MonstrousMay 25. The Vampire

A hundred curfews were broken on the night of September 30th, 1963. As the sun was setting, the class of '64 took matters into their own hands. It's said that the streets of Pinefall echoed with the shouts of parents, commanding their kids come back that instant. Calls that went ignored and hung in the air and faded to nothing like smoke.

"Now they give a shit," Rita said as she met her friends Gloria and Kat, falling into the scattered procession marching towards the cemetery. She was carrying a baseball bat and a flashlight that had already begun to flicker.

"My mom is pissed," Kat said, gripping her makeshift spear tightly. It was made from a broken broom handle and a kitchen knife haphazardly taped together. 

"Well, yeah. You didn't have to break her broom," Gloria said. She held a monkeywrench in one hand, and a crucifix Rita recognized from her living room in the other. 

"I'll be much more pissed if you get killed," Rita said. "So don't." She gave up on the flashlight and stuffed it into her bag. She dug out three cigarettes and gave each of them one. "Figured we could use 'em." They stopped and huddled together so Rita could strike a match and light them all.

Rita thought of when it all began. Or rather, when she noticed. She knew the first few of the underclassman had gone missing. The whole town knew, but hadn't done much, Rita included. She said a single prayer for them all. Lumping the request for God's protection onto them all in one efficient request. That He'd keep them safe and help them find their way home. Besides that, she was worried about life after she graduated. It loomed large and imposing, a shadow in the doorway of what should be the best time of her life. 

But then Sandra went missing. The three friends were once four, cutting class to smoke sneaked cigs in the bathroom. And then one day, she wasn't there. Or the next day. Rita had dropped by her house to give her the homework she missed, but Sandy's mom said she didn't know where she was. The look on her face, the grief that had hollowed out her eyes, chilled Rita to the bone. Sandy's mom had wanted to say something else, but more or less shut the door in Rita's face.

When Rita brought it up to her parents, they said it wasn't dinner conversation. "But she's missing," Rita said. 

"Probably run off with some boy," her dad said and her mom agreed. Rita tried to protest. "I don't want to hear anything else about it," her dad said. And that was that. 

None of this sat right with her. Rita sat down with Kat and Gloria the next day. They went through the most recent yearbook, ticking off names. At least a dozen faces they no longer saw at school. And that didn't include the new freshmen.

Gloria had gone to their English teacher. Kat went to the history teacher. Rita went to the principal. They all received the same message. Sometimes kids ran away from home. The only thing to do was pray they got a wake up call and came back before something truly bad happened. 

That wasn't enough. The three friends, part of the Homecoming Committee, used that time to organize. Some people just parroted what their parents had said. But more kids went missing. Eventually, every class had empty seats. They were silent spots of nothing that seemed to scream at the rest of them, but not the teachers. Everyone had a friend, a boyfriend, a cousin, that had seemingly disappeared into thin air. 

The sightings started soon after that. The cemetery at the center of town, the second thing Pinefall ever made for itself (the church being the first), was home to something. Something that crawled between tombstones and stuck to the shadows.

James Parsons was the first to see it up close. He had gotten drunk, missing his friend Sam and not knowing what else to do about it, and stumbled into the cemetery late at night. It was only then he remembered there was no grave for Sam. You couldn't bury what couldn't be found. 

James said he caught it from the corner of his eye. It was dark and he was drunk, so a grain of salt was given. But what wasn't up for debate were the long slashes up his arm. The series of two puncture marks that dotted his neck.

He said it ran up to him on all fours, knocking him down. It had the face of a man, but just barely. Like a Halloween mask, James said. Fake and pale. It had sharp upper teeth and no lower jaw. Its clawed hands sliced through his jacket like it was butter. A long tongue unfurled from the darkness under its face and lapped at the blood that trickled from James's arm. He fought against it, said he couldn't make it budge.

Although he downplayed this fact, his screaming alerted a passing policeman. The thing ebbed away, like liquid, around the tombstones and out into the night. He knew it sounded crazy, but all he could think on the way to the hospital was Dracula.

