“Your turn.” A chill rattles down Rory’s spine, and he flicks his long black lashes up to Beth as she frowns quizzically at the cards on the floor between them. He wiggles in his sleeping bag, shimmying further into it before pulling his hat down over his forehead. The torchlight flickers, and Beth glances down at it from her own sleeping bag. “Do you think your parents are asleep yet?” she whispers, placing another card face up on the stack. “Probably,” Rory replies, checking his wristwatch, “it’s midnight.” It’s cold for April as they camp in the little red tent in Rory’s back garden, but it’s a tradition they’ve upheld as long as they’ve been friends. Soon, they will be too old, and their parents probably won’t let them camp alone together anymore. The trees whistle outside, and a distant car alarm whines as white curls of breath roil between the friends. “Is it getting colder?” Rory asks, placing a flat palm against the interior of the tent. He can feel the condensation gathering, and shivers once more. An ear-splitting roar cleaves the world in two, and Beth drops her cards as their heads spin in unison to the entrance to the tent. The sound is distant, and yet neither of them have the courage to even breath. They unzip themselves quickly from their bags, their too-long legs fighting free of the fabric as they reach for their coats, pulling them on and fighting their feet into their muddy boots, the laces still knotted in tight bows. Beth, having always been the bravest of the two, unzips the tent slowly, the sound seeping the nostalgia of camp outs in the woods with their fathers, and Rory swallows a hard lump in his throat as he grabs the torch. He can already feel the anxiety rolling in his stomach like a ship in a perfect storm, and Beth steps out into the night air. The stars blink above them, and the moon is full, drenching the garden and roof tiles on Rory’s house in bleached white. It is silent once more. “Perhaps it was a coyote,” Beth says softly, tucking her hands under her armpits from the biting cold. The rear porch light flicks on, and they both flinch in surprise. It hums like a fly, and Rory leads them to the sliding glass doors, clicking the button on the torch to turn it off. “Let’s just sleep in the house, I’m cold anyway,” he says over his shoulder, reaching for the handle before hesitating, “Beth, what is it?” Beth’s face blanches white like a scorned revenant as she grabs Rory’s hood, yanking him backwards and onto the grass and pointing a shaky finger towards the house. “Look,” she stutters, and Rory follows her line of sight through the glass doors and into the living room. A figure stands motionless, its form telling in shape of neither Rory’s mother or father. It picks up the remote from the armrest of the sofa, clicking the television on and filling the room with vibrating tv static. They can see it now, illuminated in the light of the tv. It looks like a man, only preternaturally white and stone-like as it stares at the television. It angles its head like a cat, watching the white and black dot around the screen. Something glistens on its chin, sticky and winding down its bare neck in black rivulets. Except its red, not black. It’s blood. It is Beth who opens her mouth to shriek as the man turns, his eyes black like the deepest lake they have ever seen. Rory slams a hand over her mouth as the man grins with sadistic satisfaction, his pointed fangs bone-white against the contrast of slick wet blood. Rory curses with the only bad word he knows, for only a few hours prior they had flicked through the vampire comics that they had swiped from his older brother Max’s room. He pinches the thin skin on his wrist, praying to gods that he wished he believed in that this was simply an unwelcome nightmare. But he was already awake. They sprint around the side of the house without hesitation, passing his Dad’s blue parked truck and skidding to a halt at Beth’s driveway. She whimpers at the sight of her red front door kicked open, and muddy boot prints that trail into the hall and up the cream carpeted stairs. “The bikes, quick,” Rory says between bated breaths as they dash to their two bikes, laying on the wet grass before Beth’s house. “We should cycle to the Sherriff’s office,” Beth says through tears, “I think my uncle is on duty.” It’s a safe neighbourhood after all, they’ve always been able to leave their bikes out at night. That was, at least, before it was raided by blood-thirsty vampires.