Moonlight & Monsters: Ten Vampire Tales by Rain J.R

Author:Rain, J.R. [Rain, J.R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-04-23T04:00:00+00:00

***

“I don’t like this house, Mommy,” said Tammy again.

I stood outside the smallish home. Most of the homes in my neighborhood were small. Although one or two sported two stories, my neighborhood mostly consisted of small, boxy homes constructed with little imagination after World War II.

The home we stood in front of now was exactly nine homes from my own.

Too close, I thought again with horror. Far too close.

The house had been recently painted and sported a chain-link fence that, even now, was covered in paper skeletons and strung with little pumpkin-shaped lights. Two jack-o’-lanterns with happy-enough faces blazed on the front porch. Creepy music issued out from speakers suspended in the tree.

He’s trying too hard.

The son-of-a-bitch.

I’d seen the old man who lived alone here often enough, although not so much these past few years.

But he’s still here. Right behind those doors. Giving candy out to kids. Unsuspecting kids and unsuspecting parents.

Had I been an unsuspecting parent in the past? I couldn’t recall trick-or-treating at this particular home. Perhaps my inner warning system had kept me unconsciously away. And kept my kids safe, as well.

I stared at the home even while I sensed my kids’ growing discomfort. For the most part, the other kids in the neighborhood stayed away as well. There was something about the house that I sensed now, something that I had never sensed before. A darkness around it. And sadness. Extreme sadness.

Not just sadness, I thought. Anger. Rage. Resentment. Horror.

Try as the owner might, the home was mostly skirted by others in the neighborhood. Mostly. A young mom talking on her cell phone swept past us with her little mermaid, a girl no older than four. They went through the open chain-link gate, up the cement walkway, and rang the front door. The mother stepped back, still on her phone.

I waited, watching, unconsciously holding my breath.

Tammy tugged on my sleeve. I ignored her. Anthony had stepped forward and was now leaning his elbows on the fence, watching as I watched. He was sensing something, too. But Anthony, I knew, was quickly growing unafraid of anything. This worried me. Some fear was good, right?

What he sensed, I didn’t know, but together he and I watched as the front door opened and a stooped, old man shuffled out, grinning broadly. He praised the mermaid outfit, ruffled the girl’s hair, and dropped some regular-sized candy bars into her plastic pumpkin.

Regular-sized candy bars.

Yeah, he’s trying way too hard.

The mother had the little girl thank him and together they turned away, and as they did so, I saw two things. Two things that made the hair at the back of my neck stand on end. Something that hadn’t happened in a long time.

The first was that the smile instantly left his face as he watched the two leave his porch. The smile was replaced by something unspeakably sinister. The second was that I saw a darkness swirling around him. A nearly pure-black aura. Darker than anything I’d ever seen before.

I knew I was looking at pure evil.

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