The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,75

think through this with me, to help me put it together. Maryellen, you know how the police work. Kitty, you were in Six Mile. You saw how it was. Tell them.”

“I mean,” Kitty said, trying to help, “something wasn’t right out there. Everyone was on edge. We almost got jumped by a street gang. But accusing one of our neighbors of being a drug dealer…”

“Here’s how I see it,” Patricia said. “In Six Mile, they think that someone is doing something to the children, giving them something that makes them go crazy and hurt themselves. Now over here in the Old Village, we’ve had Mrs. Savage go crazy and attack me. And then there’s Francine. I saw her go into his house, and then she disappeared. She may have stumbled on his drugs, or his money, or something, and he had to get rid of her. But everything is connected through him. It’s all happening around him. How many coincidences do you need before you wake up?”

“Patricia,” Grace said, speaking slowly. “If you could hear yourself you’d feel terribly embarrassed.”

“What if I’m right?” Patricia said. “And he’s out there giving drugs to these children and we’re too scared of being embarrassed to do anything? It could be our children. Think about how many young women would still be alive today if people hadn’t taken Ted Bundy at face value and started asking questions earlier. Think if Ann Rule had put the pieces together sooner. How many lives could she have saved? I mean, you have to agree, something strange is going on here.”

“No, we don’t,” Grace said.

“Something strange is going on,” Patricia continued. “Children in first grade are killing themselves. I got attacked in my own yard. Mrs. Savage has the same mark on her body Destiny Taylor did. Francine is missing. In every book we read, no one ever thought anything bad was happening until it was too late. This is where we live, it’s where our children live, it’s our home. Don’t you want to do absolutely everything you can to keep it safe?”

Another silence stretched out, and then Kitty spoke.

“What if she’s right?”

“Excuse me?” Grace asked.

“We’ve all known Patricia forever,” Kitty said. “If she says she saw him in the back of his van doing something to a young girl, I believe her. I mean, come on, one thing I’ve learned from all these books: it pays to be paranoid.”

Grace stood up. “I value our friendship, Patricia,” she said. “And I am ready to be your friend when you come back to your senses. But anyone catering to this delusion is not being helpful.”

Slick stood up and went to her bookcase filled with titles like Satan, You Can’t Have My Children and pulled out a Bible. She flipped to a passage and read it out loud:

“‘There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind. The leech has two daughters: Give and Give. Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough.”’ Proverbs 30:15.”

She turned more pages, then read, “Ephesians 6:12, ‘For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’”

Then she looked at them all with a wide smile on her face.

“I knew my test would come,” she said. “I knew that one day my Lord would set me against Satan, and try my faith in a battle against his snares, and this is just so exciting, Patricia.”

“Are you putting us on?” Maryellen asked.

“Satan wants our children,” Slick said. “We have to believe the righteous and smite the wicked. Patricia is righteous because she is my friend. If she says James Harris is among the wicked, then it is our Christian duty to smite him.

“The only thing smited is your brains,” Maryellen said, turning to Grace. “But she’s not wrong.”

Grace said, “Pardon?”

“New Jersey was the kind of place where no one watched out for each other,” Maryellen said. “Our neighbors were nice but they would