Frightliner Read online

  “No!” Jay shouted.

  The vampire snarled like an animal and leapt.

  Jay barely managed to lift the stake as it flew at him over the altar, hands outstretched, fingers curved like claws.

  A shaft of light, suddenly bright and clear, shot from the heart of the stained glass Jesus and illuminated the altar. The vampire flew right into it.

  There was sudden flare, like a nuclear blast, yet somehow as purifying as it was brilliant. The vampire’s last screams crescendoed and disappeared with an anticlimactic pop. Then there was only the sound of human screaming.

  After a moment, Jay realized it was him. Nonetheless, it took a moment longer before embarrassment overcame terror and he was able to close his mouth and open his eyes.

  He had flung himself backward into a wood wing-backed chair he guessed was for the priest and had curled himself tightly into it. Upon the altar and stretching out in front and behind it was a sickeningly human-shaped pile of ashes. One ash-covered stake was sticking straight up through what would have been the chest. The brilliant light was gone, replaced with the soft dimness of pre-dawn.

  Jay uncurled himself and stumbled to the others. Leroy was in bad shape, but the spear had missed the artery and he was alive. Jay staggered to the holy water pot and sprinkler, grabbed it and splashed some water on Miguel’s face.

  Miguel’s eyes flickered open. He gasped in fear, saw it was Jay, and relaxed slightly. Then he looked at the altar, and his face broke into a small, weary smile. “It’s over.”

  “You sure?” Jay was surprised how steady his voice was.

  Miguel nodded. “We will dissolve as much of the ash as we can in holy water, scatter whatever we cannot. You, however, should go now.” Jay helped him stand, held onto him a moment until the dizziness passed and he assured him he was fine.

  “Leroy needs a doctor.”

  “Si. There is a cell phone in the car. I will take care of that. You should go. You have done enough for us this night.”

  “I didn’t do anything. It was all God.”

  Miguel smiled. “Si. It always is. Now go. I have a can of gas in the trunk of my car. Your presence here will only complicate things.”

  “You sure?” Jay pulled the rosary off his neck. He held it out to Miguel. “Thanks, for, uh…”

  Miguel closed Jay’s hand over the wooden beads and clasped his hand over it. “It is a gift. Take it and remember there are things which only God can do. Dios te bendiga.”

  ~ * ~

  An hour later, Jay was back in his rig, nursing it to the nearest gas station and doing his best not to distract himself from dwelling over the night’s events. As soon as he got his load dropped off, he was taking his earnings to the a bar and drinking himself silly, he decided.

  Then an ambulance passed him in the opposite direction, its wail reminding him of the frailty and limitedness of humans. He glanced at the rosary which he’d curled around the base of his swinging alien.

  Then again, maybe he’d just stop off at a church.

  The Lobby

  By Colleen Drippe’

  It was the later evening show, the later evening crowd – those who could not finish dinner and get ready in time and those who never worried about dinner and never knew whether they were ready or not. They came with their pimples and bubble gum, pierced lips and noses, long hair and shaven heads, girls in jeans and shorts and everything in between.

  The gentleman observer was disgusted.

  The gentleman had come to the theater with friends. His friends were people who planned things – usually with more care than they had planned this particular outing. The three – he and his companions – had been out to dinner and they had talked and they had had dessert. And so they came to the late showing.

  The gentleman seldom saw a new movie. He preferred to watch those he had collected over the years starring people he knew – Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, Jimmy Stewart -- people who had been familiar to him for most of his life. They moved and spoke gracefully in black and white, and even in moments of high drama, they never forgot that essential decency, legislated, it was true, but dependable nevertheless.

  But here the gentleman felt safe enough. Though he was a man of culture, he had been a lover of the fantastic for most of his life and – he smiled a little indulgently at himself as he admitted it – an avid reader of more than one author whose work his father would have consigned to the garbage can. To tell the truth, he had gone to see The Mummy and loved every minute of it. There was no reason he should not risk seeing the sequel.

