The Dorkiest Vampire

Mick’s POV

Tensions were high at home following the reports of Stacy Gatskill’s death Monday morning. My mother had allowed us kids to sleep in, sending me into an initial panic when I awoke to find it was already past noon. A general sense of fear, anger and trepidation fell over the house in the next few days. Galiene and her family were worried this was the same vampire who had killed their father while Mom seemed slightly worried it was someone who had something against my own father. Dad was furious that he hadn’t been able to prevent it from happening, despite there being no warning signs of any rouge vampires in the area. Stacy was the first and so far only victim. If there had been a rouge feeding on humans, the death toll would have risen considerably by the end of the week.

I was personally confused as to what sort of creature would do such a thing. This obviously hadn’t been a whim, a bloodthirsty vampire concerning an innocent young maiden in a darkened alley like the old stereotype. This vampire had ingratiated himself into Stacy’s world, or at least become enough a part of it to have the time to kill her and dispose of her body. It would have taken hours that night to full drink from and then dispose of Stacy as well as disposing of any evidence around the area where the crime took place. It made me dizzy thinking of all the contemplation and all of the premeditation that had to go into such a crime.

The week off from school we were given just seemed to add to the torture. Though he was technically retired, the council at the Vazatori were putting him in charge of things. Dad had to contact any vampire with possible ties to the area to make sure there whereabouts were accounted for during the time frame of the incident. Dad also had to go to great lengths to prove all of us were accounted for when it happened because, as the primary vampiric residents of the area, we were the first suspects. By Stacy’s funeral, Dad had managed to clear our names and had gotten in contact with every vampire in the area, save for one.

Naturally, Donny thought this would be a stellar time to be up to his old antics. Dad had been trying in vain to contact Donny, who was most likely partying it up in New Orleans with all his human groupies. It was to the point Dad was ready to drive down to New Orleans and fish Donny out himself. Of course, this was typical Donny behavior. He always showed up at the last minute and unwanted and when you did need to see him, you couldn’t get a hold of him. My mother even seemed slightly worried about Donny, that perhaps this rouge vampire could have gotten a hold of him as well. I rolled my eyes at that thought, not letting her know we would probably be better off if that were the case.

The only good thing that came from our extended vacation from school was that I got to spend more time with Galiene. We had actually gotten to know each other on more than a bully-tormentee basis the night of the dance and she had even shown me a shy side when explaining that her bullying stemmed from an emotion quite the opposite of hatred and loathing. I had initially worried our coupling my upset those around us, but Riley seemed enthralled by it and neither of Galiene’s brothers seemed too upset by the prospect of me being with their sisters. Our mothers were already planning the wedding and I had a feeling my old French relatives would soon have letters regaling of them of how I would soon be settling down with a nice girl from a well-established vampire lineage.

It was Galiene who found me wandering from my bedroom down to the family room in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Though my nightmares had somewhat ceased, a terrible insomnia seemed to persist in spite of them. Galiene was apparently up as well and, seeing the light from the room, decided to investigate. When the nightmares had been frequent, I found myself staying up half the night, attempting to get to sleep in vain. Though my subconscious was no longer plaguing me, for some reason my body now thought sleep was the enemy and tried to keep me up. I just about longed for sleep, even if it would be brief and plagued with dark dreams.

“Nightmares?” Galiene asked me.

“No. Just can’t sleep,” I sighed.

“Neither can I,” Galiene nodded.

“Insomnia?” I asked her.

“Racing thoughts,” she replied.

“About what?” I asked her.

“Jacques Marrionneaux,” Galiene answered.

“Riley’s dead great-great-however-many-uncle?” I said, an eyebrow raised.

“It’s just weird. Two people from the same town trained of blood and disposed of in the same manner,” Galiene shrugged.

“You think there is a serial killer out there who waits three hundred years between victims?” I snorted.

“If it were a serial killer vampire, maybe,” Galiene said. “I don’t know… maybe there’s a rouge hiding in the woods… Used to happen all time in the old days, before we got organized. Maybe there’s some untouched vampire living in the swamp by the old ways…”

“That vampire would have to feed a lot more than once every three hundred or so years in order to get by,” I pointed out. “I mean, we’re told not to go three days without our pills at the very least.”

