She Walks at Night

A quiet town has a visitor. (Warning, contains racist language and sensitive subject matter)

    It was a cold winter night. The sun had set a decent few hours ago. The loud neighborhood had shown its quiet side. On a usual daylight, there would be kids playing, some drunk getting mad at his cheating wife. A group of wannabe mechanics would be tuning some monster truck that they didn’t really understand how it worked. On the corner, a guy would be smoking his meth and coughing. At the dark of night, under the moon, the neighborhood had gone dead.

    The guy smoking his meth was still there.

    They were out playing dominoes. A four-two piece hit the wooden table. They were cousins in this town and had their weekly meeting of getting drunk and bragging about sexual conquests which were few in truth. To the right of Jacob was the outsider cuz, Bills (short of Billy). Bills looked at his dominoe set and wished he could pass and save his piece for a good end game move but realized he had to play his last two dot piece. He slammed it down and took a shot.

    “So I take it that is your last two?” Jacob smiled. He had learned the ins and outs of the game from his college friends. His partner Phil, cousin by marriage but still part of the clan, laid down a double four keeping the chain on the left going strong, this was good because Jacob could play his other four dot piece after Steven, (cousin in that he slept his Jacobs sister but was always too lazy to go home.) would move.

    “Did you hear about that poor kid in the school?” Steven asked.

    “No, I reckon it’s a story from the papers?”

    “I heard about it on the radio but I am sure its in the papers too. Havent gone in town in days to read what the papers are sayin’.” Steven continued, “But I reckon ya heard? You did hear, right?”

    “I aint reading’ the news in a few days. Same bullshit as usual. So whats the story Steven?”

    “Hold your horses Jacob.” Steven started to think. Jacob had planned on a monopoly of all the four dot dominoes between him and his partner Phil. The game required reading the throws and catching on tells. What he did not know what Steven was going to throw a…
    
    “Four-three” Steven smiled. Jacob looked down and muttered. He didn’t have a single three dot in his domino set. His entire gameplan was…

    “F**k. You were supposed to have that piece Phil!”

    “You got too excited again man.” Jacob laughed.

    “Shut up.” Jacob was becoming a sore loser. And his mind in the game was becoming more fierce. It was the wanabe alpha male within that made him want to punch anything that looked at him wrong. He took a shot of the whiskey beside him, hoping it would calm down his rage to not nail his sister’s pathetic lay in the face.

    “So what happened in the news?” Phil leaned forward. He hated half finished stories.

    Steven looked around and then huddled forward as if to tell a big secret. “You know, the school on Central. Some hundred students or s**t like that?”

    Jacob tried to dismiss the gossip as unimportant. “Yeah, what about it?”

    “Three kids…”

    “We talking the high school or the grade school?”

    “High School you s**t for brains.”

    “Hardly kids.”

    “Yeah well…they dead.”

    In the distance there was a faint sound. It sounded like nails clacking on a surface. Jacob turned around.

    Bills took a look and put his dominoes down.

    The sound came closer and louder. The streets were usually empty and only a few houses had lights on inside. For the cousin,s sitting on their porch, it was like the last bastion of civilization overlooking a sleeping world of silence. There was a figure walking in the distance.

    “You sure three students got it?”

    “Got it, bought it, snuffed it.”

    “And you heard this on the radio? You didn’t bother to conifrm. I am sorry but I would think that if three teenagers met the Good Lord before their time, the entire county would be shut down. Do they know who did it?”

    “Nopes. And that there lies the mystery folks.”

    “The real mystery is why my cousin sleeps with your small dick-a*s.” Phil laughed at his own joke. He felt proud of that one. Again, a lot of whiskey was had this night.

    Bills tensed up.
    
    “Hey, I am just…” He trailed off.

    In the not so far distance, turning the stop sign but firmly on the sidewalk, heading in their direction, a figure dressed for summer walked. There was no pride or reason to her walk but it persisted stubbornly, perhaps a bit overly leisurely.

    The man on meth ran as quick as he could.

    “Dudes. Careful.” The color of Phil’s face deminshed and a rare seriousness replaced the comic nature he projected.

    The girl continued her walk. She took a look at one of the street lamps. After a microsecond passed, she walked forward, going back to her usual pace. She wore a white short sleeved shirt. Her pants held a vintage feminen grasp on her waiste and expanded into bell bottoms. Her hair was carefully braided backwards allowing her gentle forhead to be the center of attention, next to her big, wide eyes. She had on her, a faint smile.

    The sounds of the walking feet came closer to them out on the patio in front of the house. Soon they would be a stones throw away from her, and she could almost hear any single word they said.

    Bills couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Niether could his family sitting with him, but for different reasons.

    “Don’t move a muscle Bills.” Phil looked sternly.

