And the Count releases him, breaking off his gaze. He has granted his foe a steady, lingering look into the abyss. But the sight has made Harker stronger, because it has made death his friend. It has given him the power to free himself
I hold on to that thought.
22 December – NYC
Max says I’m difficult, too idealistic, that nobody survives intact. I assume he’s talking about the script. At least he’s back from his vacation and we actually get to meet again now that I have some clothes. We drink red wine in a fashionable media joint on Amsterdam, surrounded by flickering TV monitors. Well, I say, this is the longest courtship I’ve had before somebody’s fucked me, and he laughs. The contract’s gonna be through after Christmas, he promises, when WorldView’s legal department finally get to check everything out with the Bram Stoker estate, plus every other joker with a claim to the character who reckons they have exclusive copyright. It better come through, I say, ’cause right now what we have here is a failure to remunerate. He laughs again, tells me I’m really on form tonight.
If Max has noticed that I’m going quietly nuts waitin’ for the green light, he ain’t showing it. He wishes me a happy Christmas an’ walks off into the snow with his scarf around his shoulders, that’s how confident he is. Me, I don’t wanna leave the bar. Leavin’ the bar means leaving the warm an’ going back to CeeCee’s. Back to work. But at least I know now that I have the strength to get through it.
The Harker family will be avenged.
16 January – NYC
Why is it all the changes have to come from my side? He remains motionless, a silhouette on the ramparts, a shadow in the doorway. I adapt to survive. He lives on, unchanging, the eternal victor, the cape wrapped around his elegant form like a suit of armour. Impenetrable. Immovable.
It isn’t fair.
CeeCee is dead. On Christmas Eve he went out to some fancy new club, and that was the last anyone saw of him. The cops say he got rolled by a john over at the Adonis around 2:00 a.m. Christmas morning. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have died but he’d had a little booze and taken a few uppers, and the shock of hitting the ground did something to his neck. He never regained consciousness. The cops asked me if he had any family. It never occurred to me he even had a family.
Christmas morning. What a lonely time to die.
CeeCee always said I could stay on in the apartment. He knew I didn’t like taking the johns. He wanted to help me so he said I could stay. He never told no one else. I went in his bedroom to pack up his stuff and it was like a little kid’s. Teddy bears and movie-star posters. The next night I came home and found the locks had been changed. I wish he’d told someone else I could stay.
I called Max to ask about the contract, but he wasn’t there and the English PA wouldn’t give me his home number. I found myself crying on the phone. Fucking pathetic.
Goin’ back on the street was a shock. When I get ahold of Max I’m gonna ask him to put up or shut up. Hell, I’m gonna ask him if I can stay at his place while I’m writing the script. I should retitle the fuckin’ thing Out for The Count, ’cause that’s what I’m gonna be soon if he says no.
I’ll do anything to get out of this situation, man.
Anything.
24 January – NYC
I am undead. That’s how I think of it. Trapped in limbo. This is living death. Darkness reigns and Harker loses. Now and forever.
Fuck Max. Wherever he is, fuck him. He could have told me, he must have known. You don’t leave a job without a little preparation. You don’t just up and blow. The PA says he’s gone out to LA, she don’t know his whereabouts. She couldn’t tell the truth if her fuckin’ life depended on it. Lying is part of her job description.
The new guy’s name is Feinstein.
I spoke to him after calling so many times he finally had to speak to me. He told me the first thing he did when he took over the job was freeze all of Max’s projects. He needs to determine a budget floor and ceiling for next season, and he won’t be rushed. It’ll take some time to establish market windows. That’s not to say the door is closed on my script. By this time I figure either he used to be a builder or he’s incapable of gettin’ through a sentence without using media-speak.
I tell him I am experiencing a downturn in my fiscal well-being at the moment and may not be alive by the time he gets around to perusing my masterpiece. Perhaps I can call him in a day.
Taken aback, he agrees. But not to a day. A week.
