Kimmie’s Kooky Kreeper Kaper

Or

Haunted House Hijinks

A Kimberly Anne Moriarty Misadventure

By

Matt R.. Jones, Esq. 

*     *     * 

            “You bastard!” hissed Kimberly Anne Moriarty, clenching her fingerless-glove-clad fist in anger.  “Don’t do this to me, you filthy son of a bitch!”  She ground her teeth together, narrowing her eyes.  “I swear, I’m gonna pour gas on you and light you up, and boy, you’ll be sorry then!  You wanna be sorry?  I can make it happen, you piece of shit, so you best better know your role!”

            The young pink-haired vampiress viciously turned the key in the starter, and instead of springing to life, her usually-trusty little Geo Metro went vooooooom-ch-ch! and refused to do much of anything else.  Kimmie glared at the softly-glowing instrument cluster suspiciously, muttering to herself, and then growled, “You’ve got enough power to run your lights, so by damn, you’ve got enough to start, so start!”

            She twisted the key once more.

            Vooooooom-ch-ch!

            “Fuck!”

            Kimmie threw back her head and snarled, sounding like a oversized angry housecat.  “Why now, of all times?!” she demanded, “What have I ever done to you?!  I even gave you premium gas at the last station, pal, so you owe me!”  She tried the key yet again, and after the Metro had made the same damning noise as before, Kimmie hissed in disgust and started to softly bang her forehead against the steering wheel.  “Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit!” she growled with each thump of her head.

When she leaned back in her seat, she did a double-take when she saw that she’d bent the top of the steering wheel inward.  She then smacked herself on the forehead and moaned, “Oh for cryin’ out . . . damnation.”  She’d only been a vampire for several months, and hadn’t quite gotten used to all of the different aspects of her new physiology, and there were times that her newfound strength and durability got the better of her.  Or, to use an old cliché, sometimes Kimmie didn’t know her own strength.

After snorting at the steering wheel, the vampiress looked out of her windows and took in her surroundings, which were dark, deserted, and completely quiet.  As a matter of fact, the only action going on at the moment was the moths flapping around the streetlight down the road a short distance.  “Well, this is just great,” grunted Kimmie.  “Of all the times to break down.  If you’d have just waited a couple of hours . . .” she snarled at her car, which still had enough power that her stereo was able to continue pumping out the Hollywood Vampires album she’d been listening to.  “If you would’ve just died in L.A., things would’ve just fine, but nooooo . . . you had to choose to croak in Hollisville, out in the middle of nowhere.  Fuck.”

She leaned back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest, scowling.  Now what?  “I just had to offer to make the run over to Hollisville tonight, didn’t I?  I couldn’t have been satisfied with doing inventory, could I?  No, I had to be Miss Nice Girl and volunteer, didn’t I?” she growled.  As she listened to the Hollywood Vampires album, she sighed; “Crystal Eyes,” her favorite song, had started to play, and it was sung by Dorian, the vampire she’d been drooling over endlessly ever since she’d first laid eyes on him.  It was because of that affection she’d offered to run a box of comics over to a Mr. Rush in Hollisville, about a couple hours’ drive outside of Los Angeles.

Kimmie, along with her odd vampire friend Mary, worked at Three Amigos Comics, which was owned and operated by Dorian, and the young vampiress did her best to make a good impression upon him.  Whereas most of the vampires she’d encountered in Los Angeles were either weirdos or nutcases, she found Dorian to be like a dream come true: with long blond hair, dashing good looks, a rock ‘n roll fashion sense, and a natural charisma that drew Kimmie in like a magnet, he was, in her eyes, a perfect vampire prince.  And the fact that he’d been an actual prince in his mortal life only helped reinforce that fact!

Dorian was like a breath of enchanting normalcy in her otherwise strange life, and she did everything she could to help him out and look good in his eyes, even long-distance night runs of comics to customers that lived outside of the city.  Dorian, a vampire of approximately four hundred years of age, had hired Kimmie and Mary as help at his comic shop as a way of helping the two vampiresses build up their bank accounts, as holding down a normal steady job could be rather difficult, not to mention bothersome, when one was a creature of the night.  Having to keep a job of any kind initially annoyed Kimmie, but many of the elder vampires in the city thought it necessary that the younger ones learn how to fend for themselves and manage their finances, and though vampires like Dorian helped out by offering young vampires high-paying jobs, there were no handouts given.  If a young vampire wanted to build up a good supply of money for future use, or buy a big mansion, fancy car, or whatnot, they were going to have to figure out how to get the money themselves, by any means they could successfully pull off, including thievery and other less-than-savory means.  Kimmie and Mary had a very brief, not to mention disastrous, flirtation with a life of crime when they attempted to rob a liquor store, after which they decided that it was probably best to try to earn their money through more legitimate means, which was where Dorian came in.

Both young vampiresses were getting paid several hundred dollars a week to work only a few nights at Dorian’s shop, and Kimmie usually ended up earning more than that, because she worked at least an hour or so even on nights when she wasn’t scheduled to work.  It wasn’t not so much for extra money, but just to be closer to Dorian whenever he was working, and help improve her standing with him even further.  Though Mary was certain that Dorian knew of Kimmie’s affection for him, Kimmie herself wasn’t so sure, as even though Dorian was quite amiable with her, he hadn’t yet shown any serious interest in being anything but her friend.  The pink-haired vampiress spent a lot of time pondering  this, not quite sure what to make of Dorian, as he was very unlike other guys she’d lusted after in the past . . . probably due to the fact that he had several hundred years on all of ‘em and wasn’t such a pig.  Kimmie knew that Dorian was notorious as a lady’s man around town, and according to Tommy, Dorian’s best friend, that’s the way he’d always been . . . except for a period in the 1960’s when he’d gotten strongly attached to a girl who’d up and disappeared on him, breaking his heart and leaving him hanging.  After which, Dorian had resumed his wolfish ways, and hadn’t shown any interest in seriously getting involved with any single woman since.  When Tommy had told Kimmie that, she’d been dismayed, but wasn’t rendered hopeless . . . after all, she was immortal, and had all the time in the world to see if she could catch Dorian’s attention in a more serious manner.  As Ralph Kramden always said, one of these days, one of these days, except that Kimmie had much more pleasant activities, as opposed to getting socked, in mind for Dorian’s kisser.  In the meantime, she did her damndest to be a perfect little employee for her dreamy boss, and volunteered for almost any work that needed to be done, even stuff she didn’t like.

Normally she usually enjoyed delivering comics and other collectibles to customers out of town, especially since she’d gotten hold of all of the Hollywood Vampires albums, which she listened to constantly as she did her late-night runs.  Dorian was the bassist and sometimes-vocalist for the Vampires, and wrote a number of their songs as well, and while the hard-edged rock ‘n roll of the Vampires wasn’t her usual musical cup of tea, Kimmie quite enjoyed the music, especially the stuff Dorian did.  She played his songs endlessly on her car stereo, and even sang along with them, though she wasn’t nearly the amateur vocalist that Mary was.  But anyway, enough history . . . back to Kimmie’s predicament.

After delivering Mr. Rush’s comics without a hitch, Kimmie had just about gotten outside of Hollisville when her car had began to make strange noises, and then had died right after she’d pulled up next to a curb.  Whenever her car had made odd noises in the past, all she’d had to do was pull over and rev the engine a few times and the noises had straightened themselves out.  Maybe she should’ve listened to Mary when the redhead had advised her time and time again to have her car looked at; sometimes even people who talked to the little voices in their heads made good points.  Kimmie ground her teeth.  Life always figured out the shittiest ways to teach her lessons, and she was sure that somewhere, she was being laughed at.  She made a mental note to someday figure out how to physically kick life in the balls.

This wouldn’t have been a problem in Los Angeles, where she could have simply walked back to the shop (being a vampire meant she had little to fear even in the worst neighborhoods) or otherwise just made a quick call to the shop and had somebody come pick her up.  But Hollisville didn’t seem to be quite as connected as L.A., as she had yet to see a payphone in the tiny town . . . hell, it wasn’t quite midnight yet, and the two bars in town had already closed.  Walking back to the city was out of the question, and making a phone call was going to be a somewhat harder proposition here than it would have been in L.A. 

Kimmie growled as she climbed out of her car and glanced at all the houses and their darkened windows around her; this was one of those towns that rolled up the sidewalks at four in the afternoon, she was sure of it, and it was this kind of crap she’d moved to Los Angeles to escape.  She was originally from the small town of Kowalski, Illinois, and she had nothing but disdain for small town ways.  She liked places that were alive and open even in the middle of the night, and thought it stupid that in this modern day and age people still lived a boring diurnal life like they had in previous centuries.  Kimmie sneered at the houses and bared her ivory fangs for a few seconds in annoyance.  “Losers.”