    “Do you think that’s her?” Steven asked

    “Shut your f*****g mouth.” Jacob chided.

    “What the f**k.” Bills wanted to move to say something.

    “Dude, don’t say a word.”

    The figure took an almost brief glimpse in their direction but decided against it.

    Bills stood tall almost feeling his bretheren holding him back. He read the room and kept his peace for the moment.

    She kept walking. The sounds of her shoes getting quieter as she went to the end of the street. After a couple minutes, they couldn’t see any sight of her. She had gone.

    “What the f**k was that?” Bills asked, wondering why they had stopped him.

    “Dude, you don’t get it.” Jacob was trying to calm him down.

    “Was that her?” Steven asked.

    “We just came this f*****g close to the grim reaper.”

---

    The Township of Jefferson, Luisiana had a population of two thousand people spread flat out that it would be more accurate to call the town its own county. No one lived in the shopping and government districts downtown and a strip mall would cuddle against the high school sitting at the border of civilization leading to the deep forests and green. Half the people who lived their kept to themselves and their small communities, driving into town for the necessary materials if they weren’t out hunting for their own food.

    Three bodies had been found in the high school gym.

    Victim 1. Joseph Baker jr. Caucasian, Male. 18. Father is named Joseph Baker Sr 37. Mother Tanya Baker 35. The father is a child of noted officer of the KKK. The victim was known to show violence and deemed a trouble maker by teachers. He was highly physically active. Cause of death was his neck was completely crushed. What was left of him was unrecognizable, as if someone took a tire iron to him with no restraint.

    Victim 2. George Lee. Caucasian, Male. 18. Father is Laurence Lee 41 and mother is Patricia Lee 40. Parents are both known members of the community. Laurence Lee ran an unsuccessful campaign to be in the state senate. George was said to be well mannered and well liked. 3.9 GPA. Cause of death was massive blood loss after his neck was torn open.

    Victim 3. Terry Pullman. Caucasian, Male. 17. Father is Francis Pritchard 47. Mother is Veronica Pullman 39. The son kept his mothers name, the father is the town drunk, last seen four months ago, current status unknown. He was the strongest member of the football team and also the quietest person on the campus. The excess exercise had caused his body to become rigid early. He died stranding on his knees. Cause of death blood loss from a wound to the neck.

    “You say, you saw it happen?”

    “Can you get me a glass of water sir” The girl in a ripped shirt, covered in blood, continued to shake were she sate. The detective walked back. There was no one else in the room with them. He was worried about how quick the locals would be in sensationalizing the witness as the sole survivor to three kids being murdered.

    “So, tell me what happened.”

    “I had gotten lost and wound up not far out of town.” She tried to take a sip but her hands were shaking.

    “You definitely got lost. Where you from?” He spoke in a more hush tone.

    “I am really scared if I say where. I mean, I just don’t feel comfortable after what happened really saying where my family lives.”

    She looked up to him with sad eyes. He found himself nodding.

    She continued, “it’s a town a lot smaller knit than here. We kept to ourselves after the civil war. I know the modern world is connecting us all but my family is pretty stubborn in their ways.” She attempted to laugh away her fear.

    “Do you need coffee? It is getting pretty late. And I need to hear your side of the story before…”

    “There were five of them. Boys I mean.” She had cut him off. He was not expecting that. “There were those three and two older gentleman that night.’

    “Go on.”

    “As I said earlier, I had gotten lost, and I couldn’t tell my East from my North, and I kept walking. It was cold, I was alone in the woods, and I needed food and water.”

    She had begun to stare at his eyes. The pupils of hers were fiercely letting him in on her vulnerability. She was trusting him with her life by telling him her story.

    “They came after me in a truck. It was some red truck. I couldn’t tell you the brand. They were yelling at me as I was walking back north to try and find my way back. I just turn around and see these guys screaming at me. So I ran.”

    “They were coming after you in a truck?”

    “Yes. They came after me.” She nodded her head, and he started to follow suit with his. “I think I offended some shop keeper or made too much of a spectactle of myself. I tried to keep my head down but I just wanted to go home. I was a good mile out when they start hollering at me and yelling and I felt it. I knew, this could be my last moments on Earth.”

    “So these three boys…”

    “As I said, I was chased by five of them. I don’t know what happened right after that but somehow I got pushed down. This kid in the back is yelling “Get a bat! Get a bat!” Her eyes start to freeze. She isn’t looking at him anymore, she is looking through. She is seeing the memory.

    “So they attacked you?” He took a moment to denote the look of her clothes.

    She hurridly nodded her head. The horror of the memory and struck her dumb. She kept the nodding going until her eyes swelled even more. Sounds started coming from her lips but she was fighting to keep them in.

    “It’s okay. You are under my protection.”

