The Hostage of Vampire Valley

By Carl Reader

Forced to move to Montana with her parents' murderers, half-mad Maggie climbs the walls of her home at night, only to discover blood-spitting vampires trapped in vats on her roof. A lover helps her discover her powers, and the two brave severe attacks to save her brother and fly hordes of trapped vampires in vats through fire and smoke to imprisonment in a mountain, only to be trapped themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carl Reader
• Release date: Nov 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9781102467564

Carl Reader

Carl Reader trained as a journalist at Temple University and has worked as a reporter, photographer and editor in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Montana. He's published short stories in literary magazines and on the Internet and has self-published a children's Christmas story called THE TWELFTH ELF OF KINDNESS.That book was partially published in Russia under the Sister Cities program. He's also self-published a novella called THE PERSECUTION OF WILLIAM PENN, which has been well-received in several college libraries. He works as a professional photographer and freelance writer.

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The Hostage of Vampire Valley

By

Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Carl Reader

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be

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own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters in this novel are purely fictional.

Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is strictly coincidental.

ONE

Climbing the Walls

When all was supposed to be eternal peace and silence, a scratching on the other side of the bare white wall startled her awake. She had almost drifted off to sleep, which meant she had almost drifted from life forever. Now that she realized she was still alive, Maggie gulped in air greedily to encourage consciousness.

She lay in bed trembling at midnight with her long hair covering her like a blanket, and then she pulled up her hair to cover every part of her face but her eyes. She didn’t dare doze off again, lest her step-parents creep into her room and murder her, just as they had murdered her parents. She lay on her back half-awake, still not believing they had not come in the room yet, her heart racing, trying her best not to doze and therefore to live. She hoped her long hair would protect her from them, from what end they had in store for her, but it did not protect her that first night in Montana from fear. Fear boiled up in her and caused an awful silent storm of words to break into her skull as though a dam broke on a dike. The garble of words washing over her brain rose inside her as the servants of fright, a flood of fear. The word drowned into her thoughts like sheets of water from a hurricane, leaving her mind to drown in madness. Floods of words are much the same thing as nightmares, and waking nightmares are the worst of all.

Then the words subsided for a moment, and there was just one voice.

You’re right to wake up. If you stay in bed, you’ll die. They will kill you. Come out into the night with us, your friends, and you’ll live. Stay with them and you’ll die. You were meant to be with us and live.

All at once a thousand screams flooded back into her mind at a greater volume, none of them making sense, louder than a volcano and as incomprehensible, flowing over her mind and crushing her thoughts as a rock-strewn mudslide crushes sheep. The screams would have split open any normal human skull, but Maggie’s skull was not normal. Once the voices screamed at her she thought they might further split apart even her already shattered mind, overwhelm it and break it into yet smaller pieces. Someone unseen invited her to get up out of bed and live in the night, to flee from her step-parents to life. It was not normal, she realized, to hear voices without sounds, but again she was not normal, being used to a life that called up such things as screams inside the head at midnight. The thousand voices crying out, now like burning tortured cats, continued that first night in her new house in the mountains and they went on and on and on and on.

At first she watched horror movies on TV to keep her eyes wide open in case her step-parents crept into her room. She didn’t have the courage to close her eyes when the movies bored her, so she watched as clouds partially scrubbed by moonlight raced by her window and the voices without sound screamed at her. Spring dirtied the air, and its pollen rushed in through her open window screens and brought on her allergic reactions. She sneezed and sneezed and that helped to keep her eyes wide open as the painful silent screaming continued, as though transferred from the horror movies to the inside of her head, there to drown the remainder of her sanity. Any rest but death would have been welcome, a soothing friend when all of her old friends were left far behind two thousand miles away in Manhattan. Instead of rest she heard again the loud silent screaming voices seemingly crying out from somewhere deep inside her own head, wrestling with each other behind her eyes for attention, demanding it. The voices came from below, and yet they seemed linked to the dark clouds above that were scrubbed by the moon and floating in those awful odors, all within the bowl of this mountain valley. She was not certain she liked her new home in Montana all that much, and was very confused and frightened by it, especially by the words that came as nightmares when she was startled awake. Montana was proving not to be the fresh, natural place of romantic imagination, but instead a weird spot with unseen creatures screaming at her about walking the night.

