A Coven of Vampires

by Brian Lumley

  His naked feet stuck out from under the bright monster’s branches—branches which were all folded downwards, covering his body. Then, as I went down on my knees in shock and disbelief, I saw that which twisted my mind and blasted my nerves into these useless knots that they have been ever since.

  I had had the right idea about the tree—but I had looked at the problem in the wrong way! The thing was a freak, a mutation caused by radiations from another world. It had no parallel on Earth; and I, like a fool, had tried to compare it with the flytraps. True, the thing from the blasted heath did draw its nourishment from living things, but the manner of its feeding was nonetheless the same as for most other soil-sprouted plants—it fed through its roots!

  Those slender roots, hidden from above by the way in which the branches had folded down, were all sharply-thorned—and for each thorn there was a tiny sucker. Even as I watched, hypnotized, those vile roots were pulsing down into Cartwright’s open mouth…until his lips began to split under the strain of their loathsome contents!

  I began to scream as I saw the veins in the trunk and branches start their scarlet pulsing, and, as the entire plant commenced throbbing with a pale, pinkish suffusion, I passed into a merciful oblivion. For Old Cartwright’s entire body was jerking and twitching with a nauseating internal action which was not its own—and all the time his dead eyes stared and stared….

  There is not much more to tell. When I recovered consciousness I was still half insane. In a gibbering delirium I staggered to the woodshed and returned with the axe. Moaning in morbid loathing I cut the tree—once, twice—deeply across the trunk, and in a fit of uncontrollable twitching I watched the horror literally bleed to death!

  The end had to be seen to be believed. Slowly the evil roots withdrew from Cartwright’s body, shuddering and sluggishly pulling back underground, releasing their grisly internal hold on his bloodless form. The branches and leaves writhed and twined in a morbid dance of death; the horrible veins—real veins—pulsed to a standstill and the whole tree started to slope sideways as a terrible disintegration took hold on it. The unnatural glow surrounding the thing dimmed as it began visibly to rot where it stood. The smell of utter corruption which soon started to exude from the compost the hell-plant was rapidly becoming forced me to back away, dragging Old Cartwright’s corpse after me.

  I was brought up short by the garden fence and that was where I stayed, shivering and staring at the rapidly blackening mass in the garden.

  When at last the glow had died away completely and all that remained of the tree was an odorous, sticky, reddish-black puddle, I noticed that the first light of dawn was already brightening the sky. It was then that I formed my plan. I had had more than my fill of horror—all I wanted to do was forget—and I knew the authorities would never believe my story; not that I intended trying to tell it.

  I made a bonfire over the stinking spot where the plant had been, and as the first cock crowed in the distance I set fire to the pile of leaves and sticks and stood there until there was only a blackened patch on the grass to show that the horror from the heath had ever stood there. Then I dressed and walked into Marske to the police station.

  No one could quite understand the absence of Old Cartwright’s blood or the damage to his mouth and the other—internal—injuries which the post-mortem later showed; but it was undeniable that he had been “queer” for a long time and lately had been heard to talk openly about things that “glowed at night” and trees with hands instead of leaves. Everyone had known, it appeared, that he would end up “in a funny way.”

  After I made my statement to the police—about how I had found Old Cartwright’s body at dawn, in my garden—I put through another call to London and told my botanist friend that the tree had been destroyed in a garden fire. He said that it was unfortunate but did not really matter. He had to catch an evening plane to South America anyway and would be away for many months.

  He asked me to see if I could get another specimen in the meantime.

  • • •

  But that is not quite the end of the story. All that I have related happened last summer. It is already spring. The birds have still not returned to my garden and though each night I take a sleeping pill before locking my door, I cannot rest.

  I thought that in ridding myself of the remainder of my collection I might also kill the memory of that which once stood in my garden. I was wrong.

