Don't Look at the Leaves in Litchford [Part 2/2]
Over the next year Heston ingratiated himself into our circle. And not just our circle — practically all of Litchford knew him. He even started performing at some of the festivals, not as Victor Veil but as himself. He kept Victor separate. An online phenomenon that he seemingly kept secret from almost everyone in town, despite how viral he had gone on several recent occasions.
Our group knew though, as did everyone at the community theatre. It was like they couldn’t get enough of that derivative vampire slop. The truth is he could have pulled any movie monster persona out of a hat and made it work. He possessed this natural, effortless cool. From his singing, to his dance moves, to the way he walked. Everything came so naturally to him. Things I’d spent my whole life trying so damn hard to fabricate, he just had.
A small part of me — maybe a big part — didn’t just admire Heston, but wanted to be him. And it wasn’t just me. Other people in town started to be drawn to his charm, too. Especially Kate. She denied it, but I could tell. Every time he talked to her it was like there was a gravitational pull — like the Millennium Falcon being slowly sucked into the Death Star. There was nothing I could do about it besides bury my jealousy so deep I forgot it was mine.
I had put the thought of the house and the woods far out of my mind. Yet some part of me knew that Julius, and maybe even Kate, still went there with Heston — maybe a couple of times, maybe it had become their regular hangout. A suspicion that was later confirmed by Yo Pappa Joe at one of our late-night recording sessions in his parent’s basement.
“Yeah, Julius tells me they go there every week. Drinking, smoking, but doing some funky shit, too. I don’t know — couldn’t pay me enough to set foot in that damn house again.”
“Funky shit? Like what, hard drugs?”
I didn’t think either of them — especially Kate — messed around with that stuff. And while I was still in touch with Heston and the gang, I wasn’t exactly on a need-to-know basis with whatever they were up to at that house, especially after my abrupt exit.
“Nah, like just some weird games or telling spooky stories or something. He didn’t get into the details,” Yo Pappa Joe said, eager to wrap up our late-night session.
Summer was coming to an end and everyone was starting to prepare their acts for the fall festival circuit. I had a sneaky arrangement with Randall, the janitor at the community theatre. I’d bring him two large pepperoni pizzas after my shift and he’d reopen the theatre for me to work on my set, undistracted. He’d even leave me the keys to lock up after I was done.
This year I had cycled in some earlier repertoire I was eager to brush up on. “Into the Groove” by Madonna, “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League, “Weird Science” by Oingo Boingo, “Dancing in the Dark” — Springsteen, and some classic Michael crowd pleasers.
One night when I got there, the theatre lights inside were already on. Pizzas in one hand and my dancing shoes in the other, I peered through the small grated glass window of the heavy theatre door to see who had stolen my slot.
Julius and Heston were on the stage, rehearsing Heston’s choreography.
Were they doing the festival together? A combination of hurt and frustration welled up inside me.
After a brief moment of hesitation, I decided. I’d go in there casual and unbothered, tell them I had the stage booked that night. Polite but firm, maybe crack a joke at Randall’s expense — something pizza related. We’re all friends here anyway.
I took a deep breath in and started to open the door, which revealed Kate to the stage left, previously obscured. My frustration turned to rage.
New plan. I was going to bust in there, tell them this was my stage tonight, and maybe even passive aggressively remind Kate and Julius that they’d be wise not to get Heston’s choreography mixed up with mine at the Harvest Moon Fair, two weeks from Friday.
But I didn’t do any of that. I tucked my tail between my legs, put the pizzas on the bench next to Randall’s janitor closet, played some Pokémon Colosseum, and went to bed.
In the morning I groggily rolled over and opened my phone to a text from Julius. Eyes still adjusting to the light, somehow I knew what it was before I even read it.
“Yo Eric. I’m really sorry about this, my dude, but I had some shit come up. Just got a lot going on right now. Family, work… I’m not sure if I’m gonna be able to do the Harvest booth this—”
I aggressively tossed my phone across the room to a soft thud. Didn’t need to read any more. Julius was out. As far as I was concerned, not just for Harvest Moon Fest — out for good.
After a few minutes of agonizing, I reluctantly got up and retrieved my phone from my giant Ultraman-themed beanbag chair. I frantically texted Kate, who responded right away.
“Yeah, we’re still on! Don’t stress, I know the moves. Always do.” She ended the text with a rosy-cheeked smile emoji.
