The Pendant by Mama's Iguana D.
Dusk was setting.With every single turn of our vehicle I knew we were going to crash into one of those black trees and flip over into the ravine onto the rocks below. The sky was a strange,dark,purplish gray.My husband Phil was leaniing forward, his hands clamped tightly on the steering wheel and blue eyes wide with bizarre, crazed determination as our wheels screeched around each edge. "Phil! You're going to get us killed!Let me out of here! You're crazy!" He never slowed down.I was afraid to look in the back seat, and the odd scent of expensive colonge from back there was getting to be overwhelming. He seemed oblivious to my fear AND FURY.
That crazed smile never melted from his face for one moment.
"Lana, he's going to give us three million dollars for the body!And it's right here in our back seat!"
"Don't remind me!" I said, bursting into tears. I begged Phil to pull over and to dump that thing over the rocks, or anywhere. I just knew it would wake up at any time and devour us both. At only thirty-one I would be prime rib.
Phil pressed his foot down harder on the gas pedal, and we sped until the man's mansion finally loomed into sight. "Phil, come on. End this crazy trip! If anything,you've got to BURY that thing! Look, I've got the pick and shovel here. The ground's wet." He ignored my terrified pleas, and I rammed both of my hands against the glove compartment as we bounded up the Cherry Manor hillside. Lord Melvin Brenberg was up there definitely awaiting us to bring his PRIZE for his museum.
As the gates opened for us slowly, I had an eerie, sinking feeling about this transaction. As well as it had been planned, as simple as it all seemed, something about it was going to turn upside down and out of control.
No lights were coming on to greet us. Instantly, I jumped from the car the moment we stopped. Phil got out and regained his composure. Smoothing back his sandy hair, he walked up to the white with gold trim, three-car garage of Lord Brenberg's fabulous camel-bricked home. Nothing but the low howl of wind and the crickets' chirping could be heard. I was about to tell Phil to just drop the thing right there and to get me away from that place, when one of the heavy garage doors started slowly arising to reveal nothing but absolute dark inside. "Lord Brenberg!" Phil boldly called out.
There was no reply, just the increased rustle of dead leaves over and against our shoes.Then out of the dark came suddenly running the ashen corpse, gray with outstretched, clammy fingers. Lord Brenberg's mouth, now a cavern, was open and like a bottomless tar pit. His breath was of death itself. His eyes were wide open as he loomed upon us. His black suit was as flawless as ever, and this was but a lasting corpse that sadly paid for giving us a price for digging up his MASTER.
Phil jumped back into our car and threw it into reverse with a skid. And that was his last skid, ever. Brenberg never seemed to see me there, and I had hidden behind a huge rock in time to keep from screaming out my terror when I closed my eyes and crouched behind that rock. My heart was beating out of my body. And what if Brenberg heard it and came back there for me?
The forest trees seemed creepy and condoning to the revealed vampire as he looked over the hillside into the pitch-blackness of the car's backseat. Phil was scrambling to get out of the vehicle, and I knew it.Yet, being too afraid to lift my head, I heard the squeaking of metal of the door and the chilling cry of something not human. Evil blended in its unforgettable tone. I didn't dare move! Phil was gone, but he had KNOWN BETTER than all of THIS. I slumped backward against my trusty rock and somehow fell into a troubled sleep.
I awoke to the sound of a blue bird singing overhead, and I grabbed my shoes and scurried home. I didn't dare look at the car below. Soon, I would have to tell the police SOMETHING about Phil's disappearance. I opened all the drapes at home and collapsed on our bed. Hearing a soft, metallic "clink" down by my right ear, I reached gingerly up to realize that I still WORE the vampire master's pendant--a stolen pendant. And its RIGHTFUL owner was still unburied.
Phil's car was found in a ravine in a couple of days after his "accident." The police went all over the area carefully, but there
was no sign of Phil-- only a single set of strange tracks led into the woods, leaving the scene. The keys were still in the ignition, and the motor had been turned off. A big, red splatter of fresh, red mud was across the front seat. A pair of worn leather gloves lay across the dashboard. The car still sat sideways in the mud among those black, hulking, leafless trees.
Every once in a while, the flapping of wings broke the unnatural silence. The earth was alive, though. If you dared to walk over it alone, you could almost sense a low, deteremined heartbeat right beneath your heels.This sensation made me want to hurry myself out of there and back to Aunt Naomi's house, where I now stayed, before it was too late for me. Anyway, maybe it was that I shouldn't have been prowling around Phil's car. I didn't really know why, but I was losing enough breath backtracking through these muggy woods to see what Phil did that night.
I knew I couldn't help Phil NOW, for I knew where he was. And it was out of my hands to even attempt to dig him up from the bloody mud plot that the police always missed. That single, simple spot was where Phil had been buried three feet below, his fingers clawing uselessly as the blood mud seeped into his mouth to silence his screams. He had spelled his own judgment, his own doom. He should have left the souvenir alone. That is why I came back to this overwhelmingly creepy and risky site by the manor to leave the souvenir here. I knew the vampire would want his pendant BACK.
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