“We need it. They can make more.”
“Dill – ”
There was a squeaking noise from across the church. Both boys froze for a second, then ducked behind a pew.
A door opened in the wooden telephone booth, and a little old lady tottered out towards the church entrance.
“Where’d she come from?” Peter asked.
“That’s a…a concession stand,” Dill said.
Peter was quite confused. “They have hot dogs in there?”
“Uh…okay, maybe it’s called something else. You gotta go in there.”
“WHAT? Why?”
“Cuz there’s a priest in there, too, and you gotta talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Cuz he’s about to come out, and I gotta get more stuff, so go now, man!”
Dill pushed Peter towards the wooden booth, but was careful not to spill the holy water in his collapsible cup.
“What do I do?”
“Say, ‘Forgive me, father, four sins I have’…or something like that, I can’t remember, they say it in the movies all the time. Just make it up. It’ll be easy, they’re always nice on television. Go, before the priest comes out! GO!”
20
Peter ran towards the open door, got inside, and sat on the wooden seat built into the booth. He looked out frantically at Dill, who waved at him and pantomimed closing a closet or something. Peter reluctantly reached out and shut the door.
It was totally like being inside a wooden phone booth. Really dark.
Peter jumped as a voice came from somewhere on the other side of the wooden wall.
“Yes, my child?”
“Uh…uh…”
Peter’s heart was beating just as fast as when he looked in Mercy’s tomb. “I…have…forty sins, or something like that…forgive me?”
“How long has it been since your last confession, my son,” the voice said. It sounded friendly and kind. An older man. Peter relaxed a little bit.
“Uh…I don’t know, to tell the truth. Forever, I think.”
“Have you ever confessed before, my child?”
“Uh…not to you guys,” Peter said. “My mom has made me confess stuff before, but this is kind of new.”
“You sound very young. How old are you?”
“Nine and a half.” Peter relaxed a little. Dill was right. This was easy.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”
Okay, not so easy.
“Yeah…I was hoping you could forgive me for that.”
“I would guess that something as simple as that would not have brought you in here today, my child. Is there anything weighing on your mind?”
How about vampires?
“Kind of.”
“Would you like to talk about it.”
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Peter considered. The voice seemed so nice and gentle…maybe this guy really could help him.
“Well…there’s this girl who likes me. She’s kind of weird.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t like her so much.”
“Why not?”
“She’s a girl. Plus, she’s weird.” Peter wanted to say, Pay attention, dude.
“Mm. Go on.”
“She bugged me a lot. At school.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And then she got sick and died.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that. That must be troubling you greatly.”
“Yeah, I was really sad at first…but now she’s still bugging me.”
“You mean, you think about her a lot?”
“Well, yeah, but, I mean, she’s still bugging me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She came by last night and was bugging me.”
“In your dreams?”
“No, outside my window.”
There was a long pause.
“Young man, is this a joke?”
Uh-oh.
“No, no – we thought she might be a ghost at first, but now I’m pretty sure she’s a vampire.”
“Young man, this is a very serious place, and it is not the time for silly pranks.”
Okay, maybe this guy couldn’t really help him.
But Peter decided to try one last time.
“Soooooo…any advice?”
“Yes, you should stop this foolishness and tell me what sins you have committed, including this lie you’re engaged in right now.”
Okay, this is absolutely no help whatsoever.
There was a clatter outside. Peter winced.
“What was that?” the voice asked, alarmed.
“Uh…I don’t know. Can we get back to how bad I am and how I’m a liar and all that?”
“Hold on,” the voice commanded.
“Uh, wait, no, come back!” Peter said as he stumbled out of the phone booth.
The priest was already outside. He looked close to Grandfather’s age, but with a full head of hair and a clean-shaven face. He was dressed in a long black robe with a white collar at the top. As Dill would’ve said, just like in the movies.
On a regular day the priest might not have been such a bad guy. Except this wasn’t a regular day, what with Dill in the middle of the church aisle, arms crammed with a dozen crosses ranging from tiny to huge, and the collapsible water cup still clutched in one hand.
“Oh crap,” Dill muttered, then ran for it.
“STOP!” the priest called out.
Maybe God is on this guy’s side, Peter thought, because as soon as the old guy yelled, Dill tripped and went down in a pile of crosses. The collapsible cup hit the floor and, well, collapsed. Holy water went flying everywhere.
“Ow!” Dill yelled, first when he hit the floor, then again when the priest yanked him up by one ear. He was pretty fast for an old guy.
“OW-OW-OW-OW-OW!” Dill howled as the priest hauled him up.
“YOU!” the priest yelled at Peter. “OVER HERE, NOW!”
Peter sighed.
This wasn’t going to be pretty.
21
“You understand this is extremely disruptive behavior,” the priest said.
“I do,” Grandfather agreed. “And they’ll both get the thrashings of their young lives, Father Stevens.”
The priest sat behind a desk in a room at the back of the church. There wasn’t much on the walls, just a few framed Bible verses and a couple of paintings of old guys in funny hats.