“My hero,” I replied.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you something,” Kate said.
“Shoot.”
“Do you think I could do a solo at your booth this year? ’Don’t Give Up’ by Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. It’s only half the song and it totally fits your retro theme.”
Normally I’d politely say no — this booth was one of my only shots at exposure for the month and I needed all I could get. But something in me was scared I was losing her to Heston the way I’d lost Julius. And, she is a Peter Gabriel mega-fan.
“Of course.” I was going to end it there but followed up with one more text.
“I want you to know, I appreciate you.”
She responded with a winky emoji.
We had a couple of rehearsals and our booth drew a big crowd at the Harvest Moon Fair. Maybe even bigger than Heston’s booth with Julius. I felt like I was back on top, as far as Litchford was concerned.
I went through the next few weeks reinvigorated. I felt like if I just stayed focused, New York might actually be more than a pipe dream.
In the days following the festival, I figured I’d earned a little break, so one night after my shift at Jinky’s, instead of heading to the community theatre to rehearse, I went straight home. Diablo 3 had just come out and I had every intention of grinding my Demon Hunter build to get ahead of Yo Pappa Joe — we had a mostly friendly rivalry. I had this trick where I’d use a converter cable to port my PS3 to my CRT TV. Early 90s, bright as hell, made that high-pitched electrical signal sound that most of those old TVs made.
I fell asleep around ten thirty, halfway through a dungeon and with a small box of ham and pineapple half falling off my lap.
The buzzing of my phone tightly against my black skinny jeans jolted me awake. It was midnight. I wedged my phone out to a text from Heston.
“Were outside your house Killer. We wanna to show you something.”
My heart sank. As I started racking my brain for an excuse, my phone buzzed again.
“We can see your light on, I know you’re still up Killer.”
My whole body felt hot. I went to the window hoping it was a joke, a lucky guess. I looked out to see Heston leaning on the hood of his Camaro. Next to him in the passenger seat was Kate, who immediately spotted me, gesturing her arms toward the car and mouthing,
“Come on, let’s go!”
I nodded and texted back Heston who had already responded with the skull and crossbones emoji.
“Okay, one sec” I texted him.
I put on my jacket and began to creep down our old staircase, muscle memory guiding each foot to exactly the right spots to avoid alerting my parents. A choreography I’d had memorized since I was a teenager in this house.
Outside Heston welcomed me with a sharp nod.
“Atta boy” Heston said as he folded the driver seat forward for me to climb into the back.
The interior of the Camaro was as immaculate as the exterior. It smelled clean, with a slightly sweet cherry scent. The car ride was eerily silent but I had an idea where we were going. I fought the urge to protest, or at the very least ask what they were up to at that freakish house. But at that point I just needed to see it for myself. I had to know what was going down if I was going to have any chance of pulling Kate out of whatever the hell she was getting herself into.
“Where’s Julius?” I asked.
“Ah you’ll see him soon Killer” Heston said with a toothy grin, looking at me through the rearview mirror.
“Yo Pappa Joe?”
“Nah he ain’t into fun. Just sit back and relax my boy!” Heston said as he stomped on the gas as the sound of the catback exhaust bellowed like a war horn into hell.
“Wooohooo!” Kate shouted with one arm out the window, gliding in the night breeze.
Ten more cramped minutes in the back seat and we were pulling back up to the house. Déjà vu.
Things felt different the moment we stepped inside. The lamps were gone, replaced by what felt like a hundred candles, only a few of them lit. An enormous clutter around the living room I couldn’t quite make out in the darkness.
Most concerning was the banging from upstairs. Heavy and rhythmic. A measured drag across the floor, something dense being repositioned, then a single hammer strike, silence, then another — like a chisel working against stone. Dust rained down from the ceiling as I turned to Heston, fighting a boulder-like lump in my throat.
“Is someone else here?” I asked.
“No one you don’t already know Killer” Heston said with a smile as he slapped my back, a small cloud of dust bounced off my jacket.
“Yo Jay! We got guests” Heston shouted toward the upstairs.
The hammering stopped. A long moment of silence. Then footsteps crossed the floor above us, and Julius appeared at the top of the balcony. He came down slowly, one hand trailing the banister. A fine white dust covered his hat and clothes like he’d been at it for hours.
