Those Who Hunger Read online

  Those Who Hunger

  An Amish Vampire Thriller

  Owen Banner

  Copyright © 2020 Owen Banner

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ASIN: B083C26CWM

  Cover design by: Damonza

  For Audrey and Sam, whose home holds countless treasures hidden in its walls.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Preface

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  Afterword

  Books By This Author

  Preface

  Dear Reader,

  Writing is a beautiful yet lonely task. You spend days locked away in a world that is only alive to you, populated with characters you know intimately, but who are unaware that you exist.

  This is the part of the process I look forward to the most, though. It’s the moment I bring someone else into that world and introduce them to characters I’ve grown to love, pity, hope for, despise, and believe in. Thank you for taking a trip into Hager's Valley today.

  A little about my background because, well, this is a book about vampires and the Amish, and those are strange bedfellows. Why bundle them up?

  My mother is from a small town in Pennsylvania on the border of an Amish community, and my Pappy grew up farming with men in straw hats and suspenders. As a kid, we spent Thursdays at the auction at the novel’s opening. The secrecy and simplicity of the Amish fascinates me. What devotion is strong enough to keep generations living without cars, electricity, or even plumbing? Would you leave if it meant completely shedding your family and identity?

  This novel is not a criticism of the Amish. We could all do with a little more simplicity, community, and connection to the land. The characters you meet here are a work of fiction. They’re not meant to be a true depiction, but a version of what life lived in isolation and scrutiny can do to a young girl and her family. These pages are the work of research and personal experience. However, there also are rituals and folkways I’ve tinkered with in order to fit the cultural history of the novel’s characters. This is also a story about vampires, after all.

  If you have any questions, suggestions, or would just like to talk, you can find me on Medium.com/owenbanner, twitter.com/owenbanner, Instagram @owenbannerbooks, Litsy @owenbanner, or send me an email at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.

  What’s that? I think it’s the auction bell. Sounds like they're starting. Why don’t you grab a slice of shoo-fly pie and head on in. I’ll join you once I unhitch this horse. Welcome to Hager's Valley.

  Plainly,

  Owen Banner

  P.S. Oh, and one more thing. If you’d like to share this journey with a friend, download the Those Who Hunger Book Club Guide here: https://cutt.ly/owenbanner

  Prologue

  The mare's black eyes roamed wildly around the corral while the auctioneer rattled off her description. As the man’s voice droned over the speakers, fear rippled outwards from her womb, swarming across the muscled slopes of her lean body like biting flies that nipped at her from every side. It clogged her nostrils and burrowed into her heart. She shook her mane, whinnying against it. Her rear leg pistoned out to strike the wooden gate behind her with the crack of a gun report. Slipping through the slats, her hoof slammed into the chest of Royston Moore. The teenager crumpled to the ground with a whisper of breath as the gate swung open on him.

  The mare spun, her hooves throwing hay into the air. She reared towards the open gate. Men shouted around the sale barn, some in English, some in Pennsylvania Dutch. The scuffling of shoes added to the uproar as a few crowded the fence to throw commands at those on the other side.

  Lester Davis, Royston’s uncle, grabbed for the mare’s reins. His finger looped through the leather strap and caught for just an instant before the mare jerked her head, yanking him off balance. As he tumbled, he saw the body of his sixteen-year-old nephew, helpless, folded up on his stomach in the path of the crazed horse.

  Lying in the dirt and hay, feeling like someone had broken through his ribs and torn out his lungs, Royston was only vaguely aware of the cacophony of hooves and voices. He was too busy watching the stream of saliva drip down from his mouth, through the dust motes under him, and into the straw.

  The mare closed on the gate in two strides, her hooves finding their rhythm. Dirt exploded in her wake. Steven Torbit leapt his friend’s body as he ran up the gangway towards the horse. His hands found the gate and shoved it shut, the pin just slipping through the clasp as the mare slammed into it. Wood splintered, and Steve fell back, tripping over Royston. Behind the mare, Lester and Pete Simmons, the horse’s owner, dodged wild kicks to close in and subdue her. Steve rolled Royston over.

  “Roy!” he shouted. “Roy, you okay?”

  Royston’s face was white, his eyes bulging and red around the rims. He struggled to breathe in.

  “Shit, man. Don’t make me do this,” Steve pleaded, looking down at his friend’s lips.

  Royston’s eyes stared straight up through the rafters of the barn at the vent swirling above. It was like someone had wound a steel cable around his stomach and was cranking him into the teeth of a winch. His chest spasmed, and an electric ache shot from his back to his brain. He tried to scream, but the only sound he could manage was a dull whisper.

  “Ah Roy, come on, man,” Steve said, shaking him by the shoulders.

  The horse was quiet, bowing her head to the ground as Pete led her through the other side of the corral into the stables. Lester turned back to his nephew, striding towards the closed gate, through which he could see his body laying at the knees of Torbit. “Oh, his momma’s gonna kill me,” he muttered.

