PeterAndTheVampires.com by Darren Pillsbury: July 2008

Hey everybody,

I just wanted to be clear: PETER AND THE VAMPIRES is the name of the first collection of four stories about Peter, Dill, and the sinister town of Duskerville.

The four stories are:
"Peter And The Dead Men" (the one we're currently on)
"Peter And The Vampires"
"Peter And The Changeling"
"Peter And The Swamp Monster"

For anybody waiting for a vampire to show up, just give me about, oh, 90 more days...

In the meantime, though, there will be plenty of "Dead Men"...

<< previous page | next page >>

Sunday, July 27, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 22

Buy the ebook on Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords for just 99 cents!

<< previous page | next page >>

Saturday, July 26, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 21

Buy the ebook on Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords for just 99 cents!

<< previous page | next page >>

Friday, July 25, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 20

Buy the ebook on Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords for just 99 cents!

<< previous page | next page >>

Thursday, July 24, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 19

Buy the ebook on Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords for just 99 cents!

<< previous page | next page >>

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 18

Dill frowned and looked at Peter. “It came after you?”

“Yeah, it chased me!”

From out of nowhere, Dill hauled off and hit Peter in the arm. “You stupid jerk!”

“OW!” Peter backed away. “Hey, what’s your problem?”

Dill was still coming, arms swinging. “I should kick your ass, making fun of me like that!”

“I’m not making it up!”

Dill stopped swinging. His chest heaved up and down as he panted. “Swear to me.”

“I swear!”

In the moonlight, it looked like Dill’s cheeks might be wet with tears. “So I…I didn’t kill anybody when I accidentally set that fire?”

Peter’s eyes widened with shock. “No, no, I don’t think so. Whatever it was, you sure didn’t kill it, cuz it came running after me.”

Both the boys gazed back at the garden. Nothing was moving within its shadows. The vines and stalks were completely still.

“Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?” Dill asked, in the same tone of voice he might say gimme a break, dude.

“I SWEAR. It came running after me. I think it grabbed my shirt.”

Dill frowned, and circled around Peter. He gasped. “Oh my gosh.”

“What? WHAT?” Peter tried to turn to see whatever Dill was looking at. He tugged the edge of the shirt around to the front, but with the wrinkles and the nighttime darkness, he couldn’t see anything.

“Take off your shirt,” Dill whispered.

Peter yanked it off his body like it was on fire, then shone the flashlight on it. When he saw what Dill was talking about, he dropped the shirt like it was a live rattlesnake.

On the back, right where Peter had felt the tug, was the clear outline of very thin fingers, smudged in black soot.

Both boys looked back at the garden.

Nothing.

Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted and fell silent.

*********************

Buy the ebook on Kindle, Nook, or Smashwords for just 99 cents!

<< previous page | next page >>

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 17

It was more of a skull than a face, but black and charred. There was skin still left that covered most of the head and hid a lot of the teeth. But the skin looked like leather that somebody had roasted on a fire until it was black and shriveled as a burned raisin. The lips were gone, and had pulled away from the yellowed teeth in a permanent sneer.

The thing looked at Peter with its empty sockets.

Then it lunged at him.

Peter screamed, stumbled back through the corn, and ran fast as he could.

“DILL! DILL, GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE!”

Dill’s voice piped from somewhere off to the side.

“What? What is it?”

“GET OUT OF THE GARDEN! RUUUUUUUUN!”

Peter tore through the corn and into the tomatoes, flailing his arms and ripping apart the vines. His feet smushed vegetables underfoot, his head smacked into stakes. He spun around dizzily like a drowning man trying to find his way to the surface of the lake.

Behind him, he felt a tug on the bottom of his t-shirt. A tug that didn’t feel like it was snagged by a vine or a plant.

He screamed and ran faster, plowing through anything and everything in his way.

If he could only see the house again…

And then it was there, the dim lights from the windows. Safety.

Peter stumbled in the cucumbers but managed to keep upright, one foot flying in front of the other. For the first time since he started running, he looked over his shoulder.

Nothing was behind him, just the ever-receding garden patch.

Peter stopped and whirled around. “DILL!” he screamed.

Silence.

“DILLLLL!” he screamed again and prayed that he hadn’t left his friend behind to die in the clutches of a monster.

There was a giant shaking and shuddering in the tomato plants.

Peter’s heart froze in his chest.

And then Dill came tumbling out, batting away vines from his face, sputtering and spitting pieces of leaves from his lips. “Jeez, man, why’d you go and scare me like that?! I peed my pants, I was – I mean, I almost peed my pants, you scared me so bad. I think I lost my flashlight…”

Peter ran up to the edge of the garden and urged Dill forward, yet kept his eyes glued to the vines and stalks behind them.

“Dill, I saw a hobo!”

“Really?” Dill gasped. “Did you talk to him?”

“No, he was burned to a crisp!”

Dill stopped in his tracks. His lower lip trembled. “He was…he was burned up?”

