The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

I imagine I was something like 5 years old, perhaps 6, no more. Until I was 11 I lived in rural northern Ohio. My father, besides being an accountant, owned and operated Motel Ding which was located on Rt. 20 between Fremont and Clyde. No…it’s gone…there’s some sort of Amish Adult Deer Blinds and Gazebos business there now. I think the man that bought it…Mr. Chahbookiss (No shit, that was his name.) burned it down. He used to take his dog’s medications…so…it was just a matter of time really.



We had one back road roughly ¼ mile away on which the only other people in the area lived, a few homes and a few farms and of course The Witch’s Cottage. Everything else was wheat fields and woods and corn fields and creeks (criks) and prickers the size of your palm and barn cats and bicycle chasing dogs and barn coffins and poison ivy and poison sumac and snakes and big fat bullies that I would later whip with a leather bullwhip my parents gave me as a gift (?!) and bean soup and musty crawl spaces under the Motel and farmer mothers that never put enough cinnamon on breakfast toast during a sleep over and mean sisters that called your cat “El Retardo” just because it threw up every time it came in the house and burning down the occasional wheat field and swingsets made from industrial pipe with seats made from 2x12s that if hit you in the face would damn near knock you unconscious and sandboxes and brothers that would shoot you out of said swingset with pellet guns and I’m rambling.



Construction of a new home had begun on that back road and I made the journey across creeks (criks) and fields to check it out. The main guy building the home seemed to know my older siblings because after finding out who I was he asked me and would ask every time I showed up…”Hey! Can you get me naked pictures of your sister?”…to which I would reply with hands out and shrugged shoulders…”I don’t have a camwah, are you fuckin’ stoopid?”…he would laugh and tell me to put down the goddamn saw.



It’s Friday and it’s the 4th of July and that night we are going to the big city of Clyde to watch fireworks! HOT DAMN! MAN! The day was dragging, I was so excited, fireworks baby, FIREWORKS! So to kill some time in the late afternoon, I went over to the construction site. Nobody was there, but I had made the trek so I went in the partly framed home to snoop around a little (crap, the saw was gone). I had come down the stairs from the second floor and turned at a plywood corner when, from out of nowhere, a rogue wind blew through the home and as it did blew (what I would later find out was) sawdust, broken glass and burr fragments into both my eyes.



I took a few minutes and did the worst thing I could do, I rubbed at them furiously, it wasn’t helping, I couldn’t blink and see without…well…one cannot call it pain…but…I think everyone knows what it feels like to have a foreign object in one’s eye and I had sawdust, broken glass and burr fragments in both. I slowly made my way home (don’t blink don’t blink don’t blink).



I told my mother what had happened and she rinsed my eyes out repeatedly with no change. One is not going to rinse out sawdust, broken glass and burr fragments. So she calls an Optometrist and it’s so late in the day that no office is open…remember…this is way before cell phones and answer systems…if something was closed…well…you were going to have to wait until it opened again and that meant if it’s late afternoon on a Friday, one is waiting until Monday and that’s what my mother informed me, that I was going to have to wait until Monday (APPARENTLY MY PARENTS NEVER HEARD OF A HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM?!) to have my eyes looked at…I can remember thinking how far away Monday was.



I can’t see and FIREWORKS are going to be happening…GLORIOUS FIREWORKS! Well, we went and after some experimentation I found if I laid flat on my back…turned my head all the way to the side and looked up out of the left corners of my eyes, I could watch the fireworks. That was the only way I could blink where it didn’t feel like someone was running steel wool over them and that would be how I laid the entire weekend.



There was a family with a little girl on a blanket beside us…I heard her ask her mother…”Mommy? Is that boy retarded?”…her mother said…”Don’t look at him honey, watch the fireworks.”.



Man…that’ll scar ya…

Now…see…smart boys would have left well enough alone, especially considering the “Loose Cannon Behavior” showcased by the man. Smart boys would have appreciated the “Clean Get A Way” and counted their blessings. Smart boys would be thankful for the “No Harm No Foul” situation and left…it…alone. Yup…that’s what smart boys would have done.



Four nights later…2 am…we came in from the south…fast…silent. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything to be going on, I didn’t expect the man to be in that big steel garage SAWING away on God knows what, so you can imagine my surprise when not even halfway across the new addition I could hear that SAW running. Clearly the man was antagonizing us…clearly.



Once again we stood atop that big dirt pile. We scanned our immediate area and all seemed quiet, except for that SAW, of course. So I start to reach down for a dirt clod when Nike says…”I wanna do it!”…and Nike picks up this huge…mammoth…giant clod, it had to be 5 times bigger than the clods I threw and let me tell you, I had to put a little moxy on those to get them to the garage. I told Nike…”You’ll never get a clod that big to the roof, find one that’s smaller.”…Nike says…”Yes I can.”…I say…”No you can’t.” …Nike says…”Yes I can.”…I say…”No you can’t.” …Nike says…”Yes I can.”…I say…”No you can’t.” …Nike says…”Yes I can.”…I say…”No you can’t.” …Nike says…”Yes I can.”…I say…”No you can’t.” …Nike says…”Yes I can.”…and he hurls that behemoth into the dark.



