Chapter Seven
1
Gracey was surprised to find that Ivan Harvey was absent in her class. He'd never skipped before, not on her watch or anyone else's. Her concern was oddly great. Before her lunch break, she went up to the principal’s office. She was even more surprised to hear that his mother did not phone him in sick earlier that day. She was tempted to call his mother and make sure that everything was okay. But something inside her stopped her from doing so. She remembered when she was in high school. She'd skipped more than her fair share of classes, and was always smart mouthing off to the teachers. Ivan Harvey certainly was not like that. It did not seem fair for her to call him out on missing a mere day of school. She would not do it. She could not do it. Maybe she would have if she were older, more professional. But, in her mid-twenties, with her high school memories still fresh in her mind, she could not bring herself to do it.
The minute she left the school parking lot for a quick trip to a fast food join for lunch, the new Dyebuko Manor caught her eye. Oh, how it seemed to shine in the sun. The trees that recently lost all their leaves made the mansion more noticeable from the road. It was anomalous how it seemed to follow her. It always seemed to be in her sight, whether in a rear view mirror or standing right there in front of her, it was always in sight. She seemed to always look at it.
The dinner party didn’t escape her thoughts that day. It was all anybody in the small town of Riverwolf Pass thought about. How obsessed most people in town became with it. Gracey found it mighty peculiar. She thought, perhaps, it was because nothing of such mysterious nature happened in Riverwolf Pass in such a long amount of time. Or perhaps, she thought, it was because everybody was excited to get to know the new people who had moved there. But if that really was the case, what made those people so interesting? Was it the fact that no one had seen them in town yet? Was it the fact that the people found the invitations on their doorsteps instead of mailboxes? Was it the fact that they did not invite the preacher? These were all odd things, true enough, but how were they all mysterious and entrancing enough to get the whole town talking about the dinner party non-stop?
Even more curious to Gracey was the question: Why was she so obsessed with it? And: Why couldn’t she stop thinking about it?
She did not know the answer to any of these questions, and even taking note of that did not get her to stop thinking about it, or merely start thinking about it less. In fact, it made her think about it more, and more, and more, and more, and even more. Even if she did try to think of something else, she would soon become bored, and think about the dinner party again. It scared her that she thought more about the dinner party than the two missing teens in Riverwolf Pass. How could that even be possible? She did not really want to learn the answer to that last question.
2
“Latianna?” Ivan said, letting the name roll off his tongue in such a sweet sounding way. He was apprehensive about the question he wanted to ask her, but he needed to talk to someone about it. After all, even being with her, he could not get it out of his mind.
“Yes, Ivan?” she replied sweetly, batting her eyelashes at him in a way that made him want to slowly, sweetly, kiss both her eyelids.
“May I ask you a question and expect you to answer truthfully?”
“Of course. You can trust me,” she said. How and what made him believe her? He had only known her for a number of days, and yet she was closer to him than anyone else had ever come close to being.
“Do you believe in… oh forget it, it’s so stupid,” he changed his mind, unable to find the words that would not make him sound crazy.
“Believe in what, Ivan? If it’s on your mind and you want to ask me, then I highly doubt it’s stupid,” Latianna said, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll think less of me. Perhaps, I will ask you another time,” Ivan said, taking her hand in his, and patting it gently. Ivan thought to himself about how she would react if he asked what he wanted to ask her. What would she think of him? Believing in creatures of the night seemed like such a childish and romantic idea. The more Ivan thought about it, he decided that romantic wasn't quite the right word, perhaps poetic would work better in this instance. Besides with all the vampire believers those days, she might have thought he was overly obsessed and want nothing to do with him. After all, he hadn't heard her say anything about vampires, or merely wear a shirt that said something about them like most teenage girls wear.
“Ask me now, Ivan, please,” she said, looking into his eyes with such a sensual feeling, Ivan found it near impossible to not ask her. So he said what was on his mind.
“Vampires,” Ivan said with a sigh, not knowing how Latianna changed his mind back so quickly and easily. “Do you believe in vampires?”
“Vampires? They don't really make me swoon like they're supposed to,” Latianna replied with a slight giggle.
“I wasn’t talking about the romantic kind of vampires,” Ivan elaborated. “I was more asking about the horrific type of vampires.”
