Vintage Misery: Part Three (rough draft)

I had a headache by the time I woke up. My neck hurt, which was probably what was leading to my headache. I sat up in the bed and looked around, eyes bleary, mind hazy. I was having trouble piecing together what had happened over the last day or so.

The floor was wooden, so it was extremely cold to my bare feet. I hissed, considering staying in bed until it got warm. But everything was so dark, I couldn’t tell up from down, day from night, or even right from left.

“Neil?” I muttered as I rubbed my eyes; the one I hit with a rock was still very sore. “Neil? Where are you?”

No answer. That was new.

“Shit.” I got up from the bed and felt lightheaded. Lightheaded with a headache, that’s new. I fumbled around the room for a moment. “Neil, I could really use you! Come out now!”

The door opened and light flooded in. I covered my eyes, as they might as well have been thrown onto a grill.

“Oh, look, Beth’s little friend is up.” The woman stood there and chuckled as she strutted into the room. “Beth’s not here at the moment. Why don’t you just get back in bed?”

“I really have to go,” I grumbled. “Have you seen my bag?”

She put her hand on me, leading me back towards the bed. “No.”

“Who are you?” I grumped.

“Yvie,” she stated simply as she had me sit back down upon the bed. My eyes were focusing more and I could see Yvie was one of the girls I had passed that night the girls had been murdered. She had long, slick, straight hair with razor-like bangs. She wore big dangly earrings and wore lots of clanky, clunky bracelets.

“I’d like to just go please,” I muttered. “I need to get the bus. What time is it?”

“Beth will be back shortly.” Yvie touched my face and smoothed away my hair. A strange gesture for a first time meeting. “You feel a bit cold.” Her fingers swept across my forehead. “You should warm up a bit.”

“I have a headache,” I huffed. “You’re getting a bit close.” I put my hand on her shoulder and pushed back a bit.

“Alice, was it?” Yvie smirked. “You’re just as cute as Beth said you were.”

My cheeks prickled as color tried to rush to them. “Listen-”

“-out,” Neil’s voice faded in and out like bad radio signal. “-bad thing! …...out!”

I pushed more against Yvie as she came closer to me. Her lips touched against mine and I was too weak to fend her off. She pushed me down onto the bed and bit my lip. I was pinned to the bed, barely able to move and then the bed toppled. One of the legs must have given out, or Neil came through for me. We fell off the bed and I quickly escaped from Yvie. I stood up and put a chair in front of me while Yvie just laughed. It wasn’t until then I realized my lip was bleeding.

“You don’t want to have a little fun with me?” Yvie chuckled.

“Not particularly!” I wiped my lip. “You’re a little too rough and a little too forceful for my taste!” I snapped.

Yvie licked her lips. “I’ll make you feel so much better, though.”

I held up the chair and moved around Yvie. “I’m good!”

I saw my bag on the floor, dropping the chair to grab it and run out the door. I didn’t care if I never found my shoes, I’d go barefoot if I had to. I went down the hallway with Yvie not too far behind me. Another girl popped her head out of a room. She had a massive mop of hair that was crimped and curly dirty blonde. She smiled, coming out of her room to block me, trapping me between her and Yvie.

“What have you got, Yvie?” She giggled.

“I’ve found Beth’s new friend, Millie.” Yvie snickered. “I think I scared her.”

I looked back and forth then scoffed. “You’re both fucking weird!” I pushed my way around Millie, using my bag like a shield. I remember there had been four of them that day, including Beth. So I needed to be ready for the next one to pop out and scare me.

I was in the foyer now, so I could see the front door and my freedom straight ahead. “Run!” Neil’s voice was still in the distance, fading in and out of my conscious mind.

I grabbed hold of the door but I was grabbed around the waist from behind and pulled back. My bag hit the ground and I was set at the foot of the stairs.

“Be nice to her, Adele. We’d hate to return her to Beth bruised.”

