Julie | Stuff I've Written | A Most Electrifying Evening

Excerpt: Night of the Vampire Scare, from Time of the Vampires. Published 1996, DAW Books. Edited by P.N. Elrod and Martin H. Greenberg. Story copyright 1996, Julie Barrett

Now available as a free e-story!

It all started when Fred got the Oral Roberts haircut. Looking back, it was probably the first real outward manifestation of the trouble that had been brewing all along. No one recognized—or cared to acknowledge—the signals poor Fred had been giving off before his trip to Earl’s Barbershop.

Other people say it really started with the cross. Since Fred was a churgoing man, no one thought twice when he took to wearing a small cross on his lapel, especially since Reverend Walters had asked for the town to wear them as a show of support for the Weems family after the Army sent home the remains of Bobby, who had been missing in action in Vietnam for three years. While everyone else put theirs away after a respectable period (although they still wore them on Sundays and religious holidays) Fred kept wearing his. There was talk around town that he even wore a cross on his pajamas, and that his wife Irma said it put her right out of any romantic moods she might have harbored at bedtime.

About that same time Fred started asking Irma to cook with more garlic. He’d read a report in some medical journal by several doctors with a lot of letters after their names saying that garlic was good for you. Fred always felt you could never get too much of a good thing, which really got him in trouble the time he read of the healing powers of mud baths. Later on he got the idea that strings of garlic in the kitchen would make a good decoration. Naturally, Irma didn’t take too kindly to that suggestion. “You go take care of your garage,” she told him in no uncertain terms. “The kitchen is my domain.” Sometimes Irma would come home and find a string of garlic cloves hanging in the kitchen. Without a word to Fred, she would take it down and bury it in the bottom of the trash can. After a few weeks of this nonsense she got to realizing she was seeing the same string of garlic over and over. From then on she took garbage duty.

Then came the day when Fred strolled out of Earl’s Barbershop, his hair all slicked back except for a little pompadour at the crown. Someone remarked at how he looked like the TV preacher. Of course, that may have been the catalyst rather than the haircut, but suffice it to say that Fred somehow took the image of a preacher to heart, although his message was not taken from the Gospels as we know it.