The Dorkiest Vampire

The next day, when Mom and I went to drop Mick off at his parents’ house, there was a strange car in the driveway. It was a black sports car, much nicer than anything anyone in town could really afford and I knew Mick’s parents were partial to their Secret Service-esque black SUVs. Mick seemed to freeze when he caught a glimpse of the car and scowled all the way into the house. I looked at him oddly, wondering what had put him in such a foul mood. Mrs. Vespasien let us in with a smile, asking how everything was. While she and my mother chatted, I could hear Mr. Vespasien talking with someone in the drawing room.

“Your dad have a friend?” I asked. I had offered to help Mick take his bags to his room and then we were hoping to hang out for a little while afterward. However, I doubted I would be allowed to stay if my mother knew the Vespasiens had guests.

“Yeah,” Mick grimaced.

“Who?” I asked.

“Friend of the family,” Mick replied.

“You don’t like him, huh?” I said.

“No. I hate Donny,” Mick said, annoyed.

“Donny?” I said curiously. I wracked my brain, not remembering anyone of that name living in Merridick.

“You don’t know him,” Mick replied, as if reading my mind. “He’s from New Orleans. Name is Donny Boucher. I think he’s in college now or something… I guess…”

“He’s really young to be friends with your dad,” I said.

“I think his Dad and my Dad were friends growing up or something. Then Donny’s dad died and so my Dad has some sort of obligation to making sure Donny is okay,” Mick shrugged. “Doesn’t help much, though. Donny’s an asshole in general and likes to get in trouble. He also likes to bully people he thinks are weaker than he is.”

“Then he really is an asshole,” I nodded, helping Mick deposit his stuff in his room. “We can go ask my mom and yours if I can hang out, but I don’t think my mom will want to if you guys have a visitor from out of town in. How long do you think he’ll stay?”

“Knowing Donny, he got kicked out of school and needs a place to stay indefinitely,” Mick grimaced. “Hopefully he’s just visiting though.”

“Has he had to stay with your family before?” I asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Mick sighed. “Mom doesn’t really like him. Dad usually tells Donny he can stay with us and then he and Mom get into a fight because she doesn’t want Donny around the house. I think she thinks he’ll be a bad influence on me or something.”

“Well, maybe he’s just visiting for the day or something,” I suggested hopefully.

“Maybe,” Mick grimaced.

Like I had predicted, Mom said I couldn’t stay since the Vespasiens were entertaining a guest. I gave Mick a sympathetic look as she ushered me out the door and promised I would call him later on in the evening to see how things were going. He nodded and then grimaced as his own mother pushed him into the drawing room to say hello to Donny. I felt bad for Mick as we returned to our car and let out a big sigh as I buckled myself up in the front seat. My mother smirked at me with a knowing look as she started up the engine. I glanced at her, wondering what she was so giddy about.

“What?” I asked.

“You know, Mick is a rather cute boy, even if he is so shy,” Mom smiled.

“We’re just friends!” I growled. “Why can’t I have a friend who’s a boy and just be friends?”

“Well, he is a nice boy, Riley,” Mom pointed out.

“Yeah, he’s a nice guy,” I shrugged, “but he’s got tons of baggage. And he’s kind of a Mama’s boy. Not exactly boyfriend material, Mom.”

“Your father was a Mama’s boy,” Mom smirked.

“Dad still is a Mama’s boy,” I scoffed. Mom laughed and suggested maybe we might like to spend a day out at the mall about thirty minutes away together.

After a few hours of shopping, we arrived home and I picked up my bags from Mom’s car, taking them up to my room to put things away. I wasn’t a big shopper, but I managed to find a few things I liked. I mainly had watched my mother try on new dress shoes, however. When I was working to put things away near my closet, I sat down on the ground, folding up two of the sweaters I had bought to put away. As I pushed against the wood floor to help myself stand back up, I noticed the short wooden plank wavered a little, flipping up slightly like a seesaw.

I was about to dismiss it or maybe tell my Dad to tell him the board needed fixed, but then I noticed there was something underneath the plank. Curious about what was hidden in our old house, I headed down to the kitchen and pulled a flathead screwdriver out of the tool kit my parents kept under the sink. I went back upstairs to pry the board open and see what had been stowed away there. It only took a few minutes and some elbow grease, but I managed to use the screwdriver to pry the board up. It still out easily after that, almost as if the floor had been designed to conceal this hidden compartment.

