Fear the Barfitron (11 page)

We yelled and jumped back, our sneakers squeaking
on the cold linoleum floor.

“Do you think it can get through the window?” Gordon whined.

The blind monster lifted up a gnarled, slimy hand and pointed behind us.

Ben covered his eyes.

Gordon and I turned to see one of the old vampires. It was the vampire that had been licking his lips at me ever since I started at Raven Hill.

“Chris?” Ben whimpered. “Can we go now?”

In the pale light of our cell phones, I could see that the vampire was drooling a little. A wad of drool fell off of the left corner of his mouth and PLOPPED to the floor.

The vampire was hungry.

He backed up toward the main entrance to the hallway. The monster in the prison cell behind us giggled a high, piercing giggle. It didn’t sound human.

We were cornered.

“I’ve had enough of this. Outta my way, old man!” Gordon yelled.

He stomped toward the doorway and the light beyond. I grabbed Gordon before he got too close to the old vampire.

“That’s not just any old man,” I said. “He’s a vampire.”

“What?” Ben said, and finally looked up from his hands.

As if on cue, the old vampire bared his teeth for us to see.

They looked remarkably pearly white and healthy for a vampire of his age. And his incisors looked very, very sharp.

“RUN!” I yelled.

I grabbed Ben and Gordon by the belts of their karate uniforms, and turned down the dark hallway. I had no idea where it led, but I knew it led away from the vampire. That was good enough for me.

We ran past another half dozen doors and the medical/hospital/bleach smell got even stronger. At the end of the hallway, there was a small room with beakers and vials—a laboratory. We ducked inside.

“Look for a door on the other side!” I screamed.

“He’s halfway down the hall,” Gordon yelled.

Gordon sounded terrified.

Ben slammed the door shut, but there was no lock. We scrambled around the room, looking for a door to anywhere but here. But there was no door, and there was no window. The old vampire would be here any second, and he looked ready to feast.

I looked around for wood to make into a stake, but there was nothing but steel and stone in the laboratory.

“How are we going to defend ourselves?” I asked.

“I dunno,” said Gordon. “How about this?”

He held up a beaker labeled
ACID
.

“It’s worth a try,” Ben said.

I rummaged through a drawer of rusty old medical tools and found a scalpel.

The door slowly creaked open, and the sound of laughter filled the laboratory. The old vampire was
giggling
.

“Ready for dinner?” asked Gordon as he stepped forward.

He flung the vial of acid at the vampire. It broke and the vampire started smoking, but it didn’t slow him down. He giggled even more and lunged forward. Gordon backed right into a cabinet, and the vampire pounced and held on tight.

“GORDON!” Ben screeched.

“Get him off me!!” yelled Gordon.

I jumped forward and stabbed the old vampire in the throat.

The scalpel just stuck there as the old vampire leaned in to bite Gordon. He didn’t even seem to feel it.

“Chris! Ben!” Gordon yelled. “Help me out! DO SOMETHING!!!”

But it was too late. The vampire opened wide and let out one more drooly, excited giggle.

And then, right before I closed my eyes—

FWACK! CRACK!

The old vampire’s dentures fell out of his mouth, bounced off of Gordon’s neck, and rattled to a drooly stop on the linoleum floor of the laboratory.

The old vampire let Gordon go and slowly leaned down to scoop up his dentures. Gordon ran out into the hall. I leaned down to grab the dentures before the vampire did.

Neither of us would get the dentures, though.

They started clicking…

And took off down the hallway!

“Gordon!” I yelled “WATCH OUT!”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Taylor,” said a voice that was not Gordon’s, “your friend is just fine. Grigore’s dentures are just heading back to his coffin.”

“The Director?!” I yelled.

Sure enough the Director came through the door, dragging Gordon by his ear.

Grigore started crying as soon as he saw the Director. He rushed over and grabbed a hold of his suit, weeping into his perfectly pressed shirt. The Director let Gordon go and he came over to stand next to Ben and me. Gordon rubbed his ear, which was beet red.

“Mr. Taylor,” the Director said, cradling Grigore in his arms, “you have broken into the private wing. You’ve soiled my laboratory, most likely ruining weeks of research. But, most despicably, you have frightened Grigore.”

The old vampire cried louder at the sound of his name.

“I’m extremely disappointed in you. You were the perfect candidate. But I see now that I should never have trusted you. Certainly not today. Most likely from the beginning. I let you in after the raven tried to block you. You’ve been up to something the whole time you’ve been volunteering here. What is it?”

“I’VE BEEN UP TO SOMETHING?!” I yelled. “What have you been up to? Sheltering monsters!”

“Well, I don’t really think of them as monsters,” the Director said, patting Grigore’s head. “Just elderly with special needs.”

“Very special needs,” said Gordon.

“But,” the Director continued, “I will agree with you that I’ve been sheltering them. It is my duty to shelter and protect them. They have nowhere else to turn. And you gentlemen have stuck your noses far too far into our affairs.”

An intercom next to the door crackled and a voice said, “Great Room secure.” It sounded like one of the Nurses.

“Very well,” said the Director. “Meet me at my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Follow me, gentlemen,” said the Director, “or I’ll lock you in this wing and open up all the doors.”

He didn’t have to tell us twice.

