Avenging Autumn: Seasons Change Book 1 of 4 (10 page)

Benny quickly moved to the other side of the
room, wanting nothing more than to be through with the task at hand
and to be out of the strange house. He moved to the first casket,
flung the lid up, and rammed a stake into the vampire’s heart. Not
waiting for the thing to stop screaming he immediately moved to the
next one. Again the kill was quick, and Benny walked to the last
coffin while the screaming from the previous two continued. He tore
the lid off the last box, but stopped in his tracks.

“
What’s wrong?” Frank asked, once
the screams had stopped.

Benny’s voice came from far away, as if his
mind was somewhere else completely. “This guy is an art critic; he
attended a few of my showings. He was always a big suppor-ter of my
art.”

“
You never saw him in daylight
though, did you?” The Old Man returned.

“
No,” Benny replied, as he brought
the point of another stake to rest on the man’s chest, “Now that
you men-tion it, I didn’t.”

Much to Benny’s surprise, the vampire smiled
at him and tears spilled from his eyes, as if he had been waiting
cen-turies for this moment to come. The stake plunged into it’s
blackened target, and though the creature tensed slightly, there
wasn’t so much as a whimper to be heard from his smiling
mouth.

So it came that five of the six vampires were
dead.

Benny turned and looked at the others. “All
that re-mains now is; finding Odin Sway.”

8. The Graveyard and the Cornfield

The ride home from the concert was full of the
usual gripes and curses from Frank, after making the long trip to
Indianapolis to pick up the four concert goers.

“
I don’t know why you have to give
all of these as-sholes your money anyway,” the Old Man barked. “You
al-ready have the CD full of all of their music, what’s the
differ-ence if you see them live.”

No one ever answered these questions, it was
better to stay quiet and let him rant, and rant he did, all the way
back to Triloville.

Once Marvin, Jack and Autumn were dropped off
at their respective homes, Benny found himself alone in the car
with his father as they returned to Frank’s house, where Benny was
staying until he returned to school.

Benny stared at the Old Man’s face for a long
mo-ment, highlighted only by the ghostly glow of the dashboard
lights, and tried hard to decide if he could confide in him without
being perceived as being crazy.

“
Something on your mind?” Frank
said.

Benny swallowed hard and then spoke, “I saw
some-thing tonight. Something strange that I’m not sure was
entirely real.”

“
What did you see?”

Benny recounted his trip to the dark bathroom.
When he had finished, Frank looked at him sternly and said; “Did
you drop acid tonight?”

“
Benny shook his head, “Of course
not, I’ve never done that shit.”

“
In that case you probably did see
this creature.”

This was the last thing Benny expected to hear
from his father.

Frank saw the confused look on his son’s face
and decided to elaborate. “During my time in the military and even
in this business, I have seen some strange shit, things that I
wouldn’t feel comfortable telling anyone for fear of my sanity
being questioned, so believe me, I know where your coming
from.”

“
What do you think it was I
saw?”

“
I don’t know, Benny, but some
things are better forgotten. If you dwell on this and start talking
about it to other people, it could get back to someone or something
that doesn’t want this secret out. Then you might find yourself a
lifeless lump on a bathroom floor.”

Benny nodded and took his father’s advice to
heart, pushing the entire event to the back of his mind. He would
not think of it again for almost five years.

The old black hearse had just crossed the
border from Indiana into Illinois.

“
We should be able to make it
before sunset,” Frank shouted over the roaring engine, “Omaha is
about eight hours away and it’s just past 11 now.”

Autumn had just finished informing the others
that she could feel Odin’s presence somewhere around Omaha,
Nebraska, presumably holed up someplace dark until the sun went
down.

“
We only have about seven hours
before the sun sets,” Jack reminded the others, “it is October
after all.”

“
I realize that, Jack, but I also
realize, come sun down, we’ll be the target of a whole lot of
vampires. So, we’ll leave it up to Benny,” Frank looked to the back
of the hearse at his other son. “You boys have been on a road trip
with your old man before; you know I can get you there in less than
seven hours.”

Benny looked at his father, knowing he was
right, and traffic should be thin on a Sunday morning. “Alright,
let’s go for it.”

Frank applied pressure to the gas pedal and
the old death cab shot westward where they would ride Interstate 80
in an almost straight line to Omaha.

Turning his attention to the back of the
hearse, Benny began to replenish his belt with wooden stakes.
Autumn had moved some of the arsenal away from the window, and was
now stretched out on her side, using that old army nap sack as a
pillow, staring distantly at the scenery as it flew by. Benny sat
his gear aside and lay down behind her, slipping his arm around her
waist. She closed her eyes, savoring his touch, knowing if she was
able to shed a tear they would be streaming down her face right
now.

“
Are you alright?” he whispered in
her ear.

“
Yes,” she answered, “I just feel
so sorry for the things I’m making you do. The person you’re
becoming is so different from the person you once were.”

“
How do you mean?”

“
You would never have killed anyone
before; you were always such a live and let live type of guy. Back
when we were at IUPUI everyone used to call you a
hippie.”

“
Hippie?” Benny sounded shocked,
“Who called me a hippie?”

“
Kenny Evens, for one.”

“
Would this be the same
belligerent, gun freak, Ken-ny Evens who would beat the crap out of
people when they made fun of his teeth, and committed himself to
the Army when he was sixteen only to be tossed out because he was
even two nutty for them?”

“
Yes,” Autumn replied
sheepishly.

“
That guy made Ted Nugent look like
a hippie.”

Autumn began to giggle, in spite of her
worries.