Adele was tall, not exactly big but not exactly petite either. She had a lovely face, although I didn’t think any of them were particularly attractive at that moment. She had buzzed, platinum blonde bleached hair with a braided headband wrapped around her skull.

“Beth told us to keep her here,” Adele said. “I was just making sure she didn’t go.”

I wasn’t about to run up any stairs again, not after last time. But Neil was trying to warn me, and I bet this headache was the reason I was having a hard time perceiving him. This was frustrating, and a little bit terrifying. I was starting to get sick of being scared.

There was a knock on the door and all three sisters turned at once to look. Yvie approached the door. “Who is there?”

“I’m looking for Alice Young.” It was the voice of Officer Mercy. “I dropped her off here yesterday, and I found her wallet in my car. I was wondering if she was still here.”

Yesterday? Did I sleep twenty-four hours? I was about to shout but Adele grabbed me and forced her hand over my mouth.

“No, she left yesterday,” Yvie sighed. “But you can leave her wallet here.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” he said gently.

I guess Neil was still looking out for me, because Adele lost footing on the stair and let go of me.

“I’m here!” I shouted. “Officer Mercy! Its me! Al!” I managed to get to the door but Yvie held me off. She glared at me and I swear it looked like she wanted to kill me.

“Oh, my mistake,” Yvie snarled.

I opened the door as Millie pulled Yvie back. It was pitch black outside. I really did sleep for a whole day! I then reached back, grabbing my bag off the floor before I went to join Officer Mercy on the porch.

“What’s going on?” He asked.

I took my wallet from his hand and shoved it back into my bag. “Thanks,” I huffed.

He had a concerned look painted on his face. “You’re bleeding, are you okay?”

I looked back at the door and grimaced. “Just get me out of here. I made a mistake coming here. I made a huge mistake coming to this town.” I walked off the front porch and made a beeline to his car.

“You don’t have shoes!”

“I’m done answering questions.” I put myself into the car and sat there with the door closed. My ears were ringing, my head was a quagmire of pain soup. Officer Mercy got back into his car and started the engine. Only then did I feel some relief.

“Are you okay?” He asked again.

I held up a finger. “Ever since you knocked on my door, life has been nothing but a massive pain in my neck. I have obviously been pulled into something and I really don’t like how messy it’s gotten. I just want to get on a bus and get the hell out of here. So no, I am not okay.”

Mercy just looked straight ahead. “Well, if this helps with anything, after I last talked with you, I did some digging.” He pats a folder next to him on the seat. “There is a bit of dark history to the Alpha Sigma Alpha house.”

I took the folder, finding copies of old newspaper clippings and a couple of book passages. “Hervé House Horror,” I muttered. “Dozens of missing persons cases are likely attributed to local butcher Louis Hervé who shared the house with his ailing wife and her sisters. Hervé is thought to have killed, butchered and served the corpses as meat in his shop-” I stopped and looked to Mercy. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“Those girls were cut up like a butcher would cut a pig,” Mercy said. “Even with the bites taken out of them.”

“So the ghost of this Hervé guy is killing them? There were no ghosts in that house! None at all. Trust me, I know these things. I know what a spectral presence feels like more than I do what a hot bath feels like. That house was clean.”

Mercy frowned. “But don’t you think that it’s odd? It can’t be a coincidence.”

I thought of that awful underground basement filled with corpses. Who knows how many more were under the water. Hell, the bones of Hervé’s victims were probably still down there too.

“Does Hervé have any surviving relatives?”

Mercy shook his head. “I thought the same thing. He and his wife never had children, she was thought to be too sickly. And once Hervé was caught and tried, she and her sisters left to escape the scandal.”

I set the papers aside. “Not my emergency then.”

“You don’t care at all?”

I stared out the window. “I want to get out of here before your boss finds out anything else about me. And you can’t tell me he’s not looking.”

Mercy pulled up to a stop sign. We sat there in the darkness, car running, lights beaming out across the road. “Is there something to find?”

