The Night the Vampires Came

Chapter 1

The street there were lined with red paper lanterns in the shape of magpies celebrating the QiXi festival. The story goes that five thousand years (or a very long time) ago a cowherd fell in love with a weaver girl and met over a bridge of magpies. Grimly, I thought to myself — there won't be another five thousand years left for this planet.

I doubt there will be another hundred.

Blight Rain burned concrete and made people sick. It was so caustic, it even eroded the stone lions guarding the nearby Dim Sum restaurant.

The rain was different this time.

I knew it even before the puddles started to ripple black.

I made it to my house as the fog started to smother the streets. It was thick and dense as pea soup. I had never seen it this bad before. Usually, when the Blight Rain falls, I felt a dull ache in my chest. This time, my heart was beating like a bird trying to break out from under my rib cage.

I banged on our front door for a full minute before my ten-year-old sister, Grace, cracked it open.

"Where were you, Snoria?"

"At school! Sure took you long enough to open the door, greaseball," I retorted. I couldn't believe that my sister was reminding me of my snoring at a time like this. Siblings! I stepped inside and tossed aside the wet plastic bag that I had been wearing as a rain cap. I tried not to think about the dirty droplets of water that splattered everywhere as I kicked off my sneakers. "Where's maw?"

"Went to her room to lie down. She was in the rain, like you, but now she's not feeling so good."

My sister went back to watching cartoons on the living room floor. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was the ghostly lights projecting over the pitch-black walls, or the way that my sister was laughing emotionlessly at the game show, or the stray bits of popcorn scattered over the damp carpet. Something just felt wrong.

"Do you feel it?" I asked Grace as I took a deep breath of the suffocating air. She ignored me as though she was lost in a dream. The Blight was going on outside, and although we were dry in here, I still felt it all around us. I reached for the remote to change the channel to the news. A woman in a maroon jacket with big shoulder pads and a stack of papers was speaking somberly into the camera.

The anchorwoman reminded us once again, as always, that as long as we stayed indoors and out of the rain, the Blight Rain will pass. Stay inside. Lock your doors. Don't drive unless your life absolutely depended on it. If any family members are affected, keep them in a dark, quiet room until the rain passes. Then take them to the hospital. No EMS will come to get you in the middle of a Blight Rain.

I knew all this. The woman had nothing new to tell us.

We had been through this before. I didn't know why — this time the rain was different. I just had a sense of foreboding. My heart continued to race.

Thump, thump, thump.

My heart was banging against my sternum like a fist pounding on heaven's door.

It's here.

Something that wasn't here before.

"Is anyone else here?" I demanded, wondering if I was losing my mind. Maybe the fog was affecting me too. It was making me paranoid, and I heard voices. The Black Waters can make people hallucinate; I recalled from the lecture they gave us at school during a practice drill.

Whatever happens, whatever you think you hear — stay away from the water.

It was easier said than done. We already lost three kids from my class this year who walked into the ocean. The newspapers blamed the victims, saying they should have resisted. They said that — back in the day, there was a thing called personal responsibility. I'm sure back in the day when those elephants in suits were growing up; water was just a thing you drank out of a cup. And only the poor kids were personally responsible. If a rich kid growing up on South Beach got swallowed up, they'll call it a national emergency.

Windflower Springs was nothing but an impoverished enclave of undesirables. We were told again and again that we should thank our stars that the charitable corporations donated medications to those caught in the Blight. They said we should be grateful. Accuse them and they'll take the medication away. Then what will we do? Pay? We couldn't afford it, not even if we worked our minimum wage jobs for many lifetimes.

"Paw's still at work," Grace said. Two years ago, Grace started to call papa by the nickname 'paw' around the time she started befriending the neighborhood stray cats. Soon enough, she began calling our mother 'maw' too, just to remind our parents how badly she wanted a pet of her own. "He called to say that he's staying at the office until the rain's over. He took the train so he can't come home until they're running again."

I nodded. I saw dad's car keys on the dining room table. Sometimes, when the weather forecast said rain, dad takes the train to work in the morning. The Blight was hard on his tires. We had to be frugal since we had just paid for the repairs on the roof.

"I'm going to go check on maw," I told her. Grace didn't respond and went blankly back to her cartoons. She wasn't usually like this. She was usually full of energy and endless noisy chit-chat. Even without the rain, the fog affected people in strange ways. The medical professionals on the TV said it wasn't permanent. I had my doubts. They'd say anything if the right people paid them off. Everyone has a price, even people whose job it was to help us.

I went to my mother's bedroom and knocked on the door.