An Unattractive Vampire

by Jim McDoniel

  “Master Martin,” she declared, walking up to the witchfinder. “For the good of the village, I shall assist you.”

  Again, the Puritans burst into applause-like prayer. The women of the town were a bit too happy to see the back of Anne, probably because their husbands had always been a bit too eager to see the back of Anne. Then, after one last stirring rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, they turned and started back to their homes, declaring the evening’s festivities a resounding success. Anne and Erasmus were now alone.

  “Well,” Anne said, impressed that he had gotten the better of her. “What now?”

  He handed her a small snuffbox. “You hold the incense,” he told her, using a flint to set it smoldering. “Make sure it doesn’t go out.”

  The ritual took most of the night. Every hour or so, Anne would pretend that she hadn’t noticed the fire go out and Erasmus would pretend that the incense was actually necessary and would relight it. By the time they made their way all around the house, the Mosses had returned with the stone slabs. Erasmus oversaw the installation, which required one or two to be recarved, due to Anne “accidentally” scratching off the engraved crosses. By dawn, however, all was set, and the new day saw a town free from evil.

  “So, where are we going?” Anne asked as the witchfinder hitched his belongings to his horse.

  “You are free to go where you will,” he replied, pulling on the leather strap keeping his books in place. “I hear the Quakers are about to have their own colony. No doubt they would take you in.”

  “And what about you?” she inquired.

  “I move on. There are reports a devil has taken up residence in the woods of New Jersey.”

  She smiled. “Sounds delightful. I think I’ll join you.” And with that, she took the reins of his horse and led it away, taking her place at the side of the only person who respected her enough to fear her.

  Before following his horse and new companion, Erasmus Martin gave one last glance toward the house beneath which his most indefatigable foe now slumbered, then uttered what was to become a most fitting eulogy.

  “Until next time.”

  Chapter 5

  Vampires don’t sleep. When arriving back at their crypts and coffins before the break of day, they return to their natural state of death.4 The vampire’s consciousness, their being, remains within the husk of its body, aware and waiting for night. In the meantime, it plots, summons visions, reads omens, replays events, and, in general, thinks. One might ask how this is any different from sleeping, at which point, the vampire would rub its neck, mutter something incoherent, and then rip your throat out.

  Yulric Bile’s not-sleep was filled with not-dreams: memories of the past, visions of the future, and the glowing yellow eyes of a great metal beast speeding toward him. Also, knocking. It had begun faintly but, over the course of his rest, grew louder and louder. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  BANG!

  Yulric Bile awoke from death to find an eight-year-old boy shooting him in the head.

  “That’s not supposed to happen,” remarked the child, reloading.

  Yulric shook with surprise and rage. If his outrage bothered the freckle-faced child, it didn’t show. The boy merely climbed out of his grave on a small stepladder and walked away. How could. A child. Do that. To him? The enraged vampire leapt out of the hole in the cellar, letting out a fierce and terrible shriek.

  “Mmmmmmmmmmm! Mmmmmmm . . . mmmmmm?”

  His lips had been sown together. He raised a finger to his mouth and carefully cut the thin metal wire. He spun to face the child as it was rummaging through a bag. “Ytheh oo ee oy . . . ?”

  Salt poured from his mouth. Yulric froze in confusion. There were many herbs, weeds, and random objects to which his kind had an aversion. Some were common, others downright peculiar.5 Salt, however, had never been one of them.

  The child turned back to face the puzzled vampire. In one hand, it held a magical dagger, which moved on its own, and wrapped around the other was a small green serpent. Yulric smiled and matched the child’s aggressive posture, letting his nails grow to clawlike lengths. The boy yelled, the vampire hissed, and they both leapt into battle.

  • •

  “Simon!”

  The combatants froze as they turned toward Amanda. Amanda, who was filled with fear and rage and about to commit bloody, vicious murder. Amanda, who had just found her eight-year-old brother trying to kill the creature from last night with an electric turkey carver and a rubber snake.