“Something he can use,” I muttered.

Mercy took his foot off the brake and started to put his foot on the gas when it sounded like something hit the side of the car.

“What was that?” I gasped.

Mercy stopped again and it sounded like something was crawling on top of the car. Something struck the side of the car again, moving it enough to where it went up on two tires. Once it landed again, Mercy hit the gas and sped off. White hands came down over the window, but they didn’t look human. They were long, spindly, and looked like those of the creature Beth drew for me. I screamed and Mercy hit his brakes hard, sending the thing on top of the car toppling down. He hit the gas again, driving over whatever was on top of us and not stopping.

“Holy shit!” I yelled.

“Not good! Not good!” I could hear Neil as clear as day in the back.

“What the fuck was that?” Mercy’s voice warbled from panic.

“Just drive! Just drive!” Neil screamed.

“Just drive! Just drive!” I echoed Neil’s words.

Mercy drove for a long while, never stopping, turning on his sirens to bypass the little traffic in town. We stopped in the diner parking lot, in the light, near people. We both sat there, stunned, silent, and uncertain.

“I’ve seen some shit in my life,” Mercy muttered. “My mom had us study crime scenes, bad ones too. But I have never seen anything like-”

“Monster hands?”

Mercy nodded. “Was that what it was?”

I pressed my lips together in a firm line. “I don’t know what’s happening here.” I looked in the rearview mirror and I could see the faint outline of Neil. I sighed with relief, I could perceive him again. I had been so scared when I couldn’t. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

“Never?” He asked.

“I’ve seen every sort of ghost, spectre, whatever you can name. I always thought, at least hoped, that monsters weren’t real. Not the ones in stories anyways. No bigfoot, no boogieman, no goblins or werewolves but-” My voice clipped.

“Vampires,” I heard Neil.

“What?” I furrowed my brow.

“Your lip,” Mercy said. “It’s bleeding again.”

I touched my chin, feeling the warm blood going from my lip, down my chin, and onto my neck.

“Here,” Mercy handed me his handkerchief. “Clean yourself up.”

I took it, wiping up as much as I could. “Thanks. And sorry.”

“I don’t think you’re to blame for this.” He leaned onto the steering wheel. “At least, I hope you aren’t. That’d be a lot to put on a lady.”

I chuckled, checking the handkerchief before pressing it back upon my lip. “I’d be used to it.” I leaned back in the seat, looking up at the sky that stretched far above us. There were so many stars here in the South. I wonder how that’s possible.

Mercy opened his car door, and stepped out. He looked over it and I could see even in the shadow the shocked expression on his face. He then leaned back in through the window. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m done being in this car.”

I stepped out, remembering I didn’t have any shoes. I guess it didn’t matter. I closed the door and saw there were claw marks in the metal. “Well-” I sucked in my breath and held it.

“We need to go,” Neil said to me as he came out of the car. “Those girls, those...things!” He snapped at me. “They drank your blood, Al! They’re vampires.”

That was a lot to take in. For me, Vampires were men like Bela Lugosi, Christoper Lee, Peter Cushing. “Are you sure?”

“I saw them!” He hissed, bloodshot eyes panicked. “But because you were unconscious, I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

I felt around my neck which had felt sore this morning. Sure enough, near the back, I felt an extremely sore spot. “Who did it?”

Neil bounced in place. “The creepy ones, the three that tried to keep you there.”

“What about Beth?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I looked down at the ground then turned to Mercy as he stepped near me. “I forgot you didn’t have any shoes on. We can get you something in the morning. It’ll be soon.”

“Yeah, okay.” I followed him inside. The place and people were virtually unchanged since I was there with Beth, shit, two days ago.

I sat down with Officer Mercy, trying to angle my legs so my feet didn’t touch the ground. This was bad. What if Beth was being held hostage by these women? What if she was their feed bag and they were going to keep me to be the next one? I then bit down on the tip of my tongue. What if they had killed those girls?

