I was heading for the creek, whistling “Heartbreak Hotel” and minding my own business, when Ross caught up to me and told me about the vampire at Todd Palmer’s house.

“Jason,” he gasped, almost doubling over as he caught up to me. “Man, we thought you’d never get home from vacation. Todd and Dave and me, we didn’t know what to do. But now that you’re back….”

He left the sentence unfinished. Suddenly, he wore the relieved look of a tired pitcher who’d just been pulled from a tough game. He straightened, still a head shorter than me even though we were both eleven, and shot the look my way one more time, just to be sure that I hadn’t missed it.

I flicked his Brooklyn Dodgers cap off his head. “Pull the other one, Ross. You guys have probably been planning this for two weeks.” I shook my head. “C’mon–Bela Lugosi in corn country? Is that the best you can do? Isn’t it bad enough that my folks dragged me through twenty-two states in fourteen days? And, man, all I’ve got to show for it is this chintzy knife from Yosemite.”

I pulled the knife fast enough to make Ross jump (he’s a hopeless coward). It wasn’t really chintzy, but it wasn’t the one I had wanted, either. That one cost ten bucks and had an authentic ivory handle. My old man wouldn’t go for it though, so I had to settle for the two buck special that had a genuine plastic handle featuring a hand-painted view of Half Dome.

Hand-painted in Taiwan, that is.

Ross stared at the knife. No, he did more than stare–his gaze was riveted on the shiny blade. “Oh, man,” he said. “This is scary. I mean, you buying a knife. It’s like you’re psychic or something. I swear to God it is!”

“What’re you talking about?”

“C’mon and I’ll show you.”

Ross scooped up his cap and we walked the short distance to Palmer’s cornfield. We hopped the fence and blazed a trail between two rows of dead cornstalks. I was surprised that Mr. Palmer hadn’t plowed the field and planted another crop. Todd’s dad was usually real quick about that kind of stuff. My dad always said that Mr. Palmer was a hard man, a man who didn’t brook nonsense. That was the way Todd’s dad managed his farm, pushing its crop potential to the limit, and my dad seemed to think that was the way Mr. Palmer handled his kids, too.

But something had slowed Mr. Palmer’s clockwork pace. Maybe for once he hadn’t had enough time, or maybe he’d wanted a vacation of his own, or maybe….

Maybe anything. Who knows why things happen? I mean, really? People say things. They do things. But who ever knows? Really?

Ross pushed between two tall stalks that crackled like ancient parchment. I followed. We cut through a couple more rows and came to the center of the field.

And there it was.

A naked mound of dirt, dark clods dried gray and hard in the hot sun.

A grave, I thought, shivering. It wasn’t an ordinary grave, either, and not just because it was in the middle of a cornfield. Imbedded in this grave, punched into it like it was some weird pincushion, were dozens of stakes and knives, their hilts barely visible. Tent stakes, survey stakes. Boy Scout knives, ordinary silverware, putty knives, and fancy stuff that must have been pure silver.

Ross was talking again. “We had to steal some of ‘em. Christ, my mom’ll kill me if she finds out I took Aunt Alma’s silver. But we had to, ’cause we can’t let him come back. Oh, man, he’ll be pissed if he comes back, and I don’t want to think about what he’d do to Todd, and to me and Dave because we helped Todd.” He bent low, touching knives and stakes, making sure that they were firmly planted in the hard ground. “So we stuck this stuff into the grave, and he can’t get out without killing himself again. That makes sense, don’t it, Jase? I mean, you know how this stuff works….”

Ross kept talking, the way he always does, but I wasn’t listening.

It was my turn to stare.

My turn for riveted gazes.

The churned, dry dirt of the grave. The stakes, brown and hard and smooth, like weird roots. The silver knives, hilts glistening in the morning sunlight. The clumps of earth, like dead fists.

Not dead. Undead.

Because this was a vampire’s grave.

#

Standing there surrounded by oak trees that were a good hundred years old, Todd’s big house looked small. The Palmers had lived on the outskirts of Fiddler for three generations, and the house had stood the test of time. A couple coats of white paint every two years helped, and so did old man Palmer’s skill as a carpenter, but I always thought that there was something about the way the house rested under those big trees that helped protect it.

