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In the weeks and months following the Gas Tornado—the news reports recorded it as a freak incident that had caused the several members of the community to hallucinate that the town was being overrun with the walking dead—things grew strange in Blythe Hollow.
Well stranger than nine reanimated members of the old town council admitting to killing a child and then wandering around like…the living dead for a night.
Salma doesn’t think a scale could be accurately calibrated to measure the situations they have all managed to get themselves into since the Gas Tornado—not that she or Kyle were there which throws another wrench into any attempts to create a proper scale—but she imagines that their current situation would warrant at least an 8 ½ considering they were about five blocks away from Mitch’s van and their parents thought they were all bowling and eating pizza and none of them had eaten anything except for the pretzels that Neil had taken to leaving in Valerie’s glove box.
Valerie was Salma’s name for the van, if she had a name for the van, which she clearly did, but she wasn’t prone to sharing it with the others.
If she adjusted for certain variables—Mitch had yet to make a run for the door with Neil held under his arm and an apology thrown over his shoulders for leaving them to die, Alvin had not cried once or offered them up to his Lord and Savior the Almighty Sauron, Courtney hadn’t looked at any of them as if it would be disappointing to die by their sides, and Kyle was still filming them—their current situation was only a seven.
Their current situation was walking through the graveyard towards the Grover property that was built a few months after the Gas Tornado and where Norman was sure a family of vampires lived.
Norman was, however unfortunate Salma found it, never wrong about this sort of thing—except for the time it was actually Mr. Roggs in a werewolf costume—so here they were walking through the cemetery, supplies in tow, hungry and without an advantageous escape route with a precious twenty minutes until sunset because Alvin had shown up late with the garlic.
-
In Alvin’s defense, his mom bought the garlic that was already minced and there was no way to buy all the garlic they would need without looking like a freak in the grocery store and after the pitchforks and the fires and the one time with the banshee Alvin had no interest in looking like a freak.
-
The door was open when they arrived and if it had been up to Courtney they would have turned right back around because what kind of idiot left their door opened unless the real idiots was the person or persons who entered other people’s homes without knocking or invitations when they suspected the people who lived there were vampires.
“I’ve seen this in a movie once and this isn’t how I’m meant to die, but since I don’t know actually know how I’m pretty sure this will work in the short-term so maybe we should try again tomorrow.”
She directs this to Norman, who was their default leader because of the seeing dead people thing and while Courtney had come around she was still pretty sure if she was the one seeing dead people, she’d be in a nuthouse somewhere discussing the finer benefits of electro-shock therapy with the ghost nuts, she was happy being stuck with the “keeping Norman alive while their parents thought they were bowling and bonding” duties.
“We can’t try again tomorrow. It’s a full moon and,”
“Wait.” Neil was standing at the bottom of the stairs, foot half-raised to take the next step, his pale freckled face twisting in confusion, not a typical expression for the kid, but the hesitancy was the same. “I thought you said they were vampires? We made rules about werewolves, Norman. Very specific rules about werewolves!”
From behind his video camera, and closest to the door, Kyle spoke up, “Little man, this is not the time to yell,” with a quick glance to Mitch he added, “But you raise an excellent point.”
Salma begins explaining how full moons are beneficial to destroying and sacrificing and eating and tides and Courtney never really cared for the facts behind how to stop the creatures that tried to kill them, as long as they were able to stop them.
Kyle likes to call her bloodthirsty, which she allows, despite the unfortunate comparison to certain surprisingly unattractive creatures of the night because they saved their best trash talking for each other.
Seriously, most vampires were hideous.
“The full moon will help us get rid of the vampires? Good. Let’s stop letting them know, anymore than they already do that we’re here.”
-
If one were to ask Mitch where things went downhill, not that anyone would because other than shoving him between them and the monster, no one ever asked Mitch to do anything except drive.
This was fine by Mitch. No murder for him. No dying for him. No five legs or six fingers or fangs or laughing witches for Mitch.
He stuck around because short of trapping Neil in his room, he couldn’t stop Neil from helping Norman, and Salma was Kyle’s babysitting charge, and Kyle was his boyfriend, and everything was connected; and Mitch doesn’t like being scared and sometimes just how big he is could make a monster back down, but other times, like tonight, he just had more blood than everyone.
If one were to ask Mitch were things went downhill he’d say it was around the time they decided to not go bowling first.
