Attack of the Vampire Weenies (4 page)

If you gathered the ten best-looking movie stars on the planet and squished all their good looks into one person, that person would look ugly next to the visitor at the door.

All the girls acted like they were about to faint. The man—I mean, the vampire—spoke.

“Good evening.” He put his hand on his chest and bowed. “Count Vranski asks permission to enter this house. Who gives it?”

“You won't drink our blood, will you?” Tammy asked.

He smiled at her, and she let out a little whimper. “I would never dream of doing that,” he said. Then he repeated the question. “Who gives Count Vranski permission to enter?”

“I do.” Tammy took a step toward him. “Please come in.”

“With pleasure.” He moved into the room.

I couldn't believe how handsome he was. But he was still a vampire, and I was still going to save the day. Even if I was wrong about how he should look, I knew I was right about the rest of it. He'd go for blood, soon. And I'd be the hero.

Downstairs, all the kids had gathered around him. “So,” he said, “you are not afraid of vampires?”

“We
are
vampires,” Dalton said. “All of us.”

“Perhaps some of you will be exactly what you think you are, soon,” Count Vranski said. He stared at Tammy, locking his eyes on to her neck.

It was hero time. I leaped down the stairs, raced over to the picture of Grandma, and knocked it off the wall, revealing the first cross.

Then I ran to the other wall and pulled down the calendar.

“Trapped!” I shouted, reaching into my pocket for the holy water.

Instead of cringing or flinching, Count Vranski sighed and walked toward me. “You've been reading too many comic books, young man,” he said.

“Back!” I shouted, holding up the bottle of holy water.

He plucked the bottle from my hand, unscrewed the cap, and drank the water.

“Ah, refreshing,” he said. Then he walked over to the wall, took down the first cross, and slipped it into his pocket.

“You can't touch that!”

He answered me by pointing to the empty spot on the wall, then patting his pocket.

All the myths couldn't be wrong. I reached under the couch and grabbed the garlic. By then, he'd taken down the second cross.

I pulled back the lid and thrust the container at him.

He wrinkled his nose. “Pungent. It would make a good marinara sauce.” Then he grabbed the container away from me. “We don't want to stink up this nice party.”

I followed him into the kitchen. He dumped the garlic in the sink and ran it through the garbage disposal.

“Anything else you want to thrust at me?” he asked as he headed back toward the living room.

“No…” I'd lost. I felt like
GAME OVER
was flashing above my head in giant red letters. “That was everything I had.” I couldn't believe my stupid sister and her vampire weenie wannabe friends were right.

“No stakes?”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. They're under the couch.”

He reached down and pulled out the stakes. “That's it?” he asked.

“Yup.” I glanced at Tammy. I really didn't like her expression.

“Cheer up,” Count Vranski said. “Pretty soon, you won't even care about what these people think.”

I turned away. Then I spun back. “Wait!”

Count Vranski looked at me but didn't say anything.

“I'm not wrong. There's another explanation why none of this worked on you.” I pointed at him. “You're not a vampire!”

He shrugged. “I never said I was.”

“Sure you did. When you came to the door. You said, ‘Count Vranski asks permission to enter this house.'”

“And he does.” He stared at me like he was waiting for me to figure something out.

My jaw dropped as the truth sank in. He'd never said he was Count Vranski. I looked past him. None of the kids had a clue. They were looking at me with the mocking expressions big kids always have when they think someone did something childish.

“They're ready for you,” the man said.

He spoke quietly, but I knew the person he was talking to could hear him no matter how softly he whispered.

I spun toward the wall and reached out, forgetting for an instant that the cross was gone. Both of them were gone. So was the holy water and the garlic. I had no stakes to thrust at undead hearts.

The door flew open so hard, it shattered against the inside wall.

Someone old and evil and horribly ugly stepped into the house. His skin was dead white. His teeth were the dull brown color of old blood. A smell of rotten flesh and unwashed clothing drifted from him. White flecks wriggled in his hair and fell to his shoulders. Maggots.

