The Traveling Vampire Show

Slim studied one of them. Meeting my eyes, she said, “Tickets for tonight’s performance of the Traveling Vampire Show.”

“All right!” Rusty blurted.

Slim and I looked at him. He seemed delighted.

“The tickets, guys. We can still go.”

“Not without Lee,” I said.

“Go where?” Bitsy asked.

Rusty scowled at her. “To the Traveling Vampire Show.”

“What about the drive-in?”

“Screw the drive-in.”

Bitsy glanced hopefully from me to Slim and back to me again. This time, neither of us came to her defense. Her face turned sullen, lower lip bulging out.

Slim set the tickets on the kitchen table. “Guess Lee didn’t switch purses. This one has all the main stuff in it.” She put the billfold back inside. Leaving the tickets on the table, she closed the purse. Then she turned toward me. She looked worried.

“You really think they took her?” I asked.

“It’s a possibility. But maybe Lee just went off without her purse, no big deal. She might’ve gone for a walk, gone on a ride with a friend, whatever, and she’ll turn up before long. I mean, you guys had me kidnapped or God-knows-what this afternoon just because you couldn’t find me for a couple of hours. Lee could be anywhere, perfectly safe, planning to get back here in plenty of time to take us to the show.”

“We’re gonna miss the show if we don’t get going,” Bitsy complained.

“Not that show, you wad. The vampire show.”

Slim pretty much ignored them. “If she’d just gone off, though, she probably would’ve taken her purse and shut the front door. So maybe something happened that made her leave in a big hurry.”

“An emergency,” I said.

Slim nodded. “Maybe she ran out of the house to help someone. Or to get away from someone.”

“Maybe she did get away,” I said.

In my mind, I saw Lee fleeing out the back door of her house, Stryker and his gang in hot pursuit… chasing her with spears as she ran through her yard and down the long embankment toward the river.

What if she didn’t make it?

“Another possibility,” Slim said, “is that someone came into the house and took her away.”

“Stryker?” Rusty asked.

“He’s a likely suspect,” Slim said. “But maybe he isn’t involved at all. Look at what’s happened to us. Like how that car came after us on the way home from the drive-in a few weeks ago. And that weird guy in the sheet on Halloween last year. And all the troubles we’ve had over at Janks Field before today. They had nothing to do with the Vampire Show.”

“Maybe,” Rusty said. “Maybe not.”

“Get real,” I told him.

“Who really knows?” he said, wiggling his eyebrows and trying to sound like Karloff. “Maybe it’s the ghost of Tommy Janks. He’s doing it all… pulling all the strings.”

“Get bent,” Slim said.

“I want to take a look out back,” I said and handed the bow back to Slim. “If someone did come after Lee, maybe she ran off.”

“Out the back door?” Rusty asked, using his normal voice.

“Yeah.” I walked toward it.

“The front door’s the open one,” he reminded me.

“If someone comes in the front door,” I explained, “what you do is run out the back and shut it behind you to slow ’em down….”

“Or maybe so they don’t realize you went out,” Slim added.

“Right,” I said. I stepped up to the back door and opened it. A warm wind blew in against me. I pushed on the screen door.

It stayed shut.

Because its inside hook was fastened.

“Guess she didn’t run out the back,” I admitted.

“So much for that theory,” said Slim.

“She still could’ve gotten away.”

“Maybe she didn’t need to,” Rusty said.

“That’s right,” I said.

“So what do you want to do?” Slim asked me.

I shrugged. I had to do something, but didn’t know what. I felt miserable: confused, helpless, scared.

Even as we stood in the kitchen chatting about theories, Lee might be running for her life with Stryker or someone hot on her tail. Or maybe she’d already been captured. Someone might be taking her farther and farther away. Or torturing her. Or raping her. Or killing her. Or she might be perfectly fine. Maybe she’d walked over to a friend’s house for supper or gone for a stroll to enjoy the wild, windy night.

“I don’t know,” I muttered.

Bitsy raised her hand as if she were in a classroom.

“We know, we know,” Rusty said. “In your brilliant opinion, we should forget about Lee and go to the drive-in.”

“Shows how much you know,” Bitsy said.

“What is it?” Slim asked.

Bitsy frowned and opened her mouth, but no words came out.

“Spit it out,” Rusty said.

“Shut up,” I told him. Then I looked at Bitsy. “Is there something you want to say?”

She glanced around at all of us, then said, “Just that you shouldn’t be so worried about Lee. She just went somewhere, that’s all”

Rusty smirked. “Thanks for the news flash.”

Bitsy scowled at him, then looked at me and said, “Nobody’s after anybody. I mean, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“About what?”