“If you want, you can stay with me until you can get a bus out of here,” he says. “I don’t mind at all. No one has to know you’re still here.”

I nodded in silence.

“I came out here hoping it’d be more peaceful and quiet than what I was used to. Guess you get big scares everywhere you go. Even small towns like this one have their dirty, awful secrets,” he chuckled as he looked over the menu.

I ordered waffles and coffee again, as well as biscuits and gravy, hash browns, and a side of grits to go with it. I was starving, famished. I hadn’t eaten in twenty-fours and who knows how much of my blood those bitches took. I felt so much better after eating, my headache was vanishing, my neck felt less stiff. Even my lip had stopped bleeding.

Once the fog had dispersed in my brain, I decided to tell Officer Mercy what I had found at the Alpha Sigma Alpha house. “Look, don’t ask me how I know this, but if you go to the fifth stair at the house, you’ll see it comes loose. It leads down into a cavern that’s filled with water and a lot of dead people.”

“Fucking finally!” Neil heaved in relief. “See? Had you just told him before, we could have avoided this thing completely! It’s about time you told me I am right!”

Mercy goes stiff and his eyes focus upon me. “Are you serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to say anything about this at all, especially since your boss seems to like me so much. But Beth asked me to go back into that house just to make sure. I did, but only because she offered a lot of money. And, quite literally, the ground was pulled out from underneath me. I fell into that underground lake and found myself in a heap of death.”

Mercy sat back and his eyes focused more upon the table. “So, the night you wandered into my back yard.”

“The exit was under the overpass,” I murmured. “You can probably get to it easier that way.”

“Are you sure?”

I gave him a short nod. “Positive. I’ve seen a lot of horrible things in my life, but nothing ever like that.”

Mercy sighed and slouched his shoulders. “I’ll go and look at it. Once I confirm it, I can report it to the chief. I’ll just tell him I got a report of a bad smell or something.” He rubbed his arm then raised his eyes again. “Is it really that bad?”

“Afraid so,” I murmured. I then felt bad. “I’ll go with you. But I’ll need shoes first.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I want to. It’s the least I can do. Besides, I have to make sure you find this mess. Maybe it’ll help solve a few cases and get you in good with your boss.” I smiled, although I didn’t really feel like it.

We got some cheap shoes at a discount store down the street. We then drove to the overpass, parking the car at the side of the road and walking down to the water. Once there, I could see the opened grate I had left a couple of days ago.

“You really wanna go back in there?” Neil asked.

I nodded then held my hand out as if asking him to stay put. “Let’s go, Mercy.” I led him into the water, taking him to the grate. He turned on his flashlight, examining the entrance before leading the way. I followed after him, chills and nerves prickling all over my body.

We came out into the big cavern and Mercy’s flashlight landed upon some of the corpses on the land across from us. His hand flinched and he nearly dropped the flashlight. He continued to search the area, despite his own discomfort and horror.

“This is…”

I pointed up. “You can see where the stairs are above and where the basement of the house ends.” I placed my hand upon his shoulder. “Let’s get out of here, Mercy.”

He was shaking under my palm. “That one over there,” he whispered. “I recognize their shirt...their mother said they came home but-”

I pulled on his arm. “Let’s go.” I managed to dislodge him from his spot, taking him with me back out of that horrible place. I took him back up towards the car, but when we got there, Officer Pitbull was waiting.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? Still in town, little lady?” He chuckled. He then turned to Mercy and grimaced. “Officer Mercy, what the fuck happened to your patrol car?”

“Sir,” Mercy was trying to process everything through his head at once. There was too much information, too much horror. He started to speak, but instead, he doubled over and heaved up his entire breakfast onto Officer Pitbull’s shoes.

“Oh no,” Neil whined.

Mercy choked and heaved, throwing up a second round.

