CHAPTER 6

Danny couldn't believe his luck. Mr. Kincaid must have returned from his vacation early, because he answered his phone almost immediately. He readily agreed to meet Danny in the park. All Danny would tell him, was that they were going to have a major problem with Keith if he didn't get help soon. In hindsight, Danny realized that he had made it sound as if Keith was strung out on drugs or something. Well, he figured whatever it took to get Mr. Kincaid's attention, would be worth it. Now all he had to do was convince him that Keith was in danger of becoming one of the 'Undead.'

To his amazement, it didn't take a lot of convincing to get Mr. Kincaid on board. Oh, he scoffed at first, but when Danny presented the evidence to him (Keith's physical appearance and weird behavior. Not to mention that Adrians last name-Tepesh-was very similar, to Dracula's real surname-Tepes. According to all the books), there was no mistaking the danger to the eldest Partridge sibling. Then things began to move along pretty fast.

With a little sleuthing on his part, the manager was able to pinpoint the lair of the vampire. As a matter of fact, by this time, Danny was pretty sure that she wasn't the only bloodsucker in the neighborhood. There seemed to be a small coven of them living in the old abandoned Tate house on the edge of town. Once they had pinpointed the location of their resting place, Danny and Reuben took turns with surveillance of the building. They had both observed the comings and goings of not only Adrian, but two others; a male and another female. It became apparent that they were together as a couple. It began to dawn on both Mr. Kincaid and himself, that since Adrian seemed to be unattached, she had probably set her sights on Keith for her 'mate.'

Meanwhile, Keith was spending less time at home and more time with Miss Tepesh. Danny even followed them to the Tate house once, where they spent most of the night that time. At least Danny had never observed either of them leaving by the front door until Keith left the residence just before dawn.

Danny and Reuben began to make plans to visit the abandoned, run down house in the daytime, when it would be safer to check things out and get the layout of the house. Vampires slept during the day...right?

The next Saturday morning, Reuben stopped by the house and picked Danny up. Today would be the day that they were going to the Tate house. They made up some excuse as to where they were going and everyone seemed to buy it. At least no one asked any questions.

As they pulled up to the front of the abandoned house, Danny noted that there weren't any natural sounds coming from the area. It was a beautiful, sunny day, but the atmosphere was silent; no chirping or singing birds, no buzzing insects, nothing. It was eerily silent.

The pair walked up the cracked and broken sidewalk to the front porch. Danny automatically reached out and rang the doorbell.

Reuben was horrified as he pulled Danny's hand away from the button belatedly. "What the hell are you doing? Do you think they're going to answer the door and let us in or something?"

Danny shrugged sheepishly. "I dunno. I guess old habits die hard."

"That's a hellava thing to say under the circumstances, don't you think?" Reuben growled as he looked around nervously.

Danny ignored him. "So...what are we going to do...just walk in?"

"No...at least not yet. First we look through the windows and see if there's any sign that someone's been living here. You go around back and I'll search up front. Be careful."

Danny took in a deep breath. "Okay." He walked down the front steps and began to make his way through the over grown yard to the back of the house.

From what Danny could see through the dirt and dust smeared windows, no one was home. There was no sign of life whatsoever in the crumbling abode. The house and yard had obviously been neglected for quite some time.

At the back door, his heart nearly stopped as he detected movement from within. Getting ready to run, he realized that it was Mr. Kincaid walking toward him in the kitchen.

The manager opened the back door. "C'mon in. No one's here at the moment."

Danny regained his composure. "How did you get in?"

"The front door was unlocked...or should I say the lock was broken. I opened the door and walked in."

"Figures." Danny replied. "Let's just look around quick and get the hell out of here. This is giving me the creeps."

Reuben looked around at the disarray and clutter. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Let's stay together though. For safety's sake."

"Okay. Sure." Danny readily agreed. He certainly didn't want to be alone in this place. Not even for a second.

They made quick work of looking around. They found nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to indicate that anyone lived here recently. The place was a shambles.

They were getting ready to leave, when Danny thought of something.

"What about the basement?"

"What about it?" Reuben replied testily.

"We need to check it out, don't ya think?"

The manager sighed heavily. "Yeah. I suppose."

They made quick work of finding the basement door and they carefully headed down the creaky wooden steps. A strong, musty odor drifted up toward them as they slowly went down the stairs. Obviously, it had been quite a while since this house had been inhabited by humans. Danny was glad that they had thought to bring some powerful flashlights as the electricity seemed to have been turned off. The basement light switch didn't respond to repeated attempts to turn it on.

