Richard Laymon: The Traveling Vampire Show

“WHY ARE YOU TALKING SO QUIET?” Rusty boomed out, making us both jump.

We whirled around and watched him laugh.

“Good one,” Slim said, looking peeved.

“A riot,” I said.

“YOU TWO AREN’T NERVOUS, ARE YOU?”

Slim grimaced. “Would you pipe down?”

“WHAT’RE YOU SCARED OF?”

I wanted to bash him one in the face, but I held back. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but Rusty wasn’t exactly in the best of shape. Not a total lardass, but pudgy and soft and not exactly capable of fighting back.

Which might seem like an advantage if you want to slug a guy in the puss. But I knew it would make me feel lousy. And he was my best friend, after all—other than Slim.

Grinning, he boomed, “CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE?”

Slim pinched his side.

He gasped, “OW!” and twisted away. “That hurt! ”

“Keep it down,” Slim said.

“Jeez.”

“We’re gonna have to be sneaky going in,” she explained, “or they’ll toss our butts out and we’ll never get a chance to see Valeria.”

“Or don’t you want to see her?” I asked Rusty.

“Jeez, guys, I was just screwing around.”

“Let’s hope nobody heard you,” Slim said.

“Nobody heard me. We’re miles from Janks Field.”

“More like a few hundred yards,” I told him.

“And sound really carries around here,” Slim added.

“Okay, okay, I get the point.”

The dirt road wasn’t as wide as Route 3, so we didn’t walk abreast. Slim took the lead. Rusty and I stayed pretty much beside each other.

There was no sunlight. Of course, there hadn’t been any sunlight before we entered the woods—just a gray gloom. But now, with trees all around and above us, the gloom was deeper, darker. Things looked the way they do when you’re out after supper on a summer night and you can see just fine, so far, but you’ve only got maybe half an hour before it’ll be too dark for playing ball.

“If it gets much darker,” I said, “Valeria won’t need her casket.”

Rusty put a finger to his lips and went, “Shhhhh.”

I gave him the finger.

He smirked.

After that, I kept my mouth shut.

Our shoes were almost silent on the dirt road except for sometimes when one of us stepped on a twig. Rusty was breathing fairly hard. Every so often, he muttered stuff under his breath.

A very quiet tune seemed to be coming from Slim. “De dum, de doo, de do-doo….” It blended in with the sounds all around us of buzzing flies and mosquitos and bees, bird tweets, and the endless flutters and rustling scurries of unseen creatures. “De-dum, de do, de doo.”

Rusty made no attempt to shush her.

But suddenly he said, “Wait up.”

Slim halted.

When we caught up to her, Rusty said in a hushed voice, “I gotta take a leak.”

Slim nodded. “Pick a tree,” she said.

He glanced from Slim to me. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” “We’ll stay right here,” she told him.

I nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He stepped off the dirt road and made his way into the trees.

“Do you have to go?” Slim asked me.

“Nah.”

“Me neither.” She pursed her lips and blew softly through them. Then she said, “Sure is hot in here.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. I was broiled and drenched and itchy, my clothes sticking to me.

Slim’s short blond hair was matted down in coils against her scalp and forehead. Sweat ran down her face. As I watched, a drip gathered at the tip of her nose and fell. Her white T-shirt was clinging to her skin and I could see through it.

“This vampire better be worth it,” she said.

“Too bad we won’t get to see her.”

Slim gave me half a smile. “If she’s in her casket, we’ll have to bust her out of it. We’re not gonna put ourselves through all this and not get a look at her.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Don’t know what?” she asked, and peeled her T-shirt off. In spite of her bikini top, she seemed to be mostly bare skin from the waist up. She wadded her T-shirt and mopped the sweat off her face.

I looked the other way.

“What don’t you know?” she asked.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what we’d been talking about. Then I remembered. I said, “She isn’t gonna be by herself. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“You’re probably right.” Lowering the shirt away from her face, she smiled and said, “She needs casket-handlers.”

“Right.”

“Probably has a whole crew.” She wiped her chest, her arms.

“And they might not be model citizens,” I said.

Laughing softly, she lowered her head and began to wipe the sweat off her belly and sides. I sneaked a glance at her breasts. The thin pouches of her bikini top were stretched smooth with them. Around the edges of the fabric, I glimpsed pale slopes of skin.

“We’ll have to be careful,” I said.

“Yeah. If they look really scurvy, we’d better forget the whole thing.”

Hearing footsteps, we both turned our heads and saw Rusty trudging toward us.

Slim continued to rub at herself with the balled shirt. I wanted her to put it back on, but I didn’t say anything.

“All set,” Rusty said. I saw him check her out. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing much,” Slim told him. “Just waiting for you.”

“We’re thinking we’ll have to be really careful,” I explained. “Valeria’s gonna have…”

“Casket keepers,” Slim threw in.

Rusty smiled and nodded.

“No telling how many people might be with the show,” I said.

“And it’s likely a scumrvy lot,” added Slim with a bit of Long John Silver in her voice.

“They go around with a traveling vampire show,” Rusty said, “they’ve gotta be at least a little strange.”

“And maybe dangerous,” I said.

Rusty suddenly frowned. “You guys aren’t gonna chicken out, are you?” Before either of us had a chance to answer, he said, “Cause I’m going irregardless.”

“Irregardless ain’t a word, Einstein,” Slim told him.

“Is too.”

She wasn’t one to argue. She just gave him a funny smile, then pulled her T-shirt on. “Let’s go.”

After that, none of us said anything. We weren’t that far from Janks Field, so I think we were starting to get more nervous.

Janks Field was the sort of place that made you nervous no matter what.

First off, nothing grows there. It’s a big patch of hard bare dirt surrounded by thick, green woods. But it’s not bare on purpose. Nobody clears the field. As far as anyone knows, Janks Field has always been that way.

I’ve heard people say the dirt there is poison. I think they’re wrong about that, though. Janks Field has more than its share of wildlife—the sort that lives in holes in the ground—ants, spiders, snakes, and so on.

Some people say aliens landed there, and that’s why nothing will grow.

Sure thing.

Others say the field is cursed. I might go along with that. You might, too, after you know more about it.

The reason they call the place Janks Field isn’t because it belongs to anyone named Janks. It doesn’t, and never did. It’s called that because of Tommy Janks and what he did there in 1954.

I was just a little kid at the time, so nobody told me much. But I do remember people acting funny the summer it all happened. Dad, being chief of police, wasn’t home very often. Mom, usually cheerful, seemed oddly nervous. And sometimes I overheard scattered talk about missing girls. This went on for most of the summer. Then something big happened and everyone went crazy. All the grown-ups were pale and whispering and I caught bits and pieces like, “Some kind of monster…” and “Dear God…” and “their poor parents…” and “always knew there was something off about him.”