Rural Vampires

It may be you know someone who has driven the Swansonville Road late at night, an acquaintance, perhaps, or the friend of a friend. If so, then you've noticed that such a person is more likely than not to have the distracted aspect of one who has glimpsed sights not meant for mortal orbs, and dares not broach the ghastly secrets to which he or she is now privy. Nocturnal mechanical breakdowns are unusually commonplace along that lonely stretch of two-lane blacktop, especially near the curve where the ominous, discolored shell of the old Baptist Church rises up discordantly out of the boggy ground, with its small, fenced burying ground hemmed in by the writhing, twisted yews whose branches creak and groan as they are rubbed together by the wind.

For the debased and inbred people of this district, most of whom have crossed eyes, twelve fingers, and twelve toes, the melancholy, sometimes startling noises which pierce the silence of the dark night are a commonplace, and the natives never remark on them.

Unfortunate is the lone traveler whose vehicle breaks down on the Swansonville Road, and more unfortunate is he who suffers this fate after twilight has faded. But most unfortunate of all is the one abandoned on foot on this dread vicinity, near the curve where stands the church, after midnight during the dark of the moon. For it's then that the coyotes howl, the owl is abroad, and he whom fate has chosen as the unlucky centerpiece of perverse desires and unclean rites discovers the horrible truth -- that there are vampires living here.

Except you can't exactly call that "living."

And the most amazing and horrifying aspect of all this: these are rural vampires, who listen to Merle Haggard.