Collected Stories (4.1)

by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  The Reverend John Cole did not consider the problem very long. A bite from a baby werevamp is a great decision maker.

  “Yes,” he nodded, “we have been chosen. Let us gird up our loins, gather the sinews of battle, and go forth to destroy the evil ones.”

  “Cool.” Willie nodded vigorously. “All that blood. Can I cut ’er ’ead off?”

  If anyone had been taking the air at two o’clock next morning, they might have seen an interesting sight. A large clergyman, armed with a crucifix and a coal hammer, was creeping across the churchyard, followed by a small boy with a tent peg in one hand and a light hunting rifle in the other.

  They came to the cottage and Mr. Cole first turned the handle, then pushed the door open with his crucifix. The room beyond was warm and cosy; firelight painted a dancing pattern on the ceiling, brass lamp twinkled and glittered like a suspended star, and it was as though a brightly designed nest had been carved out of the surrounding darkness. John Cole strode into the room like a black marble angel of doom and, raising his crucifix, bellowed, “I have come to drive out the iniquity, burn out the sin. For, thus saith the Lord, cursed be you who hanker after darkness.”

  There was a sigh, a whimper—maybe a hissing whimper. Carola was crouched in one corner, her face whiter than a slab of snow in moonlight, her eyes dark-pools of terror, her lips deep, deep red, as they had been brought to life by a million, blood-tinted kisses, and her hands were pale ghost-moths, beating out their life against the wall of intolerance. The vicar lowered his cross and the whimper grew up and became a cry of despair.

  “Why?”

  “Where is the foul babe that did bite my ankle?” Carola’s staring eyes never left the crucifix towering over her. “I took him... took him... to his grandmother.”

  “There is more of your kind? Are you legion? Has the devil’s spawn been hatched?”

  “We are on the verge of extinction.”

  The soul of the Reverend John Cole rejoiced when he saw the deep terror in the lovely eyes, and he tasted the fruits of true happiness when she shrieked. He bunched the front of her dress up between trembling fingers and jerked her first upright, then down across the table. She made a little hissing sound; an instinctive token of defiance, and for a moment the delicate ivory fangs were bared and nipped the clergyman’s hand, but that was all. There was no savage fight for existence, no calling on the dark gods; just a token resistance, the shedding of a tiny dribble of blood, then complete surrender. She lay back across the table, her long, black hair brushing the floor, as though this were the inevitable conclusion from which she had been too long withheld. The vicar placed the tip of the tent peg over her heart, and taking the coal hammer from the overjoyed Willie, shouted the traditional words.

  “Get thee to hell. Burn for ever and a day. May thy foul carcase be food for jackals, and thy blood drink for pariah dogs.”

  The first blow sent the tent peg in three or four inches, and the sound of a snapping rib grated on the clergyman’s ear, so that for a moment he turned his head aside in revulsion. Then, as though alarmed lest his resolve weaken, he struck again, and the blood rose up in a scarlet fountain; a cascade of dancing rubies, each one reflecting the room with its starlike lamp, and the dripping, drenched face of a man with a raised coal hammer. The hammer, like the mailed hand of fate, fell again, and the ruby fountain sank low, then collapsed into a weakly gushing pool. Carola released her life in one long, drawn-out sigh, then became a black and white study in still life.

  “You gotta cut ’er ’ead off,” Willie screamed.

  “Ain’t no good, unless you cut ’er ’ead off and put a sprig of garlic in ’er mouth.”

  But Mr. Cole had, at least temporarily, had a surfeit of blood. It matted his hair, clogged his eyes, salted his mouth, drenched his clothes from neck to waist, and transformed his hands into scarlet claws.

  Willie was fumbling in his jacket pocket.

  “I’ve got me mum’s bread knife here, somewhere. Should go through ’er neck a treat.”

  The reverend gentleman wiped a film of red from his eyes and then daintily shook his fingers.

  “Truly is it said a little child shall lead them. Had I been more mindful of the Lord’s business, I would have brought me a tenon saw.”

