The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  “No.” He shook his head. “I must destroy the brain. The only point is, when I do . . .” He looked round the cavern, then over to the entrance of the green-walled passage. “. . . anything may happen.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “So soon as the job is finished, I’ll join you.”

  He might have added, “If I can,” but instead guided Rosemary to the wall and assisted her up to the cave.

  “Now,” he instructed, “stay well back and don’t, in any circumstances, so much as put your nose outside. Understand?”

  “God, I’m petrified,” she said.

  “Don’t let it get around,” he nodded grimly, “but so am I.”

  He came back to the hole like a released spirit returning to hell. As he drew nearer, the terror grew until it required a desperate effort to raise one foot and put it down before the other. Only the memory of Rosemary up there in the cave kept his spark of courage alive. At last he again gazed down at that horrible growth; it groaned and the sound raced round the cavern and up through the house. The face grimaced and twitched, while the green tubes writhed like a nest of gorged worms. Brian selected a rock which was a little larger than the bloated head and, gripping it in both hands, prepared to hurl it down. He had tensed his muscles, and was turning slightly to one side, when the eyelids flicked back and he was staring into two pools of black hate.

  The shock was so intense he automatically slackened his grip and the rock slid from his fingers and went crashing down somewhere behind him. The mouth opened and a vibrant whisper went racing up through the house.

  “Elizabeth . . . Carlo . . .”

  The words came out slowly, rather like a series of intelligible sighs, but from all around, from the walls, the floor, the high roof – never from the moving lips.

  “Would . . . you . . . destroy . . . that . . . which . . . you . . . do . . . not . . . understand?”

  Brian was fumbling for the rock, but he paused and the whispering voice went on.

  “I . . . must . . . continue . . . to . . . be . . . I . . . must . . . grow . . . fill . . . the . . . universe . . . consume . . . take . . . strength . . .”

  A padding of fast-running paws came from the passage entrance and a woman’s voice was calling out.

  “Petros, drink of his essence . . . will him into walking death.”

  There was a hint of fear in the terrible eyes. The whispering voice again ran through the house.

  “He . . . is . . . an . . . unbeliever . . . he . . . is . . . the . . . young . . . of . . . a . . . new . . . age . . . why . . . did . . . you . . . let . . . him . . . through . . .?”

  The great dog leapt over the loose earth and emerged from the passageway; it was black as midnight, like a solid shadow newly escaped from a wall, and it padded round the cavern before jumping up on to a boulder and preparing to leap. Brian hurled a rock at it and struck the broad, black snout. The beast howled and fell back as Mrs Brown spoke from the entrance.

  “You will not keep that up for long. Carlo cannot be killed by the likes of you.”

  She had been transformed. The once white hair was now a rich auburn, the face was as young as today, but the glorious eyes reflected the evil of a million yesterdays. She wore a black evening dress that left her arms and back bare and Brian could only stare at her, forgetting that which lay behind him and Rosemary, up in the cave. All he could see was white flesh and inviting eyes.

  “Come away,” the low, husky voice said. “Leave Petros to his dream. He cannot harm you and it would be such a waste if Carlo were to rip your nice body to shreds. Think of what I can offer. An eternity of bliss. A million lifetimes of pleasure. Come.”

  He took one step forward, then another, and it seemed he was walking into a forbidden dream; all the secret desires that up to that moment he had not realised existed flared up and became exciting possibilities. Then, just as he was about to surrender, go running to her like a child to a beautiful toy, her voice lashed across his consciousness.

  “Carlo . . . now.”

  The dog came snarling over the rocks and Brian fell back, suddenly fully aware of the pending danger. He snatched up a piece of jagged rock and threw it at the oncoming beast. He hit it just above the right ear, then began to hurl stones as fast as he could pick them up. The dog leapt from side to side, snarling with pain and rage, but Brian realised it was coming forward more than it retreated and knew a few minutes, at the most, must elapse before he felt those fangs at his throat. By chance his hands closed round the original small boulder – and it was then he understood what must be done.

