Patti stared down at it for a moment or two, something in her telling her to trust him, to follow him. He had, after all, given away what seemed to be his only weapon. She knew that was hardly enough to actually justify blindly trusting some random guy, when all this weird stuff – and she still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t just an elaborate prank – was going on, but she did anyway.
The man held a finger to his lips as she approached, giving her a hard stare. After a moment, she realized he was telling her to be quiet. Then he pointed back down the path to the main building, a much clearer signal. She shook her head and, a bit reluctantly, handed the bat back to him.
He opened his mouth, then shook his head and nodded, gesturing for her to follow him. He moved quietly, slowly, glancing towards the silent cabins for a few seconds before moving on. It was Patti and Mina’s cabin where he stopped longer, apparently having heard something more.
He made her stay outside, holding her back with one hand before venturing inside.
If she’d stayed in the cabin for a few minutes longer, if the kid hadn’t been able to get to sleep, if she’d decided it was getting late, she was tired, it wasn’t worth it to trek over to the main building, she would’ve still been inside. That was one of the things that haunted her, ever since. But not the main thing.
The man stumbled out, the baseball bat tumbling to the ground, his eyes dazed. He didn’t even seem to see her. “I have to find the other,” he was saying to himself. “There’s always two…” He vanished into the darkness, never to be seen by Patti again, no matter how hard she tried to track him down, to get his help.
The “other” might have reared its head, repeated that night with everything it had learned from its master, but the next morning, after the police had gone, the place was deserted. Patti thought about it sometimes, about the weeds growing up around the cabins, erasing the baseball diamond, about dead leaves filling the pool, soaking up the stagnant water. That haunted her, too, now and then.
But it was the inside of her cabin that showed up in her nightmares most often. If she’d been there just a little longer, sure, she might have died, too, but at least she might have done something before she went, might have made some contribution to save those kids.
He didn’t look like much, the person who had done it. He was older than she had been then – though maybe about the same age as she was now – and small. But she could feel the evil coming from him, saw the work of his hands, saw the blood on his lips, and knew it hadn’t come from within, just knew it. As surely as she knew what he was, what he had been.
The baseball bat was evidence – she knew that, too – but she barely even remembered taking it with her as she slowly made her way to the parking lot, putting it into her trunk as, deep down the dark, twisting road, she saw flashing lights approach, too late, as always.
Some day she would need it. Some dark, snowy day.
2 – Ghosts of Christmas Past
“You’re twenty-one, Joy,” her parents had told her. “Don’t you think it’s time you paid for Christmas presents on your own?”
That was unfair – it wasn’t as if Jolene had asked for them to fund all of her present buying, just a bit of a supplement. But she knew their minds weren’t going to be changed by such logic as that.
Five years had passed quietly, sneaking past Jolene with barely a warning. She’d finished high school, of course, but after that, there had been no big changes. Everything felt as if it were standing still, as if her life had frozen that day at camp. So it was hardly surprising that, even after all that time, she’d recognized Hope in a heartbeat.
Jobs hadn’t exactly become any more plentiful over the years – it had been the opposite, actually, even with her opportunities opening up as she got older. In all honesty, she hadn’t exactly minded. Her friends were all scrambling to find some great career so they could move out, or succeeding in doing so, but she was happy where she was. She felt safe there, stable… She supposed it could be said she was only stable because she was stuck in a rut, but it was a rut she was more than happy with, so she didn’t mind.
“You must be our new elf!” Hope greeted Jolene cheerfully as she anxiously entered the door marked “Employees Only”, walking over to her and shaking her hand boisterously. She must be sixteen or seventeen now, Jolene calculated, and a lot had happened to her over those five years. Much more than had happened to Jolene. She wasn’t a kid anymore, not by a long shot – looking at the two of them side by side, Hope might even have been mistaken as the older, helped by the few inches she had on Jolene. Her costume, a mid-thigh green dress trimmed with fur, tights, and a green Santa hat, looked better on her than it had any right to.
“Y-Yeah,” Jolene replied nervously, searching Hope’s eyes for any sign of recognition. She’d interviewed with someone who worked for the mall, and, with no little siblings or cousins, hadn’t had any reason to look at the elves. She never would have applied if she’d known this specter of her past would be waiting for her, even if the job seemed incredibly easy. “I’m Joy.”
Hope nodded, smiling indecipherably. “I’m Hope. Nice to meet you! Let’s get you all set up!”
Jolene nodded, following the younger girl obediently. There probably should have been a part of her that rankled a bit at working under someone five years her junior, but apparently that part was missing. The woman she’d interviewed with had mentioned the supervisor was pretty young, though never specified, just said she’d worked there the year before and done a great job. Jolene wondered if it was too late to switch, to work during the day, while Hope would be at school, instead of in the evenings, even if that might mean having to wake up earlier.
