them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs, dreading what I would learn on the Internet. With another sigh, I turned to my computer and sat down.
Naturally, the screen was covered with child pornography that had popped up onto my screen the last time I emailed Reneé. I sat in my hard chair and began closing all the little windows. It took a long time because some of them were interesting. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed one word into my Hotbot search engine:
Vampire.
It took an infuriatingly long time for the page to load, and as I sat back in my chair, the tension began to mount. What information would Hotbot bear? Would it help me confirm my suspicions that Fredward was a vampire? Was Fredward a vampire? When the results finally came up about twenty minutes later, there was a lot to sift through—everything from movies and TV shows/shoes and young adult literature to role-playing gear, underground metal, and Hot Topic.
Then I found a promising site—Vampires A-Z. It seemed like it would be well-organized in a way that would make it easy to navigate. I won't pretend that I'm any better at navigating the World Wide Web than I am at walking up my stairs. Sigh. I waited impatiently for the site to load, quickly clicking closed each pornographic ad that flashed on my screen. I only lingered on one—a kind of vampire-firefighter fantasy sequence starring a very pale, skinny vampire wearing overalls and no shirt and holding a big red...
Finally the screen was finished—simple white background with black text, academic-looking. Two quotes greeted me on the home page:

Throughout the vast shadowy world of ghosts and demons there is no figure so terrible, no figure so dreadful and abhorred, so beautiful and so gorgeous, dight with such fearful fascination, as the vampire, who is himself neither ghost nor demon, but yet who partakes the dark natures and possesses the mysterious and terrible qualities of both but is somewhat appealing, especially to those who are vacant and have nothing to live for.
-Rev. Montague Cummer

If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of the vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of

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Chapter 7

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