Halfway down the stairs, Danny began to play his light around the dark room. They noticed heavy draperies covering the basement windows, effectively blocking out any natural light from the outside. The powerful beam suddenly picked up some large dark forms in the far corner.

"Oh my god..." Danny whispered.

"What?" Reuben shone his light in the same direction.

Both beams lit up four dark coffins. Four.

"There's only three of them, right?" Danny whispered.

"As far as we know." Reuben confirmed. "And there's only one way to know for sure. We're gonna have to open those and look inside each one."

Danny tried to sound brave. "Right." Every muscle in his body was screaming at him to run. Run far and fast.

They descended the rest of the stairs and quickly got to work.

Thankfully, the coffins were wooden and therefore the lids were relatively light. They made quick work of opening them, confirming its occupant and promptly replacing the lid of the first three.

Indeed, the bodies of Adrian and her two cohorts were residing in each one.

They hesitated at the fourth.

"This is either going to have someone we haven't seen yet...or it'll be empty." Reuben stated. He looked at the frightened boy beside him. "You know what it means if it's empty, right?"

Danny swallowed hard and looked at the older man bravely. "Yeah. It's meant for Keith."

Reuben nodded solemnly. "Right. Let's get this over with." He moved to the last dark box.

Danny held his breath as the man whom he'd begun to think of as a father figure, slowly lifted the lid of the coffin.

Empty.

Reuben confirmed the vacancy and gently set the lid down.

"Okay. Now what do we do?" Danny wanted to know, even though he thought he already knew the answer to that one.

Reuben turned and started for the stairs with the young red-head close on his heels. "I guess the two of us will have to come back here early tomorrow morning...and destroy these monsters before they do any more harm to Keith. Hopefully, it's not too late."

"Why can't we do it now and get it over with?" Danny implored nervously as they reached the top of the staircase.

"We've got to get a few things together. Like some Holy Water, a couple of crucifixes, three wooden stakes and one large mallet."

"Where are we gonna get Holy Water?" Danny was aghast. Was all of this really happening? Everything felt so surreal.

"I'll take care of everything, don't worry." The older man assured him. "These bloodsuckers have messed with the wrong family."

Danny was really beginning to get frightened. Mr. Kincaid had a funny look on his face; an expression that he had never seen before on the manager's face. It was a mixed look of anger, determination and fierceness. They walked out of the house together and headed toward the manager's car.

A thought occurred to the boy as he opened the passenger side door. "Hey, maybe we should get a priest involved or something! Don't ya think that would be a good idea? I think we need all the help we can get." He was trying to squelch the sound of desperation in his voice.

"There's not enough time. Besides, they'd think we were nuts and probably put us under observation in some mental ward. We'd be of no help to Keith then, would we?" Reuben slid behind the steering wheel, put the key in the ignition and fired up the motor.

Danny swallowed. "No, I guess we wouldn't." He sat back and tried to prepare himself mentally for what was to come.

A few minutes later, Reuben dropped Danny off at the house.

"I'll pick you up bright and early tomorrow morning. Keep an eye on your brother and call me if anything changes. Anything at all."

"Yeah. Okay." Danny replied dully before letting himself out of the car.

"Danny?"

The troubled young boy turned and leaned in through the open window of the vehicle "Yeah."

"Don't worry. I'll take care of everything. It'll be okay." The manager tried to comfort the obviously distraught boy.

Danny nodded, but deep down inside, he felt impending doom hanging over his family. He turned and walked toward the house as he heard Mr. Kincaid drive away.

The next morning, Danny was jolted awake to a sudden, loud crash. Then he heard the unmistakeable sound of screaming and anquished sobbing. It took him a moment to realize that it was his mother and that the commotion was coming from the room next door.

Keith's room.

He quickly threw his bed covers off, jumped out of bed and practically tore the door to his room off its hinges as he ran into his older brother's room. What he saw there, literally brought him to his knees.

An overturned tray lay on the floor; a juice glass lay shattered with orange liquid splashed everywhere, a bowl of what looked like oatmeal had splattered across the floor. Shirley was kneeling at the side of Keith's bed, her whole upper body thrown across his still form. She was in the process of gathering him in her arms as she wailed her grief.

"No...not Keith. Please God, give him back to me. I'll do anything...anything...Please...don't take him..." Her words were cut off as she lost control of her emotions and sobbed uncontrollably.

