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

by Stephen Jones

  The clerk sighed as if he were being asked to undertake all the labors of Hercules. “So you’re going,” he said as he started toward the hallway.

  “Yes,” said Morton, doing his best to be pleasant.

  “Going to tell them Infernal Revenues that Jericho’s down the drain, is that it?” His rancor was more for show than any strong feeling. “What’ll they do to us?”

  “I don’t know,” said Morton seriously. “My job is to investigate. There are others who make those decisions.” He wiped his hands on his handkerchief before he looked over the bill that the clerk presented to him, all entries in a crabbed little hand.

  “But you got to make recommendations” said the clerk.

  “I have to make reports. Others will do the evaluations.” Morton nodded as he checked the math. “It looks fine. How much more do I owe you?”

  The clerk named the figure, and Morton presented him with the appropriate amount, then looked around the lobby. “This could be such a pretty place. I can’t understand why you don’t do something with it. Towns like this one can be real tourist attractions if you go about development the right way.” It was only a friendly observation, but the clerk looked at him, much struck.

  “Mr Symes,” he said as Morton struggled to lift his bags. “What did you mean by that?”

  Morton was starting to sweat; it embarrassed him that he could not do so little a thing as lift his bag without coming near fainting. “I meant . . . this place . . . is authentic. The setting . . . is beautiful.” He put the suitcase down. “If you handled it right, you could develop some seasonal income, anyway.”

  The clerk nodded several times. “And there’d be a lot of people through here, you say?”

  “In time.” Morton had another go at hoisting his suitcase, and did rather better now.

  ‘I’ll take your things out to your car,” said the clerk in an off-handed way. “No need for you to be puffing like that. Though a young man like you—” He left the rest of his remark to speculation.

  “Thanks,” said Morton, and turned his luggage over to the clerk. “You know where my car is.”

  “Sure do,” said the clerk. “Look, when you get back to wherever your office is, can you find out what they’d do to us, I mean the IRS, if we wanted to turn this village into a tourist place?”

  ‘I’ll try. Who knows,” Morton added with more encouragement than sincerity, “I might want to come back myself one of these days.” He winced as the bright sunlight stabbed at his eyes; his dark glasses were taken from their case at once and clapped over his face.

  “Shows good sense,” said the clerk, nodding toward the glasses. “Light can be hard on a fella.”

  As Morton opened the trunk, he observed, “I had the impression that . . . pardon me if I’m wrong . . . that the people in Jericho aren’t interested in change, and they wouldn’t like turning this place into a tourist town”

  The clerk shrugged. “Well, the mill’s gone, and we’re pretty damn stuck. I can’t say I want to make it all quaint, but we got to eat, like everyone else.” He finished stowing the luggage and slammed the trunk closed for Morton.

  Morton offered a five-dollar bill, which was refused. “You find a way to make sure we get some new blood in here – that’ll be more than enough.” He stood back as Morton got into the car.

  Morton started the engine and felt a touch of satisfaction in the muffled roar. “Someone else from our office will be contacting you soon.”

  “We’ll be waiting,” said the clerk, and to Morton’s amazement, the man licked his lips. “Make sure you save a few for yourself.”

  Because he could think of no appropriate reply, Morton put the car in gear and started away, waving once to the clerk before he rolled his window up. Perhaps, he thought, Jericho would not be as difficult a place as he had feared. Perhaps there were things that they would accept as necessary and reasonable change in order to continue their town. He tabbed the little raised welts on his neck as he swung into the first big bend in the road. At least he had broken the ice; he could provide some explanation of what had happened – other than the ridiculous tale Wainwright had told – that would make it possible for the townspeople not to be encumbered with an unpayable tax burden. On the whole, he was satisfied with his job, though the episodes, real and imagined, with Ilona Wainwright made his conscience smart. But with a beautiful woman like that, one so irresistible, he supposed many men had fallen under her spell at one time or another. How ludicrous to call her a vampire. If he had remained there much longer, he might have started to believe it. Hell, he might be persuaded that he was one, too. “Absurd,” he said out loud. The welts continued to itch, and he scratched them without thinking as he started down the lazy decline toward North Poindexter.