Peter grabbed Dill’s arm and pulled him over to the rose bushes. “Yeah, he didn’t have any eyes or nose or anything, and his hand was like this – ”

Peter contorted his own hand into the shape of a claw.

“ – except it looked like a branch after a fire, and his clothes were black and burned and everything.”

Dill looked into the field. “Do you…do you think I…” he whispered.

“And then it came after me!”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 16

Peter stopped to get his bearings. He was about to call out for Dill again when a noise came from up ahead. The shhh shhh shhh of someone else moving in the corn.

“Dill?” he croaked, his throat dry.

No answer. But the corn stopped moving.

“Dill?” Peter whispered again.

There was the sound of something dropping to the ground, a series of light thumps. A gentle pressure touched Peter’s foot.

He gasped, stepped back, and shone his light on the ground.

A tomato. It must have rolled across the ground and bumped his foot.

Anger flared inside Peter where fear had once been. He picked up the tomato and forged ahead, pushing apart corn stalks.

“Dill, we’re out here to find raccoons, not pick – ”

He meant to say ‘vegetables,’ but the word stuck in his throat.

There was a man right in front of him.

He was kneeling on the ground, picking up the tomatoes and zuchinnis and corn he had dropped. He was dressed all in black – black pants, black shirt, long black jacket. His head was bent, and he had a hat on – the hat was black, too – so Peter couldn’t see his face.

A hobo.

Something smelled wrong, though. Literally. The smell of green plants was gone, and the odor of burned leaves filled the air.

Peter gasped. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean – I – I – ”

He stopped speaking.

In the dim light of the flashlight, Peter saw the hand that was picking up the last tomato. The hand was black, too.

But not African-American. Back in California, Peter had lots of friends at school who were black. Next door in his apartment building, there had lived a friendly man from Nigeria who was darker than anybody else Peter had ever seen in his life.

But even he wasn’t this dark.

Black, like ink. Like outer space, between the stars.

And the hand was too skinny for a grown man. It looked like a claw or a skeleton’s hand, but charred and cracked. Like the ashes of a log after the fire has died out. That’s when he realized the clothes and the hat weren’t black, either. Not originally.

They were burned. The man had been burned to a crisp.

He must’ve died. No human being could look like that and still be alive.

But he was moving. His arm was moving.

No no no no no no no no

The blackened claw gripped the last tomato…then paused.

The hat tilted up and the face looked into the light.

What was left of a face.

No ears, no nose, no hair.

No eyes. Just gaping holes.

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 15

Some vines shuddered and the movement continued to the right. There was the sound of leaves shaking and light snapping sounds.

“What should we do?” Peter whispered.

“Let’s go take a look,” Dill answered.

“What, and burn down the garden again?”

“Dude, I came prepared this time.”

Dill pulled out two small, keychain-sized flashlights from his shorts pocket.

Peter looked at the offered flashlight, then out at the garden. The rustling started again, then stopped.

“I don’t know…my grandfather said not to come out here.”

Dill smirked. “You do everything your grandfather tells you to?”

“Well – ”

“You’re down here, aren’t you? So no, you don’t do everything he tells you to. Come on, don’t wuss out now. It’s probably a raccoon. Raccoons are cool.”

“What if it’s a hobo?”

“You and me, we can take him.”

“I thought you said we could only beat up a sixteen year-old.”

Dill thought for a second. “All we have to do is kick him, then we’ll run away.”

“What makes you so brave? Last time you got scared to death and burned down the garden, right?”

Dill slapped Peter on the shoulder. “Yeah, but now I got you to go with me.”

Peter hesitated.

Beets and peas. 9:45 bedtimes. Two weeks of lost vacation.

He relented and grabbed the flashlight. “All right.”

“Yeaaaaaaahhhh.” Dill grinned and headed into the garden.

Peter snapped on the tiny little flashlight, which gave off a beam that was barely any better for seeing than the moon. He sighed and followed Dill into the garden.

The dirt was soft and gave way beneath Peter’s feet. Low-lying plants – cucumbers? Zucchinis? – brushed against his legs as the boys moved through the rows. Coming up were the tomato plants, which twirled high above Peter on six-foot stakes.

Up ahead, Dill crouched over and disappeared into the tangle of vines. His flashlight bobbed behind the tomato plants like a glowing fairy from a storybook.

Peter looked over his shoulder, back to the safety of the giant house with its dim lights showing through the windows. Then he peered forward into the darkness and twisted ropes of green.

He took a deep breath and plunged on through.

It was a jungle in there. A fresh, green, pungent smell filled his nose. The plants crinkled against his body, occasionally tugging against his jeans or shirt. The little flashlight illuminated only the closest vines to him, no more than a foot or two away.

In less than a minute he had reached the corn stalks. He paused and whispered, “Dill?”

Dill answered from somewhere off to the right. “What?”

