"I'll be glad when school starts, Sam. You need a way to get out of the house without asking me or your brother for a ride every day," Lucy teased her youngest, smoothing freshly-manicured nails through his gelled hair while he remained quiet with a pained expression on his face.
Maybe if he had a bike, it'd be easier to get to the boardwalk. Now that Sam knew about the stuff that could happen to him at night, though, he wasn't too sure he wanted to take that kind of risk. At least Mike could probably out-ride a horde of undead neck-biters if he had to. Sam doubted he'd have that kind of luck on a Huffy.
"Mom, I think I might spend the night with these guys at the comic shop. You think that'd be okay?" He gently extracted her hand from his scalp and guided it back to the steering wheel, while Lucy looked back at him in astonishment as she pulled her car into park.
"You've got friends already?" Lucy broke into a smile, "as long as I meet their parents first, I'm fine with that. Is that why you brought your backpack with you? I thought you were going to sell a few of your old comic books."
"Yeah, I'm gonna do that, and you can meet their parents tonight," he just hoped Ed and Alan's parents weren't those weird stoners he'd seen sleeping against the wall. Probably wouldn't make for good conversation when mom showed up to meet them.
Once they'd parted ways on the boardwalk, Sam was really hit hard by the fact that there really were a lot of missing persons photos everywhere, Plastered on poles, building sides, every inch of space you could find on any platform or billboard. An ocean of kids, parents, old people, just about every kind of person you could imagine. Why did people still live here?!
He stopped in front of one really large billboard at a four-way crossing of beach shops and snack stalls, eyes scanning over all of the pictures there. Not even one ad for a dog or a piece of ratty furniture for sale. There just wasn't any space for that kinda stuff. The innocuous things he hoped to see that'd make it a hell of a lot easier to sleep at night.
"Whoa!" Sam's eyes snapped open wide when he spotted it. A beacon of white with black marker, and something he just knew the Frog brothers would want to see. Without thinking, he ripped the paper from its nails, making more space for the weathered pictures beneath it spotted with mildew and rain water.
Michael left the house before sunset, just after he'd finished packing and labeling the very last box of junk. Tomorrow he'd help mom load the car to get rid of what they could, but for now he was going to enjoy himself. He didn't feel like staying home tonight, nor did he want to comb through the Sunday paper mom had brought home to see if he could scour out at least one part time job. Frankly, as much as Michael had thought about it the day before, he just didn't want to do much of anything. Just hang out. Make a few friends. Maybe the distraction would be good for him.
The girl he was going to meet up with wasn't answering any of her calls, and leaving more than one message seemed a little to desperate, so he gave up on that. Maybe she had a boyfriend already, decided to just flirt and play with the idea of cheating. He wished she hadn't decided to use him to do it.
He parked his bike against the railing, the same spot as last time. It was a little ridiculous, but he'd half-expected to see the guys from the other night there waiting for him. He leaned against the railing and watched the tide roll in, mango-red sky meeting greyish water. There weren't many people surfing, or doing much of anything on the beach. Seemed like a waste of good weather.
Scratching absent-mindedly around his freshly-changed bandage, Michael scowled. He'd noticed his palm that morning seemed even worse, raw, like the skin had been torn open again. It was clean, though, which didn't make much sense. Hurt to grip his bike handle.
A small group of guys was coming back from the shore. The only surfers out there. The closer the got, the more uncomfortable he became, and when one of them gave him a dirty look Michael shot one right back before he hastily beat a retreat into one of the shops nearby. He'd have to wait until they cleared out before he went back to move his bike. Maybe he could take on that one asshole in a fight, but six of them was a bit much.
In retrospect, pretty much any other shop on the boardwalk would probably have been a better choice. The garage full of dead critters and furry skull projects he'd packed up were nothing compared to this compact museum of inglorious taxidermy. Michael was no expert, but he'd seen enough jackalopes over the last week to know they weren't supposed to be pop-eyed. Deer, too, weren't supposed to be fat with distended bellies and bits of stuffing poking through the edges of their wired joints.
He wasn't a small guy, but he wasn't huge either. Michael felt like Gulliver, as packed as all of the shelves in the place were, so close together he almost had to hold his breath to edge through.
