Page 28 of Missing Moon
Dusk swirls his tea around in the glass. “His flight got delayed for weather. Otherwise, he’d have been here today. He’s expecting to show up tomorrow, as well.”
“That’ll be everyone, then.” Mary Lou leans her head back and lets out a long exhale. “Been a long time since we had the whole family in one place.”
Rick yawns… which sets off a chain reaction.
Eventually—and by that, I mean within about fifteen minutes—we all break up from the living room and go looking for places to sleep. We put Emerson in one of the three unclaimed rooms. Two are kinda clogged with piles of cardboard boxes containing Dad’s stuff. One has enough open space to allow the setup of a sleeping bag, which Emerson already has with him. He seems reluctant to be left alone in the room. I prompthim again that all is well, and he nods and yawns... and agrees to be separated from me for the night.
On complete autopilot, I go to my old bedroom, located down the hall—the last door on the left. Wow. My old Dead Kennedys band poster is still on the door. Still don’t really know why I got it or even put it on my door. It had to be some sort of rebellion thing. I wasn’t really into that kind of music as much as I made people think.
Maybe it’s why that poster went on theoutsideof my door. A less-than-metaphorical wall, so to speak. I’m also shocked as hell when I open the door. The room looks like a time capsule, utterly undisturbed from when I left to go to college. Even the clothes I left on the floor are still there.
“Who the heck is Tori Amos?” asks Tammy behind me, glancing at one of my ‘inside-the-room’ posters.
Yeah, that’s the kind of music I listened to back then. Very girly stuff. Tomboy on the outside, princess on the inside, I suppose. “Music I listened to as a kid. Good music, mind you.”
“Never heard of her,” says Tammy in a weird non-sarcastic tone like she’s tempted to look up her music and give it a whirl.
“You can have the bed.” I nod at Tammy. “I’ll flop on the floor.”
“No way, Ma. This is your old room. It’s your bed.” She nudges me. “If you want me using the bed, we’re going to share it.”
Whatever. It’s not a tiny bed and neither one of us is very big… so sure.
I grab two pairs of my pajamas out of the dresser, which probably hasn’t been touched since I moved out. They smell like wood from being in the drawer so long. Could be worse; it’s not an entirely unpleasant aroma. We change and get into bed, with Tammy closer to the wall. We fit without being squished into each other. A few minutes after we’ve settled,Anthony walks in dragging the couch cushions, which he drops on the floor to improvise a bed.
From the sounds of conversation coming in from the hall, my siblings are all reclaiming their old bedrooms. Ellie Mae and Ruby Grace are sharing the unused second room in sleeping bags while Billy Joe’s camping out on the floor in the living room. The thought of Rick sleeping in Mary Lou’s room makes me laugh inside. If Mom only knew my sister sneaked a boy into her bedroom.
Wow this is surreal, laying in my old bed staring up at the ceiling. My head spins with all the things I used to think and worry about while doing this exact thing. Most of it was school. Anxiety over tests and such. Worrying if I might ever get caught for sneaking onto that farm and stealing produce. I didn’t do that for very long. I was around twelve the last time I raided the farm. Guess Dad started making a bit more money at his traveling sales job than he did as a minor league baseball player. Of course, he hated the job and loved baseball. But the job turned food from an ‘if’ to a ‘what kind’ for us kids, though, so he tolerated it.
“So, a vampire?” whispers Tammy.
“I think so.”
“What happened?” asks Ant from the floor.
“Heard a scream outside. Sounded desperate, so I investigated.” I stretch.
Anthony yawns, too. “I figured you had a good reason for leaving.”
I catch them up on what happened, and add, “As soon as I cut his head off, his entire body just exploded.”
“Eww.” Tammy shivers.
“No gore. Just dust and bits of bones. It was the craziest thing.”
“Sounds like a movie vampire.” Tammy chuckles.
“It does,” says Anthony. “Guess Hollywood has made too many cheesy movies if that stuff is starting to happen for real.”
Ugh. There’s a horrible thought. Exactly how much of humanity’s collective consciousness must believe something in order for the Powers That Be to make that thing into reality? I can’t believe that vampires, in general, were entirely a creation of human expectation. There had to be something out there that existed before undead bloodsuckers entered the public consciousness and media fascination. What would the stories even be based on? How damaged a person would you have to be in order to invent something like a vampire completely out of the blue?
I nod to myself. A creator of some sort was responsible, surely.
Of course, there are plenty of ‘movie monsters’ far freakier and scarier than vampires.
I hope beyond hope that John Carpenter—creator of theHalloweenfranchise—is not really a Creator and none of his stuff ever happens for real.Oof.That would be rough.
“You guys know that I normally don’t go around killing vampires for sport, right?” I say. “They’re not dangerous wild animals.”