According to the internet, The Last Vampire came out in 1994 about a month before I turned 12. Whether I was 11 or 12 in this story, the facts are the same.
I was staying with family when the guy in charge decided we girls needed a babysitter for the day. I hadn’t required a babysitter since I was 6 or 7 and I was thoroughly a latchkey kid by 10, and my approximately 9 year old niece wasn’t much different, so we girls probably would have been just fine without one. But adult rules meant we ended up at an older lady’s house – a friend of my family’s, who had babysat for them before, who I generally knew but hadn’t spent an entire day with before.
The babysitter’s apartment was sterile and she gave off a similar old, uptight stuffiness. For a kid, it was a miserable experience going to her place. I didn’t understand the agreeableness that my family had towards her. She didn’t play, she barely talked to us, there was nothing to do, and it was too quiet. Normally when I was stuck someplace I didn’t want to be I read their books, watched their movies, went outside and wandered, found some other kids to hang out with, but there was none of that.
On this glorious day she said we were going to Kmart. A break from the monotony! Yes! Kmart was not really top choice, but I’d take it. Apparently the main purpose of the Kmart trip was for her to have a look at the sewing aisle, which I didn’t much mind because it reminded me of making knotted bracelets with my best friend.
On the way to the sewing aisle, we passed by books on display. My eyes caught a cover and I stopped. It was The Last Vampire by Christopher Pike.
By this age I was insane about horror. I’d read some young horror novels but horror movies were my go-to thing. I lived next door to a small video rental place and would specifically head straight to horror every time my mom and I went, and most times I left with something to watch over the weekend. My mom liked horror but she liked everything, and she rarely said anything about me increasingly excited about specifically horror. I’d been watching Nightmare on Elm Street movies and more relevant things like Fright Night and Once Bitten for a while already. I was never told no or that I was too young. In fact, by 1995, I had a horror book club subscription that she bought me. Me seeing The Last Vampire and going “oh??” was a neutral act as far as I could tell.
But my mom wasn’t there. It was just me, my niece, and the babysitter walking away to look at yarn or needles or something. I picked up the book. I was very intrigued. My niece, lingering nearby, didn’t read and didn’t give a shit. I looked at the price tag. It was less than I’d walked in the store with. Theoretically I should spend my money on food, if necessary, but I didn’t see myself coming back to this store anytime soon. I lived in a completely different neighborhood many miles away. I should definitely buy the book now.
I knew how it was with babysitters rather than my mom, so I walked the book over to the sewing aisle. Can I buy a book? She seemed very annoyed that I would dare speak to her and said no. She didn’t look at the book, barely seemed to care that I was there, and generally gave “fuck off” vibes. I started to mosey back to the books but decided for her that she was wrong and I would, in fact, be buying that book. I was old enough. If I had fucked up and accidentally bought porn (in Kmart? The gray hair store? Unlikely!), my mom would tell me later.
As our babysitter walked into a checkout lane, I walked into the adjacent empty one and quickly purchased my book. We left the checkout lanes together, her largely unaware until just after we left the area and I still had the book in hand and my niece’s expression of shock at my gall grabbed the babysitter’s attention. If the babysitter said anything definitive, it was essentially an informative “your parents are going to hear about this” kind of statement, which I’m sure I shrugged at. None of the adults in my everyday life cared about what I read or watched.
But it was simply called The Last Vampire and the cover wasn’t acceptably pastel or pink, and I could feel the hardcore judgment permeate the car on the short ride to get to a restaurant stop for lunch. It was even worse in the restaurant. This lady was not only mad at me for being a young girl into reading but that I was reading potential horror smut. Young girls don’t do that. At all. Ever. I was supposed to be at home in a dark closet dressed to the stuffy conservative nines darning socks for my future husband or standing before the stove learning how to baste a turkey so my 47 children to be arriving shortly by osmosis (no sex allowed) don’t starve, duh. Reading is for recipes and the bible only. Beyond that, my only goal in life was supposed to be obedience, and I had clearly fucked up there.
The waitress came to our table. I wasn’t hungry for anything the restaurant had but decided to order something that I thought was simple – a grilled cheese sandwich. While we waited, I got mood from across the table. Eventually the food arrived and what was placed before me was not a grilled cheese sandwich. I was so confused. Did my tablemates get my order instead? No. Oh. Wtf. The sandwich in front of me had meat in it, and I didn’t much like meat. I looked at it and I just couldn’t. The babysitter had words about this. I was told, in anger, that I should just tell the waitress to replace it. You can do that?? The waitress came back and I got my new food order in. By then my anxiety was high and my appetite was gone. I felt like everyone was mad at me now. My intended plate arrived but there was something else wrong, like maybe it had a pickle that I didn’t expect, but I tried to eat it and it just wasn’t working out. I was picking instead of happily consuming the way I was “supposed” to be. The babysitter was absolutely fuming by now. We left the restaurant and I felt like I’d soon be marked on a hit list. Kids who make questionable decisions for themselves without permission then dare to also have opinions AND feelings: me, marked for death – the babysitter.
Of course my family heard about the situation, and of course they privately shrugged at the event despite oh-that’s-so-unfortunate to the babysitter’s irritated face. Kid me was not a fan of presumed authority figures pretending they actually had authority, and everyone who was around me long enough knew it. Me doing something against what an adult told me to do?! Holy shit, no way! Gosh! Oh well. Kid, can you please at least fake it for a few hours among strangers? Me: not when that stranger’s a fucking bitch.
It took me a while to actually get around to reading The Last Vampire because of that day. I may have been closer to 14 once I did, and by then it was exactly where I was in terms of reading and content levels. I don’t remember the exact story but I remember any expectation of possible vampyric smuttiness was dashed by the reality that you get strung along by irrelevant details. Maybe the average religion-informed 12 year old should not have been reading it because of Ideas™️ but I would have been fine.
Yesterday I went into a thrift store for no specific reason but air conditioning and already-in-the-neighborhood time-wasting. There, among the poorly organized fiction novels with darker covers, I found three Christopher Pike books. None had been properly labeled for sale, so I have to assume they were placed there just for me. An additional clue was, just below them, some needy jackass had misplaced a title from the opposite aisle and situated it cover-first in the scary dark-cover book section: The Book of Mormon. I heard you weren’t married and were walking around this earth without children – don’t you dare touch that horror book, you adult with autonomy and opinions! The Holy Ghost is looking! (I know. 😘🥵👻🫵🍆👌💦😇🪽) Alas. You know what I did. I bought all three. I hope my one-time babysitter turned in her grave.
I hear The Midnight Club was adapted by Mike Flanagan (Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House) a few years ago, but I haven’t seen it yet, so perhaps I should read it then watch the show. Yikes, IMDB has it as a 6.5. That’s bad for a TV show. Oh well, I can still read the book now, at least.