  PETER TREMAYNE

  Dracula’s Chair

  PETER TREMAYNE IS THE PSEUDONYM of historian and Celtic scholar Peter Berresford Ellis, who has published numerous works on Celtic history and cultures including A Dictionary of Irish Mythology and its companion volume A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology.

  As Tremayne, he has published many novels in the horror and heroic fantasy genres, often concentrating on tales based on themes from Celtic mythology. However, he is best known today for his series of historical murder mysteries featuring a 7th Century Irish religieuse, Sister Fidelma, as his sleuth, who has to work under the ancient Irish law system with her companion Brother Eadulf, an Irish-trained Saxon monk. Whispers of the Dead, the fourteenth book in the series, has recently been published, and the series sells in nine European languages. There is even an International Sister Fidelma Society based in the United States but with members in over twelve countries.

  Although Tremayne has published nearly eighty short stories, ‘Dracula’s Chair’ was only his third.

  “It was originally written as an epilogue to my novel The Revenge of Dracula” he explains, “the second volume in my ‘Dracula’ trilogy which also includes Dracula Unborn (a.k.a. Bloodright) and Dracula, My Love. I decided to omit it on the grounds that it was ‘artistic overkill’ and it was first published in an anthology in the late 1970s.”

  Tremayne’s Dracula novels were last published in paperback as an omnibus volume by Signet in 1993 and have recently been optioned again for filming.

  MAYBE THIS IS AN hallucination. Perhaps I am mad. How else can this be explained?

  I sit here alone and helpless! So utterly alone! Alone in an age which is not mine, in a body which is not mine. Oh God! I am slowly being killed – or worse! Yet what is worse than death? That terrifying limbo that is the borderland of Hell, that state that is neither the restful sleep of death nor the perplexities of life but is the nightmare of undeath.

  He is draining me of life and yet, yet is it me who is the victim? How can I tell him that the person he thinks I am, the person whose body my mind inhabits, is no longer in that body? How can I tell him that I am in the body of his victim? I . . . a person from another time, another age, another place!

  God help me! He is draining me of life and I cannot prevent him!

  When did this nightmare begin? An age away. I suppose it began when my wife and I saw the chair.

  We were driving back to London one hot July Sunday afternoon, having been picnicking in Essex. We were returning about mid-afternoon down the All, through the village of Newport, when my wife suddenly called upon me to pull over and stop.

  “I’ve just seen the most exquisite chair in the window of an antique shop.”

  I was somewhat annoyed because I wanted to get home early that evening to see a vintage Humphrey Bogart film on the television, one I’d never seen before even though I have been a Bogart fan for years.

  “What’s the point?” I muttered grumpily, getting out of the car and trailing after her. “The shop’s shut anyway.”

  But the shop wasn’t shut. Passing trade on a Sunday from Londoners was apparently very lucrative and most antique shops in the area opened during the afternoons.

>   The chair stood like a lone sentinel in the window. It was square in shape, a wooden straight-backed chair with sturdy arms. It was of a plain and simple design, dark oak wood yet with none of the ornate woodwork that is commonly associated with such items. The seat was upholstered in a faded tapestry work which was obviously the original. It was a very unattractive upholstery for it was in a faded black with a number of once white exotic dragon’s heads. The same upholstery was reflected in a piece which provided a narrow back rest – a strip a foot deep thrust across the middle of the frame. My impression of the chair was hardly “exquisite” – it was a squat, ugly and aggressive piece. Certainly it did not seem worth the £100 price ticket which was attached by string to one arm.

  My wife had contrary ideas. It was, she felt, exactly the right piece to fill a corner in my study and provide a spare chair for extra guests. It could, she assured me, easily be re-upholstered to fit in with our general colour scheme of greens and golds. What was wanted, she said, was a functional chair and this was it. She was adamant and so I resigned myself to a minimum of grumbling, one eye on my watch to ensure I would not miss the Bogart film. The transaction was concluded fairly quickly by comparison with my wife’s usual standard of detailed questioning and examination. Perhaps the vendor was rather more loquacious than the average antique dealer.