Now what was she to do?  The vampiress gave the hood of her car a glance, and even started to go for her door so she could reach into the car and spring the hood-release latch, but thought better of it after a few seconds.  A mechanic she most definitely was not, and though she knew she was quite the intelligent young vampire, the guts of a car, even one powered by a glorified lawnmower engine like hers, was well beyond her ken.  Dorian, along with most of his friends, seemed to know everything there was to know about almost every car ever made, and she was willing to bet that he could have gotten her car running again inside of two minutes, even without any tools.  But alas, neither Dorian nor any of his friends were anywhere to be found.  Kimmie decided that once she got back to L.A., it might be in her best interests to hang out with Dorian or Tommy in the garage when they were fiddling with cars so she could absorb a little knowledge and not get stuck in this kind of predicament again.  Besides, it would be an excellent excuse to hang over him, and perhaps if she made herself seem completely ignorant of cars (which wouldn’t be hard), he’d even hold her hands while she was working the wrenches and such . . .  Kimmie grinned slyly to herself and momentarily forgot her troubles.

But then her troubles made sure she remembered them.

“Hey beautiful!  What’s tha problem?  Gotta bitta car trrrrouble?”

Frowning, annoyed that her pleasant thoughts had been rudely interrupted, Kimmie turned around and saw a form shambling towards her on the sidewalk.  Hmm . . . it seemed that the streets weren’t completely deserted; there was at least one good ‘ol boy roaming around without a keeper.  Dressed in a battered and well-worn letter jacket that was emblazoned with the numbers ‘78’ and sporting a shaggy haircut that had gone out of style in the same year, the broad-shouldered man greeted the vampiress with a crooked grin as he stumbled across a quiet street and made his way towards her.  Kimmie rolled her eyes: she hated drunks.  “Fuck off,” she snapped at the drunk, scowling at him.

The drunk stopped dead in his tracks and squinted at Kimmie as though he was trying to figure out something particularly difficult, and then he brightened up.  “Did’joo say you wanna fuck?” he asked with a grin missing several teeth, and then took a hefty swig off of his bottle of cheap whiskey, drinking the bilge as though it was water.  Then again, from the look of the gut underneath the stained Big Johnson shirt, he probably did a lot of swigging, the slob.

“Go stick your thumb up your ass, you trash-eating stinkbag,” Kimmie hissed, trying to send out mental waves of menace towards the drunken moron.  She knew that most vampires were able to broadcast, as well as sense, emotions to varying extents, and could use this ability to influence the emotional states of mortals, such as projecting happy or lustful feelings to draw mortals closer, or sending out anger to make them keep their distance.  However, she hadn’t yet quite developed the knack for that.  There were times she was able to unintentionally influence mortals, but it seemed like every time she actually tried, she got absolutely nowhere.  It obviously wasn’t working on the drunk, as he kept walking towards her with the vacant grin that only the intoxicated can manage . . . this only served to frustrate Kimmie even more.

“Awwww, thash no way ta talk, ‘lil girl,” cooed the drunk, wiping some stray drool from his chin.  “I jus’ wanna help ya out . . . I’m a good guy, really I am!”  Kimmie briefly considered pouncing on him, dragging him into the nearby alley, and making a quick snack out of him, but she and Mary had already started the evening by sharing a pair of joggers, so she wasn’t hungry in the least.  Besides, sloppy drunks made her feel a sick to her stomach when she fed off them.

“No, you’re not.  You’re a douchebag and I don’t like you.  Go away and die in a gutter before you piss me off,” snarled Kimmie, nearly squeezing her eyes shut in an effort to influence the jackass’s emotions.  The reek of alcohol and body odor emanating from him was enough by itself to make her hate his guts, the grimy bastard.  Dammit, she’d seen Mary pull it off before, and Mary was at least half-crazy!  Why couldn’t a clear-headed vampiress like herself do it?!

The drunk giggled.  “Yer jes’ playin’ with me, ain’t’cha?  Ya don’ mean it!”  He then closed one eye and leaned forward a bit, peering at her black knee-length skirt.  Then he glanced up at her face, then back down at her skirt, while Kimmie thought about saying to hell with it and place-kicking his head right there on the sidewalk.  “Say, I was wunnerin’ . . . are you pink down there, too?”

“WHAT?!  YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

As Kimmie shrieked in rage, she felt a prickle in the back of her head, and the drunk’s bottle suddenly shattered against the sidewalk as he clapped his hands to the sides of his head and let out a howl of terror, his eyes bugging out like a cartoon character’s.  Finally!

The drunk turned and staggered away as fast as he could, screeching like a little sissy, literally pissing down his legs and leaving a trail of misshapen footprints in his wake.  “Monsters!  Monsters!  Monsters all fuckin’ over me!  Arrrrgh!” screamed the drunken jackass, flailing his arms around wildly.  He made it as far as the next street over before he tripped on the curb and fell face-first onto the pavement and knocked himself unconscious.  Kimmie’s sharp ears picked up the satisfying sound of loose teeth clattering across asphalt like chips of marble.  From the bedroom window of one of the nearby houses, a gruff voice called out, “Shut the fuck up, ya stinkin’ rummy!” It then fell silent, apparently content the stinking rummy had indeed shut the fuck up.

She grinned at the prone form of the drunk and made a sound of delight.  “And that’s what happens when you screw with Kimberly Anne Moriarty,” she snickered to herself.

But despite the fact that the drunk’s personal disaster had proven entertaining, she wasn’t any closer to getting back to L.A. than she was before, meaning that she needed to get something figured out.  Kimmie turned back to look at her car as she considered walking back across town and banging on Mr. Rush’s door to see if she could borrow his phone.  He’d said that he was going to head off to bed after she left, and she didn’t particularly want to disturb him, seeing as how he was one of those weird, high-strung middle-aged guys; she certainly didn’t want to piss him off and have him call Dorian and bitch about her.  Then again, it wasn’t like she had a lot of options in this little rathole of a town . . .  Maybe she’d just start walking across town, looking for public phones, and if she hadn’t been able to find one by the time she got near Mr. Rush’s house, she’d chance knocking on his door.  But then it would be even later in the night, and it would be even more likely he’d be asleep; however, she didn’t want to bother him unless she was absolutely unable to find another telephone.  She had to search for a phone first, because it wouldn’t look very good at all if she was bothering Mr. Rush past midnight if there was a phone just a block away from his house.  “I hate having to be nice,” muttered Kimmie, wishing that the world would just cater to her needs.

Her ears picked up the sound of several voices approaching from the direction of the drunk, and the young vampiress instinctively moved towards the shadows.  Her car had stopped in front of a little grocery store with a large awning, and the angle of the nearly-full moon in the sky behind the building gave her a perfect pool of darkness to conceal herself in.  Sliding up next to the building, Kimmie became nearly invisible, and she was as silent as a statue as she listened.

“Look, there’s somebody laying in the road!” said a male voice with a slightly effeminate tinge.  “I bet he was the one that was doing all that screaming.”

A whiny, trembling voice added, “Yeah, like, screaming about monsters!”  There was a sound like a dog whimpering to second the sentiment, and a haughty female voice sighed in disgust.

“Do you two always have to be such chickenshits?  Do you see any monsters around?”

“He, like, wouldn’t have been screaming so much if there wasn’t, like, something scary around.  We should go back to the van . . . we can just drive by the guy and see what’s up, and Dooby and I will be, like, safe and sound in the back.”  Kimmie heard the whimpering sound again.

“Come on, you guys, don’t be so afraid.  We’ve got to check this out . . . this might be a clue as to what’s going on in the Laruba Mansion,” said the male voice from before.

“Ed’s right,” said a second female voice, this one more nasal and earnest-sounding.  “It’s not often you come across someone screaming about monsters in the middle of a small town at midnight.”

“And I say he wouldn’t have been, like, screaming so much unless he had a really good reason.  I say we go back and get the van.”  There was a bark of agreement.

“Grubby, just shut the fuck up, okay?” said the first female voice, sounding terribly annoyed.  “You’re just being paranoid, like you always are when you’re coming down.  Fifteen minutes from now, you’re going to stop being scared and you’re going to be really hungry again, and then you and Dooby will be bitching at us to stop at some shitty burger joint along the highway.”

“But Dolly—“

“Shut up!”

At this point, the group of people (and a dog), previously obscured by the building down the block, stepped into view from a side-street and looked the drunk over.  They all looked to be in their early twenties, or possibly very late teens, like a bunch of college students.  The first male, who was apparently named Ed, looked like he should have been the Homecoming King for some little town, with short, wavy blond hair, generic good looks, and a slacks-and-shirt outfit that looked like it came from a mall store.  Standing next to him was a girl that would have made a perfect Homecoming Queen for him, with long red hair, lots of makeup, and a short purple dress with matching hose and shoes.  She also had the standard ‘bitch’ look that Kimmie knew from high school . . . because it wasn’t that long ago Kimmie was more or less a blonde version of the girl, though she reckoned herself to be made of sterner stuff than most high school bitches.  Already stooping and looking over the inert form of the drunk was a nerdy-looking, slightly chunky girl with shoulder-length brunette hair and thick glasses; she was dressed in a long orange sweater, knee-length brown skirt, a tan hip-pack, and sandals over her socks, and her whole outfit had a disheveled look to it, as was the case with most nerd apparel.

