The Purple Vampires

We lived in one side of a duplex on Wroe Avenue until I was in the second grade. I remember the address — Twenty-two Wroe Avenue — because it rhymed. The owners of the duplex lived in the other side — nice old people who always gave us goodies. They were sort of like grandparents to us, until the night Mac had too many beers and tried to hurt my dad. We moved out shortly after that; but that’s another story altogether.

Things were different back then. No one seemed to worry much about their kids running all over the neighborhood. We used to get up on Saturday and, after we had our cereal and watched the really important cartoons, we would run out the front door and not be seen again until we got hungry enough to come home for lunch. Once we ate our bologna and cheese sandwiches (or, on really good days, fried bologna) we would take off again and come home, reluctantly, when it got dark.

We lived in probably the best neighborhood in the whole town. Oh, not the richest, not by far. Wroe Avenue was lined with duplexes and little houses, with bikes in the front yards and toys on the stoops. Dads got in their cars every morning and went to work, mostly to blue collar jobs, and even some moms went to work. But even though we didn’t have big houses and big, shiny cars, we had the very best neighborhood. And that was mostly because of the Purple Vampires.

The Purple Vampires was our club, and you could only be a member if you were invited by the others to join (I don’t think there were any kids on the block who weren’t members). Being the youngest, I was only allowed to join because my brother was The Purple Vampire, head Vampire, and besides, we started the club.

We all had club names. Most of them were really cool names, like my sister, the Green Witch. But my club name was Cucumber. That was because I loved to eat cucumbers and was always carrying one around to chew on. I thought it was a pretty stupid name for a vampire, but they told me I couldn’t have a “real” vampire name till I was at least eight years old. So if I had to be named after a vegetable, I figured a cucumber was the best one.

Despite the ghoulish names, the Purple Vampires were the good guys. Our mission in life was to protect the world — or at least our world — from evil, especially evil in the form of ghosts and goblins. The Purple Vampires spent a lot of time patrolling the Haunted Hotel. The Haunted Hotel was down the alley from our house, and across a street. It was big and gloomy, and people lived there all the time (it turns out it wasn’t a hotel at all, but an apartment building!). We could get in through the door by the laundry room, and it always had the same steamy, dusty smell you could smell if you stood by the vent outside the mud room at our house when Hattie (that was our babysitter — our mom was one of the moms who got to go to work every day!) was doing the wash. Then we would run up the stairs and explore all along the hallways. Nobody ever stopped us or asked us what we were doing; we pretty much went anywhere we wanted to go.

The hallways were long and very dimly lit. Most of the time my brother would give the rest of us Vampires an assignment at the Haunted Hotel, and we would split up to carry out our duties. Much of the time there was a beautiful damsel in distress, captured by evil villains and held for ransom. The Purple Vampire always got the job of rescuing the damsel while the rest of us had to distract the ghosts and overcome the evil perpetrators. We didn’t mind much, though, because we all thought it was much more fun to distract ghosts than (yuck) save damsels.

It didn’t matter what time of year it was; the Purple Vampires always had some wonderful mission or assignment to carry out. In the winter we made snow forts and had snowball battles against the ghosts from the Haunted Hotel (I often had to be one of the ghosts just because I was the youngest. I always lost.) Whenever we could convince our parents to let us, we would take our sleds and head for Dead Man’s Hill (which we named it and which we thought was terribly original), spending the day flying over the snow at speeds of at least a hundred miles an hour, dodging the ghosts or goblins or whatever evil persons were out and about that particular day. Then we would all troop over to our house for hot cocoa and sandwiches (or, on really good days, fried bologna).

