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

by Stephen Jones

  The woman, Clara, spread her hands and shrugged.

  “To me he seems little better, John. Even when he seems more alert physically he can only growl like a beast. I try my best but I fear . . . I fear that . . .”

  The man called John patted her hand and gestured her to silence. Then he came and bent over me with a friendly smile.

  “Strange,” he murmured. “Indeed, a strange affliction. And yet . . . yet I do detect a more intelligent gleam in the eyes today. Hello, old friend, do you know me. It’s John . . . John Seward? Do you recognise me?”

  He leaned close to my face, so close I could smell the scent of oranges on his breath.

  I struggled to break the paralysis which gripped me and only succeeded in issuing a number of snarls and grunts. The man drew back.

  “Upon my word, Clara, has he been violent at all?”

  “Not really, John. He does excite himself so with visitors. But perhaps it is his way of trying to communicate with us.”

  The man grunted and nodded.

  “Well, the only remedy for pain is to keep dosing him with the laudanum as I prescribed it. I think he is a little better. However, I shall call again tomorrow to see if there is a significant improvement. If not, I will ask your permission to consult a specialist, perhaps a doctor from Harley Street. There are a number of factors that still puzzle me – the anaemia, the apparent lack of red blood corpuscles or hemoglobin. His paleness and languor. And these strange wounds on his neck do not seem to be healing at all.”

  The woman bit her lip and lowered her voice.

  “You may be frank with me, John. You have known Upton and me for some years now. I am resigned to the fact that there can only be a worsening of his condition. I do fear for his life.”

  The man glanced at me nervously.

  “Should you talk like this in front of him?”

  The woman sighed. “He cannot understand, of that I am sure. Poor Upton. Just to think that a few short days ago he was so full of life, so active, and now this strange disease has cut him down . . .”

  The man nodded.

  “You have been a veritable goddess, Clara, charity herself, nursing him constantly day and night. I shall look in again tomorrow, but if there is no improvement I shall seek permission to call in a specialist.”

  Clara lowered her head as if in resignation.

  The man turned to me and forced a smile.

  “So long, old fellow . . .”

  I tried to call, desperately tried to plead for help. Then he was gone.

  The minutes dragged into hours as the woman, Clara, who was supposed to be my wife, sat gazing into the fire, while I sat pinioned in my accursed chair opposite to her. How long we sat thus I do not truly know. From time to time I felt her gaze, sad and thoughtful, upon me. Then I became aware, somewhere in the house, of a clock commencing to strike. A few seconds later it was followed by the resonant and hollow sounds of the grandfather clock. Without raising my head I counted slowly to twelve. Midnight.

  The woman Clara abruptly sprung from her chair and stood upright before the fire.

  As I looked up she seemed to change slightly – it is hard to explain. Her face seemed to grow coarser, more bloated. Her tongue, a red glistening object, darted nervously over her lips making them moist and of a deeper red than before, contrasting starkly to the sharp whiteness of her teeth. A strange lustre began to sparkle in her eyes. She raised a languid hand and began to massage her neck slowly, sensually.

  Then, abruptly, she laughed – a low voluptuous chuckle that made the hairs on my neck bristle.

  She gazed down at me with a wanton expression, a lascivious smile.

  “Poor Upton,” her tone was a gloating caress. “He’ll be coming soon. You’ll like that won’t you? Yet why he takes you first, I cannot understand. Why you? Am I not full of the warmth of life – does not warm, rich young blood flow in my veins? Why you?”

  She made an obscene, seductive gesture with her body.

  The way she crooned, the saliva trickling from a corner of those red – oh, so red – lips, made my heart beat faster yet at the same time, the blood seemed to deny its very warmth and pump like some ice-cold liquid in my veins.

  What new nightmare was this?

  How he appeared I do not know.

  One minute there was just the woman and myself in the room. Then he was standing there.

  A tall man, apparently elderly although his pale face held no aging of the skin, only the long white moustache which drooped over his otherwise clean-shaven face gave the impression of age. His face was strong – extremely strong, aquiline with a high-bridged nose and peculiarly arched nostrils. His forehead was loftily domed and hair grew scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. The eyebrows were massive and nearly met across the bridge of the nose.

  It was his mouth which captured my attention – a mouth set in the long pale face, fixed and cruel looking, with teeth that protruded over the remarkably ruddy lips whose redness had the effect of highlighting his white skin and giving the impression of an extraordinary pallor. And where the teeth protruded over the lips, they were white and sharp.

  His eyes seemed a ghastly red in the glow of the flickering fire.

  The woman, Clara, took a step toward him, hands out as if imploring, a glad cry on her red wanton lips, her breasts heaving as if with some wild ectasy.

  “My Lord,” she cried, “you have come!”

  The tall man ignored her. His red eyes were upon mine, seeming to devour me.

  The woman raised a hand to massage her throat.

  “Lord, take me first! Take me now!”

  The tall man took a stride towards me, drawing back an arm and pushing her roughly aside.

  “It is he that I shall take first,” he said sibilantly, with a strange accent to his English. “You shall wait your turn which shall be in a little while.”

  The woman made to protest but he stopped her with an upraised hand.