At the front of it all, the master of this stuffed circus, was none other than the old man's piece on the side. Hattie. Johnson.
She was leaning over a newspaper at the front counter, just beside a rusted cage with an eye-less stuffed parrot inside. He hadn't even thought it was possible for her to look even more eccentric than the last time (and first) they'd met, but somehow she managed. Between the red paisley caftan, the lady-bug pillbox hat, and the bright red netting veil with black spots that sprouted from the hat to drape over her face, it was like she was prepared to attend the red queen's funeral. Probably paint a couple of fucking roses while she was at it, too.
"Ohhhhh, I know this one!" She shouted in a sing-song voice, scrawling down something on the newspaper, "formalde-" she paused, frowning and sucking at her wrinkled bottom lip, probably ingesting a pound of lipstick in the process, "no, too many letters."
Thank god she hadn't spotted him yet. There was still time to escape and take his chances with the punks outside.
The fates were not on Michael's side today, and apparently neither was his sense of balance, because when he tried to beat his hasty retreat he only ended up stumbling into an enormous wind-chime made of sand dollars and bleached little bone fragments, tangling his arms in them and very nearly colliding into a shelf as he tried to break free.
"Oh!" Hattie Johnson shouted, billowing away from her counter, across the store, and right at him, like a pirate ship with more sail than actual wood to support it, "Michael Emerson, why speak of the devil, I was just talking about you!" She exclaimed, helping him untangle the strings of chimes from his arms.
"Sorry, I was looking for a different store," he apologized, and very nearly made his escape before a bony hand clamped firmly onto his shoulder.
"Now, what do we have here?" She looked down at his bandaged hand. "You hurt yourself, darling?"
"I'm fine, it's just a cut. It's fine."
"Oh no, let me look at that, it's dripping!" She grabbed his hand, lifting it up to her face and squinting at it, because clearly she'd need a telescope to see anything. "Here, you follow me to the back, and I'll get this cleaned up."
"You don't have to, really-"
He had no choice. He was driven to the back of the shop through a mysterious beaded curtain, and very nearly slammed down into a cracked leather easy chair behind it. "You wait here," she told him, patting his uninjured hand and rushing out through the beaded curtain, the same way they'd come.
Michael was stunned, staring after her, confused, and a little dizzy from everything happening all at once. He hadn't known his grandpa that well, but if this was the kind of chick he spent his nights with, he must've been pretty damn crazy. He'd had the garage to prove it, come to think of it.
Hattie returned with a first aid kit, beaming down at him, "you know, my husband used to hurt himself just about every night trying to make those things out there," she waved through the curtain towards the shop floor, "your grandpa was a much better taxidermist, god rest both of their souls. Now, hold out your hand."
He stared back up at her, hesitant, a deer in headlights. Michael hated to think what would happen if he tried to fight the old lady, so he reluctantly lifted his hand to let her unwrap the bandage he'd fashioned from an old shirt.
"Tut tut, this is going to get infected if you don't look after it a little better," she scolded him, balancing her kit on the edge of the chair's arm and flipping it open to grab a large bottle of iodine.
"So, what happened?" Her smile grew, "did you get into a little tiff about a girl? You seem like the type. Your grandpa was the type."
"No, there was this as-" Michael cut himself off, "guy who tried to hassle Sam. Listen, I don't want to bother you, it's really okay, I can just leave-"
"Stay." She frowned, "you aren't leaving until we have this taken care of," one wrinkled hand dug into a large pocket at the front of her caftan, and she yanked out a thick pair of bottle coke lenses to slam over her nose so she could better examine the wound as she dabbed a few cotton balls into the iodine.
The time it took for her to just stare at his hand, turning it over and squint while the iodine-soaked cotton balls remained unmoving in her grip, was excruciating. It felt like his palm was a book, and she'd just gotten to the good part.
"Looks like this got torn open recently," she glanced back up at him, "catch it on a couple of nails?"
"What?"
He took in a sharp breath when she pressed the cotton balls to his hand and dabbed at it, "looks like something nasty got to it. No, I wouldn't want many bites like this, sugar. You're lucky you're still walking."
She wasn't making any sense. He wasn't surprised.
"Nothing bit me."