“There’s not a lot of costumes left,” Hope mused, looking Jolene over. “I hope we can find one that’ll fit you.” She pulled open a box, peering inside and digging through it before pulling out a dress identical to hers, except much smaller. “Why don’t you try this one?” She nodded towards a door, handed the dress over.
The door led to a small bathroom, which Jolene quickly locked, hanging the dress up on a hook on the back of the door and staring at herself in the mirror, a hand on either side of the sink as she bent in closer. Was she as recognizable as she thought? Maybe the years had changed her a bit… Or maybe that memory wasn’t as ingrained in Hope’s mind as deeply as in hers. After all, it hadn’t been a confession for her, just a weird little episode with a camp counselor she’d never seen again after just a few days. Or perhaps she’d tried to forget it, to erase all memories of that camp. She might have been young enough to succeed at it, even though Jolene hadn’t had any luck.
Maybe… Or maybe Hope just didn’t care.
Even with all the possibilities, Jolene found it difficult to re-open the bathroom door, once she’d stripped out of her sweater and pulled on the dress, and only partly because it was too short for her. It was only a bit longer than her sweater had been, prompting her to leave her jeans on as she stepped back out with a blush.
She saw Hope bite her bottom lip, probably trying not to laugh. “Okay, maybe that won’t work,” she said after a moment to regain her composure. But after a minute or two of digging, she looked back up at Jolene, worried. “Umm… That’s the biggest one we have left.” She shrugged, unable to hide the little smile that began to creep across her face. “I’m sure we’ll think of something…”
Patti was uncertain. While it was true Jolene had been a coward in life, all of Patti’s research showed that the life after always seemed to make people stronger, more cocky. It was a big self-esteem boost, with a healthy dose of added evil. Sure, they could act scared, especially in the face of their eminent re-death, but to some little teenager? She couldn’t see it. On the other hand, Jolene was clearly dressed like an elf, and that wasn’t something she’d seen many other vampires stoop to, either.
Was it possible she’d simply stumbled upon the most ineffectual vampire ever? One that she’d be doing a favor – not just to the world, but to it, personally – by killing it? No, not killing, she reminded herself. Slaying was the technical term, the one she’d used to psych herself up for this, to convince herself she could do it.
Things may have gone back to normal for Jolene, but Patti knew things would never be the same before she’d even set foot outside the camp. There were dark things in the world, she now knew, things most people were oblivious to. She could attempt to ignore them – for the first week or so, while she was still trying to figure everything out, she did try – but they kept haunting her from the shadows of her dreams, shapeless, but definitely there, and very, very evil.
The modus operandi for most monsters was rather similar to what she’d seen – luring caretakers out into the night, killing innocents – but it hadn’t taken her long to figure out it had been a vampire. It had a human shape, after all, which narrowed things down a good ways. The moon had been full, so a werewolf was also a possibility, though she didn’t buy that. While they did tend to revert to their human form after death in movies, Patti had a feeling that, in real life, they’d still be wolves until the full moon set. And, besides, werewolves, in their more beastly shapes, didn’t seem smart enough to hang their victims from tree limbs to terrify future prey.
Her parents hadn’t understood, not that she could really blame them. They did their best to be understanding, considering what she’d been through, but even so, they just wouldn’t – or couldn’t – accept the truth. She played along for a while, even went to the psychiatrist for them a couple times, until he started trying to get her to take pills. Her parents agreed with him, of course.
So she left. She couldn’t afford the dullness the drugs would bring, couldn’t let herself chase away the dreams, much as she’d like to be rid of them. They kept her sharp, kept her resolve strong, made her believe that maybe, just maybe, when the time came, she would have a chance to slay at least one of the monsters.
She took the bat. She knew it was just a regular baseball bat, nothing special, even a little beat up, but she felt safe with it. She took her car, too, stopping at a Wal-Mart a few towns over to take a license plate off a car at the edge of the parking lot there, ditching her own after a few more hours of driving, flinging it over the fence at the landfill just outside town.
She’d read somewhere that vampires would likely return to the place they were reborn, but she didn’t dare try to go back to the camp. In her mind, that was the most obvious place to go, which meant there was a chance her parents, or her shrink, would realize she would probably head there. And she couldn’t let herself get caught.
Instead, she pulled her notebook out of the glove compartment. When she’d gotten home, it had been one of the first things she’d done, while everything was still fresh on her mind. She’d written down everything she remembered about her fellow counselors, where they lived, where they went to school, whatever she could think of that she’d spoke with them about, or overheard from other conversations. She’d seen a lot of them the day after, sure, and even some out in direct sunlight. But who knew how long the transformation could take? And there was some lore, including the original Dracula story, that suggested vampires could, in fact, endure a little light.