I stuck my hand beneath the floorboards stupidly. I knew deep down I probably should have looked around with a flashlight or something before sticking my hand into a whole that could have positively anything from spikes to poison to termites in it, but I did anyway. What my hands finally landed on was a small wooden box. I pulled it up and blew off centuries of dust on top of it. After jarring it with the screwdriver, I managed to get the clasp, which had rusted shut, open. I was a little disappointed at what I found inside.

There were there objects. The first was a small kaleidoscope looking thing. When I opened it up, I found it was some sort of antique telescope that could no longer be used. The lens had fogged over and it would probably take some special cleaning before it could be useful again. The second thing looked like a compass or a compact mirror, but like the clasp, it had rusted shut. I tried to pry it open with the screw driver, but had no look. I moved on to the third item. It was a note written in a language I didn’t understand but recognized from my catechism classes as Latin. The first of it was simple enough with three lines in elegant script reading:

Protegat nos Deus
Salva nos Deus
Libera nos Deus.

The second part of the note was written in the same hand and the cleanliness of the writing indicated the scribe had taken considerable time in taking down the notation. Still, my lack of Latin made the script, however beautiful, completely meaningless. The second paragraph read:

Defende nos in proelio.
Esto praesidium contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur;
tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis,
virtute divina Dei
in gehennam Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos
scrutantibus mundi, quaerens animas perdere hominum.

I recognized a few words and after a moment, realized what was written on the paper was a prayer. It was similar to the ones my grandmother and mother kept in card versions around the house. Tucked away in a drawer in our entry hall was a card bearing a prayer to Saint Jude, the protector of homes. There were cards in kitchen drawers to various saints of cooking and food. Upon my Confirmation the year before, I had been given a similar card from my grandmother, bearing a prayer to my patron saint, St. Joan of Arc. I had chosen her since I admired her strength and courage at such a young age. The card featured Saint Joan, her hair loose around her hair, wearing her battle armor and looking to the heavens as she was being burned at the state. The prayer on the opposing side was entitled “A Prayer of Faith to Saint Joan,” asking her to be with me in all of my battles, spiritual and otherwise. However, no mention of any saint was made in this prayer, so I could only guess who it was too.

Finally, my eyes ventured down to the third part of the note. Whereas the first two sections were written in neat, meticulous scrawl, this third part was written hastily, as if the person were in a great hurry and needed to finish the words as quickly as possible. While the other sections had been allowed to dry properly, this section was smudged with ink stains, looking as though it had no time to dry before the note was again rolled up. It read simply:

Libera nos a malo. Libera nos a immortuos. Libera nos ab iis, qui bibit sanguinem hominis..

I actually recognized the first part of the phrase. The Libera nos a malo was part of the Lord’s Prayer, the part that said “deliver us from evil.” I heard it at least once a week in Mass every Sunday since before I could remember, so the Latin phrase had stuck with me. However, I was unfamiliar with the rest. Someone was asking to be delivered from something repeatedly, but I could not tell what. I sighed, trying to think if we had a Latin to English dictionary anywhere downstairs before I heard my parents calling my name for supper.

I quickly covered up the floorboards, hid the items in a box under my bed, and then headed downstairs. I couldn’t help but think about who had hidden those items in my floorboards and what was the purpose of the note I had discovered. I barely listened to the conversation at dinner and my Mom thought maybe I was sick or something. After supper, I went to call Mick and ask him how Donny’s visit was going. Of course, it took me a few minutes to get Ritchie off the phone since he and Sue-Beth Howe were in another one of their “you hang up, no you hang up” deals.

“Fine,” Ritchie said, flipping the phone into my hands. “You can call your boyfriend.”

“Mick’s just a friend,” I snorted.

“Oh, really Riley?” Ritchie smirked.

“So, did Sue-Beth wear a sexy kitten costume to the party last night or something?” I snorted.

“No,” Ritchie blushed. “She came dressed as a Jane Austen character.”

“I bet she thought your vampire costume was lame,” I snorted.

“No she didn’t!” Ritchie hissed before running upstairs, probably to place a bucket of water above the door to my bedroom or something.

I called Mick and we talked briefly. He said that Donny was only staying until Sunday but that he was required to be hanging around the family during the weekend since they had a guest in. I thought about telling him about what I had discovered in my room, but instead decided I would tell him when he could come over so I could show him exactly what I had found. Once I had finished my phone conversation with Mick, I headed into the library to see if we had a Latin to English Dictionary. There was an old one, probably from when my grandfather had taken Latin in high school, but I couldn’t manage to translate anything since I had no knowledge of the language. Dad was working on the family computer and I knew my parents wouldn’t let me use it so close to bedtime.