"If you say so," she continued to clean his wound, and he decided then and there that he would never visit Hattie Johnson's shop again if he could help it. The iodine burned almost as bad as actually being cut.
"You know, there's an awful lot of things in Santa Carla. Nasty things. Sometimes they look real nice. Pretty packages. They didn't always used to be nasty, either. Most of them were just like you and me," she rambled, getting more and more confusing by the second. Dear god, did the woman have some kind of brain tumor?
"That's terrible," Michael humored her, not really knowing what else he could do. If she got worked up, she might do something crazy, like dump the whole bottle onto his hand.
"The point I'm trying to make here is that when you see those nasty things, it's better to just look away. Stay inside. Be extra careful, because once they get an eye on you, and you're still in one piece, maybe you won't be so nice anymore either."
At long last, his hand was wrapped with gauze, released, and Michael very nearly got to make his escape. Of course, that would have been too easy. She still had one last thing to say to him before he ducked outside.
"Michael," Hattie waved at him, closing her first aid kit, "you be a good boy. It's getting dark, and I don't want to have to tell your grandpa I wasn't looking after you boys. Understand?"
"Uh, yeah."
"So you promise me you'll stay out of trouble and go right home?"
He nodded slowly.
"Alright then. You have a good night, you hear?"
He'd try. Maybe after he met up with those guys tonight, he'd be able to shake off the weird feeling he got just being around Hattie Johnson. The woman was insane.
Max had spent a long time alone. Perhaps too long. He wasn't accustomed to silent eyes, always following him, nor being forced to deal directly every evening with one of his difficult children. They were all trouble, of course. Boys would be boys. Star was most likely acting up because she wanted more attention, but he simply didn't have the time to stay home and coddle her when he had a store to run and a wife to find. A wife would handle everything. A mother for the children.
He had this same conversation with himself every night, and had for the last century or so. Each passing year seemed to make the need more urgent. David was hardly listening to him anymore, showing up to his summons only every other time they were given. Max was losing control of his family, and this monstrosity in his hand was the last straw.
Laddie was at home, thankfully drugged with tonight's juice box of his blood. Star was locked in the basement until she learned to address him respectfully, and stop killing his guests. They were not his immediate problems anymore, but the paper grasped in his claw was.
He used his sunshade to guard his face, remaining still in his car as he struggled to control his temper, eyes scanning over the 'ad' he'd had to spend the last hour ripping from every visible display he could find on the boardwalk. The boys were responsible for this. David would have quite the punishment tomorrow evening, once Max was able to calm himself.
"Think of the children," Max mouthed the words aloud, lips pressed into a snarl, "vampires are roaming the streets of Santa Carla. We need hunters to deal with this deadly menace, before it's too late."
There was even a crude map scrawled out with his address beneath it!
"The source of all evil resides here, and when he's gone, the city can finally rest in peace."
It didn't even read like a proper ad! It was a joke in the poorest of taste. What they were thinking when they decided to play this little prank on him, he hadn't a clue, but this behavior was going to stop. Now.
He debated whether he really should let his temper calm, and not go to the hotel immediately to address their challenge, but ultimately decided against it. One more night wouldn't kill him. Maybe they'd even come clean and apologize.
Yes. The guilt would overwhelm them. Even David had some sense of loyalty to his maker. Max nodded, satisfied with himself as he packed the pile of trash into a small grocery bag in his passenger seat. They were probably even planning to make up for their behavior. Perhaps a birthday party for Laddie. Surely the boy would be turning nine or ten at this point, he deserved a nice cake.
"Michael, hey!" David lifted a gloved hand to salute the human as he approached them, looking so spooked he almost wondered if he already knew what they were. Even if he did, they'd all parked far too close to his bike for him to make an easy escape. Michael didn't seem like the type to run, though.
"Hi," Michael greeted them all in turn, his freaked-out expression seeming to melt away, "you guys planning anything tonight?"
"Planning?" Marko straightened up, "like what?"
"I dunno. Do you just hang around here all the time watching people?" Michael glanced around, "doesn't really seem like there's much else to do besides watch music or hop on a ride."
David grinned, flicking his cigarette, "you want to do something fun?"