So, knowing nobody was truly beyond suspicion, she took out her list, read over it once, then again, and then started out on her hunt.
“They’re too big – can’t we just leave it at that?” Jolene called through the door. It seemed rather unlikely, looking back, for half of her costume to only be available in a size too small for her, and the other half too baggy, begging the question of whether they could be called tights if they weren’t.
“Just come on out, Joy,” Hope coaxed her. “Let me see how bad it is, so I can see what we need to do.”
“We need to get a new costume,” Jolene wanted to say, but she didn’t want to sound too demanding, or too whiny. It was her first day, after all, and, whether she wanted to be there or not, she didn’t want to start off on a bad foot. So, with one hand pulling the hem of her skirt down and her tights up in the front, she made her way out of the bathroom.
“Oh, those aren’t that bad,” Hope said, making her way around a nervous Jolene, who kept turning her head to try to see what the other girl was doing, until she pulled out the back of the tights and let them snap back at Jolene’s bottom. Jolene blushed, her eyes going down to the floor. She heard the bathroom door shutting behind her, then Hope giggled. “Sorry, Joy, couldn’t resist. You just remind me so much of my little sister with that cute little penguin.”
Jolene began to open her mouth, to protest that Hope was an only child, before stopping herself. It had been five years – maybe that had changed. If it had, of course, that meant she reminded Hope of a four, or less, year old, which just made her blush more deeply than she already was, knowing someone was looking at her panties, more cutesie than anything most girls her age – or even half her age – would ever be caught in, with their little penguin in a scarf staring out from the back. Either way, there was no reason she should know anything about Hope’s siblings, or lack thereof, if she was sticking with her act of not knowing who Hope was.
“How old did you say you were?” Hope asked, coming back around in front of Jolene at last.
“Umm… Well, I’m turning sixteen near the end of the month,” she lied. “I kinda lied about when my birthday was to get this job… I guess I probably shouldn’t have told you that…”
Hope melted, giving Jolene a quick hug. “Oh, I won’t tell on you, sweetie. Now, you just wait here, and I’ll get this all sorted out.” With that, she was gone, leaving Jolene all alone in the little room, trying to keep her underwear covered. She stood there for a few minutes, dumbly glancing around, before realizing she could just go back in the bathroom and change. Feeling silly, she reached out for the doorknob, turned it…
Or tried to. The knob refused to turn, no matter how many times she jiggled it. She started to feel trapped, as if she were inside the bathroom rather than out, her heart fluttering faster until it spiked at a sudden ‘ding!’ She turned around wildly, feeling slightly better to notice a microwave sitting on the counter on one side of the room. Hope must have been heating something up, she mused. Nothing weird about that.
She did her best to calm herself down, reassure herself that Hope didn’t know anything. She wasn’t acting like she was suspicious, as far as Jolene could tell. Jolene had probably just accidently re-locked the door when she was coming out, and Hope hadn’t realized. She sat down at the edge of the beat-up couch, feeling strange not having anything more substantial than the saggy pair of tights between the furniture and her underwear, making herself as comfortable as she could manage.
It didn’t take long for Hope to reappear, a shopping bag in hand. She paused at the door for a moment, then began to approach. “How old did you say you were, Joy?”
“Fifteen,” she repeated, more confident this time.
“That’s what I thought you said,” Hope nodded. “Which is weird… Because I thought you were more like five.”
Jolene squirmed in her seat. “What?”
“Oh, maybe not on the outside,” Hope continued, walking toward Jolene. “But on the inside… Definitely.” She grabbed something out of the bag, and before Jolene could stop her, had pinned it to the dress. Jolene looked down in confusion, seeing the pacifier now swinging off her costume. “Put it in your mouth.”
“Hope, what are you…?”
Hope lifted the pacifier, popped it into Jolene’s mouth. “Shh, it’s all right…” Hope said. “I’m going to take care of you now.”
Jolene knew she should protest, she should take the pacifier out, should run out of there, should do something… But she couldn’t. She wanted to fight back as Hope pushed her back onto the couch, pulled her tights down, but all she could do was lay there.
“I don’t know if Goodnites would still fit you,” Hope said, “but even if they did, I bet they wouldn’t hold up your tights well enough. These are more fitting, anyway, don’t you think?” Hope smiled, taking a package of adult diapers up, then tugging it open. “I think this is what you really want.”
Hope took ahold of Jolene’s panties. Jolene winced at the ripping sound that came from one side, and then the other. “Those are adorable,” Hope told her, “but you’re not going to need them any more.” Jolene felt something being slid under her, something thick and cushy, that her bottom sank into as her ruined underwear was yanked away. She could only manage a weak wriggle as the diaper was taped securely around her, then followed up with another one, then covered with her tights, which stayed up easily now, with the added bulk.