“Maybe it migrates,” Galiene shrugged. “The bayous cover a big area. I mean, you’d think a rouge would hang out in a big city like New Orleans were there are weird murders all the time. But if this person knew how to navigate the bayous undetected… they could fathomably cross the state from place to place, feeding off of people…”

“Yeah, but they would have had to do that in a lot of areas… and the police couldn’t find any connection to any similar case in the whole state,” I replied. “This is the first time a body has been found in this condition since… well, since Jacques Marrionneaux…”

“Did you tell your dad…” Galiene began.

“Yeah. And he thinks my subconscious is playing tricks on me. He said Donny would have never hurt Lia and a whole bunch of other crap,” I sighed.

“Did you ask him… if your sister was romantically involved…” Galiene began.

“I never got around to asking that,” I sighed. “He did tell me they never found a body… just some bones and clothes and stuff… She’d been missing for months when they found her…” Galiene looked at me pointedly. “I think Dad’s right. Lia would have tried to contact us someway if she were still alive…”

“Not if she were protecting you,” Galiene said.

“I thought that at first but… what could she possibly be protecting us from?” I sighed.

“Vampires who drain cheerleaders of their blood?” Galiene shrugged. I sighed again.

“Dad said he could show me where she was buried… It’s around here on the property somewhere…” I began. “I don’t know… I just feel bad asking him to do that. It was hard enough bringing the subject up the first time. And Mom just about falls to pieces at the mere thought of Lia…”

“We could find it,” Galiene suggested. “It can’t be that far away…”

“I’m sure that’s what Lewis told Clark when they set off,” I snorted.

The next morning, Galiene and I set forth throughout the property to find the crypt where my sister was buried. I knew my parents wouldn’t be too keen on us going if they knew what we were looking for, especially since they were still a little uneasy about letting us out of doors after what had happened to Stacy. Galiene managed to convince them that we just needed some fresh air after being cooped up in the house for long, and they consented, allowing us to venture out on the property. We explored mainly around the house at first, but found no evidence of any burial site anywhere near it. After breaking for lunch, we returned to the yard to explore the more remote areas of the property.

“So, if I were placing a crypt, where would I put it?” Galiene sighed.

“I guess we’ve established it’s nowhere near the house,” I shrugged. “I mean, I don’t think my parents would have wanted that constant reminder in their faces all the time.”

“But it would still have to be accessible… just to get the casket in and in case anyone wanted to visit it,” Galiene countered.

“Yes, but it might have been accessible three hundred years ago. Things change,” I pointed out. “It could be completely under the bayou by now…”

“Not if your father said he could take you there,” Galiene shook her head insistently. “I’m sure we could still be able to find it. It would have to be within a good distance of the house or at least the front drive, but not somewhere very conspicuous… There might be a path of some kind… perhaps a clearing or some sort of indication that land had been set aside for a particular purpose…”

I allowed Galiene to lead our trek, keeping silent as she pondered where a good location for a family burial site would be. We knew it had to be above ground since the whole area had once been swamp and the ground was not stable enough for burial. We headed down the drive and, about halfway down to the gated entrance of the property, Galiene spied what appeared to be the beginning of a stone path. The path was barely visible, marked only by a slight trace of dirt and short grass. It had been well-worn at one point in time, but there was little evidence it had been walked in decades. We walked about five minutes until we came to an unusual grove of trees. It was obvious that these trees had been planted rather than cropped up of their own accord as they were all growing in a straight line on either side of the remnants of the path.

I was certain we had found what we were looking for when we came to a set of black stone steps leading us down a hill from the trees and into a small, rounded plain that looked as though it had been carved out from the surrounding ground. In the center was a building made of the same black stone, very gothic in style. There were gargoyles and spikes adoring the top of the building. I supposed they had once been menacing looking but had been worn down and broken from centuries of weatherization and neglect. There seemed to be no door to the building at all, but rather a wrought iron fence surrounding the black marble building.

“Look,” Galiene pointed out. I followed her gaze to find that, right above where a door should have gone in the building, there was a very deeply engraved “V.”

“Five?” I asked.

“Vespasien,” Galiene rolled her eyes at me. “This has to be it… just how do we get in? There’s no door… there aren’t even cracks to indicate where a door might go…”

I followed Galiene around the building as she scoured the marble for any indication of a door or a keyhole or a knob. After about thirty minutes of running out fingers over the cool marble, looking up and down on each of the walls, and even kicking the base of the building in hopes of finding something, we were no closer to finding an entrance to the mysterious mausoleum than we had been when we first arrived. Galiene and I were both utterly confused as to how anyone could get into the building.