One week. Days, hours, minutes.
Nights.
I don’t work on the script no more. I can’t ’cause some asshole lifted my bag on the subway, and the last copy I had was in there. It’s 3:00 a.m., way below freezing, and I’m hustling for johns on 42nd St.
Man, this is so far below my dignity, it’s horrifyin’. I got a cold that won’t go away, an’ a dream that won’t die. Better if it did. Better to let it go.
Maybe I been fightin’ on the wrong side all this time. After all, my namesake met his end in the book, but it was just the beginning of the Count’s career.
They say people are attracted to him because of the darkness.
The dark never seemed attractive to me until now.
31 January – NYC
Another couple of days, he tells me.
There are so many scripts to go through, and he must be fair to every one. Call him back at the end of the week and he promises to have an answer, this way or that. The PA tells him mine’s one of the best scripts she’s ever read, an’ she’s been in the business a long time.
I am standing in the phone booth listenin’ to this.
It’s so cold I can’t tell where my feet end and the side-walk starts. I have two dollars in my pocket, a cold sore on my lip, and there are no johns on the street. I stayed a couple of nights at this guy Randy’s apartment but it turns out he really wanted to beat me with a studded strap, so I got out. It was worth good money, but hey, I have my pride. That’s a joke, by the way. There’s a sticker on the coin box in front of me, some broad offering guys an enema and I’m thinkin’ well, at least it would warm me up. I feel weird, like I passed beyond some kind of barrier.
I can’t give blood no more. They don’t want it. They said it’s gone bad. I got bad blood now. I told the doc I’d been bitten, but he didn’t get it. Two more days. The dark before the dawn. This is gonna be an eleventh-hour rescue, I can tell you.
You should never have tried to fight him, Jonathan.
2 February – NYC
A foot of snow around the call box an’ I got sweaty hands.
I got a pocket full of quarters which it turns out I need ’cause they leave me on call-wait for ten minutes, during which I get to listen to three songs from South Pacific. Then he’s not at his desk. It takes them a couple more minutes to locate him. I’m thinking this is good, this is a build-up of tension, this makes the news stronger.
Well, it does do that, at least.
I really didn’t like it, he says. Not Sorry for fucking you around or Maybe you’d like to write something else for us. Just I really didn’t like it. But that’s not the best part. He leaves a small silence while I’m supposed to make grateful noises for his opinion. Then he says I should remember the network buzzwords, which are Feelgood and Reassurance. The public don’t want to see this kind of thing, he says, it’s way too depressing. They need to be told that everything’s okay. I should bear that in mind next time.
I guess I could have screamed and shouted at him, but I just said quietly, There isn’t gonna be a next time, and hung up.
At least it’s over. I kind of feel better now. Not knowing was more painful than I’d realized. Yeah, I feel better now. I’m a little shaky walkin’ out of the box, but the sun is shining. I should of asked him to return the script, but somethin’ in me didn’t want it back. The battle’s ended. Dawn’s here.
I gotta get myself a new jacket. This one’s too thin. I’m freezin’ my ass off. Pockets are ripped. Gonna get myself
cleaned up. That’s how I’ll start. First the jacket. Then the life.
At least I took the bastard on, right?
Maybe I didn’t win, but I sure as hell held him at bay once more.
Isn’t that all you can ever do?
J.H.
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON
Vampire
RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON is the son of veteran science fiction and fantasy author Richard Matheson. A novelist, short-story writer and screenwriter/producer, he has scripted and executive produced more than five hundred episodes of prime-time network television and was the youngest writer ever put under contract by Universal Studios.
His debut novel Created By was published to great acclaim in 1993, and his short fiction has been collected in Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks and Dystopia. He has also completed his second novel and is writing a third.