Ben, Gordon, and I all sat in the Director’s office with our heads down.

Shane was nowhere to be seen.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” whispered Ben. “They killed Shane! I think I’m losing my mind.”

“It’s okay, Ben.” I patted him on the back.

I had absolutely no idea if it was okay.

“Where’s Shane?” I asked the Director.

The Director paced behind his desk and stared at us. And stared at us. And stared at us. He looked very, very angry. And still he didn’t say anything.

Two Nurses guarded the door. The office itself was actually quite warm and inviting—books on the shelves, a small fireplace, a nice view of the hillside. The furnishings were all wood and leather, and there
was a rug that looked like it could have actually been manufactured in the last twenty years.

“If this is your idea of a joke…,” Gordon started to say to the Director.

But then Shane came into the room—with the zombie who had lost his arm!

Shane gave the arm, which had been reattached, a shake.

“It was great talking with you, too, Billy!” he said as the zombie turned to leave. “If they ever let you out of here, you should check out the dojo I go to. Remember—start slow—ease your body into it.”

Shane sat down next to us. We all just stared at him.

“What’s up, guys?” he asked casually.

“Wait,” Ben said. “You made it! We thought you were done for! This is crazy! Was that really a zombie?”

“The zombies are actually pretty chill dudes,” said Shane. “You just have to talk to them on their level, you know what I mean?”

The Director sat down behind his desk, sinking slowly into his chair. He clasped his hands together, but still said nothing.

“So…,” Gordon said, “can we go now?”

“No,” the Director said, “you cannot go now. Nor can you go…ever. I’ve made up my mind—you can never leave this place. You’ve seen too much, and…”

The Director hesitated for a moment.

“…and I need your help with the residents.”

“Wait!” I yelled. “You can’t just keep us here!”

“Actually, I can,” the Director said. There was not a hint of joking in his voice.

“What are you going to tell our parents when they come looking for us?” I asked.

“Oh, your parents will never come looking for you,” the Director said.

“Don’t you dare hurt them,” I said.

The Director grinned and said, “I’m not going to hurt your parents. I have some rare monsters—”

Gordon interrupted the Director with a loud snicker.

“Yes, monsters—in the very same wing where I caught you. One of them is a jungle worm that can crawl into the brain of its victim through the nose and eat their memories. We’ll introduce a few to your parents, and they’ll soon forget they ever had children. We’ll do the same to your teachers. To your principal. To your grandparents, if in fact they still exist. Your friends might miss you, but who will believe a kid who talks about imaginary friends? The worms hurt terribly, but your parents won’t remember that, either. So I won’t, technically, be hurting them.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Ben, and let out a little burp. “Oh, man, someone get me out of here!”

“What an idiotic plan,” I said.

I stood up, crossed my arms, and looked right into the Director’s eyes. He looked genuinely surprised.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“That plan would never work,” I said. “You’d have to erase too many memories
and
official records. Do you think the whole school district is just going to ignore all the records of missing students? What about our IM screen names?”

There was a moment of silence as the Director and I stared at each other.

“Good point!” whispered Shane.

“Yeah,” said Gordon. “This is a bunch of baloney! Where are the cameras, Director Dude? You’ve certainly got enough actors around. That old vampire bit was a hoot.”

Now I turned to Gordon.

“Wake up dude; this is for
real!
” I said.

“For real….” Ben curled up into a ball on his chair.

“You have seen too much,” snapped the Director. “You know about the vampires. The werewolves. It’s hard
not
to notice the zombies, and I presume you’ve seen a few of the banshees. We have a swamp thing. And a monster pieced together from the flesh of the dead. We used to have a Cyclops…”

The Director looked distracted for a moment and then continued. “The witches are actually quite helpful with potions and spells to calm some of the residents
that suffer from dementia. But, they, too are losing their minds.

“So, that’s that. You’ll be helping us here until the end of your days. Rewrapping mummies, checking the werewolves for ticks, cleaning the vampire’s dentures, sewing on lost zombie parts. The list goes on and on. There’s a lot to be done.

“However, I will warn you. Don’t think these old monsters are harmless. Had Nurse Uwt actually applied denture cream to Grigore’s dentures today as he was supposed to, Gordon would not have fared as well in the laboratory. They are very, very hungry, and it is only because we tell them to behave that they do.”

I couldn’t stand it! The Director acted like he was going to keep the old monsters from harming us, but I already knew what he had planned. Now he had three more sources of lebensplasm!

“You don’t want us to help!” I screamed. “You’re just going to feed us to all the old folks. They’ll all eat our lebensplasm. Where have you put mine?”

The Director looked at me strangely. He opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, it began raining.

Yes, it began raining
inside.
A light drizzle quickly became a steady pitter-pitter-pitter of rain. It wet the documents on the Director’s desk. It wet the rug. I felt it soak through my hair and onto my scalp. I touched my hair, and it felt…slimy.

We all looked up to see where the rain was coming from.

And then we saw them.

Dozens of them.

There were dozens of the same cat-size roaches I had seen the raven kill that very first day. And this time I could see them clearly. They looked exactly like huge roaches except for one special feature.

They had big-lipped, snaggletoothed human mouths. And they were all drooling.

It was raining drool.

The rain ended and the roaches started to hiss and moan with their twisted, puffy-lipped mouths.