Today it didn’t look protected. It looked trapped, ensnared by a hundred gnarled arms, all twisting toward it and holding it down.

Todd answered our knock. He didn’t look right. There was a deep green bruise on his jaw, and his eyes were red, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that he’d been crying.

Ross opened his trap and started to whisper too loudly, and Todd held a finger to his lips. “My folks are gone,” Todd said. “They headed down to see Grandma in Earlimart. They don’t think she’s gonna make it this time, and she won’t go back to the hospital. Sis is upstairs, sleeping again. That’s all she does lately.” He opened the screen door. “Come in, but be quiet.”

We followed Todd through the living room. It was stark, like a room where no one lived at all. No television, no hi-fi, no coffee table, certainly no magazines or flowers. Just a worn rocker, a few chairs so stiff that even the doilies on their arms seemed out of place, and a big wrought iron cross hanging over the fireplace.

A cross that a hard man would appreciate, I thought, and then I felt kind of weird, because it was a thought my dad would have.

Anyway, Todd moved down the hallway, his right shoulder rubbing the flowery wallpaper. He came to a little table by the staircase and picked up the telephone.

He didn’t have to dial. It was a party line, and Dave’s mom was in the middle of a call. “I hate to interrupt, Mrs. Sanchez,” Todd said, his voice quiet but firm. “Can I talk to Dave? It’s kind of important.”

Mrs. Sanchez must have agreed, because Todd didn’t say anything else. In a town like Fiddler, where everybody thinks they know everybody else’s business, a kid with a dying grandma can get away with anything.

We stood in the quiet hallway, waiting for Dave to come to the phone. I stepped to the foot of the staircase. A doorway stood open on the landing above. I saw a bed, and someone’s arm dangling over the side. The person in the bed rolled over just as I started up the stairs, and I saw long blonde hair and a white nightgown dipping low over a white shoulder.

Janet Palmer, Todd’s sister.

Her eyes caught mine, but it was like they weren’t quite focused. “Dave?” she whispered. “Is that you? I’m sorry, Dave. I’m so sorry.”

I backed down the staircase, embarrassed, and didn’t say a word.

Todd said a couple words to Dave, because that was all it took. Then he grabbed my shirttail, and I turned and saw those red eyes of his.

I couldn’t read them at all.

Upstairs, Janet was crying.

“C’mon,” Todd said. “Meeting time.”

#

We sat under Todd’s front porch. The air was still and cool. There was enough room for kids to sit comfortably, but not enough room for adults, so it was the perfect place to go when we didn’t want to be bothered.

“Tell us what to do, Jase,” Ross said. “Tell us if we done right. I mean, you know about this stuff. You read all those monster magazines and see all those movies.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve said that about a jillion times today.”

Dave laughed, twirled his drumsticks, and did a little drum roll on the rubber pad the band teacher had given him so he could practice over the summer. His folks weren’t too well off and he couldn’t afford a snare drum, let alone the fancy set he wanted.

Dave carried the practice pad everywhere. He put up with band, but he really wanted to rock ‘n’ roll. He said he was going to get out of Fiddler and tour with Ritchie Valens or somebody like that. Dave was the coolest kid I knew, the leader of our group, and I felt like he was about five years ahead of us in almost everything. Girls liked him, and he didn’t put on a show with them or pretend that he minded their attention.

“So who’s going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked.

Ross started blabbing again, and I cut him off with a hard glance. Todd didn’t look like he was up to talking. Dave shrugged and started in, setting his drumsticks aside.

“I guess I was the first one to figure out what was going on.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “But I don’t really want to talk about it. It was hard enough to tell Todd the first time, and to do it again….”

“You gotta tell,” Ross put in, and then he buttoned up before anyone could punch him.

