Night School
By T. A. Staver
Copyright 2012 T. A. Staver
Cover Art Copyright 2012 Julie Staver
Night School
1
The cold air smelled damp and musty, like a graveyard. A hand, as hard as iron, gripped my arm. I looked away from my arm, towards the sky. The sun had set and the moon shone full and bright. A thumping beat, like a kettle drum, pounded out a slow rhythm. Looking in the direction of the thudding sound, I saw an elephant lumbering down the hallway. Its tusks were straight and pointy; sharp. The sight filled me with fear, and I closed the lid to the coffin, hoping it would pass by my bedroom without seeing me. As I waited, I pulled a crucifix out of my pants pocket, just in case. I heard a voice speaking in a language dead when Rome was just a village, and I knew that it was Satan, coming to steal my soul. But why did my neck itch so? Hands flying to my collar, I swatted away the mosquitos as large as birds. Satan’s voice grew louder, but not clearer. My neck itched so bad that I thought I would scratch it raw. Satan’s voice grew even louder, and now I could almost make out the words. Suddenly, the casket lid flew off, and I was exposed to the cold light of the moon. Satan’s voice boomed clear as a bell saying “Rodger, your class is ahead. Groove it” Groove it? What did that mean? Was the Devil to blame for disco? And what did my class have to do with it?
I opened my eyes. Not six inches away was Chuck, my vampire acquaintance. He looked angry.
“Dammit Rodger, I thaid get your ath out of bed! Move it!”
“Chuck, what are you doing in my bedroom? How did you get in my house? Why are you yelling in my face? And why,” I pushed myself up and rubbed my eyes, “are you wearing a tuxedo?”
Chuck struggled to control his emotions. When he was excited his fangs protruded and caused him to lisp. I wouldn’t recommend laughing though. The idea of a four hundred pound vampire being mad at me usually dried up any urge to giggle.
“Get your lazy butt out of bed, you need to help me.” Chuck has never shown much in the way of social graces in all of the time I’ve known him. I doubt he knows the word ‘please’. How he had ever succeeded as a salesman I will never know.
“Okay, yeah. Let me at least wake up first. How did you get into my house?” I asked.
Chuck gave me one of his dismissive looks. “Duh, you gave me permission to enter your home. Now hurry up, I don’t have all night.”
“Are you telling me that allowing you into my home once lets you come and go as you please? You didn’t tell me that when you came knocking at my door.” This was scary. Chuck was an interesting acquaintance, but not someone I wanted waltzing into my house whenever he felt like it. “Is there some way we can maybe undo the permission thing? Go to a sort of, I don’t know, as-needed basis perhaps?”
Chuck turned away and started to open drawers in my dresser. “Come on, get your clothes on.” I’ve noticed that Chuck just ignores the questions he doesn’t want to answer: works good for him, not so much for me. I made a mental note to check into the undo-the-permission question.
I swung my legs out of bed and stretched my arms over my head. “So what’s going on?” I asked around a yawn.
“My master is in town. I’m going to see him and ask some questions.” Chuck kept his back to me as he rummaged through my clothes.
I was frozen in my upstretched arms position. “And you think I can do what for you in this situation?” Meeting one vampire was causing stress in my life; meeting his master wasn’t going to lower my blood pressure. “You know, I’m not exactly Van Helsing.”
“For some reason, I didn’t have many friends before I became a vampire.” Chuck could be a Type-A jerk, so his lack of friends didn’t surprise me. As I may have mentioned, Chuck is a very large and grumpy vampire. Pointing out his personality flaws is not something I have any desire to attempt.
“As you can imagine, now that I am a vampire, the prospect of finding new friends has all but dried up. You, my pajama wearing confessor, are the closest thing I have to a friend. I’ll need someone to go with me to even the odds, and you’re the lucky one.” Chuck looked at me over his shoulder. “Don’t you have any clean underwear?”