Hanging off to the side were two dirty-looking specimens, one human, the other canine, that looked as though they needed to be ran through a carwash.  The human was dressed in a long, sloppy green t-shirt and horribly out-of-style brown bellbottoms, with a shaggy mass of thick brown hair on his head and chin.  He looked just like the guys that her pothead bus driver from high school used to hang out with at the gas station: dumb scum.  His dog was a grubby-looking brown Great Dane with a blue collar, who looked to be slightly more intelligent than his glassy-eyed master, though it was probably close.  Both of them looked like they were ready to bolt and run at any moment, in case the drunk decided to get up and slur at them.

It was a motley crew to say the least.

“Look!” exclaimed the nerd girl, holding up one of the teeth the drunk had lost in his fall.  “A tooth!  And it’s fresh, too: look at the blood on it!”

The redhead folded her arms across her chest and sighed.  “So what, Selma?  He tripped and fell on his face.  I’d be more surprised if he didn’t lose some teeth.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “And he stinks!  He smells worse than Grubby and Dooby!”  Both the man and his dog gave the redhead dirty looks (no pun intended) but didn’t say anything in their defense . . . because the redhead was right, most likely.

“Do you think he was attacked?” asked Ed, peering at the bloody tooth Selma was holding.

Selma frowned.  “I don’t know.”  With an effort, she rolled the drunk over, revealing a bloody, unconscious face with a nice case of road-rash.  Holding her nose, the brunette leaned forward and looked the man over, then shook her head.  “It’s hard to tell, as beat-up as his face is . . . it looks mostly like he fell down, and I can’t see any solid signs of other kinds of violence on his face.  There aren’t any other marks or rips on his clothing, at least nothing that looks out of the ordinary . . . and I’m a bit hesitant to peek underneath it.”

“Maybe you ought to do it, Ed,” said the redhead with a smirk.  “I bet you’d like that just fine.  We’ll even turn our backs so you’ll have privacy.”

Ed scowled.  “Can it, Dolly.  This isn’t the time for that.”

“Whatever you say, oh fearless leader.”  Kimmie grinned.  She had to admit she kind of liked Dolly.

“Like, can we go back to the van now?” whined Grubby, looking nervously around.  “I think I left my stash back there and Dooby and I need something help calm us down.  Maybe we should, like, go back to L.A. for tonight and come back here tomorrow, when it’s light out.”  Kimmie’s ears pricked up.  L.A.?  Tonight?  Hmm . . . you don’t say!

Ed shook his head.  “No way, not until after we’ve checked out Laruba Mansion, and the night-time is the right time.  We’ve all got class for most of the day tomorrow, and even if we skipped, it’d still be a lot harder to sneak in and check things out in the daylight.  People watch things real closely in small towns during the daytime, especially when if it involves non-natives, like us.”  Kimmie rolled her eyes: she hated know-it-alls.  “Once we’ve checked Laruba out, then we can go home.”

“Like, that can’t come soon enough for me and Dooby!”  The big dog barked in agreement.

Selma stood up and absentmindedly brushed off her hands and knees.  “I can’t really tell much of anything from this guy, unless he wakes up.  To me, it looks like he was running away from something—“

“And screaming about monsters!” interrupted Grubby.

“Shut up!” hissed Dolly.

“—And probably tripped and fell,” continued Selma, neatly picking up the flow of her words again as though nothing had happened.  “There’s no goose-eggs on his head or any marks on the back of him to indicate he got hit from behind; I think he was just so scared he fell down really hard and knocked himself out.”

“Kind of like what happens to a certain pair that we know so well,” sneered Dolly, and Grubby and Dooby pretended to ignore her.  Then she wrinkled her nose again.  “And he smells like piss!”

Selma nodded.  “I noticed that,” she said in a clinical matter, as though she were talking about a lab specimen instead of a drunk that had whizzed himself.  “He must have been really scared.”

“Just like the realtors at Laruba,” said Ed, sounding like he’d just uncovered some great secret of the universe.  He looked beyond the drunk and pointed at the pavement.  “Look!  He even left footprints!”  He hurried over to them and knelt down.  “Selma, come here and look at these!”

“Oh geez,” moaned Dolly.  “Ed, do you have any dignity left?”

Ed looked confused as Selma stepped over to take a look.  “What do you mean?”

“You’re looking at piss footprints!”  Then she shook her head.  “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“It’s a clue, Dolly,” Ed gamely protested.  “We’ve got to check everything out!”

“They make a trail,” said Selma, looking up and following the wet footprints from the street back onto the sidewalk with her eyes.  “It looks like they lead over to that car,” she said, pointing towards Kimmie’s Metro.  “Maybe that’s our unconscious friend’s car.”

“Could be,” said Ed.  “Let’s go over and check it out, there might be some clues in or around it.”

“And there’s what looks like a bag of some sort on the sidewalk, too,” exclaimed Selma, adjusting her glasses as she stood up.  “There’s definitely something afoot!”  She started towards the sidewalk, heading in the direction of the parked Metro, and Kimmie decided that if they were going to be snooping around her car, she’d probably better do something; she didn’t want Grubby or Dooby anywhere near it, because from the looks of it, they probably both had fleas.  Not only that, this bunch seemed like her best bet to get a ride back to L.A. at the moment, and if she was going to take advantage of that, she probably should make herself known sooner or later.

Selma was moving quickly up the sidewalk towards the car, with Ed right behind her, when Kimmie slipped out of the shadows and said, “Actually, the car’s mine.”

“Holy shit!” screeched Ed, nearly jumping out of his skin at the sudden appearance of the young vampiress.

Selma, however, was only startled for a second, and her eyes locked onto Kimmie with intense interest, and she also noticed that Selma’s eyes kept straying to her fishnet-clad legs and the cleavage emerging from the top of her tight black vinyl dress.  Before Kimmie had a chance to consider this, Selma asked, “And who might you be?”

“I’m Kimmie,” replied the vampiress, then pointed at her car.  “And that’s my broken-down wreck.”

Ed eyed Kimmie suspiciously as Dolly stepped up next to him, with Grubby and Dooby several feet behind her, looking fearful.  “Do you know anything about that man back there and what happened to him?” he asked authoritatively; Kimmie became certain that he probably had fantasies about being a cop of some sort.

The vampiress shrugged.  “He stumbled up to me, propositioned me, I told him off, and he ran away from me screaming about monsters,” she answered, which was the honest truth, minus a few crucial details.  “Don’t ask me what his hang-up was.  I was just happy to be rid of him.  Good riddance, I say.  Stinking drunk.”

Ed frowned. “But why would he be screaming about monsters if all you did was tell him off?  That smells a little fishy to me.”

Dolly chuckled.  “Yeah, kind of like Sel—“

“Who knows what goes through the heads of drunks?” interrupted Selma, almost frantically.  “He might’ve been high on PCP, LSD, or something else like that, you never know.  Remember how strange Grubby and Dooby acted when they got into that acid?  They saw all kinds of things, including flying monkeys with machine guns!”  She grinned nervously at Kimmie, opened her mouth as if to say something, and then shut it again.  After a few seconds, she said, “You’ll have to excuse us . . . we’re trying to solve a mystery about some strange goings-on in town, over at Laruba Mansion.  Do you know where that is?”

“If you mean that big house on the edge of town, I guess,” replied Kimmie, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with the way Selma was staring at her.

“Oh, that’s great.  Just tell her everything, why don’t you?” snapped Dolly.  “I thought you were the one that said we were supposed to keep things hush-hush just in case.”

“That’s right,” said Ed.  “We don’t know what this Kimmie’s story is, if that is indeed her real name.”  He peered at the vampiress as though he expected her to suddenly fess up to the whereabouts of Elvis, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Hoffa all at once, and then admit to helping Elvis assassinate Kennedy.

“Look, I’m just passing through town and I was on my way to L.A., and my car broke down,” said Kimmie, giving Ed a withering look that made him glance away.  “I’d just like to get home, and I could really care less about why some lousy drunk flipped out when I told him to get bent.”
            “You’re going to L.A.?” asked Selma, looking very interested.  “We’re from L.A.!  We all go to Miskatonic University, as a matter of fact, and we’re trying to get involved in paranormal studies.  Do you go to Muck, too?”

Dolly elbowed Ed, and whispered, “She’s worse than you around a guy in uniform, you know that?”

“Shut up,” grunted Ed, looking uncomfortable.

“Nope, I don’t,” replied Kimmie to Selma’s question, though her own interest had been piqued.  Over the past summer, Tommy had started teaching night classes on the paranormal at Miskatonic University California (MUC, or Muck, if you will), and she wondered if she could possibly use this connection to worm her way into their good graces in order to get a ride from them.  “But I do know one of the professors that teaches there.  You wouldn’t happen to know a Professor Harcourt, would you?”

“He was our teacher over the summer!” exclaimed Selma excitedly.

“I hang out with him from time to time,” said Kimmie, “He’s the friend of a friend of mine.”

“What a small world, huh?” asked Selma, smiling at the vampiress, and behind her Dolly looked like she was about to gag, while Ed kept giving her the evil eye, as though he were expecting her to suddenly pull out a knife and start stabbing away.  Grubby and Dooby didn’t seem very interested either which way, and Grubby had, in fact lit up a joint and was happily taking drags off of it, sharing the smoke with Dooby by puffing it in the dog’s face.  The Great Dane seemed quite content with the arrangement, wagging his tail slowly and lazily.  Oh brother.  Ignoring the moron and his equally lackbrained dog, Kimmie forced herself to smile back at the leering geek, going for as much positive PR as she could get; she wasn’t the least bit interested in Selma, but she was quite interested in the potential ride she could get if she buddied up to her enough.  Sometimes sacrifices had to be made.

