When the bike smacked into it, the metal case started to bang and clatter.
“What are you waiting for? Get in, get in!” Grandfather barked as he headed for the driver’s side door.
As he raced for the passenger side, Peter glanced fearfully at the metal box. It jumped about two inches into the air. The chains restrained it, though, and then it crashed back down.
Once in his seat, Peter pointed back behind him. “Is that…?”
“Your lady caller from earlier in the evening,” Grandfather growled. “Where’s she headed?”
Peter looked dumbfounded. “I don’t know, she’s in a box.”
“The other one, the other one!” Grandfather raged.
“Ohhhh, Mercy! I don’t know – she’s up there.”
Peter pointed up at the sky, where a tiny black shape could still be seen over the trees. Grandfather cursed when he saw it, then slammed the truck into gear and drove off down the road.
“She’s got Dill!” Peter moaned.
“I know – a blubbering little snot called the house. I would have been here sooner, but I had to…pack.” Grandfather squinted at Peter. “Is that a pie tin around your neck?”
Peter half-winced, half-smiled.
Grandfather groaned and turned back to the road. “This is not going to go well,” he muttered to himself.
“Why’d you bring Agnes?”
“I wasn’t about to let that that thing stay in the same house with my daughter and granddaughter.” Grandfather glared at Peter. “You I might let her alone with, for getting me into all of this nonsense. Grab the bag by your feet, and be careful.”
Peter reached down and pulled up a canvas bag – the same one he’d seen Grandfather wearing at the cemetery.
“Open it up. Mind you don’t cut yourself.”
Peter’s hands trembled as he pulled the bag open and stared at an assortment of props straight out of a horror movie. Wooden stakes. Two hammers. Crosses. A knife that gleamed silver in the moonlight. A string of garlic bulbs.
“Take one of each and put it in your backpack there.”
Peter started gathering the tools, then hesitated. “Grandfather, I…I don’t know if I can do this…”
“Do you want to save your friend?”
“Of course.”
“Then you’ll do what you have to.”
Peter jerked his thumb back towards the rear of the truck. “What about her?”
“Who, the one in the box? There are some books that say once the head of the vampire line is destroyed, all his victims return to normal. We’re going to test that theory tonight.”
“But…what if Mercy’s not the head vampire?”
Grandfather was silent.
“What’s going to happen to Mercy?” Peter whispered.
Grandfather shook his head slowly. “There’s only one thing to do.”
“She’s a kid,” Peter protested.
“Who’s taking other children from their families. She’s not the girl you knew, boy. She’s something evil now, something rank and foul. Remember that, and don’t hesitate when you have the chance. Your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather Willard didn’t.”
Peter stared. “Are you talking about…”
“1822. Gilbraith Chalmers. You asked who stopped the madness back then? Willard Flannagan, the son of John Stephen.”
“The guy with the hobos in the garden?” Peter asked, shocked.
“John Stephen, yes. Willard was his son, just a lad when the Todenhorns met their grim end. When he saved Duskerville as a man, he had to fight to do it. The Chalmers family…” Grandfather gritted his teeth. “The Chalmers family did everything they could to stop him. They knew – they knew, boy. They helped. They aided and abetted, and if they didn’t do that, they certainly turned their heads while their son went from family to family, destroying one life after another. They even profited off it, what with the uncle selling coffins to the families, knowing that his nephew had done his murderous deeds, and would bring him more business to come. But the books never recorded that, did they? When it was all said and done, Willard was an outcast, and a quarter of the town had died from cholera. Well, history repeats itself tonight. My great-great-great-great grandfather then, and you and I now. Let’s hope the results are the same, but that the body count is a good deal less.”
“Did, uh, anybody help your great…whatever grandfather?”
The old man ignored the question. “Do you know how to do it?”
“Do what?”