Of course, the very best day of the year for the Purple Vampires was halloween. We were always on duty on halloween because, of course, there were more ghosts and goblins to battle than at any other time of the year. In order to sneak up on the ghosts, we always disguised ourselves on halloween and tried to blend in with the trick-or-treaters roaming the neighborhood. We did this by donning costumes and carrying pillow cases, just like the trick-or-treaters. We took our job very seriously; we even went door to door and gathered candy, so the ghosts would really believe we were just regular trick-or-treaters. It was a sacrifice, but we did it. In the days following halloween, we would celebrate our victory over the ghosts by eating all the candy and homemade popcorn balls and cookies we had accumulated. (This was in the days when people still gave out homemade halloween treats and no one would ever think of slipping a razor blade or poison in them.)

There was one halloween, however, where the Purple Vampires did not reign victorious and, in fact, which saw the demise of the beloved Vampires.

It started out like any other halloween. The Vampires all dressed in disguise and started our evening patrol of the neighborhood, pillow cases in hand. After a couple of hours, we returned to our homes to empty our pillow cases and start over again. When we reconvened in my front yard, our esteemed leader, The Purple Vampire, made the announcement that we would be going directly to the Haunted Hotel for our next round of battles. The rest of us looked at one another uncomfortably, because in the past we had always steadfastly avoided the Haunted Hotel on halloween. Not because we were afraid, mind you, but because we reasoned that all the haunts would be out haunting so what was the use of going to the Hotel? This night, however, P.V. elected to attack directly at their headquarters.

The others seemed to get into the spirit of it right away, although I followed somewhat reluctantly (I was the youngest, remember). Once there, however, I got caught up in the excitement and forgot my trepidation. We entered, as always, by the laundry room, and encountered no ghosts or other spooky things there. We made our way up, floor by floor, knocking on doors in search of spirits and finding none (but filling up our pillow cases again very nicely).

It must have been on the third or fourth floor that we ran into trouble. We were about half way down the hall when it happened.

My brother, The Purple Vampire, led the way, with my sister right behind him. As usual,I brought up the rear. The other Vampires were scattered throughout the Hotel, looking for ghosts and gathering candy. My brother knocked on a door as usual, knock knock knock, but the door didn’t open. Instead, we heard a knock knock knock right back at us. We looked at one another, perplexed, and the P.V. knocked again — knock knock knock. After a couple of seconds, we heard, knock knock knock. We tried just knock knock, and heard knock knock back.

We weren’t sure what to do, but it was clear that this was no normal situation. As we were looking at each other in confusion, we heard a big, long scraaaaaatch on the inside of the door. This was very puzzling, but, being Purple Vampires, we couldn’t just leave. There might be ghosts in there that needed defeating!

We were standing in the dimly lit hall outside the door with no one else in sight, trying to decide what to do. It was silent now, and almost eerily still.

Just as The Purple Vampire lifted his hand to knock one more time, the door flew open and a...a...a monster jumped out into the hallway, waving his arms and screaming. My brother went flat against the wall in terror, and my sister and I took off running down the hall as fast as our feet would carry us, screaming at the top of our lungs. We hit the staircase and nearly fell down them, so terrified were we. Down, down we ran, and out the door by the laundry room, across the street, down the alley, and home, where we collapsed sobbing into our mother’s arms.

When she finally calmed us down enough to talk, she asked where my brother was (we weren’t ever supposed to leave his side), and hysterically we told her that a monster had captured him. Just about this time, however, in he ran, laughing. Laughing!!!

It turns out that the monster wasn’t a monster at all but just a regular person all dressed up like one. Because my brother hadn’t run off (I guess it didn’t matter that he was paralyzed with fear and not able to make his legs work!), the “monster” had given him a Coca Cola and a quarter — a whole quarter! Well, of course, then we wanted to go back and get a coke and a quarter, too, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, we all got in trouble because the Haunted Hotel was off limits to us in the first place, so we couldn’t go out again that night.

Even though we now knew that it hadn’t been a real monster, nevertheless the business of the Purple Vampires lost some of its attraction, and we went on to other things. But sometimes, especially around halloween, I think back on the Purple Vampires and that one night when I was more frightened than I had ever been or than I have been since, and it still sends delicious chills down my spine.