The Traveling Vampire Show

Chapter Five

We started walking across the field.

“Guess we beat ’em here,” Slim said, her voice hushed.

“Looks that way,” said Rusty. He also spoke softly, the way you might talk late at night sneaking through a graveyard. He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s only ten-thirty.”

“Still,” I said, “you’d think they’d be here by now. Don’t they have to set up for the show?”

“Who knows?” Rusty said.

“How do we know someone isn’t here?” Slim asked, a look on her face as if she might be kidding around.

“I don’t see anyone,” Rusty said.

“Let’s just be ready to beat it,” I said.

They glanced at me so I would know they got both meanings. Usually, such a remark would inspire some wisecracks. Not this time, though.

“If anything happens,” Slim said, “we stay together.”

Rusty and I nodded.

We walked slowly, expecting trouble. You always expected trouble at Janks Field, but you never knew what it might be or where it might come from.

The place was creepy enough just because it looked so desolate and because a lot of very bad stuff had happened there. Bad things still happened. Every time I went to Janks Field with Rusty and Slim, we ran into trouble. We’d been scared witless, had accidents, gotten ourselves banged up, bit, stung and chased by various forms of wildlife (human and otherwise).

Janks Field was just that way.

So we expected trouble. We wanted to see it coming, but we didn’t know where to look.

We tried to look everywhere: at the grandstands ahead of us, at the mouth of the dirt road behind us, at the gloomy borders of the forest that surrounded the whole field, and at the gray, dusty ground.

We especially kept watch on the ground. Not because so many people had been found buried in it over the years, but because of its physical dangers. Though fairly flat and level, it was scattered with rocks and broken glass and holes.

The rocks were treacherous like icebergs. Just a small, sharp comer might be sticking up, but if your foot hits it, you find out that most of it is buried. The rock stays put and you go down.

You don’t want to go down in Janks Field. (Forget the double-meaning.) If you go down, you’ll come up in much worse shape.

Even if you’re lucky enough to escape bites from spiders or snakes, you’ll probably land on jutting rocks and broken glass.

The field was carpeted with the smashed remains of bottles from countless solo drinking bouts, trysts, wild parties, orgies, satanic festivities and what have you. The pieces were hard to see on gray days like this, but whenever the sun was out, the sparkle and glare of the broken bottles was almost blinding.

Of course, you never walked barefoot on Janks Field. And you dreaded a fall.

But falls were almost impossible to avoid. If you didn’t trip on a jutting rock, you would probably stumble in a hole. There were snake holes, gopher holes, spider holes, shallow depressions from old graves, and even shovel holes. Though all the corpses had supposedly been removed back in 1954, fresh, open holes kept turning up. God knows why. But every time we explored Janks Field, we discovered a couple of new ones.

Those are some of the reasons we watched the ground ahead of our feet.

We also watched the more distant ground to make sure we weren’t about to get jumped. That sort of thing had happened to us a few times before in Janks Field. If it was going to happen again, we wanted to see it coming and haul ass.

Our heads swung from side to side as we made our way toward the stadium. Each of us, every so often, walked sideways and backward.

It was rough on the nerves.

And it suddenly got rougher when Slim, nodding her head to the left, said, “Here comes a dog.”

Rusty and I looked.

Rusty said, “Oh, shit.”

This was no Lassie, no Rin Tin Tin, no Lady or the Tramp. This was a knee-high bony yellow cur skulking toward us with an awkward sideways gait, its head low and its tail drooping.

“I don’t like the looks of this one,” I said.

Rusty said, “Shit” again.

“No collar,” I pointed out.

“Gosh,” Rusty said, full of sarcasm. “You think it might be a stray?”

“Up yours,” I told him.

“At least it isn’t foaming at the mouth,” said Slim, who always looked on the bright side.

“What’ll we do?” I asked.

“Ignore it and keep walking,” Slim said. “Maybe it’s just out here to enjoy a lovely stroll.”

“My ass,” Rusty said.

“That’s what it’s here to enjoy,” I pointed out.

“Shit.”

“That, too.”

“Ha ha,” Rusty said, unamused.

We picked up our pace slightly, knowing better than to run. Though we tried not to watch the dog, each of us glanced at it fairly often. It kept lurching closer.

“Oh, God, this ain’t good,” Rusty said.

We weren’t far from the stadium. In a race, we might beat the dog to it. But there was no fence, nothing to keep the dog out if we did get there first.