“A stake through the heart. It’s the only thing that will stop her...that you would be capable of. If you get the opportunity, take it. Then wait for me, I’ll finish the job. But whatever you do, don’t take out the stake. Leave it in. If you don’t, she could come back to consciousness. And that will not be a pretty sight, I guarantee it.”
“There’s no way to stop her without hurting her?”
Grandfather shook his head ‘no.’
“There’s no way to bring her back, you’re sure?”
“None, boy. In all my readings, the books say there’s only one thing to do.”
“But in fairy tales, they always save their friends. Everything’s always okay.”
“This isn’t a fairytale, boy,” his grandfather said softly. “At least not one with a happy ending.”
“But books – you said books cover up the truth, that people change the story, like the cholera.”
“The books aren’t wrong. Not about this. I’ll be the one to do it if I can, but if I can’t, I need to know – can you do this? Can you do this to save your friend, and this town, and your mother and your baby sister?”
Peter was still for a long moment…then nodded silently.
“I can’t hear you,” the old man growled.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Boy – ”
“Yes,” Peter nearly yelled. “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
“That’s a good lad, a brave lad.” Grandfather’s tone wasn’t exactly kind, but there was a sort of quiet pride in his voice.
But Peter was lying.
He didn’t know if he could do this at all.
Please God…make this all a dream…make it so I’m still sick, and lying on the couch in the den, and all of this is just a dream…
Grandfather peered up through the top of the windshield. “She’s veering off to the left.”
Peter looked outside the window. “Wait – this is where the bus lets her off! She must be going home!”
“Then ready yourself, boy. We have a dark hour ahead of us.”
36
The truck pulled into a wooded driveway with a long, low tunnel of treetops overhead. At the end of the drive, the headlights illuminated an old, old house, probably built in the time of Gilbraith Chalmers. It was two stories tall with a giant wooden porch and peeling paint.
As the truck came to a stop, they saw it: an old storm cellar on the side of the house, set in the ground not thirty feet away. The door was halfway open, blocking their view – and then it slammed shut.
“Let’s go,” Grandfather said, and hopped out the door. He grabbed something out of the back of the truck and then ran for the house.
Peter ran after him to the cellar door. Grandfather bent and pulled at the handle. Nothing. The door didn’t budge.
“Stand back.” With that warning, Grandfather heaved an ax into the air and down into the wood with a sickening CRACK.
Suddenly, light flooded all around them.
“Ho there,” an angry voice shouted. “Who are you, and what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Peter squinted against the flashlight beam. Behind it stood a tall man, thin as a skeleton, dressed in black.
“You know who I am, Chalmers, and you know why I’ve come,” Grandfather snarled. “Stand back, we need to get into this cellar.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Get off my property, or I’ll have the law here faster than you ca
n sneeze.”
“Call them! Let’s show them what dark secrets you’re hiding, just like your ancestors. How in God’s name could you do that to a child?”
Mr. Chalmers pointed a bony finger. “You’re one to talk, Seamus Flannagan. You forget, I know exactly what you did thirty years ago.”
Peter’s ears perked up. What?
“Now get off my land,” Mr. Chalmers growled, “before I finish what the town should have done back then.”
“I’ve been to the cemetery, Chalmers. And I’m not leaving without the thing you took from there.”
Grandfather swung the axe again against the storm cellar door. CRACK.
“STOP!” Chalmers shouted, and ran for Grandfather.
“Look out!” Peter yelled.
The man in black tackled the older one, and they spilled to the ground in a jumble of arms and legs. The flashlight spun through the air and thudded in the grass. Peter picked it up and ran to Grandfather’s aid.
“Never mind me!” the old man barked. “Get in the house – somewhere in the house there’s got to be a way to the cellar!”
Peter dashed for the front porch and opened the door – only to have his way blocked by a woman in a housedress. Her eyes were puffy and red.
“We only wanted to keep our little baby girl,” she whimpered. “We thought we were going to lose her…I only wanted my baby to stay with me.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” Peter said, and meant it – but he had to get into the house. He tried to push past her, but hands grabbed his shoulders and held him back.
