The Traveling Vampire Show

“Don’t be an asshole,” she told him.

“Just asking.”

“Well, don’t. You want to be a bigoted shit-for-brains, don’t do it in front of me.”

I looked at Rusty and shook my head. “Nice going.” “Big deal.”

Still looking angry, Slim said, “Matter of fact, all of them were white.”

“Glad to hear it,” Rusty said.

Ignoring him, I asked, “What did they look like?”

“Just normal, I guess.” She glanced at Rusty, but he made no comment so she turned her attention to me and continued. “Mostly men, I think. And a few women. They all wore these shiny black shirts that looked like satin or silk or something. Anyway, they split into two groups. One bunch went around one side of the hearse, one around the other. Before the dog noticed anything was wrong, they closed in on it. They surrounded it, then started poking at it with their spears. They could’ve killed it with one good thrust, but nobody did that. They just kept poking at it, giving it little jabs.”

Slim went silent. She had a hurt look in her eyes as if she could feel the dog’s agonies. After taking a few deep breaths, she said, “I couldn’t see the dog at all… just those people around it, going at it with their spears. I could sure hear it, though. It was yelping and squealing and whimpering. You could tell…. It was like they just wanted to torture it.”

“Good God,” I muttered.

“Sick,” Rusty said.

“Finally, they stepped back to let someone through. The dog was down on its side. Its tongue was hanging out and it was panting for air, and it was just covered with blood. It was sort of trying to get up.” Slim’s voice broke. She shook her head and looked away from us.

Rusty looked as if he might throw up.

With both hands, Slim wiped sweat away from her eyes. Some tears, too, I think. Then she took another deep breath and said, “The guy they let through, he got down on one knee and shoved his spear….” Breathing hard, she shook her head. Then as if in a race to get her story done, she blurted, “He picked it up off the ground with his spear and ran with it to the back of the hearse and somebody’d already opened the door back there and he shoved the dog in like food on the end of a stick and…” She paused to take a few quick breaths, then went on. “He pulled the spear back a second later, and the dog wasn’t on it anymore. It was like somebody in the hearse… I don’t know. ”

Rusty and I both stared at her.

Head down, she kept wiping her face with both hands. It took her a long time to calm down. Then she said, “After that, that’s when I figured it was time to go.”

We were silent for a while longer. Then I said, “God almighty.”

After more silence, Rusty said, “So you think somebody in the hearse ate the dog?”

She shrugged her shiny, tanned shoulder. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

“Or drank its blood,” I suggested.

“Valeria is supposed to be a vampire,” Rusty reminded us.

“I don’t know who was in the hearse,” Slim said.

“Maybe nobody,” I said. “Maybe they just put the dog in there to get it out of sight.”

“I don’t know,” Slim muttered. “Anyway, that’s what happened. And I thought if they got their hands on me… I might get it like the dog. So I turned around and belly-crawled to the back of the roof and jumped down and ran like hell.”

“Did they see you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe not. I didn’t hear any shouts. No one came after me. I don’t think so, anyway. When I got into the woods, I kept changing directions to throw them off. Just in case someone was after me. Then I hid for a while.”

“Where’d you hide?” Rusty asked.

She shrugged again. “Under some old tree. It had fallen over and there was a space between it and the ground. I just barely fit in.”

“How long do you think you stayed in there?” I asked.

“Seemed like ages.” She shrugged again. “Maybe half an hour, I don’t know.”

“I bet that’s where you were when Lee and I were at Janks Field.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Did you hear anyone calling your name?”

She shook her head.

“I called out for you and Rusty.”

“When was that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe around twelve-thirty, I guess. Twelve-fifteen, twelve-thirty, something like that.”

Slim frowned as if thinking about it, and shook her head again. “I must’ve been somewhere in the woods.”

“You weren’t on the roof.”

Surprise on her face, she said, “You looked?”

“Yeah. I went over and jumped up and…”

“Went over to the shack?”

“Yeah.”

“What about all those people?”

“They weren’t paying much attention to us. Julian had gone into the bus…”

“Who’s that?”

“Julian Stryker. He’s the owner of the show.”

Looking surprised but not at all pleased, Slim said, “You met the owner?”

I nodded.

“What’d he look like?”

“I can see this coming,” Rusty said.

I glanced at him, then looked back at Slim. “He wore a black shirt….”

“They all wore black shirts, numbnuts,” Rusty reminded me.

Ignoring the remark, I said to Slim, “He had long, black hair. He was… I guess women would probably think he was really handsome.”

“Gorgeous?” Slim asked.

“I didn’t think so, but…”

“Was he carrying a spear?” Rusty asked.

I glared at him.

“Did he wear silver spurs?” Slim asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s him,” she said.

“Knew it,” said Rusty.

Me, too. But I asked, “The guy who… picked up the dog and took it to the hearse?”

Slim nodded.

“Oh, man,” I muttered.

“What?”

“We asked him about you and Rusty.”

“What’d he say?”

“That he hadn’t seen you.”

“Wait’ll you hear the good part,” Rusty said, a strange smile on his face.

“Lee bought tickets from him,” I explained. “Four tickets for tonight’s performance of the Traveling Vampire Show. One for each of us.”