  “Put him down!” she ordered.

  Yulric was halfway through a defiant roar when his gaze fell to her neckline and the searing pain in his head forced him to hiss and retreat.

  Amanda, unused to that particular response when a man caught sight of her breasts, looked down to where her mother’s gold cross hung around her neck. “Fine,” she hissed.

  Pulling the necklace over her head, she advanced. Yulric dodged and flailed as best he could in the contained space, but she eventually trapped him in a corner.

  “I said. Put. Him. Down,” growled Amanda. Reluctantly, he lowered the boy to the ground while giving Amanda a glare that was known to wilt flowers, a glare that was mirrored in the younger face two feet beneath his and several inches to his left. Neither the vampire’s nor the eight-year-old’s gaze fazed Amanda. She was immune. She was a caregiver.

  “Over here. Now!” she commanded. They both started forward. “Not you. Him.”

  The boy marched to where his sister waited, leaving the vampire standing alone among the knickknacks, bicycles, and boxed-up Christmas ornaments.

  “What did I say about this place?” she asked, reciting lines from the parents’ handbook chapter entitled “When Your Child Breaks the Rules.”

  Simon’s young mind paused. It had recently discovered sarcasm, and several cheeky answers were considered before he decided to stick to the script.

  “Don’t go into the cellar,” he intoned.

  “Why?” she continued.

  Simon nodded toward the recently dug hole in the floor. “Because you didn’t want me to know what you were doing.”

  Amanda’s eyes narrowed. She wasn’t about to let him undermine her authority with the truth. “Because it was dangerous. And, knowing this, what exactly did you do?”

  “I went into the cellar.”

  “No,” she said. “You went into the cellar with a knife. What have I told you about knives?”

  “Technically, it’s a turkey carver,” he pointed out.

  “What was that?” Amanda’s voice hit a pitch normally reserved for dogs and bats. Yulric, who could become both, checked his ears for blood.

  “Don’t play with knives,” replied the returning dutiful child within Simon.

  “Right. Don’t play with knives. What if you had tripped and fallen down the stairs? You could have impaled yourself, and then where would you be?”

  The vampire envisioned exactly where the child would have been. And where Yulric would have been. And what condiments he would have used. He was very hungry.

  “What did you think you were doing?” asked the adult.

  Simon mumbled his reply, pulling from the eight-year-olds’ handbook a chapter entitled “When You Are Caught.”

  “I’m sorry?” replied his sister, not having any of it.

  “Vanquishing a zombie,” he reluctantly repeated in full voice.

  “Excuse me?”

  Both humans turned to the eldritch voice in the middle of the basement.

  “A what?” it asked.

  “A zombie,” Amanda told it.

  “A what bee?” it asked again.

  “A zombie. He thinks you’re a zombie,” blurted Amanda, who was growing ever more frustrated with this thing. Bad enough that it had ruined last night’s planned rendezvous by turning out to be a hideous monster, but now it was throwing her off her disciplinary stride.

  “And what exactly is a zom-bie?” it inquired, unabated by her rising anger.
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  “How can you not know what a zombie is?” Amanda barked.

  “A zombie smart enough to know it is a zombie would not be a zombie,” Simon whispered to his sister. He stepped toward the creature, who had been ready to rend him limb from limb, and explained, “A zombie is an undead creature who rises from the grave to feast on the flesh of the living.”

  “Like a ghoul?” it replied.

  “No,” said Simon.

  “Ah, a revenant then.”

  “No.”

  “A fext?”

  “No, listen. An undead creature—”

  “—which feasts on the flesh of the living,” interrupted Yulric. “The definition does not narrow it down.”

  “Indeed,” said Simon. Zombies of any kind weren’t known for making reasoned arguments. Kicking himself over his misidentification, he turned to his sister. “I deserve to be punished.”

  “For . . . ?” she prompted.

  “Going into the cellar when I was expressly forbidden and the wielding of knives outside of mealtimes,” he said with a suspicious lack of hesitation. “I’ll be off to my room then to think about what I’ve done.”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Amanda stopped him. “Outside.”

