A half hour later Peter felt as though he'd broken trail for miles. He had a creeping doubt in his mind that his intuition had suicidal tendencies. There was no sign of the girl, not even a broken branch, and it didn't help that he was traveling nearly blind in the dark forest.
Peter was on the verge of turning back and trying to retrace his steps of broken bushes and low branches when his eyes spotted an opening in the woods. He pushed on, and in a few yards he pulled free from the last of the brambles and stumbled into an open meadow. The diameter of the circular field was sixty yards, and the border was surrounded by the thick growth of ancient trees and brush. The meadow itself was filled with wild grass and flowers that swayed in the chill autumn breeze that swished past him.
Peter's eyes widened when he beheld a large house in the very center of the meadow. It was an imposing Victorian house with two floors and a full attic, and was at an angle from where he stood where the front faced toward his left. He could just make out an old-fashioned earth-level basement door on the far side of the front porch. A few short steps led onto the covered porch with the railing all around its sides. On the side of the home closest to him he beheld two large chimneys, one near the front and another in the far back of the long, deep house. The windows were rounded on the tops and stared at him with a menacing gaze. The original white paint on the shingles was faded and peeled, and bricks from the chimneys lay on the ground around their source like worshipers at a crumbling temple.
A few of the windows gave off the soft glow of a weak light. That was enough of a welcome for him, and Peter hurried to the porch. He tested the rickety wood and winced when they groaned beneath his weight. His shoes clomped along the boards and he came to stand before the large, wooden front door. It was made of some dark wood, stained and aged with countless years of weather. There were no windows or peepholes, but a tall, fogged glass on the side with a faint glow behind it showed he wasn't mistaken about the lights.
Peter knocked on the door. The call echoed throughout the house. His pulse quickened and he rocked on his heels waiting for a reply to the knock.
He got his reply. It was a slow thump of wood against wood. Thump. Thump. The sound grew louder the closer it came. Peter's instincts told him to dash away, to dive into the bushes around the edge of the raised porch. Thump. He half turned, but froze when the noise stopped. The knob rattled. The door creaked open.
Peter looked over his shoulder and froze. A single eye that looked through the small crack between the door and the frame. "What do you want?" came the gruff, old voice of a man.
Peter swallowed and turned with a shaky smile. "I, um, I was wondering if you wanted to buy a subscription to Playboy."
The door swung open and revealed the whole of the person. The man was about his height, but only because he was slightly stooped. His age was hard to guess from the long, speckled-gray hair that was tied behind him, but Peter guessed it was about sixty. The man's face was wrinkled, but unscarred and very pale. He wore a black vest with a white shirt beneath it, and black slacks. His shoes shone with countless polishes and were pointed at the ends. In his right hand was a black hickory cane with a rounded metal top that shone with a color not unlike solid gold.
The stranger scrutinized Peter with the same careful eye. "If that's all you've come for then-"
"You!" The old man swung around and Peter glimpsed a long hallway that led to the rear of the house. Along the left wall of the hall was a staircase with a door on the side, and on the first landing on the stairs stood the girl from the woods. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was agape.
The old man glanced between the girl and Peter. "Do you know him?"
The young woman hurried down the stairs and rushed past the old man to wrap her arm around Peter's waist. "I met him in the park and-um-"
"Peter," he spoke up.
"Peter was just-"
"Looking to sell some magazines," Peter added.
She nodded. "Looking to sell some magazines, and I told him if he wanted a job he could clean up our messy library."
The old man's bushy eyebrows crashed down over his bright blue eyes. "You told a human about us without my permission?"
She bit her lip and her eyes swung back and forth in desperate thought. "It's not like that, Dad. He's-um, he's one of us. You know, a vampire."
Peter glanced at her and blinked. "I'm a-" She slapped her hand over his mouth so fast he didn't even see the action until he felt her soft, bone-chillingly cold flesh across his lips.
The young woman nervously laughed. "He was just flying through looking for work and I thought maybe he could stay with us."
The old man's eyebrows crashed down and he jerked his head back over his shoulder. "Go upstairs. You're grounded for a decade."
Her mouth dropped open and she dropped her hand from Peter's lips. "What? But why?"
"Because you led him to the meadow," he explained.
Peter pulled her hand off his mouth and frowned. "Come on, it isn't that bad. She didn't even lead me this place. I just sort of found it."
The old man turned toward him and glared at Peter. "You will forget about what you have seen here and never return."
He swept his eyes over the entrance hall. "But this place is so cool. It's like Halloween every day of the year. Just the sort of place a-um, a vampire would love to live in."
"Leave now before I loose the dogs on you," he warned him. The old man grabbed his daughter and pulled her inside the house.