  The tickets were bought, candy and popcorn as well, and all three found seats. He must brace himself for the previews – times had changed, after all. But the volume of sound took his breath away. It had done so before. This was a far cry from the cartoon and newsreel of his youth.

  Alas, the end of these advertisements – for remarkably worthless movies – brought no relief. The main attraction did not please him. One knew, one had been told from time to time, that a “return of” movie was often inferior to its progenitor. But this specimen seemed to him so very disappointing that the gentleman could not keep his seat. Excusing himself, he left his companions to enjoy themselves, if they could, while he betook himself to the lobby.

  The lobby was a show in itself, as the latecomers drifted in. These modern people seemed as bizarre to him as the characters on the screen. He seldom came out in public at this hour and he wondered mightily whether that much tattooed young man worked in a factory by day, or whether the damsel in black – even to her lipstick and fingernail polish – might be the same lady who cashed his checks at the bank. Perhaps she took the ring from her lip during working hours?

  And so he sat, glancing at his watch from time to time, watching this other show. Once in a while he looked over at the candy counter, where a young man with a pony tail dispensed his overpriced wares. In a booth the ticket seller sat, small and gnarled, his face reflecting some twisting that might also show in his body if he rose from his chair. He turned a bright-eyed gaze on the gentleman and smiled. It was not a reassuring smile.

  The gentleman glanced at his watch. Barely ten o’clock. He drummed his fingers on one knee. He did not smoke – and very likely in this new and vulgar world, smoking would be the one thing prohibited. Probably the only thing – unless you counted prayer.

  The people who came in were more and more strange. A couple in evening clothes – but where had he seen such clothes save in an old illustration? – approached the ticket seller. The gentleman could not hear all that was said, but he could have sworn the man was talking French. Arm in arm, the pair moved off into the arch and disappeared. He wondered which of the mediocre offerings they had chosen to view.

  A crowd of college boys came in. At least he thought they were from the college. All wore long hair, unwashed, and in one case, braided. There were beards, coarse and dirty clothing, and footgear of a sort he had not seen before. No one wore jeans and though there were wristbands and neckbands in plenty – gold, by the look of it – he saw none of the bizarre face piercings he had observed in the earlier crowd.

  These, too, after a whispered parley with the ticket seller, disappeared. They, he concluded, would probably enjoy the mummy’s return. A few more people came late – to his annoyance, his watch seemed to have stopped – a down and outer in a very out of date suit, two youngsters in costume with pantaloons and swords, a veiled lady who glanced behind her furtively as she spoke rapidly in a foreign language to the ticket taker. It was a parade, the like of which, he had never imagined could occur in his city – or anywhere else except New York, perhaps, or LA.

  During a lull in business, the ticket seller glanced over at him again, his smile more inviting, one crooked hand beckoning slightly. Reluctantly and rather stiffly, the gentleman rose. “Good evening,” the gentleman said. “I am afraid I did not enjoy the movie. I am waiting for my friends.”

  He wondered why it was he felt he must explain himself. But th
e ticket seller seemed sympathetic. “I can understand that,” he said and his voice was smooth and husky at the same time. “Perhaps you would like a refund?”

  The gentleman was startled, but he did not show it. “As a matter of fact, I would,” he admitted. “The Mummy was pretty good, but this --”

  “Ah yes.” The ticket seller chuckled. “The first movie reminded you of your youth.”

  The gentleman did not quite answer this. “It was good, clean fun,” he said.

  “I’d imagine,” the ticket seller said, as he handed over the refund, “you’d like to go back to the days of double features. Boris Karloff in his prime. Bela Lugosi.”

  The gentleman took out his wallet, accepted the bills. “One realizes that time and society change,” he said hesitantly. “But it seems to me we have lost more than we have gained.”

  “People are more shallow?” the ticket seller suggested. “More coarse?”

  “That, certainly.”

  “This world,” the other man said dreamily, his eyes focused somewhere above an unspeakably garish poster, “is a very interesting place. There is more than meets the eye – more than men know.”