“You in the corn?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

Peter pushed into the giant green plants. It was even harder to see now – the big leaves slapped his face and towered so high above him that they blocked out any light from the moon or stars. It was just Peter, the dim beam from the flashlight, and the shhh shhh shhh of the corn all around him.

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 14

“You were right. He told me never to come out here, ON PAIN OF DEATH,” Peter imitated his grandfather’s booming voice, then squinted. “Or was that the door under the stairs?”

“Yeah, well, he was maaaa-AAAAD when I blew up the watermelons. Jeez, you would think he could spare a couple.”

“The weird thing is, he doesn’t eat any of it.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. My mom told me she got in trouble when she was a kid for picking some tomatoes. She said she thinks that a bunch of hobos keep the garden and eat it all up.”

“Hobos?”

“Homeless guys who ride trains.”

“Oh, bums,” Dill nodded. “I don’t know, man. I guess the stuff I saw could’ve been a hobo, but…it was a messed-up hobo, then.”

“So you don’t see it all the time?”

“Naw…only once in awhile, mostly in the summer and the fall…weird shapes out here at night, and plants moving around ‘n stuff.”

“That’s why you lit the fire?”

“Actually, it really was an accident,” Dill admitted. “It was the fall, everything in the garden was dry and kind of dead, but the watermelons weren’t all gone yet. I couldn’t find a flashlight, so I took my dad’s zippo lighter and I was out there lookin’ around when somethin’, I don’t know what, scared the bejeezus out of me. I dropped the lighter and ran, and the next thing I know, the watermelons are exploding and the fire trucks are all racin’ up the street. Your grandfather about screamed his head off outside of my house. A cop came and talked to my parents, and I told him what had happened, and then he yelled at me and then he left. I thought my dad was going to whip me good, but he just laughed and told me anything that made that old fart mad made him happy, and nothing else happened to me. I just can’t let your granddad see me out here, that’s all.” Dill scoffed. “Getting’ mad at me…he’s a big hippo crib.”

Peter cocked his head to the side. “A what?”

Grandfather looked far more like a scarecrow than a hippopotamus, and Peter had no idea where the baby bed part came from.

“A hippo crib. A guy who says ‘No, you’re bad for starting a fire,’ and then he goes and starts a fire himself.”

“A hypocrite,” Peter suggested.

“Yeah, that’s what I said. The very next night he’s out with his truck and he rolls some big thing off the back onto the ground and lights it on fire till it’s all burned up. Hippo crib,” Dill muttered bitterly.

“I wonder why he did – ”

“Hey, shhh – did you see that?”

Peter peered out into the darkness, into the green stalks and vines barely visible in the starlight. “I don’t see anything.”

“Wait.”

There was a rustling somewhere out in the middle part of the garden, maybe fifty feet inside the corn. The leaves shook a little.

Peter gulped. “It was the wind.”

Dill licked his finger and held it up. “There isn’t any wind.”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 13

“No…,” Peter said defensively. “I’m just…I’m kind of scared of heights.”

“Don’t look down.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

“Dude, I’ll go first. All you gotta do is go about three feet on the roof and then bam, you’re at the tree, and it’s easy from there. Just do what I do. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall. Come on!”

Peter looked back at his closed bedroom door. If Mom or Grandfather came in, he was busted for sure.

Dill must’ve known what he was thinking. “Lock the door, dude, and let’s rock and roll.”

“I could get in a LOT of trouble for this.”

Dill shrugged. “It wouldn’t be worth it, otherwise.”

Peter took a big breath.

Peas, beets, and sauerkraut…bedtime at 9:45…and not being able to go anywhere or do anything.

Forget that.

Peter pulled on his pants, shirt and shoes, and locked the bedroom door.

Dill grinned and gave him a thumbs up. “You da man.”

The climb out on the roof was terrifying. Thirty feet down, the grass seemed to spin slightly in the moonlight. Peter started to get dizzy, but Dill held onto his arm the whole time. “Don’t look down, just grab the branch.”

Once he reached the limb, Peter hung on for dear life. Dill shimmied his way down like an expert until he reached the tree trunk, then hopped from branch to branch until he dangled only four feet off the ground. He let go, dropped, and rolled.

Peter took considerably longer, but he finally made it. His ankles and heels stung a little when he landed, but he was safely on the ground.

Dill slapped him on the back. “I take it all back, you’re no wussy weenie.”

“How do we get back up there?”

Dill pointed to a hole in the tree that made a perfect foothold. “I take back what I just took back. Don’t be such a granny, I got you covered.”

They kept to the shadows as much as possible, then bolted for the rose bushes and raced to the other side.

The air was perfumed with the smell of flowers and a touch of salt from the ocean. There was no breeze, though, and Peter couldn’t hear a single wave – only the chirping of crickets all around.

They walked about halfway between the rose bushes and the garden before Dill stopped him.

“Okay, this is far enough,” Dill whispered and sat down.

“But the garden’s still like fifty feet away,” Peter said.

