Fat Vampire: A Never Coming of Age Story

There were no traffic lights here and few cars, but every corner was pinned with a stop sign.

'Won’t lose him now,' said Alan.

'But this is worse. I have to roll through every stop just to keep up. He’s going pretty fast. And it’s only a matter of time before he—'

The boy looked over his shoulder, looked right at the van.

'Shit!' said Mike.

'Turn off the lights.'

'Then we’ll lose him. Look, he’s turning east again. Why is he—?'

'Don’t do it.'

'I have to do it.'

Mike turned right and followed, and the rider was already far down the block, just a shining mote in their headlights. He’d picked up speed.

'He’s turning again,' said Alan.

'He’s taking us around the block. Making us prove we’re following him. Dammit! Look how fast he’s going!'

Now they were hurtling through intersections, bucking over cracked pavement and divots in the road. Alan held the camera in his left hand, braced himself against the dashboard with his right.

'You should really put on your seat belt,' said Mike.

'Uh-huh,' said Alan, gazing cross-eyed at the camera’s bright LCD.

'This is…really fast. I couldn’t ride a bike this fast.'

'Uh-huh. Uh-huh.'

'Should we stop?' said Mike with a glance toward Alan. 'This is really dangerous. And it’s not like he’s gonna lead us home at this point.'

'It’s fantastic footage. Like nothing we’ve ever had. Something like this could save the show.'

'Yeah. Yeah, get a shot of the speedometer.' Alan leaned over and focused on the backlit dial. Forty-five… forty-seven miles per hour through residential streets. 'Good,' Mike added, and laughed. 'They can use this as evidence at our trial.'

The rider swerved past another stop sign and narrowly missed an SUV. Mike slammed on the brakes and the horn at the same time. The SUV honked back, the driver shouting through his tinted glass as he crept through the intersection.

'Aah! Shit! Move!' said Mike.

The SUV finally cleared a path, and Mike urged the grumbling van forward into…fog.

'What the hell?' he said. The headlights barely cut into the thick white cloud ahead of them. He switched on the high beams, but that was worse.

'My god,' said Alan. 'My god. Go, go! We’re going to lose him!'

Mike accelerated cautiously. They passed another stop sign. It emerged from the bright mist suddenly, like a magic trick.

'There’s no fog down the side streets,' Mike muttered. 'Did you see? It’s only ahead of us.'

'That’s how we know we’re still on his trail. Go faster.'

Mike went faster. 'Alan?' he said. 'Alan, what are we gonna do if we catch him?'

Then a white face came out of the smoke, a bright, hideous face. Mike looked into the eyes. He saw the teeth. The bike and its rider came at them and swerved to their left; and Mike swerved to the right and saw briefly the shapes of houses and an electrical pole and then red.

His head hung forward, tingling, and then it was all dark, like he’d been pulled by his hair into sleep. In a moment the sleep faded and he thought of Alan.

'You okay?' he groaned, and turned his head slowly.

The vampire’s face was in the window. Between Mike and the vampire was Alan, slumped like a dead man against the dash. All around was the fog, which was fading and mingling with a turbid black smoke that rose out of the van. The passenger door opened. The night air came in, smelling of tires, and the dome light flickered on, flickered off. In the flickering light he could see the vampire, see (thank god) Alan’s chest rise and fall. He could see, through a space between the dashboard and the rise and fall of Alan’s chest, the vampire reach in and take the camera.

'This is your fault,' it said, and was gone.

27 Roles

IN THE COMING WEEKS the school buzzed with speculation about the superhero of Philadelphia. He had stopped a robbery at a MoPo. A few days later, he saved a woman from rape, or worse, at the hands of a group of young men in West Philly. A week after that, another group of men were found badly beaten in Upper Darby. No one knew what they’d done, but they said they’d been assaulted by a short man in a white mask and cape and so were assumed to be up to no good.

Several names were put forth for the character, by the newsreaders and by the populace he presumably served, but the Ghost was the name that stuck. There were no more stories of the hero vanishing, leaving his wardrobe behind like the mark of a clothing-optional Zorro. Stranger stories spread to fill the vacuum, however: the Ghost could fly. The Ghost had a snow-white wolf companion. The Ghost rode an invisible motorcycle.

Then a new piece of information, separate at first, was braided tentatively into the thread: Alan Friendly, host of the Crypt’s Vampire Hunters, had been in a car accident in West Philadelphia, only blocks from that legendary MoPo, on the night after the robbery. He’d almost died. No one was sure if he’d even walk again. And his organization wouldn’t confirm that he’d been in the area hunting vampires, but why else would he be there?

Opinion on the Ghost grew mixed and vague. The woman he’d saved in West Philly changed her story: she’d been in no danger — the boys had been loud and crude and were bothering her, but they’d done nothing to deserve…what he did. Now that she thought about it, there had been something weird about the Ghost. His mouth had looked like an animal’s.

Fanboys and goths and readers of black-clad paperbacks found their stars suddenly rising. They were the keepers of all the abruptly popular atavistic knowledge that You Needed to Know: the myths and folktales, the talismans and apotropaic spice racks that could keep you safe. If he was a vampire. If he wasn’t a hero. Adam, who was suddenly an admitted scholar of speculative fiction, thought he might even be both, like Blade from the comic books. Jay said he didn’t believe in vampires. Doug said little that was not mocking, when he said anything at all.

Sejal actually did try out for the school play. Cat was going to anyway — if she didn’t land a part she planned to volunteer for crew — and so Sejal imagined quiet, airless evenings alone with Uncle and Auntie Brown while Cat remained at school for rehearsals. Acting would be therapeutic, she thought. Besides, she had seen West Side Story before. She already knew the music.

And because she had a nice singing voice, and because the Ardwynne High School drama teacher, on a subconscious level, felt that a girl from India was somehow specially qualified to play a Puerto Rican, Sejal won the role of Maria. The lead role.

'Rock out!' Ophelia said to Sejal as they crowded around the freshly posted cast list. 'Look at you!'

'And you got the part of Anita,' Sejal replied.

'That means we’ll have a lot of scenes together.'

'Sorry, Cat,' Sophie said. Sophie and Abby had won parts, Cat had not.

'Whatever,' Cat answered. 'I never get anything. But I talked to Ms. Todd and she wants me to be assistant director.'

'That’s cool.'

'It beats carrying furniture.'

'I bet you’re happy for Jay,' said Sejal. Jay would be playing the shopkeeper.