On our way over to the bleachers, I noticed several fresh holes in the dirt. They weren’t filled in. Just holes. I didn’t know who or what had made them, or why, but I suddenly remembered the poodle that had nipped Rusty’s arm and how it had squealed underneath one of the cars.
Slim drove us all around the bleachers and between them. There was no sign of the black bus or the black truck or the black hearse or the black-shirted crew of the Traveling Vampire Show.
The cage was gone, too.
“ ‘Folded their tents like the Arabs,’ ” said Slim, “ ‘and silently slipped away.’ ”
It seemed they had left nothing behind except Slim’s bow, her arrows, and the special quiver she’d won at the Fourth of July archery contest.
When she spotted them, she cried out,
A few minutes later, Lee jumped out again. This time, she ran through the mud with spare keys in her hand and climbed into her red pickup truck.
We followed close behind her all the way back to town.
Chapter Sixty- four
There was a big investigation, of course, but the Traveling Vampire Show was never seen or heard of again. Neither were the bodies of the volunteers or Stryker or Valeria or any of the workers we’d killed.
Or Bitsy.
Yeah, Bitsy vanished that night, too. I don’t know, she simply never turned up again. Searchers, including me and Slim and Lee, scoured the woods for her. Parts of Janks Field were even dug up. Four bodies were found, but not Bitsy (no one else from that night, either, strangely enough). To this day, Bitsy is a big mystery. I keep hoping she’s alive and happy somewhere, that she chose that night to run away from home, that she didn’t end up getting grabbed by remnants of the Vampire Show or by some other form of degenerate... or whatever it was that got the poodle. If anything bad happened to her, it would’ve been partly my fault.
I won’t get into the whole mess about Mr. and Mrs. Simmons, the parents of Rusty and Bitsy. Let’s just say it was grim.
Rusty had won the wager about Valeria’s beauty, no doubt about that. We didn’t have to go through with the pay off, but we did. As sort of a tribute to Rusty, Slim shaved my head. We never told anyone why. Only Lee. We pretty much told her everything.
My father recovered nicely from the injuries he’d sustained in the car accident.
The next year, Lee and my brother Danny had a baby girl.
Slim started calling herself Fran, short for Frances, and we began going steady and everything was just about as great as it could possibly be ... except for Rusty being dead and Bitsy being gone and Lee and Fran and me never being able to completely get away from memories of what we saw that night in the back of the hearse.
I guess maybe it was the “real” vampire, and maybe Valeria had been some sort of bait....
I don’t want to think about it.
Anyway, that’s my story.
I just want to say, if you ever get word that a Traveling Vampire Show is coming to your town, stay away from it. For God’s sake.
RICHARD LAYMON
Richard Laymon is the author of over 30 novels and 65 short stories. Though a native of Illinois and a longtime Californian, his name is more familiar to readers in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world (where he is published in 15 foreign languages) than it is to most Americans. He has written such novels as
Check out the Richard Laymon Kills! website at: www.rlk.cjb.net.
