Suburban Vampire Ragnarok

Chapter 25

OUTSIDE SOCORRO, NEW MEXICO

1995

"Grace! Gracielita! Where's your sister?"

Dolores Montoya had been slaving over the stove, getting ready to serve her family dinner, when she called down the hall to her youngest daughter. Grace was sitting in her room, listening to the radio and working on homework.

"I don't know, Mama!" she called back. "Probably out with some boy," she then said under her breath.

"Yeah, well, maybe you should go find her," Juan Montoya ordered his daughter. Grace usually listened to her father; after all, he had been a Marine, and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, having earned a bronze star for his actions at the Battle of Hue. He was not the kind of man to take lightly.

Grace sighed. "Why do I have to go find her? I don't even know where she is!"

That may not have been entirely accurate: Linda Montoya had herself a new boyfriend. She frequently bragged about it to her little sister, swearing her to secrecy, wanting to keep it a secret from her staunchly Catholic parents. As a bored and discontented sixteen-year-old girl, strict obedience was starting to lose its luster.

"Now, Gracielita!" her father commanded.

"Okay, okay!" she huffed as she put on her coat and grabbed a flashlight, then headed toward the veranda. There her grandmother sat in an old rocking chair, smoking a pipe. As Grace passed the elderly matron, she heard the howl of an animal far off in the distance.

"Es el chupacabra," the old lady told her.

"Abuela, there's no such thing as a chupacabra," Grace scoffed as she headed out into the cold desert night. The Montoya ranch was certainly not large, at least in comparison to other ranches in New Mexico, but large enough to provide for the entire family, with a barn and a couple small outbuildings on the property, in the shadows of the Black Range, the Rio Grande a few miles to the east. As a bit of a tomboy, Grace took advantage of the wide-open spaces, riding horses, fishing, going shooting with her father. Her sister, Linda, on the other hand, was into more traditionally feminine pursuits. The two sisters could not have been more different. Grace did know all the good hiding places on the small ranchito. The old barn was too obvious for her; Linda, however, was less creative and always lost at hide-and-go-seek. That's where Grace was headed.

She entered the barn as quietly as possible, hoping to sneak up on her sister and give her the fright of a lifetime. Indeed, she heard the noises she had been anticipating—low moans and groans. Oh, I just hope this doesn't get too gross, she thought as she headed into the hayloft. The twelve-year-old girl peeked her head into the loft. There her sister was, with a boy. The boy was hunched over her and was making sloppy wet noises, which Grace dismissed as kissing. As Grace stepped on the last rung of the ladder to the loft, it made a loud creaking sound which captured the attention of the 'boy'. He whirled around to face her.

Grace was unprepared for this: the 'boy's' face was pale, his eyes dark, his lips stained red with blood. His teeth looked less like human teeth and more like the fangs of a carnivorous animal. Linda lay beneath him, pale, cold, unmoving, a gaping wound in her neck, from which blood flowed freely. The 'boy' snarled at Grace, who started screaming. She screamed loudly for help. The 'boy' perked his ears and heard a commotion from the ranch house. He then took the body of Grace's sister in his arms, kicked open the hayloft door and jumped, disappearing into the night.

The sheriff's office and the New Mexico State Police were involved in the search for Grace's sister, logging countless man-hours in the rugged desert terrain. But there was little trace left of her, the trail having gone cold. Eventually they had to abandon the search. Her body was never found.