Come with us, the solitary voice said suddenly, very clearly, at another pause in the screaming. You know what will happen if you don’t listen to us.

She knew that if she slept she would not live. The voices seemed to know that, too. At least someone was talking to her, a friend who was concerned for her welfare, and it planted an irresistible impulse in her to sit up in bed. Maybe someone in this weird, violent world wished her well. Maybe someone would save her.

Where are you?

Down here, come down to us. We know that it’s blood you want, and blood we have, so that you can live.

Still groggy and fearful, she could make little sense of the offer of blood, although the word itself brought a strange, coppery taste into her mouth. Why would they offer her blood? It seemed so silly when what she needed was safety and rest.

If you made sense, I would listen to you, she said, talking to the air. I thank you for keeping me awake, but most of the time I don’t understand what you’re saying and all you are is a lot of babbling. I’m not afraid of you, so make some sense and I might listen and come to talk to you.

With the offer to talk further, the babbling tumult of thousands of voices inside her head lifted to a painful crescendo that extended far past mere seconds and into several minutes, as though the offer brought on that awful excitement. All the voices vied for her attention now and made her feel as though her very brain was being diced to bits. They all wanted her to come to them, and screamed at her to do so. It was a pleasant possibility, that someone might need her, but the screaming of all those voices all at once left her tilting again toward madness. It was only fair to listen to beings who screamed so loudly and hurt her so, for beings who screamed loudly did so because of two reasons: one, they were mad and howled at mere trifles like breezes and clouds; or, two, some great injustice had been committed against them and they cried out for fairness in a dark world. The impulse to descend to them was a compulsion she had to agree to, since she was so weakened by her torture and compelled by her needs.

Make sense! At least make some sense! And stop talking all at once! I’ll come down, if you only make sense!

Then come down, Maggie Long Hair. When we see you, we’ll make sense, it will all make sense, we promise, one voice managed to say, above the rest.

With that, those words, the screaming stopped and she was on her feet, the floor creaking beneath her weight and her heart thumping wilding with the prospect of escape from her step-parents. When she was on her feet, her long hair trailed behind her down to the tops of her legs. She was a girl so desperate for a friendly touch that she would do anything and go anywhere, except she didn’t know where down here was and exactly what it was she was doing in her attempt to make friends. Down was obviously down, silly girl, but it seemed a far distance to go to the shining oak stairs just outside her bedroom door and she was exhausted and frightened, if not intrigued by the voices that made friends with her at midnight by screaming inside of her head. Still, she definitely was the girl who would do anything, absolutely anything, and anything she was about to do, if it meant the voices would settle outside her mind and communicate to her as rational friends, company to loneliness and fear and despair.

Come down, one deep sonorous voice of a boy said again, reminding her of what she was to do. Come down.

You don’t have to tell me again. I understand you. Wait for me. I’m coming, boy.

The voice was as pleasant as the depths of the sea.

I am not a boy, but an old man. Come down to me.

The pleasant ocean of his words washed over her, but lies were everywhere, and she suspected she knew a boy’s voice when she heard one, like this one, this boy’s voice pretending to be an old man’s. She was very certain it was a boy talking under some disguise, speaking in disguise for a reason she did not know, but she knew the boy called to her and she must go, if only to escape the death that awaited her if she remained in bed.

Come down and open the door. Spit to the wind with us, it’s glorious, spitting, and then let us out and all of us will be free.