As well as creating a new reality show for Fox TV, Matheson has recently scripted a number of feature films, a television pilot for Showtime Networks and two four-hour mini-series of Dean Koontz’s Sole Survivor and Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber. He continues to play drums for the blues/rock band Smash-Cut, in which he performs along with Craig Spector and Preston Sturges Jr. The band is currently at work on their debut album and play clubs in Los Angeles.
“I’ve played drums my whole life,” explains the author. “Like any creative form, its disciplines are multiple. But in time, as technique refines, rigors evolve into emotion; deeper rhythms of self.
“For beginners, a drum set is a daunting fascination; endless choices seduce and paralyze and, for a time, it seems cool, itself, sleeps under those skins; an elusive hipness only maple sticks could possibly stir.
“But with experience, what is inevitably discovered is that the beats and fills left out are the coolest thing of all; a mysterious effect, undeniable despite illogic.
“For me, this insight has been a chrysalis path of nearly four decades, almost perfectly paralleling my discovery, as a writer, that what’s withheld has eloquence; transcendence.
“Which brings me to ‘Vampire’.
“Its original draft was twelve pages long, but in rewriting it, I felt it too long, too detailed. I began its edit, in something of an unmerciful trance, and when done, what remained was a connection via minimal dots; a stream of consciousness set to a tempo; staccato. Fleshless.
“Though some detractors of the story may disagree, it is not a poem, bohemian dismissal of form, nor designed peculiarity. Rather, it is what was strong enough to survive my unsentimental pen.
“Considered as cadence and pulse, the story is a drum solo of sorts; percussive, propelled by unstated detail.
“Sometimes absence is presence.”
‘Vampire’ is the shortest story in this book. It is also one of the most powerful.
Man.
Late. Rain.
Road.
Man.
Searching. Starved. Sick.
Driving.
Radio. News. Scanners. Police. Broadcast.
Accident. Town.
Near.
Speeding. Puddles.
Aching.
Minutes.
Arrive. Park. Watch.
Bodies. Blood. Crowd. Sirens.
Wait.
Hour. Sit. Pain. Cigarette. Thermos. Coffee.
Sweat. Nausea.
Streetlights. Eyes. Stretchers. Sheets.
Flesh.
Death.
Shaking. Chills.
Clock. Wait.
More. Wait.
Car. Stink. Cigarette.
Ambulance. Crying. Tow truck. Bodies. Taken.
Crowd. Police. Photographers. Drunks. Leave.
Gone.
Street. Quiet.
Rain. Dark. Humid.
Alone.
Door. Out. Stand. Walk. Pain. Stare. Closer.
Buildings. Silent. Street. Dead.
Blood. Chalk. Outlines. Closer.
Step. Inside. Outlines. Middle.
Inhale. Eyes. Closed.
Think. Inhale. Concentrate. Feel. Breathe.
Flow.
Death. Collision. Woman. Screaming. Windshield. Expression.
Moment. Death.
Energy. Concentrate. Images. Exploding.
Moment.
Woman. Car. Truck. Explosion.
Impact. Moment.
Rush.
Feeling. Feeding.
Metal. Burning. Screams. Blood. Death.
Moment. Collision. Images. Faster.
Strength. Medicine.
Stronger.
Concentrate. Better.
Images. Collision. Stronger. Seeing. Death.
Moment. Healing. Moment.
Addiction.
Drug. Rush. Body. Warmer.
Death. Concentrating. Healing. Addiction. Drug.
Warm. Calm.
Death. Medicine.
Death.
Life.
Medicine.
Addiction. Strong.
Leave.
Car. Engine. Drive. Rain. Streets. Freeway. Map.
Drive. Relax. Safe. Warm. Rush. Good.
Radio. Cigarette. Breeze.
Night.
Searching. Accidents. Death.
Life.
Dash. Clock. Waiting.
Soon.