Mitch wasn’t terribly good at bowling, but it was fun and no one ever died bowling or because they ate too much pizza or because their boyfriend let them win in exchange for kisses or anything like that.
He could ask Salma, but she’d probably consider it a waste of her valuable resources whatever that meant.
Things went downhill right after Alvin broke the vase in the front hall and then laughed. Things usually went downhill after Alvin decided to do simple things like exist or move.
-
In Alvin’s defense the entire front room is completely white like magic is involved for sure and how would he know he was going to bump into anything when everything was the same boring old person shade of white and magic was definitely involved because they only heard the vase break the pieces were just slightly raised bits of the floor and if anything he was the only reason they ever rescued anyone or anything so everyone needed to acknowledge him as the hero he totally was even if they were usually just rescuing themselves.
He had brought the garlic and everyone needed to get off his back.
-
A lot had changed since Aggie and the dealing with the curse and a lot had stayed the same.
Most of it was occult bookstores and new neighbors and no one calling him a freak to his face anymore, but some of it involved running for their lives around abandoned houses, of which there was a surprising amount in Blythe Hollow, which was convenient and all of them were in a constant state of disrepair which wasn’t. There was a lot more hiding and a lot more fighting, but this usually happened all at once and Norman was still expected to be in bed at 9pm and tonight it looked like he wouldn’t be in bed until at least 9:45, if he made it to bed at all.
Right now they were all in the basement, which was fortunately well lit and unfortunately painted the darkest shade of black that Norman had ever seen.
Salma was setting up for the spell the two of them had to do to bind the vampires to the house while Kyle filmed her and the others sat in a huddle around the stairs.
“These are horrifying decorative decisions,” Kyle was saying from behind the camera. “I’m not talking about of stylistic choices, I mean I think these are deliberately horrifying choices. The second floor is completely red. Who would choose to live like this? What color are their clothes? How did they find the perfect shade in lamp shade and lightbulb for a completely red floor?”
“They probably asked their decorator.” Neil says, eyes on the candles Salma was lighting.
Kyle swivels the camera in Neil’s direction. “You think so?”
“No.” Neil says without looking up. “It’s probably magic. If you can’t explain it then it’s probably magic.”
“That’s hardly scientific.” Salma says from her place on the floor.
“You’re lighting candles and getting ready to recite a Romanian spell to stop a bunch of vampires from killing us,” Courtney says sharply before zipping and unzipping her jacket.
“This is just unproven science.”
“I don’t like the sound of that at all.” Mitch says, eyes darting from Salma to Neil as if he was estimating just how long it would take to get the two of them out of there.
“Don’t get any ideas.” Kyle focused the camera on them. “You’d have to walk through the vampires to get to Mimi and you’d have to do it with Neil and then you’d both die and what would I tell your parents? ‘Sorry we took a wrong turn on the way to the bowling alley and ended up being attacked by bats’? That didn’t work the last time and it won’t work this time. Especially since you’ll be dead.”
Norman is pretty sure this was one of those “Kyle is my brother’s boyfriend and they never make sense” conversations that Neil had told him about when Salma and Kyle first showed up after the dogs in the neighborhood started disappearing and they’d both wanted to help.
He tunes them out and starts focusing on assisting with setting up the spell.
-
No one asked Kyle to be the cameraman.
Nor did anyone ask for a camera, man.
These are the words that run through Kyle’s mind every time there’s a near death situation, which is basically once every two weeks at least. They run through his mind, in Alvin’s voice and that’s more thinking about Alvin than any one human should handle.
At the same time, they had been monster hunting for nearly four months, so Alvin is practically his frie—acquaintance.
Without his camera there wouldn’t be any proof of any of the things they did and certainly one of these days the guys on Monster Hunters would believe they were dealing with real monsters and not that they were a group of extraordinarily bright and talented future makeup artists and actors.
What they needed was a poltergeist. Maybe not in the exact moment, with the running and the bleeding and Mitch and Neil ahead of them by what felt like miles and Mitch screaming back how sorry he was, but if Neil died his parents would kill him and then both their sons would be dead his mom was too old to have more children and what if she had daughters and forgot about all of them?
Mitch would be the type to yell all of that in an apology as he continued to flee, but Kyle wasn’t too worried. He was in fact, beginning to believe Mimi, his name for Mitch’s van, was alive or at the very least sentient.