“Indeed it is,” said Kimmie, trying not to gag.  Why did her car choose this night, of all nights, to go out on her?  Well, it could have been worse . . . she could have run into the gang from Deliverance.  “So, uh, would you guys mind if I caught a ride with you back to L.A.?  I could pay your gas money and everything.”

Ed started to say something, but Selma cut him off.  “Sure!” she said.  “It wouldn’t be a problem at all, would it guys?”

Grubby and Dooby were off in their own little world, and didn’t even acknowledge the question, but Ed scowled in response, and Dolly rolled her eyes and muttered, “Selma’s looking for love.”

Kimmie kept smiling at Selma, and kept hoping that things would improve before the night was over.  But it wasn’t looking good.

*     *     *

            “Look, I’m not sitting in the back with those two assholes!” snarled Dolly, folding her arms across her chest and not moving from her spot on the van’s front bench seat.  “At least I don’t have to worry about being groped while sitting next to Ed!”

            Ed, who was sitting behind the wheel of the big blue and green van, looked vaguely embarrassed but said nothing.

            “And not only that, those two stink!” added the redhead, turning her head to glare over the seat at Grubby and Dooby, who were sitting in the back of the van and giving Dolly resentful looks.  “If you want your sweetheart to sit up front, then why don’t you sit back there with them?  Nobody said you have to sit up here, Selma!”

            Standing outside of the van with Kimmie, Selma blushed furiously and hissed, “She’s our guest, Dolly!  I’m trying to be polite!  She said that she was going to pay for gas, and I thought it’d be a nice gesture to let her sit up front!”  Kimmie, in the meantime, was feeling rather weary of the whole argument, as well as reassessing her opinion of Dolly.  Being a bitch was something that the vampiress could respect perfectly well, unless it inconvenienced her personally.  At the moment, she felt like kicking Dolly in the head.

            “I already took part in one of your nice gestures tonight when I helped you drag that filthy drunk out of the road so he wouldn’t get run over,” replied Dolly, “And after getting his stench all over my hands, I’m not in the mood to get the rest of me equally defiled by sitting with Grubby and Dooby!  Either she sits in the back, or you do!”

            Selma clenched her fists in frustration for a few moments, then said, “Well, who says Ed has to sit up front?  Why can’t he sit in the back?”

            “It’s my van, that’s why,” said Ed smugly.

            “Yeah, do you know how many rich guys he had to su—ow!” Dolly yipped when Ed smacked her on the shoulder.  The redhead rubbed her shoulder and darkly glanced at him, then said, “Anyway . . . either you sit in back with Grubby and Dooby, or she does.  Neither Ed or I are going to move.  So what’s it going to be, Selma?”

            The brunette turned and looked at Kimmie apologetically.

*     *     *

            “Would you two mind cutting that out for awhile?” asked Kimmie through gritted teeth, glaring at Grubby and Dooby.  The back of the van, which was seatless and full of assorted boxes of junk, was thick with marijuana smoke as the shaggy-haired man toked away and shared with his faithful dog.  Though Kimmie’s vampiric metabolism was able to easily resist getting a contact high, the smell was really starting to annoy her.  It also didn’t help that Grubby and Dooby both reeked to begin with.  “I’m starting to get a headache.”

            It took Grubby several moments to process the question, and then he giggled.  “Like, no way, chicky.  If Dooby and I are going to be wandering through some creepy old house, we gotta, like, get our courage up.  This stuff’s the best courage we can buy.”  He took another long drag off of his joint, which was the size of a hot dog (sans bun), then blew the smoke in Dooby’s face, causing the happy dog to further slump over in contentment.

            Kimmie sighed.  Ed, Dolly, and Selma seemed hellbent on investigating this Laruba Mansion on the edge of town, and they couldn’t be dissuaded from the task, even when she’d offered to pay them extra if they’d skipped the mansion and had taken her straight home.  On one hand, she had to admire their tenacity, but on the other, she didn’t want to be dragged along for the expedition.  She’d seen Tommy once or twice when he was on the trail of something he found fascinating, so their dogged insistence was familiar to her, and she wondered if they’d learned any of it from Tommy himself. 

They’d spoken very highly of him as a teacher, with even Grubby piping in that he was a “really happenin’ dude,” and Selma had told her it was Tommy’s tales of his past investigations of paranormal activities that had inspired them to try it on their own once the summer class had ended.  Over a month had passed since then, and though they hadn’t yet ran into anything that had turned out to be of a genuinely paranormal origin, they felt that they were on the right track, and that sooner or later they’d find something that they could wow Tommy (or Professor Harcourt, as he was known to them) with. 

Their admiration of Tommy and their clear attempts to emulate him very slightly endeared them to Kimmie, as even though Tommy was often sardonic and highly sarcastic, he’d always treated her well and had patiently answered any and all questions she’d asked him about vampires and the supernatural.  So in a way, Kimmie felt a certain need to look out for the gang of youngsters while she was with them, since they were Tommy’s students and Tommy was a friend of hers.  If she went along with them to this Laruba Mansion and something bad happened, they stood a much better chance of getting out unscathed if she was with them, and it was something of an honorable duty to watch out for them.  Or at least that’s what Kimmie had been telling herself since her ill-fated phone call to the comic shop.

Shortly after she’d reluctantly climbed in the back with Grubby and Dooby and Ed had started them off towards the other end of town, she’d peered out the back windows of the van and had been ecstatic to spot a phone booth sitting outside of the Hollisville carwash.  After she’d had Ed pull over (much to Selma’s dismay), she’d hurried over to the phone booth, thanking any universal force that was bothering to listen, deposited her spare change, and had made a call to the Three Amigos comic shop, eagerly awaiting the sound of either Mary’s or Dorian’s voice on the other end.  But she didn’t get either of them.  Instead, she’d got Donita, who was the closest thing she had to an arch-nemesis.

“Three Amigos Comics, what’s shakin’?” chirped the half-vampire gypsy over the phone, and Kimmie’s heart had stopped for a second.

“Uh . . . is either Dorian or Mary there?” the vampiress had asked, fighting with the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“Nope, no can do.  They’re out for the time being.”  Then there was a pause.  “Hey, wait a second!  Is that you, Pinky?”  Kimmie had ground her teeth; she hated the nickname Donita had given her, and the gypsy knew it, too.

“Where’d they go?” Kimmie had asked, ignoring the gypsy’s question.

“Ah, no manners at all; it must be Pinky!  Anywhoo, some guy called in awhile ago and said he had a ton of old comics and magazines he wanted to sell, so much so that it would have been a problem to bring them in, I guess, ‘cuz Dorian decided he’d just make a housecall.  Kitty-Katheryne and I had just happened to stop in a few minutes before, so he took Mary with him to help out, leaving us in charge of the store . . . scary thought, ain’t it?  Hey, what was that?”

Kimmie had glanced down at the coinbox of the phone, which her fist had caved in when she’d vented her frustration, and when she’d pulled her fist away, quarters spilled out onto the floor of the booth.  She’d grabbed several to replace the ones she’d spent on the call, then continued.  “Nothing.  Do you know when they’re going to be back?  Any time soon?”

“Beats the hell outta me.  Hopefully he takes awhile, because Stephen’s roaming loose in here somewhere and we can’t find him . . . as anal-retentive as Dorian is about the store, he’d probably flip if he came back and found us searching for him.”  Stephen was Donita’s big purple-furred rat, and Kimmie disliked him almost as much as she did Donita.

“Well, maybe if you’d keep a better eye on him, he wouldn’t run off like he does,” Kimmie had snapped, “And Dorian’s got every right to be meticulous, since it’s his store and there’s a lot of valuable stuff in there!  It’s not a rat’s playground for fuck’s sake!”

“Whoa whoa whoa!  Who stuck it up your ass and broke it off, Pinky-Poo?  You’re even more of a snatch than usual!”  There was a pause, and even over the phone, Kimmie could just see the grin forming on the gypsy’s dusky face as the gears in her head turned.  “Say . . . you’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?  Something that you might need a little bit of help to get out of, mmm?”

Growling softly, the vampiress had haughtily replied, “Nothing of the sort.  I was just . . . calling to check in and let Dorian know that I’d gotten the stuff to Mr. Rush all right, and that I was going to be heading back soon.  I just didn’t want to have to leave the message with you, since you’d probably twist it all up or otherwise forget to tell him at all.”

“Oh, now would I do that?  Not me!”

“Bullshit.  Now go find your fucking rat and make sure he doesn’t tear up the store!”

