A Tale of Two Vampires Read Online Free PDF Page B

continued to speak aloud, more to bolster my own spirits than because I was of the habit of doing so, my voice had taken on a hushed quality normally confined to places such as churches or graveyards. “I can’t wait to get back to my laptop and see how they turned—whoa. What the heck is that?”
    I plucked from my arm a vine that had somehow snagged me, and I slid between it and a massive pine tree to stop and squint at the object in the center of a small clearing about thirty feet in width. The ground rose slightly to the center, where a sort of cloud seemed to hang, slowly twisting and turning upon itself.
    “Well, that’s not something you see every day,” I said slowly, and shuffled forward a few feet to get a better look at it. It still looked like a cloud, faintly bluish black in color, just lingering over the spot at the top of the little rise. “How on earth…? Is there, like, a hot spring or something beneath here?”
    There didn’t seem to be anything dangerous about the cloud, so with a glance around the clearing, I took a few shots of it from three different angles before approaching it, holding out my hand to feel any steam that might be leaking through a crack above a hot spring. My fingers brushed the edge of the cloud, making them tingle.
    “That is just the strangest thing….” I held the camera to my eye and focused on one section of the cloud. It wasn’t completely opaque, but the way it gently moved around on itself was not quite…well, normal. I reached out to touch it again. It wasn’t hot at all, and studying the ground, I found no signs of disturbance, which let out my spring theory. I waved a hand through the cloud, swishing it around vigorously to see if it would dissipate.
    Tendrils of the cloud broke off and evaporated into nothing, but the rest seemed to fill in the part that had been removed.
    “ National Geographic , here I come,” I said, moving in a complete circle around it, photographing as I did so. “They’re guaranteed to want these pictures, and even if it’s just some sort of swamp gas—on the side of a mountain, which is really weird if you ask me—the results will be completely spectacular.”
    A thought struck me then—perhaps this was why the locals considered the area haunted? I lowered my camera and eyed the cloud with speculation.
    “It certainly is a strange phenomenon, and I suppose if one was superstitious or the least bit prone to being weirded out by things, it would be possible to imagine that you are a ghost. But you’re not a ghost. You’re nothing but a cloud,” I told the strange anomaly, moving closer to it in order to stick my arm entirely through it. “I wonder if I can get a picture of just my arm coming through the other side?” I adjusted the focus and leaned to the side to do just that, but at that moment, the ground beneath my feet seemed to shift, toppling me forward.
    I shrieked and threw out my hands to catch myself before hitting the ground, swearing even as I did so when my camera flew out of my hands, leaving me to be completely swallowed up by an inky abyss.
    Nothing surrounded me. At least, that’s what it seemed like when I regained consciousness. I sat up, aware of throbbing in my head and mouth.
    “Ow,” I mumbled, sitting on my heels as I felt my mouth, pulling away my fingers to see if it was bleeding.
    I couldn’t see them to tell if I had drawn blood. At that moment I realized that the visual fuzziness had nothing to do with me waking up, and everything to do with the fact that night had suddenly fallen. Right smack-dab in the middle of the day. I looked up to where stars glittered overhead with a cold silver blue light. “Holy bizarre-o-rama, Batman,” I said slowly, letting my gaze drop back down to the trees surrounding the little clearing.
    The wind rustled through them, raising goose bumps along my bare arms, and sending a shiver skittering down my back. Ebony fingers stretched toward me, seeming to shimmer