dark eyes drifted down to the hardwood floor as if in shame, but when they rose again I could see a combination of loneliness and sadness. Suddenly, I knew that he had been carrying the burden of this secret, possibly for a long time. I tried to remember how long it had been since he started pulling away from the rest of us, his classmates, his friends: eight years, nine maybe.
“You’re a vampire,” I whispered.
He nodded, his chiseled chin jutting out defensively.
I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold him. All this time, I had been acting as though I was the one who was different, as though I was the one who couldn’t seem to fit in with the crowds. But this, what Evan had been forced to—
Damn! And now my turn had arrived—but I didn’t want this. I couldn’t possibly do any of the things I had seen in the movies. It made me sick to think how I had reacted to the taste of my own blood earlier.
“Is there a cure?”
“Not one that you would like,” Evan said.
I knew he meant death.
“And your aunt?” I asked, suspecting I finally understood her unpleasant nature.
Evan shook his head. “She’s human but she knows about me. My mother told her just before she died. She thought my aunt could accept what had happened, accept me.”
“Didn’t she?”
Evan shrugged. “She hasn’t given my secret away,” he said, “and she supplies me with blood from the clinic.”
“So you don’t…kill?”
“Deer, rabbits, sometimes a wolf or fox. But, no, I don’t kill people. I wouldn’t even drink human blood except I get sick if I go too long without it.”
Paul Doucette reinserted himself into the conversation.
“You better get your ass down here, Evan, because I think Tony just killed Dillon.”
Evan raced out of the room so fast I could barely see him move. Since I was now free, I followed as best I could. Evan’s house seemed even larger on the inside than it was outside. Surprising for a vampire’s home, there were a lot of windows through which shone a bright moonlit night. Outside the bedroom, I turned right and followed a long, wide hallway to the end where I had glimpsed the oak door closing.
Basement, I guessed.
I slipped through the door and hurried down a long stairway which opened into an immense carpeted room with a full set of windows along one wall. Correction: a daylight basement.
“Let me out of here, Kayla,” I heard Paul say from a locked door to my right. I could see him banging on a small square window.
Evan was unlocking a padlock to another room further down. He disappeared inside.
“I told him to shut up,” one of the boys said. “I told him to be quiet!”
Evan reappeared carrying a limp form. The look on his face told me all I needed to know.
I brushed tears from my eyes. I recognized the tall, lanky redhead; Dillon had always been well-mannered, quiet. He didn’t deserve this. I intentionally didn’t allow myself to consider that he might have been better off than the rest of us.
“Why were they together?” I asked.
“They were best friends,” Evan said. “They begged me not to separate them. Dillon was crying.”
“Your aunt didn’t chain them?”
“No need. The cells down here are secure. My father used to sleep in one of them. I should have known, though.”
“Hey,” I said. “You’ve been amazing…for all of us. It’s not your fault.”
“Tell Dillon that,” Evan said, shaking his head and staring down into the lifeless eyes of our classmate.
“I looked at Dillon, face tilted away from me, blood smeared across his neck, a huge red splotch staining the right shoulder of his light blue T-shirt. His lips were tight with what looked like pain. His eyelid twitched.”
“He’s still alive!” I gasped.
“No he’s not,” Evan said. There was a sad timbre to his voice. “Vampires don’t exactly die, not without help.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Evan carried Dillon toward a pair of glass double doors leading outside.
“I have to burn him,” Evan said. “And if I don’t cut his head off first, he’ll scream until his vocal chords are too charred to work anymore.”
“So he’s still alive!”
“No. Whatever part of his brain made him Dillon is gone. If I don’t finish the job Tony started, he’ll go on a killing rampage until his body starts to rot and fall apart. By then, half the town could be dead or turned and the Army would be back.”
I wanted to argue, to fight for the life of my friend, but the things Evan said were too horrible to imagine. My life had turned into a nightmare straight out of a horror movie. I couldn’t speak.
“Lock Tony’s door again,” Evan said. “I knocked him out but he’ll come around soon.”
“Where…where will you do it?” I asked. One of Dillon’s feet jerked.
“There’s a concrete bunker at the back of my property. My mother had it built to take care of the infected animals we found.” Evan stepped outside.
“Remember, lock Tony’s door.”
I turned to do as asked when the sirens began. It sounded as though both the Groacherville police cars were coming up the long private driveway to Evan’s house. I turned to lock the room where Dillon’s body had been found, but I was too late. Tony had already stepped outside of his cell. He leered and gave me a malicious grin. Four new fangs framed his otherwise perfect dentist’s son teeth. His long blond hair was matted on one side with what I imagined to be Dillon’s blood. Seemingly unconcerned with the sirens, squealing tires or the sounds of car doors opening and closing, he snarled and sprinted straight at me.
End Episode One
Coming November 2012
“Her Yearning for Blood, Episode Two”
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Dislocated Man
Part 1
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Dislocated Man
Part 2
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Dislocated Man
Part 3
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