LACEY’S YOUNGER BROTHER, KEVIN, who was in eighth grade, could not believe how long it had taken Lacey to get out of the house. Kevin dimly remembered Lacey telling Mom and Dad she was going to stay at Roxanne’s, but apparently she was going to Sherree’s instead. Kevin had never heard of either girl and his only interest was being alone in the house at last. Once the house was empty, Kevin had a telephone call to make.
The telephone call.
Kevin was deep in his first real crush.
He had told nobody about the crush, since he had nobody to tell.
His best friend, Will, had made such a complete idiot of himself last spring when Will got a crush on Lauren that Kevin trembled at the mere thought of following in Will’s footsteps. Kevin was not going to start by buying a huge silver bracelet for a girl who did not even like to sit near him. He was going to start with a simple telephone call.
He was doing his homework, Kevin would say casually, and he remembered that Mardee…
Kevin rehearsed the call over and over. Sometimes his voice sounded triumphantly interesting, and sometimes it sounded as if Kevin were the flake of the century.
“We’re going, dear,” said his mother. “Here’s the phone number if you have to reach us. We’ll be home around one a.m. Be sure to keep the doors locked and don’t watch anything disgusting on television.”
“Okay, Mom,” said Kevin, who always watched disgusting things on television the instant his parents were out the door. The thud of the closing front door and the clack of the closing lock were music to his heart.
He kept the TV on very low volume, for company, and looked up Mardee’s number again, although he knew it by heart.
It took him a full hour to manage the actual call. The sixty minutes were filled with half-dialed numbers, self-scolding and swearing, hysterical laughter and deep despair. Kevin knew that if anybody could see him they’d figure he was a maniac. I am a maniac, he thought, I am insane about Mardee. His fingers completed all ten digits this time and to his horror the phone at the other end was actually lifted. “Hello?”
Kevin’s tongue felt like a lost mitten. “Hi — Mardee?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Kevin.”
“Kevin?”
“From school. Kevin James?”
“Oh, yeah. Hi, Kevin, how are you?”
“Fine.” His voice was not fine. His hands were sweating so badly they had soaked right through his jeans where they pressed down. Disgusting. What girl wanted to hold hands with a water faucet?
“It’s funny you should call,” said Mardee. “I was just thinking about you.”
“You were?” Kevin was absolutely thrilled.
“My older brother, Bobby, is at a party with your sister, Lacey, tonight.”
Kevin was puzzled. “Can’t be. Lacey’s over at Sherree’s.”
“That’s the story,” said Mardee. “But you didn’t believe it, did you?”
Kevin had always believed every single thing his big sister said. Lacey was the most straightforward and uninteresting person in America.
“Weren’t you suspicious when it was Sherree’s house they were supposed to be going to?” Mardee was laughing.
Kevin did not know Sherree. How was he supposed to be suspicious?
“Sherree is all body and no mind,” said Mardee.
Kevin was pretty sure he would remember meeting somebody like that.
“They’re actually going to party all night in the dark in a deserted house,” said Mardee.
Kevin was overwhelmed. His sister? Party? “No,” said Kevin. “I don’t think Lacey parties. She’s kind of a —” But Kevin loved Lacey, so he did not say that she was kind of an airhead. But it was true.
“It’s a party, all right,” said Mardee cheerfully. “Bobby doesn’t do anything on Saturday nights but party.”
Kevin was rather proud of his sister. It was time she broke out and did something other than study, practice, work out, and be kind to the elderly. Lacey at a party. Kevin could not quite picture this. He wondered if the others would give her partying lessons.
He wondered what Mardee would be like at a party. Kevin had not done a whole lot of partying in his life, either. Starting with Mardee would be a pleasant introduction. He said, “Mardee.”
“Yup. That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
Kevin had thought they stopped saying that in third grade, but evidently not. He went on manfully, “Mardee, what do you say we — um —” but unfortunately, he was too rattled to remember what he had planned to suggest. The only activity that sprang to mind, he could not suggest aloud on a telephone.
“Yes!” said Mardee.
Kevin was awestruck. Would it be as easy as this?
“I know the address,” said Mardee. “Of course, neither one of us has a car, but that could be the fun part.”
Kevin was eager to have the fun part.
“It’s probably a mile if you walk over to my house,” said Mardee, “and probably another mile to the Mall House.”
The Mall House? That horrible termite-infested porch-rotting monstrosity waiting to be ripped down? Kevin was horrified. Of all the places he did not want to go on a first date —
“What we could do is,” said Mardee, giggling wildly, “we could scare them. That’s why they went there, you know. To be scared. We could add the extras. The special touches. The really good noises. Tapping on windowpanes. Howling like the wind.”
“Let me get this straight. You want me to walk over to your house, get you, we’d walk to that abandoned mansion, creep up in the dark, throw pebbles at the window, hide behind those old fallen trees, and listen to my sister and your brother scream in the dark.”
“Right!” cried Mardee. “Won’t it be fun?”
Kevin ceased to be an eighth-grade boy striving for adulthood and sex. He became a fifth-grader, dying for Halloween and fake blood, free candy, and screaming girls. “I’m on my way,” said Kevin. “Find a flashlight.”
“A flashlight!” said Mardee, disgusted. “And let them see us? Nosirree. We’re going in the pitch dark, buddy.”
“Pitch dark,” repeated Kevin reverently. All sorts of possibilities sprouted in his beginner mind.
Roxanne held on to the hammer.
