Monsters in the Midwest ( Book 1): Wisconsin Vamp by Burtness Scott

Author:Burtness, Scott [Burtness, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: vampires
Publisher: Scott Burtness
Published: 2014-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

It wasn’t just bowling night. It was finals night and Herb was as nervous as a one-armed kid at a paddy-cake contest. It had been almost two weeks since he’d hung out with Dallas and Stanley, and the past week had been tough. They were supposed to roll last weekend, to stay in what Dallas called “prime rolling form,” but Herb had begged off, pleading with Dallas over the phone that he still wasn’t feeling great and really needed to rest. Herb’s excuse was certainly genuine. He just hoped that Dallas and Stanley never learned the details. His visit to see Helen had really messed him up. There was no way he was going to try and bowl with the guys like nothing had gone down. Despite the thermometer stubbornly insisting he was a cool seventy-three degrees, he had felt feverish, complete with nausea, aches, pains, like someone was boiling a rusty vat of roofing tar deep in his gut.

A suffocating malaise smothered him like a moldy blanket, wrapped with cords of deep paranoia. Every sound, no matter the source, was the police coming for him. Fever-dreams played out the scenes in stark detail. There’d be an investigation. Questions about the collection of twigs, jerky and cracked leather that used to be Helen curled up inside the tanning booth at Nekked’s. They’d find the brunette and ask about Helen’s acquaintances. Was she seeing anyone? Did she have any visitors? That brunette, she’d stand there smoking her cigarettes, describing between shaky puffs the awkward man who suddenly disappeared into the night. It’d take her a few minutes, the horror of the memory making it hard to concentrate. Then it would come to her in a flash. Herb, she’d say with conviction. His name was Herb. Minutes later, they’d find three more bodies in the dumpster, while at the same time some kids would stumble upon a fourth body stuffed under a log in the woods. Then there’d be a meeting, the Trappersville cops gearing up like the Frog Brothers. Stakes and crosses, holy water squirt guns, you name it. Faint sirens would reach his sensitive ears from miles away, growing to a skull-splitting screech as they circled his home. Then the blowtorch. Yes, of course they’d have a blowtorch. And a megaphone. “Come out, you demon, you hell-spawn! Get out here and maybe we’ll let you live!” But of course they wouldn’t let him live. Not Herb. Then the fire, great gushing geysers of flame. It would be so hot, so damn hot, like Herb was burning from the inside out...

His vivid fantasies had left Herb cowering in his home the remainder of the weekend, vacillating through periods of deep, guilt-wracked depression, manic turns where he’d plot his escape from town and try to work out the details of creating a new life in Nova Scotia, and long stretches during which he just felt too sick to care about anything at all. In his fever dreams, Herb figured his death was a foregone conclusion.

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