The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(93)

Patricia supposed that was yes in seventeen-year-old language.

The Old Village streets were packed with a parade of kids and parents, and Patricia wove through them too slowly. The fathers looked pleasantly loaded, their steps getting heavier, their dips into the candy bags becoming more frequent. She couldn’t imagine what had happened to Slick. She needed to get to her house. She crawled through the crowds at fifteen miles per hour, passing James Harris’s house with its two jack-o’-lanterns flickering on the front porch, then turned up McCants and hit the brakes.

The Cantwells lived on the corner of Pitt and McCants, and every Halloween they filled their front yard with fake corpses hanging from the trees, Styrofoam headstones, and skeletons wired to their shrubberies. Every half hour, Mr. Cantwell emerged from the coffin on the front porch dressed as Dracula, and the family performed a ten-minute show. The Wolfman grabbed at the kids in front; the Mummy stumbled toward little girls who ran away shrieking; Mrs. Cantwell, wearing a fake warty nose, stirred her cauldron full of dry ice and offered people ladles of edible green slime and gummy worms. It ended with all of them dancing to “The Monster Mash” followed by mass candy distribution.

The crowd around their house spilled off the sidewalk and blocked the street. Patricia’s face twitched. Was it just Slick? What about the rest of Slick’s family? Something was wrong. She needed to go. She took her foot off the brake and rolled onto the edge of the Simmonses’ front yard on the far side of McCants, flashing her lights to make people clear the way. It took her five minutes to get through the intersection, and then she picked up speed as she headed to Coleman Boulevard, and hit fifty on Johnnie Dodds. Even that wasn’t fast enough.

She pulled into Creekside and wove around trick-or-treaters as fast as she dared. Both cars were parked in the Paleys’ driveway. Whatever had happened had happened to the entire family. A flickering white candle sat on a kitchen stool on the front porch. Next to it sat a bowl of pamphlets emblazoned with orange type reading: Trick? Yes. Treat? Only Through the Grace of God!

Patricia reached for the doorbell and stopped. What if it was James Harris? What if he was still inside?

She tried the handle and the latch popped and the door swung silently open. Patricia took a breath and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and stood, eyes and ears straining, listening for any sign of life, looking for a single telltale detail: a drop of blood on the hardwood floor, a picture knocked askew, a crack in one of the display cabinets. Nothing. She crept down the front hall’s thick runner and pushed open the door to the back addition. People started screaming.

Every muscle in Patricia’s body snapped into action. Her hands flew up to protect her face. She opened her mouth to scream. Then the screaming dissolved into laughter and she looked past her hands and saw Leland, LJ, their oldest, Greer, and Tiger sitting around the long dinner table halfway across the room, their backs to her, all laughing. Greer was the only one facing Patricia.

She caught sight of Patricia and stopped laughing. LJ and Tiger spun around.

“Ohmygosh,” Greer said. “How’d you get in?”

A Monopoly board sat in the middle of the table. Slick wasn’t there.

“Patricia?” Leland said, standing, genuinely baffled, trying to smile.

“Don’t get up,” she said. “Slick called and I thought she was home.”

“She’s upstairs,” Leland said.

“I’ll just pop right up,” Patricia said. “Keep playing.”

She left the room before they could say anything and went up the carpeted stairs fast. In the upstairs hall she didn’t have a clue which way to go. The door to the master bedroom sat ajar. The bedroom light was off but the master bathroom light was on. Patricia walked in.

“Slick?” she called softly.

The shower curtain rattled and Patricia looked down and saw Slick lying in the tub, her lipstick smeared, her mascara running down her face in trails, her hair sticking out in clumps. Her skirt had been torn and she only wore one dangling sand dollar earring.

Everything between them evaporated and Patricia knelt by the bathtub.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I didn’t make a sound,” Slick rasped, eyes wide with panic.

Her mouth moved soundlessly, straining to form words. Her hands opened and closed.

“Slick?” Patricia repeated. “What happened?”

“I didn’t…,” Slick began, then licked her lips and tried again. “I didn’t make a sound.”

“We need to call the ambulance,” Patricia said, standing up. “I’ll go get Leland.”

“I…,” Slick said, and it trailed off to a whisper. “I didn’t…”

Patricia walked to the bathroom door and heard hollow flailing in the tub behind her, and then Slick rasped, “No!”

Patricia turned around. Slick gripped the edge of the tub with both hands, knuckles white, shaking her head, her single sand dollar earring flopping from side to side.

“They can’t know,” she said.

“You’re hurt,” Patricia said.

“They can’t know,” Slick repeated.

“Slick!” Leland called from downstairs. “Everything all right?”

Slick locked eyes with Patricia and slowly shook her head back and forth. Patricia eased out into the bedroom, eyes still on Slick.