Again, they were making no sense, but she was already up and too afraid to return to her bed. What did they mean by asking her to spit with them? What did they mean by that? She might as well have been walking on ice as those carpetless oak floors, still bare but with Persians unrolled against the walls, too lazy to open out in battle and cover the floors with the ice of their bodies. Persians invaded Greece, but not those floors. All the floors were ice, as cold as the centuries-old dead, from her bedroom into the hallway where her murdering step-parents slept uneasily together behind the closed door of their bedroom. She moved as quietly as possible, in an agony that they might discover her. Her feet waked on icy floors down through hallway and the living room until finally there was some warmth under her when she opened the door to the basement and stepped onto the oddly toasty bare wooden steps there to go down. It was as though those steps had the temperature of life in them, or brimstone below them. The screams were transformed into murmurs during her trek down, almost unbelieving murmurs of joy that she would listen and descend toward them, barely able to control themselves from screaming at her again. She is doing it, she is doing it and coming, they murmured, but then they began screaming again in a crescendo when her foot first hit that first step to the basement and they knew she was coming to them for certain, she was coming, she was coming for sure, to their pure joy. Again, they nearly split apart her head.

Come to all of us! We are all here, not just him. Yes, come! You dear one, dear girl who will do anything for us, come to us and let us be free again! We will never leave you, and he will be here, too, for your love! You will be safe with us!

They would kill her with their uncontrolled screams if her step-parents heard them, but she would die pleasantly and be below with them, forever with them in their basement where she would call with them to others to join them, as soon as she found them and him and joined with them. Anything was better than lying half-awake in her bed waiting for her step-parents to kill her. She wished to find him most of all, whoever that was, and end the pain of the screaming and simply be with him and safe. She flicked on the light switch at the top of the stairs and hurried down the steps and soon was with them. From the ice of the upstairs floors she now stepped onto a lake of fire in the basement, as though the heat from the souls burning below and calling her inflamed the concrete. Then, to her surprise and as far as she could tell, she was still alone, just fevered and delusionary. The souls of her feet were scorched in agony so that she fell to her hands and knees. They too were scorched in agony but still she did not see the voices calling her although she cried out to them now in her pain. She had been tricked again and was as lonely and vulnerable as ever.

Where are you? I’m here, but you’re not. I came down to you, but you left. Where is he? Help me, please. Where are you? I can’t stand being alone here without you, and my step-parents will know where I am soon.

You are just above us. Open the trap door. Open it! He is here for you. You are just above us! We are almost with you, and he wants you!

She grappled with her pain to do as she was told to do, to enter hell and more pain but no loneliness, but as she crawled across the floor there was no trap door anywhere in the basement, no relief to the burning concrete that the ultimate pain of hell would give, and finally she had to admit to herself that she could not tolerate for a minute more this earthly pain in order to find the final pain and relief of hell.

You’re no where! I am a fool again. You called to me, but you’re no where, nothing but an illusion off of fire. What have you decided to do, pretend you are in my head to end it? Why would I end it if I have to stand alone again with more lies?

We are just beneath you! Trust us! We called to you because we want you! We are as honest as the sun! Come to us! We desire you more than life itself! He desires you!