“HE’S NOT A FUCK—“

Kimmie had slammed the receiver down so hard she’d snapped the earpiece completely off, and with a hiss of contempt, she’d left the decapitated phone hanging by its cord.  Stranded or not, there was no way that Kimmie was going to ask that bitch of a gypsy for any kind of help at all, because then Donita would have held it over her for the rest of her eternal life.  While Kimmie held grudging respect for the gypsy and her abilities, and appreciated the fact that Donita paid her and Mary well to act as the backup singers for her punk band, she personally couldn’t stand the bigmouthed half-vampire and avoided her whenever she could.  She hoped that she wouldn’t catch hell from Dorian for snarling at Donita and not telling her what the problem was, but seeing as how her charming vampire prince had been on the receiving end of Donita’s mischief in the past, she was certain that he’d understand.  And if he didn’t, it was just one more reason for her to want to kick the gypsy’s ass.  Some people were just born assholes.

So Kimmie had returned to the van and had told the gang to go on about their business, and she’d ride along until they got back to L.A., which had delighted Selma to no end.  As she glared at Grubby and Dooby, she kept telling herself that it could have been worse, she could have been riding with Donita and her precious rat.  In an attempt to distract herself from the human and canine stoners, she moved across the back of the van towards the front and asked, “So what exactly is going on in Laruba Mansion that you guys need to investigate?  You keep telling me you need to check it out, but you haven’t really gone into the whys yet, and if I’m going along, I’d like to know what I’m getting into.”

“Oh!  I’m sorry, I probably should’ve mentioned that!” exclaimed Selma as she turned around and blushed at Kimmie, pushing up her thick glasses on her nose.

“Too busy staring at her legs,” mumbled Dolly, low enough that Selma thought Kimmie hadn’t heard, but the vampiress’ preternatural hearing easily picked it up.  Kimmie said nothing, though she mentally moved her estimation of Dolly a couple of notches lower.  Bitch.

“Laruba Mansion is this big old place on the edge of Hollisville that’s been abandoned for years, ever since old Phineas Laruba hung himself in the dining room back in the early 1960’s,” said Selma, “He was an eccentric that had amassed a fortune in oil in the 1920’s, but lost it all when it dried up thirty years later, and it wasn’t long afterwards that he committed suicide rather than face losing everything.  There are tales that Phineas Laruba still haunts the mansion, roaming the halls and lamenting his losses, and everyone’s left the place alone over the past several decades.  But recently some rich man from San Francisco’s been showing interest in buying Laruba Mansion, and when the banks did some sniffing around to see if anybody could lay claim to it, they found a forgotten branch of Laruba’s family living in Georgia, and though they’re living at poverty level, that big old house is still theirs.

“After some advisement, the Larubas quoted a price to the interested party in San Francisco, one which was actually pretty reasonable, considering the size of the mansion and how much land comes with it.  But the San Franciscan didn’t like the price at all, and told the Larubas to go to hell.  They didn’t seem to mind, and put the old mansion and grounds up on the market for other buyers, but that’s when the trouble started . . .” Selma said, trailing off for dramatic effect.

Kimmie sighed.  “And let me guess: old man Laruba’s back, right?”

Selma nodded emphatically.  “Exactly!  A few real estate agents have gone in to show the house to potential buyers, but they all got chased off by what is assumed to be Phineas Laruba’s ghost, or some other supernatural manifestation.  They say it’s a tall man dressed in old clothes, with pale, greenish skin, shaggy hair, and empty white eyes.  It doesn’t talk, except for snarling, ‘Kreeper!  Kreeper!’ as it chases after intruders, as though it’s angry at the unwanted invasion of its house by the living . . .”

“Zoinks!  I wish you hadn’t said that, Selma!” Grubby groaned, “You’re killing our buzz!”  Dooby rolled over onto his back with his legs in the air and whimpered plaintively in agreement.

Selma and Kimmie both gave the stoners arch looks, and Selma said, “What’s your problem?  It’s not like we haven’t gone over all of this already!  You were there when we talked to the realtors!”

“Yeah, but like, Dooby and I have been trying to forget about it, and every time we’ve almost gotten it out of our heads, you go and like, remind us about it!”  Dooby whined again.

“Just shut up while the adults are talking, okay?” snarled Kimmie, and the two promptly turned their attention back to Grubby’s joint, though neither one of them looked terribly happy.

“But anyway,” said Selma, returning her gaze to Kimmie.  “They say Laruba’s ghost can move through walls, and when the police went in to investigate, they saw him and shot at him, but the bullets passed right through.  The police, not sure what else to do, declared the mansion off-limits until they figure out some sort of solution . . . according to the officer we talked, they sent in an inquiry for further assistance from the LAPD, but L.A. just laughed at them and essentially told them they wouldn’t be seeing ghosts if they just laid off the moonshine.  Typical city attitude towards small rural townspeople, you know.  But as you can imagine, these ghost stories have completely ruined the house’s value on the real estate market . . . everybody’s interested in haunted houses, but nobody wants to live in one.  The only offer still on the table is the San Franciscan’s, but he’s dropped it considerably, and I’ve seen offers for trailers higher than that.  If something’s not done about the ghost, I don’t think the Larubas are going to be able to make much of anything off the mansion,” said Selma, shaking her head.  “Hopefully we’ll be able to figure something out.”

Kimmie nodded.  She knew that in the past Tommy had taken on similar “cases” in order to both further his knowledge and help out poor schleps that had no idea how to deal with the supernatural.  But the difference was that Tommy was several centuries old, much stronger, faster, and smarter than the average person, and he was very much a professional when it came to this kind of thing . . . whereas this gang was almost totally clueless.  A summer class, even with Tommy, wasn’t nearly enough to prepare a group of college kids and a dog for supernatural happenings, if that was indeed what was going on in Laruba Mansion.

The young vampiress personally had her doubts about the nature of Laruba’s “ghost,” as she’d never been one to believe in ghost stories or other tales of that sort, and figured it was probably some kids playing jokes on simple rural townsfolk.  Originating from a small town herself, she knew exactly how gullible that kind could be.  Then again, there was the fact that within the last six months, she herself had become a preternatural being, not to mention the various true tales of ghosts, hauntings, and other phenomena she’d heard from Tommy, so it made her wonder.  There may have been more there than met the eye, but it may also have been nothing beyond simple trickery.  Either which way, they were probably better off with Kimmie going along as a chaperone.  Not only that, but if she did a good deed by helping this gang of idiots, and they told Tommy about it, he might mention it to Dorian, and Dorian might be impressed with her thoughtfulness.  Hmm . . . she liked the sound of that.  Good deeds were so much easier to go through with when one could personally gain from them.

“So . . . what exactly are you planning to do if it does turn out to be the ghost of Phineas Laruba?” Kimmie asked, waving marijuana smoke away from her nose and shooting an evil look at Grubby.  “Did Tom—Professor Harcourt give you any pointers on how to snag a ghost, or are you just going to try to suck it up in a vacuum cleaner?”

Selma laughed and batted her eyes at Kimmie.  “Ah, so he told you that story, too!  I sure bet that guy felt dumb when he woke up, huh?”  Kimmie forced herself to grin and nodded.  Tommy had once told her a tale about a would-be paranormal investigator who wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer and had attempted to slurp up a centuries-old ghost in a vacuum cleaner, and it was one of the few times that Kimmie had seen him barely able to contain his laughter.  The spirit, however, hadn’t been very amused, and had zipped in through the moron’s nose and had made his head explode, killing him instantly . . . but Tommy usually left that particular detail out of his “censored for school” recap.  He said that he tended to soft-pedal certain details when telling tales in a school setting.  For some reason, administrators got a bit upset when professors told stories about  exploding heads and melting skin in the classroom, especially in what amounted to a Paranormal 101 class full of all kinds of students.  According to the sardonic vampire, he waited until he knew he had dedicated and truly-interested students until he got into the nasty stuff.

“Yeah, he probably felt pretty empty-headed,” Kimmie said.  “But seriously, what are you going to do if you run into the ghost?  I didn’t think Professor Harcourt went over ghost-capturing or removal techniques in his intro class.”  She stopped and frowned slightly.  Ever since she’d Become a vampire, she’d found herself having the strangest conversations.

Selma pointed at a big duffel bag sitting amidst the clutter of the back of the van and said, “He just gave some rough outlines of certain techniques, and I went and looked them up in the library and the internet, then put together a little paranormal kit that might come in handy if things get tight.  I found a ton of information on the internet about ghost-catching and repelling, and other supernatural manifestations, and put the whole thing together myself to complement my hip pack of tricks.”

The internet?  Kimmie refrained from rolling her eyes.  She had a very low opinion of the internet and its denizens, which were probably all pasty-skinned basement-dwellers, horny teenagers, and dimwitted losers that thought they could impress people by posting their stupid, pointless stories about vampires and Star Trek.  Jack-offs.

The vampiress hoped it wasn’t really the ghost of Phineas Laruba, because if it was, there was at least a decent chance these guys were doomed if Laruba was hostile.  Well, however things turned out, this was still better than getting a ride with Donita.  At least a ghost wouldn’t sit there and make fun of her for the whole ride home.  And if she got killed, she was damned sure going to come back and haunt the obnoxious gypsy forever.

*     *     *

            “Like wow, what a creepy old place!” moaned Grubby as he lit up yet another joint and deeply inhaled.  Kimmie took three more steps away from him, though she went no farther, because she didn’t want to get any nearer to Selma, who was already too close to her for comfort.  Dooby whimpered plaintively and hid behind Grubby, covering his eyes with one of his paws in what would have been a charming gesture if not for the fact she would’ve liked to have seen the filthy pothead dog gassed.