If the vampire came near her, she would let him have it. Roxanne was good at sports, although she had not gone out for any since middle school. The coaches were always after her to be on a team, but Roxanne disliked losing anything publicly. It wasn’t so bad to goof up in gym class, and it wasn’t so bad to screw up on an exam in an academic class. But in a gymnasium when the bleachers were filled? On a playing field when parents and friends lined the grass?
No, Roxanne liked to stack things in her favor. And in sports, the odds of being an idiot or doing poorly were too uncomfortable.
She hefted the hammer. It felt good and strong in her hand.
“Okay, I’m sorry,” said Randy from his corner. He sounded belligerent, the way people do when the whole thing is their own fault, when there’s absolutely no way to pin it on anybody else.
Nobody responded.
“I mean, how was I supposed to know?” said Randy.
Whiner, thought Roxanne. Who needs him? She concentrated on the shape of the house. So they could not exit by the door. There had to be another way out, then. She and her hammer would get out.
Years and years ago, the house must have been handsome. Big and square, wrapped with an immense porch, its wood trim was curlicued, its many roofs covered with slate, and its beautiful tower had once risen above the gleaming house like a ship sailing at sea.
The hedge must once have been delicately green, enclosing flowers of great beauty and intoxicating scent.
But the hedge had grown to gargantuan proportions, threatening neighbors and roads. As the ground around the mansion had been flattened to get ready for building the mall, chain saws had taken those frightening black and green trees down, and bulldozers had heaped them like dead bodies awaiting burial.
The six teenagers had skulked around the downstairs with the flashlight. Anything nice had been pried away and carried off: The mantels over the fireplaces were gone, leaving horrible gaping holes around the brickwork. The beautiful woodwork in the study had been taken, exposing both the framework of the house and the mouse nests. In a butler’s pantry, there had once been fine cabinets with beveled glass doors. Long gone. Nothing left but the holes where the screws had attached the cabinets to the studs.
The house was pathetic.
They had gone quickly to the second floor, a dangerous expedition, because the beautiful, carved banisters had been removed. There was nothing to hold on to.
“At least they left the treads,” Bobby had said.
“Unless those are just shadows,” Roxanne had added.
Sherree had screamed happily. Sherree was a good screamer, which would be a useful asset as the night continued.
But on the second floor a strange thing had happened.
Nobody could be bothered looking into the empty bedrooms or trying out the damaged window seat.
Another, steeper set of stairs coaxed them up again.
Roxanne had actually felt drawn, in a sort of reverse gravity.
The railing was still on this stair, and when her hand touched the surface, it felt warm to her. It quivered slightly, as if wired. They had found themselves getting in line to go up, waiting impatiently, staring with fascination at the lifting feet of the kids ahead of them, and then setting their own feet neatly in the spaces just vacated.
It had been a strange, breathless parade.
Randy had gone first. It was his hand that closed on the knob of the single door at the top of the stairs. His hand that swung the door out. His foot that crossed the threshold into the tower.
The tower was very high, Roxanne knew.
Although the house was in a valley, the tower was visible from far away. During Roxanne’s lifetime, various owners had either kept the shutters tightly closed over the tower’s many windows, or entirely opened. With shutters closed, the tower looked angry, like a weapon poised. With shutters open, the tower seemed hungry, its flaps checking the air for food.
Once up in the tower, the six made a strange discovery. Not only did the tower have shutters on the outside, it had them on the inside. The inner shutters were tightly closed, giving the room a strange inside-out look.
Roxanne’s hands memorized the hammer. Three textures: handle, slipcovered in corrugated rubber for a better grip; shaft, smooth cold metal; head, strong with sweeping claws.
This tower — how many feet above the ground was it? Too many to jump, that was for sure.
Randy was still busy apologizing. He sounded worried that he might get a demerit.
“Somebody has to rescue us!” said Sherree hysterically.
Lacey considered the possibility of rescue.
She thought of the Land Rover, parked so invisibly in the sheltering maze of fallen hemlocks.
Nobody would see it.
She thought of the careful excuses made to trusting parents.
Nobody would worry.
She thought of the little pile of cell phones inside the Land Rover. Randy had insisted that things would be scarier without the comfort of instant communication. Everybody had regarded him with suspicion. She herself had stuck up for Randy, being the first to set a cell phone on the floor of the vehicle. Everyone had followed her example.
Nobody would be telephoning in or out.
“Call somebody, Randy!” cried Sherree.
Why, Roxanne asked herself, if you had to be imprisoned with somebody, must it be a brainless goop like Sherree? “Every single phone,” Roxanne pointed out, “is sitting uselessly in the car.” She glared at Randy.
“I’m sorry, okay?” said Randy. “I mean, I didn’t know this was going to happen, did I? You can’t get mad at me over this. How was I supposed to know?”
“Keep whining,” said Zach. “Because you’re right. Tonight you won’t win any points in your popularity collection game, Randy. The minute we get out of this, we’re never looking at you again.”
“We’re not getting out of it,” said Bobby.
Zach glared at him. “You sure gave up easily. Get a grip on yourself, Bobby. We need to talk about what we know about vampires. What exactly do they do? What exactly will happen to us if he gets us?”
“I don’t want to talk about that!” wailed Sherree.
“If we gather enough knowledge,” said Zachary, “we’ll know the vampire’s weaknesses.”
Sherree burst into tears. “I don’t want to know anything about vampires! I want to go home!”
Nobody said anything to that. They all wanted to go home.
“I like my life,” added Sherree.
They all liked their lives.
“We’re wasting time,” said Zach. “List the vampire’s weaknesses.”
Bobby laughed.
Lacey said softly, “The vampire’s weaknesses don’t count. Our own weaknesses are the ones that matter.”