The scream does not repeat itself. One of the neighbors looks at Clarice. "We should go see what that was," she says.

"Yeah."

She tries emergency services again, just in case.

Nope.

Well.

Towards the scream, then.

One of her neighbors—a woman named Alessandra—goes with her.

The house is silent. She knocks. "Julia? Are you in there?"

Clarice goes to the side of the porch, trying to see in through the window.

Then she'll be able to see Julia's husband practically fly through the door and fling himself at Alessandra. She screams.

– Clarice shouts for help, looking around for a good heavy stick or something.

The other neighbors—well, one tries calling emergency, the other seems to try to do the same as Clarice—and then Alessandra stops screaming as Heitor sinks his teeth into her throat and starts draining her.

Clarice notices this a moment later, after having successfully determined there are no obvious sticks to be found, and freezes very briefly.

Then she's running back to her house to grab Alexandre.

Before she's even one third of the way to her house the—vampire, probably—is on her other neighbor, Marta, and she screams for just a second before losing strength for even that.

That just makes her run faster because she was – not as certain it wasn't some bizarre trick, that she was wrong – and now she is rather certain.

She looks behind herself a couple of times, making sure not to trip but trying to work out how close she is to being dead, if there's anything she can do to stop it.

She should probably get the hell out of dodge immediately. He hasn't noticed her—no, scratch that, he notices her just as she's getting to her front door, he starts running towards her—

Fortunately the door is not locked because she lives in a small town it is wonderful here no-one is evil and killer and her door is not going to help her but she's going into the house anyway–

He's going to catch her it's over she goes through the door—

—he stops—

—he doesn't seem to know why he stopped. He blinks, looks at her through the open door, frowns in concentration, growls, and runs elsewhere.

– She catches herself, having almost tripped over a shoe in the porch, and shouts for Alexandre, looking panicky and confused.

The view from the open door includes: a sprinting turned-vampire neighbor, his dead wife, another of Clarice's neighbors, also dead, and no one else.

There's really nothing she can do, here.

Then Alexandre is at the bottom of the stairs and looking at her worriedly.

She grabs her keys off the table near the door and looks outside again, blocking Alexandre's view.

The scene has not chan—oh look someone just ran past her house really really fast.

And then they stop, do a double-take, and run towards her fuck fuck they're too fast they're gonna get her—

She looks a little wide-eyed and starts to move backwards. Even though it won't help.

It does seem to help, given the way they—she, is that Maria Ana?—given the way she stops running just shy of going through her threshold, frowns in confusion, and moves on.

– Vampire myths.

Clarice looks over at Alexandre, tells him to get back in the house, away from the door, then hurriedly pushes the front door shut and moves into the house proper herself.

Then she busies herself trying to find garlic or silver or anything shiny and a flashlight and a firestarter and – anything she thinks might help.

Alexandre stands near the door to the kitchen, looking out the window.