“What’s good, Eric” Julius said as he began to reapply his jewelry stashed in his black jean pockets.
“What are you working on up there? Remodeling?” I asked Julius.
He glanced back up the stairs briefly, then back at me with a shrug.
“Just helping out the homie,” Julius said, nodding toward Heston with an eyebrow raise as he began patting the dust off his shirt.
At some point during our borderline awkward exchange, Kate had made her way to the living room and began lighting the candles — all of them. I looked over and she was standing with her arms folded, reading something to herself from a piece of paper on the mantle.
"Come on in, we want to show you what we’ve been working on,” Heston said as I followed him into the living room where I’d had my first panic attack — I felt myself gearing up for my second.
The newly lit candles illuminated the clutter, now visible in the form of… books. Books spread across the floor, stacked along the walls, and covering the gigantic coffee table. Old books, some newer ones, a lot of them looked handmade. A few appeared to have English text but most were in another language entirely.
I sat back down in my same spot on the couch, Kate next to me and Heston and Julius in the chairs across, just like before. I glimpsed the title of the book nearest to me — an ominous two-word title: Reîntruparea Eternului.
Even without understanding the language, I knew it wasn’t good. None of this was. I was biding my time to get the hell out of there again. But this time I didn’t have an excuse ready.
Shit. My car was at home. Whatever they had in store for me, I had to play along and hopefully be back home before… sunrise? God.
Scanning the room — despite the many candles around us, the surrounding areas remained completely black, lit only by occasional threads of moonlight between the rolling clouds. In the corner at the far end sat a large cage, not big enough for a human (lucky for me) but maybe a large animal. A black cloth was draped over whatever was inside. Something dark had seeped through the fabric and dried into the floorboards beneath it in a stain that spread maybe two feet in each direction. I didn’t look at it for long.
I took a deep breath from my diaphragm and tried to keep my expression neutral, despite my stomach churning.
Markings and symbols lined the wall by the fireplace, mirroring those scrawled across the open pages of the books strewn around us — the largest one directly above the mantel. It looked like a curled up snake or lizard trying to eat itself — short stubby wings on its back, its long tongue and fangs outstretched, its neck craned forward as if it just couldn’t quite reach the end of its own tail.
Kate drew it. I just knew. I’d seen her art before. Admired it. Always told her so.
“Latest art piece?” I said, nodding sarcastically toward the monstrosity above the mantle.
“Try to keep an open mind, Eric. We’ve been working on something big,” Kate said.
“Yeah, I heard.” I turned to Heston. "Enough with the theatrics. Is this some set for a Victor Veil video? Some kind of cryptic content house?" My frustration boiled over. I needed to reel it in and play nice if I had any chance of getting home sooner rather than later.
“You want to show him?” Heston said, turning to Julius, head cocked slightly, eyebrows raised.
“You know you’re the only one who can do it right,” Julius said, opening his palm toward the coffee table in front of us.
“Alright then,” Heston said with a grunt, leaning over the coffee table.
He grabbed one large old book, shoving the immense remaining pile aside, many falling haphazardly to the dusty floor beneath us. The now almost bare coffee table revealed a massive carving — the same figure as the one above the mantle. Kate carved this too. My skin started to crawl.
“Okay, seriously what—“
“Shhhh, just watch. Then we’ll explain everything,” Kate said, putting her hand on my leg in an attempt to defuse my growing unease.
Heston opened the book and began to read aloud in a language I had never heard before. It was unsettling. He struggled through most of it. I looked at Kate, then at Julius. Their eyes were fixed on Heston, attentive — the way a dog watches its owner holding a hot piece of bacon.
He read for thirty, maybe forty-five seconds, paused, and finished slowly and confidently with:
“Arată-te nouă. Așa cum ești. Neterminată.”
I looked over at Kate, shaking my head.
“Okay, you guys had your—”
Kate put her hand up, cutting me off.
“Wait,” she said in a long, soft whisper, her pensive eyes still fixed on Heston.
Then, like the room itself exhaled, a wispy labored breath filled the air, accompanied by a strong draft that flickered the candles surrounding us, many extinguishing entirely. From somewhere across the house came the distant sound of slow, muffled footsteps. A thud and a drag. Something moving with great difficulty, almost like it was relearning how.