  Steve knew what he had to do, and he didn’t like it. He licked his lips, instinctively. Shit, he thought. Why am I licking my lips? He wiped them on his sleeve and bent down. His face hovered an inch over Royston’s as his friend’s wide, brown eyes seemed to be staring straight through him at the rafters above. “You better never say nothing about this, Roy,” he said. “I swear. I will kill yo
u if you tell anyone.” He hesitated, then heaved in. His mouth closed around Royston’s, and he breathed out. When he came off, he heard the whistling of air as it left his friend’s mouth. He breathed in again and bent over Royston, pushing the air down his throat.

  The cable around Royston’s chest snapped. His lungs ballooned with the breath. He coughed into his friend’s mouth, and Steve fell back. Lester opened the gate and leaned over his nephew. “Torbit, get off him,” he ordered.

  Roy heaved in a chestful, wheezing with the pain. The smell of damp hay, dust, and cow piss had never smelled so good. “Shit,” he said.

  “They’ll put down that damn horse for sure,” his uncle muttered over his shoulder. “Can you get up? Anything broken?”

  “I think a rib, maybe,” Royston said, grimacing and lifting his hand to rest on his Mt. Clemence Trojans t-shirt. “Maybe two,” he said, running his fingers over each rib and staring up at the faces looking down at him from above the gangway.

  “Well, try to get up,” Lester said. “This crowd’s not gonna stand around all day watching you two lovebirds sucking face.” He put his hands under Royston’s shoulders and tilted him forward.

  “We weren’t-” Steve started to say, but Royston shouted in pain.

  “Torbit,” Lester said, “help him up. Take him to the office. I’ll call Doc Sweeney and get him down here. Do not call an ambulance, you hear me? We can’t afford the insurance on that hassle no way. And Roy, don’t call your mother,” he added as Steve positioned Royston’s arm over his shoulders. “We’ll tell her when I take you home. I don’t want to be catching hell from her over the phone.”

  The two boys crept up the gangway as Lester turned back to the corral. “He’s alright folks,” he raised his hands and yelled into the barn, where men and children were standing to get a look at the scene. “Just got the wind knocked out of him. Everything’s gonna be fine. Now who wants that horse?”

  The gathered crowd mumbled laughter. Pete Simmons stood by the auction block, shaking his head, staring into the dirt. The auctioneer leaned down to him, whispering in his ear. Pete nodded his head, defeatedly.

  The auctioneer turned back to the microphone. “We’re gonna start the bidding at three hundred dollars,” he said. “Can I get three hunrd? Three hunrd? Can I get three hunrd?” his voice began to rattle off.

  A sixty-year-old man in a red, white, and blue plaid shirt with a Vietnam War Veteran’s hat lifted his hand.

  “I got three hunrd. Can I get three hunrd tweny-fi? Three tweny-fi?”

  A younger man with a jean jacket, a mustache, and cowboy boots raised a finger.

  “Three tweny-fi. Can I get three fiddy? Three fiddy?” The auctioneer’s eyes scanned the platformed benches of the barn, taking in the hundred or so people inside. “Three fiddy? Three fiddy?”

  The Vietnam veteran lifted his hand again.

  “Three fifty,” the auctioneer said. “How bout four hunrd? Four hunrd?”

  The man in the jean jacket put a stick of gum in his mouth, shaking his head.

  “Three seventy-fi?” the auctioneer came down in sympathy for Pete standing at the base of the auction block, pushing the toe of his boot in the dirt.

  “Three seventy-fi?”

  A hand went up in the back, the owner of that hand, and a flat-brimmed, straw hat, silhouetted by the window behind him. He was Amish—one of a great number of Amish and Mennonite farmers and tradesmen who lived in nearby communities around Hager's Valley and attended the Leedville Sale on Wednesday each week.

  The auctioneer pointed at him and continued. “How bout that four hunrd? Four hunrd? Who’ll give me four hunrd?”

  The Vietnam veteran raised his hand again.

  The Amish man pressed his lips together. He had watched the black mare almost trample that teenage boy to death. A horse such as that was like to be a trial on the man who owned it for the rest of his natural life. He had no use for it, and not the money to buy it today and feed it tomorrow. But he knew that man in the red, white, and blue plaid shirt was Ronald Kauffman, a kill-buyer who was only going to take the horse for slaughter. He didn’t know why he wanted to buy this horse. He’d let Ron Kauffman buy plenty of other horses for the slaughterhouse—plenty of better horses. Four hundred dollars was three hundred dollars too much to pay for a tribulation like that one. He decided against it.

  “Four hunrd going once. Going twice,” the auctioneer said, raising the gavel.

  “Eight hundred dollars,” the Amish man raised his voice, sitting up straight so that the young boy leaning on his lap almost fell down onto the next platformed bench.

  Every head in the room, from Pete Simmons to Ron Kauffman turned towards the man sitting erect on his bench, his right hand clenched and white on the splintered wood beside him.

