American Vampire

Right … so, she wasn’t going to be any help. Sure, he was leaving her on the side of the road, but he had just saved her life. Humans could be so ungrateful.

He pulled away. She’d called him an outsider. What the hell had that been about? As much as he didn’t want to head back toward … whatever it was that had destroyed the gas station, he really didn’t want to drive straight to the heart of some religious commune, either. He blew past a THANKS FOR VISITING PENANCE sign with peeling paint and a faded metal Rotary Club seal on it and pressed the accelerator to the floor. He didn’t want to see the gas station when he passed it—at least, not as anything more than a blur. It had been about three miles since he’d passed the last county road. He’d backtrack to that and take it wherever it ended up leading. If he had to sleep in the trunk to stay out of the sun, well, he would. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be a hell of a lot more pleasant than being held hostage by religious freaks.

After a few long, silent moments, he turned on his iPod. Weird stuff happened all the time. It didn’t bear thinking about. He found Lily Allen’s latest album and turned it up, singing along absentmindedly as he struggled with the TomTom once more.

Three songs later, he noticed he hadn’t made it back to the road yet. No, that couldn’t be right. He probably was just too distracted trying to change the settings back to English to notice that he’d passed it. He pulled a U-turn and headed back. He’d only gone about a quarter mile before the ruined gas station loomed to his left, and he passed a WELCOME TO PENANCE sign on his right.

“What the …” Up ahead, a figure walked at the shoulder of the road, her head hanging, arms wrapped around her middle. He slowed beside her, double-checking the odometer. He’d driven fifteen miles. It was right there, in black and white on the little dials that worked just as well as the rest of the car.

The girl shot him an angry look over her shoulder, then faced forward again, tossing her long, brown hair.

He drove past her and waited, watching in the mirror as she tried to look anywhere but at the car she approached. He couldn’t help but notice her long, suntanned legs sticking out of a nice, short pair of denim cutoffs. Country girls. Yum. He rolled down the window as she walked by. “Something strange just happened.”

She didn’t answer, but kept walking. He gave her a little room, then rolled after her. When he pulled up even again, he continued, “I just tried to drive back to county-road-number-whatever-that-number-was, but I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Got any idea what that’s about?”

Still no answer.

He let her get ahead again, then drove up beside her once more. “You can either get into this car, or stay out here with whatever that was that just wrecked a building.”

She laughed humorlessly and kept walking. “You didn’t seem to care about leaving me out here when you thought you were going to be able to drive away and never see me again.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, creeping slowly alongside her. “But that’s only because I thought I was going to drive away and never see you again … Why didn’t that work out?”

“You’re a real gentleman.” She shook her head, still walking. “You can’t leave because It keeps us here.”

“It?” She’d said the word like it was a name, like it should be obvious what she was talking about, but Graf had no clue. “What do you mean, ‘It'?”

There was something hard about the way she wrinkled her nose, as though she had been defeated a long time ago and didn’t like talking about the fight. Whatever bad memories were associated with the subject, they made her voice a little less strident. “I don’t know. No one does.”

“Well, what do you mean I’m—” His foot slipped on the accelerator, and the car lurched forward. He hit the clutch and downshifted into Neutral. “Damn it, get in! This is ridiculous.”

To his surprise, she walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door. “Are you going to drive me home, or just abandon me on the side of the road a little farther down?”

He ignored her. “You told me to enjoy my stay. So, I take it other people have had this same trouble?”

“No. You’re the first.” She wasn’t being sarcastic. She dropped into the seat and pulled in her long legs as she closed the door. “The rest of us have been trapped here, but outsiders never stop.”

Trapped. Well, that sounded great. “‘Never’ meaning … how long exactly?”

“Five years.” She pointed to a dirt road ahead. “Turn there.”

He complied, too confused to do much other than ask questions and take orders. That wasn’t like him at all, and it made him uncomfortable. “Five years, no one has been able to …”

“To leave Penance, or get in. No visits to or from. No one with car trouble on the side of the road.” She closed her eyes. “No ambulances.”

“So, I’m the first person to come to Penance for the past five years?” There was a fallow field to one side of the road, a swamp to the other. “What is this?”

