Shards

Chapter 3
Midnight Madness

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Chapter Description: We're gonna rock around the clock tonight.

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Chapter Three

“What do I do now?” Kate asked herself as she stared out at the castle that sat on the horizon. A lot had happened in the past twelve minutes and she needed some ideas.

“If only Jeremy was here, he always has good ideas.” Kate sighed. But it was only when she stopped to think of how much she missed Jeremy that she heard a small sniffle coming from upstairs. Kate rushed upstairs, desperate to see if she had done something right. The sniffling was coming from a locked door, she could tell because she could feel its click when she opened it. Inside was the little boy from before, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Are you ok?”

“Kuh, Kate?”

“How do you know my name, little guy?” Kate sat down onto the bed. She figured that the little guy picked it up from Austin.

“Its me, Kate.”

“Who?”

“Jeremy.”

“Jeremy?” It took Kate a few seconds to figure out what the boy was saying. When she did, her face exploded into awe.

“Jeremy! Oh my god, what happened to you?” Jeremy began to retell his tale to Kate, from him going to the old club house and releasing the baby, to it sapping him of about ten years, to Austin humiliating him (Kate snickered at the last part). Then Kate explained what happened at the party to Jeremy. When everything had been said, they paused for a second.

“So, do you have a plan?” Kate asked Jeremy, filled with hope.

“Nope.”

“What? You always have a plan!”

“How are we going to stop it if we don’t even know what it is!”

“Well, what are we gonna do? Run a Google Search on things that suck out age? We’d be swamped with Fountain of Youth reports, dumb YouTube videos, and losers who write dumb stories!”

“Suck . . . out . . . age? Kate! I think I might know what it is!” Jeremy hopped up, and with elementary energy, he ran to his father’s room. Kate followed with curiosity, and almost laughed as she saw Jeremy jumping up as high as he could, trying to grab a book on a high bookshelf. When he noticed Kate, he beckoned for her.

“Look! My dad has a book that will help us! Grab it for me!” Jeremy pointed to a black velvet book on the highest self. Kate grabbed it and looked at the spine.

“Vampires Throughout the Ages?” You think its a Vampire?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said as he pulled the old book out of Kate’s hands. “It makes sense. You said he didn’t do anything until you told him to come inside. That’s a famous characteristic of vampires.”

“Yeah, but vampires suck blood.”

“Well, lets read the book.” Jeremy flipped open the book and began to skim through its pages until he stopped suddenly and began to read intensely.

“What, what is it?”

“Um, its bad. Really bad.”

“Oh how bad could it be?”

“Really bad.”

“What’s it say?”

“It says, and I quote, ’A vampire who siphons experience from human flesh is an extremely rare breed believed to have existed in its prime during the period of history known as the dark ages. It is believed to be currently extinct.’”

“Well, we know that’s not true. Is there more?”

“Yeah. It says, ’Known as temporal vampires, they do not share the same characteristics as normal vampires. Temporal vampires have the ability to teleport, theorized to only be to a place they know. They also can survive in the sunlight but cannot shape shift beyond changing their age. However, like traditional vampires, they cannot enter a residence uninvited nor do their reflections appear in mirrors or water. They also can hypnotize people into paralysis, but they cannot control the mind. Also, Temporal vampires accumulate a horde based on children instead of small vermin.’”

“Well, some people consider children to be like rats.” Kate offered.

“Quiet! ’Temporal vampires have their abilities at the childhood age, but they can only extract experience through the blood.’ That’s why he bite me as a baby and Austin as a kid!”

“This is wonderful, but how do you kill them?”

“I’m getting there! It says here that temporal vampires seek out humans to drain their experience, but they need to obtain 1000 years worth of age in order to kill a solid form. If they don’t have 1000 years worth by midnight, then they disappear entirely!”

“Well, how can we figure out how much energy it has?”

“The book says that until they reach their full powers that come with 1000 years of experience, they can only take ten years at a time, so with the approximate twenty people at Austin’s party and myself, he’s got around 200 years already!”

“And who knows how much he’s gotten since!”

“But if we can stall him to midnight, he’ll disappear!”

“How do you stall a teleporting vampire?”

“Well, the book also says that they can’t cross over running water or living wood.”

“Living wood? How lame.”

“Well, it explains why he was stuck in a tree.”

“So that’s it? We attack him with wood?”

“Naw, stake in the heart doesn’t work either. They just regress to before it happened. That’s why you can’t kill them.”

