He dashed through the garage, dodging his way through the maze of clutter, and didn’t stop running until he reached the safety of the house.

He shoved the sliding door shut. He locked it.

He pressed his face to the glass and stared at the open garage.

Acting like an idiot, he thought.

But God!

After catching his breath, he opened his trembling hand. He lifted the ring close to his face.

Engraved in the silver that surrounded the garnet were the words “Buford High School,” and the date “1968.”

He looked into the middle of the loop.

Inside the band was a name.

“Bonnie Saxon.”

Nineteen

“I gazed at the ring, dumbfounded. The hideous corpse in my garage now had a name. Bonnie. A pleasant, rather cheerful name.

“Perhaps she is a vampire. Somebody thought so, killed her with a stake and used a crucifix to seal her makeshift tomb. But a vampire by the name of Bonnie?

“She seems, to me, less frightening than before.

“The gruesome, mummified thing in the coffin may indeed be a demonic beast that would drink my blood if unleashed from death. But it was a girl once. A ‘Bonnie’ lass.

“She attended the same high school as my daughter, Lane. She walked the same halls, perhaps sat in the same classrooms, may even have had some of the very same teachers as Lane. She was a girl who ate lunch in the school cafeteria, who probably struggled against dozing off during her afternoon classes, who worried about pop quizzes and homework and zits.

“A teenager. Who studied schoolwork. Who watched television. Who listened to the latest music with the volume blaring. Who went to movies, to the school’s football games and sock hops and the prom. Who had boyfriends.

“The vile thing in my garage was once a teenaged girl named Bonnie...”

The door bell chimed. Larry flinched. He scrolled up to remove his words from the computer screen, then hid the class ring under the matchbooks and scraps of note paper scattered on his desktop. He hurried into the living room.

He half expected the person at the front door to be Pete.

He was right.

“Hey, bud!” After a glance toward his house, Pete gave Larry a sly look. “Barb’s off grocery shopping. Thought I’d drop by and see how our best-seller’s coming along.”

“Not too bad.”

He entered, and Larry shut the door.

“I guess you really whaled on the thing yesterday,” he said.

“Yeah, it went pretty well. Sorry I didn’t make it over for supper. Time just got away from me and...”

“No sweat. So how many pages you finish?”

“I don’t know. Quite a bunch.”

“Terrific. Gonna let me read ‘em?” he asked, flopping onto a chair.

Larry hoped his alarm didn’t show.

“They aren’t printed up yet,” he said.

“Well, go do it. Don’t let me stop you.”

“It’d take hours,” Larry said. He sat on the sofa, rested his elbows on his knees and shook his head at Pete. “Besides, I’ll have to make a lot of corrections. It’s pretty much of a mess right now.”

“So when’ll I get to read it?”

“How about when it’s all done?” Larry suggested, trying to smile.

“Hey, come on.”

“No, really. I think it’d be best if you don’t read any of the thing while I’m still working on it. It’d make me too self-conscious.”

“Oh, bull.”

“I mean it.”

“What about my input? Maybe you forgot some stuff.”

“I’ll give you a copy when it’s finished. If there’s anything you want added or changed, I can revise it then. Okay?”

“That’s kind of late in the ball game,” he said, frowning slightly.

“You want me to write the thing, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. But...”

“I can’t do it if I have to pass every chapter along to you for inspection as I go along. I’ll quit right now...”

“Jeez, don’t get in a huff. Do it your way. I’m just curious, is all.”

“Well, that’s all right,” Larry said, relieved that he had backed off. “I didn’t mean to get testy about it.”

“What’s a testi between friends,” Pete said, and smiled. “Anyway, it’s going pretty good?”

“I think so.”

“What’s next on the agenda?”

“Well, I need to do those revisions.”

“I guess we’ve gotta start thinking about how we break the news to the women,” Pete said. “Jean’ll be home tonight, won’t she?”

“Yeah. Tonight.”

“Should we just walk her and Barb out to the garage and show them? Or work up to it more gradually?”

“ ‘Guess what we brought home Saturday night?’ ”

“Something like that.”

“Suppose we just keep the whole thing secret?”

“Are you kidding?”

Larry shook his head. “They won’t let us keep a body around. No way. I don’t care what we tell them, they’ll make us get rid of it.”

“They’ve gotto find out sooner or later.”

“Let’s wait. We can tell them about it when everything’s set to pull the stake. By then the book’ll be almost done.”

“Yeah. ‘Course, they might give us shit about pulling the stake.”

“Good point.”

“No pun intended,” Pete said.

Larry frowned for a moment, thinking. “Okay. Let’s pull the stake and thentell them what we’ve done. After the fact. By that time it’ll be too late for the gals to screw things up for us.”

Pete grinned. “Man, will they be pissed!”

“That’s for sure. The book’s bound to find a publisher, though. Best-seller or not, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a pretty good chunk of money from it. That should get us out of the doghouse.”

“Maybe they don’t have to find out about it,” Pete said, “until you make the sale.”

“If we work it right. What we have to do is hide the thing better. Right now, anybody wandering into the garage might stumble onto it.”

“We useour garage.”

“I know, I know,” Larry said. He was well aware that Pete and Barbara often parked their cars in it, while he and Jean only used their garage for storage.

“There’s a crawl space under our house,” Pete said. “I suppose we could shove the casket under there. If we do it quick before Barb gets back from the store. We’d have to lift it over the fence. Wouldn’t wanta be seen lugging it around the front.”

“Not necessary,” Larry said. “I know just the place to stash the thing.”

Should’ve put it there in the first place, he thought. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up spending the night with it.

“Where?” Pete asked.

“Come on. We’ll take care of it right now.”

They went out the kitchen door and walked up the driveway to the garage. Its bay door was still open. As they entered the shade, Larry hoped that the wet spot on the floor had dried.

Must’ve, he told himself.

A few yards beyond the door was a square wooden platform half a foot high. Larry stepped onto it, reached up and caught hold of a dangling rope. He pulled the rope’s knotted end. A plywood ceiling panel swung down on hinges.

“All right,” Pete said. “A trapdoor.”

Fixed to its top was a ladder folded into three sections. Larry lowered the ladder until the shoes of its side rails rested firmly against the platform.

“Gonna be a bitch getting our stiff up there,” Pete said.

He was right. Though the ladder stood at an angle like a flight of stairs, it was much steeper than a stairway.

“It’s the perfect place,” Larry told him. “Nobody’s going to find her.”

He stepped aside. Pete climbed to the top and looked around. “Yeah,” he said. “Great if we can manage it.” He started down. “How come you don’t use it for storage?”

“Never got around to it.”

“Pretty neat up there. Floorboards and everything. Hotter than shit, though.” He grinned. “Guess our friendly local vampire won’t mind, huh?”

“Probably not.”

They stepped off the platform. Larry led the way toward the far corner of the garage.

“Almost need a map to find the thing,” Pete said.

I can find it in the dark.