  A moment passed, and when the auctioneer regained his composure, he looked at Ron, who sat, arms crossed, shaking his head.

  “Sold to Mr. Nehemiah Zook,” the auctioneer said, bringing down his gavel with a clack. “And may God have mercy on your soul,” he muttered as he looked at the register for the next animal.

  1

  Black Tulip

  “Nothing too strenuous, you hear?” Doc Sweeney said, handing Roy a pair of Tylenol. “You’ve got two broken ribs by my count. They’re probably just hairline fractures. You’re lucky that gate was in the way.”

  From beside the filing cabinet, Steve watched Roy wince, pop the pills into his mouth, and take a swig of water.

  “Not much you can do for a hairline fracture, except let it be,” Doc Sweeney said. “No sports or heavy lifting. You play football?”

  “Yes sir,” Roy said, groaning out the last part of the words.

  “Well, I think it’s safe to say you won’t be playing for a few weeks. Have your parents write you a note.”

  “So he’s gonna be alright?” Lester asked, both his hands planted on the desk behind Roy and the doctor.

  “He’ll be fine. Like I said, he’s lucky that fence took most the blow. I’d still go by the hospital and get an x-ray to make sure.”

  Lester thanked the doctor and paid him, then saw him to the door of the office. He walked back to the fridge and pulled out three bottles of Budweiser, setting them down on the desk and cracking them open with the corner of the table. “I reckon you boys earned this,” he said. “Torbit, you think you can keep it in your pants if you get a little alcohol in you?"

  Steve scowled, glancing from Lester to the floor. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “You know it. I thought he was dying. I thought maybe if I just-”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t have to enjoy it so much. I mean, jeez, when a man starts coughing, let him come up for air.” Lester grinned, handing him a beer.

  Steve took it, mouth watering, but eyes only gingerly making contact with Roy’s uncle.

  Lester handed the other to Roy, then said, “To Torbit. May he find a woman to make him a man or a man to make him a woman.”

  Roy laughed sharply, cut short by pain. He lifted his bottle to Lester’s and clinked it against the side.

  Steve didn’t find it so amusing.

  “Come on, Steve,” Roy said. “Lighten up. You saved my life twice today. Everybody saw that. Uncle Les is only kidding.”

  Steve leaned forward, tapping his bottle to the other two waiting. “If this is the thanks I get, then don’t count on me doing it a third time.” He sat back in his seat and pressed the bottle to his lips, swiping the hair away from his eyes. A piece of straw of the same color hung down below his bangs. He plucked it out and wondered how long it had been there without him noticing it.

  Lester gulped his bottle dry, then set it on the table with a thunk. “Well, I better get back down there. You want me to lock the door behind me, Torbit?” he asked, picking his hat up off the desk.

  “It isn’t funny,” Steve muttered into his bottle.

  Lester started to close the door, then pushed it back open. “Roy,” he said, “don’t say nothing
to your mom, alright? I don’t want her thinking this was my fault.”

  Roy took another swig and gave his uncle a lazy salute.

  “And nothing about the beers neither,” Lester added.

  “Never have,” Roy answered.

  Lester nodded, then looked at Steve and laughed as he shut the door behind him.

  An hour later found the two milling around the flea market outside the auction barn. Roy cradled his ribs. Steve cradled his ego. He sulked beside Roy as they walked between the white tents and foldout tables. He could just hear all the jibes and snickers that would be scampering like rats down the hallway the next day. Sure, he’d saved Roy’s life, but nobody would be singing his praises. He’d heard the murmured questions at parties. “So, is Steve, like, in love with Roy or something? I always see them together,” and, “does he have any other friends?” With his luck, someone had probably already taken a picture of him pinning Roy to the ground in a french kiss and posted it online. He imagined stepping up to his locker in the morning and seeing the word “queen” carved all over it.

  Thankfully, the smell of rhubarb and shoofly pies was thick enough in the air to pull him away from brooding on that thought. He and Roy passed a stand kept by a Shawnee Indian family, where dreamcatchers spun in the crisp April breeze. The three Shawnee children sat on a wolf-skin rug and played with their iPhones. Antique dealers held the stalls on either side of the family, selling old suitcases, clocks, Civil War memorabilia, and mostly worthless baseball cards, among other crap. Some stalls sold leather goods: belts, holsters, saddles and the like. Amish, regulars, and tourists all scavenged for treasures, haggling over prices and munching on hotdogs or pizza slices.

  A woman’s laugh cut through the air like a whip-crack, and Steve looked over his shoulder. She sat on a picnic table with red hair kindling in the sunlight, straddling a man whose face was buried in her neck. Tied to the next picnic table was a pitbull. The dog strained against its leash as it growled at the two of them. The man, whose leather-vested back was turned to the dog, ignored it. Steve thought maybe it was the screaming skull embroidered onto the back of the man’s vest that had set the dog off or the tattoo that wrapped around his shaved head. Motorcycle gangs came through here every now and then. Some were more respectful of the Amish ways than others.