“Trust me, man. If there’s something in there, we wanna get a good head start. Gummy bear?”

Dill produced a crinkled package. Peter took a couple of pieces and popped them in his mouth.

“Thas’ good,” he smacked. “I had beets for dinner.”

“Ugh. So was I right? Is he crazy, or what?”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 12

Peter trudged up the stairs. He could hear angry muttering and whispering back in the den, but he couldn’t make any of it out.

There was a bathroom next to his bedroom. As he brushed his teeth he mentally tallied all the reasons he hated moving here from California.

Boring…stupid…all my friends are gone…a psycho for a grandfather…who hates the one kid who lives anywhere near me…NO TV…gotta go to bed like a three year-old…can’t even walk out in the flippin’ back yard…can’t even go to the ocean…

He pulled off his clothes and climbed into bed under the musty sheets. It smelled like old people.

Peter fluffed his pillow and coughed. He was glad the lights were off; he didn’t want to see the dust that was probably in the air.

Gross.

The one good thing was that he had a perfect view out the window from his bed. Lying there in the dark room, he watched the sliver of a moon far over the trees and wished he could be in California right now, under a California sky.

Where it’s two weeks away till school, he added angrily to his list.

And now Dill is going to hate me, he thought. He’ll think I stood him up for sure. The one friend I could’ve made is going to totally hate me –

“Yo, dude,” somebody whispered outside his window.

Peter bolted upright, his heart thudding in his chest.

“Dill?” he whispered back.

There was a familiar buzzcut silhouette perched right outside the window. It waved.

Peter jumped out of bed and climbed up on the cushioned ledge. Sure enough, there was Dill, seated precariously on the windowsill outside.

Peter searched around for a second, found and unlatched a lock on the left side of the glass panes, and pulled. The window swung open towards him like a door.

“How’d you get up here?” Peter asked, amazed.

“The tree, man. I can climb like a monkey. Hoo hoo, haw haw!” Dill scratched his underarms and poked out his lips like a chimpanzee.

“Sorry I can’t come. They made me go to bed,” Peter said morosely.

“I figured when I saw the lights go on in this room and then go out. Lucky thing you’re by the tree, I didn’t wanna have to go far on this roof.” Dill waved his arm. “Well, come on, get dressed and let’s go.”

Peter looked at him, dumbfounded. “Go?”

“Yeah, let’s boogie.”

“I can’t leave! I’m supposed to be in bed!”

Dill groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re a teacher’s pet.”

“No…”

“You’re probably a straight A student, aren’t you? You probably go to dance class, don’t you?” Dill stuck out his arms and flicked his fingers across an imaginary keyboard. “‘Hi, my name is Peter,’” he said in a high, nasally muppet voice. “I play the piano and I practice every day!’”

“I do not!” Peter almost shouted, then looked around uneasily in case someone had heard.

“Then get dressed and let’s go. Unless you’re a weenie,” Dill said. “A wussy, wussy weenie.”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 11

“Why aren’t we supposed to go in the garden?”

“I don’t know, Peter. Your grandfather said it doesn’t belong to us. He said not to go past the rose bushes, because none of it belongs to us, and they might think we’re trespassing.”

“Well, who does it belong to?”

Mom’s face clouded over a bit. “I’m not sure, but I think there’s a bunch of hobos who eat the food.”

“Hobos?”

Mom caught herself and smiled. “Homeless people, honey. I’m sorry, hobo isn’t the accepted word these days. But ‘hobo’ was what we called them back then…they used to ride the trains all around the country and live on the really poor side of life. I think Grandfather kept the garden for them, I’m not sure.”

“Did you see the hobos?”

Mom cocked her head, as though trying to remember. “Only once…it was night, and I saw somebody…or something in the garden. I didn’t go find out what it was because I was scared. But there’s no need to worry, I lived here eighteen years until I was in college and nobody ever bothered us. Hobos are harmless, kid. Just don’t go in the garden, and don’t make any problems with grandfather, okay?”

Peter nodded. “Okay, Mom,” and he meant it.

Whatever it took to avoid Grandfather’s anger, that’s what Peter was going to do.

*********************

Mom finished putting Beth to bed at 8:30. After that, she and Peter read in the den. Read, because there was no TV.

“He doesn’t have a TV?!”

“Don’t make a fuss, Peter. Once I find a job maybe I can talk him into letting me buy one.”

Peter grumbled as he looked around the room for something to read.

All he could find was a wicker basket full of National Geographics. But not anything recent – in fact, not a single one had pictures. They were all from the 1940’s and just full of writing.

Peter groaned and went upstairs to get some comic books of his own instead. After he returned, they both read quietly until Grandfather lumbered in.

“Time for bed,” he announced as he pointed at Peter.

Peter glanced at the huge wooden clock on the fireplace mantel: 9:45. He was supposed to meet Dill at 10 o’clock.

“But – ”

“Time for bed!” Grandfather repeated angrily.