  Simon stomped his feet and made the scrunched-up face of children everywhere. “But why?”

  “Because you’re grounded, you little snot,” Amanda gloated. “I want you to go . . . play.”

  “Play?” whined the boy.

  “Play.” She smiled. “With children.”

  “Mom and Dad never would have made me play.”

  A pall fell over the room. Yulric was intrigued by the sensation. Usually, he was the pall that fell over a room.

  “Library card,” Amanda said coldly.

  “I’m sorry,” Simon said sheepishly. He knew he’d gone too far.

  “Library card,” she repeated, her hand outstretched.

  “Amanda, I’m sorry,” he moaned.

  “Give it,” she demanded.

  Head bowed, the boy reached into his pocket and, with reverence, pulled out a little laminated card. He placed it into her palm, where it was quickly and without ceremony enfolded.

  “You’re right,” she continued. “I’m not Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad pretended not to notice that you liked being sent to your room. They did it because they loved you. But I’m your sister—your big sister—and it’s my job to call you out on your crap. So I want you to go outside. I want you to play. And when I come out in ten minutes, I expect to see you engaged in some sort of team sport or imaginary adventure, because if I don’t, it’ll be all TV for a week. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” muttered a low voice somewhere in the vicinity of the child.

  “All right then. Go.”

  Simon rushed past her up the stairs. She listened carefully to his footsteps and, when she was reasonably sure he had left, turned back to the remaining combatant.

  “You!” she spat. “What do you think you’re doing, fighting a second grader?”

  No one talked to Yulric Bile this way, and because no one talked to him this way, he found it difficult to respond. “He started it.”

  “Oh, and how exactly does a little kid start a fight with a werewolf?” she asked, her arms folded across her chest. She was baiting him. She had spent the night coming up with all manner of argument to prove he was a werewolf. All he had to do was rise to her challenge.

  He didn’t.

  “By shooting it repeatedly in the head with your firearm,” he said.

  “Impossible! He doesn’t know where I keep—” Amanda’s voice cut off as the silver gleam of the Beretta, lying where Simon had left it, caught her eye. Her eyes grew wide, first with shock, then with anger.

  “Simon!” she didn’t yell so much as simply raise her voice. But the tone hit the key of trouble major, which amplifies the sound to the intended listener—in this case, the small boy who had sneaked back to listen at the top of the stairs. In the silence that followed, both the creature and the girl heard small footsteps rush through the house, the slam of a door, and a bike with training wheels peel out, if such a thing were possible.6

  Amanda turned around to face the creature. Normally, she would apologize. That was the polite thing to do when you wrongly accuse someone, not to mention when your brother shoots that somebody in the head. Then again, it didn’t exactly seem proper etiquette to apologize to an abomination whose very existence is an insult to nature. She settled for a questioning tone. “What are you doing here?”

  “It is daytime,” he said dismissively.

  “What does daytime have to do with being a werewolf?” Amanda scoffed. “Oh, right. I forgot. You’re a ‘vampire.’” She used air quotes on this last word.

  “Yes, I ‘am,’” Yulric retorted, imitating her hand motion, though he did not know why. He supposed this was how people talked now.

  Amanda glared her most effective motherly glare. “You have till nightfall. Then, you’re gone.”

  “I can come or go from this house as I please.” Yulric smiled.

  “Riiiight.” She rolled her eyes. “Because of my invitation.”

  He chuckled mockingly. “Silly girl. Your invitation merely pointed me in your direction. It had nothing to do with my ability to enter.” He walked past her as if she weren’t even there. “I need no invitation to enter my own home.”

  He climbed the stairs and entered the house. The effect would have been more dramatic if it hadn’t been midday. As it was, he came hissing back down, somewhat singed, and could not go back up until after Amanda had pulled all the shades. After that, the questions remained, but the mystery had certainly died.