“I don’t understand!” Galiene huffed. “It has to have a door! How would they get the casket in without a door?” I frowned thoughtfully.

“Maybe there is no door. Maybe they don’t want anyone to get in,” I replied.

“How could there not be a door?” Galiene huffed.

“Maybe they build the mausoleum around the casket,” I replied. “They laid it here and then build this building around it… so there’s no way for us to get in…”

“That’s… that’s completely unacceptable! There has to be someone to get in,” Galiene snorted. “This building is too wide to have been built around a single casket. I mean… you could probably fit three or four in there width-wise…”

“Look, I don’t think we’re going to find the door tonight,” I said, looking up at the quickly darkening sky. Galiene sighed. It was almost supper time, and our parents would be expecting us back for supper soon. The fact that the little grove of trees surrounding us seemed to be turning particularly menacing with the setting sun didn’t encourage us to linger much longer either. With a another sigh, Galiene agreed to head back to the house and try to find the crypt entrance the next day.

However, when we set out the next day, we could not find the path or the mausoleum again. We could not stay out too long as we had to go to the visitation for Stacy and resolved to try again Saturday after the funeral. We were dismayed to find we could not locate the masoluem Saturday afternoon either. Galiene was utterly frustrated and I was flustered myself. It seemed as though the patterns of the trees and even the front drive had changed on us, preventing us from relocating the crypt.

“This is insane!” Galiene huffed as we made our way back to the house after our second failed attempt. “It’s not like a grove of trees and a marble mausoleum can just pick up and move!”

“Well, this is an all-around creepy place,” I shrugged. Galiene rolled her eyes at me.

“Come on,” she sighed. “It’s starting to get dark…and it smells like there’s a rainstorm coming…” I nodded and followed her back home.

Galiene and I both had seemed to come to the silent conclusion that it just wasn’t worth the effort to go looking for the crypt again. Neither of us were really sure what we might find if we were able to get inside or if anything we did find would be useful in answering the many questions cropping up in both of our minds. After eating supper, we allowed ourselves to get distracted by playing a board game with the family and then both went to bed late, anticipating that we would sleep in on the following, lazy Sunday morning.

I settled into sleep easily enough, which I should have taken as a warning sign. My sleep was always the most peaceful before a nightmare. Before long, I found myself in a dream, but not the usual one. Whereas I normally found myself chasing Ophélie – who I was now certain was my sister Lia – through the woods around our home. However, I found myself standing on our front porch with Lia in her usual attire, beckoning for me to follow her. Nervously, I followed her spectral form, which guided me down the front drive and then to the little path Galiene and I had discovered days before, only to loose again.

The further we walked, the more defined the path became, as if each step was taking us further back in time. I followed Lia down to the black mausoleum, trying to memorize the way so I could know when I returned to consciousness. I waited for Lia to show me how the building opened and she floated around to the very front of the building. She reached over to a decorative fleur-de-lis I had not noticed before right beside the “V” engraving at the tomb’s top. After pushing it in, the wall eerily moved downward and allowed us to step inside.

Cautiously, I followed the ghost of my sister into her tomb to find torches already light and burning inside. Lia motioned me over to what appeared to be a coffin, only made of marble and with no top. It sort of reminded me of the glass casket in the old Snow White movie. I bent down and found inside the perfectly preserved body of my sister, clutching a book and a diamond key on a chain to her chest. As I leaned in forward, I heard a scream, only to look up and see ghost Lia running through the woods. Looking back down, I saw her body had disappeared out of her coffin. Hearing another scream, I panicked and ran out of the tomb after my sister. I followed the path now familiar to my dreams through the woods. I was hoping to catch her before Donatien could get his hands on her and Jacques, but before I could catch up with her, I heard the final scream that ended the dream.

Again, I woke up in a sweat, shaking and disoriented. I had barely gained my bearings when Galiene burst through the door.

“What happened?” Galiene asked. “You were screaming… How did no one else hear you? You could have woken the dead!” My face paled at her statement and Galiene slumped on my bed, fearful. “What is it?”

“I think I know how to find where my sister is buried…”