“Dad…” Mom sighed. “Peter’s been used to going to bed a little later than this – ”

“I’ll not be questioned in my own house, Melissa,” Grandfather warned.

Mom stared at Grandfather. He stared back.

“Go get ready for bed, Peter,” she said in a dull, flat voice.

“But Mom – ”

“Peter, just do it.”

Jeez.

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 10

“At the edge of the meadow is a giant cliff,” Grandfather warned, “with a hundred foot drop to the rocks below. Stay away. And don’t get within ten feet of that blasted garden, do you hear me?”

Grandfather stomped out of the room.

Peter looked back out the window and down at the garden.

If it didn’t belong to anyone…then who had replanted it after Dill burned it down?

*********************

They spent an hour dragging in all their suitcases and boxes from the Honda up to the third floor. Grandfather untied Peter’s bike from the roof of the car and stowed it away in an old, wooden garage back behind the house. Peter looked around inside at the ancient Ford truck, the dust-covered tools on the walls, and the stacks of bug-eaten newspapers lying everywhere until Grandfather chased him out with a loud grunt.

After that, the old man disappeared down a hallway on the first floor and Mom went to fix something to eat.

Dinner was not in the giant room Peter had seen by the main hall but at a cozy little table in the kitchen, which ran along the back of the house. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t very good: canned peas, canned sauerkraut, canned beets. Beth was having fun, though, smashing everything flat like pancakes and then licking it off her palms. Grandfather was nowhere to be seen.

Mom watched him scrape at his plate. “I’ll get better food tomorrow, Pete, when I go into town. It’s all I could find in the pantry.”

“Why isn’t he here to eat this stuff?” Peter grumbled.

Mom sighed. “That’s just Grandfather. He’s probably in his study, reading away.”

“Mom, this place is weird.”

Mom smiled sadly. “Yeah, I know. I’d forgotten a lot.”

“What’s in all the locked rooms?”

Shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You lived here all your life and you don’t know?”

“One thing you’ll find, Peter, is that when your grandfather tells you not to do something, it’s best if you don’t even think about doing it.” She turned to Beth and forced a spoon into her fingers. “Honey, don’t eat with your hands.”

“What about the garden?”

Mom’s eyes got big. She acted scared but broke into a smile as she talked. “Ohhhh, don’t go into the garden! Whatever you do, don’t go into the garden.”

She stared off into the distance. “I think I was…five or six, maybe, and I went and picked some tomatoes for my mom? Put ‘em in my dress and held it out like this.”

Even though she was wearing jeans, Mom pantomimed holding out a dress by the corners to form a basket of sorts.

“When I brought the tomatoes in, my dad – Grandfather – he got so mad, he spanked me till I couldn’t sit down for hours. I cried and I cried…”

Mom snapped out of the daydream. Her face grew slightly angry, and she stabbed at her beets with a fork. “And I never went in that garden again.”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 9

There was Dill’s house off to the right, completely visible from front to back. The roof was missing shingles here and there, and generally looked as rundown from above as it did from the ground level, but the place had a backyard as big as a soccer field – and with next to nothing in it. A rusty metal swing set and concrete patio kept the weeds company before the overgrown grass gave way to more forest.

Separating Grandfather’s property from the tiny house was the rickety fence where Peter had met Dill just moments before. Its sagging rails and leaning posts stretched down the meadow for hundreds of yards, then finally collapsed in a jumble of rotting logs beneath the overhanging tree branches.

Back in Grandfather’s yard, an untrimmed barrier of rose bushes ringed the house. Even from this height, Peter could see the different colored blooms: red, pink, yellow, white, and a dozen variations.

Funny, Grandfather didn’t seem like the kind of guy to grow roses.

“I’m surprised Mom didn’t want this room for herself,” Peter mused.

“Everyone gets the rooms I assign them.”

“Why’d you give me the one with the window?”

“In case anything ever came through it, I figured you’d handle it best.”

Peter stared at his grandfather for a hint of a smile, any indication of a joke. There was none.

Okaaaaay…

Peter turned back to the window.

A hundred feet beyond the roses was what he guessed to be the garden Dill had mentioned. It was surprisingly large, about half as big as his old school’s soccer field, but overgrown and wild-looking, with a forest of green corn stalks standing guard over twisted mounds of vines. Here and there were bright green specks that could have been watermelons, he supposed.

“I guess the garden grew back,” Peter commented absentmindedly. Only after the words were out did he realize maybe that wasn’t the best subject to bring up.

“What did that little vandal tell you?” Grandfather snapped.

“Uhhhhh, he said there was an accident. But it looks like everything’s fine now,” Peter added with forced cheerfulness.

“Stay out of that garden, boy,” Grandfather commanded.

What a relief. Unhappy visions of himself toiling and sweating in the midday sun, picking peas and cucumbers, completely disappeared.

“Are you the only one who works out there?” Peter asked warily.

“No one works out there. It’s not our garden. Stay out of it.”

