The Vampire Club (5 page)

“
So we must perform our act in secrecy. No one can know our true purpose. This community is too closely knit—if one person finds something out, the whole town would know soon enough—so that means we keep Granddaddy Grandmaster and the others in the dark. If word ever escaped our lips of what we are up to, we are in a heap of trouble, and that’s the end of the Vampire Club.”

Since the cemetery was located on the road and wasn’t more than half a mile away, we didn’t need any transportation. A convoy of Broncos might have drawn unwanted attention. We would slip out of the house and walk the short distance. All we would bring were flashlights, shovels, and a special satchel that contained my vampire resuscitation kit.

As the group headed out of my room, lugging their chairs with them, I pulled Professor L aside. You’d think a sixty-year-old man hanging out with college kids was a little creepy, but he was a true researcher, and what he lacked in youthful energy, he made up for in knowledge. The club couldn’t have functioned without him. Plus, he knew how to get grants.

Once alone, I asked him, “So what’s your impression so far?”

“
We are in some serious shit.”

That didn’t sound very academic. “Serious shit?”

“
Serious shit. Deep doo-doo. Catastrophic ca-ca. Bottomless—”

“
I get the point. Might I ask why?”

“
I have been a vampire lover long before Anne Rice,
Twilight
, and the
True Blood
series, and I have studied many a myth on the vampire. But there is one myth that seems far more legendary than the rest. It is so mythical I hardly know what I’m talking about, and I
always
know what I am talking about. It’s as if, well, let me put it this way: we all have five senses, but what if someone had another sense and he was able to discern future events? What if this was an actual sense, like seeing, touching, urinating—”

“
Not a sense.”

“
Should be. Anyway, do you know what I’m getting at?”

“
I think so,” I said. “Sort of like a sixth sense.”

“
Exactly,” he burst out.

“
An interesting concept. Like, half the world has seen that movie.” Yes, there’s more to life than vampires, but not a whole lot.

“
This sense, this hypothetical sixth sense, is setting off warning bells in my head louder than any of that rapping you kids listen to. Your Kid Rock and Lady Gaga and—hey, isn’t Gaga another name for doo-doo?”

“
Professor, tell me about the legend,” I said, before he got going again. He was as bad as Perch. “What is it you read or heard whispered?”

“
It’s a clan, Andy, the VVV. They watch over all vampire graves. The members of VVV have sworn their very lives to guard the graves, to make sure no vampires walk the earth again. I am beginning to suspect that my ancestor Ed Royce was part of this very secret society.”

I’d read a thousand vampire websites, but I had yet to come across this one. “What does VVV stand for?”

“
Vu Vlux Vlad.”

“
Of course.”

Chapter Nine

Mustering forth all my logic and deductive skills, I said to Professor L, “And you think Dial Toen and his relatives are part of this VVV?”

“
You must remember, my student,” said Professor L. “The existence of the VVV has never been proven. Only whispers passed through the ages have kept the rumor alive.”

“
But, but...” I seemed to be at a loss for words. That was a first.

“
Andy, I want you to think back to our vampire-sighting charts. Has not the number of sightings dropped over the last century?”

“
Distinctively. Most troubling.”

“
Do you have any explanations for it?”

“
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, about a thousand vampires on average were reported each year. Like with UFOs, some reliable sources have spoken up, but most were hoaxes, pranks, flat-out lies, or devices for cheap fame. Still, the sightings were reported and vampires were very active in those days, or rather nights.

“
During the twentieth century, the sightings began to dwindle, actually accelerating a trend that started in the mid-nineteenth century when reports began dropping ever so slightly. But nothing like the twentieth century.”

It was definitely the most curious fact in our vampire studies. We had all researched and pondered the drop in sightings. Our most obvious—and horrifying—answer was they were dying or disappearing, and with it our chances of ever encountering one in the flesh.

I continued. “During the first half of the twentieth century the number of sightings dropped from a thousand a year to half that, and after World War II, less than a hundred.

“
So, by result of our extensive research, we have learned that vampire sightings have dropped ninety percent. Rather significant, and most disheartening.”

“
Conclusions,” insisted Professor L, always the teacher. “Your conclusions, man!”

“
They’ve been attacked somehow, either from the inside where they’ve killed each other off—however that could be done—or from the outside where humans have managed to hunt them down. Professor, we’ve gone through this hundreds of times, because this is the main focus of our studies: where have all the vampires gone?”

“
I know, Andy. But don’t you see, here in this place, we are close to the answer? I feel it, like this original sixth sense you’ve coined. The fact is, as we’ve stated many times in class and the club, over the past decade vampires have went the way of the Do-Do. Or doo-doo. Gaga.”

“
VVV,” I said, trying to keep him on track.

“
Now, as I’ve stated, very few people have even heard of the VVV. I, myself, believed it to be such a fantastic rumor that I buried it away with all the other falsehoods on vampires. But I see now, in the situation we’ve found ourselves in, if the truth be known, we might very well be in the midst of the VVV.”

“
Cool,” I said. I could hardly wait to tell Janice, preferably alone. “That means we’re close to the truth.”

“
Now, Andy, there is no known way to kill a vampire, correct?”

“
Correct,” I said. “There was a recorded event in Romania, as we in the club all know, of an evil baron dismembering a vampire, scattering and burying his vampire parts across the country. But, as the tale goes, the vampire’s spirit is forever connected to the mortal body. So, still connected by the umbilical that would forever claim its soul, the vampire’s soul reached out like an expanding piece of melted taffy to the birds above, commanding their simple consciousness to seek his body parts and bring them to him, starting with the largest part, which I believe was most of his torso. The birds, then, sought out his scattered body and brought back the pieces. And, like a bloody jigsaw puzzle, reassembled the vampire.