“Yeah, I gotta tell.” Dave sighed again. “You know that we’ve got a party line with Todd’s family. Well, I got so I would listen in every now and then. At first it was just for fun. One time, I heard Mr. Palmer cussing out some tractor salesman. And I heard Mrs. Palmer gossiping with Ross’s mom almost every day.” He paused, his eyes locked on his drumsticks as if he didn’t dare look up at me and speak at the same time. “But, to tell you the truth, Janet’s voice was the one I really wanted to hear when I picked up the phone.”

I glanced at Todd. His eyes were glazed over, and he was rubbing the welt on his jaw. I knew then, even before Dave said what he was going to say, that Todd would rather get punched out than listen to Dave’s story again.

Suddenly, I knew what kind of story it was going to be.

People say things. They do things.

And sometimes they even tell the truth.

Dave went on, still looking down at his drumsticks. “I know that she’s six years older than me. I know that. But when I’d hear Janet talking to her girlfriends, I didn’t miss a word. And when she wouldn’t tell them the name of the guy she had a crush on, I’d imagine that she was talking about me.And when she told Ross’s sister that she was in love with a guy who was in love with her, too, I imagined that she knew how I felt about her without me even saying, and that she felt exactly the same way about me.”

“Without even saying,” Todd whispered, still rubbing his jaw.

Dave nodded, still looking down.

“Tell him what happened next,” Ross blurted. “Tell him about the vam–”

“Shut up, Ross,” I said.

“Yeah, shut up,” Dave said, but his voice didn’t have any strength. He looked at me, and I knew that it took everything he had just to hold my gaze.

He didn’t look like a leader anymore. He didn’t look like a guy who had everything figured out. He looked like an eleven-year-old boy who’d been scared by an expert.

He kept talking. “It was two weeks ago, just about the time you left on vacation. I got up around midnight to get a drink of water. I don’t know why, but I picked up the phone, even though it was late.

“I heard him then. I had to strain to understand him, because his voice was so quiet and smooth. Her voice sounded the same way. But I’d never heard Janet talk like that before. It made me feel sick, some of the things she said, and the hard way he laughed when she said them.” Dave swallowed. “And I felt sick, too, because suddenly I knew she hadn’t been talking about me when she talked to her girlfriends.

“I wanted to hang up, but I couldn’t.And then came the worst part. He said, ‘You think your little friend is listening? You think he’s gettin’ a thrill?’, and she just laughed. I hung up then. I didn’t even try to be sneaky. I’m sure they heard me.

“I tried to go to sleep, but all I could do was toss and turn. I knew that I’d never be able to look Janet in the eye again. And then, in the middle of the night, I heard a motorcycle out on the road, full open and racing fast. I got out of bed and ran to the window just in time to see Janet riding with him, her arms wrapped around his chest, her fingers digging into his leather jacket, her blond hair blowing in the wind. They headed up the road, toward wherever he was from, I guess, and they came back about an hour before dawn.

“That should have been the end of it. Even then, I thought it was spooky that they knew I was listening to them that night. I mean, I knew it was weird. Too weird.” Dave’s voice quavered with shame. “But I couldn’t stop listening. I heard them every night. The things they said… some of them they said to me, because they knew I was listening. And I heard the motorcycle. Roaring out on the road, coming and going night after night. And then one day I heard Todd’s mom talking to Ross’s mom–”

“I heard it too,” Ross said. “I mean, Mom told Dad about it. She said that an evil boy was sucking Janet Palmer dry, sucking the blood of Jesus right out of her and dragging her straight down to hell.”

“Your mom is a pretty wild with the fire and brimstone bit,” I said. “She’s said worse stuff about me, I’ll bet.”

“No way,” Ross said. “She was serious. She knew that this guy was a vampire! She knew it! But she was afraid to say the word!”

Dave shook his head. “I don’t know, Jase. Maybe you’re right. But if you’d heard this guy. If you’d heard the things that he said–”

“Or if you’d seen what he did,” Ross put in. “I didn’t see it. Not myself. But Todd was there when it happened. Todd saw the whole thing.”

Todd stopped rubbing his jaw. He started talking, but his voice was distant, like it wasn’t a voice at all but a little machine that had clicked on inside of him. “We went to see Grandma. Mom and Dad and me. You guys know how sick she is. Janet didn’t go. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She whispered something to Mom about the way she felt, and Mom blushed and said it was okay for her to stay home.