The bleachers wouldn’t be much help; the dog could probably climb them as well as we could.

We might escape by shinnying up one of the light poles, but the nearest of those was at least fifty feet away.

A lot closer than that was the snack stand. It used to sell “BEER—SNACKS—SOUVENIRS” as announced by the long wooden sign above the front edge of its roof. But it hadn’t been open, far as I knew, since the night of the parking disaster.

We couldn’t get into it, that was for sure (we’d tried on other occasions), but its roof must’ve been about eight feet off the ground. Up there, we’d be safe from the dog.

“Feel like climbing?” Slim asked. She must’ve been thinking the same as me.

“The snack stand?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“How?” asked Rusty.

Slim and I glanced at each other. We could scurry up a wall of the shack and make it to the roof easily enough. We were fairly quick and agile and strong.

But not Rusty.

“Any ideas?” I asked Slim.

She shook her head and shrugged.

Suddenly, the dog lurched ahead of us, swung around and planted its feet. It lowered its head. Growling, it bared its upper teeth and drooled. It had a bulging, crazed left eye. And a black, gooey hole where its right eye should’ve been.

“Oh, shit,” Rusty muttered. “We’re screwed.”

“Take it easy,” Slim said. Her voice sounded calm. I didn’t know whether she was talking to Rusty or the dog. Or maybe to both of them.

“We’re dead,” Rusty said.

Glancing at him, Slim asked, “Have you got anything to feed it?”

“Like what?”

“Food?”

He shook his head very slightly. A drop of sweat fell off the tip of his nose.

“Nothing?” Slim asked.

“You’ve always got food,” I told him.

“Do not.”

“Are you sure?” Slim asked.

“I ate it back in the woods.”

“Ate what?” I asked.

“My Ding-Dong.”

“You ate a Ding-Dong in the woods?”

“Yeah.”

“How come we didn’t see you?” I asked.

“I ate it when I was taking my piss.”

“Great,” Slim muttered.

“I didn’t have enough to share with you guys, so…”

“Could’ve saved some for the Hound of the goddamn Baskervilles,” Slim pointed out.

“Didn’t know…”

The hound let out a fierce, rattling growl that sounded like it had a throat full of loose phlegm.

“You got anything, Dwight?” Slim asked.

“Huh-uh.”

“Me neither.”

“What’re we gonna do?” Rusty asked, a whine in his voice. “Man, if he bites us we’re gonna have to get rabies shots. They stick like a foot-long needle right into your stomach and… ”

Slim eased herself down into a crouch and reached her open hands toward the dog. Its ears flattened against the sides of its skull. It snarled and drooled.

“You sure you wanta do that?” I asked her.

Ignoring me, she spoke to the dog in a soft, sing-song voice. “Hi there, boy. Hi, fella. You’re a good boy, aren’t you? You looking for some food? Huh? We’d give you some if we had any, wouldn’t we?”

“It’s gonna bite your hand off,” Rusty warned.

“No, he won’t. He’s a good doggie. Aren’t you a good doggie, boy? Huh?”

The dog, hunkered down, kept growling and showing its teeth.

On the ground around us, I saw small pieces of broken glass, little stones, some cigarette butts, leaves and twigs that must’ve blown over from the woods, a pack of Lucky Strikes that was filthy and mashed flat, a few beer cans smashed as flat as the cigarette pack, a headless snake acrawl with ants, someone’s old sock… a lot of stuff, but nothing much good for a weapon.

Slim, still squatting with her hands out and speaking in the same quiet sing-song, said “You’re a nice doggie, aren’t you? Why don’t you guys see if you can climb the nice snack stand, huh, doggie? Yeahhh. That’s a good doggie. Maybe Dwight can give Rusty a nice little boost, and they can wait for me on top of the nice little snack stand? Is that a good idea? Huh, doggie? Yeah, I think so.”

Rusty and I looked at each other.

We were probably both thinking the same things.

We can’t run off and leave Slim with the dog. But she TOLD us to. When she says stuff, she means it. And she’s smarter than both of us put together, so maybe she has some sort of fabulous plan for dealing with the thing.

I rebelled enough to ask Slim, “You sure?”

She sing-sang, “I’m so sure, aren’t I, doggie? Are you sure, too? You’re such a good doggie. It’d be so nice if you two lame-brain dingle-berries would do as I ask, wouldn’t it, fella?”