The vampiress absently kicked at the cracked and weedy sidewalk outside of the wrought iron fence that surrounded the dilapidated old Laruba Mansion, folding her arms over her chest impatiently while everybody peered through the bars and voiced their opinion of the place.  Selma babbled on about some of the architectural details of the sprawling three-story house, while Ed and Dolly ignored her and conferred between themselves over the best way to get in.  She wished they’d just hurry up so they could get in and get out as soon as possible, because she didn’t want to wait until sun-up to be able to get back to L.A.  Grubby and Dooby were of no help whatsoever, and did their best to get as high as possible before they had to step inside.  Pussies.

“I think we should walk around the perimeter first and look for any points where the fence might be compromised in some way,” Ed said authoritatively.  “It would make getting in a lot easier, I’d think, and would give us a chance to scope out the house a bit before heading in.”

“Ooo, listen to Ed!” Dolly crowed, putting her hands to her chest like a lovestruck maiden and batting her eyelashes.  “He sounds just like an army guy!  But don’t start drooling, ladies, because he’s—“

“Dolly, shut up!” snapped Ed, looking as though he wanted to strangle her.  Nothing like a little display of unity before going on a mission, eh?

“Like, can we just go home and forget we ever came here?” whined Grubby, trembling despite the joint in his hand.  Or maybe because of the joint, Kimmie wasn’t sure.

“And you shut up, too!  If you’re so goddamned scared, then why the hell did you two idiots come along?!” demanded Dolly, while Ed rolled his eyes and Selma sighed.

Grubby and Dooby cowered at Dolly’s pointed finger, and after a weak shrug, Grubby replied, “Like, we didn’t want to miss anything interesting.  We just don’t wanna get killed!”

“Then stay out in the van!”

“No way!  What if old man Laruba sneaks outside and gets me and Dooby?!” wailed Grubby, dropping to his knees and hugging his plaintive-looking dog.  “If we’re gonna be here, we’d rather be with you guys!”

“Gawd, you two piss me off!” growled Dolly, turning away from them.  “You’re lucky you’re Ed’s cousin and he feels sorry for you, otherwise you’d never go anywhere!”

“Cunt,” whispered Grubby, and Dolly spun back around as Selma and Ed both shook their heads.

“WHAT?!”

“Like, nothing!”

Ed quickly stepped between Dolly and his worthless cousin, holding up his hands.  “Look, let’s just stop fighting and figure out how we’re going to get inside, okay?”

“Did you hear what he called me?!” snarled the redhead, trying to push past Ed.

“Like, I didn’t say shit!” protested Grubby, trying to hide behind Dooby, who in turn was trying to hide behind him.

“Oh, for the love of . . .” muttered Kimmie as Selma stepped up and got hold of Dolly, who was actually doing a pretty good job of pushing past Ed.

“Settle down, Dolly!  Save for when we get home!  Now’s not the time!” Selma growled between clenched teeth, trying to remain as quiet as she could.  They were lucky the mansion was on the edge of the town and the nearest house was a half-mile away, because if they were anywhere within Hollisville, everybody and their cat would’ve heard them by now.  Tommy probably would’ve had them all killed if he’d seen them . . . the scholarly vampire was quite the professional, and these jackasses were the textbook example of how not to go about an investigation.

“Let go of me, fisheater!  I swear, if you touch my tits, I’ll kill you, too!” promised Dolly, struggling furiously.

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t say that, Dolly.”

While everybody was occupied, Kimmie glanced up at the heavy fence, which was nine feet high, and catlike, she leaped on it and swiftly climbed over in a fluid movement.  She neatly dropped down behind it, pleased with how easily she’d gotten over the fence; she’d been rather annoyed to discover that flawless agility didn’t come part and parcel with becoming a vampire, and like most things took practice to perfect.  Though she couldn’t move as well as Dorian or even Mary just yet, she was definitely a lot better than she used to be.

Kimmie moved over to the gate a short distance away from where the gang was arguing, inspected the heavy lock that secured the thick chain holding the gate closed.  With a soft snicker, she crushed it like silly putty, ripped it free, and then tossed it into the large yard of tall grass surrounding the mansion.  After yanking the chain out and throwing it aside, she gave the gate a kick, and with an earsplitting creak, the twin doors opened wide.

Everybody jumped at the sudden noise, and Grubby and Dooby both let out shrieks of terror.  “Well?  Are you guys coming, or are we just gonna head back to L.A.?” Kimmie asked snidely, putting her hands on her hips and giving everybody a sly look.  “If you wanna look around inside the scary ‘ol mansion, let’s get a move on, but I am NOT going to sit back and listen to you argue all night.  I’ve got much more important things to do with my life and time.”

“How did you get in?” Ed asked suspiciously, giving her the evil investigative eye yet again, as though she were the mastermind behind all of the troubles surrounding Laruba Mansion.

Kimmie glared at him.  “I climbed the fence and kicked open the gate, duh.”  Selma’s eyes got wide, and the vampiress had the distinct feeling that a certain somebody was disappointed that she wasn’t paying attention during the fence-climbing bit, especially since Kimmie was in a short skirt.

“But the gate had a lock on it!”

“Not a very good one, because it wasn’t even secured.  I just gave it tug and off it went.  Maybe if you’d spend more time investigating instead of bitching at each other, you might actually get something accomplished,” quipped the pink-haired vampiress.  “If Professor Harcourt was grading your performances tonight, he’d probably fail all of you,” she added, her tone haughty, and everybody at least had the decency to look properly ashamed.  “Now, are we gonna do this and get it over with, or are we just going back to L.A.?”  She threw the option in, hoping that they’d just decide to pass on Laruba and head back to the city.

But no such luck, as Ed said, “C’mon gang, let’s go!” and hopped into the van and started up the engine.  Everybody else piled in, with Selma practically dragging Grubby and Dooby along, and Kimmie took off down the overgrown path leading to the house at a brisk trot, not wanting to get into the van again unless she absolutely had to.  Maybe if she had any luck, she’d be able to somehow finagle her way up into the front seat for the ride home.  She’d even sit next to Selma to get away from Grubby and Dooby; they were like a pair of shitstains come to life.

After Ed had gingerly pulled his precious van up to the house and had parked it next to one of the many enormous trees dotting the vast yard, the gang got out and found Kimmie sitting on the front steps, tapping her feet impatiently.  Selma immediately started poking around in the thick grass and bushes surrounding the house, while everybody else stopped and gawked at just how big the old house looked up close.  Many of the windows of the huge mansion were broken out, and the once-lustrous red paint was cracked and peeling to the point that it was barely more than flecks in places; it looked tired and weary, as though it knew its better days had passed on by and now it was just waiting to die.

Kimmie had refused to allow herself to be cowed by the spooky-looking old house when she’d reached it, as she knew that other vampires, like Tommy and Dorian wouldn’t have been scared of it, and she wasn’t going to be either.  Hell, Mary wouldn’t have been scared of it, either . . . the odd vampiress probably would have already wandered inside by this point in time, eager to see if there was anything interesting to be found.  Not only that, but Kimmie was one of those types that was always too cynical to be bothered by the ideas of haunted houses and graveyards.  When she’d been in early high school and her friends had been spooked by Ouija boards, she’d been laughing her ass off at them.  She’d played midnight tag in cemeteries to prove that just because she was a cheerleader and worked on the yearbook, she wasn’t a coward.  And at sleepovers, whenever there’d been an odd thump in the night and all of her friends had been scared witless, she’d always been the one to grab something heavy and go looking for potential intruders, ready to brain anybody that was spoiling her fun.  So while the gang was screwing up their courage to step inside and go on a real ghost-hunt, she was still on the porch, annoyed at what a bunch of sissies they all were.  Heh, if only they knew what their temporary traveling companion really was . . .

She hopped to her feet and motioned towards the house.  “So what are you all waiting for?  Let’s go, see if there’s any ghosts running around, and then get back to the city.”

“We need to check for clues,” Ed said studiously, pointing towards where Selma was slowly walking around in the grass as though she’d lost something.  Dolly started to do the same, poking around the bushes close to the house, making sure she never bent over in such a way that her rear was aimed in either Selma or Grubby’s direction.  “Professor Harcourt once said that we should always know the lay of the land before we get into something.”

Kimmie rolled her eyes.  Sure, now they decide to start playing it more professional.  She dimly suspected that the universe was just trying to find ways to waste her time; if it wasn’t for the fact that she wanted to at least try to keep some of Tommy’s students safe, she would’ve just grabbed the van and taken off on her own.  She wondered how people like Mother Teresa did it: being compassionate was a damned pain in the ass.

“Yeah, that’s all well and good,” Kimmie said, “But what’s a ghost going to do outside its haunted house?  You expecting to maybe find his lawnmower or car keys or something?  Or maybe a list of the people he’d most like to haunt?  You wanted to see the house, let’s go see the house.  That’s bound to be where all the pertinent stuff is.”

