Vampire Double Feature: Vampire Next Door & Lust for the Vampire

Nobody believed Kendra Dawkins when she told them that a vampire moved in next door.

She started by sharing the news with her mother.

"Is that what your father and I pay all that college tuition for? So you can spend your time dreaming up nonsense like this? Vampires on Willow Lane? Where do you think we are, New York City? Really, Kendra," her mother said as she put the groceries away.

Kendra knew better. She had been watching the new neighbor every night from the corner of her window. Kendra would shut all the lights off in her room and sit on the carpet. She'd move the blinds just a bit so she could see around the bottom one. That provided her a generous view at different angles into various rooms of the neighbor's house.

The elderly lady who had lived there before hadn't updated her furniture or décor in years. She loved antiques and they filled every corner of the old house. Apparently the new thirty-year-old male neighbor had exactly the same taste since the house was sold furnished and he didn't bother to change anything in there or even add anything of his own—at least in the areas that Kendra could see from her bedroom window.

Kendra would catch glimpses of the tall, dark stranger as he moved from room to room. Kendra often had to guess which window to look to next. The neighbor definitely preferred what people usually referred to as "mood lighting" since it seemed like he used nothing brighter than candles and an occasional heavily shaded sixty-watt bulb.

Kendra thought her older sister might be more receptive to her discovery, so she told her about the new neighbor being a creature of the night.

"I've always suspected you were dropped on your head as a baby. Now we have proof!" her sister Diane dismissed as she pushed Kendra out of her way and headed out the door to the waiting car of her football player boyfriend, Butch.

Kendra kept watching out her bedroom window. Eventually, she'd find something incriminating. In the meantime, it didn't hurt that the man next door happened to be extremely easy on the eyes.

From what Kendra could tell, the neighbor seemed very handsome, but she had trouble making out the fine details of his features. Kendra wished the man would walk over to his window and look outside directly so Kendra could get a full frontal view.

One particularly warm evening, Kendra gulped as she witnessed the stud start to remove his shirt. The hunk unbuttoned it as if performing a striptease in slow motion. He arched his back and stretched his neck from side to side as one button after another came undone beneath his fingertips.

When he finished, the two sides of the shirt hung loosely, partially covering his nips while revealing the light coating of hair that covered the amazingly well-defined pecs and abs of a man in perfect shape. Kendra subconsciously brushed her hand against her own shirt, marking the contrast between the soft, smooth skin beneath it and that of her masculine neighbor.

Kendra felt stirrings of anticipation below her waist as the guy walked towards the window. The young woman couldn't wait to see her new neighbor's face and body straight on.

In a classic case of "be careful what you wish for because you just might get it," Kendra wanted to yell out in frustration when it turned out that she couldn't make out a darn thing with the neighbor in that position. When the guy's frame filled most of the window, there was no light source with which to see his chest or face.

Kendra could only see a backlit glow around the man's head. That's it! The whole incident turned out to be nothing but a great big tease!

The neighbor left the window and moved about his house again.

This wouldn't do at all, Kendra thought. The young woman dropped down on the floor and crawled across the room below window level. She went down into the garage and retrieved her father's bird-watching binoculars. That's when things heated up!

Back at her secret spot at the window, Kendra trained the binoculars on the neighbor. Her eyes filled with desire as the man's bare, muscular torso came into full view. A few turns of the focusing knob brought the hot face and body into perfect focus.

Kendra curled her fingers tightly around the cylindrical body of the binoculars as she surveyed the protruding nips and their surrounding hair. She practically drooled as she followed the valley between those hot pecs to the treasure trail that rippled over the abs and disappeared beneath the hunk's waistline.

After a week, Kendra shared her vampire theory with someone outside the family. In fact, Kendra chastised herself for not starting with Sam in the first place.

"A vampire here in our neighborhood? Girlfriend, get a grip. Have you been doing acid?" asked Sam Maxwell, Kendra's gay best friend who lived down the street.

"Very funny, Sam. You know I don't even like to take aspirin when I have a headache!"

