The vampire's costume

It was a convincing costume that Sylvia Leibovitz's brother bought, so much so that it made her jealous; she wished she'd gotten hers from Harper's Costumery too instead of cutting two eye holes into an old white sheet.
"So how much did that cape cost, Samuel?" Sylvia asked her brother.
"That's for me to know," Samuel replied as he swung the black velvet cloak over his shoulders and slid the row of false pointed teeth into his mouth. "But it was a good deal. The owner was desperate to get rid of it."
"Why?"
"I dunno. What difference does it make?"
"None, I suppose," said Sylvia as she slipped her holey sheet over her head and followed him out of the house.
It was a particularly cold night. An ill wind blew from the west, fluttering Sylvia's costume, and a full moon cast an eerie silver glow over every house, tree and bush in the village. But in spite of the conditions Sylvia and Samuel had their most successful night of guising ever.
"It was my vampire costume that did it," said Samuel, grinning with smugness. He held his cloak just beneath his eyes and flickered his eyebrows. "I'm going to wear this all the time. In fact I'm going to sleep in it."
As he dashed upstairs to his room, with his cloak tail flapping behind him, a chill ran down Sylvia's back. Something was amiss. Was Samuel gliding above the stairs, carried along by the wings of his cloak?
She shook her head, convinced it was an illusion, a trick of the eye. She was tired.
The next day at breakfast her mother's face was ashen. "Something terrible has happened," she said as she gingerly lowered herself into a chair at the kitchen table. Sylvia leaned over toward her mother, curious but at the same time chilled by her mother's demeanour. "Mrs Tindle's daughter, Lucia, was attacked last night, whilst she slept. She was bitten on her neck."
"Is she okay?" Sylvia asked.
Her mother gave a hesitant nod. "I think so. It's early days. She's very weak apparently. They reckon it was their dog."
Sylvia looked across the table to her brother who was busily pouring cereal into a bowl. "Did you just hear what mum said?" she said.
"Yeah, so what," he replied. "She was a snob anyway. She never liked me so why should I be concerned about her."
"That's a really mean thing to say."
Samuel shrugged his shoulders and struggled to hold back the heavy folds of his black velvet cloak as it slid down his arm and into his bowl.
"Hadn't you better take that off now, Samuel," said his mother. "It's not halloween anymore you know."
"I know," Samuel grunted. "I like wearing it."
"I hate it," bristled Sylvia. "It makes you look mean."
Samuel grinned slyly at her, as though he was hiding a dark secret.
That night Sylvia was awoken by a clattering sound coming from Samuel's room. She sat bolt upright in her bed listening to it for a moment or two before summoning the courage to investigate. With her dressing gown wrapped round her shoulders to keep the night chill off, she crept across the landing and cracked open his bedroom door.
"Samuel," Sylvia whispered. "Are you awake?"
She opened the door fully and peered into the room. His window was wide open, the wooden shutters flapping in the night breeze, and his bed was empty, the covers pulled to one side.
"Samuel, where are you?" she asked as she scoured the room for her brother, looking in the wardrobe, under the bed and in the large toy chest. There was no sign of him. It was as though he'd just floated out of the window.
The next morning as Sylvia munched through her breakfast, her mind plagued by questions over Samuel's bizarre disappearance, Samuel appeared in the doorway to the kitchen wearing his vampire cloak and a pair of sunglasses. She wanted to challenge him there and then but didn't want to worry her mother.
"Samuel, that thing's going to start to smell if you keep wearing it," Sylvia's mother said. "And you can take those glasses off whilst you're at the table too."
"Hell will freeze over when I stop wearing it," Samuel said as he slumped down on one chair and rested his feet on another.
"Samuel, I'll have less talk like that, thank you," his mother bristled.
"So...ere...did you sleep well last night, Samuel?" asked Sylvia.
"Like a baby," he said as he devoured a rasher of raw bacon.
"You woke me up. Your window was open. The shutters were banging," said Sylvia.
Samuel's eyes widened, his brow knitted and he leaned closer toward her.
Sylvia swallowed the lump of terror that was rising in her throat, threatening to choke the life from her. She knew she was treading on very shaky ground as Samuel was clearly alert to her prying into his affairs.
"And?" he said slowly, steadily.
"And, nothing," she replied. "I...I just thought I'd mention it."
Samuel sat back and rocked his chair.
Sylvia had never been terrified of her older brother before, but now, as he sat grinning at her from the edge of the kitchen table it was all she could do to avert his gaze.
She never went to school that morning. Instead, she took a detour to Harper's Costumery, curious to know about the provenance of the cloak. The idea that it was responsible for the change in her brother's behaviour fluttered through her mind. She laughed it off. 'That would be impossible,' she thought.
Harper's Costumery was a little, unassuming shop on the corner of a side street in the middle of town, rarely passed by any shoppers. It was a little worn and unloved on the outside with peeling paint and dirty windows but promised, on a sign outside, to be able to procure any costume required.
Sylvia cautiously clicked open the door to the chime of a bell above her head. Inside the shop was dark and dingy, much like the outside of the shop, and was cluttered with all manner of costumes for every ocassion and from every period: jester costumes, victorian and tudor gowns, top hats, powder wigs, shiny black boots and the remnants of halloween costumes that an elderly gentleman was busily folding up into leather chests.
"Can I help you, young lady?" he said as he shuffled toward her, his wisps of grey, straggly hair hanging limply over each ear.
"I don't really know," replied Sylvia.
"Well, if you're in here you're obviously looking for a costume. Perhaps if you told me the theme or occasion I could advise you."
"I don't actually want a costume. I want to know about one."
The man tilted his head at her. "I don't follow you, my dear."
"You sold a halloween costume to a boy recently."
"I've sold many costumes. Can you describe which one?"
Sylvia ran her fingers across a rack of glittering Elizabethan gowns, admiring them, before snapping back her attention. "It was a cape. A black cape with a red lining and a stand up collar."
"Ah, the nosferatu," the old man said. "Yes, I remember it. A young boy bought it, I recall."
Sylvia was about to say it was her brother, but decided to hold back that information, at least for the moment.
"Where did it come from? The cape I mean."
The old man rubbed his stubbly chin. "Oh, well now, there's a question," he said before reaching behind his counter and pulling out a large rusted tin. He lifted the lid and rifled through the papers inside it. "I usually keep all my paperwork in this here tin. I don't do well with newfangled computers. It's all to easy to loose the information they contain, as I've seen recently in the news. No, its paper all the way for me. I suppose I'm just too old. Ah, here it is. I bought it from a Mrs Jane Leibovitz."
"Liebovitz!" Sylvia shrieked. Her heart started racing, her muscles clenched and her blood chilled. "That's my...mighty unusual for one person to sell you something."
"Not really. I get donations of costumes all the time. You'd be surprised what people are prepared to part with. But I do now remember this one. Yes," he said. "The lady was most insistant that it was sold to a very particular boy only. No other. I thought it strange at the time but she was insistant and very sure that the boy would procure it."
"And he did?" asked Sylvia, desperately trying to remain composed amidst the tornado of confusion that whirled around her.
"Oh, yes. Not a day after Mrs Leibovitz gave it to me. To be perfectly honest with you I was glad to be rid of it. There was something distinctly amiss about that garment. Much history is soaked in that fabric. I'm sure of it."
That name felt distant to her now, as though it was no longer connected to her. She couldn't understand what it all meant. Why did mum want him to buy that cape? Why didn't she just give it to him?
Sylvia spent the afternoon in the school library, huddled in a dark corner hoping the teachers wouldn't find her skipping classes.She pulled as many books on the occult as the library stocked and piled them up around her. She scanned the indexes of each book for anything relating to, dare she admit it to herself, vampires. She'd weighed up the evidence-the floating up the stairs, the missing brother in the middle of the night, the open windows, the bitten girl-and it was all too coincidental. After what felt like hours of reading she happened on a passage on pure vampires.