"I do!" Paul exclaimed, slinging an arm around the blonde leader's shoulders and then quickly jumping away when David cast a warning look at him.
It was an interesting challenge. Something fun. Without killing? David could still taste Michael's blood on his tongue, so he was fine with putting that off for another night. Honestly, he'd enjoy having a little more soon, but best to let the teen recover a little if he didn't want to drain him dry. Had to leave something, after all.
David tried to look thoughtful, "there's a dive bar just outside the city with a great pool table, cheap drinks. We're pretty much regulars there, aren't we?" He looked back at the others, who each nodded eagerly in turn. They weren't regulars at all. Hard to be when half the places you went turned into bloodbaths once they got boring.
The place he had in mind was at least far enough for them not to be recognized. Wouldn't do to have the locals freaking out and ruining the vibe. Casual. Tonight was going to be casual. Except, well, David had to test Michael. See if he had what it took to be one of them. At least to keep the boys happy.
"Alright," Michael nodded, "sounds good." He was so much less argumentative when he was awake.
They kept to a moderately less dangerous trail, though David and the boys were in no mood to coddle Michael. The race from the boardwalk was brutal, and they didn't ease up until they were well on their way to the bar, where patchy lighting and seedy drunks awaited them. Dwayne and Paul laughed, eliciting a sharp cackle from Marko, and a screeching cheer from David. If they were alive, their hearts would be racing right now. As it was, they could all hear Michael's hammering in his chest.
He kept up, though, and that made all the difference. It meant he had a good chance of being one of them. A better chance than anyone else had in decades
Theirs were the only bikes. Every other vehicle in the parking lot was either a junk heap or an obvious compensation. A good sign that if anything went wrong tonight, or if one of them got a little too carried away, the only people who'd be missed wouldn't have much of a family to go back to anyway. Guys with wheels like that rarely had happy little home lives.
"You'll like it here, Michael," David told the human, slinging an arm around his shoulder as he led them all inside. Dwayne hopped over to the bar to order their beers, while Paul and Marko rushed to a ratty pool table at the corner of the bar to claim the space. There wasn't a line.
Michael smirked, "doesn't look like much."
"You have no idea," David shook his head, "trust me, any minute now something big is going to happen to keep your head spinning for days."
He looked at his surroundings doubtfully, but didn't argue, "if you say so."
They walked over to the pool table and Marko passed out the cues, "you know the rules?" Marko looked over at Michael.
He nodded in response, "who's playing first?"
Paul held up a hand and David took a position at one edge of the pool table, "you and Marko just sit this one out, then you can take the winner. Sound good?"
"Yeah, that's fine." Michael sat down at a booth Dwayne had claimed, distributing frosty mugs of beer around the table. Paul, meanwhile, wasted no time grinding a square of chalk pointlessly on the end of his cue, just to keep busy while he tried to pick a mark. There were maybe eight or nine others in the bar tonight at most, and almost all of them seemed to be bitterly confined to their own little liquor-soaked worlds.
David grinned, setting the table as he watched Paul, whispering in his mind, "make it a good one. I want this to last."
Paul's eyes danced with vicious delight when he settled his attention on the biggest guy there. Beefy. Hairy. This one would take more than a couple of punches for any normal person to take down. David didn't even have to say anything, they all knew he'd be perfect.
"Alright, go for it," David nodded, readying himself to make his first move at the table.
"Having fun yet, Mikey?" Marko prodded, watching him as he gulped down some of his beer. These guys always seemed to be silently laughing at something. Maybe someday they'd let him in on whatever the joke was.
"I guess," Michael shrugged. He directed his attention towards the pool table. David seemed to be a lot more intent on the game than Paul. Then again, it wasn't Paul's turn.
"So how'd you guys get those rides? Rich parents?" Michael had worked hard for his bike last summer, and what he hadn't been able to earn, he'd scraped together from what he could get from family. He suspected these guys had a lot more money to spend than him, especially after the move.
"Nah," Dwayne shook his head, "they were practically giving them away. Begged us to take them."
"They?"
"Friends," Marko explained, "pretty much just some meal tickets. We play nice with them, they play nice with us."