“
The vampire, and rightly so, went on to ravage the countryside, the usual stuff, you know, killing women and children. Now, vampires are supposed to have many abilities, and one of them is the ability to command animals—not turn into animals, for we have discovered that is false. The vampire’s soul, which is attached forever to the body, has no right according to natural laws to stay in that body; for the vampire’s body is dead, yet somehow it stays alive, and we, in the club, think it’s all in the blood. I’m getting off the topic, as interesting as this all is. Quite simply, the vampire’s soul can reach beyond its dead body, like an out-of-body experience, but it is forever attached to the body. In other words, no matter what you do to vampires, they will not die, and will eventually come back as pissed as ever.”

“
What about burning?”

“
Simple, the flesh can’t catch fire, as is told and retold in many accounts.”

“
So,” said Professor L, “can we rule out the reason of the decline in vampires is due to death?”

“
Perhaps. But, as we’ve discussed and argued about in class a hundred times, vampires might be able to kill vampires. It is simply not known, since we can’t find any of the living dead to ask them.”

“
So the question remains, where in the hell are all the vampires?”

“
God only knows, Professor.” He was breaking my heart. It was sort of like being constantly reminded that there was no Santa.

“
But we know, with reasonable certainty, that there is one not more than half a mile away, buried.”

My mental gears grunted as they were once again put into use. The professor was on to something.

“
And as we also know, there is a simple way to incapacitate a vampire—the silver bullet.” The professor walked about my room. He knocked over my chair, tripped, and fell on my bed, flat on his face. I had a feeling he wasn’t thinking too much about navigation. “Lifffen tifff thifith.”

“
Roll over, professor.”

“
Listen to this. What if the majority of vampires have been shot with silver bullets? What if
all
the vampires have been shot with silver bullets?” He was practically shouting, and for some reason—maybe a sixth sense—I didn’t want Grandmaster’s clan to hear.

“
Calm down, Professor.”

“
That must be it,” he said, lowering his voice, but his eyes stayed as bright as red sparks in a vampire’s coffin.

“
But who would do this? The VVV?”

“
To wipe out all the vampires of the world would take an extensive and wide-reaching organization,” he said. “They would have to be powerful and organized, much like the CIA or the Tea Party or the Screen Actors Guild.”

Sickening dread washed over me like a shower spouting mud. “Why, Professor L? Why?”

“
Andy, as you know, there are some in this world that do not see vampires as you and I do. They do not see their beauty, their gifts, their kick-ass in-your-face powers. Andy, some fear them.”

I gasped. I knew a lot of people didn’t agree with me whenever I discussed vampires with them. Humor was the most common reaction. But fear?

“
Andy, though it has never been documented, I believe there is a VVV out there, or some form of it. I believe they’ve feared and hated vampires to the point of extermination.”

“
But they can’t kill them,” I reminded myself loudly.

“
No, but a silver bullet is just as effective. Out of sight, out of mind.”

“
But tonight.” I stopped. There was a confused, wild panic in my eyes. I noticed it when I glanced in the mirror to check my hair.
Still looking good. Janice, eat your heart out
.

“
Tonight,” I continued, “tonight, the most glorious night of my life, we will hopefully uncover a vampire. No CIA, VVV, right-to-life, or right-to-death assholes are going to stop us.”

“
Andy,” said Professor L quietly. “Look around you.”

I did. My head jerked around like a bird’s. I was in a nice room, inside a nice mansion full of Dial’s nice but big relatives, who just happened to be located half a mile from the nice vampire.

“
This doesn’t look good,” I said.

Professor L shook his wizened head. “No, it doesn’t.”

“
Guess I should have kept my voice down.”

Chapter Ten

“
So what are we going to do?” I asked.

“
Before we can decide what we’re going to do, we need to know what they’re going to do.”

“
Oh.”

“
We need some more information,” said Professor L, rubbing his gray beard as if he was summoning a genie from Aladdin’s Lamp.

I was sort of new to this detective, reconnaissance stuff, so I asked, “What kind of info?”

“
Since Dial has no doubt told them everything we’ve discussed, they know we plan to dig up the vampire tonight. They know we are not here to admire the scenery and follow in the footsteps of our vampire. That we can be sure, but what we don’t know is what they plan to do about it. Will they be waiting for us with the cops and nail us for grave-robbing, or perhaps dispose of us in a deadly fashion? We need to know. We can’t walk out there blind.”

“
Perhaps we shouldn’t even go.” Yes, those were my words and I was shocked to hear my rather deep baritone utter them. Thank God Janice wasn’t in the room.

“
You know as well as I do that we can never settle for that. Remember this, Andy: they desire to be rid of vampires as much as we desire to find them—opposing forces. We, however, are far from defeated.”

“
They’ve got the advantage, Professor. They’re walking Marvel Comic supervillains. They’re ripped and cut and chiseled. They were recruited, no doubt, and maybe even bred to champion their cause.”

The professor and I both gazed at the bed, perhaps suffering disturbing images of those muscular demigods engaging in unseemly acts of reproduction for the good of the cause. Well, maybe
he
did. I was above all that.

“
And we are weak physically, professor.” I could bench my weight in wet laundry, but Juan was just a regular, pizza-loving college kid. Buddy was a jock but was an offensive lineman, slow and rather clumsy. The professor definitely needed more vegetables and sunshine. Janice was in great shape—I mean,
really
great shape—but she was rather small for her size.