Peter looked back in confusion. Beyond the garden, the vast meadow was empty except for a jumble of stones that looked tiny in the distance.

“Is it Dill’s family’s?”

“It’s no one’s. Leave it alone, and DON’T GO INTO THAT GARDEN. And don’t go down to the ocean, either.”

“What?!” Peter gasped. “That’s the ocean down there?”

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 8

“We have some rules around here, boy. Number one is you are to NEVER ENTER THAT DOOR.”

Peter looked at it with new interest.

“You are never to try to open that door, you are never to play with that door, you are never to TOUCH that door. ON PAIN OF DEATH. Do I make myself clear?”

Peter stepped back. “Why?”

“And you are never to ASK ABOUT THAT DOOR.”

Peter looked from his Grandfather to the door and back again.

“Very well, moving on,” Grandfather muttered and started up the stairs. Peter followed.

“There are many, many rooms in this house,” Grandfather growled. “If a door is shut, DON’T OPEN IT. If a door is locked, DON’T BOTHER IT. There are plenty of open rooms for you to go in and mess up and destroy, which I know you will.”

They reached the second story. The hall stretched off a very long way in either direction, longer than Peter would have thought possible.

“Are we going down there to – ”

“No.”

Grandfather continued on up the stairs.

As he reached the third story, Peter looked down at the hardwood floor thirty feet below. He got a little dizzy. Actually he got really dizzy, and had to look away until he was off the stairs and safely on the third floor.

Grandfather pointed to an open doorway as he walked by. “That is your mother’s.”

Peter peered in on a windowless room with a large canopy bed and paintings of bowls of fruit.

“Next to it is your sister’s.”

That room was windowless, too, and nothing Beth would want. The walls were dark purple, the furniture was straight out of George Washington’s time, and the only painting on the wall was of three women in white robes knitting a long piece of cloth. One of them held golden scissors over the thread, waiting to cut it.

Grandfather wasn’t so good with little girls, Peter was guessing.

“And this is yours.”

Whoa.

It was almost as big as his mother’s, with a large bed along the center wall and a writing desk and lamp in the corner. But the main thing was the giant window across the room, which poured sunlight across the floor. Even better was a perch in front of the window, a pillow-lined ledge set two feet into the wall, perfect for sitting and watching on a rainy day.

Peter hopped up on it and looked outside. Just beyond the glass panes were the branches of an enormous tree, just right for climbing. Peter had never snuck out in his life, but that tree was the perfect way to do it.

Not that he had the faintest inclination to try. In fact, when he looked at the ground over thirty feet below, he got woozy even thinking about it – just like on the stairwell – and had to look away again.

The view was amazing. Behind the house, a vast field stretched for a quarter mile until it just ended, as though it dropped off completely into the light blue sky.

To the left of the field, a dense, dark forest stretched on for miles.

<< previous page | next page >>

Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 7

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.

*********************

If the house was crazy outside, it was double crazy inside. Maybe triple crazy.

The main hallway was three stories high. A giant wooden staircase angled up to the left until it reached the second floor, then sloped up to the right until it reached the third. Peter could imagine Dill having tons of fun sliding down the banister from the top floor all the way to the bottom – if the railing had curved around instead of jutting out at sharp angles. Peter pictured Dill tumbling off into space at the first hairpin turn and shuddered.

Off to the left, there was a living room with antique furniture and stained glass lamps. A giant Arabic rug covered the polished hardwood floor, and a coffee table with a glass plate in the middle sat in the center of the room.

On the right side of the hallway was a cavernous dining hall with a table that looked like it could have served 30 people or more.

Under the stairwell was a door with an ancient lock, the kind in old movies that they opened with skeleton keys. Peter gave it a glance and was about to walk on when his Grandfather stopped him by clamping a hand on his shoulder again.

<< previous post | next post >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 6

“Cuz we could 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 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.

<< previous page | next page >>

Sunday, July 20, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 5

“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 almost 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?”

“Uh…"

<< previous page | next page >>

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 4

For the first time in her life, Peter’s sister had nothing to say. She just sat there in Mom’s arms, fingers in her mouth, staring at Grandfather as he stared back at her.

“And this is Peter.”

That was his cue. Peter opened the door and stepped out.

Grandfather’s eyes burned a hole in his skull. “Peter, eh?”

Peter nodded.

“How old are you, boy?”

“N-nine and a half,” Peter stuttered. “I’ll be ten in March.”

“Hrm.” Grandfather turned back to Mom without giving Peter another glance. “So I guess we’ll be moving you in now.”

“Well, we could go on a little tour of the house first. The bags aren’t going anywhere.”

“Hrm.” Grandfather turned and walked up the front steps into the house without another word.

“You coming, Peter?” Mom called.

“Uhhhh…I’m gonna walk around outside first, stretch my legs,” Peter replied.

“Okay, suit yourself.”

“Mommy, he’s a scare-wy man,” Beth whispered a little too loudly.

