The Traveling Vampire Show

sit next to her, she might realize how I really felt. It might scare her.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? If you really want to drive…”

“Nah, that’s okay.” I climbed out and shut the door. Starting to feel lousy, I walked around to the other side. By the time I reached the passenger door, Slim and Rusty had both scooted over.

I sat beside Rusty and swung the door shut.

Leaving the headlights off, Slim drove slowly forward down the slope of the hump from which we’d viewed the movies. At the bottom, she made a sharp turn onto the cross-lane.

She put on the parking lights. A couple of times, she stopped to let people walk by. At the end of the lane, she waited for a car to pass us before she pulled out.

She didn’t cut anyone off. She didn’t do anything wrong or even rude. Neither did Rusty or I.

In fact, we’re pretty sure that what happened a few minutes later had nothing to do with any of the cars from the drive-in. Those exiting ahead of us had all turned the other way at Mason Road. And none came out after us. None that we noticed, anyway.

For a while, Slim’s Pontiac seemed to be the only car on the road. We were about ten miles north of town, midway between Grandville and Clarksburg.

We had forest on the right.

On the left was the old graveyard. If it had a name, we didn’t know it. Nobody’d been buried there since about 1920. We’d explored it a few times, though never at night. It had a lot of very cool tombstones and statues and stuff.

Driving by, the three of us snuck glances at it the way we usually did. I think we wanted to make sure nobody was digging up bodies… or crawling out of any graves.

No one was.

But a car sat between the old stone posts of its entry gate. A car without any lights on.

“Uh-oh,” Slim said. I felt our speed decrease slightly. “Was that a cop car?”

“Didn’t look like one,” Rusty said.

“It wasn’t,” I confirmed. Being the son of Grandville’s police chief, I knew what every cop car looked like: not just ours, but those of all the nearby towns, plus the county cars and state cars.

“Thought it might be a speed trap,” Slim said.

“Nope,” I told her.

“Cool place to make out,” Rusty said.

Slim and I both laughed.

“Don’t you think?”

“No,” Slim said. “For one thing, it’s right by the road where everyone can see you. Not to mention the bone orchard. You wouldn’t catch me making out there.”

“Wouldn’t catch you making any…” Rusty tipped his head back and stared at the rearview mirror.

“What?” Slim asked.

“I think it’s coming,” he said.

“Huh?” Slim glanced at the rearview mirror. “I don’t… oh.”

I was already looking over my shoulder and knew why she’d said, “Oh.” A car was coming, all right, but without headlights on. It looked like a clump of shadow hurling toward us from the rear.

“That the car from the graveyard?” Slim asked.

“Think so,” Rusty said.

Slim groaned.

Rusty and I both looked over our shoulders.

Rusty muttered, “Shit.”

By the velocity of the car’s approach, I expected it to swerve and zip around us. But it didn’t. It stayed behind us. Just when I expected it to slam into our tail, Slim hit the gas. We shot forward, the sudden acceleration pushing me into the seat.

The other car shrank into the distance, then started to grow. It looked like a big old black Cadillac.

“Here it comes,” I said.

“What’s the matter with that bastard!” Slim blurted.

“You’d better get moving,” Rusty told her.

“I am moving.”

“Faster.”

We picked up more speed. The Cadillac quit growing. It didn’t shrink away, either. It matched our speed and stayed about twenty feet behind us.

Moonlight glinted on its hood and windshield. I couldn’t see inside it.

Slim said, “I don’t like this.”

She rounded a bend in the road too fast. The tires sighed. As the forces pulled at me, I grabbed the door handle to keep myself from leaning into Rusty. He let himself tilt against Slim. She muttered, “Get off me,” and shoved at him with her elbow.

I looked back. The Cadillac was still on our tail.

“I’m slowing down,” Slim said and took her foot off the gas.

“Here it comes,” I warned.

I braced for the impact. There wasn’t one. When I looked back again, the car was no more than two feet from our rear. But the space seemed to be growing.

“Looks like they don’t want to hit us,” I said.

“What do they want?” Slim asked.

I shook my head.

Rusty said, “Maybe they’re just trying to scare us.”

“If that’s all,” Slim said, “they’ve succeeded. They can go home now.”

“Could be anything,” I said.

“Is it the car from the graveyard?” Slim asked.

“You got me,” I said.

“I think so,” said Rusty.

“It looked like it might’ve just been sitting there waiting for us.”

“Or for someone,” I said. “Maybe just waiting for anyone to go by.”

Her voice low and steady, Slim said, “Either way, we’re it.”

“Long as all they do is follow us…,” Rusty muttered.

“We’ll get to town pretty soon,” I said.

“We’re not that close,” Slim pointed out.

“Five minutes?”

“More like ten,” Rusty said.

“Who do you think they are?” Slim asked.

“God knows,” I muttered.

“How about Scotty or one of those guys?” Rusty asked.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Slim said.

“They’d love to nail us,” I said.

“Yeah, but they know what’ll happen if they try.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have your bow handy, would you?” Rusty asked.

“No. But they don’t know that.”

“I almost hope it is Scotty,” I said.

“As opposed to whom?” Slim asked.

“I don’t know. Some creep like Starkweather or…”

“Hey,” Rusty said. “Maybe it’s an artist and he wants to make us into statues. Slap some clay on us….”

“Crap!” Slim cried out.