ABBY: By Jim Bronyaur
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012“Abby…”
Asa realized she had not left the cemetery, but was in a different part of it.
A part that haunted her for her entire life.
Abby’s grave.
Well, Abby’s empty grave.
Abby was killed by a vampire, turned to ash, and gone. The ground left empty, nothing but dirt and the remembrance of a life that was lived too short.
All because of a vampire.
Asa stood at the grave stuck between emotions.
Behind her she heard the growling and calling from the vampires at the gate. They could have climbed the gate, but they did not. Something else was waiting for Asa.
When she finally looked away from Abby’s grave, she saw the next stone.
It read… Abby.
The one next to that?
ABBY.
Next to that?
ABBY.
Everywhere Asa looked, the graves read her best friend’s name. An entire cemetery of the same grave. A painful reminder over and over, Asa being tortured every second she breathed by what could only be the old man vampire she thought she had killed.
Just when she needed it, Mr. Rogers spoke.
It had felt like years.
“Asa… please…”
“Help me,” Asa whispered.
“He’s trying to confuse you. Make you weak. Stay with the reality Asa. Get to him.”
“Can you help me?”
“Asa, I can’t do anything but talk.”
“What does that mean?” Asa asked.
“I can’t see, Asa,” Mr. Rogers said. His voice sounded more than nervous – he sounded scared. Scared for his life. “I can’t see anything. All I do is talk. Sometimes you hear me, sometimes you…”
Silence came again.
The worst silence Asa ever felt.
“…when he finally shows…”
The pieces of sentences continued and none of it really made sense to Asa.
Asa stared around her, at the graves, and watched as a set of eyes formed in the distance.
White eyes, beaming towards her like two tiny flashlights.
They grew and a vampire emerged.
Another nightseeker.
It was tall, lanky and just walked towards Asa. It did not reach for her, but it followed her when she moved. It acted paralyzed, except it could move its mouth.
It snapped at Asa, so she pulled a piece of old world wood out and stabbed the vampire.
Dead.
Before she could take a breath, another one came.
It acted the same way, moving towards her, trying to bite, but nothing else.
Asa had no choice but to stab that one too.
One by one, they kept coming, vampire after vampire, all walking slow but their long fangs intent on tasting Asa’s sweet blood.
Asa lost count after twenty.
When the twenty-first vampire came forward, Asa stood there.
It moved closer to her and she kept looking between the vampire and the graves with Abby’s name on it.
She had no idea what it all meant, and she was tired.
Annoyed and tired.
“Come on then,” she whispered.
The vampire got within a foot of her and it lunged.
Its hand wrapped around her throat and she met its eyes and knew she had been tricked, again.
The grip was tight and took her air. With a small push, Asa was on the ground gasping. She felt her fingers on the old world wood and knew she needed to find a way to get out of another mess.
The nightseeker just held there, keeping Asa from breathing.
“You walk,” it growled. “You live. You know… the truth…”
The vampire’s eyes changed from the white lights to their normal blood red color.
A horrible color… one that filled Asa with rage.
She moved her arm and brought the old world wood forward. As she stabbed the vampire, it smiled at her and nodded, as though it knew this was its sorry fate.
The vampire curled up and died, then faded into the nothing world that Asa existed in.
She rolled to her knees and slowly got up.
Asa stood again and saw the dozens of vampires still at the gate, watching Asa.
She sensed something was wrong just as the wrong thing happened.
The vampires all growled at once and started to move. Their growling had been calmer, but now they wanted Asa’s blood as if they had been told to attack.
They climbed the gate and jumped down. They fought each other for a shot at the steel bars, to have the chance to climb and get to Asa.
Asa knew she could not fight them all, not all at once at least.
She spun around with the intention of running. Wherever the blackness would take her would be her fate.
When she turned, she saw that the cemetery had changed.
There was only one grave now… one grave with the name ABBY on it.
It was in front of her and the grave was open.
Asa stared into the black hole and felt a chill of air come out at her.
This was the real grave, but it should have been empty. There should have been nothing there.
Behind her, the vampires closed in.
At the touch of the first vampire, Asa shuddered and knew what her fate was now.
After all these years, after all the nightmares, the tears, and the questions that had no answers, Asa would get her chance to see what it was like… Asa stepped forward and fell into the grave.
Into Abby’s grave.
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©2012 Jim Bronyaur