  “It’s a very nice chair,” said the dealer with summoned enthusiasm. “It’s a Victorian piece of eastern European origin. Look, on the back you can actually see a date of manufacture and the place of origin.” He pointed to the back of the chair where, carved into the wood with small letters was the word “Bistritz” and the date “1887.” The dealer smiled in the surety of knowledge. “That makes it Romanian in origin. Actually, I purchased the piece from the old Purfleet Art Gallery.”

  “The Purfleet Art Gallery?” said I, thinking it time to make some contribution to the conservation. “Isn’t that the old gallery and museum over which there were some protests a few months ago?”

  “Yes, do you know the place? Purfleet in Essex? The gallery was housed in an ancient building, a manor house called Carfax, which was said to date back to medieval times. The old gallery had been there since the late Victorian period but had to close through lack of government subsidies, and the building is being carved up into apartments.”

  I nodded, feeling I had, perhaps, made too much of a contribution.

  The antique dealer went on obliviously.

  “When the gallery closed, a lot of its objets d’art were auctioned and I bought this chair. According to the auctioneer’s catalogue it had been in the old house when the gallery first opened and had belonged to the previous owner. He was said to have been a foreign nobleman . . . probably a Romanian by the workmanship of the chair.”

  Finally, having had her fears assuaged over matters of woodworm, methods of upholstery and the like, the purchase was concluded by my wife. The chair was strapped to the roofrack of my car and we headed homewards.

  The next day was Monday. My wife, who is in research, had gone to her office while I spent the morning in my study doodling on pieces of paper and vainly waiting for a new plot to mature for the television soap-opera that I was scripting at the time. At mid-day my wife telephoned to remind me to check around for some price quotations for re-upholstering our purchase. I had forgotten all about the chair, still strapped to the roofrack of my car. Feeling a little guilty, I went down to the garage and untied it, carrying it up to my study and placing it in the allotted corner with a critical eye. I confess, I did not like the thing; it was so square and seemed to somehow challenge me. It is hard to define what I mean but you have, I suppose, seen certain types of people with thrust out jaws, square and aggressive? Well, the chair gave the same impression.

  After a while, perhaps in response to its challenge, I decided to sit down in the chair, and as I sat, a sudden coldness spread up my spine and a weird feeling of unease came over me. So strong was it that I immediately jumped up. I stood there looking down at the chair and feeling a trifle self-conscious. I laughed nervously. Ridiculous! What would my friend Philip, who was a psychiatrist, say to such behaviour? I did not like the chair but there was no need to create physical illusions around my distaste.

  I sat down again and, as expected, the cold feelings of unease were gone – a mere shadow in my mind. In fact, I was surprised at the comfort of the chair. I sat well back, arms and hands resting on the wooden arm rests, head leaning against the back, legs spread out. It was extremely comfortable.

  So comfortable was it that a feeling of deep relaxation came over me, and with the relaxation came the desire to have a cat-nap. I must confess, I tend to enjoy a ten minute nap just after lunch. It relaxes me and stimulates the mind. I sat back, closed my drooping eyelids and gently let myself drift, drift . . .

  It was dark when I awoke.

  For an instant I struggled with the remnants of my dreams. Then my mind cleared and I looked about me. My first thought was the question – how long had I slept? I could see the dark hue of early evening through the tall windows. Then I started for there were no tall windows in my study nor anywhere in our house!

  Blinking my eyes rapidly to focus them in the darkened room, I abruptly perceived that I was not in my study, nor was I in any room that I had even seen before. I tried to rise in my surprise and found that I could not move – some sluggish feeling in my body prevented me from coordinating my limbs. My mind had clarity and will but below my neck my whole body seemed numb. And so I just sat there, staring wildly at the unfamiliar room in a cold sweat of fear and panic. I tried to blink away the nightmare, tried to rationalize.