"I know, but something's got to explain this whacky idea of yours." Sam threw a pillow that bounced off Kendra's head. He leaned back on the couch in the room above Kendra's garage which had been converted to Kendra's bedroom a couple years earlier as a high school graduation present.

"There's a simple explanation," Kendra said while peering out the window at the old Victorian house across the lawn.

"Yeah, you've become a stalker/voyeur. You came up with this lame vampire thing as an excuse to continue creeping on the guy next door!"

"Knock it off, Sam."

"OK. I can't wait for your explanation. Let's hear it."

"I'm right."

Sam rolled his eyes. Then an idea popped into his head. "OK, why don't we go ask him?"

"Ask him what?"

"If he's a Dracula in disguise, a blood sucker, a creature of the night…"

"Yeah, like he's gonna admit that! Besides, it's broad daylight outside!"

"So?"

"Vampires don't answer the door in the middle of the afternoon. He must be asleep at this time of day."

"In his coffin, I assume?" Sam questioned.

"Where else?"

Sam sat up and leaned forward. He squinted at Kendra who sat in the big chair by the window. "At first I kind of thought you were joking. Now, I think you're serious. Tell me you're not serious about this, Kendra."

"As serious as a stake through the heart!" Kendra responded.

Sam didn't know what to make of this whole situation. He'd known Kendra since they were children. They'd been best friends for as long as he could remember. Kendra had never lied to him about anything. In turn, Sam could trust Kendra with anything too.

In fact, Sam confided first in Kendra about his sexual orientation. Two years earlier, during their freshmen year in college, Kendra had come right out (no pun intended) with it one day while they were working on their calculus homework.

Sam had asked, "Did you solve number three yet? I think we need to use the quadratic formula, but I can't figure out the—”

Kendra cut him off with, "Dude, are you gay?"

Sam blinked in surprise. "Am I what?"

"You heard me. Gay."

"What do you mean?"

Kendra peered over her textbook. "Don't make me grab my phone and find you a website with video demonstrations…"

"You know I could never lie to you, Kendra. Yes, I like guys instead of girls."

Kendra nodded her head knowingly. "I always thought so."

"How did you know?"

Kendra tugged at her tight blouse. Her ample bosom strained against the fabric. "Well, for one thing, you never notice these babies!"

"Yeah, why are straight guys so into boobs?'" Sam laughed.

"If I knew why straight guys did anything, I might be studying with one of them instead of my newly revealed gay best friend," she teased.

"Now that you know about me, I hope our friendship doesn't change."

"I'll always think of you the same way," she assured.

"Is that code for something? Is this the part where you tell me you've always had a secret crush on me?" Sam asked.

Kendra tried not to choke from laughing. "Sam, even if you were straight, you wouldn't be my type!"

"Oh, OK," Sam replied. After a pause, he continued, "Wait! Now I think I'm insulted! What's your type?"

Kendra sighed with a dreamy look on her face. "Older. Tall. Dark. Mysterious."

"Then what am I?"

"Sam, you're more short, blond, and predictable!" Then, with a sly grin on her face, Kendra winked and blew Sam a kiss.

That's the kind of open and honest friendship they had. Sam knew he could count on Kendra, the "straight A, never skipped a class in her life" kind of gal, for anything. So, this bizarre vampire thing really threw Sam for a loop.

"What makes you think your new neighbor is a vampire?" Sam asked.

"I don't just think he's—”

"Just answer the question!" Sam yelled as he sent another couch pillow flying across the room.

"OK, OK. First, just look at that house. I mean, it's like horror movie central, right? Who would buy that house like that—and then leave it that way?"

"It is kind of creepy," Sam admitted as he glanced out the window at the old house with the damaged wooden shingles and the gables sticking up all over the place.

"It's been empty for like four years since Mrs. Krakow died. Suddenly, the faded for sale sign disappears and this guy shows up—at like midnight! Who moves into a house in the middle of the night?"