I jumped out of bed and grabbed some off of the floor. “These are clean, just not put away,” I mumbled under my breath. As I walked to the bathroom, I grabbed jeans and a shirt. “How should I dress?” I asked. “Are we going to be outside or inside or what?”
“Dress warm, we’ll be outside,” Chuck said.
I stopped and turned around. “Why are you wearing a tuxedo?” I asked.
Chuck shot his cuffs. “I want to make a good impression. Get dressed. We don’t have a lot of time to get to our meeting,” Chuck pushed me into the bathroom with a large hand on my shoulder. “I really want to talk to Abarran.”
2
Soon we were in Chuck’s black pickup, blasting down the street at approximately warp speed. Of course, Chuck hadn’t turned on the headlights.
“Uh Chuck, you once told me that you were going to dress appropriately to avoid detection. Don’t you think driving like a NASCAR competitor on a residential street at night with no headlights is a little, watch that mailbox, a little showy?” I had on a seatbelt, but grabbing the dashboard seemed like a reasonable precaution also.
“Don’t be such a sissy,” Chuck said. “I only have a couple of minutes to get where we’re going. I got to pick the location, but Abarran got to pick the time. He told me that if I was even one minute late, he would leave without talking to me.”
“So, where did you choose?” I asked.
“That deserted school at the end of Walnut Street.”
“Oh good,” I said. “That’s only a couple of blocks…” I looked at Chuck. “Are you telling me that you told the vampire that created you, and is not concerned with killing humans, to meet you four blocks away from where I live?!”
“It’s not like I could tell him to meet me where I live,” Chuck said, his face showing confusion at my anger. “How dumb would that be?” O..kay. I decided to let the explanation for that go.
“And how am I supposed to help you ‘even the odds’ in a meeting with Abarran? I don’t know the first thing about fighting a vampire.” The more I thought about this whole mess, the more I saw myself as being the one who ended up hurt. Or dead.
“‘Fighting a vampire’? You’d be about as much help as second belly button.” Chuck looked amused. “I need you for your mind. You have a quick wit and think outside the box. I’ll need that when talking to an old vampire.”
Okay, that sounded much less dangerous. Maybe I could be of use in this meeting.
“So is Abarran really old?” I was imagining some of the stories I had read: Anne Rice; Stephen King. The characters they created seemed worldly and debonair.
“Well, I only saw him, as a vampire, for maybe thirty minutes, forty tops. So I can’t really say how old he is. But, it’s better to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
Chuck’s use of that particular proverb didn’t elevate my courage. But as a commonsense approach, he could have done worse. Tires crunching across the gravel parking lot, I hoped that it would be enough.
3
“We have about three minutes before he shows,” Chuck said. “Let’s hustle. I suggested we meet in the playground. There’s lots of open space there. We can keep our distance without looking too suspicious about it.”
“Will we have to keep our distance?” I asked. “Are we talking to him or starting a fight?” I trotted to keep up with Chuck, who was setting a fast pace.
“I don’t know,” Chuck admitted. “I like to have all of my options available, and the farther away from him I am, the more time I have to react to whatever he may do.”
“Is there a rea
son to think that Abarran would be hostile to you?” I asked. “I mean, he did create you. As a vampire, that is.”
Chuck stopped and looked at me. “I can feel him. It’s an irritation. I don’t like having him around. I feel as if something is wrong, and it’s bugging the crap out of me.” He started walking again, heading towards the back of the school.
As we rounded the corner, I sized up the area. The chain-link fence was sagging in some spots, but still surrounded the playground. The only way out, short of climbing the fence, was back the way we had come. There was a swing set (with no swings), a slide (with no ladder), and a teeter-totter (with neither teeter nor totter). Yep, this was most definitely a deserted school yard. I expected to see the gangs from West Side Story start a rumble.
I thought of something. “Hey Chuck, how did Abarran contact you? Did he send you a psychic message? Or did he appear in a dream? I bet you’re attuned to the master’s blood
connection.”
“He called me on the