“No, it’s just Grandfather,” Mom said in a hushed voice. “We’re going to go see your new room now.”

Peter waited until they were inside. Once they were gone, he kicked the gravel in frustration.

Freakin’ – dang it – flippin’ –

Thousands of miles to come live in a rundown shack.

Peter shielded his eyes with his hands and peered up at the house.

A huge rundown shack.

It was kind of cool, actually, in a horror movie kind of way.

He just didn’t want to live in a horror movie, that’s all.

Peter circled the house and counted the odd, mismatched windows. After losing count, he backed up almost a hundred feet to try and see that crazy balcony on the roof again.

“Psst,” somebody said behind him.

Peter whirled around.

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."

<< previous page | next page >>

Friday, July 18, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 3

It was like some giant monster had a baby, and the monster kid just stacked his giant toy blocks at random to build what was supposed to be a house, because no sane human would have ever built it.

The wood had lost its paint years ago, and the weathered gray planks crumbled silently in the sun. The shutters were black and peeling. A couple of tall, gnarled trees grew against the side walls, and overgrown bushes spilled out into the knee-high lawn.

It looked like a haunted house. Or an abandoned building. Or both.

“Oh no,” Peter whispered as a look of horror crept over his face.

“Peter, I know it looks…interesting, but it’s a great old place. I grew up here, you know.”

“You made me leave Carlos and Steven and Ben for this? I left my friends so we could live here?”

“Peter, don’t do this. Not now. Not in front of Grandfather. Smile, okay? We’ll talk about it later.”

Peter looked out the windshield, up ahead of the car. There, standing in the overgrown grass by the front steps, was a crazy old man to go with the crazy old house.

He was tall and gangly like a scarecrow, though a well-dressed one: black pants, white long sleeve shirt, gray patterned vest, a tie knotted under his collar. He looked like he was going to church.

But if his clothes looked dressy, his face just looked scary. Wild, piercing eyes blazed from beneath bushy brows. A scraggly white beard sprouted from his cheeks and jaw. He was bald on the front and top, but thin wisps of hair clung to the sides of his head.

Grandfather Flannagan.

Peter had never met him. Grandma Flannagan had flown out to California a couple of times, but she had died when Peter was four. Peter could barely remember her. There were some faded photographs of her smiling in front of their apartment, and equally faded memories of a sweet lady who gave him candy when Mom wasn’t looking.

They had never visited his grandparents’ house here, and Grandfather had never visited them. Suddenly Peter wished one of the two had happened, because if it had, Peter would have fought a lot harder to stay in California.

“Who’s dat scare-wy man?” Beth whimpered.

“He’s not scary…that’s my daddy. He’s nice, you’ll see,” Mom said, though something in her tone wasn’t exactly reassuring.

Peter looked in the mirror and smoothed his sandy brown hair, then looked down to make sure his shirt and shorts didn’t have any ketchup or mustard stains. Normally he wouldn’t have cared less, but something told him he was about to get a military inspection.

Gravel crunched under the tires as the Honda pulled up to the front of the house. Peter watched uneasily as the old man peered inside the car, straight at Peter’s face.

Mom was the first out. “Hello, Dad.” She smiled, and gave him a little hug.

“Mrm” was his only reply.

She opened the car’s back door and unbuckled the kiddie seat. “This is Beth. Um, don’t mind the bathing suit."

<< previous page | next page >>

Thursday, July 17, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 2

“Beth, you cannot wear a bathing suit everywhere!”

“NO!”

His sister was …difficult. That was the nice way of putting it. Her latest thing was wearing a yellow Strawberry Shortcake bathing suit – everywhere. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. To bed, in the bath, to the store, to the movies, to the park. Everywhere.

It wasn’t so bad in the summertime. You expected little kids to wear bathing suits in the summertime. But this had been going on for six months. The bathing suit was worn and frayed in places, and it was more gray now than yellow. Mom washed it every couple of days, and Beth would sit by the washing machine and read stories to it as it swirled around. Usually she would wear it straight out of the washer, wet and dripping, rather than bear to part with it for the 15 minutes it would take to tumble around in the dryer.

At the moment she was wearing it over a pair of shorts and a white t-shirt. When it got a little chilly – which it was in the car, with the air conditioning going – she would wear it over her other clothes. Not under. Nope, the entire world had to see her love for Strawberry Shortcake.

Mom struggled to keep her voice calm. “Beth, we have to make a good impression on Grandfather since we’re going to be living with him now. And I would rather he not see you wearing that bathing suit over your regular clothes.”

“He wike Stawbewy Shorcake!” Beth protested. “I wike it!”

“I don’t,” Peter said.

“You don’ count!” she shouted as she pointed and bared her lower teeth at him.

Peter sighed and turned back to the window. When dealing with Beth, unless it was really important, it was easier just to ignore her. Mom hadn’t learned that yet.

They had left Duskerville behind and were on a winding road deep into the forest when Peter saw it: Grandfather’s house.

