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

by Stephen Jones

  The vampire’s body began to shake. It thrashed from side to side, then crumbled like a hollow shell. Pieces of flesh dropped away. A glass eye rolled across the cellar. The skin shattered. Something was breaking free.

  Shards of Sebastian flew in all directions, and others settled into the box. Most of his face came to rest beside the other face beneath it.

  Felicia Lamb lay among wax fragments, the sharp shaft of Callender’s broken cane embedded in her breast.

  Callender wondered why she didn’t bleed. He had no way of knowing that there was not a drop of blood inside her. She was as white as a marble statue. Her golden hair, unleashed as he had never seen it, spread round her head like a halo. And all about her were parts of a waxen man, the remnants of Newcastle’s last cruel joke.

  Callender thought he saw Felicia’s lashes flutter, her lips part, her fingers reaching toward her shattered heart. Then she was still, garbed in a gown of pure white silk. She looked like a sleeping angel.

  His candle flared for an instant.

  Callender laughed. He could hardly help himself. He picked up the bits of wax and smashed them underfoot. He found another bottle and broke its neck, drinking from sharp glass that sliced into his lips.

  He heard footsteps overhead, and knowing that they came for him, he laughed again.

  They found him there, his mouth dribbling blood, beside the punctured corpse of his beloved. The sound of his incoherent voice had drawn them to him.

  There were three men in blue, one of them holding a lantern in his bandaged hand. Behind them came Nigel Stone, apologetically brandishing a key. The light sent shadows shimmering all over the wine cellar.

  “Mr Callender,” said the chief constable. “What have you been doing to Miss Lamb?”

  XI. The Conscientious Cousin

  Mr and Mrs Nigel Stone sat side by side on a horsehair settee and shared a bottle of fine old sherry.

  Their wedding might have been a hasty one, but, as Mrs Stone observed, a hasty wedding was better than none at all. And furthermore, their union served to disperse the sadness that might have blighted both their lives.

  “To think that I have married a hero!” chirped Mrs Stone.

  “Not really,” murmured Mr Stone. “I only let the fellows in to capture him.”

  “But you might have been killed!” she said.

  “I suppose so. He did have another half of that stick in his coat.”

  “I have found a brave man and inherited a fortune in the same week,” said Mrs Stone. “Was any woman ever so blessed?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mr Stone. “I’ve come home from years in the wilderness, and right away I’ve found a charming bride. Surely I’m the lucky one.”

  The bride and groom exchanged chaste kisses.

  “Did you hear that Madame Tussaud will be putting poor Felicia and your cousin on display?” asked Mrs Stone. “They will be part of a large addition to The Dead Room. It pleases me to think that the poor girl won’t be forgotten.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr Stone.

  “Would it be in bad taste for us to visit the display?”

  “Just as you think best, Penelope.”

  Mrs Stone took a thoughtful sip of sherry. “And what of Mr Newcastle?” she asked. “Has he been found?”

  “Not a trace of him, I’m afraid.” said Mr Stone. “The police think Reggie might have done away with him as well, and of course that’s what the fool said he’d done when he shoved that stick into Felicia’s heart.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Stone. “Was there much blood?”

  “What? I really didn’t like to look at her, to tell you the truth. She seemed quite clean, though, really, but poor old Reggie had blood all over his mouth.”

  “And had he really lost his mind?”

  “What other explanation could there be for such unchivalrous behavior?” Mr Stone filled both their glasses. “I wonder if they’ll keep him in the madhouse or just take him out and hang him. I wish there were more I could do for him somehow.”

  “I hardly think you need concern yourself, after his barbaric treatment of my niece.”

  “As you say, Penelope. At least I did him one good turn.”

  “And what was that?”

  “A small thing, really. I went back to the house the day after all that happened, and I found a packing crate in the hallway.”

  “A packing crate?”

  “Yes, and quite a large one. It was sealed, and the labels were on it, so I took it on myself to have it sent on, though heaven knows what business Reggie could have in India.”

  “India?”

  “It was addressed to some fellow in Calcutta. I don’t remember who it was, but it looked to me like some sort of Spanish name.”

  “A Spanish name?” said Mrs Stone. “Oh, dear!”

  NEIL GAIMAN

  Fifteen Cards from a Vampire Tarot

  NEIL GAIMAN’S 2002 NOVEL American Gods won science fiction’s Hugo Award and horror’s Bram Stoker Award. His latest novel, Coraline, a dark fantasy for children which he had been writing for a decade, was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic and even managed to beat its predecessor in the awards stakes.

  On the illustrated front, his first Sandman graphic novel in seven years, entitled Endless Nights, is published by DC Comics and illustrated by seven different artists; 1602 is a new alternate-history mini-series from Marvel, and he has collaborated with artist Dave McKean on the children’s picture book The Wolves in the Walls.

  As well as all the above, The New York Times best-selling author has somehow also found the time to make a short vampire film entitled A Short Film About John Bolton, and he has recently started writing a new novel, with the working title of Anansi Boys.