“I’ve never read the books with the horrific vampires in them. I have never found myself fascinated by vampires, really,” Latianna trailed off, looking down at the ground, her eyes wandering around the field. Ivan wondered what her thoughts were, but she chose to keep them to herself.
“I knew it; you think I’m crazy for asking,” Ivan said, hanging his head in mortification.
“No, it’s not that. Everybody has to believe in something,” Latianna said, a slight smile let Ivan know that she spoke the truth.
“So you don’t think I’m crazy?” Ivan asked, just to be sure he was not reading her wrong.
“Not at all!” she said, leaning towards him. “I am curious to what brought this up?” she asked, placing her hand on his.
“This dream,” Ivan paused, thinking, “It must have been a dream,” a smile tore at his lips, a slightly confused smile, the kind of smile he wore when he was nervous.
“You had a dream about vampires?” Latianna asked, looking into his eyes deeply. Ivan thought that if she looked any deeper, she would actually see his soul.
“Yes, last night,” Ivan said. Latianna suddenly looked confused, and maybe a little bit of concern. “On second thought, I wouldn’t exactly call it a dream. It was more like a nightmare.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?” It was more a plead to hear it than a question about whether he wanted to tell or not. Ivan could not resist. No one had ever been interested in a dream he'd had before. This was something that caused him a lot of jealousy. Every morning, Ivan would sit at the kitchen table, forcing down his breakfast his mother made him eat. He would sit there, listening to his sister tell their parents all about her dream. It was always a dream about fairies, unicorns, angels, or other magical, fictional beings. And always, always, always, if Ivan mentioned anything about his dream that night, his parents would hush him, or tell him they did not have time to listen to his foolish dreams.
“I was walking home from your house, after the afternoon we spent together yesterday. I took a shortcut through the graveyard. Alice was there-”
“Who’s Alice?” Latianna asked, sounding more concerned than curious. That put Ivan in a tizzy for a mere second, and then answered, brushing off her tone.
“Alice is a girl who attended high school. She was uhh... well, she was a girl who dated and skipped school a lot. She recently went missing alongside Kurt. It does not surprise me, if you want to know the truth. They were both bound runaways from the moment they were thirteen and started to rebel,” Ivan explained, with a dull expression on his face.
“Then what happened?” Latianna gently cajoled.
“She started talking to me. It was like she wanted something,” Ivan paused to recall what. “She wanted me to come closer to her.” Latianna clutched her dress tightly.
“Did you comply?” she asked with a nervous look upon her face.
“It was like
…” Ivan drifted off for a second. “like I had no choice. She made me come to her… or maybe she came to me. I don’t remember exactly,” Ivan said, his forehead furrowed with thought. It seemed the more he told this story, the more he forgot it, or the memory became fuzzy. Like a dream he had when he was five and was trying to recall at seventeen.
“Do you remember what happened after that?” Latianna asked, peering into his deep green eyes. Ivan slowly nodded his head, his eyes trying to hide the fear. It suddenly came to him… the images… the memory of what happened. The recollection made him want to bury his head under his pillow and cry for hours. “It’s okay, Ivan, it was just a dream,” Latianna said, kissing him gently on the cheek. Ivan returned a loving look at her as he wondered if it really was a dream or not.
There was no need to explain what happened next in the dream. They both very well knew what happened next. She escaped into the night. And although, neither of them would willingly admit it – so as not to scare the other – they were terrified of the “dream.”
3
Chad was feeling better around dinnertime that evening. The sun had just started to set below the mountains. His head stopped pounding and his heart was only barely racing as opposed to full throttle racing. He felt ravenous, like he was dying from famine. He made his way out of bed and into the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and found it quite awakening. When his eye caught his reflection in the mirror, he had half a mind to jump. He did not look like himself and his reflection flickered in and out. He was pale, and had dark circles around his eyes. There were two tiny marks on his neck, two, tiny, red marks. They did not hurt. He would not have even noticed they were there if he did not catch his appalling reflection in the mirror. What sickness had he picked up? He looked at his fingers. They seemed to be longer than they were before. They were a milky white, and his fingernails were slightly off color.
Chad, not willing to believe what was happening, decided he needed to call his only friend that might have a clue as to what was happening to him. Ivan Harvey was that friend.
