Click...Clack.....Click, clack.....
The sound was intolerable. And it was following her home. She looked again over one sodden hunched shoulder and peered into the rainy gloom behind her. Only sullen inky night met her gaze. She turned her eyes back to the wet sidewalk before her.
Click, click.
Maureen Reese was a normal secretary, working normal hours, on all the normal days. Until now. At the behest of her employer, she had broken her daily ritual of ten years and stayed late. He had needed help typing a last minute speech for an important meeting with some very affluent clients the next morning. He had promised her a bonus if all went well the next day.
Now she was walking home. In the dark. She did it every day, walking home, rather than driving, to save money and be environmentally correct, but she had never walked home in the dark.
It should be the same, she told herself. From Mansfield Avenue to Gregory, take a left, the to the Metro Apartments. The Metro was the largest apartment complex in the city. It was also one of the most economical. Its sheer size somehow managed to keep the prices down.
Click, clack, click.
It sounded like someone in heels.
Click. . . silence. . .
Maureen nearly tripped when the next anticipated click did not come. It had stopped. Very close to her. She could feel unseen eyes in her back. She whipped around to face....nothing. The shallow night darkness stared back at her, revealing nothing. She turned around and to resume her trek, only to find herself in a dead end alley.
How did that happen? She demanded to herself, denying the surge of violent panic that struggled to erupt. I just saw the sign for Gregory. She closed her eyes very tight and willed the wall to disappear and let her continue on her way home. She opened her eyes to see it was still there. Calm down, she told herself as her hands began to shake. It is nothing. You just took a wrong turn while you were so busy being scared at echoes. You weren't paying attention to where you were going. All you have to do, she continued, frantically clinging to her sanity, is turn around and go back until you find Gregory. Easy.
Not so easy.
Going back meant she had to face IT---whatever IT was following her. It was between her and the relative safety of the street. It had to be. She could feel it there, close to her, watching her every move.
Click. It was moving again, closer, and yet closer. She peered through the darkness trying to discern movement. For a moment, silence came over the alley. She felt her self involuntarily tensing up, feeling very much like the rabbit who is about ready to be eaten by the wolf.
Then IT came out of the shadows, stepping into the dim circle of her vision. Maureen fought down the urge to scream as she realized that IT was a skeleton, hinged together by invisible bonds.
Click, clack. That sound she had heard was the sound of the bare bones of the skeleton's feet striking the pavement.
The eyes. They were the most horrifying part of the whole monster. They were still intact, held in hollow sockets. Like an ancient mummy's eyes, the eyes were parched, with a hole where the iris and pupil were supposed to be. In the hole, there was a focus of light, shining bright red from the empty depth. The color was a sickening shade, yet Maureen felt entranced by them, unable to look away.
Maureen felt drawn into these eyes, farther that she should have... suddenly, IT was there, a few inches from her. She had not even seen the movement. She tore her gaze away from its eyes and saw the mouth, level with her eyes.
The mouth. . .there were two long fangs extending from the upper jaw. Maureen stepped away, but the monster grabbed her with one of the skeletal hands. It gripped her painfully, pulling her closer. It opened its mouth and leaned closer to her, toward her neck.
Maureen did scream now, a piercing scream hat shattered the night around her. The monster ignored her scream and bit her neck, dry fangs piercing the jugular.
It seemed an eternity before it let her go, throwing her to the ground as it pulled away. Maureen looked up and watched in stunned fascination as a vapor began to rise off the creature's limbs. Soon she could no longer see it in the cloud that surrounded it. Only its red eyes burned through the cloud, still gazing at her. After a moment, she could make out a vague body, writhing as if in pain, its mouth gaping open in a terrible high-pitched screaming. Maureen turned away, too terrified but what she was seeing to even try to understand.
She found her eyes returning to the skeleton before she was truly ready to see it again. The skeletal vampire was no longer a skeleton. Now the creature had a layer of flesh covering it. The features were still impossible to make out from the emaciated face, but it seemed masculine. Maureen was numbly surprised by the fact that he had clothing, threadbare, but still, clothing where there had been nothing before. It turned its wasted eyes to her and moved toward her again. The eerie red glare had left, and the eyeballs were now complete, but dry and white with no iris.
She scrambled backwards in an attempt to escape, but she found that the wall that had appeared earlier was still there, very solid. The only way for escape was past that thing that common sense said could not exist. She tried to stand up, but the vampire grabbed her roughly by the arms and pulled her to it again. She never had a chance to scream as she saw the animal fangs coming toward her again, sinking into her neck once more.
Consciousness faded away before it let her go. When she became aware and was able to open her eyes again, she saw that it, no he, had changed again. Now there stood a young man before her. He was beautiful in his own, frightening way. Vibrant blue eyes, glowing almost as much as they had when they were red, studied her emotionlessly. His hair was a soft shade of brown, now falling over his shoulders in gentle curls. His clothes had changed again as well, but they were of the wrong time period. Maureen's fashion-tuned mind clicked disapprovingly at the faded loose-linen weave of his shirt and scarred leather of his trousers.
He looked almost alive, but… malnourished. She took a breath to speak, but found she had no strength to make a sound. Realizing that she was conscious, the vampire swiftly knelt by her. Gently, he brushed his hand across her cheek, moving a stray strand back into place.
"Maureen," he said quietly, letting her name roll off his lips in a sensuous tone, "my poor Maureen. I am afraid your organized life has been disrupted. You much accept my sympathy." He then laughed softly, a sound that sent shivers up her spine. "I am sorry, however, that you will not live long enough to enjoy that sympathy." Saying this, he gathered her limp form in his arms and drained the rest of her life away into the night.
The police file the following morning started that "the body was unusually pale-probably from abnormal loss of blood." The coroner confirmed shortly thereafter that the death did indeed occur from loss of blood. The case was closed, due to lack or evidence, motive, and interest, then filed away in the shelves of bureaucracy.
And the newly-awakened vampire lived, to kill anew.