“Don’t you hurt her!” the woman screamed. “Don’t you hurt my baby girl! Leave her alone, you nasty little brat, leave her alone!”
Peter turned and smacked her arms with the heavy metal flashlight, and the woman screamed. Peter whacked her again, and she turned him loose. He fled into the dark house as fast as he could.
“Gregory!” the woman screamed behind him, and ran out into the front yard. “Gregory, he’s going to hurt my baby!”
37
Peter ran to the nearest door he could see and flung it open: a closet. He ran to the next, the flashlight beam bobbing every which way. A bathroom. He ran into the kitchen, where the moonlight streaming through the windows made everything look ghostly. Over in the corner was another door. Peter ran to it, his heart pounding, his mind filled with images of Mercy bent over Dill’s lifeless body.
He opened the door and found darkness. A long, rickety staircase made from plywood descended into utter black.
A light switch was on the rough cement wall inside, but when Peter flipped it, nothing happened.
He shone the flashlight down instead. A cement floor and a bag of potatoes appeared in the circular beam. There was a squeak somewhere, a rat or a mouse disturbed from its late-night scavenging.
Peter shuddered…and started down the stairs.
Creak…creak…creeaaaaak…
As he went, he rummaged in the backpack. His right hand held the flashlight, so he couldn’t use the stakes and hammer. His fingers closed on the cool metal of a cross, and he pulled it out of the bag.
The wall to his left ended halfway down the stairs. Once he was past it he swung the ray of his flashlight into the middle of the basement.
It was one big room, the whole length of the house, and stacked with a hundred years of junk and knickknacks…except for the middle, which had been cleared for two tables. Each one had a coffin on top of it. Both caskets were open – the first with a top that swung open on hinges, the second with a lid that lay on the floor.
The first was white and pretty, with pink velvet lining inside and shiny metal handles on the outside. Shriveled flowers lay on a cross-stitched pillow, but the coffin was new. Only a few smudges of dirt marred its pristine surface.
The other coffin was entirely different. It was a simple pine box, far older than the white one. Dried dirt caked every surface. Jagged nails poked out here and there.
The lid on the floor looked hacked apart in the middle, like something – or someone – had smashed its way out.
And inside the coffin itself, rust-colored splotches covered the wood.
Blood. Dried blood.
Peter tried to swallow, and couldn’t. He reached the end of the stairwell and swung the flashlight around the room.
The beam passed over a pale, writhing shape. Fear choked his brain and urged him to run, but Peter whipped the light back on the thing he had glimpsed.
Dill. It was Dill lying on the floor, his hands and legs tied with old rags. Another was stuffed in his mouth. His eyes were wide and very much alive. The pie tin still hung around his neck, apparently untouched.
“Dill!” Peter whispered in relief. As he ran over to his friend, he realized Dill was jerking his head and his eyes upward, trying to tell him something.
Peter aimed the light at the wooden beams of the ceiling. Nothing. As he was bringing it down, though, brightness struck the corner of the room.
Mercy Chalmers clung to the wall, her black eyes glinting red in the light.
She hissed and sprang straight at Peter.
38
Peter dove and rolled under one of the tables. Once he realized what was directly above him, though, he scampered back out in the open.
Mercy popped up on the other side of the table across from Peter. The white coffin between them partially blocked her from view.
“Peeeteeeeeer…I thought you might come.”
Peter held up the cross with one hand and the flashlight with the other. “Let him go, Mercy. Let him go and we’ll leave you alone and never come back, okay?”
Mercy slowly circled around the table. Peter went the other way, trying to keep as much space between them as possible.
“I think we both know that’s not true,” she smirked. “I heard your grandfather up there hitting the cellar door with something…an ax, maybe? That’s not a very polite way to knock.”