HUGH B. CAVE
Stragella
HUGH B. CAVE WAS BORN in 1910 in Chester, England, but migrated to America with his family when he was almost five. While editing trade journals, he sold his first pulp-magazine story, ‘Island Ordeal’, to Brief Stories in 1929. Cave quickly established himself as an inventive and prolific writer and became a regular contributor to Strange Tales, Weird Tales, Ghost Stories, Black Book Detective, Thrilling Mysteries, Spicy Mystery Stories, and the so-called “shudder pulps”, Horror Stories and Terror Tales.
He then began spending his winters in Haiti and Jamaica and after writing highly praised travel books and a number of mainstream novels about those two Caribbean countries, began contributing fiction regularly to The Saturday Evening Post (forty-six stories) and many other “slick-paper” magazines.
In 1977 Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa imprint published a hefty volume of Cave’s best horror tales, Murgunstrumm and Others, which won a World Fantasy Award for best collection, and Cave returned to the genre with stories in Whispers and Fantasy Tales, followed by a string of modern horror novels: Legion of the Dead, The Nebulon Horror, The Evil, Shades of Evil, Disciples of Dread, The Lower Deep, Lucifer’s Eye, Isle of the Whisperers, The Dawning, The Evil Returns and The Restless Dead.
Cave’s short fiction has been collected by a number of publishers, including Starmont House, Fedogan & Bremer, Tattered Pages Press, Black Dog Books, Subterranean Press, Ash-Tree Press, The Sidecar Preservation Society, Necronomicon Press and Crippen & Landru. A new biography of the author by Milt Thomas, entitled Cave of a Thousand Tales, is published by Arkham House.
The author has been presented with several awards during his writing career. These include a Phoenix Award (1987), a Special Committee Award from the World Fantasy Convention (1997), and Lifetime Achievement Awards from The Horror Writers Association (1991), The International Horror Guild (1997) and the World Fantasy Convention (1999).
In a career that has spanned an incredible eight decades, it is perhaps not surprising that all the author can recall about ‘Stragella’ is that, “At the time, I suppose it was probably just another story aimed at Strange Tales and its editor, Harry Bates.”
The following novella dates from Cave’s most prolific period and is a classic vampire chiller written in the extravagant style of the pulp magazines of the 1930s.
NIGHT, BLACK AS PITCH and filled with the wailing of a dead wind, sank like a shapeless specter into the oily waters of the Indian Ocean, leaving a great gray expanse of sullen sea, empty except for a solitary speck that rose and dropped in the long swell.
The forlorn thing was a ship’s boat. For seven days and se
ven nights it had drifted through the waste, bearing its ghastly burden. Now, groping to his knees, one of the two survivors peered away into the East, where the first glare of a red sun filtered over the rim of the world.
Within arm’s reach, in the bottom of the boat, lay a second figure, face down. All night long he had lain there. Even the torrential shower, descending in the dark hours and flooding the dory with life-giving water, had failed to move him.
The first man crawled forward. Scooping water out of the tarpaulin with a battered tin cup, he turned his companion over and forced the stuff through receded lips.
“Miggs!” The voice was a cracked whisper. “Miggs! Good God, you ain’t dead, Miggs? I ain’t left all alone out here—”
John Miggs opened his eyes feebly.
“What – what’s wrong?” he muttered.
“We got water, Miggs! Water!”
“You’re dreamin’ again, Yancy. It – it ain’t water. It’s nothin’ but sea—”
“It rained!” Yancy screeched. “Last night it rained. I stretched the tarpaulin. All night long I been lyin’ face up, lettin’ it rain in my mouth!”
Miggs touched the tin cup to his tongue and lapped its contents suspiciously. With a mumbled cry he gulped the water down. Then, gibbering like a monkey, he was crawling toward the tarpaulin.
Yancy flung him back, snarling.
“No you won’t!” Yancy rasped. “We got to save it, see? We got to get out of here.”
Miggs glowered at him from the opposite end of the dory. Yancy sprawled down beside the tarpaulin and stared once again over the abandoned sea, struggling to reason things out.
The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books) Page 19