Office Pitbull pushed him aside, shoving Mercy into his car. He came towards me, grabbing me by the arm. “You’re coming with me.”

“On what grounds?” I snapped at him. “Get your hands off me!”

“Dead bodies!” Mercy finally managed to spit out. “Over there. Lots of them!”

Officer Pitbull grew an awful smile upon his face. “Like grandfather, like granddaughter. Isn’t that right, Ms. Young?”

I tried to yank my arm free, but the bastard was a lot stronger than I gave his doughy body for. He threw me into the back of his police car, despite the protests of Mercy trying to get him to listen. He drove off, spinning out dirt on Mercy.

“I found out a few things about you, Ms. Young,” he chuckled. “Thought you could hide from it forever?”

“I have no connections to that man!” I snapped at him.

“But you’re his granddaughter, and sickness runs in the blood.”

“I’m not blood related to him either!” I screamed.

Officer Pitbull hit his brakes really hard, knowing my seatbelt wasn’t on so I slammed into the cage. “Shut up back there.”

“Mother fucker.” I held my already beaten and bloodied face. My lip was even starting to bleed again.

“Daughter of Ivan and Amy Young. Famous ghost hunters and exorcists. Sick fuckers all the way around. Not to mention your grandfather, Walter.” He chuckled. “Or should I say the God’s Womb killer.”

I wanted to throw up on his shoes now too.

“Killed over thirty women, trying to find the perfect womb to birth the return of his god,” he sneered at me. He then clicked his tongue. “Apples don’t fall too far from the tree.”

“I keep telling you, I have no connection to that man,” I snarled hatefully at him. “He wasn’t my grandfather, I never even met the man. He was long dead before I ever was a thought. And we don’t share blood at all! You can’t use any of this to hold me.”

“Officer Mercy certainly gave me enough. If there are bodies, well, you’re placed right at the scene of the crime.” He pulled up to the police station. He then turned around, removing his glasses and looking at me dead in the eye. “I know some sick motherfucker like you is responsible for this. All you satanists are.”

I could hear Mercy’s car pulling up beside us then. “I’m not a satanist! My dad is Catholic!”

Officer Pitbull stepped out of his car just as Mercy was rushing up. He was hurriedly trying to explain, but Pitbull wasn’t listening. Mercy might as well have been a ghost like Neil. Pitbull opened the car door and pulled me out, dragging me inside and throwing me into a cell.

“Stay away from here, Mercy.” Pitbull gave him another shove. “In fact, stay away from me.” He shoved him against the bars of the cell I was in. “Officer Martin! You and Perkins go to the overpass and search for anything down there.”

Mercy turned and looked back at me, guilt in his eyes.

“Just leave.” I sat down and leaned my back against the wall.

“But you’re innocent!”

I shook my head. “It’s easier to get yourself out of this now than try to pull yourself up later.” I shrugged and tilted my head up. “He’s not going to listen to you, and I doubt anyone else will.”

“It’s not right,” he huffed. “I’ll try and tell him. Someone! Anyone who will listen to me. I know its not you.”

I closed my eyes. “Just make sure Beth is okay. Tell her I left town and that I am sorry. But just go to her house and make sure she’s safe. I don’t trust those other girls that are there.”

“What do you mean?” Mercy asked.

I opened my eyes and turned back to him. “Just keep your gun with you, that’s all I ask. Are silver bullets a thing?”

His brow pinched. “No. That’s just stories.”

“Then regular bullets should be fine.” I huffed and touched my neck, feeling where it was sore. “Don’t keep your neck exposed either. Just in case.”

“Alice, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “I never should have knocked on your door.”

“Can’t stop it now,” I sighed. “What’s done is done.”

His hand slipped away from the bars. “I’ll go check on Beth, like you asked. I’ll make sure someone hears the truth too.”

“Just go.”

Mercy left and Neil came back through the bars. He sat down beside me, placing his hand over mine. “I can get the keys and open the door.”

“Not yet.”