  It makes no difference that I have given away my conches from the islands of Polynesia and have shattered into fragments the skull I dug from beneath the ground where once stood a Roman ruin. Letting my Dionaea Muscipulas die from lack of their singular nourishment has not helped me at all! My devil-drums and death-masks from Africa now rest beneath glass in Wharby Museum along with the sacrificial gown from Mua-Aphos. My collection of ten nightmare paintings by Pickman, Chandler Davies and Clark Ashton Smith now belong to an avid American collector, to whom I have also sold my complete set of Poe’s works. I have melted down my Iceland meteorite and parted forever with the horribly inscribed silver figurine from India. The silvery fragments of unknown crystal from dead G’harne rest untended in their box and I have sold in auction all my books of Earth’s elder madness.

  Yes, that which I once boasted of as being the finest collection of morbid and macabre curiosities outside of the British Museum is no more; yet still I am unable to sleep. There is something—some fear that keeps me awake—which has caused me of late to chain myself to the bed when I lie down.

  You see, I know that my doctor’s assurance that it is “all in my mind” is at fault, and I know that if ever I wake up in the garden again it will mean permanent insanity—or worse!

  For the spot where the spring grass is twisted and yellow continues to glow feebly at night. Only a week ago I decided to clear the very soil from that area but as soon as I drove my spade into the ground I was sure I saw something black and wriggly—like a lopped off root—squirm quickly down out of sight! Perhaps it is my imagination but I have also noticed, in the dead of night, that the floorboards sometimes creak beneath my room—and then, of course, there is that other thing.

  I get the most dreadful headaches.

  UZZI

  Powell. Refer it to Powell.

  That could well be the answer. Geoffrey Powell, who cribbed all my work at Oxford where we studied together, and stole my girl, too, and lives with her in that big house which should really be mine, making mine look like a kennel. Yes, I shall refer the matter to him. Big-headed, pompous bastard that he is, in his Harley Street consultancy, still he might be the only one to come up with the right answer. And if he does, certainly it will have been worth his exorbitant fee.

  None of which would be necessary if Miles Clayton had gone to Powell in the first place; but he didn’t, he came to me. He was overdue for a shave, bleary-eyed, and the smell on his breath was probably whisky. He didn’t reek of drink, no, but he’d had a few. On the other hand his clothes were of an expensive cut, his car was new and rather superior to mine, and his wallet when he gave me his card was certainly well-stuffed.

  A large, florid man, Miles Clayton smoked fat cigars and dealt in fancy liqueur chocolates which he imported. If this rather brief description of him makes him seem disagreeable or unpleasant, that is not the impression I wish to convey; on the contrary, he was a very “nice” man. One cannot help one’s looks. And of course, in his condition, which was other than usual….

  Anyway, this is the story he told me:

  I was in Germany on business. The Teutoberger Wald. Been over there for five days, driving myself from venue to venue, and was up in the mountains around Holzminden to visit a small family firm specializing in dark chocolate brandies. I had just got used to driving on the right-hand side of the road—or at least I thought I had—when it happened.

  On the outskirts of a tiny village, where the road swept out of miles of pine forest and down into the harbour of a valley saddled between three hills, suddenly I found mysel
f back on the left again! It must have been the absence of other vehicles, the repetitious twisting and twining of the road where it followed the contours through the trees, which was almost hypnotic, the sheer loveliness of the scenery all about. Anyway, I started to correct my error immediately; but in the next moment, coming around a bend into a built-up area—

  I mean, she was just there! Now, I believe that by then I was on the right side of the road again—my side, I mean—but having just the moment before corrected myself…maybe I was a bit confused, d’you see? Whichever, I didn’t react fast enough: even as I slammed my brakes on I was into her. Bump! She went up in the air, banged about on the roof-rack, plopped down on the road behind me. By which time I’d just about slewed to a halt.

  I’d been well inside the limit—well, just inside it; it hadn’t been my fault at all; she’d just appeared there, right the hell in my way! And it had happened right outside the local police station, where as luck would have it an “Offizier” had just come out of the door. He’d seen the whole thing.