“Oh. Lets get some wood then.”

An hour later, Kate was stepping out of her parent’s jeep, looking at the castle. From what she knew, they ha about an hour before the vampire’s powers were permenate. She hustled to the other side of the vehicle and helped Jeremy out of a car seat. Local laws declared, to Jeremy’s disapproval, that children under eight that weren’t at least 100 pounds had to be secured into a harness. Jeremy wasn’t even ninety. Armed with their wooden barriers, they marched into the castle’s keep with fear in their eyes.

It didn’t take Kate and Jeremy long to find Drake’s citadel, it was naturally in the tallest tower atop a spiraling staircase. The heavy wood door creaked loudly as Kate and Jeremy pushed it open with all their might. Once the door was opened, a burst of music rushed t them, nearly toppling Jeremy over. A deep, threatening organ bellowed as loudly as it could, and as the music played, deep purple candles, ones of the same color as Drake’s brand of spell weaving, burst into flame. Stationed directly in front of each candle was a small child, fast asleep. Jeremy picked out his little brother instantly.

“Austin!” Jeremy instinctively yelled. Kate jabbed him in the shoulder, a jester that hurt Jeremy much more now.

“He’ll hear you!”

“No he won’t!”

“Oh ya, yes he will, dawg!”Jeremy and Kate screamed as the backed away from Drake, who stood directly behind him.

“Ya know, dawg. Ya shoulda stayed away from my crib. Ya see, yous be doomed to be my eternal servants anyway, so why’d ya come to make yourself my final offering!”

“You can’t fool us! You can’t use Jeremy because you can only sap increments of ten from people!” Kate triumphantly declared.

“Kate, your 17 too. You have ten years to suck.”

“Oh.”

“Naw, naw, you got me all wrong. I have enough power that I can sap away one year at a time! And your experience should be just enough for my 1000 years, punk!” Drake began to fail his arms out as he did before, by Kate threw her stick at him. Everyone who was old enough to comprehend the act she had done stared at her with disbelief.

“What was that?” Drake asked.

“That’s a good question.” Jeremy added.

“Well, he can’t cross living wood, so I thought if I threw it at him it might work.” Kate shrugged her shoulders.

“Dude, dude, dude. You gots it all wrong! You see, I can’t escape living wood, but I can still fly over it.” Drake demonstrated this by levitating himself over the stick a few times.

“Not to mention, in order to be living, its gotta be part o the plant, see. It died the second you cut it off.”

“Oh.” Jeremy blushed at his own lack of insight.

“That’s all you have to say? Oh?” Kate yelled at Jeremy, and Jeremy was going to respond, but all that escaped his mouth a babyish gurggle as Drake quickly sapped Jeremy of the seven years of his life, leaving Jeremy as a helpless baby, unable to do anything except lie helplessly in his oversized seven-year-old clothing.

“And notta moment too soon! Exactly 11:30! I can through an anointing party! Gotta make some homies though, I can dig it!” With a wave of his hands, all the children lined by the candles grew up. Inside of helpless baby’s, nearly grown teenagers stood in their place, as well trained as British soldiers. Kate watched in horror as Drake’s own face melted into that of a teenager’s.

“We gonna party it up all night long!” Drake said happily, his ’homies’ eyes lighting up purple as dark robes swirled to cover them.

“Let the annexation of the world commence!” Drake happily said to his zombies. He didn’t notice Kate, who grabbed the book from out of Jeremy’s shrunken clothes, and as if fate intended Kate to find it, the book flipped open to the page after the last one Jeremy had read.

“My loyal minions! Join me in giving me your strength! Allow me to turn the hands of time forward so I may turn them back on the world!” The zombified citizens of Kate’s home began chanting a language that Kate was fairly sure was normally impossible for human vocal chords to reach. Kate read the page.”

“’Temporal Vampires can be destroyed in one and only one way - their coffin must be exposed and burned to the ground.’ Their coffin? Where’s the coffin?” Kate pondered for a moment about where a coffin would be, but another blast of wind from the powerful chanting pushed the pages forward to a general page on vampire coffins. Kate read aloud again.

“The coffin of a vampire normally is kept in the dark, in or near the place they were awakened.’ The place were he was awakened was the tree house! I got to get there now!” Kate scooped up baby Jeremy, who looked less and less intelligent by the minute, loosing his signature eye sight and trading it in for random limb movement and a peculiar interest in the taste of his own toes.