    “I fell down. I don’t know who tounched me or how that street became surrounded by trees without a road. I don’t remmeber and I am sorry. I get up though. The car, its in the distance but I think if I get through the trees I can lose them.”

    The detective takes a moment to take out the map of the town. “A road leading north, followed by trees a few minutes off the path, I would guess you would be on the 15 north. That’s still decent distance from the gym.”

    “I don’t know how long I ran and in what direction. But, they got me. One of them pinned me to the ground. I scratched and clawed at him, but he just punched me in the face and called me a n****r. She spat on me and then he…I know he hit me, I remember his fist coming for my face.”
    
    Her frails self seemed to curl again.

    “You said you saw what happened. But…”

    “How did we go from the lynching tree to the school grounds?”

    The words were not what he was expecting.

    “They tried to…”

    They did. That night on the urging of  Joseph Baker’s uncle and a drinking buddy they found a defensless black girl and chased her into the woods. They assaulted and tore at her. One she was knocked out the eldest two members departed, telling the novices to make them proud. They had tied her up and took her to an old known tree among the locals. Many men and women were killed there.

    The dragged her kicking and screaming. Joseph kept laughing and screaming orders at his friends. She locked eyes with him and felt pure hatred within. She felt the presence of an unknown creature watching them.

    Joseph spent the next five minutes bragging to his friends on how to tie the knot for the noose. It was to keep her scared. She knew he wanted her to be bathing in her orwn horror before she died.

    The other two boys were scared as well. They had never dreamt that today was the day they become killers. The strong one hoisted her up and Joseph just kept laughing. She had felt the rope tighten on her neck as her body began to lift….

    “And then the rope came undone. It was a bear. A bear had made a noise and they just ran for their lives. Guilty conscience perhaps. I was scared too, so I ran.”

    “So a bear chased you guys?”

    “I don’t remember it being a gym. I just remember four walls and pushing open a door.”

    “So what happened in the gym?”

    She went silent. Her eyes detached from his completely now and for the first time he could see past her. He shook off the effects.

    “They were killed in front of me. This is there blood. And for some reason. As horrifying as them being murdered in the same room as me. All I keep seeing is that tree, begging to see tomorrow.”

    She looked at him in the eyes one more time. “Please, just let me go home and you wont have to hear from me again.”

    The dead son of a politician, the grandson of a member of a KKK, and a kid with a potential football career ahead of him. This would be a scandal. If he kept her any longer, who is to say her life wouldn’t be in more trouble?

    “Ill make sure you get out of the town safe,” was all he could say. She left the room grateful, in a daze of the last few minutes..

---

    At the edge of town, at the dark of night, a black girl walks the streets. The moon reflects on her forhead. Her braided hair allows the soft wind to tickle her scalp. She turned left last night so this time, she turns right.

    Two older white men, in their thirties, drinking low end beer and talking trash, She sees them from the corner of her eye.

    One looks to the other. “Am I seeing that right?”

    They both look out to the black lady walking into their neighborhood from the distance.

    “What the hell Skyler. I thought they knew to stay away.”

    The other one laughs and then has another sip of his drink. It was almost midnight and Skyler had finished his last beer for the night. He was just going to sit in his rocking chair. His friend though got up and waited till the girl was in yelling distance at the porch.

    “Get the f**k out of here you n****r or I…” His friend was drunk and forgot what he was going to say. He turned to Skyler to laugh for a bit at their shared joke. The last thing Skyler’s friend saw when he turned around was the inside of her massive grin as she standing right in front of hem, her teeth inside his vocal cords. Skyler could only scream as she had her eyes trained on him the entire time she drank.

---

    In the vampire community there is one known as Abigail. She patrols the streets at night looking for some fool to be her next meal. On one foolish night, three people made the mistake of crossing her. The last one, she beat within an inch of his life and then hung him with her own hands by the neck until he was dead.  

    To some, she is an urban legend best not mentioned. To a detective, a scared girl covered in blood that he cannot seem to recall much of. To one ex skin head covered in tattoos, he gives her a toast of his late night gin when she walks by. He says hello and wishes her well. She strangely looks back at him and smiles and nods her head.

Author's Note

Part of me wants the audiance going in blind to the story. The other part of me knows that with the material discussed that people should know what they are getting into. If I were to say "vampires" from the get go, and even with the title, the first scene I think would lose a lot of its mystique.

I was debating on the reveal of how she killed those boys, and i knew i wanted to drive home that the one whose throat she crushed in her own hands was murder, and not her trying to sustain herself thus making the kill more impactful. I'm worried about the level of showing vs telling I did on this story. Needless to say I would love to clean this up in the future but would love feedback.

Last note: This was originally conceived as a side chapter in a book I was writing long ago. Abigail is going to become someone important in the vampire world and this was her introduction to that world.

Again, thoughts and feedback welcome, and thank you for reading.