Ed, who’d begun looking around in the yard, stopped and rubbed his chin for a moment, as if considering something.  “You know, guys, she might have a point.  There’s six of us, right?  So why should we all spend our manpower outside, when we could split up and cover all bases at once?”

“Split up?” gulped Grubby, who was still fearfully hanging close to the van with Dooby, a half-used joint dangling from his lips.  Dooby whimpered and hid behind Grubby’s legs.

“Yeah.  Selma, Dolly, and I all took that investigation class last fall, and we know a bit about checking things out for clues, but you didn’t, so you wouldn’t be of that much use out here, Grubby.  Meanwhile, Kimmie really wants to go inside and get things moving along; why don’t you, her, and Dooby all head inside and see if there’s any clues in the mansion?  We can’t stay out too late since we’ve got class tomorrow, and this way we’ll cover twice as much ground and get things figured out twice as fast,” Ed said proudly, as though he was rather pleased with his line of thought.

“But like, what if there really is a ghost inside?  What if he gets me and Dooby?!” wailed Grubby, taking a long hit off his joint afterwards, though it did nothing to ease his shakes.  If Kimmie had actually given a shit about his feelings, she would have told him that the marijuana probably would’ve been a lot more effective if he didn’t go through it like a fat slob ate a bag of potato chips.  “My mom will be so pissed if I like, turn up dead because you weren’t looking out for me!”

“You’ll have Kimmie there to keep on eye on you,” Ed replied, “She knows Professor Harcourt, and I bet she’s picked up more than a few things from him.”

Kimmie nodded, though she wasn’t all that thrilled about having to babysit Grubby and Dooby inside the old mansion.  But if it got things moving along faster, then she’d have to endure it.  If she could put up with Donita long enough to sing for the gypsy’s band and get her pay, then she could likely put up with Grubby and Dooby for an hour or so.  At least in theory.  “I’ll keep an eye on ‘em,” she said, “And if anything happens, I’m sure I can handle it.”

“See?  There you go.”

Selma, however, stood back up and said, “I could go in with them, too.”  Ed and Dolly both looked at her in surprise.

“Every other time we try to send you in somewhere with those two fuck-ups, you always bitch and moan about it, and now that you’re getting a break, you want to go in with them?” Dolly asked, shaking her head.

“Hey!  We’re not like, fuck-ups, all right?” Grubby snapped.

“Shut up, fuck-up, or I’m gonna give you what I should have earlier,” barked the redhead.  “You don’t have any say in this until you can actually prove you’ve got worth as a human being.  Can you do that?”

Grubby was clearly caught off-guard at the demand, and after stammering for a few seconds, he lamely replied with, “Well . . . uh, no, not really.”

“Then shut up.”

“All right,” sighed the stoner, hanging his head.

“It might be best for someone with a little bit of investigative knowledge to go in, just in case,” said Selma after Grubby had shut his yap.  “That way there’d be two knowledgeable people outside, and two inside . . . it’s not like Grubby and Dooby are going to be a great deal of help to her, beyond the most basic observations.”

“Feh, you’re probably just hoping to get her to help you investigate some nice private closet,” sneered Dolly, who then glanced over at Ed.  “Then again, if you want to check out a closet, Ed might be the best one to take along, since he knows all about being in the closet.”

Ed didn’t have any witty rejoinders to throw at Dolly, but he did do an awful lot of muttering as he searched around for clues.  As for Selma, she heavily blushed and wasn’t able to look over at Kimmie, and she did a little muttering of her own.  Kimmie’s own investigative instincts, such as they were, told her that sooner or later there might be a murder mystery in the works.  Tired of listening to the interplay of the gang, Kimmie motioned towards the mansion and said, “Look, whoever’s going with me, let’s get moving so we can get this done with and get back to L.A.  I don’t feel like hanging around here until morning.”

She nearly jumped at how quickly Selma moved up close to her, ready to go exploring.  “I’m all set!” said Selma, beaming at the vampiress, and then she hurried over to the big oak double-doors and peered down at the lock.  Kimmie stepped up behind her and waited for a few moments, while Grubby and Dooby got up on the big porch with them, if only to escape further abuse from Dolly.  The two of them were already shaking so hard one would have thought Laruba Mansion was in the Antarctic.  After an inspection of the lock, Selma reached for her hip-pack and said, “This shouldn’t be too hard . . . just give me a few minutes, and I should be able to get the lock picked.”

As she rummaged around in the hip-pack for the tools, Kimmie stepped forward and gave the doorknob a twist, and when it resisted, she just kept turning anyway, breaking the lock mechanism with her vampiric strength, though to everybody else it looked as though someone had left the door unlocked.  The vampiress gave the door a light shove, ignored Grubby and Dooby when they both whined at the eerie creaking sound the heavy door made as it swung open, and smirked at Selma, who was blushing again.  “Sometimes the easy way works best,” she said, and then boldly strode into the dark and dusty interior of the mansion.  “Let’s go.  I’m sick of sitting around and doing nothing.”

*     *     *

            Kimmie and her three companions did a quick search of the sprawling first floor, and upon finding nothing of interest, they made their way up the massive staircase and began a search of the next floor.  Thus far, it was more of the same: vaultlike rooms lined with dusty old paintings and antique furniture, connected by carpeted hallways that seemed as long as city streets.  Long-dark chandeliers hung from the ceilings, and though some windows were uncovered, many of them were obscured with thick velvet curtains that allowed very little light to pass through.  However, the vampiress’ eyes had no problem with the darkness, and she easily found her way around, though Selma had to produce a small flashlight from her hip-pack to light up the way. 

            As they walked along, Kimmie’s limited empathy could pick up traces of the emotions of the other three, which ranged from nervousness (Selma) to all-out fear (Grubby & Dooby), but she couldn’t pick up the presence of anybody else.  But then again, that didn’t mean anything, since her empathy was still pretty undeveloped and wasn’t good for detecting much of anything beyond emotions in the immediate vicinity.  She knew that some vampires had such powerful empathy that they could use it like radar, which would have been pretty useful right now; then again, would she have even been able to detect something of a ghostly nature?  She found that she didn’t much care for that question.  Kimmie didn’t like to think that she was anywhere but the very top of the food chain.

            She also didn’t like the fact that she thought she kept hearing scuffling sounds off in the distance, but the myriad rooms and sheer size of the mansion made it hard for her to pinpoint where the sounds were coming from.  She wasn’t even sure if they weren’t simply echoes of her companions’ movements.  She hadn’t realized how noisy most people were when they moved until she’d become a vampire, and the two stoners were louder than most.  She could’ve heard their teeth chattering from a half-mile away.

            “Oh man, this is like major-league creepy,” whimpered Grubby as he and Dooby slunk along behind Kimmie and Selma.  “Why do we have to like, be in the rear?  What if something sneaks up and grabs us?”

            “Hey, if you two jackoffs want to be up front, and get devoured first if the Wolfman jumps out of a closet, be my guests,” snapped Kimmie, glaring back at the two.

            “W-W-Wolfman?”

            Dooby whimpered and tried to climb up into Grubby’s back pocket.

            “Or the Mummy, whichever one we run across first.”

            “Ohhhhh . . . how do we let ourselves get talked into these things, Doob?” moaned Grubby, and the dirty Great Dane had no good answer.

            Selma gave Kimmie a pat on the shoulder and said, “You don’t have to be so rough with them . . . they mean well enough, it’s just that they’re sort of fuck-ups.  They can’t help it.”

            Kimmie scowled at the unwanted touch on her shoulder and grunted, “I’ve got a friend who’s a total fuck-up . . . she dresses like a Spice Girl and has long conversations with the voices in her head, and she’s got her shit together a lot better than those two.  At least she’s not a complete coward.”  Quite the opposite, actually . . . whenever the going got tough, Mary was usually the one that ran out and jumped on the problem.

            Selma glanced at Kimmie, with an unsettled expression on her face.  “A . . . friend?”

            The vampiress rolled her eyes.  Selma was seriously asking to be thrown out a window.  The first time she’d ever encountered Donita, the gypsy had propositioned her, along with grabbing her ass, and she would still periodically make loaded remarks to Kimmie; the vampiress had gotten pretty tired of the whole lesbian angle and sooner or later somebody was going to get their ass kicked over it.  But she bit her tongue: she still needed a ride home and didn’t want to risk completely alienating herself by attacking one of the competent members of the gang.  However, Grubby and Dooby were fair game, since everybody fucked with them one way or another.

            She looked back at them again and saw that Grubby had lit up yet another joint and was heavily toking on it.  “Courage, gotta get me some courage . . .” he muttered.

            “Can you go fifteen minutes without getting high, you worthless pieces of shit?!” demanded Kimmie.  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason you’re so fucking stupid is because you’re always in a dope-fog?!”  Grubby and Dooby stared at her goggle-eyed, their nerves already frayed from being on the second floor of the musty old house, and probably the only thing that kept them from bolting right then and there was the fear of the Wolfman or Mummy hopping out at them.  Then again, the Wolfman or Mummy probably would’ve been friendlier than Kimmie.  “You know what?  You both fucking suck!”  Moving like lightning, she lashed out and swatted the joint from Grubby’s mouth, sending it bouncing down the hallway in a shower of little sparks until it rolled underneath a door, where Grubby couldn’t get at it again.  “That’s what I think of your filthy habit, dickwad!”  Like a boulder pushed down a steep slope, Kimmie was hard to stop once she got started.