Sam ticked off the possibilities on his fingers. "It's cooler so more comfortable for doing physical labor. Maybe he works nights so moving at that time just fits his usual schedule. He could have moved from far away and just happened to finally arrive here at whatever time you saw him…"

"I only see him come and go at night too."

"Which just goes along with him working at night like I already said."

"He's only lived here a week and suddenly there are bats flying around the house every night. I never noticed bats out there before."

"Maybe the mosquito population suddenly increased."

"Then there was the coffin…"

"Coffin? In journalism class, my professor calls that burying the lead! Pun intended!"

"Well, I think this guy probably buries victims after he drains their blood."

"Let me get this straight—”

Kendra rolled her eyes. "Said the gay guy…"

Sam dismissed her joke with a smirk. "If there were any pillows left over here, you'd get another one upside the head," he teased. "Are you saying you actually saw your new neighbor moving a coffin?"

"Well, I saw him take a large coffin-sized rectangular box out of his van. He used a dolly to move it around to the side of the house. Then he brought it into the basement via the bulkhead doors."

"Maybe he was moving a refrigerator to the basement to set up an awesome man cave down there."

"Maybe. Could be. We're not going to get anywhere discussing this back and forth," Kendra said. "We're not going to ask him either. I have a better idea."

Sam waited for Kendra to continue. After a long bout of silence, he said, "I like how you build suspense by making me ask…what's your idea?"

Kendra glanced out the window and then back at her friend. "We're going to break into the vampire's house! Tonight!"

The setting sun over Willow Lane drenched the entire neighborhood in shadows. The gables on the old Victorian house caused the sharpest shadows to fall on the lawn and street directly in front of the property.

"I've been thinking," Sam said as he tied new black shoelaces into his dark sneakers. (Kendra insisted that they wear all black for their fact-finding mission.) "If he really is a vampire, wouldn't it be safer to do this whole thing during the day?"

"Ah, so now you believe me—”

"I said 'if he is,'" Sam pointed out.

"If we went during the day, then we know he'd be home. He might hear us, wake up, rise from his coffin and attack us. This way, at night, we'll stake out the place from my window and wait until he goes out, probably looking for a victim!"

"That's comforting. And don't think I missed your choice of words…stake indeed!"

When the early autumn sun had completely disappeared over the horizon, shadows turned to pockets of darkness. The two young college students crouched down behind the blinds in Kendra's window, watching and waiting.

"He's leaving," Kendra whispered excitedly when she saw her neighbor's garage door open. The dark sedan pulled out of the garage and rolled down the driveway. Sam and Kendra lost sight of it when the car drove down Willow Lane and rounded the corner onto Elmhurst Drive.

Nothing stirred on Willow Lane except Kendra and Sam silently creeping across Kendra's soft lawn towards the bushes that separated her property from the neighbor's. They crawled through the brittle bushes trying to avoid getting scratched in the face.

"Remind me again why we couldn't just go up the front walkway," Sam said.

"We don't want anyone else to see us and call the police thinking we're prowlers."

"What would you call us? We're dressed in black, hiding in the dark, about to break into a house!"

Kendra declared, "We're doing a public service! The police and the rest of our neighbors should be thanking us!"

Sam shook his head. "That's why you're going to make a great lawyer someday, Kendra. You can convince yourself of anything!"

They approached the cellar door at the back of the house. The worn, peeling paint gave little indication of what color the door might have been at one time. Sam decided on puke green. "So, genius, since you've thought of everything, how exactly are we going to get in?"

"With this," Kendra answered as she produced a shiny brass key from her pocket.

"How the hell…"

"Several real estate agents ago, one asked my dad if he would check on the pipes in the house during the winter since the house was abandoned. She was afraid the pipes would burst so she gave my dad this key for the new lock."

"What about the old skeleton key lock built into the door originally?"

"That thing probably hasn't worked since before we were born."

The two effortlessly opened the door and slipped into the basement. They were hit in the face with a humid, earthy smell, like the inside of a dank cave.