He rushed to the phone, picked it up, dialed the number, and sat there on his bed as he listened to the phone ring. Once… twice… three times… four times… five times… six times… a seventh time… and then… voicemail. Great. This was just great... a great pain that is. Just when Chad needed Ivan the most, he did not answer his phone. After a minute of debate, Chad decided not to leave Ivan a message. There was no way that he could explain what he needed in a message. Besides, what would someone else think if they heard the message before Ivan did? Chad could not bring himself to take that chance.
He hung up the phone and lay on his bed, his mind whirling with worries. His stomach made a grumbling noise, and he became aware, once more, of how hungry he really was. He stood up, a little too fast, and felt an odd sensation that made him feel like perhaps he could black out any second. That was not that out of the ordinary. It happened to him quite frequently when he did not eat enough that day or was incredibly tired. He made his way down the stairs and to the kitchen. His parents had not returned home yet. They were currently out getting pizza for dinner that night. Chad could not wait. He needed food right then! There was no debating that.
He rifled through the fridge, finding nothing that looked appealing to eat. But, knowing he needed to eat something, he cracked open a jar of peanut butter, and wolfed some of that down. It did not taste good, and it got stuck in his throat, making him cough and gag.
4
The sun fully went down behind the mountains, leaving a dim golden glow to the sky around Riverwolf Pass. At that very moment, several things were happening in the town. Chad doubled over in pain, standing in his own kitchen, all by his lonesome in his house.
Mr. White and Gracey were investigating the rustling sound coming from under their house. Thelma, Peter, and Gerald all sat down to a quiet dinner of spaghetti. Latianna’s parents were yelling at her for leaving the house again. She did not quite know how they knew. She'd arrived back home before they were. But, she was not the least bit surprised and took the reprimands with a grain of salt.
Chad's parents arrived home and struck up a conversation with each other in their living room. Ivan Harvey managed to get home without his parents noticing he'd been gone. He was home studying – or at least pretending to – a good five minutes before the babysitter dropped Christina off. His parents showed up about five minutes later. No one even suspected him of playing hooky all day.
5
Chad sat in his room, rocking back and forth on his bed. His hands clenched into two fists that gripped his legs that already firmly pressed up against his chest. What was happening to him. The rain battered down upon his roof and slashed its way against his window, revealing the night sky. Every raindrop sounded like a firecracker went off in his head. He could hear his parents talking downstairs clear as a bright, sunny, blue skied day. He could make out the dim buzzing of the street lamps down below in Riverwolf Pass. He could hear the hum of the traffic lights blinking yellow.
Chad’s eyes were fixated on his window, the night called to him. He assumed that he could not possibly be human anymore. There was no chance with the way his hearing went wacky, and the way he was pale and sick looking, the way that he could eat a horse, but then, wouldn’t feel full afterward. No, he could not possibly be human. The night kept calling to him. It was relentless. He had to go out into the night. He did not know why. Back when he was human, he would not have wanted to go out. He'd never sneaked out before, and he did not much like the rain. But then, his parents, the trouble he could get in, the pouring rain, the loud, booming thunder, the crashing lightning, it all meant nothing to him. The only thing that mattered to him was outside. The night... that was what mattered to him.
He was just about to open his window and climb out when the phone rang, bringing him back to his senses. He shuddered at the cold and quickly closed the window. Running his hands up and down his arms, trying to shake the cold spell, he answered his phone.
“Hello?” he asked in a small scared, barely heard tone.
“Chad, it’s Ivan. I saw you called and I just wanted to see what was up?” Ivan’s voice came from the other end of the phone. It sent a relieving feeling throughout Chad.
“You’re probably wondering I wasn’t in school today,” Chad said, thinking of what – and what not – to tell Ivan over the phone, and how to get him to come over to his house.
“Uh, yeah,” Ivan said, maybe a little too quickly. He was not about to tell Chad he skipped school, that could, and most likely would, result in trouble.
“Well, I’m sick, and I’m talkin’ real sick,” Chad replied.
“Did you have to go to the hospital?” Ivan sounded concerned and perhaps a little bit worried.
“No, no, but I’m thinking maybe I should. But, not just any hospital… a mental one!” Chad elaborated.
“What are you talking about, Chad?” Ivan asked. Chad could tell Ivan was confused and worried.
“Just get over here, quick, before I do something stupid,” Chad said, hanging up the phone.