If he'd had any doubt in his mind before that this was a gang, that answer pretty much sealed it. He should probably leave now. Go home. Avoid giving his mom a reason to worry about him, but Michael got an odd feeling at the thought. Then he noticed David wasn't focusing on the game anymore, but on him, and it was like they could all read his mind, so he just shrugged the thought away and took another gulp of beer. As long as he didn't get involved with anything shady, there was no harm in hanging out.
He felt a little out of place here, wearing his cardinals shirt and jeans. An all american teen surrounding himself with the 'wrong crowd', but frankly, everyone in Santa Carla pretty much looked like they fell into that category. Like it was a rite of passage for the locals to either turn beach bum or bleach blonde.
David made his move at the pool table, trading off to Paul so he could lean his cue up alongside a railing beside the booth the rest of them were seated in. Michael wasn't exactly focused on their game anymore, though. There was something really weird going on at the bar.
A drunk about the size of a freight train was violently, yes violently, tossing back shots of liquor, splashing half of it on the floor in the process. The bartender was staring at him in bewilderment, snatching back the bottle he'd used to pour the shots before the man could grab at it.
As if that was the mammoth's cue to start trouble, he rounded towards the pool table as he wiped at his neckbeard with the back of his hairy arm.
David watched Paul expectantly, and Michael could only assume he was just anxious to make his next move, but Michael was still a little distracted, "uh, David, theres-"
The drunken bar warrior gave a loud bellow and started barreling towards the blonde leader before Michael could finish his sentence, and without thinking he jumped up to do something. He was just a little too slow to prevent the guy from colliding with David and very likely knocking the breath out of him and grip the blonde's hair with two sets of stubby, reddened fingers.
Two for two, these guys just seemed to invite trouble wherever they went. Still, Michael couldn't in good conscience let David get beat to a bloody pulp, so he did what any good samaritan with poor judgment would do, and snapped up David's discarded pool cue, shattering it over the drunk's skull with one good swing.
This did slowly seem to get the guy's attention, and he happily released his hold on David to focus on breaking Michael's neck instead. He was ready, though, and when they were face-to-face, Michael threw all of his strength into decking the guy. With his injured hand.
Fuck!
David and the others crowded around them as Michael stepped back trying his best not to let the excruciating pain in his hand show on his face, while the hairy behemoth staggered and blinked red-rimmed eyes back at Michael as if he couldn't believe what had just happened.
Michael hadn't planned to pick fights when he got to Santa Carla, and maybe part of the problem was hanging out at a dive bar, which meant he couldn't really be mad at Sam for doing something just a little dumber. If it weren't for the ham-fists flying back at him, he might have contemplated his poor choices a little longer.
He held his own. He wasn't a pushover, after all, and while the guy in front of him was certainly twice his size, most of that weight was beer fat. So Michael was actually able to avoid the worst of the assault, and it was fairly clear nobody else was going to come over to help them.
If he'd looked at anyone else in the bar, he would've seen glazed eyes and dazed expressions. As it was, only David and the boys were really enjoying the show, especially when the drunk finally seemed to have had enough, as Michael broke his still-full mug of beer over the guy's head, sending him falling to the ground in a heap. Some of the tables beside them shuddered with the impact.
"Holy shit," Michael groaned, using his good hand to rub tenderly at his cheek where the guy had managed to land at least one meaty punch. He was going to have to make up something good tomorrow. Maybe blame it on a falling antelope head or something.
"Nice one, Michael," David patted him on the shoulder, and Michael glared back at him.
"You could've helped."
"You looked like you were handling it pretty well," David replied, "but thanks. You helped me prove something tonight."
"Yeah? What's that?" Michael scowled.
"Paul can't play for shit."
"So this is the place?" Sam asked, double checking and triple checking the backpack full of tools he'd been toting. His mom might not have liked the looks of Ed and Alan's parents last night, but somehow the Frog brothers had managed to charm her enough into letting him spend the night. It was just as well. He couldn't believe his luck! A vampire had practically fallen into their laps with a stake wrapped in a nice ribbon and a bullseye on its chest.
"Source of all evil," Edgar whispered darkly, gleefully. "That's what the ad says, isn't it? Source of all evil."