Kendra pulled the string hanging from the light fixture, but nothing happened. "Figures," she mumbled. They didn't dare bring flashlights because they didn't want any of the other neighbors to see flashlight beams sweeping the interior of the house as they moved from room to room. So, they carefully stepped down the steep and rickety wooden stairs using the minimal screen light from their iPhones for guidance.

"Watch your step."

"Thanks," Sam and Kendra said to each other simultaneously. Then they froze.

"If you didn't say that…" Kendra started.

"And you didn't say it…" Sam finished.

"I did!" a deep voice boomed in the dark from the top of the stairs.

Sam tried to run. His foot slipped and he lost his balance. "Help!" the young man screamed in a high-pitched voice. His body slammed against the crumbling cement wall and the unforgiving wooden steps as he went head over heels towards the cellar floor.

"Are you OK?" Kendra yelled as she went scrambling down the stairs after her best friend, momentarily forgetting about the vampire looming above them from the doorway.

Before Kendra had even reached Sam's twisted body, the vampire had inexplicably raced past her to the bottom of the stairs and was already checking the young man's neck for a pulse. Kendra saw the vampire's fingers deftly exploring Sam's soft flesh by the eerie blue light of Sam's iPhone which had landed face up on the floor next to his head. Kendra figured that if there was a pulse to be found, then a vampire would definitely be the one to find it!

The vampire looked up and shook his head.

"Is he…" Kendra asked with a lump in her throat, unable to complete the question.

"I'm afraid so," came the unsettlingly calm response.

"But there has to be something we can do…"

"It appears that your friend broke his neck. Everything happened so quickly, he probably wasn't aware of it. I doubt he suffered any pain."

Kendra looked down at Sam's body and fought back tears.

"Wait here," the vampire instructed.

Kendra dared not move a muscle other than her eyes, which she shifted from side to side trying to see where the vampire had gone. A bare light bulb clicked on across the room.

Kendra got the clearest glimpse of her neighbor that she'd had so far. The pale skin seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it like normal skin. The young woman found the vampire's gaunt features oddly attractive. Somewhere deep beneath the creature's dark eyes, Kendra detected a note of sympathy as the vampire glanced down at Sam's head which lay at an unnaturally odd angle.

The vampire walked towards Kendra. The young woman instinctively backed up. The backside of her shin hit the bottom step and she looked up in fear.

"My name is Frank Gardner," the vampire said as he extended his hand for shaking.

Kendra swallowed hard with relief. She accepted the outstretched hand. She found it surprisingly cool to the touch, but then wondered why she ever thought it would be otherwise.

Her head swooned for a moment as she imagined all the places she would like the vampire to touch her with that cool hand: around the outline of her lips…cupped around her supple breasts…between her wet, smooth thighs…

She snapped back to attention. "Kendra. Dawkins. From next door," she said awkwardly.

"Hello, Kendra Dawkins from next door."

Kendra wondered if the creature of the night was mocking her. Toying with her before he finished her off like a wild cat with its prey, perhaps? Kendra forced herself to focus. "I thought your name would be more, um…"

"Exotic?"

"Yes, that's a good way to put it."

"If it makes you feel any better, originally it was François Desjardins. But, alas, we are not in pre-revolutionary France, which is when and where I was given the name."

Kendra's eyes widened. "You were born in the 1700s?"

"Come now, Kendra. Don't play coy with me. You know that I'm not the thirty-year-old I appear to be. That is why you and—” He glanced down at the dead body at the bottom of his stairs.

"Sam," Kendra choked back a tear.

The vampire finished his thought. "Why you and Sam came here tonight, is it not?"

Kendra nodded her agreement.

Frank glanced again at Sam's body. "I'm sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances. I've been watching you."

And all this time Kendra thought she was the one doing the watching! "Me? Why?" she blurted out.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Apparently not."

The vampire looked intently into the young woman's eyes. "Nous sommes destinés à être amoureux."

"I'm sorry, I took Spanish in high school," Kendra told him.

"That is a pity. Forgive me. I sometimes revert to my native language when I have important matters on my mind. I said that we are destined to be lovers."