Peter leaned to the side as the door shut. His last view of her was her smiling face and beautiful eyes. "Wait a-" The door shut, missing his nose by a fraction of an inch. "-sec." He stepped back and glared at the imposing front door. The light in the side window vanished and the thump of the cane faded into the distance.
Peter shoved his hands into his pocket and tromped off the porch. He paused ten yards from the front of the house and looked back at the home. Just when he thought he'd found the girl of his dreams, and his sweater, the father butts in and ruins everything. He admitted to himself that she was a little weird with her lies, but she didn't lack originality.
He studied the home and the few remaining lights that glistened through the windows. They must have been candles because he couldn't see any source of electricity. One of the upper front rooms had a light on and thin white curtains. The glass was shut, but he couldn't mistake the slim silhouette that appeared at the window. His strange dream girl. He glanced at the front door, saw nothing of the dad, and scurried up to the bottom of the chimney. The chimney stack climbed past the window on its right.
He opened his mouth, and it was then he realized he didn't know her name. "Psst! Psst!" he whispered, but his timing was bad. The silhouette stepped away from the window, but the light was still on. That gave him hope. He glanced along the wall and noticed vines grew from a large, old bush and climbed the wall and chimney up to the window of his aspiring girlfriend's room. Their small purple flowered were like a trail to destiny.
Peter walked over and tested the vines. Tough as any other rope, and it barely moved under his pull. He jumped up and climbed the fifteen feet to the window sill. Peter let go of one of his hands and slipped. He quickly knocked on the glass and hugged himself to the vine. The curtains parted and the beautiful girl peered into the night. He was disappointed she was still dressed in her street clothes.
Her eyes widened. She pulled the window up and leaned out. "What are you doing here? Dad said if you didn't leave he'd loose the dogs on you!"
He sheepishly smiled. "I just thought I'd climb in and see how you were doing and apologize. I didn't mean to get you in trouble with your dad."
The climb up the vines was worth the effort when she smiled at him. "You're very sweet, but you really do have to leave. The dogs aren't what you think they are."
He shrugged. "It's cool. I'm one of the fastest sprinters at the university. It comes from always being
late to class."
She shook her head. "No, these aren't normal dogs. They're-"
Peter heard a hiss near his hands and he glanced down at the flowers. The heads of the purple flowers were like large buttercups, but for the first time he noticed there were rows of sharp teeth inside the petals. The flowers stretched their stems away from the vine and pointed the openings of their petals toward him. His eyes widened when they hissed at him. Several snapped at him like vipers.
"Whoa! Whoa!" he yelled, but they continued snapping at his hands and face.
Peter writhed and dodged their snapping pedals. Every victory was a small defeat as his fingers lost their grip on the vines. He fell backwards and landed on his back with a hard plop.
The young woman leaned out the window and looked down at him. "Are you okay?" she whispered.
He sat up and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah," he coughed out. The air was slowly returning to his lungs when he heard a baleful howl in the distance.
The young woman whipped her face toward the rear of the house, and then back to Peter. "Run, Peter! My dad's let the hounds out!"
Peter flipped over and groaned just as two hounds raced around the corner of the building. The groan stuck in his throat when he noticed how the eyes of the hounds burned like hell and their teeth were sharp as needles. Their mouths salivated with the thought of fast food. Peter thought to oblige them as he scrambled to his feet and raced away from the house toward the safety of the thick woods with their high branches.
The trees came closer, but so did the hounds of Hades. Peter heard the snapping of their jaws at his heels and glanced over his shoulder. If he was to meet his end he was going to see it coming. He saw not only the gnashing teeth of the hounds of hell, but something small and black swept from the window of the young woman's room. The little creature flew over the heads of the dogs. Peter saw it was a large black bat. It screeched and turned its small claws forward so they pointed at him.
Peter tried to duck, but the tiny claws grasped his shirt collar. He expected the beast to bite his neck and drain him dry, but what he could never have expected was for the creature to yank up on his collar and for his feet to leave the ground.
"Let me down!" he yelped. His feet flailed in the air and he nearly slipped out of his shirt in his struggles to loosen himself from the bat's grasp. He lowered himself a few inches, but his victory was short-lived when the hounds jumped up and bit at his heels. "Let me up!"
The bat flapped its wings faster. They flew across the meadow grass toward the trees ten yards off. They rose higher and higher, but the branches came closer and closer. He tucked his legs against his chest and gave a quick prayer with promises of ending world hunger and curing cancer. Someone heard half his prayers because his rear and feet missed the tops of the brushes, but they didn't clear the branches. The bat swooped and dodged the thick limbs of the ancient trees, and Peter swung from side to side with his arms scraping the twigs of the limbs.
The hounds were as disappointed as he was terrified. They skidded to a stop at the edge of the meadow, and howled and growled their disappointment. He was out of the pan and into the fire.
CHAPTER 4