  He was not more than half way through his appointed task, when the door was flung back and George entered. He was on the turn. He was either about to “become,” or return to “as was.” His silhouette filled the moonlit doorway, and he became still; a black menace that was no less dangerous because it did not move. Then he glided across the room, round the table and the Reverend John Cole retreated before him.

  George gathered up the mutilated remains of his beloved, then raised agony-filled eyes.

  “We loved—she and I. Surely, that should have forgiven us much. Death we would have welcomed—for what is death, but a glorious reward for having to live. But this...”

  He pointed to the jutting tent peg, the halfsevered head, then looked up questioninglv at the clergyman. Then the Reverend John Cole took up his cross and, holding it before him, he called out in a voice that had been made harsh by the dust of centuries.

  “I am Alpha and Omega, saith the Lord, and into the pit which in before the beginning and after the end shall ye be cast. For you and your kind are a stench and an abomination, and whatever evil is done unto you shall be deemed good in my sight.” The face of George Hardcastle became like an effigy carved from rock. Then it seemed to shimmer, the lines dissolved and ran one into the other; the hairline advanced, while the eyes retreated into deep sockets, and the jaw and nose merged and slithered into a long, pointed snout. The werewolf dropped the mangled remains of its mate and advanced upon her killer.

  “Satanus Avaunt.”

  The Reverend Cole thrust his crucifix forward as though it were a weapon of offence, only to have it wrenched from his grasp and broken by a quick jerk of hair-covered wrists. The werewolf tossed the pieces to one side, then with a howl leaped forward and buried his long fangs into the vicar’s shoulder.

  The two locked figures—one representing good, the other evil—swayed back and forth in the lamplight, and there was no room in either hate-fear-filled brain for the image of one small boy, armed with a rifle. The sharp little cracking sound could barely be heard above the grunting, snarling battle that was being raged near the hanging brass lamp, but the result was soon apparent. The werewolf shrieked, before twisting round and staring at the exuberant Willie, as though in dumb reproach. Then it crashed to the floor. When the clergyman had recovered to look down, he saw the dead face of George Hardcastle, and had he been a little to the right of the sanity frontier, there might well have been terrible doubts.

  “Are you going to finish cutting off’er head?” Willie enquired.

  ***

  They put the Reverend John Cole in a quiet house surrounded by a beautiful garden. Willie Mitcham they placed in a home, as a juvenile court decided, in its wisdom, that he was in need of care and protection. The remains of George and Carola they buried in the churchyard and said some beautiful words over their graves.

  It is a great pity they did not listen to Willie, who after all knew what he was talking about when it came to a certain subject.

  One evening, when the moon was full, two gentlemen who were employed in the house surrounded by the beautiful garden, opened the door, behind which resided all that remained of the Reverend John Cole. They both entered the room and prepared to talk. They never did. One dropped dead from pure, cold terror, and the other achieved a state of insanity which had so far not been reached by one of his patients.

  The Reverend John Cole had been bitten by a baby werevamp, nipped by a female vampire, and clawed and bitten by a full-blooded buck werewolf.

  Only the good Lord above, and the bad one below, knew what he was.

  The Fly-by-Night

  (1976)

  Let it be known that there is the earth and all things that do breathe, eat and wal
k thereon.

  Then there is the underearth and all things that do not breathe, eat or walk, but most certainly exist. They have no flesh, but have substance; they neither spin nor toil, but find much to do; they speak not, but communicate. Their natural habitat is the lower regions of that uncharted country men call Hades, and since time began, they have crawled, slithered or flown between the dark, fire-tipped mountains that border mist-filled valleys.

  But there are those which over countless ages have evolved and become aware. With knowledge comes desire, and after desire comes determination, and after determination comes action. They wormed their way up through the dark tunnels which spiral around the place where lost souls mourn the passing of life, and came at last to the plane of the air-breathers. To some the light was not good and they either perished, or took to haunting the dwelling places of shadows, or ventured forth only when the sky was masked by night clouds. But some adapted, merged into their surroundings and learned to imitate the appetites of man. Such a one was named by the wise men of old as The Flucht-Daemon, but the common people drew upon their own limited vocabulary and called it: The Fly-by-Night.