Alan nodded beside him, passing a tin of grease paint to Sam before double checking his own supplies. They were loaded up, ready to face anything. It was going to be a lot easier than Sam expected his first hunt to be. He hadn't believed they'd be able to catch one during the day.
"You know what that means? Could be the main one. The head honcho. If we take this vampire out, who knows how many lives we're gonna save?" Alan chimed in, "imagine all the cash we'll get when people find out we're the ones who did it," he made a dramatic gesture towards his chest as if he was ramming a stake in, twisting it, and going into immediate death spasms.
"We're-" Sam hesitated, "we're gonna check first, right?"
"What do you mean?" Edgar directed his attention to the new, but as of yet un-initiated member of their monster hunting squad.
"We're gonna make sure we're not just breaking into some normal guy's house and trying to stake an innocent person, right?"
Alan slapped him on the back, "hey, if he or she is in there sleeping in a coffin, isn't that proof enough?"
"Yeah," Sam nodded, "I guess you're right. You think there's more than one?"
Edgar shrugged, "probably."
It was hard to believe that behind that freshly-painted fence and granny-style lawn lay a cold-blooded killer. Would it look like the last one? Or something even worse? Images of the comics he'd studied at the Frog brothers house last night flashed through his mind. Almost made him wonder if they were autobiographical.
"Hey, wait!" Sam grabbed Edgar Frog's shoulders when he made a move to open the gate, "Ed, what if there's something else there waiting to attack?"
"Whaddya mean?" Ed rounded on him, looking thoroughly unimpressed with Sam's caution. He was clearly a 'stake first, ask questions later' kinda guy.
"Well, I mean, look," Sam reached into his back pocket and yanked out his rolled-up issue of vampires everywhere, "what if there's a hound of hell ready to play fetch with our skulls? This thing says head vampires have them keep guard during the day. If this shit-sucker is a big one, wouldn't he have a hell hound too?"
Alan snorted, "Sam, you can't believe everything you read."
Sam looked back and forth at them, exasperated, "so, what, like half of this stuff is bogus?!"
"No, it's fact," Edgar straightened up, "look, we're the experts here. You're just a rookie. You'll be fine as long as you follow my lead."
For a moment, Sam seriously reconsidered whether he really wanted to do this. The only thing that kept him standing there with the Frog brothers in the midday sun was the fact that their dad was asleep at the wheel and probably wasn't going to be up for driving for a good thirty minutes or more, and Sam couldn't just let whatever monster was inside that house kill any more people tonight.
"Alright," Sam took a deep breath and let it out, "let's go!"
"CHARGE!" Edgar bellowed, slamming the gate open and running straight for the front door.
Everything else seemed to happen in agonizingly slow motion.
A giant white german shepherd came peeling around the side of the house at full speed, his screeching bark and snapping jaw vicious enough to put Cujo to shame. Sam didn't even need to see Edgar's face go from determined bravery to overwhelming fear to know it had flipped on a dime even as the gruff Frog brother tried to backpedal. Not so easy to do when you're already running in one direction.
"Edgar!" Alan shouted, diving past the opening of the gate with his water pistols at the ready, "drink holy scum, death dog!"
Holy scum? Death dog? Sam shook his head, taking the opportunity while the otherworldly mutt was distracted to make a beeline for the front door. The hellhound couldn't chase three of them at once.
"Alan, it's not working!" Edgar shouted, scrambling around to the side of the house to avoid having his legs chomped off.
"I don't know what to do!" Alan shouted back, "the comics don't say shit about how to kill a hellhound!" He was on the verge of whining now, while Sam tried to open the front door. It didn't work.
Sam whimpered, tossing his backpack to the porch so he could dig through it for something to use. A hammer. A mallet. Anything good and metal he could use to smash open the door. His hands were shaking, though. His muscles just refused to work. It was like he was trapped in a nightmare, watching himself move and having no control over it, so he did the next best thing before he ran out of time, and he did it fast. The dog was running for him, and Ed had managed to climb a tree around the side of the house, even though his ankle was bloodied, his pants torn to shreds.
Sam shoved everything back into his bag and spun towards a window near the front door, swinging the bag around with all of his might to break the glass.
CRASH!