Pure vampires. Pure vampires are at the head of the vampirus bloodline. They are not created by bite but by the blood of the Dracule. Legend has it that when Dracula began to be pursued in the middle ages by peasants looking to extinguish the deathly curse that hung over their villages he soaked his cloak in his own blood, his pure vampire blood, as a means of preserving it and as a way to start the pure bloodline should he be destroyed. The cloak became a legend and after hundreds of years had passed it passed into myth. No-one has ever seen the cloak of the undead. But legend tells that the wearing of it will start a new bloodline, a pure vampire bloodline that is impervious to all known methods of extermination-silver, stake or garlic. However the cloak cannot simply be passed from one to another. The cloak must be procured. It is the right of passage to becoming a pure vampirus. Procurement is seen to be in honour of the Dracule, and an acceptance of his gift.

Sylvia was shaking so much she could barely turn the page let alone close the book. The realisation that her mother was a pure vampire was too incredible to contemplate, and the fact that she willingly dragged her only son into her coven made her blood popple. How long would it be before her mother turned her into a pure vampire too. A family of pureblood vampires. Was that what she wanted?
She had to get away before she succumb to her mother's grotesque plan. She ran all the way from the library to her house, packed a bag, grabbed her purse and ran. She had no idea where she was going or what she was going to do. All she knew was that she had to get away. She had to save herself from her fate. Gasping for breath she stopped at a bus stop, sat on the bench and waited for the next bus. She didn't care where it took her, as long as it was far enough away from her mother. All her talk and sorrowful words about the girl being attacked and loose commands for Samuel to stop wearing his cloak were all a sham. A design to divert attention and suspicion. She knew that now. But her mother would not get her wish. Sylvia would not succumb.
A bus pulled into the curbside, sploshing through muddy puddle. She climbed aboard and threw some coins on the counter, so racked with fear, shame, anger and confusion she failed to notice who was driving the bus.
"Thank you, darling," the driver said.
The voice felt like a dagger piercing Sylvia's heart. Sylvia looked up and straight into the fiendish twinkle of her mother's eyes.
"This is for you. Thank you for your patronage," her mother said gleefully before handing the familiar black velvet cloak to Sylvia.