  He raised the rock high above his head, made as though to hurl it at the dog, which momentarily recoiled, then threw it back – straight at the head of Petros.

  The house shrieked. One long-drawn-out scream and the dog was no longer there; instead, Carlo ran towards his mistress, making plaintive, guttural cries, before sinking down before her, plucking frantically at the hem of her black dress.

  Brian looked back and down into the hole and saw that the head was shattered and what remained of the flesh was turning black. The green tubes were now only streaks of deflated tissue and the life-giving fluid no longer flowed up into the body of the house. From up above came a deep rumbling sound and a great splintering, as though a mountain of rocks were grinding together. Brian ran towards the far wall and, quickly scrambling up into the cave, found Rosemary waiting to welcome him with outstretched arms.

  “Keep down,” he warned. “All hell is going to break loose at any moment.”

  They lay face down upon the floor, and Brian had to raise his head to see the final act. The green light was fading, but before it went he had a last glimpse of the woman staring blankly at the place where Petros had lain. She was patting Carlo’s head. Then the ceiling came down and for a while there was only darkness filled with a mighty rumbling and crashing of falling rock. Fantasy tumbling down into the pit of reality. Time passed and the air cleared as the dust settled and presently, like a glimmer of hope in the valley of despair, a beam of light struck the entrance to the cave. Brian looked out, then up. Twenty feet above was a patch of blue sky.

  They came up from the pit, bruised, clothes torn, but happy to be alive. They trudged hand-in-hand out across the moors and after a while looked back to see a pile of rocks that, at this distance, could have been mistaken for a ruined house.

  “We will never talk about this to anyone,” Brian said. “One does not talk about one’s nightmares. They are so ridiculous in the light of day.”

  Rosemary nodded. “We slept. We dreamed. Now we are awake.”

  They walked on. Two figures that distance diminished until they became minute specks on a distant horizon. Then they were gone.

  The early morning breeze caressed the summer grass, harebells smiled up at a benign sky and a pair of rabbits played hide and seek among the fallen rocks. To all outward appearances the moors were at peace.

  Then a rabbit screamed and a stoat raised blood-dripping jaws.

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER

  Beyond Any Measure

  KARL EDWARD WAGNER WAS ONE of the genre’s finest practitioners of horror and dark fantasy, and his untimely death in 1994 robbed the field of one of its major talents.

  Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Wagner trained as a psychiatrist before becoming a multiple British Fantasy and World Fantasy Award-winning author, editor and publisher. His early writing included a series of fantasy novels and stories featuring Kane, the Mystic Swordsman. His first novel, Darkness Weaves With Many Shades (1970), introduced the unusually intelligent and brutal warrior-sorcerer, and Kane’s adventures continued in Death Angel’s Shadow, Bloodstone, Dark Crusade and the collections Night Winds and The Book of Kane. More recently, the complete Kane novels and stories have been collected in two volumes by Night Shade Books, Gods in Darkness and The Midnight Sun.

  In the early 1970s Wagner started the acclaimed Carcosa small-press imprint with friends David Drake and Jim Groc
e. He also edited three volumes of Robert E. Howard’s definitive Conan adventures and continued the exploits of two of Howard’s characters, Conan and Bran Mak Morn respectively, in the novels The Road of Kings and Legion from the Shadows. He also edited three Echoes of Valor heroic-fantasy anthologies and a collection of medical horror stories, Intensive Scare. He took over the editing of The Year’s Best Horror Stories in 1980 from Gerald W. Page and for the next fourteen years turned it into one of the genre’s finest showcases.

  Wagner’s own superior short horror tales were collected in In a Lonely Place, Why Not You and I? and Unthreatened by the Morning Light. A tribute collection entitled Exorcisms and Ecstasies was published in 1997.

  As the author revealed: “‘Beyond Any Measure’ explores the relationships of eroticism and horror – and the title is from Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show. ‘Erotic nightmares beyond any measure and sensual daydreams to treasure forever’.

