The Traveling Vampire Show

“You almost missed your chance to help us clean this up,” Slim told him.

“I tried.”

“What’d you do in there,” I asked, “take a bath?”

His face flushed scarlet. “I had to go, okay? Thanks for bringing it up.”

Slim chuckled.

“Very funny,” Rusty muttered.

“You like it so much in there,” she said, “how about going back and getting us some paper towels? There should be a roll under the sink where the TP is. Maybe you can bring the whole thing.”

“Sure.” He hurried away.

Slim waited until his footsteps faded, then whispered, “Do you think Rusty had anything to do with this?”

I felt a blush coming on. Quickly, I asked, “What do you mean?”

“He’s acting sort of funny.”

“He is?” I hoped I wasn’t.

“Like he feels guilty about something.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. He seems okay to me.”

“Do you think he might’ve done this stuff?”

“Why would he chew up your book?”

She shrugged. “It’s Dracula and he’s all excited about the Traveling Vampire Show? Maybe he thought it’d be a cool trick to play… freak us out.”

“I don’t know,” I muttered. “I don’t think so. Anyway, he was with me.”

“Maybe he came in and did this on his way back from Janks Field. Before he went over to your place.”

As I shrugged, I heard footsteps coming down the hallway.

We went silent, but we both looked at Rusty when he walked in.

“What?” he asked, handing the roll of paper towels to Slim.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“We were just trying to figure out how all this happened,” Slim explained. She turned away, tore off some paper towels, wadded them up and started to mop the top of the dresser.

Rusty gave me an alarmed look.

I almost shook me head, but realized that Slim was facing the mirror and might see me.

“If none of us did this stuff,” she said, “who did?”

“How about ghosts?” Rusty suggested. The playful tone of his voice sounded forced. “I mean, you’ve gotta have ghosts in this place, everything that’s happened here.”

She stopped cleaning and turned around. Frowning, she asked, “Like what?”

“You know.”

“No I don’t. What do you mean, ‘everything that’s happened here’?”

Rusty seemed shocked by her tone. It shocked me, too.

“Like with your dad and grandfather.”

“You’ve gotta be dead to be a ghost,” Slim said, her voice sharp.

“I know, but…”

“And Jimmy Drake isn’t.”

“I didn’t say he is.”

“You said his ghost…”

“He might be dead, right? I mean, he left town and you’ve never heard from him again. So he could be dead, couldn’t he?”

Seeming calmer, Slim looked at Rusty with narrow eyes and said, “I guess so.”

“Anyway,” Rusty said, “it was just a thought.”

“A lame thought,” I told him, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject of Slim’s father. “You don’t even believe in ghosts.”

“This just seems like the sort of thing a guy like Jimmy Drake might do,” Rusty explained. Then his eyes widened. In a hushed voice, he said, “Maybe he was here. Maybe he came back… you know, from wherever he went… and did this stuff.”

Slim stared at him.

“In the flesh,” Rusty said. “Not a ghost or anything, but him. What if he’s back?”

“He’s not,” Slim said.

“How do you know?”

“If he came back, he wouldn’t piddle around chomping on books and breaking a couple of things. It’s not his style. They’re just things. They’re not people. They don’t…” She turned away and resumed wiping the dresser top.

“I think it has something to do with the vampire show,” I said—partly because that’s what I really thought, partly to get the subject off Slim’s father because I knew she didn’t like being reminded of what he’d done to her and the others. “Maybe it’s a warning.”

Nodding, Rusty added, “To keep our mouths shut.”

“I don’t know,” Slim muttered.

“What I think we should do,” I said, “is finish cleaning this stuff up and then go over to my house. We can have supper there like we planned, but maybe we shouldn’t come back here afterwards.”

“They might be waiting for us,” Rusty pointed out, smiling as if he thought it were a joke.

“Where will we go?” Slim asked.

“I don’t know yet. We oughta think of a place where nobody’ ll be able to find us. But the main thing is, we should stay together from now on.”

Slim turned around. Finally smiling, she raised her eyebrows. “From now on?”

“Cool,” Rusty said.

“At least till the vampire show leaves town,” I explained.

“What about tonight?” she asked. “I’m not going to the show. I’m not stepping foot in Janks Field till those creeps are long gone.”

“Well I’m going,” Rusty said. Eyes on Slim, he shook his head. “I’m not gonna miss it just because you’re a chicken.”

“Hey,” I said.

“Well, I’m not. We don’t even know it was them. It might’ve been anyone.”

“It isn’t about this,” Slim said. “It’s about torturing and killing that poor dog.”

“That poor dog went after you like a hunk of raw meat.”

“Let’s not start this again,” I said. “Let’s just finish and get outa here before something else happens.”