  After that things happened very quickly. I suppose I was very nearly in a state of shock. I got out of the car, fell down—I was shaken, d’you see?—got up again and went to where the officer was kneeling beside her. On my way I’d seen the dent in my bonnet, the way the mascot was bent right back, a little blood on the roof-rack. But oh my God, there was a great deal more blood on the road, around the crumpled form of the girl!

  Her dress at the front was torn, red and wet under her left breast, and blood was pumping from a great laceration in her neck. I thought about her being torn by the roof-rack and it made me grind my teeth. She was conscious, but only just.

  The officer was a good ’un: cool as a cucumber, efficient as only the Germans can be. “Go inside,” he told me. “Hold the doors open for me. I have to move her.” And he very gently picked her up. I held the doors for him while he carried her inside the police station, into a room where he laid her down on a bed. Then he did what he could to staunch her wounds. Where her dress was torn I saw a wound which I couldn’t believe I—my car—was responsible for. It was round and black in its middle, as if a bite had been taken out of her. I could see ribs in there. Then the officer put a thickly wadded dressing over it.

  “Wait,” he told me, “and I’ll call an ambulance.” Of course he called it a “Krankenwagen”, but I’m quite fluent with German; I’ll simply tell it all in English.

  Anyway, he left the room and I heard him using a telephone. The girl caught at my hand. I sat there sweat ing, looking at her, and I saw how young she was, and how pretty. “Oh, my God!” I said. “My God!”

  She patted my hand. I mean, she patted it! “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “An accident.”

  “But…but….” It was all I could say.

  “An accident,” she repeated. Her blood had seeped right through the mattress where she lay and was dripping on the floor. The young policeman was still on the phone.

  “For God’s sake hurry up!” I called out to him.

  The girl was in a great deal of pain. Her face had twisted up and the dressing had come away from her side again. I pressed it home, gritted my teeth when I saw her grit hers. “God!—if there’s anything I can do—” I said.

  “The devil,” she answered me, looking me straight in the eye. “Don’t ask it of God. This isn’t His work.” She was sinking into delirium.

  “Listen,” I gasped, wringing my hands. “I have money. A great deal. Only hang on, and—”

  “No,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I can’t. This is punishment. I had forsaken….”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s the end of me, and the end of Uzzi.”

  Uzzi? Her child? A pet cat or dog? “Listen,” I gabbled desperately. “While you’re recovering, I’ll look after Uzzi. I’ll—”

  She shook her head, but oh so weakly. “No,” she forced something of a smile, more a grimace, on to her face. “I’ll not recover. And don’t…don’t worry about…about Uzzi.”

  “God!” I cried again. “Don’t die, please don’t die. I’ll look after Uzzi. I swear it!” I hardly knew what I was saying.

  “Swear it?” Her eyes had shot wide open. She reached out a bloody, trembling hand towards my lips, as if to seal them…and fell back. Her eyes stayed open. When the police man came back into the room he closed them and covered her body with a blanket. Covered her face, too….

  That was the end of it—or should have been.

  The ambulance came and took her away. I gave a written statement of what had happened. The policeman had seen the entire thing and corroborated my statement: it hadn’t been my fault, no blame at all attached to me. There might be an inquest but I wouldn’t be required to attend; the evidence of a police witness would suffice. I found it all too easy, too…simple! A girl was dead, and I was being told—quite literally—to drive on, not to concern myself.

  “But her family….”

  “No family. She lived alone. Here, in the village.”

  “Relations, friends….”

  He shook his head. “None.”

  “What? A pretty girl like that? I can’t believe—”

  “Wait,” he said, cutting me short. “Look, she wasn’t…an innocent. She wasn’t…a good person.”

  “What? Do you mean she was a whore? A criminal, perhaps? But what does that matter? I mean—”

  “Please!” he said. “I know what you mean. Very well: yes, she was a criminal. And I agree, that doesn’t matter at all. But you are not to blame. I doubt if you’ll ever hear anything about this again.”