“Grandma talked for a long time. It was fun to listen to her. She talked about her courting days, and how wonderful Grandpa was back then. It was like she wasn’t sick at all. She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

“We got home late. Dad saw the motorcycle first. He stopped the car at the end of the driveway, got out, and started for the house. He was walking fast, but he didn’t run. Mom just sat there in the front seat, not moving at all. I sat in the back, staring at her hair. It was all neat in a bun and it didn’t move, either. It was like she was a department store dummy or something. I remember thinking that.”

Todd lay back and closed his eyes. I couldn’t decide if it helped him remember or if he wanted to hide from us. He said, “I heard Janet scream, and I scrambled out of the car. Mom was screaming at me, but I didn’t stop running. I banged through the screen door and the screaming was really loud, like it was bottled up in the house.

“I almost stopped running when I got to the foot of the stairs, but it was too late. I took them three at a time and then I was in Janet’s room. She was in the corner, all twisted up like she wanted to hide. She didn’t have any clothes on and I saw the bruises on her neck where he’d…and there were bruises on her boobs, too.” He sobbed. “And then I saw the blood. I saw where she was…bleeding. It was on her legs and…and….”

Todd was crying now, and there was no stopping his tears. “And there was blood on the sheets. Dad pinned the vampire to the floor with his knees, straddling him. The guy–the thing–it was real white. Its arms and legs were long and skinny, like it was a big spider. Dad had the wrought iron cross in his hands, and he bashed…and he hit the thing again and again, and the guy–the vampire–was twitching and Janet was crying and…its arms and legs were twitching…and the cross…it worked and….”

Dave’s hand dropped onto Todd’s shoulder. Todd stopped talking, but he couldn’t stop sobbing.

“That was what happened,” Dave said. “Todd’s dad sent him to bed, hit him hard when Todd tried to go back to Janet’s room. He told Todd that the guy was okay, that he’d only beat him up so he wouldn’t come back and hurt Janet again. But Todd knew that wasn’t true. He could see the cornfield from his bedroom window, and he saw his father go out there that night and dig a grave.”

“But Mr. Palmer didn’t put a stake in the vampire’s heart,” Ross said. “At least we don’t think so. That’s why we put the knives and stakes in the grave. ‘Cause Todd saw Janet. He saw that blood. He knew what really happened.”

“It really happened,” I said. “Everything you told me. It really happened.”

They nodded. No one said anything for a long time. Then Ross started in again. “It’s just like they said. It’s true, every word. I mean, the vampire only came at night. On the phone, he knew that Dave was listening. They can read minds, right? And the things it said to Janet, and the things it made her say. They can hypnotize people, y’know, make them say or do anything. And the blood. Todd saw the blood.” Ross hugged himself and rocked back and forth. “It’s scary. I mean, I found where Todd’s dad hid the vampire’s motorcycle. It’s down by the creek. It’s black. It’s all busted up now, but it doesn’t have any mirrors, and I think it never did. Understand? It doesn’t have any mirrors!” He was rocking like crazy now. “I don’t think the vampire can come back. We did the right thing, didn’t we Jase? It can’t come back, can it?”

I shook my head.

Dave picked up his drumsticks and thrummed them gently on the practice pad, but he couldn’t find a beat. “It’s hard,” he said, and he almost sounded like Ross. “It’s hard to know what we should do next.”

I looked at them, and I was with them, and I wanted to help them.

I looked at Todd. He couldn’t do it. He was the son of a hard man, and he’d been broken.

Dave couldn’t do it. He was still in love. If he heard Janet say how sorry she was, he’d never forget it.

Ross couldn’t do it. Not on his best day. Not ever.

“She won’t get up,” Todd said. “She won’t eat….”

Dave started to cry.

Gently, I slid the drumsticks out of his hands.

I opened my new knife.

Sometimes people say things. Sometimes they do things.

But nobody said a word, and nobody moved, while I sharpened the stakes.