He slithered over to Tammy. “Thank you for the invitation. I brought my friends.”

Tammy screamed. So did all her vampire wannabe friends. They tried to run out of the room, but more vampires burst in through the windows. I heard glass shattering all over the house. I guess once one of them was inside, he could invite the rest.

Count Vranski glanced over at the good-looking guy who'd tricked us. “Well done, Samuel,” he said. “You may leave now. I know you need lots of sleep to help you keep those good looks.”

“Yes, master,” the man said. He bowed. Then he turned to me. “I told you this wouldn't matter for long. Enjoy the party.”

He slipped out the door. I tried to escape, but someone grabbed me. A horrible face thrust toward my neck. The smell made me so sick, I hardly felt the bite.

He locked me in his grip as he started to drain my blood.

“I was right,” I gasped.

Somehow, that didn't seem important anymore.

 

RAPT PUNZEL

A
while ago—however
long it actually was doesn't really matter—a poor couple lived in a shack in the woods. They had enough money for a television, but they couldn't afford cable. So they settled for watching the few shows they could catch on broadcast. When the wife learned she was going to have a baby, she got restless.

“Look there,” she said, pointing to the high walls that surrounded the witch's home not far from their shack. “She has satellite TV. And all we have is broadcast.”

“I'll fix that,” her husband said. He waited until night, then took his tools and sneaked over to the satellite dish. He spliced a second cable into the line and ran it to his shack.

“Now we can watch everything,” the husband said.

“Isn't that stealing?” the wife asked.

“We're not hurting anyone,” the husband said.

And so they settled down on the couch and watched the wonderful abundance of available satellite programming while they waited for their daughter to be born. From the instant the baby girl, who they named Punzel, set eyes on the television, she was mesmerized. She spent every waking moment staring at the screen, totally rapt. So did her parents. At night, in her cradle, she fell asleep to the comforting glow of the screen and the lilting melody of talk show theme songs.

One evening, as the husband and wife sat on their couch, admiring their new baby and watching an ancient rerun of
Delaware Shore,
they heard a knock at their door.

It was the witch. She wasn't smiling.

“I didn't do it!” the husband shouted. As his scream bounced back at him from the walls of the shack, he realized he should have waited until he was accused of something before he started shouting denials.

“You stole my signal,” the witch said as she strode over to the crib. “And now I shall steal your daughter. You're lucky I don't turn you into a newt. Or a minnow.” The witch snatched the infant from her cradle and left.

She locked Punzel in a high tower with no exit except a small window. Punzel didn't care. There was a TV in the tower. The witch got three hundred channels. And it was a big TV. Really, really enormous.

Each day, Punzel watched her favorite programs and surfed the channels in search of new shows. Each evening, the witch flew up to the small window and visited Punzel. Together, they would watch reality shows and make fun of the contestants.

Years passed. Punzel grew into a young lady. And her hair grew long and full. The witch never cut it. Punzel never asked for it to be cut. She was happy watching TV, enrapt by the images.

One day, a prince heard a rumor of a fair maiden trapped by a witch in a tower. He traveled through the woods until he found her.

“Punzel!” he called.

“Shhh!
Supermodel Showdown
is on,” she said, not even looking over her shoulder. She'd seen this episode seven times, but she kept hoping the ending would change and the mean model would win. So far, no luck.

The prince wasn't easily dissuaded. He'd fought dragons and bested ogres. “Punzel, rapt Punzel, let down your hair,” he called, “so I may climb the golden stair.”

His timing was perfect. A commercial for a miracle hair-growth formula had just come on. Punzel certainly didn't need that. And she felt it would be nice to have some company other than the witch for a change. She grabbed an armful of her hair, which by now filled nearly half the room, and tossed it out the window.

The prince, watching from below as the hair cascaded from the window, was the first to suspect this may have been a bad suggestion on his part.