I went to bed, looking at the note and wondering what it could say. We had to wake up early and go to mass the next morning since we were having a special All Souls Day Service, even if it was two days after Halloween. I knew it would probably be until late afternoon before I could resume my research. I put the note under my pillow and tried to go to sleep, wondering what the note could say. When I was readying for church early the next morning, a thought hit me. All of the priests at St. Mary’s were required to know Latin, so I knew one of them would probably be able to help me.

After Mass and before Sunday school, I sought out Father Brian, who was my personal confessor and had taught my confirmation class. He was an old friend of the family who had gone to high school with my grandparents and he was sort of an uncle to everyone in town. Of course, my grandparents had known him simply as Brian Sauveterre, the punter for the Merridick High football team. Grandpa told me that Father Brian had actually been engaged in high school to a pretty girl who lived in town. However, she had gone to a USO dance during the early days of the Vietnam War while visiting family in New Orleans and ran off with a handsome naval officer. After that, Father Brian was so heartbroken he ran off and became a priest.

“Aurelie,” Father Brian smiled at me as I knocked on his office door. “What do I owe the pleasure of this visit for?”

“I had something I wanted to talk to you about,” I replied, walking in and taking a seat in front of his desk.

“Alright,” Father Brian smiled, “How is school?”

“Good,” I nodded. “Some of the classes are harder than I expected, but it is high school.”

“Yes,” Father Brian said. “So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I knew lying to a priest was probably a sin, so I tried to be as evasive as possible while still telling the truth.

“I found this in the house the other day. It’s in Latin,” I said. “I thought maybe you could tell me what it said. It looks like a prayer or something. I thought maybe it was something one of my ancestors kept around the house, you know, like how Grandma uses prayer cards as bookmarks and stuff?”

“Well, let me take a look at it,” Father Brian nodded. He slipped on his reading glasses as I handed him the crinkled old note. He read it silently, looking bewildered as he read further.

“What does it say, Father?” I asked curiously.

“These first lines… are just asking for basic protection,” Father Brian said, beginning to read and translate for me. “This first part reads Protegat nos Deus; God protect us. Salva nos Deus; God Save us. Libera nos Deus; God deliver us. Whoever was writing this felt the needed the protection of God.”

“And the second part?” I asked.

“That is a prayer to St. Michael, the Archangel, for protection against evil spirits,” Father Brian replied. “St. Michael is the commander of the Army of God who will lead God’s armies during Revelation. His name means ‘Who is like God.’ Oddly, though the first line that invokes St. Michael has been left off of this prayer.

“What does it say?” I asked curiously.

“Defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil,” Father Brian read. “May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the Divine Power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

“Scary,” I said, shivering a little at the words.

“This prayer is commonly used in exorcisms,” Father Brian replied. “Or by soldiers.”

“And the last part?” I asked curiously.

“Yes… this last part… it is what troubles me,” Father Brian frowned. “I am not entirely sure what it is supposed to mean. The first part is simple enough: Libera nos a malo; Deliver us from evil. But the second part… I have never read anything like this before.”

“What does it say?” I asked nervously.

“Well,” Father Brian frowned. “Roughly, it translates like this: Libera nos a immortuos; Deliver us from the undead. Libera nos ab iis, qui bibit sanguinem hominis; Deliver us from those who drink up man’s blood.”

“What?” I gaped, feeling as though a cool breeze had suddenly entered the office. Father Brian looked even more concerned than I was.

“Riley, where did you find this?” Father Brian asked me.

“Just in the house…” I replied. “I was putting my clothes away and I just found it…”

“I would like to keep this Riley,” Father Brian said. “I think… I think some of my superiors might like a look at it…”

“Alright,” I nodded, “but can you tell me what they think about it?”

“Of course, though I doubt it will be very excited,” Father Brian said. “It probably is just the mad ramblings of a long lost relative…”

My mind flickered instantly to the story of my distant great-uncle Jacques Marrioneaux in the early 1700s, who had been found dead in the river, drained of blood. By all accounts, he had been mad before his death, seeking a ghostly woman who didn’t exist. I could understand why he of all people might be praying for protection from St. Michael and why he would be praying to be protecting against those who might be undead and drinking his blood.

“Well, Riley, you should be getting to Sunday school,” Father Brian smiled at me, giving me a little bit of comfort. I nodded and went to class, hoping to put all of the disturbing thoughts behind me.