“Good girl,” Hope cooed, patting the back of the diapers gently, pulling Jolene to her feet. “That’s just about perfect,” she nodded, before heading over to the microwave. Jolene’s eyes darted to the door, to her escape, but it was the only part of her body that she dared to move. There was something soothing about all of this, much as she didn’t want to admit it, something comforting about the feel of the diapers around her, the sensation of sucking on her pacifier, something more comforting than the hundreds of sessions she’d had with her shrink, after that summer, something she’d been too scared to try herself. “Not yet,” she heard Hope say, and then the other girl returned, putting her hands on Jolene’s shoulders and guiding her back to the couch, sitting her down on it and then moving behind her.
Jolene’s eyes closed as she felt a brush being run through her hair, almost forgetting where she was, what was happening. She felt her hair being gently manipulated into a pair of pigtails. “I always knew I’d find you again,” Hope whispered in her ear.
Jolene nodded slowly, in a daze, letting Hope stick a pair of shoes on her feet, a Santa hat on her head. She heard the microwave door open behind her, then stood as Hope tugged at her hand. There was a slight rush of cool air as the back of her diaper was pulled out, only to be replaced with a thick, warm mess that woke her up quickly.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, finally letting her pacifier fall from her mouth, although it didn’t fall far.
“Just adding the finishing touch,” Hope said, letting the diapers and tights snap back into place, patting the rear again and spreading the contents. “You look perfect now!” She set a large measuring cup down on the couch, a bit of thick oatmeal still resting in the bottom, just as the rest of the contents were now resting in the bottom of Jolene’s underwear. “Don’t spit out your paci.”
The pacifier was shoved back between her teeth, and then she was being led by the hand towards that door, the one to the rest of the mall. Jolene began to squirm, to fight against Hope’s grip. She’d almost forgotten where she was, what was going on, but she remembered now, and she knew she couldn’t let it happen. “Stop it!” she said, spitting out her pacifier again.
“Why?” Hope asked. “You’re the little baby elf! You look adorable, sweetie – you’re going to be so popular! And nobody will ever know how much you like it.”
“I-I can’t go out there like this,” Jolene protested.
“But this is what you want,” Hope smiled. “And now, I’m going to give it to you.”
“Uh-huh,” Patti nodded, raising an eyebrow. “So you just ran off then, huh? Finally snapped out of it and realized how crazy it was?”
“Basically,” Jolene shrugged.
“That’s quite a story,” Patti said, leaning against her baseball bat.
“Oh, and yours isn’t?” Jolene asked. “Spending five years hunting fictional monsters because you can’t accept that a human could do something as horrible as what happened at camp? It was just a person! A lunatic, but just a human!”
Patti shook her head. Of course, she’d wondered if that wasn’t the case. When she’d run out of gas in her car, and money to put more in, she’d wondered. When she’d run away from the third straight house of a former counselor because she overheard their parents calling the police to tell them they had a ‘missing person’, she’d wondered. When she’d started having to keep to the shadows as she watched the people from her list, feeling more like a monster herself than the hero she knew she was, she’d wondered.
“There’s always two,” she said again. “He had to know there was a risk he’d be taken down… He would’ve turned someone before going in for the big feast. You.” She lifted the bat, pointing it at Jolene.
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Jolene countered. “Can you say the same?”
“Shut up,” Patti growled. Reminded herself it wasn’t killing, not when they weren’t human.
But was she wrong? Jolene’s story was pretty unbelievable, but, if you thought about it, wasn’t hers as well? Wouldn’t someone have gone public with the fact that vampires were real? In the age of Youtube and Twitter, nothing could stay secret forever.
“He wasn’t a vampire,” Jolene went on quietly. “Just a garden variety psycho… But he did turn someone.”
“Shut up!” Patti yelled, kicking Jolene in the chest, knocking her onto her back in the leaves and snow, poising the sharpened tip of her bat over the other girl’s chest.
But she couldn’t push it down. What was more unlikely, she wondered. Was it someone making up some fanciful quest to deal with what she’d seen? Was it another person drifting blandly through life before allowing herself to find comfort in the loss of control?
She shook her head, raised the bat higher, staring down into Jolene’s eyes, raising it a little too high, enough that it could allow Jolene to roll away, to escape and strike back. Patti’s hands began to sweat, just slightly.
“Do you really have what it takes?” Jolene asked, with the hint of a smile playing across her lips.
Patti’s fists tightened around the bat, raised it again, muscles tensing.
Blood splashed against the white snow, and out in the forest, one girl died.
A tongue darted across a pair of lips instinctively, licking a stray fleck of blood from them before they began to form a slow, small smile.
The End.