Page 27 of Vampires Don't Give Hickeys
Like a horrible song, the static noise began and swelled, crushing out everything until there was nothing left. The cemetery melted. Gravestones folded in half much like Tim, and angel and cherub statues leaned forward off their perches, their heads tilted unnaturally. Their features sagged off their faces into a nightmare. They wept blood, and somewhere...somewhere far away, I sensed someone else crying too.
My thoughts circled, trapped in a thick fog inside my mind. I stumbled up the path, deeper into the cemetery, away.Away. My vision tunneled to the stake in my hand, and without my consent, I stabbed myself with it, straight through the heart. Only there was something blocking it, and it bounced off harmlessly.
“Lovely night...” Paul growled from inside me.
I shook my head, trying to clear him out.No. Someone sobbed nearby, and it sounded a lot like me.
“...for a stroll...”
My gaze zeroed in on a metal staff gripped in an angel statue’s hands on the path a few feet in front of me. Then to the sharp points on top of the fence bordering the cemetery. Then to the lightning streaking across the sky. So many ways to—no means no means no—die.
The statue leaned over as if to offer the staff to me.No. Her twisted mouth gaped open wide enough to devour my head, and two monstrous fangs melted down to her bottom lip.
Away.Away. I needed—
The static noise spiked.
“...isn’t it?”
My hands, connected to me but not controlled by me, snapped the staff from the statue’s grip. I lifted it like a horizontal spear aimed directly at my eye.
The static noise intensified even more, vibrating through my whole body and scratching out rational thoughts from inside my skull.
I stumbled backward, desperate to get away from myself. The static noise faded some, especially when the mausoleum door behind me yawned open into darkness. But then it slammed closed again in a burst of wind. I tightened my grip, the rain splashing down from the sky making it difficult, and stared down the length of the staff. One shove and that would be—
The door crashed open again, somehow muffling the static and carving out one thought:No!
I forced one hand free from the staff and slapped the wrist of my other, knocking it out of my grip. Then I threw myself backward into the Alpert mausoleum. My fingers scrabbled over the stone to shut the door behind me. A pale hand zipped through from outside at the last second. It snatched at the bun on top of my head and jerked me forward, tearing loose large chunks of hair. My scalp screamed in pain.
“LOVELY NIGHT FOR A STROLL, ISN’T IT?” Paul howled.
The static noise swelled again as my head almost cleared the door, ripping steel claws through my mind. He released his hold on me because I was still shutting the door. Fast. Slamming it down on my own head next to the door frame. But at the same time, his rough release propelled me backward, and I was tilting, tilting toward the stairs behind me. The door slammed closed without me in it. I shot my arms out to catch my fall and wound up with fistfuls of empty air.
My stomach dropped. A cry tore loose.
Something hard caught me at the back of my knees, something that shouldn’t have been on the stairs. I flipped backward even faster then smashed my back into concrete. All of my oxygen fled my lungs in a painful rush. Before I could move, before I could even take a breath, a long, low creaking sounded just to my left. Then a boom right on top of me that rattled my bones.
What was that? I dragged in a breath, so loud in the complete darkness. In the silence. The static noise had stopped. My thoughts were my own again instead of a loaded weapon meant to take my own life. While I focused on that bit of good news and concentrated on breathing damp, musty air, I spread my arms to feel at my surroundings. I couldn’t see a thing. A satiny wall just to my right. To my left, a piece of paper that crumbled between my fingertips. No, not paper. Fabric...and the unmistakable feel of bony digits on a hand.
I yelped and jerked away from it, crushing myself against the opposite wall. My hand shook badly as I crept it upward, so slow it seemed to take years, and felt a solid stone lid over my head.
My breaths grew ragged, filling the tight, confined space with the sounds of panic. I was inside a coffin with a dead person, but I almost preferred this than outside with Paul and...Tim. This person was already dead. Had been for a long time. I could handle already dead, but that didn’t mean I wanted to live inside his coffin with him.
I slammed my fist upward and brought a hailstorm of jagged wood and rocks down upon me. It took several tries before light tunneled through, and not the heavenly kind either. I was very much alive, and for that, I couldn’t have been happier. Eventually I hauled myself up through the broken lid of the coffin, but nearly stumbled back in again. The coffin was halfway up the stairs as if Mr. or Ms. Appelt had been seeking an escape out the door. Or as if someone was capable of dragging a stone coffin out of the way. But out of the way of what?
The lightning flashing outside the stained glass window threw multi-colored geometric patterns all over the walls and floor in vibrant pulses, almost like flashing arrows. And all of them pointed to where Appelt’s coffin had originally been in the middle of the mausoleum. I leaped out of the coffin to the floor as softly as I could, checking to make sure the door of the mausoleum was still shut. Why hadn’t Paul come in here? Or was this just part of his nightmare plans for me?
Taking a deep breath that did absolutely nothing to calm my nerves, I knelt to the floor right next to a small and thin raised piece of stone that looked suspiciously like a handle. Faint lines formed a square around it, filled with years of dirt. A trapdoor.
My shaky breath hissed through my teeth as I glanced once again at the mausoleum door up the stairs. Still shut, but what if I opened this trapdoor to a whole new kind of horror. I couldn’t deal. Not tonight. Not all doors were meant to be opened.
But I was the slayer, and Appelt’s coffin had been moved for a reason. It was my job to find out why, even if I’d really had enough for the night. Dead people weren’t supposed to travel, even inside their own coffins. If this had anything to do with Paul, then I didn’t have much of a choice to make it my business.
I wrapped my hands around the handle, its cool temperature peppering goose bumps up my arms, and pulled. And pulled again and again. All that build-up for nothing. Still, with my slayer strength, I usually didn’t have trouble opening doors.
With a frustrated sigh, I pushed to my feet and stared down the door that led out of the mausoleum. I had to go back outside at some point. Yet the thick stone walls muffled the storm outside just enough to make it sound separate from reality. Right this second, I needed that little bit of comfort in order to walk out of here.
I hauled myself up the stairs, careful of the coffin, and settled my hand against the door as if that might open a hole inside it and I could peer through. Was Paul still out there? Waiting? I thrust my hands into my pants pockets and ripped out all of the fabric. Then I rolled it up into two tight balls and stuffed them into my ears. I had no idea if that would work against his voice and the static, but it was better than nothing.