  Although the author only had a poem in the original edition of this book, we decided to replace it with the more unusual narrative that follows. “One day, perhaps, I’ll finish the major arcana,” confides Gaiman. “Seven cards, and seven little stories, still to go. And then there’s the minor arcana.”

  Originally published in a volume showcasing the work of a number of different artists, “You can draw your own pictures,” invites the author.

  0. The Fool

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  The young man had come to the graveyard every night for a month now. He had watched the moon paint the cold granite and the fresh marble and the old moss-covered stones and statues in its cold light. He had started at shadows and at owls. He had watched courting couples, and drunks, and teenagers taking nervous short cuts: all the people who come through the graveyard at night.

  He slept in the day. Nobody cared. He stood alone in the night and shivered, in the cold. It came to him then that he was standing on the edge of a precipice.

  The voice came from the night all around him, in his head and out of it.

  “What do you want?” it repeated.

  He wondered if he dared to turn and look, realized that he did not.

  “Well? You come here every night, in a place where the living are not welcome. I have seen you. Why?”

  “I wanted to meet you,” he said, without looking around. “I want to live for ever.” His voice cracked as he said it.

  He had stepped over the precipice. There was no going back. In his imagination, he could already feel the prick of needle-sharp fangs in his neck, a sharp prelude to eternal life.

  The sound began. It was low and sad, like the rushing of an underground river. It took him several long seconds to recognize it as laughter.

  “This is not life,” said the voice.

  It said nothing more, and after a while the young man knew he was alone in the graveyard.

  I. The Magician

  They asked St Germain’s manservant if his master was truly a thousand years old, as it was rumoured he had claimed.

  “How would I know?” the man replied. “I have only been in the master’s employ for three hundred years.”

  II. The Priestess


  Her skin was pale, and her eyes were dark and her hair was dyed a raven black. She went on a daytime talk show and proclaimed herself a vampire queen. She showed the cameras her dentally crafted fangs, and brought on ex-lovers who, in various stages of embarrassment, admitted that she had drawn their blood, and that she drank it.

  “You can be seen in a mirror, though?” asked the talk-show hostess. She was the richest woman in America, and had got that way by bringing the freaks and the hurt and the lost out in front of her cameras, and showing their pain to the world.

  The studio audience laughed.

  The woman seemed slightly affronted. “Yes. Contrary to what people may think, vampires can be seen in mirrors and on television cameras.”

  “Well, that’s one thing you finally got right, honey,” said the hostess of the daytime talk show. But she put her hand over her microphone as she said it, and it was never broadcast.

  V. The Pope

  This is my body, he said, two thousand years ago. This is my blood.

  It was the only religion that delivered exactly what it promised: life eternal, for its adherents.

  There are some of us alive today who remember him. And some of us claim that he was a messiah, and some think that he was just a man with very special powers. But that misses the point. Whatever he was, he changed the world.

  VI. The Lovers

  After she was dead, she began to come to him, in the night. He grew pale, and there were deep circles under his eyes. At first, they thought he was mourning her. And then, one night, he was gone from the village.

  It was hard for them to get permission to disinter her, but get it they did. They hauled up the coffin and they unscrewed it. Then they prised what they found out of the box. There was six inches of water in the bottom of the box: the iron had coloured it a deep, orange-ish red. There were two bodies in the coffin: hers, of course, and his. He was more decayed than she was. Later, someone wondered aloud how both of them had fitted in a coffin built for one. Especially given her condition, he said; for she was very obviously very pregnant.

  This caused some confusion, for she had not been noticeably pregnant when she was buried.

  Still later they dug her up for one last time, at the request of the church authorities, who had heard rumours of what had been found in the grave. Her stomach was flat. The local doctor told them all that it had just been gas and bloating as the stomach swelled. The townsfolk nodded sagely, almost as if they believed him.

  VII. The Chariot

  It was genetic engineering at its finest: they created a breed of humans to sail the stars: they needed to be possessed of impossibly long lifespans, for the distances between the stars were vast; space was limited, and their food supplies needed to be compact; they needed to be able to process local sustenance, and to colonize the worlds they found with their own kind.

  The homeworld wished the colonists well, and sent them on their way. They removed all traces of their location from the ships’ computers first, however, to be on the safe side.

  X. The Wheel of Fortune

  What did you do with the doctor? she asked, and laughed. I thought the doctor came in here ten minutes ago.

  I’m sorry, I said. I was hungry. And we both laughed.

  I’ll go find her for you, she said.

  I sat in the doctor’s office, picking my teeth. After a while the assistant came back.

  I’m sorry, she said. The doctor must have stepped out for a while. Can I make an appointment for you for next week?

  I shook my head. I’ll call, I said. But, for the first time that day, I was lying.

  XI. Justice

  “It is not human,” said the magistrate, “and it does not deserve the trial of a human thing.”

  “Ah,” said the advocate. “But we cannot execute without a trial: there are the precedents. A pig that had eaten a child who had fallen into its sty. It was found guilty and hanged. A swarm of bees, found guilty of stinging an old man to death, was burned by the public hangman. We owe the hellish creature no less.”