  Chapter 6

  The history surrounding the Pink House of Shepherd’s Crook is long, ominous, and surprisingly well documented, since nothing says “Wouldn’t you like to donate to the Shepherd’s Crook Historical Society?” quite like a haunted house. The structure was originally built in 1678 for an unknown English gentleman. He took up residence in 1679 and lived there less than a year before mysterious and violent circumstances led to his disappearance. Modern historians agree that he was likely the victim of persecution on trumped-up charges, based on the presence of infamous witchfinder Erasmus Martin—honorary reverendship given, stripped, given again, stripped again, and now being reconsidered by the Shepherd’s Crook Community College (formerly the Mather Institute of Greater Theology, the Northern Massachusetts College of Science and the Arts, the Mather Institute of Revivalist Theology, and the All-Faith Universal University of Greater Enlightenment and Understanding).

  After that initial owner, the house was left empty for nearly fifty years by the nearby Puritans, who were quite happy to leave well enough alone, thank you very much. Then, beginning in 1728, a series of poor Bostonians seeking cheap land occupied the building. This period, marked by a 1,000 percent increase in murders, suicides, and ritual cannibalism, lasted until 1734 when a family of Quakers moved in. Locals started calling the place cursed after that.

  The house saw action in two wars during the eighteenth century. During the French and Indian War, tragedy befell a small scout force of French soldiers who’d taken refuge there during a battle7 with Shepherd’s Crook’s plucky native sons. The siege that followed lasted exactly one hour and mainly consisted of the local militia drinking tea outside while waiting for the screams to end. Just over a decade later, it was chosen by the British during the War of Independence as the site for the most disastrously unsuccessful battlefield hospital in the history of battlefields, hospitals, or staying alive. Doctors and historians still disagree as to why, despite above-average sanitation for the time, every injured soldier who’d been treated there, whether it be for a bullet hole or a dose of the clap, had died of acute anemia.

  For most of the next century, the house fell into abandonment and disrepair—which was just fine with the citizenry—with occasional bouts of habitation by Irish, German, and Italian immigrants—which was decidedly not. Fo
rtunately, the stays of these foreigners were brief and punctuated by a night when each family ran screaming into the woods, never to be heard from again. This usually warranted a town-wide day of thanksgiving.

  Following the hurried departure of a Norwegian couple in 1855, a group of otherwise well-intentioned abolitionists thought to use the Pink House, at this point a fairly awful shade of ramshackle, as a shelter for runaway slaves. After a single night, the former slaves told the abolitionists exactly what they could do with this particular safe house. When pressed, the escapees spoke of queer dreams in which an old white devil drank from their very souls. The Underground Railroad gave Shepherd’s Crook a wide berth in the future. “We may be desperate,” said one of its conductors, “but we’re not crazy.”

  In 1891, a visiting Boston architect decided to restore the edifice to its former glory, despite the resounding disapproval of the locals. He would spend the next three years and much of his fortune on the renovation, after which he died drunk, destitute, and alone. Though, strictly speaking, this wasn’t the house’s fault. The rebuilt residence then fell into the hands of New York railroad magnate Gerard D. Huff, whose family traveled there seasonally well into the next century. With occultism all the rage among the upper crust, Mrs. Stephanie Huff would often host séances and Sabbaths for her friends and famous guests. At this time, however, the spirits were not very forthcoming. Even the notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who could raise a spirit out of a snuffbox, was unable to find a single solitary soul.8

  Over the next fifty years, very little of interest occurred in the dwelling, except for a dozen deaths by Spanish flu, the murder of an abusive husband, the last stand of a Boston gangster, a War of the Worlds–incited suicide pact, five dismembered pets, and twenty-seven missing children who had entered on a dare—the same as any old house. In fact, when the ’60s and ’70s came around with their own brands of occultism and spiritual interest, the hippies squatting in the building9 were disappointed that nary a ghostly presence could be found. Never ones to remain disheartened, they did what any reasonable proponents of peace and love would do on a boatload of LSD.