She could not. All she wanted now was to rise. They, too, had lied to her and she was still alone and in danger. She would not be with them because they were not here. They lied. Devils lie. She crawled in desperation back to the stairs as the screaming inside her skull worsened to the loudest noise possible among stars, the loudest a noise could be anywhere, even in the great silence between the stars, but as she lifted a burning palm onto the first stair the stair was ice, and it burned her with cold, and she shrieked with agony, but it was not as though that mattered. She barely gasped at the pain, barely felt the searing of her flesh, so desperate was she, but instead ascended the stairs like an animal, like a dog, quickly loping upward on all fours, and she was a dog or an animal by the time she reached the corridor of shining floors beyond the open door to the basement, so loud was the crying out inside her head. The world was utterly ice now that she had run. She evolved, a little more human, when upstairs, rising to her burned feet, but only because on her feet she could run from this world. She could run with the speed and reason of complete panic and now she ran outside through the kitchen door and into the night, where the world might be a little bit normal, anywhere but inside this house of screaming voices. Outside, it was as though a wall had suddenly been erected before her eyes. She ran into it and could go no farther. Trapped, even more desperate now, she scratched at the outside wall of her screaming home and clawed at it, since she could not them, and the kind of animal she became now was a monkey, climbing. She discovered she could rise by clawing the wall with her hands and feet, some special being now that those devils who screamed inside her head motivated her: she was capable of climbing up walls with hands and feet that stuck to the siding. She pulled herself up and up, past the porch, moonlight lighting her path like a pure wan frost on the stucco walls, and she passed her bedroom window where her bed lay rumpled and disordered, skewed, her sheet pulled partially off the bed to expose the shoulder of the mattress and the covers swirling on the floor in whirlpools. She would climb to the stars if she possibly could. Never that night would she enter that room, ever, for there was the real danger. She climbed upward because that was where the lying voices were not, it was up there she was as far away from the basement as she could be, since her world walled her off and she could not escape in any way but upward from those who taunted and lied. She was clumsy then, as she swung a leg up and clung to the gutter at the base of the roof to pull herself onto the rough shingles, another grind to her poor flesh, as she scraped her knee and bloodied her palms clambering to that place closest to the silent stars, on a rough slant now in the darkness. She closed her eyes with the relief of it, nearly limp, close to the sky, nearly wanting to fall to the ground in the great calm that overcame her, but the roof was rough and held her, unlike the icy floor that had nearly given way beneath her.

Is she here? I can sense her. I thought she had left us, but it’s not so. She’s come closer to help us climb out the pit! Help us climb out the pit now! Spit to the wind!

And then the screaming got still louder, and she knew she would never escape it until she gave in to it. The screaming was up and the screaming was down and it was everywhere but she could not know where it truly was.

You’re right, she’s out there! We sense her, too. She is not a bad person, not the bad person we thought her to be when she left but a good one, one who will be with us out in the world, one who will give us her hand to pull us out and spit to the wind.

Then she saw what she had been looking for in the basement, her way out, the place were the voices came from. It was a large circular silver vat sunk in the roof like a hot tub, reflecting the moonlight in its cover, and it contained the voices that assaulted her thoughts. The home of murderers had an entrance to hell in the roof. The silver shining trap door leaked a sick, blue-grey light from its edges, the fetid, rotting blue blood of demons, for the light did not simply leak from the openings around the trap door, but it emanated out a short ways into the air and then fell like a waterfall onto the roof, where it flowed in a sheet toward the edge of the roof and then disappeared into the darkness. It was rotten, and it smelled rotten as all the piles of all the dead smell rotten. That was where she was going. She was going to open the door to escape to death, she was certain she was going to do so now. She was about to end it all with the great relief that comes in the embrace of friendly demons.

Maggie stepped into the sick, blue-grey light flowing over the shingles and felt a tingling rush of excitement, as though mice danced on her feet, as it wrapped around her. The awful blue light had a sweet and a fetid smell that traveled up her legs and wrapped around her, so that she glowed blue-grey as she reached for the handle of the trap door.

Spit! Spit more! Spit as much as you can! She’s opening it! She’s opening the door! Spit! Spit!

When she opened the trap door, a dozen panicked but delighted eyeballs, sunk in hollow skulls, suddenly looked up with joy and bore into her from below the frame of the open vat. Each of the six sickly emaciated demons below her, made mostly of bone, was spitting out the blue-grey light in liquid form with great hacking coughs. It congealed into a deep pool that sank them up to their necks, as though they were ill with a deadly blue-grey flu and spit its remnants out all around them in an ever-deepening flood. They were drowning in a silver tank in their own sickly excretions. A blue gob shot out toward her from an inconsiderate mouth and struck her shoulder, but its disgust was limited by its airy, light-like nature and it evaporated into the atmospheric demon-spit that already encased her, failing to become liquid.

Come down and spit with us. You’ll be safe here.

It doesn’t look very pleasant, but I might as well.

No! Wait! Make her pull us out! We all want to be out of here and no longer have to spit.

"Don’t