Vampire Stories to Tell in the Dark

by Anthony Masters

  Squeezing his way cautiously out of the window and clambering over the fence without being seen, Vic walked slowly home. Why had Maxted been wheeling away a cage like that? He had only met him once or twice but Vic knew he was a much-respected local citizen: captain of the local cricket team, member of the Rotary club and general do-gooder, with a pleasant, open personality and known to be kind and helpful to his small staff. A good boss. But what was in the cage?

  Vic knew he couldn’t mention the incident to his father for fear of upsetting him further. He went to bed, intending to sleep on the problem, but in the early hours he suddenly found himself wide awake, fancying he had heard a sound, but muzzily wondering if he had been dreaming. Suddenly there was a low moan, and he sat up, shivering, his legs refusing to move. Forcing himself, Vic stumbled out of bed and ran downstairs.

  His father was slumped in a chair with blood on his neck. Something was moving on the ceiling in the darkness. As Vic fumbled for the switch he heard the beating of wings, and when light finally flooded the room he saw the window was open – despite all Don’s security precautions.

  Rushing to his father’s side, Vic immediately realized the wound in Don’s neck was much deeper than he had thought. Ripping the cloth off the table, he tried to stanch the blood, and just as he was succeeding his mother appeared at the door.

  ‘Get an ambulance,’ Vic yelled at her.

  ‘Can’t let him get away with it,’ his father muttered.

  ‘Who?’ asked Vic.

  ‘Destroying the laboratory’s reputation – just to breed the damn things. Crazy. He was told to stop. I told him to stop. But he’s carrying on. He’s trained the creatures to attack and to return to him. He must have been near by. Now he’ll pick us off one by one.’ He talked on, pleading with Vic to do something, eventually collapsing into delirium as the ambulance sped him away.

  Vic went to look at the window in the front room, and examining it carefully noticed the catch had been forced from the outside. Sick with fear, he knew there was only one thing to do: he must return to the lab straightaway, giving himself no time to chicken out. He squeezed in through the window again and crept quietly in the half-light towards the main laboratory. Then he froze.

  Someone was in the kitchen, drinking coffee and writing feverishly on a lined pad. It was Maxted. Vic hesitated, staring nervously round the room. Then, without warning, something flew at him – huge, dark and furry. It hit him with such force that he fell against the wall. His head reeling, Vic stared up at it, realizing to his horror he was gazing at a giant bat. He heard the flapping of its dry wings, saw the mouse-like head, the bulbous eyes deep set, the teeth sharp as needles. Then, with unerring accuracy, the bat fastened its teeth in his neck.

  Vic fell to the floor, thrashing wildly, tearing at the thing, but it clung on, its incisors deep in a fold of his neck and the bright-red blood spurting out of the wound. He rolled, but the bat still clung, and although he tried to claw it away, the creature was like a leech. Finally, just as he was weakening, a surge of fury swept over him, and with renewed strength he tore the bat away, the blood streaming down his fingers.

  Desperately, he ran to the window and tried to lever up the security catch, but he couldn’t free it and once again he heard the fluttering above him. He had to get the window open, but he still couldn’t work out how to do it. He pushed, pulled – and it suddenly swung out. The bat dived, Vic ducked and fell, this time cracking his head on the steel filing cabinet. As the dark tunnel rushed towards him, he saw Maxted standing by the kitchen door, furiously angry, shouting. The bat hovered, and then dived once more.

  Vic came to and looked at his watch. He had been unconscious for over five minutes. Shaking, he stumbled to his feet, went over to one of the work-benches and leaned against it, trying to recover. Then he caught sight of an outstretched body in the doorway. Simon Maxted lay in a pool of blood, his throat torn out.

  Fearfully, Vic began to search the lab, but could find no trace of the giant bat. The window was still open, so he assumed that once the thing had gorged and become satiated, it had flown out into the night. What Maxted obviously hadn’t realized was that the thing would not just be content to suck one victim dry.