“
Besides, there is something I’ve
always had that makes me secure enough in my masculinity to not act
like a dominate male, chest beating freak like Kenny
Evens.”

Autumn turned over and looked into his eyes,
fully prepared to hear something extremely romantic. “What’s
that?”

“
A massive cock.”

With that, Autumn began laughing harshly;
letting out pig like snorts no matter how hard she tried to contain
them. When the laughing had finally subsided, Benny began to stroke
her long hair. “Nothing has changed about me, Autumn. I would do
absolutely anything to be with you for the rest of eternity, and
that’s the way I’ve felt since the moment I first met
you.”

She smiled at him and he leaned down and
kissed her lips, and though she probably imagined it, she could
have sworn that kiss made her cold body feel much
warmer.

Jack sat in the passenger’s seat with his head
resting against the window, not really paying any attention to the
brilliantly colored trees that were racing by outside. Instead, his
thoughts were somewhere else. A long forgotten memory buried deep
in his mind, rising to the surface with the startling suddenness of
a bloated body in Lake Michigan.

He was seven years old, maybe eight, and he
had just watched a TV movie with his father, Salem’s Lot if he
remembered correctly. He was lying in bed trying to sleep, but
every time he closed his eyes the bald vampire’s horrible face
would appear floating before his mind’s eye. It didn’t take long
for him to start screaming for his mommy. And in she came, as she
always did, to comfort him. He remembers her sitting there on the
edge of his small bed, rubbing his back, and assuring him that
there were no such things as vampires. It was only a movie, they
were only actors (and not very good ones at that) wearing heavy
makeup and fake teeth.

He remembered feeling so much better with her
there. So much safer. How he wished she was with him on this mad
trip, to rub his back and tell him everything was going to be
alright.

That movie, as well as the multitude of horror
movies he had seen since then, were weighing heavily on his mind.
Mostly because the vast majority of them have something in common.
The supporting cast gets killed off one by one throughout the
course of the movie until the main character and maybe a love
interest are all that‘s left. The situation that he and his family
(what’s left of them anyway) had found themselves in now is feeling
more and more like one of those movies. What are the odds that all
of them would make it through this, considering what they’re up
against.

This is Benny’s story, and he knew it. Ol’
Jack Writeman is nothing but a supporting character, just like the
Old Man, and even Autumn. He had a sinking feeling he was not going
to make it to the end of this story alive. While these thoughts ran
through his mind he fell into an uneasy sleep.

Frank Writeman was used to going long periods
of time without sleep, but now that the adrenaline from breaking
into the vampire house had drained from his body, he felt an
exhaustion he hadn’t felt since his younger days. He wanted nothing
more at that moment than to collapse on a bed and sleep for a good
twelve hours.

That was not an option however, and he was
sure that if they didn’t kill Odin Sway before sundown, there was a
very good possibility they would be dead before dawn. This was
Benny’s best chance of completing his task and after that he would
let things play out as they may.

Now, as they made their way west to Omaha, he
couldn’t help but feel bad for Jack. He regrets ever letting his
oldest boy get involved in this mess. Frank had lived a long life
and didn’t fear death, and though Benny was young, it was well
understood that without Autumn he was practically dead already.
Jack, however, still had things going for him back home. Sure he
hadn’t had much luck with women lately, and Frank knew how much he
hated the job he had inexplicably gotten into, but he had yet to
know the magnificence of real love, and now he most likely never
would.

Hind sight is always twenty/twenty.
Right?

“
Right,” he said aloud.

Jack’s head popped up from its resting place
on the passenger door window. “You say something?”

“
No,” Frank replied, after a slight
hesitation, “go back to sleep, son.”

Jack dropped his head back to the window. A
few seconds later, Frank put his hand in Jacks and held it. Jack
squeezed his father’s hand, and sleep came a little
easier.

There was still about a half an hour of
daylight left when the Writeman hearse pulled into the Auburn
Fields cem-etery, just outside of Omaha city limits.

“
See, I told you we’d make it.”
Frank stated, proudly.

“
Yeah,” Jack glumly returned,
“that’s great, Dad.”

Looking back through the window at Autumn,
Frank asked; “Where exactly do we need to go, pumpkin.”

Autumn felt momentarily stunned by her
father-in-laws use of a nickname he gave her long ago. Though he
had called her pumpkin countless times in the past, this was the
first time he had done so since she had returned from the dead. It
made her feel accepted and at the same time it made her realize how
much she really loved the old man as if he were her own
father.

“
Autumn?” Jack said.

“
Sorry,” she pointed a finger out
the windshield, “up there on that hill, inside the
mausoleum.”

“
Inside a mausoleum,” Jack half
shouted, “Why am I not surprised.”

“
Settle down, Jack,” Benny said
from the back of the hearse, “let’s get up there, we don’t have
much time.”

Frank drove the car up a narrow, paved road
and parked next to the decrepit looking structure. The three men
exited the car and began equipping their gear. Autumn got out of
the car and walked slowly away from the mausoleum. She came to a
stop near an eroded headstone and stood staring blankly toward an
adjacent corn field.

Benny and Jack went to the front of the
mausoleum and began the arduous task of removing the large stone
slab that covered the entrance. After a few moments of struggle,
Benny turned to his father, red faced and out of breath, “Can
you…give us…a hand with this.”

“
Oh, yeah!” the Old Man exclaimed,
“Alright, on the count of three. One, two, three,
heave.”

The three of them pulled on the slab together,
but still had no luck moving it.

After catching his breath Frank said;
“Something isn’t right here, it shouldn’t be this hard to
move.”