Page 18 of Dead End

“Drat! The little bugger just won’t accept its fate. Come here, you little...” She grumbled, but we all watched in fascination as the bat made a beeline for Norman.

I saw the little guy’s beady eyes lock onto him, and Norman stared back with the strangest expression on his pale face, as if in a trance. The bat flew at his chest, and Norman stumbled backwards, grasping it around its little body. The thing slumped in his palms and burrowed its snout into his hard chest. Norman was staring down at it in bewilderment before he looked up and met my eyes in horror.

“What the fuck?” he deadpanned, clutching the bat like he didn’t know what to do. I was trying to contain a hysterical laugh. Let them make fun of Jessica again.

“Sorry about that, dear,” Pip said, waving her spoon at the snuggling bat. “This one’s a bit wily.”

“Auntie, what’s going on? Why are you acting so strange? Why do you have a bat in the house? I don’t understand any of this, and I’m seconds away from pulling my hair out. Is this some kind of Halloween prank or something?”

“I told you to keep a vigilant eye out before you left this morning, did I not?” She gave me a pressing look that said, I told you so.

She was right. I did remember her saying something like that as I rushed out the door for our trip.

“I think the virus has gone to her head, Toby,” said Maddie, finally coming out from behind Freddy. She skirted around Norman, who was still holding the bat. He seemed to be stroking its tiny head as Freddy stared at him like he didn’t even recognize his twin. “We need to find the nearest hospital, because everyone’s lost their minds.”

“Pish posh, there’s no virus here in Midnight Hollow.” She waved a hand at Maddie. “Come now, everyone, let's have that tea. Perhaps you’d like to sample some of my famous vampire bat chowder?”

My face drained of blood, but the second she said it, Norman moved forward, faster than I’d ever seen anyone move before, crouching and hissing at Auntie Pip. He hissed, really hissed, like a fucking cat or something. I stared for a second at the sharp, elongated incisors that grew in his mouth before Norman shook off the feral look in his eyes and straightened back up again.

Norman stumbled back, holding out the bat like he was disgusted, and dropped it on the floor with a wet splat.

“What the fuck?” His green eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them—almost black—and his face was now utterly translucent white. He was so pale, he could have been a corpse. The bat on the floor hopped back onto his shoulder with a flutter of wings and nuzzled Norman’s neck in obvious affection.

Freddy rushed to Norman’s side, shaking his shoulder and whispering hoarsely, “What the hell, man?” But Norman didn’t acknowledge his twin in the slightest as he stared at his new fuzzy friend.

“Well, this is an interesting turn of events.” Auntie clicked her tongue again. “No matter; I suppose tea shall suffice for now.” She turned on her heel and headed into the kitchen with a dramatic flourish, her skirts swirling around her ankles.

We gaped after her. The nonchalance, the lack of alarm in her voice... This whole situation was terribly wrong. Something was happening to all of us that scared the hell out of me. Flashes of green lightning, orange fog, and dead bodies nearly made me stagger.

“Auntie, wait!” I called after her. The others were right on my heels as we followed her to the next room.

I stopped dead when we got to the kitchen, my mouth falling open yet again. The kitchen looked like a scene out of an old-school fairytale cottage. Wooden cupboards with criss-crossed glass fronts lined the walls, filled with those same powder-filled bottles of every size, color, and shape I’d seen in the hallway. Instead of the stainless steel oven I was used to, there now sat a massive brick pizza oven with a cast iron grate, and next to it was an open stove with an actual fucking cast iron cauldron simmering on the flame.

We watched in silence as Auntie Pip clapped once and the flame snuffed out, just as the screaming of a teapot filled the silence. “Don’t be strangers, dears; take a seat.” She gestured to the massive round table just off the side of the kitchen.

There was hesitation among all of us as we decided what to do. At this point, I knew we needed to follow along and pretend like it was normal to see magic, giant spiders, two moons in the sky, and creepy clowns on street corners. Just your average Saturday night bus crash, memory loss, and missing fifty or more classmates.

Yep.

Normal.

Auntie would have the answers we needed; I was sure of it. She had to know because she was acting suspiciously unbothered right now. There was still a very real possibility that we were all suffering from one of the biggest drug trips in history, and soon we’d all wake up in the hospital back in Sunset Hollow.

“So you were super serious about the bat stew thing, weren’t you, Pip?” Maddie held her nose between her fingers. Her face was screwed up into a look of revulsion as she stared at the still-bubbled cauldron.

“Bat chowder,” Auntie corrected with a cheeky wink, not really answering the question.

Norman looked a bit green around the gills; his eyes locked onto that cauldron before shivering. The bat was still snuggled against his neck, and I wondered if Norman had forgotten it was even there. Our eyes met, and I tried to give him an encouraging smile, but he immediately scowled at me, his jaw clenching so tight that I thought his fangs might snap in half.

Fangs. Holy shit balls... Norman had fangs. I wasn’t going to get used to that, even though the look was kind of hot on him, the bastard.

“Okay, now that’s all settled, let’s get Fe down here to help explain. It’s a doozy.” Auntie Pip clapped her hands together in barely contained excitement before lifting a steaming teacup to her grinning crimson lips. She blew on it, then sipped with a loud slurp that filled that awkward silence.

I couldn’t understand why she was acting like this was all completely normal. She looked utterly thrilled, actually. Norman was currently staring at my neck from across the table like it was the juiciest steak he’d ever seen. He was in for a rude awakening if he thought I was about to give him a snack. He kept licking his plump lips every few seconds as he squirmed in his seat. It didn’t help that I was intentionally flicking my hair every few moments to the other side of my shoulder, just to torture him. He deserved it.

“Knock it off, clown freak. I can see what you're doing,” Freddy whispered into my ear, leaning over from the chair to my left. His voice was tight, but he paused midsentence and leaned even farther into my space, inhaling deeply. “Did you change your perfume, Redrum? Smells like... crisp apples mixed with... nutmeg?” He was practically on top of me, his nose buried in the small space between my neck and shoulder.

I shuffled in my seat, hating and also loving the way his nose skimmed my sensitive skin back and forth and the way his hot breath heated that one spot that caused me to shiver every time. Memories threatened again, but I shook them away. There was no way I was going there.

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