Peter and Dill both huddled in two high-backed chairs facing the priest. Grandfather stood between them, his arms folded. He glared down continuously, first at Peter, then at Dill.
“I just can’t understand why someone would do this,” Father Stevens said. “One of them lies while the other one steals – this is extremely alarming behavior, especially at this age, Mr. Flannagan.”
“I didn’t lie!” Peter protested.
“I was just borrowing that stuff!” Dill said indignantly. “I woulda brought it back. Except for the holy water, but I’da brought that back, too, if I didn’t use all of it.”
“What in the world would you be borrowing ten crucifixes for?” Father Stevens asked angrily. “And holy water?”
“Vampires, man,” Dill said.
“You see?” The priest looked at Grandfather but pointed at Peter. “That was the same nonsense this one was saying! What exactly are you letting them watch on TV?”
“Far too much, it would appear,” Grandfather said.
“We don’t even have a TV!” Peter complained. “Everything I told you was the truth – why won’t you believe me?”
“Vampires? Little girls who ‘bug you’ from beyond the grave?” Father Stevens scoffed.
“Dude, you believe in guys who come back to life,” Dill pointed out.
The priest got red-faced. “Our Lord Jesus Christ was not a vampire!”
“I’m not sayin’ he was,” Dill shrugged. “But he was dead, and he came back, right? I’m
just sayin’.”
“That is blasphemy!” the priest sputtered.
“What’s that?” Dill asked.
“It’s saying bad words with God’s name,” Peter explained.
“Well, jeez, my dad does that all the time when he stubs his toe or runs out of beer. Why don’t you get him in here, not me.”
“MR. FLANNAGAN!” the priest roared.
Grandfather’s hand clamped down on Peter’s shoulder. He didn’t dare look up.
“I assure you, Father,” Grandfather said in a very solemn voice, “the problem will be taken care of. Of that you can be certain.”
Peter shuddered. After hearing that, he wished the priest would keep him locked up in the phone booth.
22
Dill and Peter followed Grandfather silently out to the truck. After he placed their bikes in the back, the old man held the passenger door open for them, closed it, went around, and got in himself.
The boys waited. Grandfather cranked the engine. Putter putter, clank clank. The truck backed up, then grinded forward into drive. Grandfather never looked at them once.
Dill was about to burst. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What…uh…what’re you…”
“Spit it out, boy.”
“Are you going to kill us?”
“No.”
The truck turned right out of the parking lot instead of left. Left would have been towards home.
“Where are we going?” Peter asked.
“I am taking you two criminals to school.”
Dill pointed back at the church. “That guy can’t prove anything.”
“He’s a priest, Dill,” Grandfather said without any humor whatsoever. “Juries tend to believe them more than juvenile delinquents.”
“Grandfather…you know we were taking all that stuff for a reason, right?”
Grandfather was silent for a moment. Peter thought that meant the end was nigh. Instead, when the old man spoke, it was a quiet, simple question:
“You were there in the cemetery, weren’t you.”
“Huh? What cemetery? I don’t know what you’re talking OOF.” Dill grunted as Peter elbowed him.
“Yeah,” Peter admitted.
“Dude,” Dill hissed in Peter’s ear, “he can’t prove anything, either.”
“I saw you, Dill,” Grandfather growled. “Behind the statue, out of the corner of my eye.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Did you go in?” Grandfather asked.
Dill and Peter answered at the same time.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Well, which is it?”
“We didn’t see anything,” Dill vowed.
“Because there was nothing to see,” Peter added. “No coffin, no…body. Nothing.”
“Do you remember what I told you last night, boy?”
“…that there aren’t any such things as vampires?”
“That’s right. Officially, in broad daylight and in serious people’s minds, vampires do not exist. They are stories used to frighten children into saying their prayers and eating their greens. Do you remember what I told you that night you were sick, and we talked about Mercy’s family? Her great-great-great-great-great-uncle and the coffins he sold?”
“Um…you said that cholera didn’t kill those people.”
“Yeah, the pooping did,” Dill said.
Grandfather looked at Dill with an expression somewhere between angry and confused.
“Cholera. Death by pooping,” Dill explained helpfully.
Grandfather looked back at the road and shook his head.
“Well, what killed them, then?” Peter inquired, trying to divert attention away from Dill.
“No one’s entirely sure how – ”
Dill opened his mouth to answer.
Grandfather looked sharply over at him.
Dill shut his mouth.
“How the first death occurred,” Grandfather continued. “It was Gilbraith Chalmers, the youngest son of John Buchanen Chalmers, a mere 15 years old when he died. But however it happened, Gilbraith did not stay dead.”
“He was a vampire?”
“There are stories from a Winnapotaka Indian tribe that a European traveler passed through this region in the 1800’s and killed two young men from the village. The warriors of the village pursued the European, who fled into the night. The village mourned and did all proper burial rights for the two braves, according to Winnapotakan customs. But they were astounded when the two young men appeared in the village the very next night, alive and well. However, they were…changed.”