  Vic went over to the phone and called the police. Then he made sure all the windows of the lab were well fastened and all doors closed. When the squad arrived he was at the front of the building, carefully checking the sky.

  When Vic’s father had partially recovered, he told the police shakily what he knew.

  ‘A giant fruit bat had never been bred in captivity before, but Maxted succeeded. He was a brilliant scientist, but he knew the other directors would never allow him to continue with such an experiment – it would have been completely against the laboratory’s policy. We discovered what he was attempting and tried to dissuade him, but when he refused we were too weak to prevent him. When Professor Simmons and I saw the result – that enormous blood-sucking bat, and realized he was training it like a hawk – we threatened to report him, so he set the thing on Simmons and then on me.’ He lay back in bed, staring out beyond the policemen at the foot of the bed. ‘Nurse,’ he called. ‘Can you close that window?’

  A few hours later, Don called Vic from the hospital, in considerable agitation.

  ‘I think Terry should be investigated.’

  ‘Who’s Terry?’ asked Vic in bewilderment.

  ‘Maxted’s son. He’s also a scientist and I know they were very close. He was fascinated by his father’s experiments and was working from a lab in his cottage just outside Weymouth. I think the police should get to him. Now.’

  Vic rang the station at once and gave the investigating officer Terry Maxted’s address, but when the local CID called, the cottage was deserted, and the equipment in the small laboratory hastily ripped out. Reports were coming in of something very large circling in the night sky.

  ‘What’s that?’ hissed Jon.

  Tom looked up to the arched ceiling of the crypt. Was that something fluttering?

  ‘But do you think Maxted’s son is still breeding them secretly somewhere?’ asked Rob.

  Tom shrugged. ‘Vic doesn’t know.’

  There was a long, uneasy silence until Rob cleared his throat. ‘We had a bad experience last year, didn’t we, Jack?’ Jack shuddered. ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Shall I tell the story—or will you?’

  ‘You tell it,’ said Jack.

  7

  Family Thirst

  Jack and I live near Newquay and we got a holiday job fixing up an old fishing trawler that was hauled up on the beach. She was called Grey Eyes and had been accidentally rammed in a storm. The family that owned the trawler, the Michaelsons, were quite happy for us to carry out the repairs, even though they were quite extensive. We were both delighted, because the job was worth a good deal of money and we had been promised payment at top rates.

  When we talked to the locals they told us that the Michaelsons didn’t use their boat for fishing, just to live on, and scoffingly dismissed them as ‘water gypsies’ and ‘ageing hippies’, but it didn’t matter to us. They were our first clients and we wanted them to be really pleased with what we did.

  While Jack and I carried out the work, the family rented an old beach hut in which they proposed to live. The Michaelsons moved their possessions overnight and never came out during the day, only emerging in the early evening, dressed in home-made clothes and certainly looking rather weird. Leslie and Arabella were the parents, somewhere in middle age, and Emelia was their teenage daughter. She was beautiful, and I know Jack was attracted to her – and she to him. They would walk up and down the beach in the twilight, talking and holding hands until I realized, with a twinge of envy, that my brother had fallen in love.

  One morning, while the Michaelsons were in their hut with the door locked as usual, old Frank Lombard, a local fisherman and well-known Nosy Parker, came up for a gossip. He was full of some story the coastguards had told him.

>   ‘There’s been more disappearances at sea on this part of the coastline than any other – that’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘Been bad weather for a long time,’ Jack reminded him, and I said, ‘You sure of that?’ Frank was a real old yarn-spinner and we didn’t like him to get away with anything – which he did most of the time.

  He shook his grizzled head and packed a pipe with blackened tobacco with obvious relish. ‘Those ships were like the Mary Celeste,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘Empty, drifting. God only knows where the crews went. Nothing to do with the weather.’

  ‘I haven’t seen anything in the papers,’ said Jack suspiciously.

  ‘That’s because they’re hushing it up.’ Frank’s eyes were full of morbid delight. ‘Just in case folks get too frightened of their own shadows.’