  “It was written as an intended screenplay, and the story contains cinematic references and homages beyond counting. Fans of The Avengers television series will be quick to recognize the play on the infamous ‘A Touch of Brimstone’ episode, shown only in later reruns on American TV . . .”

  The sensual story which follows justifiably won a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

  I

  “IN THE DREAM I find myself alone in a room. I hear musical chimes – a sort of music-box tune – and I look around to see where the sound is coming from.

  “I’m in a bedroom. Heavy curtains close off the windows, and it’s quite dark, but I can sense that the furnishings are entirely antique – late Victorian, I think. There’s a large four-poster bed, with its curtains drawn. Beside the bed is a small night table upon which a candle is burning. It is from here that the music seems to be coming.

  “I walk across the room toward the bed, and as I stand beside it I see a gold watch resting on the night table next to the candlestick. The music-box tune is coming from the watch, I realize. It’s one of those old pocket-watch affairs with a case that opens. The case is open now, and I see that the watch’s hands are almost at midnight. I sense that on the inside of the watchcase there will be a picture, and I pick up the watch to see whose picture it is.

  “The picture is obscured with a red smear. It’s fresh blood.

  “I look up in sudden fear. From the bed, a hand is pulling aside the curtain.

  “That’s when I wake up.”

  “Bravo!” applauded someone.

  Lisette frowned momentarily, then realized that the comment was directed toward another of the chattering groups crowded into the gallery. She sipped her champagne; she must be a bit tight, or she’d never have started talking about the dreams.

  “What do you think, Dr Magnus?”

  It was the gala reopening of Covent Garden. The venerable fruit, flower and vegetable market, preserved from the demolition crew, had been renovated into an airy mall of expensive shops and galleries: “London’s new shopping experience.” Lisette thought it an unhappy hybrid of born-again Victorian exhibition hall and trendy “shoppes.” Let the dead past bury its dead. She wondered what they might make of the old Billingsgate fish market, should SAVE win its fight to preserve that landmark, as now seemed unlikely.

  “Is this dream, then, a recurrent one, Miss Seyrig?”

  She tried to read interest or skepticism in Dr Magnus’ pale blue eyes. They told her nothing.

  “Recurrent enough.”

  To make me mention it to Danielle, she finished in her thoughts. Danielle Borland shared a flat – she’d stopped terming it an apartment even in her mind – with her in a row of terrace houses in Bloomsbury, within an easy walk of London University. The gallery was Maitland Reddin’s project; Danielle was another. Whether Maitland really thought to make a business of it, or only intended to showcase his many friends’ not always evident talents was not open to discussion. His gallery in Knightsbridge was certainly successful, if that meant anything.

  “How often is that?” Dr Magnus touched his glass to his blonde-bearded lips. He was drinking only Perrier water, and, at that, was using his glass for little more than to gesture.

  “I don’t know. Maybe half a dozen times since I can remember. And then, that many again since I came to London.”

  “You’re a student at London University, I believe Danielle said?”

  “That’s right. In art. I’m over here on fellowship.”

  Danielle had modelled for an occasional session – Lisette now was certain it was solely from a desire to display her body rather than due to any financial need – and when a muttered profanity at a dropped brush disclosed a common American heritage, the two émigrés had rallied at a pub afterward to exchange news and views. Lisette’s bed-sit near the Museum was impossible, and Danielle’s roommate had just skipped to the Continent with two months’ owing. By closing time it was settled.

  “How’s your glass?”

  Danielle, finding them in the crowd, shook her head in mock dismay and refilled Lisette’s glass before she could cover it with her hand.

  “And you, Dr Magnus?”

  “Quite well, thank you.”

  “Danielle, let me give you a hand?” Maitland had charmed the two of them into acting as hostesses for his opening.

  “Nonsense, darling. When you see me starting to pant with the heat, then call up the reserves. Until then, do keep Dr Magnus from straying away to the other parties.”

