3

About 20 feet away sat a rundown fence made of graying logs and wood posts that were nearly swallowed by weeds. Behind the fence slouched a pale little kid with sunburned cheeks and a blond crewcut. He had on a dirty shirt with yellow, orange and red stripes, and he wore barely-tied hightop tennis shoes. Bony knees stuck out of his oversized shorts, which were cinched tight with an old brown belt.

The kid nodded once. “What up.”

Peter raised a hand and waved tentatively.

“You movin’ in?” the kid asked.

Peter nodded. “Yeah.”

“That your granddad?”

“Yeah.”

The kid shook his head like he pitied Peter. “He’s craaaaazy, man.”

Peter smiled a little. “Yeah, he sure seems like it.”

“Pff, he doesn’t just seem crazy, he is crazy. I watch the windows up there sometimes at night, like, two or three in the morning after the midnight monster marathon is over? Lights all over the place, floating from room to room. Creeeee-py. You wanna piece of gum?”

The kid produced a grubby pack out of his pocket.

What the heck.

Peter walked over and was about to take a piece –

“Sorry if the wrapper’s sweaty, it’s been in my pants,” the kid said.

Ew.

Peter hesitated, then took it anyway.

“Uh, thanks. I’m Peter.”

The kid stuck out his hand through the rails in the fence. “Dill.”

Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Dill?”

The kid glared. “No jokes about pickles. I heard ‘em all, I’m sick of ‘em, I don’t wanna hear ‘em. Got it?”

Peter shook his head. “I wasn’t going to say any pickle jokes.”

Dill relaxed. “Good. How old are you?”

“Nine and a half.”

“Ha! I’m almost ten, my birthday’s in November. I could beat you up.”

Peter looked down at Dill. Peter was half a foot taller and probably twenty pounds heavier.

Yeah, right.

“But don’t worry, I won’t,” Dill reassured him. “I’m just sayin’. But you and me, we could beat up a twenty year-old.”

Peter frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“Nine and a half plus almost ten is…”  Dill paused to count. “Okay, I don’t know what that is, but we could definitely beat up a sixteen year-old, cuz together we’re older.”

“Uh-huh.” Peter nodded, totally bewildered by Dill’s logic.

“So, you ready for school?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. I HATE school. Starts on Monday, though.” Dill looked around the yard like an old man taking stock of his life. “The time, where does it go?”

“It starts on Monday?” Peter asked in shock.

“Yeah.”

“That’s in two days!”

“No duh. I see they taught you the days of the week.”

“School doesn’t start for another two weeks in California!” Peter fumed. Great, he’d moved to a giant shack out in the middle of nowhere, and now they’d stolen two weeks of his summer from him, too.

“That where you’re from?” Dill asked.

“Yeah.”

“And school starts in two weeks there?”

“Yeah.”

“You think we can move there?”

“Uhhh…”

“We should totally move there,” Dill enthused wildly, “and then I bet school doesn’t start for another two weeks in Japan, so then we could move there, and just keep traveling around the world to the next place where school doesn’t start for two weeks, until we wind up back here in the summer.”

Peter squinted at him. “That’s insane.”

“No, man, it’ll work. You know how somewhere in the world, it’s always night? Like, it’s night in China somewhere right now?”

“Yeahhhh…” Peter agreed, waiting for Dill’s bizarro logic to kick in.

“Well, there’s probably always someplace in the world where school doesn’t start for two weeks. We just gotta find it over and over and over again. Man, I am good. California, here I come.”

Peter laughed. “I don’t think my Mom’ll let me go back.”

“What about your dad?”

A long pause. “I haven’t seen my dad for a couple of years.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Peter shrugged. “It’s okay.”

It wasn’t okay, but Peter knew that’s what you said in these circumstances.

“Dads are highly overrated,” Dill continued. “My dad basically just comes home from work, yells at me, goes to sleep on the couch, and stinks up the bathroom.”

“Ewww, gross.”

“Hey, I tell it like I smell it.” Dill shifted his weight, and gazed past Peter’s shoulder. “You, uhhh…you think you can get me inside your house?”

“Uh, sure, I guess. Why?”

“I wanna see inside. But he can’t know about it, okay?”

“Your dad?”

“Well, him, too, but I meant your grandfather.”

“Why?”

Dill bit his lip. “There was…an accident.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I kind of lit his garden on fire last year,” Dill explained.

“WHAT?”

“It was an accident! I was trying to scare something out of there. Didn’t work so good.”

A thrill of fear gripped Peter’s chest. “Scare what out?”

Dill looked to the right and the left, as though he were afraid of who might be listening.

“There’s something weird going on in his garden at night,” Dill whispered. “Especially the watermelon patch. That’s what I lit on fire. Well, first I lit the corn, but the watermelon patch was right next to it. You ever seen a watermelon explode?”

“No.”

“It’s coooool.” Dill grinned, eyes wide. Then he stopped grinning. “But it’s reeeeaaaally messy. And LOUD. You can’t exactly hide watermelons exploding.”

“What were you trying to scare out?”

“I don’t know, exactly…but I can show you tonight.”

What in the world was Dill talking about? A stray dog? A bear? His voice was way too spooky and low for it to be some normal kind of animal.

Peter hesitated, then relented. “Okay, I – ”

“BOY!” boomed an old man’s voice.

Peter swung around to see Grandfather striding towards him.

“Oh CRAP,” Dill hissed, and shrunk down behind the fence. “Look, meet me out here at ten o’clock tonight, okay?”

“But what – ”

“I gotta go, man, I gotta GO!”

Dill scampered off across his yard and raced inside the one-story house. The screen door slammed shut behind him.

Grandfather stomped up to the fence and switched his glare from Dill’s house to Peter’s face.

“I don’t want to see you having anything to do with that idjit, you hear me?”

Peter backed up a foot.

“H-he seems okay…”

“He’s a ruffian and a scoundrel and a troublemaker. You hear me, boy?” he thundered at Dill’s house. “I haven’t forgotten those watermelons, you little mongrel!”

From somewhere in Dill’s house came a man’s voice, sleepy and irritated. “Shut up, old man!”

“He’s a fool, a scamp, a rapscallion!” Grandfather railed at the unseen voice. “With parents to match!”

“Shuuuuuut UP!” the man’s voice roared.

Peter blushed a deep red and put his head in his hands.

Oh my God, Dill was right…he is crazy.

“In the house with you!” Grandfather snarled. “Git!”

Peter walked to the front door with the old man’s claw clamped down on his shoulder. All the way there, he wondered what awful thing he’d done for God to make him move in with an insane person.

 

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PETER AND THE VAMPIRES (Volume One) consists of four stories and is available for the Kindle, the Nook, and on Smashwords.com.

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All material is copyrighted 2007-2011 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.