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VAMPIRES

I've always feared October nights, especially when there's a full moon.

At first it was the howling, distant, but echoing from surface to surface in the iron mountains, until it seemed to be all around me, pacing there, waiting. I'd wet my bed, terrified to even attempt the crawl over the thick restraining walls of my crib and venture through the dark spaces the night light was too feeble to penetrate. Mama would chide me, but Papa would just tell her to leave me alone. He understood me so well.

Papa traveled. He was never at home on those crisping autumn evenings when the terror grew stronger and stronger in me. I longed to crawl in with Mama, to snuggle next to her and hear the comforting rhythm of her life force coursing through her veins just under her skin, but Papa forbade it. Once I actually made it over my barred crib, down the long hall, dodging the shadows snatching at me, past the silver Crucifix mounted in the corridor, its rider glaring at me with hot coal eyes despite his fetters. Papa, back from his travels, found me the next morning, exhausted from my shrieking outside Mama's bedroom, my fingernails bloodied from scraping at her woody door.

Then the scratching began: hooligans, Mama said, but somehow I knew better. There were voices, voices I never mentioned to either of them. They called me outside to play with them; to hunt the wild night; to dine. I clutched my downy pillow, stuffing a corner of it in my mouth, lest I should scream out to them. There was singing, too; siren songs no human could resist; songs that called to the flesh and the blood and madness in every human, to do terrible deeds in the night.

All Saints Day always brought peace. November First. I'd listen to the bells pealing: Come Out! Come Out! they seemed to say to my soul, their rich low tones bringing catharsis. We never went to the church. Papa declared himself to be an atheist, though I heard him praying sometimes. Not my son! Not my son, too! he would mutter to the heavens.

The first time I heard Papa's prayer was the morning after I killed the dog.

Somehow Randy had skulked into my bedroom unseen that October night. Honest, I didn't know he was there. At the height of the howling he leapt on my bed to add his canine voice to that of the banshees just outside my window. In the dark of my room, back-lit by the night light, his shadow grew grotesque and long on the wall. I struck the hapless Randy; struck him again and again, until his essence fled and his

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