  “Dare you question me?” he said mildly. “Have no fear. You shall be my bountiful wine press in a while. But first I shall slake my thirst with him.”

  He towered over me as I remained helpless in that chair, that accursed chair. A smile edged his face.

  “Is it not just?” whispered the tall man. “Is it not just that having thwarted me, you Upton Welsford, now become everything that you abhorred and feared?”

  And while part of my mind was witnessing this obscene hallucination, another part of it began to experience a strange excitement – almost a sexual excitement as the man lowered his face to mine . . . closer came those awful red eyes to gaze deep into my soul. His mouth was open slightly, I could smell a vile reek of corruption. There was a deliberate voluptuousness about his movements that was both thrilling and appalling – he licked his lips like some animal, the scarlet tongue flickering over the white sharp teeth.

  Lower came his head, lower, until it passed from my sight and I could hear the churning sound of his tongue against his teeth and could feel his hot breath on my neck. The skin of my throat began to tingle. Then I felt the soft shivering touch of his cold lips on my throat, the hard indent of two sharp white teeth!

  For a while, how long I could not measure, I seemed to fall into a languorous ectasy.

  Then he was standing above me, smiling down sardonically, a trickle of blood on his chin. My blood!

  “There is one more night to feast with him,” he said softly. “One night more and then, Upton Welford, you shall be my brother.”

  The woman exclaimed in anger.

  “But you promised! You promised! When am I to be called?”

  The tall man turned and laughed.

  “Aye, I promised, my slender vine. You already bear my mark. You belong to me. You shall be one with me, never fear. Immortality will soon be yours and we shall share in the drinking. You will provide me with the wine of life. Have patience, for the greatest wines are long in the savouring. I shall return.”

  Then to
my horror the man was gone. Simply gone, as if he had dissolved into elemental dust.

  For some time I sat in horror staring at the woman who seemed to have retreated into a strange trance. Then the grandfather clock began to chime and the woman started, as if waking from a deep sleep. She stared in amazement at the clock and then towards the window where the faint light of early dawn was beginning to show.

  “Good Lord, Upton,” she exclaimed, “we seemed to have been up all night. I must have fallen asleep, I’m sorry.”

  She shook herself.

  “I’ve had a strange dream. Ah well, no matter. I’d better get you up to bed. I’ll go and wake poor Fanny to help me.”

  She smiled softly at me as she left the room; there was no trace of the wanton seductress left on her delicate features.

  She left me sitting alone, alone in my prison of a chair.

  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.

  And where is this person . . . the Upton Welsford whose body I now inhabit? Where is he? Has he, by some great effort of will, exchanged his body with mine? Is he even now awakening from that cat-nap sometime in the future? Awakening in my body, in my study, to resume my life? Is he doing even as I have done? What does it all mean?

  Maybe this is an hallucination. Perhaps I am mad. How else can all this be explained?

  SYDNEY J. BOUNDS

  A Taste for Blood

  SYDNEY JAMES BOUNDS WAS BORN in 1920 in Brighton, Sussex. In the early 1930s he discovered the American pulp magazines and by the end of the following decade he was contributing “spicy” stories to the monthly periodicals produced by Utopia Press. He was also writing hard-boiled gangster novels for John Spencer under such pseudonyms and house names as “Brett Diamond” and “Ricky Madison”, and contributed short stories to their line of SF magazines which included Futuristic Science Stories, Tales of Tomorrow and Worlds of Fantasy.

  Along with writing five SF novels during the 1950s, Bounds soon became a regular contributor to such magazines as New Worlds Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Authentic Science Fiction, Nebula Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories and Fantastic Universe. However, as the science fiction magazine markets started to dry up during the 1960s, the author began to notice the growth of paperbacks. He quickly became a prolific and reliable contributor to such anthology series as New Writings in SF, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, the Armada Monster Book and the Armada Ghost Book.

  One of his best-known stories, ‘The Circus’, was scripted by George A. Romero for a 1986 episode of the syndicated television series Tales of the Darkside.

  Bounds has also pursued parallel careers as a successful children’s writer and a Western novelist. In the late 1970s he wrote a number of science fiction novels for an Italian publisher, together with some new supernatural and crime stories. More recently, his 1953 novel Dimension of Horror has been reprinted by Wildside Press.

  That publisher’s imprint, Cosmos Books, has also issued the first-ever collections of the author’s work as two print-on-demand volumes. Both The Best of Sydney J. Bounds: Strange Portrait and Other Stories and The Wayward Ship and Other Stories were edited by Philip Harbottle.

  “In the long-ago I planned to write a story about a vampire who made use of a blood bank,” recalls Bounds, “but never got around to writing it, until I was asked for a new story for this anthology. The idea is no longer new, so this is a variation on the theme.”

  The following tale appears here for the first time . . .

  DR GREGOR HAD AN accent that Vic Farrow couldn’t place. For that matter, Gregor’s face suggested an age that Farrow couldn’t be sure of. His voice, however, held a contempt that was painfully obvious.

  “Alcohol, Mr. Farrow? After a serious accident, major surgery and recovery from a life-threatening situation, you dare to complain because you have lost your taste for alcohol?”