  “One hopes so.”

  Again that chuckle. “I wasn’t speaking metaphysically,” the ticket seller said. “I was speaking quite prosaically. Your friends came to be entertained – and we do not let them down. But there is more to life than entertainment.”

  “You could hardly offer a philosophical lecture at a movie theater.”

  The ticket seller leaned back, showing that there was indeed a cruel twist to his spine. “No, that would be expecting too much. But there are dreams and there are dreams. Tawdry ones, serious ones – and there are different levels of satisfaction.”

  The gentleman nodded. “That couple – the ones in evening clothes,” he said. “What movie were they going to see?”

  “Oh, I am afraid their dreams were of the tawdry sort.” The old man shifted in his seat, a moment’s physical pain drawing up the corners of his mouth in a brief, sardonic grin. “She, you know, is married to someone else. Someone who would have a great deal to say about this night’s work -- if he knew.”

  “They spoke French.”

  The ticket seller nodded.

  “Those college boys?”

  “They were not college boys. They were not boys at all. They were – explorers, you might say.”

  At this, the gentleman raised his eyes – for he was a very intelligent man – and looked square into those of the ticket seller. “I see,” he said.

  “And the others – all have needs. Needs that go beyond what a theater can ordinarily offer. Low desires, higher ones – what you might call aspirations, though true aspirations are satisfied elsewhere – even plain curiosity. It is the hour,” the other man added, smiling his unsettling smile, “when dreams come true.”

  The gentleman looked at his watch. “I see,” he said again. The hands had not moved -- it was still ten o'clock.

  The ticket seller waited. There was no hurry.

  “And what,” the gentleman asked, “is the cost of a ticket?”

  “Not so very much. Something you will not miss. Something you never asked to have and will soon forget.”

  The gentleman gazed at the counter, thinking of his father and his mother. Of Saturday matinees, of well-known streets and shops and friends. Of a world, frightening enough, he supposed, but familiar and safe for all that. Of landmarks of the soul –

  Of choices that might have been.

  The ticket seller moved slightly, making a small noise as he eased himself in the chair.

  “They all paid?” the gentleman asked. But he was thinking of the world he had known and the world that was now. What had gone wrong? Was it merely that he had grown older? Had he failed somehow to adjust, to fit in? Or, and this was more disturbing still, had he by his very careless happiness in the past failed those who were born after him? He had never married. He had no children of his own. But were not these youngsters, these wasters of time and mind and – and of heart and soul – were these not his children by the very fact that they inhabited his world and had come after him?

  “Yes,” the ticket seller said, and he was no longer smiling, “they all paid. It isn’t much.”

  “And when I went into the movie,” the gentleman asked, “it wouldn’t be the same movie? It wouldn’t be a movie at all?”

  The ticket seller nodded. “It would be as it should have been. As you remember and desire.”

  “As I desire?”

  “Precisely. You might have a very happy life.”

  “I might use my youth with an eye to the future? Might prepare myself better to serve these who suffer the results of my generation’s negligence and folly?”

  The ticket seller frowned. “You needn’t think of the future at all,” he said. “You could be happy.”

  The gentleman straightened himself, put away his wallet. “Thank you for the refund,” he said. He glanced at his watch. It was ten o’clock and the ticket seller was closing his booth.

  The gentleman walked over to a bench and sat down. Around him, the present glared and flashed in all its pathos. In a while, his friends would emerge, dazzled a bit, probably criticizing the movie, but not sorry to have spent their evening here. Something in them would have been refreshed even by this poor effort at childish fun.

  He, too, was refreshed. Life was, as the ticket seller had said, far greater than men knew. Yet just as certainly there was more to life than that poor, crippled creature could comprehend.

  But here, the gentleman considered, he misjudged. He looked somberly at the empty booth. Would not an angel, even fallen, know about eternity.

  Accidental Undeath

  By Karina L. Fabian

  “Oh, God, please, please don’t die!”