            Selma frantically tugged on her hand.  “Kimmie, quiet down!” she hissed, fearfully glancing around the long, dark cobwebbed hallway.  “Someone might hear us!”

            “Aw, fuck ‘em!  If there’s anybody here, they probably already heard these two bitches, what with their whining, moaning, and chattering!  And don’t touch me!” she growled, yanking her hand away from Selma’s.  “I hate being touched!  I’m a misanthrope, and it really pisses me off!”

            Selma looked stricken, but she kept protesting.  “Stop!  You’re just asking for trouble by making so much racket!  We can’t do a proper investigation if you’re gonna act like this!”

            Kimmie threw back her head and laughed.  “This isn’t gonna be a proper investigation regardless of whether I’m loud or not!  This is just a bunch of college kids playing Ghostbusters and wasting their time when they could be taking me back to where I want to be!  Where’s Slimer and the proton-packs?  Let’s zap ourselves some ghouls and go driving back to the firehouse in the Ecto-van!  Fuck all this!  Damned Clue Club wannabes!  At least their dogs were funny!”  She was getting carried away, but she couldn’t help it: it had been a very frustrating night.  “Fuck!  I just wanna get back to L.A.!  Is that so much to ask for?!”  Why couldn’t the world ever just cooperate?!

            The vampiress stomped down the hallway cursing and snarling, and her vision got a slight reddish haze at the edges, which made her swear even more violently.  Whenever a vampire got really angry, their eyes got a reddish glow to them, which got stronger the angrier they became.  An experienced vampire could extinguish the glow if they wanted, or at least dampen it, but Kimmie hadn’t quite gotten the mechanics of glowing eyes figured out yet, and her results were haphazard at best.

“Calm down, calm down,” she murmured to herself, breathing deeply as the trio scurried after her.  Her temper had never been one of her stronger points, and due to the fact that vampire emotions tended to be stronger than those of mortals, she had a really hard time with it when she got frustrated.  She reached down into one of her knee-high boots and pulled out a pair of sunglasses she kept on her just in case she couldn’t get her eyes to settle down.  Dealing with some of the customers at Three Amigos often pissed her off, and Mary had thoughtfully gotten her the mirrored glasses just in case; the glasses got a lot of use.

“Don’t stray off!” Selma hissed, catching up with the pink-haired vampiress as she heedlessly stalked down the hallway.  “We still don’t know if there’s anything in here or not.”  She reached out as though to grab Kimmie’s hand, but stopped herself at the last second, which was a good idea, since she probably would’ve gotten her arm ripped out.

“Zoinks!  Like, don’t leave us behind!” screeched Grubby as he and Dooby shuffled up behind them.

“If I was your mom, I would’ve left you behind at the garbage dump,” muttered Kimmie.  “Outta my way, you stupid chair,” she growled and kicked a big cobweb-covered chair down the hallway, putting a bit more power into it than she intended, launching it.  The chair ended up hurtling down the hall a good distance before it bounced three times, nearly falling to pieces, then finally bashed through a window and fell down into the yard outside with a hideous crash, dragging the velvet curtains behind it.  Two good things came of it.  Firstly, with the window at the end of the hall cleared out, fresh air blew into the house, easing up some of the heavy musty scent.  Secondly, Kimmie grinned when she heard Ed and Dolly yelling in fright outside at the sudden appearance of the chair.  She hoped they pissed themselves.

“Jinkies!” moaned Selma.  She jogged down the hallway to the broken window and peered out into the yard.  “Don’t worry, we just had a little accident!” she called out to Ed and Dolly, though as shaky as her voice was it sounded like it had been more than a little accident.

Meanwhile, Kimmie made a turn down one of the adjoining hallways, continuing the circuit around the second floor they’d began, not wanting to stop making progress just to explain things to Ed and Dolly.  She shouldn’t have gotten involved with this sorry crew in the first place, and admittedly, she probably wasn’t doing much to help them out in terms of investigating the supposed ghost of Phineas Laruba, but what the hell else could she do?  It wasn’t like she was going along with Tommy and his paranormal partner-in-crime, the infamous Anton Lavey, on a serious case; this wasn’t even a grade-school field trip compared to what they’d be doing.  If it was something like that, she would’ve been able to contain herself, but then again, she seriously doubted Tommy and Anton would have pissed her off like this gang had, seeing as how they were actual professionals, instead of kids playing make-believe.

Now they were wasting her precious time, because she seriously needed to get back to Los Angeles before sun-up.  It’s not like the only consequences for her was being late for class the next day, because if she wasn’t able to find a good place to hole up in for the day, she was going to look like the contents of an ash tray, which was a pretty serious matter to her.  She supposed she could’ve made use of the mansion if worse came to worst, but she didn’t particularly want to stay in a musty dusty old dump for an entire day.  Fuck that, she deserved a lot better.  It wasn’t her fault her lousy car had decided to take a shit on her tonight, when all she’d been doing was her job, and it sure as hell wasn’t her fault that bitch of a gypsy was the only one working the store, meaning there was no options for rescue beyond a group of dumbass kids and their worthless dog.  Kimberly Anne Moriarty wasn’t going to take a fall just because of the whims of fate, especially since she was a vampire now and by rights should’ve been shoving people around left and right to get what she wanted.  She should’ve been running this little show, and instead she was just a fucking babysitter waiting for the kids to get done playing so she could hitch a ride home.  What a bunch of bullshit.

She was glad Mary had given her the sunglasses, because right now she was doing a terrible job of getting her eyes to settle down.

Kimmie slowed down and came to a stop in the hallway, her fists balled up at her sides, feeling as though her head was going to explode.  Why was she even doing this?  Why didn’t she just systematically wipe them out one by one, stash the bodies in the mansion, then take the van, drive to the outskirts of L.A., and then dump it somewhere?  What with all the weird goings-on in Laruba, the deaths wouldn’t even be attributed to anything vampiric in nature, especially if she didn’t drain their blood . . . nobody would be the wiser, especially since the gang couldn’t squeal on her if they were dead.  The elder vampires of Los Angeles frowned upon killing mortals unless it was for feeding purposes, other serious needs, or because they were criminal dirtbags causing trouble, and while she could see the logic in the rule, it also grated on her.  Why couldn’t she kill stupid people in order to get rid of an inconvenience to herself?

Ever since she’d been turned into a vampire, it seemed like she’d been doing nothing but following other people’s rules, just like she had when she’d been mortal, and she was tired of it.  There were times she just wanted to cut loose and wipe out whatever got in her way, simply because she could do that now.  She was a vampire, an immortal creature of the night, and it was beneath her to play nursemaid to a group of idiots and their mangy dog.  She could end her current frustration simply by taking what she wanted from them and taking care of business her own way.  Maybe it was time to break the rules a bit, fuck what the elder vampires had to say.

But thinking of the elder vampires brought up the thought of Dorian, sending a thrill through her heart.  What would he have done in this situation?  Hell, with his considerable telepathic abilities, he would’ve just charmed the gang into giving him a ride home right off the bat, something she couldn’t do.  Would he approve of her own solution to her problem?  Probably not.  Neither would Tommy, though she had the feeling that Tommy would understand her motivations perfectly, as he had a very low threshold of tolerance for idiocy himself.  She smirked at the memory of a few weeks ago when she, Mary, and Dorian had been riding along with Tommy in his massive old car, and a gangbanger had attempted to carjack Tommy at a stoplight.  Tommy had calmly pulled his trusty .38 Special and shot the would-be carjacker in the face point-blank, barking “Quiet, you!” while he did so.  Everybody had had a good laugh over that one.  Was what she wanted to do that much different?  With a sigh, she suspected that the other vampires would think so, damn them.  Sometimes it felt like she was still living with her parents back in Illinois and dealing with their rules.

Was this what being a vampire was all about?  Following rules and being a good little fanged citizen?  Was she going to spend her immortality following other people’s rules?

“Oh fuck it, they’re dead meat,” said Kimmie, and she turned on her heel just as Selma, Grubby, and Dooby caught up with her.

They clearly hadn’t heard her, as Selma immediately said, “Ed and Dolly are taken care of, but you can’t do that again!  I thought you knew at least a little about this sort of thing since you’re friends with Professor Harcourt!”  She looked at Kimmie as though she weren’t totally certain if the pink-haired young woman was on the level.  “Hey, what’s up with the sunglasses?  It’s dark enough in here as it is, silly!”  She gave Kimmie a grin and shook her head.  “Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m just fine,” replied Kimmie evenly, her softly glowing eyes passing over the trio behind the mirrored shades, sizing them up like a cat taking stock of its prey.  This was going to be almost too easy.  Now which one was going to get it first?

Selma, probably, since she was the most competent of the lot, and after that, she could run down Grubby with ease, and since Dooby couldn’t talk, he wasn’t worth shit when it came to sounding an alarm.  A thrill passed through her entire body at the thought of finally being able to just dispose of these idiots and take care of her problem in her own manner.  If the elder vampir