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    Vampires and Shapeshifters
    Vampires and Shapeshifters
    Vampires and Shapeshifters
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Vampires and Shapeshifters

    By James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle

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    About this ebook

    Contains:
    Bad Blood (short story)
    Nobody Has to Know
    Up the Airy Mountain
    Ecdysis
    Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames D. Macdonald
    Release dateApr 3, 2012
    ISBN9781476073231
    Vampires and Shapeshifters

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      Book preview

      Vampires and Shapeshifters - James D. Macdonald

      Vampires and Shapeshifters

      Horror stories by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

      Smashwords Edition

      A Madhouse Manor e-book

      Bad Blood copyright 1988-2012 by Debra Doyle and James. D. Macdonald

      Nobody Has to Know copyright 1991-2912 by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

      Up the Airy Mountain copyright 1996-2012 by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

      Ecdysis copyright 1996-2011 by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

      Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistrita copyright 2008, 2011 by Debra Doyle and J. D. Macdonald

      License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

      Table of Contents

      Bad Blood

      Nobody Has to Know

      Up the Airy Mountain

      Ecdysis

      Philologos; or, A Murder in Bistriţa

      About the Authors

      BAD BLOOD

      by

      Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald

      Nobody knows the real story.

      Actually, that's not quite true—I exaggerate for effect sometimes. (My father says it's a hereditary flaw in my character.) Freddie knows most of the truth, and so do Diana and Bill and Greg. But except for Jay, who isn't talking, nobody knows everything that happened except for me and Mr. Castillo, and we aren't talking either. Unless you count this notebook, and nobody's going to read that but me.

      The day it all started, Freddie and I had been gathering firewood most of the afternoon. We were ten days into the big backpacking trip (we is the Sunset Hills Junior High Ecology Club, our faculty sponsor Mrs. Castillo, and her husband) and we were going to have a bonfire that evening, to celebrate reaching the halfway mark right on schedule.

      But that afternoon we'd come to a stretch of ground that had been all burnt over about twenty years back, and so far the second growth hadn't gotten past the underbrush and sapling stage. Gathering enough sticks and kindling for a really big fire turned out to be quite a job—especially since Mr. Castillo didn't seem to think that any stack of wood shorter than the person who gathered it was enough, even for the little fires we usually built.

      Talk about overkill, I said, as Freddie and I carried the last rucksack-loads of kindling back to camp. "If Mr. Castillo had been in charge of building the Ark, Noah would have wound up with a boat the size of the New Jersey."

      It still wouldn't have been big enough for all those animals, said Freddie. He's always coming up with lines like that; in science class, Mrs. Castillo used to say that Freddie was one of nature's skeptics.

      Honestly, Freddie, I said. Don't you know a joke when you hear one?

      Sure, he said. Just the same, Val, with the few people the Ark had aboard, there wouldn't even be enough of them to shovel all the—

      I threw a pine cone at him and chased him back to camp.

      When we got there, we saw that the rest of the gang hadn't been loafing. All the tents were up, and the firepit dug—Diana had even put up the two-midget backpacker's tent she and I were sharing, which surprised me some. The other kids don't call her Princess Di, just because of her looks, let me tell you.

      Mr. Castillo was in camp, shaving wood into tinder fuzzsticks with a survival knife. Freddie and I dumped the firewood and went over to where he sat leaning against a backpack next to his tent—if you can call a pair of ponchos strung from trees a tent, which I personally wouldn't if I could help it. Mrs. Castillo didn't seem to mind much, which probably proves that love is blind, or at least doesn't freeze too easily.

      Mr. Castillo teaches physics over at the high school, and if you ask me, he's the only reason the principal and our parents agreed to let us make the trip in the first place. Mrs. Castillo is so tiny she gets mistaken for a student herself sometimes, but Mr. Castillo is something else. He's not a big man, and not a loud one—but nobody ever messes with him, not even the tough kids that have all the other teachers scared.

      Hey there, Mr. Castillo, said Freddie. Where's everybody else?

      Mr. Castillo laid a finished fuzzstick on the pile beside him and started making another. Diana's down at the stream with Rosa—that's Mrs. Castillo's real name—filling up the canteens and water bags. The others are gathering firewood.

      "More firewood? I looked at the baby lumberyard Freddie and I had carried back with us. What are we going to do with it all—burn down Chicago?"

      Mr. Castillo smiled and shook his head. There are some things that you can't have too much of, and firewood is one of them.

      About that time, Diana and Mrs. Castillo came back, lugging the last of the big folding water jugs between them, and the boys showed up a few minutes later. Jay brought in the most wood, just like he always did—sometime during the last year, he'd grown muscles the other guys hadn't yet, and he never lost a chance to rub it in.

      Night falls earlier than you'd expect, up in the mountains. By the time we'd finished eating dinner and cleaned up afterward, the sun had gone down and a few stars had started to come out. We built our little cookfire into a big yellow blaze, and settled down around the firepit to tell scary stories.

      Mr. Castillo started things off with the story about the golden arm. That one's so old I think I first heard it back in third grade, but he did a good job all the same. When he shouted YOU HAVE IT! everybody jumped about a foot into the air and then pretended they hadn't.

      After that, Mrs. Castillo yawned and said it was about time the old folks went to bed. She and Mr. Castillo headed off to the Poncho Palace, but the rest of us kept right on telling stories—the hitchhiker, the guy with a hook for a hand, all the other creepy ones.

      When it came Diana's turn, she did the one about the babysitter and the upstairs phone; she said it happened to a cousin of hers, but Bill said they'd made a movie just like that a few years back. They probably did, too, if Bill says so. I think Bill has seen every movie that's come out since he got tall enough to reach the ticket window. And now that his family's got a VCR and cable, he's playing catch-up on the oldies.

      Your turn, Jay, Greg said, when Bill stopped talking.

      Jay shook his head. I don't know any stories, he said, and then gave us a sort of nasty grin. At least, not the same kind you do.

      Come on, said Diana. Everybody knows a story.

      Okay, he said. But you probably won't like mine.

      Why not? I asked him. I've got a big mouth sometimes. And as you may have figured out by now, Jay wasn't one of my favorite people. I caught him throwing rocks at a stray kitten once, back when we were both in fourth grade, and I've got a long memory.

      You'll see, he said.

      * * *

      The important thing about this [Jay said] is that it's true. It didn't happen to my grandfather, or the friend of a cousin, or anything like that. It's happening to me.

      Remember when I had my appendix out, back in sixth grade? During the operation, I needed some blood—nothing strange about that. But after I got out of the hospital, I healed fast. Even the scar went away.

      Then I noticed

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