  Danielle swirled off with her champagne bottle and her smile. The gallery, christened “Such Things May Be” after Richard Burton (not Liz Taylor’s ex, Danielle kept explaining, and got laughs each time), was ajostle with friends and well-wishers – as were most of the shops tonight: private parties with evening dress and champagne, only a scattering of displaced tourists, gaping and photographing. She and Danielle were both wearing slit-to-thigh crepe de Chine evening gowns and could have passed for sisters: Lisette blonde, green-eyed, with a dust of freckles; Danielle light brunette, hazel-eyed, acclimated to the extensive facial makeup London women favored; both tall without seeming coltish, and close enough of a size to wear each other’s clothes.

  “It must be distressing to have the same nightmare over and again,” Dr Magnus prompted her.

  “There have been others as well. Some recurrent, some not. Similar in that I wake up feeling like I’ve been through the sets of some old Hammer film.”

  “I gather you were not actually troubled with such nightmares until recently?”

  “Not really. Being in London seems to have triggered them. I suppose it’s repressed anxieties over being in a strange city.” It was bad enough that she’d been taking some of Danielle’s pills in order to seek dreamless sleep.

  “Is this, then, your first time in London, Miss Seyrig?”

  “It is.” She added, to seem less the typical American student: “Although my family was English.”

  “Your parents?”

  “My mother’s parents were both from London. They emigrated to the States just after World War 1.”

  “Then this must have been rather a bit like coming home for you.”

  “Not really. I’m the first of our family to go overseas. And I have no memory of Mother’s parents. Grandmother Keswicke died the morning I was born.” Something Mother never was able to work through emotionally, Lisette added to herself.

  “And have you consulted a physician concerning these nightmares?”

  “I’m afraid your National Health Service is a bit more than I can cope with.” Lisette grimaced at the memory of the night she had tried to explain to a Pakistani intern why she wanted sleeping medications.

  She suddenly hoped her words hadn’t offended Dr Magnus, but then, he scarcely looked the type who would approve of socialized medicine. Urbane, perfectly at ease in formal evening attire, he reminded her somewhat of a blonde-bearded Peter Cushing. Enter Christopher Lee, in black cape, she mused, glancing toward the door. For that matter, she wa
sn’t at all certain just what sort of doctor Dr Magnus might be. Danielle had insisted she talk with him, very likely had insisted that Maitland invite him to the private opening: “The man has such insight! And he’s written a number of books on dreams and the subconscious – and not just rehashes of Freudian silliness!”

  “Are you going to be staying in London for some time, Miss Seyrig?”

  “At least until the end of the year.”

  “Too long a time to wait to see whether these bad dreams will go away once you’re back home in San Francisco, don’t you agree? It can’t be very pleasant for you, and you really should look after yourself.”

  Lisette made no answer. She hadn’t told Dr Magnus she was from San Francisco. So then, Danielle had already talked to him about her.

  Dr Magnus smoothly produced his card, discreetly offered it to her. “I should be most happy to explore this further with you on a professional level, should you so wish.”

  “I don’t really think it’s worth . . .”

  “Of course it is, my dear. Why otherwise would we be talking? Perhaps next Tuesday afternoon? Is there a convenient time?”

  Lisette slipped his card into her handbag. If nothing else, perhaps he could supply her with some barbs or something. “Three?”

  “Three it is, then.”

  II

  The passageway was poorly lighted, and Lisette felt a vague sense of dread as she hurried along it, holding the hem of her nightgown away from the gritty filth beneath her bare feet. Peeling scabs of wallpaper blotched the leprous plaster, and, when she held the candle close, the gouges and scratches that patterned the walls with insane graffiti seemed disquietingly nonrandom. Against the mottled plaster, her figure threw a double shadow: distorted, one crouching forward, the other following.

  A full-length mirror panelled one segment of the passageway, and Lisette paused to study her reflection. Her face appeared frightened, her blonde hair in disorder. She wondered at her nightgown – pale, silken, billowing, of an antique mode – not remembering how she came to be wearing it. Nor could she think how it was that she had come to this place.