Kate ran down the stairs as fast as she could, needing to drop both Jeremy’s pants, boxers, footwear, and over tee in order to move faster. Baby Jeremy shook violently at the cold air, since he worn nothing but one of Jeremy’s old undershirts. Kate buckled herself into her car and Jeremy into her lap as she drove off.

Meanwhile, once Drake was done chanting, he wanted to gloat.

“Feast your eyes on the spell that will fast forward time to midnight, allowing my true powers to awaken! Yous are gonna be the first little kid slaves I ha . . .” Drake stopped when he saw that his wittinesses were gone. He glided t o wear they stood, inhaling their scent. He also spied the remains of Jeremy’s clothes. And still situated on top of them was the book, still open to a particular page.

Kate drove as quickly as she could to the old tree house, parking outside of the thicket. With much grief, she left Jeremy in the car, bundled up in an emergency blanket. She laid him on his back on the seat of the car.

“Not like you can go anywhere.” Kate sighed as she locked the door and began to make her way through the dense thicket. It took her several minutes to reach the old house, and another several to make her way to the roof. She took out an old bungee cable she had stashed in her car for emergencies, tied it to a particularly sturdy branch, and descended into the hole.

When she reached the bottom, which seemed like an eternity, she was surprised to see dimly lite candles that crossed the room, and in the very center of the room, covered in dirt and blood, was an ebony coffin.

“Oh my god, Jeremy fell . . .”

“Directly onto my coffin.” Kate was startled to see Drake standing before her in the dark, looking smug.

“His tears of hopelessness and pain awoke my regressed corpse, allowing me to feed on his energies as a child. And now, my minions are fast forwarding time itself. Take a look at your watch. Suspecting a trick, Kate looked down quickly, then froze when she saw the time.

11:58.

“The last few minutes are always the hardest.” Drake sighed. Kate, lunged at the vampire, taking him by surprise. Kate was positioned on top of him, until he suddenly vanished. Before she knew it, Kate was being held in the air by her neck.

“Accursed virgin. Until my powers are restored I cannot harm a virgin girl.”

Thank god morals. Kate thought to herself. With a swift kick, Kate did the only thing she could think of. She delivered a swift kick into the vampire’s crotch. He squealed in pain like the teenager he was, and backed into one of the many rows of candles. They scattered across the ground, and by fate alone landed on the pile of Jeremy’s clothing on top of the vampire’s coffin.

“NOO!” Drake screamed as the fire that sprang forth from Jeremy’s baggy clothes engulfed his coffin, just as soon as the beeping on Kate’s wrist watch informed her that it was midnight. A bright purple light rose from Drake’s coffin, and rushed to greet him. Drake reached his hand out, desperate for his lost powers, and he was fingertip’s length away from it when his form evaporated and his body corroded to dust. The powers, having nowhere to go, collapsed in on themselves, leaving a tiny gem the size of a bead. The candles flicked out, as Kate picked up the bead, and hoped everything was alright.

In the car, and at the slowly fading castle, children who were rose to teenagerhood began to shrink and people who were made younger began to slowly grow. The magic took a while to disapear, as when Kate returned to her car Jeremy was in a trace-lick state and only five years old, the blanket barely covering his private section. Kate hurried to rush to the castle.

People began to awake from their traces once they hit their normal ages. Most of the people walked away, as if in a deep sleep, while Kate piled the party children in the car, dressed in draping teenaged robes. She sincerely wished to herself that the kids and her were home, safe, and wearing their normal costumes. She felt her pocket were the gem was glow warmly and in a blink of an eye she was back in Jeremy’s house, and the kids were in their costumes, chatting amongst themselves. Jeremy stood next to her in the clothes that she watched burn before her eyes. Austin walked over to Jeremy, and with a sigh, spoke to his big brother.

“Jeremy, I’m sorry that I took advantage of whatever happened to you.” Jeremy responded by bending down, patting his brother on the head, and spoke to his brother in a calm, caring voice.

“I’m sorry that I hit you too. I was just so angry. Do you forgive me?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then lets party for the ten minutes we have left.” Jeremy said as he and his brother walked away from Kate.

“I think we have a little more time.” Kate whispered as he pocket grew warm, the sum began to cast an orange glow on the town, the parents began to leave, and Jeremy’s clothes became costume and his height met Austin’s height, and the two brother’s joined Austin’s friends in the best, and longest, party even known to a Halloween night.

END

 

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