Movement drew my eyes to the veranda beyond the side rooms at the opposite end of the house. Silhouetted by moonlight, the same tall, hunched figure crept past — draped in torn black fabric, a massive hump behind its back, a hood concealing its head. The figure I had seen in the window once before. Its visibility broken by the intervening walls as it passed.
It was heading for the front door.
I felt Kate’s eager vibration on the couch next to me.
Panic rose in my eyes as I looked at Heston.
“Knock knock,” he said with a smirk.
I wasn’t planning on waiting to hear a single knock. I got up, stumbling over some of the books scattered on the floor, and without a word bolted down the long decorative rug toward the kitchen, fear guiding my best guess at an alternate escape route.
“I wouldn’t go that way, Killer,” Heston said, calmly and matter-of-fact.
I hurriedly found my way to the kitchen, nearly tripping on an accumulation of trash — fast food bags, empty alcohol bottles. A collection of large red plastic gas canisters sat next to the old rattling generator.
My eyes found the back door and I burst through it, taking fragments of the old decaying doorframe with me.
I just ran. Through the woods. My course leading as straight as possible so I could eventually figure out where the road was. Undergrowth whipped my face. I pulled out my phone to illuminate the dark ahead, nearly tripping on the vines beneath my feet.
Just as my sprint slowed to a jog, I heard it. I was being followed. But not the expected sound of twigs snapping from someone giving chase behind me.
It was above me. In the canopy. Something was up there in the darkness, moving through the trees alongside me. Debris crashing to the ground below. It sounded massive. And yet somehow, whatever it was sounded labored. Strained. Like the pursuit itself was costing it something.
My panic unlocked a new gear and I was in an all-out sprint.
Whatever it was ended its pursuit after a minute or two. The longest two minutes of my life.
After searching my way through the darkness for maybe an hour I found my way to the road, even further north than the house. I doubled over, hands on my knees, and just cried. Cried out of fear, frustration, cried for Kate. I pulled myself together and began the long five-mile walk back to the edge of town.
When my cell service kicked back in at the end of the tree line, I called Yo Pappa Joe. Told him everything. Surprisingly, he sounded like he somewhat believed me.
“Yeah, that sounds like the freaky shit they were talking about. They tried to show me but I told them I wasn’t having none of that. Man, I didn’t know they’d go that far though — especially Kate. But you’re sure? About what you saw? Like it wasn’t someone from the theatre pulling a prank or some shit?” he said.
“I know what I saw, Joseph” I said sharply.
“Alright. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Get home safe, Eric. I’d give you a ride and all but—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I said with a halfhearted chuckle.
My feet were blistered and probably bleeding at this point. I took a long defeated breath in and began the remaining thirty minute walk home.
The incident at the house had a lingering effect on me. Over the next two months I had cut off contact with Heston and Julius. I desperately wanted to chalk that whole night up to a prank, but I knew better. Kate and I still talked occasionally, but she was more distant than ever, and she would never discuss what happened at the house.
Every time I’d bring it up she’d say something like:
“If you’re not going to have an open mind, why would I waste my time explaining it to you?”
If it truly was a prank, it was a cruel one to keep going this long. Either way I decided to leave it alone. I tried to put Heston and what he was up to out of my mind, but it was impossible to avoid him. Victor Veil was exploding on social media. He had his format dialed. Most videos were ten to fifteen seconds — a slow cool walk through town, the camera following behind him, or a lean against the Camaro, popping his jacket collar and winking at the camera with a cigarette in his mouth and that sickeningly contagious smile. A faux 16mm film matte over everything.
It was like his original James Dean cosplay but now with his own spin — vampire teeth and a pair of Michael Jackson style black crocodile skin slip-on penny loafers with white socks. Something told me his new sidekick Julius was the one behind the camera.
Heston had put out a few new original music videos on YouTube, too — one filmed in Los Angeles and one down in Miami featuring vintage supercars and colorful neon lighting. Higher budget than before. I tried to deny it but the songs were actually really catchy. I was repulsed the few times I caught myself absentmindedly humming them.
Kate was the female love interest in both. He bit her in the first video, campy blood flying everywhere, converting her into his vampire girlfriend or whatever. The first one got 100k views and the second got 750k. Everyone was eating up that vampire crap. I felt like I was living in the Twilight Zone.