Had Punzel ever ventured into channels 245 through 267, where the science shows were stuck, she might have had a clue, herself, of the huge mistake she'd just made. But as much as she knew about fashion, celebrities, and cakes, she was clueless about the basic laws of motion, force, and acceleration.

Alas, ignorance of the laws of science does not protect you from them. Her hair, all eighty pounds of it, along with another ten or twelve pounds of accumulated dust and debris, fell from the window until it was yanked to a stop, by her thick head. Which, unfortunately, was perched on top of her less-thick neck. Which, even more unfortunately, having been weakened by years of motionless viewing and a diet lacking in sufficient calcium, snapped like a stale bread stick.

“Punzel?” the prince called after the hair had stopped falling. “Are you hurt?” He didn't hold out much hope for an answer. Even from far below rapt Punzel's window, the sound of the snap was clear and loud enough to make him wince.

The prince left. The TV kept playing, even though nobody was watching it anymore. It didn't care.

 

IN ONE EAR

We get to listen
to music during study hall, which is pretty cool. I have an MP3 player. So do most of the kids. For the whole period, we're all bobbing and bouncing and feeling the music. It's fun—you can tell who's listening to a fast song by the way he moves.

There was a new kid, Everet Meeps, who's really weird. He listened to music, like the rest of us, but he took his earphones out every five minutes or so. I didn't really pay much attention to him at first, but after a while, I couldn't help noticing him. He'd be listening to his player and studying, but then he'd put down his pencil, yank the earbuds out of his ears, and put them down on his desk. Then, a minute or two later, he'd put them back in.

It started to drive me crazy. It was like watching Taniqua Algernon eat her sandwich at lunch. She'd take these tiny nibbles, going slowly around the whole thing. She never finished before the bell rang. It was almost as bad as waiting for Rolando Thrump to finish a sentence. He just kept getting distracted and changing the subject.

There was nothing I could do about Taniqua or Rolando, but I could at least find out what was up with Everet. At the end of study hall, I walked over, pointed to the earphones, which were on his desk, and said, “They uncomfortable?”

He shook his head. “Nope. They're the best.” As he said that, he looked away, like he'd spilled some sort of secret.

“Then why do you keep taking them out?”

He shrugged. “No reason. Just a habit.” He snatched the earphones up, stuffed them in his pants pocket, and walked away.

That was when I promised myself I'd get my hands on his earphones and check them out.

It wasn't easy. He kept them in his pocket. But he took his pants off for gym class. We all did, since we had to wear gym shorts.

There was no way I could sneak off the field during class. Mr. Dempsey watched us too closely for that. But there was a way I could get to Everet's locker without sneaking. We were playing touch football. He was on the other team. I waited until we were both diving for a ball. I put my head down, timing it just right, so my head rammed him in the chin.

Perfect.

My head throbbed a bit. But Everet was knocked off his feet. His mouth hung open, and his eyes looked sort of fuzzy. As I'd hoped, the top of my head was harder than his chin.

“I'll get the nurse,” I said. I dashed for the gym door before anyone could stop me. I got the nurse, just like I'd promised. But I stopped in the locker room on the way to her office.

I'd watched Everet and learned his combination. People aren't very careful about stuff like that. It was easy enough to grab the earbuds.

We had gym last period. As soon as we got out, I went behind the school and took the earbuds from my pocket. They looked pretty normal, except the tips were green instead of white. I checked to make sure they were clean. No earwax or any kind of gunk. They looked fine. The plastic felt soft and sort of warm.

I put them in, then plugged the other end into my MP3 player. Everet was right—they were comfortable. I hit the
ON
button.

Awesome. The music felt like it was being played live from all around me. I was bobbing in a warm ocean of sound. These earbuds were better than anything I'd ever tried. They must have cost a fortune.

I slid down against the wall of the school and sat on the grass. The music played. I wondered why Everet kept taking the earbuds out when he listened. Maybe he had sensitive ears or something.