Dad published the article about the body the next day. It was as I suspected, he was the janitor at our school. Mr Albert Finnigan, 58 years old and a keen fisherman. Dad had done a whole write up on his life, they had known each other, coming from a small town everybody kind of knew everybody.
Dad had written a lovely obituary about Mr Finnigan, his love of fishing, his love for this town, he had ran for Riverdale mayor once in the 90s and the love he had for his wife of nearly 40 years.
The cause of death was no surprise, drowning. The verdict did raise a few eyebrows however, namely how did an experienced fisherman make such a rookie error on a river he had spent most of his life?
That wasn't the most talked about part of the article though. It came as a surprise to me but Dad did mention the so called "vampire bite." The two puncture marks on Mr Finnigan's neck took the town by storm. That day everybody was talking about the vampire, reporters from Greendale were banging down the doors of the Riverdale Registry, trying to get meetings with my dad to see what he knew.
It was the most popular article Dad had ever written about. It got so popular that Dad was asked to be interviewed on the national news!
It was a short segment, Mr Finnigan wasn't even named, but Dad was questioned about the Riverdale Vampire. My father, a struggling writer by trade, jumped on the publicity, and made himself available to every news outlet and major TV news show he could.
Dad was becoming a local celebrity and every chance he got, in every newspaper interview and TV segment, he would talk about Riverdale's long history with vampirism.
Does Riverdale have a long history with vampirism, you ask?
No, it does not.
One time, years and years ago, Pop told the story of how Bram Stoker, the original author of the Dracula novel, had come to town and had diner at Pop's. Dad knew that story and had spun it into how Bram Stoker learned everything he knew about vampires from his visit to Riverdale.
It was all nonsense! Pop said he just had lunch, it was a pit stop, he barely ever stepped foot in the town.
The story was catching a lot of heat, something that had frightened me dearly, considering the morbid part we all played in the story, I thought it would be best that this whole experience pass by without drama, but something strange happened.
The ransacked body, the make up, the stolen items, none of that had made it into dad's article. We had gotten away with it, my friends and myself were not implicated in the slightest.
Except for Veronica, of course.
For reasons still unknown, her bizarre actions had given this small town worldwide attention.
I needed to talk to her fast, because the story of the Riverdale Vampire was only just beginning.