It was monstrously huge and way high in the air. It had to be, because the roof was the only thing Peter could see over the trees…and they were tall trees. He could see some sort of balcony with a railing on the very top, and there were two small towers that looked more like they belonged on a castle.

“We’re here!” Mom called out. “Get out of that bathing suit!”

“NO!” Beth howled.

“Why not?” Mom argued.

“Stawbewy Shorcake is COOL!”

The car slowed down and turned into a little side street. On the right side of the road was an ordinary house. Actually, that was being a bit generous. It was pretty rundown, with flaking paint, a bunch of weeds on the lawn, at least one cracked window, and a rusty car in the driveway. But all in all, it was a relatively normal one-story home.

On the other side of the street, far away up a gravel drive, was Grandfather’s house.

Now Peter knew why the roof was visible over the trees: the house was five stories tall, if you counted the attic. There were dozens of windows, most of them mismatched in size, and none of them lined up straight with one another. Crazy built-on rooms popped out from the side of the house in the worst possible places.

<< previous page | next page >>

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 1

PETER AND THE DEAD MEN

Five days after leaving California, Peter Normal was about to see his new home for the first time.

He hated it already.

Peter sat in the front seat of his mom’s beat-up Honda, his forehead pressed to the window, and watched the small town of Duskerville go by. It was so different from what he was used to. A two-lane road that stretched through miles and miles of forest, broken occasionally by a farm or clump of houses. The actual town itself had seven blocks of shops, five stoplights, two grocery stores, and one movie theater. Peter knew because he had counted them all.

Most of the storefronts looked old, like something out of black and white television shows. Leave It To Beaver or Andy Griffith. Not many people were out. A few men in short-sleeve shirts, a woman in a flowered dress. And a tall, strange man in a black suit and hat, with an ancient face and grizzled beard. Who was also carrying a pitchfork.

Curiously, nobody on the street seemed freaked out by that.

This was nothing like California. There, it was buildings and condos and malls stacked up against each other as far as the eye could see. Lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of excitement.

No guys with pitchforks.

“But what about my friends?” Peter had complained when his mother first told him they were moving.

“You’ll make new friends, honey,” Mom said.

“What is there to do there?”

“Well, it’s really close to the ocean.”

So far, the only water Peter had seen was the thunderstorm they’d driven through two days ago.

As upset as he was to leave his friends behind, Peter never griped again about moving. He didn’t want to make this any harder for Mom than it already was. She tried to hide it from him and his little sister Beth, but she was having a really tough time.

But Peter knew; he’d known for awhile. She had lost her job as a legal assistant when her boss retired five months ago, and she hadn’t had any luck getting a new one that paid enough. They lived in a two-room apartment in not-that-great a neighborhood. Beth slept in the bedroom with his mom, and Peter slept on a fold-out couch in the den. Daycare for his sister was expensive during the school year. During the summer, Peter had to watch his two-and-a-half year-old sister (which was a lot like fighting World War III over and over again every day) while Mom went out on interviews. But school was starting soon, and she still didn’t have a job. Sometimes, late at night, he could hear his mother crying softly in the bathroom where she didn’t think anybody could hear her.

Before he could get too sad, Mom’s voice yanked him out of daydream world and back to the here and now. “Beth, you have to take off your bathing suit now, we’re going to meet your grandfather.”

“No!” his sister yelled from her toddler seat in the back of the car. All around her was piled the junk they’d brought from California – suitcases, Mom’s computer, boxes of toys.

next page >>

The Beginning...of PETER AND THE VAMPIRES!

Hey, everybody - welcome to PETER AND THE VAMPIRES!

My name is Darren Pillsbury. Some of you may know me from imaginaryfriendscomic.com. I wrote and self-published a novel called IMAGINARY FRIENDS (available here from amazon.com - go read the reviews!), and illustrated about a third of it in graphic novel form. For the time being, I'm taking a break from illustrating and working on my next book...

PETER AND THE VAMPIRES.

It's the story of a regular 10-year-old kid whose family moves into the creepy old mansion owned by his grandfather. As soon as he does, bad things start happening. It's like a cross between THE X-FILES and THE SIMPSONS (if Mr. Burns were a ghoul and something horrible lived in the town dump).

Each book is composed of four stories; I've finished the first four and am currently rewriting the next book (PETER AND THE WEREWOLVES). In an attempt to get some feedback (and maybe some fans!) I'm going to be posting a page a day from now until...well, when I run out of pages.

First up: "Peter And The Dead Men," the first story from the first book. The title says it all.

Enjoy, comment - and keep coming back! Remember, a new page every day!

I'd say turn out the lights, too, but things won't really get really scary until about day 16...

Table Of Contents

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Monday, July 28, 2008

Sunday, July 27, 2008

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Friday, July 25, 2008

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Friday, July 18, 2008

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

www.PeterAndTheVampires.com

Blog Archive

www.PeterAndTheVampires.com