The skin on Peter’s neck crawled. He remembered Mercy at the window. He remembered her eyes, black like a great white’s. And with teeth like a cobra’s…
“There was a great battle in which the two braves killed almost half of the men of the tribe. The Winnapotakans claimed the young men could fly, but they were finally caught in clever traps devised by the village elders. To the great surprise of everyone in the tribe, the two young men burst into flames when the morning sun came and shone upon their bodies. To be safe, the Indians burned the bodies of all the others the two had slain…and nothing happened. No one else appeared after death ever again. The Winnapotakans lived only five miles away from the township we know today as Duskerville. And that story they told happened exactly one week before Gilbraith Chalmers was officially laid to rest: January 12th, 1822.”
“You think the Indians bit Gil…that Gil guy?”
“No. I think the European did, the one that fled into the forest. But there are no stories about Gilbraith appearing after death. There are only stories about a mysterious illness that fell on the town, killing person after person. Men, women, children – it didn’t matter. ‘Cholera,’ they said. Thirty-seven people died in the space of four weeks…until something happened.”
Dill and Peter waited for the next words. “What? What happened?”
“Someone figured out what was going on and stopped it once and for all,” Grandfather said as he jammed on the brakes. The truck lurched to a stop in front of the school.
“Who? Who stopped it?” Peter cried out.
“Yeah, what’d they do?” Dill demanded.
“You’re late for school.”
“But – ”
“I have work to do before this thing gets out of hand. Now get back to your studies and keep out of my way, or like I promised Father Stevens, you will get the thrashings of your lives.”
Dill raised a hand tentatively.
“What,” Grandfather barked.
“We need a note.”
“What?”
“We need a note. They won’t let us in without a note.”
“Or worse, they’ll call Mom,” Peter said.
Grandfather grumbled and muttered. “Give me a piece of paper and something to write with.”
Peter fumbled in his backpack and produced paper and a pen. Grandfather scribbled a message, then handed them both back. Peter looked down at the paper. Whatever the writing said, he certainly couldn’t read it.
“Can we – ” Dill began.
“GIT!” Grandfather bellowed.
Peter and Dill got. The truck roared off as soon as they slammed the door.
“Dude,” Dill said. “Your grandfather’s craaaaaazy.”
“I know,” Peter said.
“And scary.”
“Yeah.”
“But he’s cool.”
Peter stared at Dill, who shrugged.
“My granddad talks about his arthritis and how his fake teeth don’t fit and how much mucus he coughs up in the morning.” Dill looked admiringly after the truck as it puttered its way down the street. “Dude, I’d trade for your grandpa’s stories any day.”
23
After a lot of effort trying to translate Grandfather’s message, the school secretary gave up and told Dill and Peter to go back to class.
“Well, I’m glad to see you gentlemen fi
nally decided to join us,” Mrs. Cashew said in her most withering voice.
For the first time in his life, a teacher’s sarcasm didn’t have any effect at all on Peter. He’d had a vampire outside his bedroom window last night; a mean teacher’s snarky comments didn’t really measure up to that.
As he sat down, the first thing Peter noticed was Mercy’s empty chair, and a sharp pang nudged his conscience once again. He couldn’t help but feel partly responsible. He still believed that if he hadn’t been mean to her on the bus, none of this would have happened. Peter knew that it didn’t make any sense, but that didn’t change the way he felt.
The second thing he noticed was that there was a second vacant seat in the classroom, the place where Agnes Smithouse normally sat. Agnes was one of Mercy Chalmers’ best friends.
Peter leaned across the aisle to ask Cindy Mooten where Agnes was.
Cindy just shrugged. “I don’t know. Katie Brammelson said she talked to her really late last night, and Agnes said hang on and put down the phone, but she never came back. Katie finally hung up and tried to call again, but nobody ever answered.”
Peter stole a look at Katie Brammelson over in the corner. She looked worried, unsure of everything. After all, her two closest friends in the world were dead or missing.
“Katie doesn’t know what happened to her,” Cindy Mooten said. “Nobody knows.”
24
By 5 PM, nobody had any more information, but now the entire town was abuzz with the news of Agnes’s disappearance. Dill and Peter watched from Dill’s front lawn as a Sheriff’s department patrol car sped by.
“You think they’ll find her?” Dill asked.
Peter watched the car recede into the distance. “I hope so.”
There was a BAM BAM BAM noise from over in Peter’s yard. Grandfather was up on a ladder, nailing cloves of garlic and crucifixes over every window and door.
“Okay, where’d he get those crosses?” Dill complained. “I try to get some, I get busted and I’m in big-time trouble. But he’s got like two hundred of them stashed away somewhere. Is that fair?”
“No, but I’m sure glad he’s got ‘em,” Peter answered.
Dill watched Grandfather nail another cross over a second-story window. “Can I spend the night at your house?”
“You’re probably better off at your own place.”
“What, do you want me to get turned into a bloodsucker?” Dill said angrily.
Peter rolled his eyes. “You know Mercy’s coming for me – at my house, you’re gonna get caught right in the middle of it. If you stay at your house, she’ll probably leave you alone. Just don’t invite anyone in. Vampires can’t come in unless you invite them.”