  The evidence against the baby was incontestable. It amounted to this: a woman had brought the baby from the country. She said it was hers, and that her husband was dead. She lodged at the house of a coach maker and his wife. The old coach maker complained of melancholia and lassitude, and was, with his wife and their lodger, found dead by their servant. The baby was alive in its cradle, pale and wide-eyed, and there was blood on its face and lips.

  The jury found the little thing guilty, beyond all doubt, and condemned it to death.

  The executioner was the town butcher. In the sight of all the town he cut the babe in two, and flung the pieces onto the fire.

  His own baby had died earlier that same week. Infant mortality in those days was a hard thing but common. The butcher’s wife had been brokenhearted.

  She had already left the town, to see her sister in the city, and, within the week, the butcher joined her. The three of them – butcher, wife and babe – made the prettiest family you ever did see.

  XIV. Temperance

  She said she was a vampire. One thing I knew already, the woman was a liar. You could see it in her eyes. Black as coals they were, but she never quite looked at you, staring at invisibles over your shoulder, behind you, above you, two inches in front of your face.

  “What does it taste like?” I asked her. This was in the parking lot, behind the bar. She worked the graveyard shift in the bar, mixed the finest drinks but never drank anything herself.

  “V8 juice,” she said. “Not the low-sodium kind, but the original. Or a salty gazpacho.”

  “What’s gazpacho?”

  “A sort of cold vegetable soup.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No.”

  “So you drink blood? Just like I drink V8?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “If you get sick of drinking V8 you can drink something else.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I don’t like V8 much.”

  “See?” she said. “In China it’s not blood we drink, it’s spinal fluid.”

  “What’s that taste like?”

  “Nothing much. Clear broth.”

  “You’ve tried it?”

  “I know people.”

  I tried to figure out if I could see her reflection in the wing mirror of the truck we were leaning against, but it was dark, and I couldn’t tell.

  XV. The Devil

  This is his portrait. Look at his flat, yellow teeth, his ruddy face. He has horns, and he carries a foot-long wooden stake in one hand, and his wooden mallet in the other.

  Of course, there is no such thing as the devil.

  XVI. The Tower

  The tower’s built of stone and spite,

  Without a sound, without a sight,

  – The biter bit, the bitter bite

  (It’s better to be out at night).

  XVII. The Star

  The older, richer, ones follow the winter, taking the long nights where they find them. Still, they prefer the northern hemisphere to the south.

  “You see that star?“ they say, pointing to one of the stars in the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. “We came from there. One day we shall return.”

  The younger ones sneer and jeer and laugh at this. Still, as the years become centuries, they find themselves becoming homesick for a place they have never been; and they find the northern climes reassuring, as long as Draco twines about the greater and lesser Bears, up near chill Polaris.

  XIX. The Sun

  “Imagine”, she said, “that there was something in the sky that was going to hurt you, perhaps even kill you. A huge eagle or something. Imagine that if you went out in daylight the eagle would get you.”

  “Well,” she said. “That’s how it is for us. Only it’s not a bird. It’s bright, beautiful, dangerous daylight, and I haven’t seen it now in a hundred years.”

  XX. Judgment

  It’s a way of talking about lust without talking about
lust, he told them.

  It is a way of talking about sex, and fear of sex, and death, and fear of death, and what else is there to talk about?

  XXII. The World

  “You know the saddest thing,” she said. “The saddest thing is that we’re you.”

  I said nothing.

  “In your fantasies,” she said, “my people are just like you. Only better. We don’t die, or age, or suffer from pain or cold or thirst. We’re snappier dressers. We possess the wisdom of the ages. And if we crave blood, well, it is no more than the way you people crave food, or affection, or sunlight – and besides, it gets us out of the house. Crypt. Coffin. Whatever. That’s the fantasy.”

  “And the reality is?” I asked her.

  “We’re you,” she said. “We’re you, with all your fuck-ups and all the things that make you human – all your fears and lonelinesses and confusions . . . none of that gets better.

  “But we’re colder than you are. Deader. I miss daylight and food and knowing how it feels to touch someone and care. I remember life, and meeting people as people and not just as things to feed on or control, and I remember what it was to feel something, anything, happy or sad or anything . . .” And then she stopped.

  “Are you crying?” I asked.

  “We don’t cry,” she told me.

  Like I said, the woman was a liar.

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Vintage Domestic

  STEVE RASNIC TEM LIVES IN Denver, Colorado, with his wife, horror author Melanie Tern.

  He has had more than 250 short stories published in such magazines and anthologies as Weirdbook, Whispers, Fantasy Tales, Twilight Zone, Crimewave, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Third Alternative, New Terrors 1, Shadows, Cutting Edge, MetaHorror, Dark Terrors, Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, White of the Moon, The Children of Cthulhu, Gathering the Bones, Great Ghost Stories, Dark Arts, Darkside 3 and various volumes of The Years Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.