Unable to move or speak, Danny simply watched as his mother rocked Keith's limp body back and forth, as if he were a child that had gotten hurt on the playground. Danny was only slightly aware of his siblings as they came into the room behind him as he watched his brother's head loll crazily back and forth in time to his mother's rocking motions.

"Mom? What's the matter...OH MY GOD!" Laurie screamed as she realized what had happened. Danny felt her push past him and watched as his older sister tried to pull their mother away from Keith's lifeless body.

His last thought before the room began to spin wildly, was 'Boy, he looks better than he has for the last few days. So...lifelike...like he's only sleeping.'

Then the blackness overtook him.

Danny slowly came to in his bedroom. Laurie was sitting in a chair by his bedside, holding vigil. She looked at him with reddened and puffy eyes and smiled gently at him as she stroked his face with her cool hand.

"Laurie?" Danny whispered.

"Shhhh. Don't try to talk now."

Danny ignored her and sat up in his bed. He glanced out the window and noticed the approaching darkness. "How long was I out for?"

"All day." Came the monotone answer. The reassuring cool hand abruptly stopped its ministrations.

"Is it true?" Danny's voice sounded small and far away.

Laurie sighed shakily. "Yes. Keith's...dead." Tears were flowing freely from her reddened eyes. "Oh Danny!"

Danny reached out to her and she all but collapsed into his arms, sobbing her heart out. He held onto her tightly and cried with her.

Finally, they both pulled themselves together enough for Danny to ask a few more questions.

"Where's Mom?"

Laurie wiped at her eyes with a crumpled up Kleenex tissue. "She went to the hospital...to escort the body to the morgue and sign some papers. . Mr. Kincaid is with her. Actually, they should be home by now, they've been gone for a long time." Danny could hear the worry in her voice, even though she did her best to hide it.

"What about Chris and Tracy? Where are they?" Danny noticed that Chris's bed was empty.

Laurie smiled appreciatively at Danny's concern. "They're both sleeping in our room. Chris is in a sleeping bag on the floor near Tracy's bed; he didn't want her to be alone."

Danny nodded. That was just like his younger brother. Fiercely protective of his baby sister. They all were.

"Laurie...what happened?" Danny wanted to know. He was surprised at how steady his voice sounded.

Laurie knew exactly what he meant. "They think that it was some sort of complication from him having the flu. But we won't know for sure until after the autopsy."

"Autopsy?" A stab of horror went through him like a knife.

Laurie nodded sadly. "Yeah, they have to..."

She was interrupted by the sound of the front door being flung open.

"LAURIE!" Shirley's panicked voice raced up the staircase to them.

They both jumped at the unexpected intrusion, then they raced down the stairs to see what was going on.

"Mom? What's the matter?" Laurie was the first to reach her.

"Keith's gone!" Shirley had a wild look in her eyes that Danny had never seen and it scared him.

"Mom...we know that..." Danny tried his best to calm her.

Reuben walked through the door behind Shirley and quickly closed it.

"No Danny. What she means is that Keith's body is missing!" Reuben gave Danny a meaningful stare.

"What do you mean his body's missing? How can anyone misplace a...body?" Laurie sounded confused and horrified at the same time.

"They were getting ready to do the autopsy. But when the coroner arrived, it was gone! Nothing left but the sheet that was covering him. Like he vanished into thin air!"

"That's ridiculous! How can his body be gone?" Laurie wanted to know. "Someone is playing an awfully mean-spirited prank if you ask me! He's got to be in the hospital somewhere!"

Shirley sat down heavily on the sofa. "They've searched the whole building and came up with nothing. Now they're thinking that someone stole him; possibly for ransom...or something more sinister.

Laurie exploded. "That's just SICK! Who'd do such a thing...and why?"

Shirley just shrugged wordlessly.

The manager turned her back toward the staircase. "There's nothing we can do at the moment. Everything is in the hands of the authorities. It's late and we all need to rest. I have a feeling that the next few days are going to be extremely draining for all of us. Laurie, why don't you help your mother upstairs? She was given a sedative at the hospital and it looks like it's beginning to take effect."

Laurie nodded. It wasn't long before they were both upstairs and out of earshot.

Reuben turned to Danny. "I'll stay on the sofa tonight and keep watch. First light, you and I go out to the Tate house and finish this. I have everything we need in the trunk of my car."

Danny remembered that he would be going back to an empty room as he knew that Laurie wouldn't disturb Chris at this point.

"I'll get some bedding for you and my sleeping bag. I'm sleeping on the floor down here."

There was no argument from the manager.