“A town.” She looked at him like he was crazy. “A small one, but a town. And everything within the city limits has been trapped for the past five years. No one gets in, no one gets out.”

That explained the lack of cars on the road, the closed-down gas station. “So, what’s this ‘It’ that you’re so worried about? The ‘It’ that tried to bring a building down on us. What’s with that?”

“I don’t know.” She got a faraway look, as if she didn’t want to talk about it. “I’ve seen It before. A lot of people have. It kills. Not every night, not on a schedule. Some people have had It come right up to them and not do anything at all. Other people get slaughtered.”

“Okay.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But what is it?”

She looked dead-on at him like he was stupid. “It’s a monster.”

Two

Realistically, Graf couldn’t doubt the existence of monsters. It just wouldn’t make sense. Obviously, vampires existed. And werewolves. He’d met one of those. Zombies, he’d never heard of those existing, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Witches? Wouldn’t want to tangle with one. But unclassifiable bogeyman-type creatures that could bring down a gas station roof right over his head? It wasn’t that they couldn’t exist, they probably did, but such information was hard to believe when it was coming from a human.

“A monster?”

The woman nodded, still eyeing him like he might be a little bit “special.” “Yes. You don’t really think a tornado did that? And left the power lines up? And us able to run? And your car sitting right there, not getting a scratch on it?”

“I thought they were notorious for that kind of thing,” he muttered, but he didn’t admit that everything he knew about tornadoes came from the movie Twister. “So, what kind of a monster are we talking about?”

“I’ve never exactly asked It to classify itself while it was chasing me.” She blew out a breath and raised her hand to push her hair back. She still shook, giving Graf the visual interpretation of the old “like a leaf on a tree” expression. She didn’t stink of fear anymore, so she must have just been burning off adrenaline. “It’s just a monster. That’s the only way to describe it. Some people thought It was some mutant kind of giant possum when it first started attacking people, but …”

He frowned. “When did it start attacking people?”

“About five years ago,” she replied in a “Gee, what do you think?” tone. “Right after we all got stuck here.”

For a few minutes, Graf didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes on the painfully straight road and let everything she said tumble around in his mind. For five years, an entire town had been held captive by some kind of monster, and no one on the outside had noticed? There was clearly more at work here than just plain old monstering. That was the kind of thing only a spell could accomplish, not that he’d tell her that. He never liked to reveal the existence of the supernatural to a human, even if they had already experienced it in some form. There was always a ton of explaining to be done, and the same tiresome questions. Questions a lot like the ones he’d had for her.

“My place is right up there.” The girl indicated, pointing to where a mercury light cast the side of a white farmhouse in a sickly green glow.

Graf pulled into the driveway, lined on both sides with milk cans rusting under their coats of white paint. “Nice decor.” He sneered.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been really worried about my curb appeal during the last five years that I’ve been unable to leave town and lived in constant fear of a monster, so go fuck yourself,” she snapped, pushing the passenger door open.

She was feisty. Now, he didn’t know if he wanted to fuck her or eat her. Or, he could do both, but only if she let him into her house.

“Wait,” he called after her, turning off the engine.

He got out of the car, and she stopped, hands on her slim hips as she turned to face him. “I hope you don’t think you’re coming into my house.”

“Look, I know that we got off on the wrong foot—”

“The wrong foot?” She laughed, tilted her head back, and gave the trees above her an imploring look, like they could save her from his stupidity. “I’m going to have to disagree with your assessment of the situation. You see, getting nearly killed by It and then being left for dead by the person you think is trying to save you, that’s not getting off on the wrong foot. That’s called getting screwed, and I’ll be damned if you’re going to do that to me again.”

“I’m not trying to … screw you.” He forced away an immature giggle. That would not help his cause in the slightest. “If I’m trapped here, I’m going to need a place to stay. Can’t you at least give me directions to a motel?”

“Yeah. I can.” She smiled sweetly. “It’s about twenty miles away, just over the state line in West Virginia.”

He cursed and turned away, then turned back. “Is there anyone in town who would put me up?”

“As charming as you are, I’m sure you’ll find someone delighted to have you as a guest in their home. But not here. There is no room in this inn.” She walked up the lawn, toward the wide front porch.