Peter darted his eyes between Mercy and the darkness around her, trying to find some glint of moonlight to let him know where the door was. If he could just open it, and Grandfather could come down here and save him…
“It’s not so bad, Peeeteeeer,” Mercy whispered. “It’s just like falling asleep… waking up in the box was scary at first, but my daddy was there…just like I was there for Agnes. I didn’t even bury her, I just brought her down here.”
Peter glanced at the old pine box and the dried red streaks within.
Mercy followed his gaze. “Silly, I wouldn’t put her in there. That’s what saved me, though. Daddy said our family had kept it all these years, he didn’t know why…why would you keep an old coffin down in your basement? But when I got sick like you did, they wouldn’t take me to the doctor. I begged and pleaded with them, Peeeteeeer, but it’s not our way…our preacher says only God can heal, and you have to put your faith in Him, not doctors. But Daddy said when it was near the end, and he could feel me slipping away, he came down here…he said he could hear the voices whispering to him, they told him what to do…he scraped off some of that red and put it in a spoonful of water, then Mommy made me drink it…said it was medicine, better medicine than any hospital could give me. And then I fell asleep, for a long time. When I woke up, I felt so much better…except I was thirsty, Peeeteeeer. I was thirsty.”
Mercy’s voice changed…became sadder.
“And I was lonely. Mommy said I couldn’t see any of my friends ever again. She said I wasn’t like them anymore, that they wouldn’t understand. But they were afraid of me, Peeeteeeer…my own mommy and daddy, they were afraid of me. I could see it in their eyes…I could smell it on them. And I was soooo thirsty. Daddy and Mommy gave me some of their own, squeezed into a glass, but it wasn’t much…not enough. I knew I had to drink more…and if I had to do it, why not make my friends understand me at the same time? Why not make them just like me? Then we could all be together, and have a wonderful time…forever.”
Mercy stopped circling the table
and looked into Peter’s eyes. Her little white coffin lay between them.
“I just wanted you to like me, Peeeteeeer. I just wanted to be with you. Put down the cross. It won’t hurt, I promise.”
His voice shook. “Let Dill go, Mercy.”
“After you put down the cross, Peeeteeeer. Put it down.”
“Let him go first, Mercy.”
Mercy’s face contorted with rage. “I SAID, PUT IT DOWN!”
She slammed her hands against the white coffin and sent it zooming across the table. Peter had no time to react; the casket smacked him in the chest and sent him falling backwards to the ground.
The flashlight went spinning off across the floor. His backpack, half unzipped already, spilled its contents everywhere. The wooden stake went rolling away, the hammer dinged and clattered on the cement. The garlic, the knife, and everything else – paper, pens, pencils – went flying across the room.
KICK. Mercy’s foot sent the wooden stake clattering off into the shadows.
CLANG. The hammer flew through the air and disappeared under an old, cobwebbed bed in the corner.
But the cross was still in his hand.
Peter looked over just in time to see Mercy pick up the knife, examine it, and throw it over her shoulder into the darkness. He tried to flip over and scramble away, but she pinned him to the floor with one foot.
“Peeeteeeer,” she chided him, “you weren’t planning on being very nice to me.”
Peter looked over his shoulder. “You’re…you’re not planning on being very nice to me, Mercy.”
“That’s not true.” Mercy removed her foot and kneeled down beside him. “It’ll be just like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White…except I’ll put you to sleep with a little kiss, and then I’ll wake you with another. That’s all, Peeeteeeer. I’ll be Cinderella, and you can be Prince Charming, and we’ll dance in the sky together. We’ll dance in the sky with the stars.”
She leaned over him. He could hear her breath.
That’s when he swung out with the cross and clocked her in the head.
Thump. She slumped to the ground.
Peter looked about wildly. It was all gone – the stake was gone, the hammer, the knife – there was nothing to kill her with. Relief washed over him. Now that he couldn’t do it, all that was left was to save his friend.