It was almost too easy. He didn't have time to gloat, though, even with Alan throwing shit at the dog, Sam was the more immediate danger for its master. So he threw his bag through the shattered opening in the window and dove through. Bright afternoon sun disappeared, and snapping jaws yanked Sam's shoe right off, but he made it. It one piece.
He made it. He made it!
"I made i-HOLY CRAP!" Sam shrieked, coming face-to-face with a small boy holding a juice box and staring straight at him from the safety of a small white love seat.
Oh god. This was a normal house. No vampires. Just a bad dog...plenty of people had bad dogs. Hell, his gym teacher in Phoenix had like 8 of them! They were going to be arrested, they were going to be sued! They were going to jai-
"He's in the back," the little boy pointed towards a door.
"Wh-what?" Sam stammered, scooping up his backpack.
"You're looking for-" the kid hesitated, blinking several times and taking one long sip from his juice box. It had to be some pretty good juice, because he took a good ten seconds or so to continue talking, and when Sam saw the kid's eyes turn gold, he had to admit he was pretty tempted to throw a crucifix at the little imp.
"Dad." The kid mumbled, sad, still dazed. "He's in the back."
Then Sam felt the wind knocked out of him as something from behind slammed him to the ground and crumpled on top of him. It was quickly followed by another figure, landing them all in a heap on the ground.
The Frog brothers had managed to make it into the house, Sam didn't know how, but they did. Piled on top of him in an inelegant heap.
"Cover the window!" Alan shouted climbing to his feet and grabbing the nearest thing he could, a small end table pressed up against the wall. The dog's head immediately poked through the opening of the broken window, while Alan screamed and kept it out by shoving the end table legs back against it like an incompetent lion tamer.
"Go!" Alan shouted, "nail the vampire!"
Edgar groaned, climbing to all fours, "where is he?" He asked, much less confident than when they'd arrived.
"The kid said he's in the back," Sam explained, grateful to no longer have the weight of them crushing him.
"What kid?" Edgar looked around.
"The one in the chair," Sam explained patiently, climbing to his feet. He had scrapes and cuts on his arms from diving through the broken window, but he was in a much better shape than the Frogs right now.
"There's no one here," Edgar snapped back at Sam, looking around. He was right, too.
"I guess he left," Sam replied, bewildered.
Edgar began to strategize, "okay, you go right, I'll go left. See if one of us can find the head vampire in-"
"Today, please!" Alan shouted, still wrestling with the end table. "This table's not gonna last all day!" He was right, too, one of the legs had already splintered under the force of the wild dog's snapping jaw.
It was definitely weird creeping through a slice of suburbia, expecting at any moment to find a half-rotten corpse, or grimacing skull, but Sam luckily found neither the former nor the latter as he crept from the room. Inside was just as mundane and pleasant as outside; in essence, it was the exact opposite of what any normal person would expect from a modern-day Dracula.
He couldn't believe all the noise they were making hadn't woken anyone. Halfway down the hall and towards the stairs, Sam could still hear Alan's fight with the devil dog at the living room window.
Edgar shouted from the other end of the hall, "I'm gonna check the basement, you think a house like this has a basement?"
Sam cringed, "yes!" He hissed back, doing his best not to disturb whatever was lurking in this house. Even if the Frogs were apparently experienced hunters, they weren't exactly what you'd call subtle, graceful, or smart.
It took forever. Each step seemed to bring with it some other shouted curse from Alan in the living room, or Edgar trying to toss up solid hunting advice for Sam if he found the head vampire first. He'd turn around and run the hell away from this whole mess if they weren't trapped by that stupid dog. No turning back now.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he noticed at the end of the hall there was one room with the door ajar, and Sam decided to check it out first. Looked like any normal bedroom you'd expect to find. Maybe there were a few more tintype photographs on the wall than he'd ever seen. A dresser. A huge bed. Not much else.
He dropped his backpack to the ground, groaning and running his hands through his hair. The window curtains were drawn wide. No way a vampire would sleep somewhere with so much daylight. Now he was seriously getting worried that they'd be trapped there for the rest of the day, and whether it was the hellhound or the vampire, one of the two was going to make him and the Frog brothers into lunchmeat.
Sam trailed over to the bed, glaring at it. Coffins. Vampires slept in coffins, not four posters with lace canopies and flowery comforter sets. There was even a sham. A sham!