There was something in his eyes in the videos though. A desperate desire. A rage. He was willing his success into existence by whatever means necessary — so intense it was almost hard to look at. Like staring into a mirror reflecting the sun directly into your eyes.
He had a private Instagram account just for his close friends: his filmmaker buddies, Julius, Kate, and some friends from the community theatre. I had unfollowed it a while ago in an attempt to purge him from my mind. Yo Pappa Joe was still following him though, and since I managed his account for him, I could still see Heston’s posts whether I wanted to or not.
On that account he’d post dark, unsettling photography. Grainy, like it was shot on old film or edited to look that way. Photos of the house at night, other small abandoned structures in the area, all lit by what I assumed were the headlights of his Camaro — like a flashlight cutting through the dark. Sometimes Kate in a barn bathed in red light, sometimes animals lurking in the darkness, an old cat staring into the lens with demonic eyes. He also posted photos of some of the old books and drawings of that symbol. A sick crawling feeling hit my stomach when I came across it, stopping my scroll.
After a few weeks of seething over the Victor Veil success arc, I met up with Kate to go over some choreography for my upcoming booth at the Wintertide on Main Fair. I went to her house to pick her up and texted her I was outside. She told me to come in and wait while she finished getting ready.
“Come on up, ’Killer.’”
I shuddered. I hated that nickname. Even hearing it in jest.
Up in her room, I sat on the edge of her bed, admiring the knickknacks on her nightstand while she got ready in her closet. I daydreamed an alternate reality where we were dating. I was picking her up to take her to dinner or a movie. Or even just spontaneously get the hell out of this town altogether.
Then my eyes drifted to her desk where some of the cultish looking books were spread open, one half read. I was growing more and more convinced they weren’t just props.
“So do you actually believe in this stuff Heston’s doing? Like the demon cult stuff? Or is it just an aesthetic for the videos?”
“You’ve clearly already made up your mind, so there’s no point,” she said, coming out of her walk-in closet and adjusting her black studded earrings.
Then I noticed.
Her tooth. Her missing tooth — it was fixed. Not just fixed, but what looked like dental implants on her incisor teeth too. Vampire teeth. I felt a combination of hurt and rage.
“Are those real?” I blurted, pointing at my own teeth.
“Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t,” Kate said, turning to the mirror on her door and adjusting her necklace.
“No, seriously. I thought you were proud of your teeth. You always said it’s what makes you Kate.”
“Well, maybe ’Kate’ got tired of being a side character, Eric,” she said, matter-of-fact.
“That’s not what you are to Heston, though — I’m sure,” I muttered under my breath, almost soft enough to go undetected.
“What?” She asked. Luckily she didn’t actually hear me.
“Nothing.”
Then it hit me. Kate had basically no money. I’d paid for her every time we went out to eat. She’d get vending machine donuts between rehearsals and use powdered coffee instead of Starbucks. She worked at the Litchford Pharmacy and used over half her paycheck for her grandmother’s medication — when she wasn’t stealing it from work.
Heston bought her those teeth.
“Did your boyfriend Heston buy those for you?” I snapped, wishing I could suck the words back the instant they left my mouth.
She turned to me, red with anger, brow furrowed.
“Yes, Eric, they’re real, and yeah, he did. Not everyone can just wait around their whole life for something they hope will happen on its own.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, worried I already knew.
“It means you’ve been my best friend as long as I can remember, but sometimes you can be the biggest pussy. And it means you should leave.”
I stormed out. Nearly in tears. No rehearsal.
The holiday festivals came and went — I did them all solo. Kate and Julius both danced at Heston’s booths and drew way bigger crowds than mine. It was ironic — Mr. Too Cool for Festivals was becoming the king of Litchford in under two years.
A few months went by. It was February. No festivals until the First Melt Fair in March, not that I was even rehearsing. Part of me was planning on not performing at all — for the first time in nearly twenty years.
I was depressed.
It was my birthday and nobody even remembered.
Nobody besides Yo Pappa Joe.
We were wrapping up another late night recording session at Yo Pappa Joe’s studio when I broke down and told him everything. My jealousy of Heston. How betrayed I felt by Julius. And for the first time saying it out loud — how in love I was with Kate. How I always had been.
He assured me I’d get through it. That maybe a change of scenery would do me some good, test out some new markets, finally move out of my parents’ house like I’d always wanted. He reminded me he’d always had my back, the way I’d always had his.
