Page 13 of My Road Trip with a Vampire: Season One

“Look.”

I see it now, lurking a couple of yards behind the parked car. The figure is blurry, its white outline stretching out in jagged angles that look something like joints and limbs moving from a heap of frothy fabric. It creeps forward in a weird crawling motion.

“What the—” I tense back. “Never seen that before,” I whisper to Dennis. He’s completely still beside me, the muscles below his ear twitching.

“Shh,” he says. “We’re not alone.”

That’s pretty obvious.

There’s the sound of a car door opening, and a teenage boy slides out from the backseat, his hair all messed up. He looks around, slamming the door behind him.

The figure steps forward, its limbs snapping in a disjointed movement. My heart jumps to my throat. Its presence is strong.

“Stop,” I call out and clap a hand over my mouth. The boy turns to look at me, his mouth dropping wide open with shocked embarrassment. The ghost snaps its neck in my direction, tilting its head in an unnatural stance.

I can make out its features more clearly now—the sharp-pointed chin, the gangly limbs. The poofy fabric of a retro dress. A prom dress.

A girl dressed for the prom. I remember the fragment of a tale, one of the many origins of the Suscon Screamer.A car crash.No.A fall from the old bridge.There was no proof, nothing to tie the different explanations to a real event.

The ghost vanishes. I blink my eyes several times.

“She’s gone,” I say.

“She?” Dennis asks. “I couldn’t see it well enough.”

“Mhmm.”

I’m thoroughly creeped out to be witnessing one of the scary stories from my childhood. It adds an extra element of fear to the mix.

The teen runs his hands over his mop of blond hair, looking confused or stoned.

“What are you two doing over there?” he asks, squinting at us. Definitely stoned.

“Same thing you are,” Dennis says smoothly. “We’re out for a nice fall evening. Trying to see if I can get my girl here nice and scared.” He tosses the boy a wink. Cheesy. But I remember he’s super old, and old men are allowed to be cheesy.

The boy grins.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I ask, and he looks around again.

“Umm. I’m not sure. Think she got scared and ran off.”

“She saw something?” Dennis cocks an eyebrow. The light of the moon makes the angles of his face seem sharper.

“I guess. Yeah. She’s just imagining things,” he says and starts making his way back toward his car.

“Aren’t you going to wait for her?” I ask.

He shrugs.

“She doesn’t live far. She can walk.”

Dennis starts to step down from the small hill. He rolls his neck side to side. There’s a strange energy around him. Maybe it’s the aura of death. I think I’d sense it even if he hadn’t told me that he’s a vampire.

“Young man. You can’t just leave your friends out here alone at night. That’s dangerous.”

The boy jerks his head back, a puzzled smirk on his face.

Dennis moves closer. I’m getting nervous. Being able to talk to the dead comes with an intrinsic fear of someone finding out about the veil and the spirits that slip through it. It’s a feeling that something terrible will happen if you accidentally spill the secret.