  ‘Since when have the papers hushed anything up?’ I asked, but he ignored me. Frank didn’t like interruptions.

  ‘There’s been a couple of disappearances recently – but there’s going to be many more.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s something out there.’

  ‘A sea monster?’ Jack almost laughed, only just managing to hold back his disbelief.

  ‘Maybe. There’s something preying on seafarers and that’s the way I see it.’ Eventually he ambled off, and we immediately dismissed the whole business. He was well known for exaggeration as well as being the great bore of Newquay, but though neither of us admitted it, this story did leave a lingering unease. I didn’t like the idea of the crews just disappearing without trace. But, of course, it was only one of Frank’s yarns.

  ‘I’m going to take a look at the bilges,’ said Jack. ‘I think one of them’s still going to leak – however much caulking we’ve done.’

  He was away some time. Then he called me rather abruptly.

  Crouched together in the hold, he showed me the metal cask he had found.

  ‘Thought I’d take a look at what’s inside,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up into the light.’

  We clambered back on deck and he poured some of the contents of the cask on to the planking. The liquid ran red.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Must be wine. I saw a lot of these casks in the Michaelsons’ hut when I went to visit Emelia the other night.’

  ‘That colour?’ I sniffed, but it didn’t smell of anything in particular. ‘Maybe I should have a taste.’

  ‘No.’ Jack was immediately agitated.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It could be anything. Poison. Some chemical,’ he suggested. ‘Besides, if anything happened to you, I wouldn’t be able to finish this job for ages.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said laughing. ‘Seriously though, I wonder why they bothered to shift all those other casks into the hut. Do you think this red stuff’s valuable?’

  ‘Valuable to them obviously.’ We both gazed at each other, our curiosity rising, despite our determination to pay attention only to the job in hand.

  ‘I’ll tell you what.’

  ‘Yes?’ But Jack was already shaking his head. He knew what I was thinking.

  ‘Let’s go and take a look.’

  ‘Spy on them? We can’t do that. Emelia would be upset.’ He looked shifty.

  The old cliché was true, I thought bitterly. Love is blind.

  Jack put the cask back in the bilges and we clambered down the ladder that was propped up against the trawler’s bows. It was lunchtime and the beach was deserted. The sun was very hot for late spring, but I knew it was the rising anxiety that was really responsible for making us both sweat so heavily.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a quick peek.’

  Jack shrugged and followed grudgingly. But I knew his curiosity was slowly getting the better of him.

  We crept up to the Michaelsons’ ramshackle hut and furtively tried to peer through the grimy window. Unfortunately a large sheet of cardboard had been nailed in place and completely concealed the interior.

  ‘Now what?’ breathed Jack.

  ‘Maybe the door’s open.’

  ‘You can’t just walk in!’

  ‘Why not?’ Suddenly I was absolutely desperate to know what was inside. But the door was locked.

  ‘We’ve got to stop this spying,’ said Jack rather priggishly.

  ‘On your girlfriend?’ I goaded, annoyed and disappointed at not being able to satisfy what was now insatiable curiosity.

  ‘I love her,’ Jack said simply and directly and I knew he meant every word of it. Jack is far more passionate than I, and I could sense that Emelia was fast becoming an obsession.

  ‘She’s weird.’ We’d withdrawn down the beach a little, but were still talking in whispers.

  ‘She’s beautiful. So shut up!’

  ‘And I still say she’s weird.’

  ‘What do you want? A punch in the face?’

  He was getting really worked up now, and as he is bigger than me I decided to back off.

  ‘Hey – look at that!’ I suddenly noticed part of the planking on the other side of the beach hut had rotted away, leaving a small hole. ‘Bet we could see through there,’ I said hopefully, trying to encourage him.

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘Come on! We’ve got to check this out – whatever “this” is. And you know you’ll feel better about Emelia then.’

  He followed reluctantly as I tried to walk quietly over the pebbles, but they still made an incredibly loud scrunching sound.

  As we crouched down I could see that an attempt had been made to block the hole, but the piece of tin they had used had fallen away.