He sighed, slumping down and sitting on top of the mattress with a feeling of utter defeat. In the back. The kid had said he was in the back. Did that mean the backyard? How were they supposed to dig the vampire up without old yeller tearing them to shreds? Why was this mattress so hard?
Sam sat up, running his hand over the comforter and feeling the mattress beneath. No, not a mattress. With a yelp, he jumped to his feet, yanking the comforter aside to reveal a huge wooden chest beneath him shaped like a box spring. His blood ran cold and he quickly scrambled back over to his backpack to yank out a stake. His palms were already sweating.
"Holy shhhh-" He began, before he heard some wailing downstairs. Edgar Frog wailing, to be precise.
"Kill it with fire!" Alan shouted, "stake it! Stab it! Do something, Ed!"
"I'm trying, butt-wipe!"
Sam quickly closed the bedroom door, hoping whatever it was they'd run into down there wasn't going to come for him next. One vampire at a time, worst case scenario he'd use that lacy curtain to make a rope or something. It worked in the movies.
"What am I doing here?" Sam mumbled under his breath, edging the top of the weird coffin-like chest open. He had to slide it, since there was no hinge, and it was heavy. The moment the open coffin was exposed to fresh air, shaded by the canopy above, Sam was immediately met with the odor of Aqua Velva and rotting meat. The stake in his right hand trembled as he immediately pulled at the collar of his shirt to help block out the smell.
Inside the coffin, reclining on a bed of dirt, was the definition of mega-dork. Tall, wearing his glasses while he slept, and though his hands were crossed over his chest like Sam had seen in the comics, that wasn't all. Trapped beneath his clawed grasp was a well-thumbed paperback with huge block letters, which Sam would have to be blind not to see: The Magic of Thinking Big.
"Okay, you got this," Sam took a deep breath. He had to do it. He had to. What if this long-toothed geek decided to snack on mom? She was nice enough to invite just about anyone into the house. Then there was Mike, who was so focused on his own girlfriend problems right now he'd follow any girl with a pretty smile down a dark alleyway. If Sam didn't do this, his family would be in danger.
Sam raised the stake above his head, letting out the breath he'd been holding in, and just as he was about to-
"HOLY HELL!" Edgar shouted, darting into the room with Alan behind him, who quickly slammed the door just as the devil dog rounded the corner, his snout and furry face painted red with someone's blood.
That finally did it, distracted, Sam turned to look at them, and the eyes of the vampire snapped open. With a loud snarl, he reached for the wannabe hunter.
Sam screamed, stumbling back and grabbing the canopy for support, only to feel it immediately rip beneath his grip and send him tumbling over his own feet. Sunlight streamed into the empty space the canopy used to be, bearing down on the vampire who was trying to reach for Sam's throat.
The monster let out an earth-shattering screech, grabbing at his face and trying to stand up in his coffin, only to allow more sunlight to cover his entire body, smoking in the first instant before he immediately burst into horrible, explosive flames. The force of it knocked Sam back to the ground as he tried to stand, and sent the Frog brothers slamming against the wall in unison.
Dazed, Sam struggled to catch his breath, looking up towards the Frog brothers, and then at the door. There was no more howling or scratching. No barking devil dog.
"Why are you covered in blood?" Sam asked, noticing for the first time that Edgar Frog looked like he'd gotten the full Carrie spa treatment head-to-toe.
"There was another one in the basement," Edgar replied, leaning back against the wall and sliding down to the ground in utter exhaustion.
They were all quiet for awhile, soaking it in. Even though the vampire in front of them was nothing more than a crumpled, burning mass in his coffin, the fire wasn't spreading. It had an almost otherworldly quality, refusing to burn anything but the blackened skeleton in its depths.
"Wow," Sam mouthed, closing his eyes.
Then they all turned their heads at once to look at the bedroom door in sheer terror as it creaked open. The little boy poked his head through, looking at all of them, just as dazed as the three teenagers.
"Thanks," the kid mumbled, looking down at his feet and kicking at a pile of ash that was settled in front of the door.
"Was that-?" Alan blinked, rubbing at his eyes.
"Yeah," the kid answered. "It was."