  I could move my head around and doing so I found that I was sitting in the same chair – that accursed chair! Yet it seemed strangely newer than I remembered it. I thought, perhaps it was a trick of the light. But I discovered that around my legs was tucked a woolen blanket while the top half of me was clad in a pajama jacket over which was a velvet smoking jacket, a garment that I knew I had never owned. My eyes wandered around the room from object to unfamiliar object, each unfamiliar item causing the terror to mount in my veins, now surging with adrenalin. I was in a lounge filled with some fine pieces of Victoriana. The chair in which I sat now stood before an open hearth in which a few coals faintly glimmered. In one corner stood a lean, tall grandfather clock, whose steady tick-tock added to the oppressiveness of the scene. There was, so far as I could see, nothing modern in the room at all.

  But for me the greatest horror was the strange paralysis which kept me anchored in that chair. I tried to move until the sweat poured from my face with the effort. I even tried to shout, opening my mouth wide to emit strange choking-like noises. What in God’s name had happened to me?

  Suddenly a door opened. Into the room came a young girl of about seventeen holding aloft one of those old brass oil lamps, the sort you see converted into electric lamps these days by “trendy” people. Yet this was no converted lamp but a lamp from which a flame spluttered and emitted the odour of burning paraffin. And the girl! She wore a long black dress with a high button collar, with a white linen apron over it. Her fair hair was tucked inside a small white cap set at a jaunty angle on her head. In fact, she looked like a serving maid straight out of those Victorian drama serials we get so often on the television these days. She came forward and placed the lamp on a table near me, and then started, seeing my eyes wide open and upon her. I tried to speak to her, to demand, to exhort some explanation, to ask what the meaning of this trickery was, but only a strangled gasp came from my throat.

  The girl was clearly frightened and bobbed what was supposed to be a curtsy in my direction before turning to the door.

  “Ma’am! Ma’am!” her strong Cockney accent made the word sound like “Mum!” “Master’s awake, ma’am. What’ll I do?”

  Another figure moved into the room, tall, graceful, wearing an elegant Victorian dress hung low at the shoulders, and leaving very little of her bust to the imagination.
A black ribbon with a cameo was fastened to her pale throat. Her raven black hair was done up in a bun at the back of her head. Her face was small, heart-shaped, and pretty. The lips were naturally red though a trifle sullen for her features. The eyes were deep green and seemed a little sad. She came towards me, bent over me and gave a wan smile. There was a strange, almost unnatural pallor to her complexion.

  “That’s all, Fanny,” she said. “I’ll see to him now.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the girl bobbed another curtsy and was gone through the door.

  “Poor Upton,” whispered the woman before me. “Poor Upton. I wish I knew whether you hurt at all? No one seems to know from what strange malady you suffer.”

  She stood back and sighed sorrowfully and deeply.

  “It’s time for your medication.”

  She picked up a bottle and a spoon, pouring a bitter smelling amber liquid which she forced down my throat. I felt a numbing bitterness searing down my gullet.

  “Poor Upton,” she sighed again. “It’s bitter I know but the doctor says it will take away any pain.”

  I tried to speak; tried to tell her that I was not Upton, that I did not want her medicine, that I wanted this play-acting to cease. I succeeded only in gnashing my teeth and making inarticulate cries like some wild beast at bay. The woman took a step backwards, her eyes widening in fright. Then she seemed to regain her composure.

  “Come, Upton,” she chidded. “This won’t do at all. Try to relax.”

  The girl, Fanny, reappeared.

  “Doctor Seward is here, ma’am.”

  A stocky man in a brown tweed suit, looking like some character out of a Dickens novel, stepped into the room and bowed over the woman’s proffered hand.

  “John,” smiled the woman. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  “How are you, Clara,” smiled the man. “You look a trifle weary, a little pale.”

  “I’m alright, John. But I worry about Upton.”

  The man turned to me.

  “Yes, how is the patient? I swear he looks a little more alert today.”