No matter where they parked it, no matter how far away it should have been or how small Mitch’s head start on the rest of them was, when they came stumbling out the woods or abandoned houses or ridiculously decorated mansions, even if a werewolf or a banshee or that one time with the witches—who were representing themselves horribly in Blythe Hollow, if one were to ask Kyle or not ask Kyle as was often the case—was right on their heels Mitch and Neil would be pulling up with Mimi, doors opening, arms flailing for everyone to hurry up and not die.
Which is what they were doing now.
“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! I’m bleeding! There’s a lot of blood! I’m for sure it is all mine! My mom is going to kill me!”
This was his moment. Kyle really should film this, but if Alvin were actually dying he would feel gauche and would also probably have to cover Salma’s eyes to shield her from future trauma.
“You’re already failing,” Courtney says from in front of him, which made him realize he’d said the last part out loud.
From the van he could hear Mitch yelling about how “there are ghosts now” and he really needed to sit down with Mitch and at least try to study for the SATs or English or something resembling studying.
“You’re not dying!” Salma says, appearing suddenly at Kyle’s left. Kyle almost started when he saw her. She was covered in a lot of blood. “No one is dying. The vampires started exploding before we could get out of the house. It’s probably Alvin’s fault.”
“In my defense,” Alvin starts saying, he’s still behind them, but not by much and the running jump into the van isn’t as cool as it usually is when Alvin slams into him and Kyle gets to hear the squelch of the blood against his clothes as Alvin scrambles over him and into the backseat.
“At least it’s not my blood,” he says avoiding everyone’s looks as Mitch continues to drive away.
“Just the blood of the people the vampire ate.” Courtney says from the second row. When Norman tries to move she shoves him firmly back in the middle of the seat between her and Salma who is making notes with one hand while she hands her glasses to Neil to clean.
Kyle asks for the time.
“It’s almost seven.” Mitch says, voice still shaky, eyes darting to the rearview mirror just a bit too much to be entirely safe, but Kyle is in no position to do much more than say, “I think we did a pretty good job this time.”
“Except for the part where they exploded.” Neil says after a moment.
“Yes,” Salma adds. “That was an unforeseen side effect of the spell.”
Kyle would be worried about how unbothered she seems about being covered in blood, but he’s known her for years. Salma is not easy to rattle; a little blood wasn’t going to change that.
It was 7pm on a Friday and while Kyle would never admit this unless threatened with the pain of death—he has real priorities he’d probably talk before any death threats occurred if someone offered him the chance to shoplift consequence free from Urban Outfitters for a week…at least a week—this babysitting Salma and Neil and their weird friends while they search for weird sh-stuff in the woods and City Hall and bitc-complaining with Courtney about the flaws in the freshman orientation packet designs, and sneaking in the occasional make out with Mitch when they managed to convince Norman that a scary movie would suffice, was fun.
Sure they nearly died all the time and Mitch was Scooby to Alvin’s Shaggy and no one had said “If it wasn’t for those pesky kids” yet, which was criminal as far as Kyle was concerned, but there were worst ways to begin the weekend.
-
“We could still go bowling,” Alvin says from the very back of the van. He’s covered in vampire blood that is not going to be fun to clean off, but certainly less awful than whatever it was that came out of that one goblin and left a smell that was rank even by Alvin’s high standards, for a week.
“Three of us are covered in blood, idiot.” Courtney snaps without looking back at him.
He isn’t sure if she’s playing hard to get or if she’s genuinely concerned about the blood, but the last time he tried to test that theory she’d nearly broken his fingers.
“We’ve been covered in worse. Anyway I’m hungry.”
“He raises an excellent point. Not entirely creative, but I want pizza too.” Salma says, twisting in her seat to give him a pleasant look.
-
They do not go bowling. They end up at Salma’s house, eating pizza on the living room floor while Kyle runs their clothes through the washing machine and watching a movie about a zombie who falls in love because, as Kyle says, “It is the best of both worlds.”
No one really argues with Kyle when it comes to picking movies out at short notice, especially after monster hunting, least of all Neil.
Neil appreciates that Kyle always makes sure that half of one pizza is Hawaiian style, which is Neil’s favorite.
It’s not the only reason he makes an effort to like the guy, but it doesn’t hurt.
Anyway, as often as Mitch drags him out before things can get interesting, Kyle’s camera comes in handy to completing the experience that Neil would be quite happy to run away from most of the time.
Not that he would ever admit that.