  ‘Blimey,’ whispered Jack directly his eye was pressed to the planking. ‘I don’t get this.’

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded, in growing frustration.

  ‘It is weird.’ His voice trembled slightly.

  ‘Let me see!’ I could hardly bear the waiting now.

  ‘I just don’t believe it.’ Jack was getting into a terrible state.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘OK. But don’t make a noise – whatever you do.’

  I squinted through the hole and with a creeping unease saw the three Michaelsons stretched out in hammocks, a cask below them and three empty glasses, stained red, on the table. They were all asleep, heavy and contented, their chests rising and falling in happy repose. I would have gasped out loud had Jack not suddenly grabbed my wrist.

  We kept staring, taking it in turns to look, amazed at the sight. Then our amazement gave way to the first trickling chill of fear. There was something very unnatural going on here.

  We moved slowly and cautiously away from hut. The beach looked as ordinary and innocent as ever, with the sun shining and the calm, glassy sea lapping gently at the pebbles. Everywhere there was normality – except in the battered beach hut with its equally battered nameplate which read: DUNROAMIN.

  ‘What had they been drinking?’ I asked Jack, as we walked slowly down the beach towards the sea.

  ‘Wine. What else? They’re a bunch of alcoholics. I’d like to save her. Take Emelia away from them.’ But he sounded more anxious than condemning, as if he was trying to shut something out of his mind.

  ‘What are we going to do then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Let me think.’

  But was it really wine, I asked myself, turning back and gazing at the hut. Then I looked into my brother’s eyes. Was he thinking what I was?

  We returned to working on Grey Eyes, and the long, lazy afternoon stretched around us without a breath of wind, as we hammered and caulked the chine-built sides of the trawler that we were now sure hadn’t been used for fishing in years. She didn’t even smell offish. Then I noticed something coming in with the tide. The object nudged against the bank of pebbles and resembled an old tarpaulin.

  ‘Jack –’

  We both trudged slowly round to the pebble bank, but it wasn’t a tarpaulin after all. It was the corpse of a middle-aged man in a blue sweater and jeans, flo
ating on his front. He wore long seaman’s boots.

  ‘He looks kind of deflated, doesn’t he?’ said Jack, once again horribly voicing my own thoughts.

  Then we heard a choking cough behind us and wheeled round to see Frank, puffing on his pipe, gloomy pleasure written all over his wrinkled face. ‘Another one.’

  I stared at him blankly. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s what they all look like when they’re washed up.’

  ‘You mean – the men on the boats?’ Jack asked slowly. ‘You said they went missing.’

  ‘Didn’t want to alarm you – not two young kids like yourselves. Besides, the police told us to keep mum while they were investigating, like.’ Frank was really enjoying himself now. ‘Sucked dry,’ he muttered. ‘Like they all were.’

  ‘What are we going to do with the body?’

  ‘Leave it to us.’ There was a new authority to his voice which took me by surprise.

  ‘Who’s us?’ I asked.

  ‘The fishermen,’ he said. ‘We’ll deal with the body. But if only we knew the cause

  It was then that I decided to tell Frank what we had seen in the beach hut.

  Jack, however, was frowning. ‘Aren’t we jumping to conclusions?’ he asked. ‘In my opinion the Michaelsons have got a drink problem. They need help.’

  ‘They’ve got a problem all right,’ said Frank, ‘but it’s the innocent seafarers who need the help.’

  There was a long and brooding silence during which I saw Jack’s eyes fill with angry tears.

  ‘We’ll drag the corpse out and shove it under that dinghy.’ Frank was completely in charge now.

  ‘Aren’t you going to call the police?’ I asked.

  ‘In due course.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘You carry on repairing that trawler. I don’t want the Michaelsons alerted.’ He turned to gaze at the hut with a vengeful eye.

  ‘When will the police come?’ asked Jack insistently.

  ‘When we’re finished. But you work, you hear. Come sundown you’ll go home.’ His voice was harsh and I realized that he saw himself and his comrades as vigilantes.