He told me that if I really loved Kate, I should fight for her. That it probably wasn’t too late to pull her from whatever grip Heston had on her. Make her remember she wasn’t… this. That she was still Kate.
I didn’t know anything about grand romantic gestures. But I knew two things about Kate — her whacky sense of humor and her favorite song.
So we planned it.
After an hour of preparations, I set out on foot. Kate’s house was just two blocks over from Yo Pappa Joe’s. Equipped with his battery-powered boombox and a Peter Gabriel tape plucked from his gigantic collection, cued to exactly the right spot — all I had to do was hit play.
“In Your Eyes.”
Her favorite song from her favorite movie.
Yo Pappa Joe sent me off with a pat on the shoulder.
“Go get her, Romeo”
The two block stroll gave me just enough time to rehearse what I might say after she opened her window. I needed a line…
It was just past 10pm when I was turning on to her block and froze.
I heard screaming. Kate was screaming!
The boombox hit the pavement as I broke into a sprint. As I started to round the corner of her neighbor’s house, Heston’s Camaro came into view parked out front. I skidded to a stop against the brick wall, ducking behind a giant boxwood bush.
I peered through the shrubbery to see Kate being practically dragged out of her house by Heston and Julius — screaming, begging, pleading. Julius had her ankles practically off the ground as she kicked.
They shoved her into the car and sped off, wheels spinning, a giant cloud of tire smoke billowing behind them and turning white under the streetlights. Dogs started barking, house lights began to flicker on.
I turned and ran. Ran back to Yo Pappa Joe’s house, running though sprinklers and vaulting over bushes. He was waiting out front when I got there.
“How’d it go, man?”
“Get in the car!” I screamed as I jumped into my Datsun parked in his driveway.
“Man, what—“
“Joseph, there’s no time, get the fuck in, I’ll explain on the way,” I said, rapidly smacking the side of the heavy rusty door.
“Okay, okay!” He felt around for the door handle for what felt like an forever and we sped off.
I knew where they were going.
On the drive I told him what I saw.
“You sure they weren’t filming something?” he asked, recognizing his own hopeful denial.
“They weren’t filming anything.” We went silent for the rest of the drive.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The moon pierced through the bare trunks, casting silver threads between the trees.
After an agonizing fifteen minutes we were approaching the house. I killed the lights and parked on the left side of the roundabout, next to Heston’s Camaro, facing the house.
“Wait here and lay on the horn if anything happens,” I whispered to Yo Pappa Joe as I grabbed the tire iron from the trunk.
“I will” Yo Pappa Joe said nervously.
The house was dark, every window black — all but the upstairs corner room, which pulsed with a deep amber light, almost red. Shadows moved across it from within.
Kate’s screams bellowed across the yard, echoing off the tree line around us. They were different now. Not fear, but pain.
Ignoring the growing thought that this was most definitely a trap, I charged up the porch steps and through the already open front door. The long decorative rug stretched ahead in the darkness, leading straight to the staircase like a runway. It muffled my footsteps as I ran. I stumbled up the old decaying steps and made my way down the eternally long hallway to the room at the end.
The red light bled through the gap at the bottom of the door, casting a thin crimson line across the old floorboards. My fear, growing more distant by the second, gave way to anger. A blind rage. I abandoned any further attempt at my covert tactics and kicked the door open.
Kate was on the floor, encircled by the giant snake symbol carved into the wood around her. A symbol she had carved.
She was writhing and screaming, her back arched and… levitating. Not floating in the middle of the room, but as if gravity had simply lost its grip on her. Each time her legs kicked the ground her body drifted slowly back upward. Her wrists and ankles buckled and cracked. She was fighting an invisible force that was holding her in place, tormenting her.
My brain was struggling to process what I was seeing — it was like the rest of the room had vanished. Shaking off my tunnel vision, I saw Heston just beyond the circle, hunched toward Kate in a wooden rocking chair, holding the same book from last time. He didn’t even look up at me. Then my eyes moved beyond him.
In the corner of the room sat the figure, leaning to one side in a poorly fabricated throne-like chair carved from stone or concrete. A demon-like entity. Skinny. Frail. Its malformed body swallowed beneath a tattered black robe, though this time I could make out its hollow eyes and sagging skin. It looked like it wanted to devour me. But didn’t possess the strength.