  • • •

  It wasn’t until I reached my destination later that night that I remembered Uzzi. I’d sworn to take care of him/her, whatever Uzzi was. A pet, I supposed. Ah, well—the Germans are a pretty humane lot, in their way. Doubtless Uzzi would find a new home. In any case, it was out of my hands now. If I didn’t feel so guilty, maybe I’d even be a little relieved that I was out of the affair so light.

  But I did recall seeing something in that police station that struck me as strange. Well, perhaps not then, but more recently it has taken on a certain significance. It was while I was waiting for the ambulance men to take the girl’s body away that I noticed a stack of old, browning occurrence books on a shelf behind the duty desk: those great, ledger -like diary things in which the officer on duty at the desk keeps his daily log or record. The books were old, as I’ve said, and the dates on some of their spines went back as far as the mid-1930s, before the war.

  The spines read: Polizei Hohenstadt, followed by the specific dates when the books were first taken into use, and the dates when they’d been completed and closed. These particulars were written in capitals, in heavy black ink, on labels glued to the spines. Several of the labels had fallen off, however, and the unfaded spines where they’d been bore a uniform legend: Polizei Hexenstadt, and then the dates as before. So that it seemed fairly obvious to me that at some time in the not too distant past the town had been renamed.

  The reason I make mention of this is very simple to explain: Hexenstadt means “Witch Town”. This is a fairly trivial fact which, in the circumstances, I might reasonably be expected to forget. But I haven’t been allowed to forget it….

  The morning after the accident I woke up bathed in stinking sweat—I thought it was sweat—following a night of hideous dreams. I couldn’t remember what those night mares were for sure, except I believe they went over, time and time again, the details of the accident and that look on the girl’s face as she died, when I swore I’d take care of her Uzzi.

  My hosts were the manufacturers of those chocolates I mentioned. God only knows what they’d think of me when I left and they came to tidy up my room! It stank as if a pig had spent the night there—or something worse than a pig. I thought that I had made the room smell like that.

  I threw open the windows, let in the sweet mountain air, and dumped my bedsheets into a dirty linen basket. Pillo
w cases, too. Then I found fresh linen in a drawer and decked the bed, set the room to rights again.

  After a shower I felt better, but I must have struggled in the night or been lying in an awkward position or some thing. My left side ached just under the armpit, causing me to favour that arm and hold it a little tenderly away from my side. But about what I’ve said with regard to the condition of my bedding:

  Please understand, I have always been the most scrupulous of men personally. It’s been a habit of mine as long as I can remember to bathe or at least shower every night, and often in the mornings, too. It was quite beyond me to fathom what sort of nightmare could squeeze juices like those from a man’s pores!

  Two days later I was on the car ferry out of Bremerhaven and so returned home. And no repetition of those terrible dreams until I found myself back at work here in London. Then, just a week ago—

  The same thing again, but this time in earnest! And it has steadily progressed, worsened, until finally I’ve found myself driven to come and see you. Not that I’ve told you all of it—not yet—nor even the half of it. But God it’s so weird, so utterly horrible that—

  —That the fact is, I think I’m losing my mind!

  I’ve told you about the “sweat”, which I thought was mine. Well, and at first I did think it—what else was I supposed to think? But as it got worse I knew it couldn’t be mine. No man—nor any living, breathing, healthy creature of God’s sweet earth—could possibly exist and have poison like that in him! Well, perhaps there are creatures that could: the octopus, maybe. Slugs and snails. But nothing remotely human.

  My dreams began to change, take on a new and more desperately frightening form. So simple, and yet so terrify ing. Part of it was the sensation of having somebody or something else in bed with me, a living person or being that snuggled to me as if for warmth and fastened to my flesh like a suckling child. With a child’s greed, yes—but without its love or vulnerability. And most certainly far larger and stronger than any child. That was part of it.