Richard Laymon - The Traveling Vampire Show

As I shrugged, I heard footsteps coming down the hallway.

We went silent, but we both looked at Rusty when he walked in.

“What?” he asked, handing the roll of paper towels to Slim.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“We were just trying to figure out how all this happened,” Slim explained. She turned away, tore off some paper towels, wadded them up and started to mop the top of the dresser.

Rusty gave me an alarmed look.

I almost shook me head, but realized that Slim was facing the mirror and might see me.

“If none of us did this stuff,” she said, “who did?”

“How about ghosts?” Rusty suggested. The playful tone of his voice sounded forced. “I mean, you’ve gotta have ghosts in this place, everything that’s happened here.”

She stopped cleaning and turned around. Frowning, she asked, “Like what?”

“You know.”

“No I don’t. What do you mean, ‘everything that’s happened here’?”

Rusty seemed shocked by her tone. It shocked me, too.

“Like with your dad and grandfather.”

“You’ve gotta be dead to be a ghost,” Slim said, her voice sharp.

“I know, but…”

“And Jimmy Drake isn’t.”

“I didn’t say he is.”

“You said his ghost…”

“He might be dead, right? I mean, he left town and you’ve never heard from him again. So he could be dead, couldn’t he?”

Seeming calmer, Slim looked at Rusty with narrow eyes and said, “I guess so.”

“Anyway,” Rusty said, “it was just a thought.”

“A lame thought,” I told him, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject of Slim’s father. “You don’t even believe in ghosts.”

“This just seems like the sort of thing a guy like Jimmy Drake might do,” Rusty explained. Then his eyes widened. In a hushed voice, he said, “Maybe he was here. Maybe he came back… you know, from wherever he went… and did this stuff.”

Slim stared at him.

“In the flesh,” Rusty said. “Not a ghost or anything, but him. What if he’s back?”

“He’s not,” Slim said.

“How do you know?”

“If he came back, he wouldn’t piddle around chomping on books and breaking a couple of things. It’s not his style. They’re just things. They’re not people. They don’t…” She turned away and resumed wiping the dresser top.

“I think it has something to do with the vampire show,” I said—partly because that’s what I really thought, partly to get the subject off Slim’s father because I knew she didn’t like being reminded of what he’d done to her and the others. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

Nodding, Rusty added, “To keep our mouths shut.”

“I don’t know,” Slim muttered.

“What I think we should do,” I said, “is finish cleaning this stuff up and then go over to my house. We can have supper there like we planned, but maybe we shouldn’t come back here afterwards.”

“They might be waiting for us,” Rusty pointed out, smiling as if he thought it were a joke.

“Where will we go?” Slim asked.

“I don’t know yet. We oughta think of a place where nobody’ ll be able to find us. But the main thing is, we should stay together from now on.”

Slim turned around. Finally smiling, she raised her eyebrows. “From now on?”

“Cool,” Rusty said.

“At least till the vampire show leaves town,” I explained.

“What about tonight?” she asked. “I’m not going to the show. I’m not stepping foot in Janks Field till those creeps are long gone.”

“Well I’m going,” Rusty said. Eyes on Slim, he shook his head. “I’m not gonna miss it just because you’re a chicken.”

“Hey,” I said.

“Well, I’m not. We don’t even know it was them. It might’ve been anyone.”

“It isn’t about this,” Slim said. “It’s about torturing and killing that poor dog.”

“That poor dog went after you like a hunk of raw meat.”

“Let’s not start this again,” I said. “Let’s just finish and get outa here before something else happens.”

It took about half an hour longer to complete the clean-up: vacuuming the carpet, wiping it with a damp sponge to take away some of the perfume, dumping the wastebasket in Slim’s garbage can in the alley behind her house and throwing in some old newspapers to hide the book and bits of glass, then finally putting everything away.

Back upstairs after returning the wastebasket to her bedroom, Slim brushed her hands against the front of her cut-off jeans. “I guess that does it.”

“Guess so,” I agreed. “Anything you want to take with you?”

“Depends on what we’ll be doing.”

“Going to the vampire show,” Rusty said.

“Maybe you are.” To me, she said, “Anyway, I guess I’ll just leave everything here for now. We can always come back and get stuff, depending on what we decide to do.”

“Go the vampire show,” Rusty repeated. This time, he grinned.

“Yeah, sure,” Slim said.

Downstairs, we hid all the weapons on the floor behind the living room sofa where we could get to them quickly if we needed them.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. Leaving us there, she hurried toward the back of her house. She returned a couple of minutes later with an inch-long strip of Scotch tape sticking to her fingertip.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” Rusty asked.

“Old Indian trick,” she said, and ushered us out of the house.

Standing in the entryway, she pulled the front door shut. Then she squatted down and I realized what she was doing. Not exactly an “old Indian trick.” More like a James Bond trick. She was sticking one end of the tape to the door’s edge, the other end to the frame.

When she stepped away, I glanced down but couldn’t quite see the transparent tape.

Neither would an intruder, more than likely.

Opening the door would either break the tape or pull it loose at one end or the other. Then we’d know that someone had entered Slim’s house.

“Did the same to the kitchen door,” she announced.

“Good idea,” I said.

Smirking, Rusty said, “Why not balance buckets of water on top of the doors and really nail ’em.”

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows.

I said, “Make it holy water.”

“There’s an idea,” Slim said.

Rusty frowned. He didn’t get it. So we both tried to explain to him about vampires and holy water while we crossed to the sidewalk and turned toward my house.

When we finished, he said, “I knew that.”

Mom’s car was gone from the driveway. The house seemed empty when we entered it, but I called out anyway and got no answer.

“She must’ve gone somewhere,” I muttered. It seemed odd that Mom would leave the house this late in the afternoon.

“Maybe she went to the store,” Slim suggested.

“Maybe.” That didn’t seem likely, since she’d done her grocery shopping that very morning. But maybe she’d forgotten to pick up buns or something, and decided to make a last-minute run.

On the kitchen table, I found a note in Mom’s handwriting.

Honey,

Your father just called from the hospital He has been hurt, but he tells me it is nothing to worry about. I am going to be with him. Don’t know when I’ll be back Go ahead and eat without us. Burgers are in the fridge. I’ll call when I can.

Try not to worry, your dad’s fine.

Love,

Slim and Rusty watched in silence while I read the message a couple of times. It gave me a cold lump in my stomach. When I finished with it, I said, “My dad’s in the hospital.”