  I held her broken body in my arms and tried desperately to remember first aid, but I couldn’t seem to get past “check for breathing.” She was breathing, sort of: ragged breaths interrupted by bloody coughing. The middle of the night, on this damn dark highway, there was no help for miles around. A part of my mind kept saying I should go back to my rig, get on the CB, call for help, but the rest of me was frozen, caught up in a myriad of emotions: panic, guilt, fear, that bizarre hunger-lust as I smelled her blood.

  Even as I cried and begged her to live, I could feel my canines growing.

  I hated being a vampire!

  It was a moonless summer night like this one, almost five years ago. A vampire with a sick sense of humor heard a Michael Longcor song about a “Truck Driving Vampire” and thought it’d be cute to fly into my cab and latch onto my jugular. I keep a stake under the seat in case I run into her again.

  Still, after five years, you start to adjust, you know? Even try to find some fun in your nosferatu abilities. That’s what I’d been doing, drivin’ my overnight run on a lampless highway, headlights off, trusting to my heightened night vision and singing “Midnight Cowboy.” The song had ended, I’d looked down to grab a new CD, when all-of-a-sudden I heard a scream and squeal of brakes and my rig did a horrible sideways lurch. I hit the brakes—too late. I heard glass breaking and metal screaming. Metal, but not human anymore.

  I shoved open my door—I was fine, thanks to my vampire state—and ran around to the other side. I saw a Mustang Convertible half-shoved under my rig. I’d already drug it half a block before my truck skidded to a halt. I found the driver, a pretty little thing, draped over her dashboard, no seatbelt. God only knows why she hadn’t flown through the windshield and smashed into the trailer.

  Had she even see me? I looked at my black cab and trailer. Of course she hadn’t seen me. I cursed the darkness and my own stupidity.

  Like some kind of idiot, I brushed back her blond hair, dabbed at the bleeding cuts on her face.

  I had cleared away the glass--my cuts were already healing--and had pulled her out, only remembering afterwards that you’re not supposed to do that. Now she lay, rag-dol
l limp, in my arms, blood dribbling from her lips. That happened on those late-night war movies when someone punctured a lung. Did she puncture a lung? Did I do that pulling her out? Or did it happen when she smashed into me?

  Why did it have to smell so good?

  She looked so young, maybe 17. What was she doing out here at this time of night?

  All alone, so young, her blood so fresh—

  I was getting dizzy, kind of drunk with shock and desire. It wasn’t like the kind of desire you surmise from those Dracula movies. It was more like waving a steak at a wild animal. You know, more feral.

  Feral. That was the word she used when she’d tried to explain turning to me.

  “Don’t believe all the folklore about vampires,” she’d said as we sat drinking in some sleazy bar on the bad side of New Orleans. It was an hour or so after she’d bitten me, in bat form, for the first time. I’d come to with my head on the steering wheel, and my cab wrapped around some huge old tree. Naturally, the trooper didn’t believe my story, thought I was DUI. As I pulled out my wallet to give him my license, this note dropped out, just a picture of a bat, the words “Questions? Meet me at,” and an address. So there I was drinking white wine—she refused to let me have a beer—with this striking lady dressed in black, with white lace, and wearing heavy dark make-up. Yeah, it’s a cliché, but she seemed to go for that stuff.

  “Some of it is true,” she’d remarked as she took a sip of wine. She was being all conversational. Me, I was humoring her, hoping she’d let something slip that I could use to sue her for repairs to my rig. I thought she was a crazy Goth. I had no idea what I was up against.

  She continued, “The aversion to sunlight, the budding canines… You’ll find out as time goes on. The blood, well, it’s like alcohol. There is fine champagne, and there is”--she curled her lip--“beer. You would probably be satisfied with eating your hamburgers blood rare.”

  She’d been right, too. Until now. Hunger was starting to win over panic as I fought to remember what my too-long-ago Red Cross class had said about internal bleeding. Get help. I had to get help. But who?