  “Vodka, doctor. I’m a crime reporter and run on a bottle a day. Now I can’t face my favourite booze – worse, I seem to have a craving for blood.”

  Gregor sniffed. “So? Blood is life, nothing to worry about there – you will adapt sooner than you think. But alcohol is a poison and, quite likely, the cause of your accident. Relax and accept the fact that your life has changed for the better.”

  On the way out Farrow met Nurse Terry, one of the team who had helped him recover from the operation after a van collided with his motorcycle.

  She was small with short blonde hair and a ready smile, and she was wearing starched whites.

  He jerked a thumb at the closed door of the consulting room. “Is he for real?”

  She chose to take the question seriously. “Yes, he knows the real world better than most. Try to understand, Vic, that Dr Gregor is older than he appears; he knows, but sometimes forgets how difficult it can be for a patient after a transfusion. What you are feeling is a side effect and it will pass. Take this—”

  She scribbled figures on a notepad, tore off the sheet and handed it to him. “This is the number of a local group prepared to help people with your problem. If it gets too bad, give them a ring.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “I sometimes call in to see if I can help.”

  Outside the small private hospital – and hadn’t he been lucky that the accident had happened almost outside the front door? – Farrow headed like a homing pigeon for the nearest pub.

  But the smell of stale beer as he pushed open the door turned his stomach and made him retch. He swung away with a shudder, swearing. A supermarket, he decided: buy a bottle to take home.

  He walked to the bus stop because his machine had been totalled, passing an old-fashioned butcher’s shop with joints of meat displayed on white enamel trays. The smell almost overwhelmed him,

  He wanted the blood oozing from the meat and licked his lips in anticipation. Fresh blood. He swallowed hard, imagining a pint of the best going down. This new urge filled him with alarm and he hurried away.

  After he got off the bus, Farrow bought a bottle and a newspaper at his local supermarket and walked home. The managing editor had granted him sick leave and agreed to cover the hospital bill. He had been, after all, their number-one crime reporter.

  Still, he couldn’t afford to get out of touch. He opened the bottle and settled into a comfortable chair with a glass, tipped vodka into it and raised the glass to his lips. He couldn’t swallow. Vodka, everyone told him, didn’t smell, but something was seriously wrong.

  Farrow hurled the glass at the wall and picked up the newspaper. A headline screamed:

  MONSTER STRIKES A THIRD TIME

  The maniac who attacks lonely women after dark has claimed another victim. Her body, drained of . . .

  Not only women, he remembered, men too had been attacked. He read critically; this was the story he’d been working on, and whoever had taken over wasn’t up to the job.

  . . . blood.

  Just reading about it gave him a raging thirst.

  He went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. He could swallow the tasteless stuff; it helped, but didn’t satisfy. He popped a frozen meal in the microwave and ate; again it didn’t satisfy. What he needed was . . .

  The hours dragged until the evening when he gave up and rang the number that Nurse Terry had given him.

  “Clubhouse. Edgar Shaw speaking.”

  “I need help—”

  “What kind of help? How did you get this number?”

  “I have a thirst for blood. Nurse Terry.”

  “Wait, please.” He heard a rustling of paper. “Are you Vic Farrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “She has mentioned your name, Mr Farrow, and I beli
eve we can help you. Take down these directions to—”

  The address was a select mews off a busy High Street and Farrow whistled when he considered how much the conversion must have cost. The door opened promptly when he pressed the bell push.

  “Mr. Farrow? My name is Edgar Shaw and I am the duty welcomer. Please don’t call me Ed – I dislike that immensely. Through here.”

  There was a heavy drape sealing off the halls, but it was Shaw who intrigued Farrow.

  The official welcomer was immaculately groomed and expensively dressed in charcoal grey, his hair touched by the subtlest of waves. He might have been ushering Farrow into the presence of royalty, and anyone less like an ‘Ed’ was difficult to visualize.

  Farrow found himself in a long room with a bar at the far end and large leather armchairs scattered around. The place suggested a superior Conservative club; certainly it was impossible to imagine Edgar Shaw desperate for blood.

  A lightning glance around the room did not put Farrow at ease. The men appeared well-to-do and professionally barbered; the few ladies would not have been out of place at a Covent Garden first night. He saw a couple playing chess, a young man intent over a computer screen, someone quietly reading.

  These people were not part of Farrow’s usual circle; each had an air of confidence, arrogance even. He wondered if he’d come to the right place.

  “Is Nurse Terry here?” he asked.

  “Not yet, but she’s expected.” Shaw smiled, and suddenly seemed much younger. “I suppose we’re not quite what you expected but, by chance, the members here this evening long ago mastered their natural inclination. Now let me get you your first drink.”

  He led Farrow the length of the room, paused at the bar counter and clapped his hands.

  “Fellow members, tonight we welcome another with the age-old thirst. A toast, please, for Mr Vic Farrow.”

  They paused in whatever they were doing and gathered as a barman lined up a row of cut-crystal glasses and carefully filled them. Farrow was given the smallest.

  “Life everlasting,” Shaw said, and raised his glass.