“Track Three:” Kampfire Vampire

“Don’t-” They all bellowed. 

Honestly, I’m grown, and they think I’ll burn myself on the dying flicker of a campfire, of all things. “Don’t be scared-” such children they are sometimes. I swear it. And you know I tell them all the time, ‘to leave yourself open…’ but here they were. Same tradition, same time every year leading up to the 31st where we make proclamations about the year to come, and they’re still banging on about their plans and this and that. 

Dreams- bullshit scene.

I tell them, ‘Rules are made to be broken,’ but it’s like they don’t hear me. They just rattle on around me and now the voice in my head is a ghost singin’ songs like, ‘Boy, stay away from the campfire-‘ just because I lean in towards the heat while everyone else stays so safely away from it. 

“Guys-” I called out to them, but got nothing in return. Not even a wince in my direction; their eyes kept on the fire, their ears don’t even angle towards the sound of my voice. 

At thirteen years old, the all-hallows-eve-campfire-night-of-proclamations started as a way to try and get girls to come and drink with us in the woods while we were all dressed up in some varying degree of Bane or Patrick Bateman costumes- and them, a version of any military, office supplier, or athlete in a low cut top or short shorts. 

It was also supposed to be the Anti-New-Years-Eve-Alternative to starting over. To actually go into the high strung holidays with the idea of who we wanted to be now, well before we greeted the new year. 

The girls never really came. But we kept showing up anyway. For the last three years, it was just us boys. Until last year, the year when Marla Mae showed up. 

Marla was a transfer in our final year. She was… different. Marla existed in a rotating pallet of black, slate grey, and forest green. Someone at school said it was because she was a kitchen witch. Whatever that means- another group said she didn’t know any spells; that she only read people’s palms. 

I think she was just smart. 

And wise. Too wise for a group of idiotic 17-year-olds who didn’t know their ass from their elbow when it came to the moon, the universe, or religion. And they couldn’t handle it, her- intuitiveness. 

That night Marla took Roger by the hand; he wanted his palm read first.

But Roger didn’t like his reading. She saw many marriages and very little love- she saw a segmented life, unsettled and without direction. Roger wanted tales of success and glory to look forward to. He didn’t want Marla’s version of the truth- so Roger grabbed her hand and didn’t let go.

Marla tried to shake free. We called Roger off, too, from across the fire. I did, at least. I should have gotten up. Stopped it, full stop. But I didn’t- not until after Roger mangled Marla Mae’s hand and shattered what became a set of gnarled fingers.

Once we pulled Roger off of her, we couldn’t even apologize on his behalf. Marla ran off into the woods alone and disappeared into the darkness. Gone. Into the night.

The boys still seemed to be lost in some sort of daze. “Umm, helloooo?“ nothing. Not even a flinch; still, none of them were responding to me. I can hear them, but they can’t hear me? I can hear the voice in my head, so why can’t I hear- wait… 

Why is there a voice in my head?

I looked across the fire, and it took me a minute to focus through the flames wavering in the wind.

It was Marla Mae. 

She was here, staring at me. In fact, my friends seemed to have no idea she was there, sat right beside them. My friends suddenly seemed to have no idea they were even here.

We didn’t see her for months after that night. For days stories circulated she went back overseas or was taken into the woods. Sometimes people disappeared out there, never to be seen again.

But Marla eventually did come back, and when she did, her pale white skin almost glowed… and she never did tell anyone about what happened to her hand. No one knew what happened to her that night after she left us.

And all I knew was that she looked different.

She was too smart for us then, Marla was. And now she was here. Again. And that hand of hers, the damaged one, it was covered by one slender, black silk glove.

I blinked harder than I ever had in my life, like I was lifting bags of cement off my eyes. I didn’t remember her there before I lost my train of thought- I didn’t feel like this is my head, either-before now. It wasn’t liquor in my head, not this time. And I don’t know that I’d ever thought of Marla Mae as smart or wise before tonight.

She smiled at me across the flicker of the fire, head in my hand it occurred to me that it wasn’t just the drinks- it occurred to me that Marla might be able to do more than read palms. I watched her as she shut her eyes. Right as she did it felt like a door slammed shut on my brain.  

Marla rolled her eyes at me before she finally spoke, “Of course, I know how to do more than read palms. Especially now. Thanks to your friends.” 

It was her inside my head just then. I didn’t say those things about her. She said them about herself. “Why? Why would you do that to me?”

“I was just a girl before your friend attacked me.”

My heart raced the more calm that Marla stayed. The more eye contact she held with me. “But what? After that night you weren’t?” "I shook my head. “No… You are a witch, like they all said. Aren’t you?” 

“Oh no, sweetheart- not a witch.” She smiled at me. “I met something much stronger than your friends in the woods that night last year. It made me something- much stronger.”

Then she smiled at me again, her teeth morphing in front of my eyes. They were slanted and sharp- they came in so fast I thought it was the dancing flame between us playing tricks on me. 

Marla bit into Roger first, throat not slashed so much as it was ripped free. Her face was covered in him. And she went for the rest of them, none of them ran, all under her control. I fell backward off my log, my half-ass costume covered in dirt, while she picked off every one of them.

There would be no all-hallows-eve-proclamations for them next year. To be fair, I didn’t think I had much chance to make my own bold wish for the new year, not with Marla still looming. 

My heart hammered in my chest, waiting for her to make her move. “Just do it already-“ I shut my eyes and squeezed them tight. All I felt capable of was the wait- the end.

“No-“ she whispered it in almost a sing-song voice. “Not you. You’re different. Barely better. But at least different.” 

She rose up from her seat, stepping carefully over the carnage left in her wake. “Goodnight, Adam.” She said to me. “Do try to continue to be better than this lot was.”

Of course, no one believed me, even by the week’s end, even after the others still weren’t back at school and everyone’s parents were in a panic. Even when Marla came back to school, pale and glowing, save for the slight pinkish0red stains on the the cuffs of her dress. Even still, no one believed me.

“Boy, stay away from the campfire,” I told them when they wanted to go back to the site and search for proof of life. 

“You got a head like stone if you think we’re believing that load of rubbish, mate.” They all said that to me in one form or another.

I said it to anyone who would listen, so they wouldn’t go back there. 

So they’d run if they saw Marla Mae staring out at them across from some dark corner of a street. “Don't be playin' for the vampires. One bite, and you'll never come home.”

One bite, and you'll never come home.

Click here to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song, “Kampire Vampire” that inspired this short story.