Now I’m waiting to hear it plop at the base of the dirt pile,I say…”I told you you’d never mak…” and that’s when it hit the steel roof of that garage…~BAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRROOOOOOOOMCRUMBLECRUMBLECRUMBLE!”. It sounded like a bomb had went off…~BAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRROOOOOOOOMCRUMBLECRUMBLECRUMBLE!”…we stood there stunned, I couldn’t believe Nike had gotten that huge clod all the way there...I swear to you it shook the windows in the house, I heard it, I did! I think Nike was in disbelief too, I don’t think he truly thought he could get it there. I cannot convey here just how loud it was…a bomb…it wouldn’t have surprised me if Nandy had thrown a fist in the air and screamed…”NAGASAKI!”…we stood there in stunned silence…but…not for long.



Two things happened simultaneously…the wife of the man, throws open the back door, sticks her head out and screams…”WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”…and the man runs out of his garage with that big flashlight AND A SHOTGUN AND HE LEVELS BOTH DIRECTLY AT US! Then he starts screaming…”I TOLD YA! I TOLD YA IT WAS KIDS! CALL THE POLICE! DON”T YOU KIDS MOVE!! I GOT YA! GO CALL THE POLICE, BETTY! I TOLD YA IT WAS KIDS! I TOLD YA IT WAS KIDS! THOUGHT YOU WERE SO SMART DIDN'T YA!! DON’T YOU MOVE! THE POLICE WILL BE HERE IN A MINUTE!! I TOLD YA IT WAS KIDS!!”.



At first we were stunned by the blast, now we were stunned by the light and that shotgun! We were frozen, once again a grownup had gotten the drop on us, our minds went blank…the situation seemed surreal. THINK DAMNIT THINK!



From where we stood one could see the start of Fox Avenue off Rt. 101…my fathers house was on that corner, perhaps 150 yards away and the man wasn’t kidding, because in what seemed like barely a minute we saw a police car, with lights flashing, pull onto Fox Avenue. THAT DID IT! THAT BROKE US FREE! WE SNAPPED OUT OF IT! We turned and lept off the back side of that dirt pile and was sprinting for the 4 foot deep crawl spaces.



We all jumped into the first one and I hissed at Nike and Nandy…”NOT ALL TOGETHER WE’LL GET CAUGHT!”…so they jumped back out and sprinted east, further into the addition. I positioned myself in the corner and put my back flat against the dirt wall. It was only mere seconds and I heard the man and a policeman coming, I saw their flashlights scanning the other side of my crawlspace, I could hear them talking as they approached…”GRrrrrblah…grrblah…grrr grrrblah…damn…grrrblah…put in a Mental Hospital!”…~Holy shit!~…now they were directly above me standing at the edge, shining their flashlights around the pit…I willed myself invisible.



I watched those lights searching every last crook and cranny of that crawlspace and I decided one thing…there was no way…NO WAY…the police were going to take me home to my fathers house and wake him at 2 am., it just wasn’t happening…the lights were running around the sides and coming to my wall…if one of those lights touch me, if they find me, I’m running across the pit, leaping out, running for the south woods and not stopping for anything…~Holy shit here come the lights!~. Both lights were illuminating the ground right in front of me, two circles running back and forth, they were no more than maybe 3 inches from touching me, back and forth, back and forth…I held my breath and waited.



Suddenly…out of the dark recesses of the addition there came a faint…”Meeeeyowww…Meeeyoow”.



“THERE’S THAT SMARTASS NOW!”…and the man and policeman began jogging east into the addition shining their lights. I let them get to the middle of the second crawlspace and made my move. I jumped up out of mine and started jogging towards the south field, I looked over at the two and screamed…HEYYYYY!”. Their lights immediately snapped around and trained on me and I began a serious sprint across the south field.



“STOP!! STOOOOP! I’M TELLING YOU TO STOP!!”…they came after me…I could hear the policeman's belt squeaking and making noise as he ran and…”I…SAID…STOP!”…I could see my shadow on the ground from two different light sources in front of me…I was doing a flat out sprint for the woods, once I got to the woods the chase would be over…baby, no one was going to find me in that woods, I was a country boy before moving to the big city of Clyde…”STOP…~huff pufff huff~…STOP RIGHT…~huff huff huff~…NOW!”…I grew up in woods, I could disappear just like…*snaps fingers*…that!



But it didn’t come to that…the policeman and the man didn’t have the stamina, they caved. Eventually my shadow infront of me faded and I risked a glance behind me and saw them walking back towards the addition, I slowed to a jog and had a good laugh. I was sure Nike and Nandy had plenty of escape time.



We met back up at the Evergreen Forest where Commendations and Medals were given out. We laid low for a few weeks around the neighborhood, but I always had the feeling that man never knew who we were, we never heard anything about those nights from anyone.



They forged ahead on the addition and those pits became homes before long, we never messed with the man again…but…having a shotgun pulled on you twice in one summer?! Fox Avenue was the goddamn “Wild West”…baby!

COMMENTS

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CrimsonBlaze
17:11 Oct 25 2017

This reminds me of the crazy stuff the neighborhood boys and I would get into. lol Good times. Wow makes me kinda miss it.

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