I went to lunge at Heston, grab Kate, do something. But the moment I moved I was tackled to the ground, my tire iron clanking across the floor.
I tried to wrestle my assailant for a few moments before giving in. I wasn’t strong enough. He grabbed me, wrenched me up to my knees, one foot pinning my ankles to the floor, both arms locked tight around my torso.
I already knew before I heard his voice.
“Sorry about this, Eric,” Julius said.
“What the fuck is this?” I screamed at Heston, who remained in the chair, eyes locked on Kate, unmoved.
“You’re not going to become real vampires, or whatever the fuck you idiots think is going to happen here. Let her go.”
Julius put tape over my mouth. I groaned and snorted against it like a bull in its pen. Helpless. Helpless to help Kate.
The demon began to chant, a deep slow mantra, like a song, each word forced through labored breaths.
“You could have helped her Eric. This was always supposed to be you. This is on you Killer.” Heston said.
I didn’t know what that meant.
Then the demon’s chanting stopped. Heston turned back to the demon pensively.
The demon gave a slow nod.
Heston looked at Kate then down at the book at his lap and read two words I’ll never forget.
“Dă foc.”
Kate’s levitating body burst into flame.
Tears ran down my face.
Heston pressed to the edge of his chair, his eyes locked on Kate in a trance-like fixation, yet with a slight undercurrent of panic. Like someone who had just jumped off a bridge and immediately regretted it, knowing there was no turning back.
Kate’s screams got louder, then deeper, then softer. Until silence.
Her body fell back to the floor. Bloodied. Charred. Gone.
My whole body went limp, held up only by Julius’s tight grasp.
The demon slowly stood and shambled toward us. Each step felt like an eternity. It placed its long shriveled hand on Heston’s head, guiding it gently to his knees, into a fetal position in his chair. Then it leaned over Kate, placing its other hand on her charred body.
Heston was shaking, his breaths short and ragged.
The demon took a long breath in and, through a wheezing but deep voice, slowly spoke one final phrase.
“Să ne ridicăm uniți.”
The figure then collapsed to the ground beside Kate.
I stared at its lifeless body — the fall had exposed its veiny, bald head from beneath its torn hood. Blood began to pool around it.
I felt Julius’s hot shallow breaths on the back of my neck.
"It didn’t work?” he shouted frantically.
Before Heston could speak, another atmospheric exhale encompassed the room — like all the windows had opened at once, every candle blowing out this time.
Heston looked at us in a panic, breathing faster and faster. He started writhing in his chair. Seizing.
Then he started… changing.
He screamed in agony as his arms and legs began to lengthen, his skin turning a pale pink.
Then four tendril-like appendages shot out of his chest and hips. A half-formed wing tore out from his back. His eyes bulged, his hands clawing at his head as if to tear it clean off — to relieve whatever scorching pressure burned from within, clumps of hair falling into his hands as he grasped at himself.
He looked at me one last time. But what I saw in his eyes wasn’t the look of a monster — it was a desperate little boy. For a fraction of a second I almost felt sorry for him. Saw myself in him.
Then his entire body started to expand like a balloon, his pearl white vampire teeth implants transforming into long, yellow decaying incisors.
“What the fuck, man!” Julius screamed as his grip on me started to loosen in sheer terror.
Heston’s chair cracked, then exploded under the tension of his expanding body, sending shards of wood across the room like shrapnel from a grenade.
There he stood. Eight feet tall. A bulbous, bloated torso. Long lanky limbs, dark veins protruding and almost bursting through a paper-thin layer of pink skin. Half naked. Too big now for his clothes. His entire grotesque form swaying with each breath he took.
He slowly knelt down to examine Kate’s blackened body, then the body of the lifeless demon.
My eyes scanned the room, stopping at a sharp pointed shard of wood next to my knee.
I leaned just enough to grab it, flipped it around in my hand, and jabbed it back into Julius’s torso.
“Fuck!” he screamed, letting go and scrambling to pull it out.
His scream drew Heston’s attention, but before he even stood I was gone.
I sprinted through the long hallway, ripping the tape from my mouth, and cascaded down the staircase, skipping three then four steps at a time. As I hit the bottom floor I heard terrible screams and a crashing sound from the room above.
Julius.