  The cottage stood on the edge of a great forest and to a person of vivid imagination it appeared to have crawled out from the shelter of giant trees and was now tentatively tasting the sunlight. A small garden was bordered by a white picket fence, and within its confines neat rows of cabbages, feathery carrots and sturdy potato plants presented a green, patchwork carpet that trembled under the caress of the morning breeze.

  Long ago the cottage had been the dwelling place of a woodcutter, and before that a charcoal burner, but now it was occupied by Newton C. Hatfield and his daughter Celia. Newton was a novelist of some repute; Celia was a would-be actress, who, when resting, tried to follow in her father’s literary footsteps. The third occupant was a black cat who answered to the name of Tobias; a mighty hunter before the Lord, who brought live field mice home, then watched with an expression of profound surprise when Celia jumped up on to a chair and gave a pretty performance of feminine alarm. On such occasions Newton would corner the mouse, take it out to the edge of the forest and there release it.

  “Damn nonsense,” he growled. “Frightened of a creature that will fit into the palm of your hand.”

  “But it might run up my legs,” Celia protested.

  “What the hell would it want to run up your legs for?” her father enquired. “It hasn’t got the morals of some of those types you go about with.”

  “You are a disgusting old man.”

  “Disgusting I may be; old never.”

  One day Tobias brought home a bird.

  It was a fine healthy starling that was in no way hurt, for Tobias treated his victims gently, being content to take joy in the hunt, then sit back and wait for the applause. The bird, once released, flew round the room and made a futile attempt to force its way through the windowpanes. Celia was full of concern and hampered her father’s efforts to capture it by clutching his arm and exhorting him to be careful—don’t hurt it—poor little thing, and other compassionate ejaculations. Newton finally netted it with a looped bath towel, then released it out the front door and watched the black streak as it sped for the nearest tree.

  “Women!” he shook his head with deep concern. “I will never understand you. You go up the wall when a tiny mouse stirs a paw in your direction, but go all ga-ga when a bloody great bird goes flapping round the place. Do you realize if that had got entangled in your hair, you would have had something to scream about?”

  “But… but it was only a poor little bird.”

  “And what about that ferocious tiger we’ve got sitting under the table?”

  Celia bent down and tickled Tobias’s ears, an action which earned his full approval.

  “He was only acting according to his nature.”

  Newton made straight for his typewriter.

  “I give up.”

  Two days later Tobias brought home something that was not a bird or a mouse.

  They found it when they came home one evening after a visit to town. It was crawling over the carpet and made a strange twittering sound when they entered the room. Newton swore and glared at Tobias, who was crouched in one corner and watching his capture with intense interest. Celia ran forward with a cry of concern.

  “Oh, poor little thing.”

  Newton grabbed his daughter’s arm and pulled her back.

  “Hold it. Before you go into raptures, I should first of all find out what it is.”

  “It’s some kind of bird.”

  “Is it?” Newton bent forward and examined the creature carefully. “Well, I’ve never seen a bird that looked like that. Look for yourself.”

  The creature—before it unleashed its tail—was about six inches long and had a pair of black leathery wings that assisted it to crawl over the carpet. But when the tail suddenly uncoiled, and it appeared to have been tucked away between the minute hind legs, another three inches was added to its length. Newton went out into the hall and returned with a thick walking stick.

  “You’re not going to hurt it?” Celia exclaimed.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” He brushed her to one side, then inserting the point of the stick under one wing, flipped the creature over on to its back. “Now, have you ever seen anything like that?”

  A tiny, black fur-covered body, which terminated in bent hind legs; a narrow little white and completely hairless face that was lit by a pair of exquisite blue eyes and surmounted with a mop of shining black hair. The tiny teeth were white, and pointed, the ears tapered, the red lips full and parted. Newton had the impression it was grinning at him.