The Hunting Committee (Kat's idea) had a suspect. What would have been their homecoming night was going to be the night they killed whatever was killing them. The seniors made the call that they would be the ones to take up the fight. Being older, it was their responsibility to protect the others, as their parents had failed to do. While it had started with the three girls, it was now its own living, breathing entity, made of contempt and hope. Catching wind of this, the mayor established a curfew for the entire town. Rita had huffed. They could whip up a curfew but not any effort to find the missing teens.

James now walked nearby, his arm in a sling. He carried a sledgehammer, leaned against his good shoulder. Rita gave him an encouraging nod. She took one last drag from the cigarette and flicked it out into the street as the cemetery rose up on its hill.

Police had showed up outside the cemetery gates. The seniors didn't stop, flooding around and over their cars. They shouted, but as with their parents, the time for listening had long since passed. 

A sliver of moon rose in a clear sky. They all spread out among the tombstones, lifting rocks, peering around statues. Nothing. The initial adrenaline wore off and they found themselves staring at one another, passing their home-found weapons from hand to hand.

"Here!" someone yelled and all of their heads spun. Whoever it was screamed. Rita rushed forward. In a far corner, neglected and overgrown, Beatrice was struggling against a hulking form. 

Several seniors ran forward, bringing hammers and knives down onto Beatrice's attacker. The thing turned and swung its arm, raking hooked talons across their faces and hands. They fell to the ground, crying out. Rita slid to a stop, seeing what James had described. 

Its human face had eyes that were rolled back. Beneath its teeth, two red eyes gleamed in the night. Rita screamed and ran forward with the bat raised over her head. She brought it down and the creature stopped it mid-swing. The wooden bat whined as it shattered in its grip. 

The thing leapt forward onto Rita. She screamed and punched as it brought its teeth down onto her neck. She felt them slide into her skin effortlessly. 

Another surge of students pressed forward, knocking the thing away. A rush of wind passed over Rita as the thing bounded up into a nearby tree. She sat up and felt blood spurt from her neck. Cracking and squishing came from among the tree branches. The things arms had become wings, leathery and translucent. 

A large rock smashed into the thing's face and a war cry came up from the seniors. A hail of heavy objects pelted it. It tried to take off into the air, but Kat appeared, slicing into its wing with her spear. It fell to the ground and tried to hobble to its feet. It cried out as the crowd rushed in, beating, stabbing, kicking, and crushing the thing. 

Gloria helped Rita to her feet. She leaned against a tree, pressing her hand against her neck. Her blood poured out between her fingers. Everyone was screaming and crying. Spit flew from their mouths. It was clear the thing was dead. But they couldn't stop. Blood splashed and spread out in a puddle that turned to mud, stomped into the ground by sneakers.

Rita stumbled towards the spot the monster had appeared. Beatrice was on her feet now, picking brambles from her hair. She moved past Rita, a fire in her eyes. 

Stepping through the thicket of thorns, Rita found a set of cellar doors. One of them was wide open. Rita reflexively vomited at the smell that came up from it. She got the flashlight from her bag and smacked it against her palm. 

In the weak beam, Rita saw them all. Or what remained of them. All of her classmates, leaned against the earthen walls, piled three high in some places. She cried, furious and bereft. 

Eventually, they began to peel away and go home. Blood and bits of bone were all that was left of the monster. Rita came to stand over the thing, Gloria and Kat at her side. She spit out what was left of her vomit onto its final resting place. "That's for Sandy," Rita said and Kat and Gloria did the same.

What occurred to her then is what she always saved for the last of her story when she told us. There was an ending of sorts. The students' bodies were recovered, and in most cases reburied properly in that same cemetery. When the sun came up, the spot where the creature had died burst into flames and left nothing but ashes. Rita and the other seniors finished their last year of school. Life went on. But no other kids went missing.

Although she told it many times, and some details changed here and there, she would get misty-eyed as she delivered the moral. The single truth she could not take a chance that we didn't get. Of course it was beautiful to see her classmates come together and defeated the creature. Of course their parents had been wrong, even complicit in the deaths some would say, knowing the creature was out there but unwilling to stop it. But so were the students, she felt. More specifically, she was guilty and would always feel that way. If she had cared before her own friend went missing, maybe they all could have lived.