My eyes found the front door, moonlight bleeding through the gap like a lighthouse in a storm. I sprinted for it. When I was halfway to the door Heston burst through the upstairs balcony railing and came crashing straight down just feet behind me in a cloud of dust and debris. He found his feet and turned toward me with an ear-piercing shriek.
I was almost through the door when the momentum of Heston’s enormous first step yanked the long runner rug from under my feet, catapulting me through the doorway. The large iron mailbox cracked against my head as I tumbled onto the porch.
I rolled onto my back. My ankle was broken and even worse I had what I knew what was — from the deep seeded memory of a childhood fall from our treehouse — a concussion.
My consciousness pulsed in and out as I watched the monstrosity that was once Heston claw its way through the door. Too big to fit, but his weight and rage were making quick work of the rotting wooden frame.
I started sliding myself on my elbows across the veranda, hoping I could get around the corner and out of sight before he broke through.
Trying, fighting to stay awake but I couldn’t control it.
My narrowing tunnel vision was fixed on Heston as he finally broke through the door and turned toward me.
Then a bright light slowly encompassed everything.
Was this it, was I dead?
I stretch out my hand out to shield my eyes from the light as I saw the impossible.
My old blue Datsun came careening up the porch stairs and blasting through the front door, taking Heston with it in a momentous series of crashes deep into the house.
Yo Pappa Joe.
Like a shot of adrenaline to a combat soldier, I was on my feet — foot.
I limped through the massive hole where the front door once was.
“Joseph!” I screamed, my hoarse voice swallowed by the roar of the revving engine.
A thick haze of dust and exhaust fumes filled the house. My Datsun sat nestled in a cocoon of rubble in the kitchen, the bottom half of the staircase in a million shards in its wake.
The rear wheels were still spinning, screeching against the old tile, the car’s forward motion held in place by the massive marble kitchen counter.
Heston was pinned between them. Clawing, screeching, bellowing, biting in the direction of Yo Pappa Joe.
The door frame was buckled, the engine bleeding smoke. The car sat surrounded by the red gas canisters and the old generator, heightening my already maxed out sense of urgency. I shouted at Yo Pappa Joe to climb through the open passenger side window. He scooted over and I pulled him through. The moment he lifted his foot from the gas, the car rolled back an inch.
My stomach dropped.
Heston was violently clawing between the car and the counter behind him. Time was not on our side.
I grabbed a mostly empty fuel can — the nearest one I could reach — and tossed it toward Heston. It landed in his lap, gasoline dribbling down his bare, distended stomach.
We traversed the thick smoke, leaning on each other to offset each other’s ailments, barely making it down what was left of the porch steps. And then came a massive explosion that ripped violently through the house, accompanied by a shrill, high-pitched shriek.
Then, it was quiet. No sound.
I turned back only once to see the whole bottom floor engulfed in flames.
For the first time, I left that property without the feeling of being watched.
We sat for a few minutes and looked at each other, then limped the long dark winding road back to town, mostly silent.
After what felt like hours we reached the edge of town, where cell service finally bled through the last rows of trees.
I called the police. Told them what had happened. How it happened. I told them everything. We offered to go with them, to show them. But they said it wasn’t safe. Told us to get some rest and they’d follow up if they needed anything.
We never heard from them. Like it never happened.
The police and the entire town of Litchford chalked it up to an accident. Young adults partying at an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. A fire. Smoke inhalation. Something to put in the report, something to tell the families.
The town held a vigil for Kate, Julius, and Heston. Some people from the theatre came dressed as vampires in their honor — which under any other circumstances might have been touching, I guess. We couldn’t help but feel like most of them looked at us like we were to blame. But they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
It was in the papers. The local newscast. Then, with the same efficiency that Litchford has always had for forgetting things it doesn’t want to remember, it was gone.
Forgotten.
I moved two months later. Took a Greyhound down to New Haven. I work at a new pizza place now. The pizza’s better here.
Whatever I was before all this — the festivals, the dreams of New York and billboards — feels like a someone else’s story now.
But I have my own apartment now. The lady at the rental office wouldn’t shut up about the great deal I was getting. Best view in the entire complex. She tells me every time she sees me.
It overlooks miles and miles of woods.
It’s almost fall now…
If you’re ever in New England and want to make the trek up to get cozy and see the leaves, keep on driving, right past Litchford.
Nothing to see there.
Not that I owe you any favors.
Goddamn Leafers.