  “Isn’t it sweet?” Celia said.

  “Sweet!” Newton’s bellow of rage made the creature look up, and its lips slowly closed. “Sweet! That is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, it’s not. I should think it’s some kind of bat.”

  “Ah!” Newton nodded grimly. “A mouse. A flying mouse.”

  “Yes, I know, but it’s not the same. Oh, look at his eyes!” Celia bent forward and assumed a winsome smile. “He’s not a nasty old mouse, is he then? He’s a little dinkom-diddens. Yes, he is… he’s a little dinkom-diddens…”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop it. How the hell you can make noises at a… a monstrosity like that is beyond me. Let me get a shovel and I’ll put it outside somewhere. Preferably as far from the house as possible.”

  Celia made a cry of protest and the creature blinked its blue eyes and seemed to look upon her with approval.

  “How can you be so heartless? It’s probably hurt; otherwise it would be flying about. We must look after it until it’s well. As it was our cat that injured it, that’s the least we can do.”

  “Then let the cat look after it,” Newton suggested.

  Celia ignored this trite remark and busied herself in lining a plastic clothes-basket with one of Newton’s woolen vests, an act of vandalism that roused his freely expressed wrath. Then she gingerly picked the creature up and laid it in this homemade nest. A second later and she was wringing her hands.

  “Gosh, but it’s cold. It’s like ice. Do you think we ought to put a hot water bottle…?”

  “No, I don’t,” Newton roared. “I can’t understand how you were able to touch it. Do you realize, it might have bitten you?”

  “Nonsense. It looks so happy and content. I wouldn’t mind betting it was someone’s pet.”

  Newton shut himself in the back room he used as a study, and Celia, still consoling the creature with comforting words, carried the basket into the kitchen and deposited it near the fire. But what disturbed her was the fact it refused to accept any form of nourishment. She tried bread and milk, some of Tobias’ cat food, a plate of cold lamb, some rice pudding left over from yesterday, and finally a quarter of a pound of smoked ham that had been purchased for Newton’s tea—all to no avail. The creature ignored all offerings, but continued to stare up at Celia with possibly
greater approval than before. Neither did it appear to want to sleep, but lay on Newton’s woolen vest and watched its protector as she moved round the kitchen, and even sometimes peered over the basket when she moved out of sight.

  “I’m awfully worried,” she informed Newton at bedtime. “It hasn’t eaten a thing and is wide awake. Do you think I ought to take it to a vet?”

  “Wouldn’t be a bad idea.” Newton nodded. “A vet could put it to sleep in no time at all.”

  “You are a cruel, unfeeling beast.”

  “Perhaps I am. But that thing gives me the willies.”

  It was three o’clock in the morning when she entered his room. “Dad, wake up. It’s gone.”

  He sat up, turned on the bedside light, then blinked.

  “What! Who’s gone?”

  “It has. 1 went downstairs to see if it was all right, and the back door was open and it’s gone.”

  “Good.”

  “But, Dad, listen. Don’t go back to sleep. Who unlocked the back door?”

  “That’s a point.” He sat up and scratched his head. “You can’t have locked it.”

  “But I did, and I remember the little thing sat up and watched me. Honestly, would 1 go to bed and leave the back door wide open?”

  Newton yawned. “Well, you’re not suggesting that little horror is capable of manipulating a ruddy great rim lock, then turning the door handle? Though now I come to think of it…”

  “I don’t know what to suggest. All I know is, the door is open and the sweet little thing has gone.”

  “Well,” Newton pounded his pillow. “Shut the door, lock it, and go back to bed.”

  “Suppose it wants to come in again?”

  “It will be a very disappointed little horror.”

  Celia departed with much shaking of her head and Newton. grinned as he heard her calling from the back door: “Come boy… come… come.” The answer she received was an expectant cry from Tobias, who assumed he was due for an early morning snack. Presently she remounted the stairs and Newton gave a sigh of relief when he heard her door shut.