With that, Rusty and I started easing ourselves backward and sideways.

The dog took its eye off Slim and swiveled its head to watch us. The threats in its growl told us to stay put, but we kept moving.

With only one eye, it couldn’t watch both of us at once.

Ignoring Slim straight in front of it, the dog jerked its head from side to side like a frantic spectator at a tennis match. Its growl grew from threat to outrage, drowning out Slim’s quiet voice.

She reached to her waist, grabbed her T-shirt and skinned it up over her head.

The dog fixed its eye on her.

“Go, guys!” she yelled.

Rusty and I dashed for the snack stand. I slammed my side into its front wall to stop myself fast. As I ducked and interlocked my fingers, I saw Slim in a tug-o-war with the dog. She had her right knee on the ground. Her left leg was out in front of her, knee up, foot firm on the ground to brace herself against the dog’s pull.

Rusty planted a foot in my hands, stepped into them and leaped. I gave him a hard boost. Up he went. I half expected him to drop back down, but he didn’t. I didn’t bother to look. Instead, I kept my eyes on Slim and the dog.

The dog, teeth clamped on its end of her T-shirt, growled like a maniac, whipping its head from side to side and back-pedaling with all four legs as if it wanted nothing more out of life than to rip the T-shirt out of Slim’s hands.

On both feet now, she stood with her legs spread, her knees bent, her weight backward. The stance, her shiny wet skin and her skimpy white swimsuit top, almost made her look as if she were water-skiing. But if she fell here, she wouldn’t be going into the nice cool river. And the dog would be on her in a flash, savaging her body instead of the T-shirt.

“Get up here,” Rusty called down to me.

Slim’s arms and shoulders jerked hard as the dog tugged.

She saw me watching. “Get on the roof!” she yelled.

And as she yelled, the dog let go.

Slim gasped and stumbled backward, swinging her arms, the shirt flapping. Then she went down.

The dog attacked her.

Shouting like a madman, I ran at them. Slim was on her back. The dog stood on top of her, digging its hind paws into her hips while it fought to rip her apart with its claws and teeth. Slim, gasping and grunting, held on to its front legs and tried to keep the thing away from her neck and face.

I grabbed its tail with both hands.

I think I only meant to pull the dog off Slim and give her time to run for the shack. But what happened, instead—I went slightly berserk.

As I jerked the dog away from her, I saw her scratches, her blood. That may be what did it.

Somehow I found myself swinging the dog by its tail. I was hanging on with both hands, spinning in circles. At first, the dog curled around and snapped at me. Its teeth couldn’t quite reach me, though.

Pretty soon, it stopped trying and just howled as I twirled around and around and around.

While I swung the dog, Slim got to her feet.

I caught glimpses of her as I spun.

She was there, gone, there, gone…

Then she was on the move toward the snack stand. Closer. Closer. Around I went again and glimpsed her leaping. Around again and Rusty was pulling her up by one arm. Next time around, I glimpsed the faded seat of her cut-off jeans. Then I saw her standing on the roof beside Rusty.

Around and around I went. Glimpse after glimpse, I saw them shoulder to shoulder up there, staring down at me.

I saw them again. Again. They looked stunned and worried.

I was awfully dizzy by then and my arms were getting tired. I thought maybe I’d better end things soon—maybe by slamming the canine into a wall of the snack stand. So I started working my way in that direction.

Rusty yelled, “Don’t bring it here!”

“Just let it go!” Slim called.

So I did.

Waiting until it was pointed away from the snack stand, I released its tail. The weight suddenly gone, I stumbled sideways, trying to stay on my feet.

I didn’t see the dog at first, but its howl climbed an octave or two.

Then, still staggering, I spotted it. Ears laid back, legs kicking, it flew headfirst, rolling through the air as if being turned on an invisible spit.

Far out across Janks Field, it slammed the ground. Its howl ended with a cry of pain, and the dog vanished in a rising cloud of dust.

Slim’s voice came from behind me. She said, “My God, Dwight.”

And Rusty said, “Jesus H. Christ on a rubber crutch.”

Then, growling like a pissed-off grizzly bear, the dog came racing out of the dust cloud.

Rusty yelled, “Shit!”

Slim yelled, “Run!”

I squealed a wordless outcry of disbelief and panic and sprinted for the shack.