A snicker escaped Claudia’s lips. She composed herself, straightened her face and said, “Tell me more.”
“More terrible than all the monsters put together, giant, undead Jesus went about killing and destroying all before him!” Leroy said. “Again, the Founding Fathers got together to come up with a solution for ridding the world of their terrible creation. They invented an immense grenado and fired it from a cannon at the giant undead Jesus. On impact, the grenado blew up and killed the undead giant Jesus. The only thing of undead Jesus to survive was his left buttock.”
“And you believe this story, do you?” Claudia asked.
“Lyman was, without a doubt, quite mad,” Leroy replied. “But he seemed a harmless soul nonetheless. When Massa kicked Lyman out of his house, I caught up with him and paid him five silver coins – half my savings – for it.”
Claudia dreaded her next question but knew that she needed to seduce the fool a little more, as less than a couple of miles remained before they reached Jerusalem. “Can you tell me more?”
“Of course,” Leroy replied.
“Claudia had no clue Black men could talk so much. They always hung their heads around white people and spoke only when told to, but this Leroy fellow was different.
The omnibus came to a screeching halt, as did Leroy’s rambling.
“Looks like we’re here,” Leroy said. “It was a pleasure to meet someone else who has a mind for the stranger things.”
“I am staying not too far from here,” Claudia said. It’s dark, would you be so kind as to escort me home?”
“Well…I don’t know,” Leroy said. “Massa expects I’ll be home directly.”
“I’ll pay you ten silver coin for your trouble,” Claudia said.
Leroy nodded.
####
As the two started walking, Claudia knew that she had no place to stay in Jerusalem – she had planned to kill some old couple and take their home – but now she had a better idea; she needed to be invited back to Leroy’s plantation – she would kill his master and take over the plantation, which would provide her with many slaves from which to drink; hopefully, they all were as exceptional as Leroy. She decided that if Leroy was going to invite her, then he needed a little push.
“So, this collection of the strange and unusual that you’ve amassed, it must be a wonderful thing to lay eyes upon,” she said.
Leroy nodded, saying: “I am mighty proud of it.”
“I’d love to see it, Leroy,” Claudia said, batting her eyes. It would be easy to enthrall him, but enthralled prey tasted bitter and left her with a terrible headache. She would do this the old fashioned way.
“Really? Well okay,” Leroy stuttered. “I was going to invite you back but it’s not the way.”
“The way?”
“Well, yes. A slave inviting a white woman to his plantation? I ain’t trying to get myself whipped and burnt at the stake!”
Claudia gave a laugh. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Who will ever know? We can do whatever we like. I won’t tell, if you won’t.”
Leroy stared at the ground, blushing. He peeked back up at her. She gave him a smile.
“Okay, then,” Leroy said.
####
“Here we are”, said Leroy, waving his hands about at the entrance to the expansive estate. “My cabin is over there. Go on in and make yourself at home. I just have to go tell Massa I’m back”
“Alright,” Claudia said. She rubbed her hand down his arm. “But hurry back.”
Leroy blushed again. He turned on his heels and jogged toward the mansion that loomed in the distance.
Claudia entered Leroy’s cabin. She was happy with what she saw. A small, one bedroom cottage, with a little garden at the front. There were other cabins on either side and behind it, but only a couple of them had the flickering of candlelight coming from their windows. On the walk to the plantation, they had not encountered anyone. Leroy had rambled on some more about his collection but Claudia had been on the alert, her eyes constantly searching, hoping to see no other wandering souls. She was very pleased with the way things were going.
On the mantelpiece, she noticed a jar with some small brown thing floating in it. The label read “Franz I’s Lost Nose.” On another jar containing a whitish liquid, a label read “Ectoplasm,” and a small glass box with a piece of brown moldy fur within, was branded with the words “Yeti Hair.”
Suddenly Leroy appeared behind her. Claudia turned to face him and gave him a smile. She sauntered toward him. “There’s one thing you should know, Leroy.”
“What’s that?” he said as she stood in front of him.
“Yeti’s and ghosts and giant undead Jesuses don’t exist. It’s an altogether different type of undead that you need to worry about!”
“What? You mean wraiths? Revenants?” Leroy said. “By the way, ghosts aren’t actually undead. They’re actually just dead and…”
With blinding speed, a deformed swung out and, with inhuman strength, slapped Leroy on the side of the head.
The blow knocked him senseless, and he fell to the floor not moving.
“Enough of your prattle!” Claudia said with a snarl as she looked down on her food.
She needed to act quickly now, Leroy wouldn’t stay unconscious long and if he awoke too soon a few more blows from her may well finish him off before she could feast.
####
When Leroy did awake, he found himself sitting in his rocking chair. The chair had been dragged into the center of the room. Before him, sitting in his dinner chair, was Claudia, grinning.
“What…What happened”, he said shakily. He tried to stand up but found that his legs and arms were tied. “You’re robbing me? Is that it, Claudia? You want my collection of oddities? Take them!”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Your collection. You actually think anybody with half a brain would be interested in your little collection? You really are a nigger! In all my years traveling this world, I’ve met some fools; believe me! I’ve met some of the stupidest, most ignorant pieces of walking feces to ever grace the planet! But you…you are the dumbest of the lot. Imaginative, but dumb. Entertaining, but dumb! Over the last hour that I’ve gotten to know you, I’ve really, really, really, grown to hate you. And believe me, I’m not someone that you want to piss off!”
“Listen, just take what you want. Just don’t hurt me.”
“Oh, my dear Leroy”, she said, her mouth twisted into a wicked grin. “I intend on not only on hurting you, but to skin you alive and to feed you your own flesh. With this she gave another wicked laugh.
Leroy struggled with his bonds.
“Now, now, dearie,” she crooned. “Stop your struggling or I’ll rip off your nose and add it to that Franz I jar to make a pair.”
Leroy stopped his struggles immediately.
“Besides”, said Claudia, leaning back in the dinner chair. “You’ll find it hard to escape. In my line of work, and in over the past few hundred years, I’ve become something of the knot tying expert.”
Leroy remained still and quiet.
“Still though,” she went on. “I suppose I may as well take your collection up to the main house. I’ll find a room for it.”
She rose from her chair and bent forward until her face was less than a finger’s length away from his. “Tell me Leroy…in all your time researching all that unbelievable nonsense that adorns your grim little hovel here, have you ever learned much about vampires?”
“Vampires! Well, I know a little,” Leroy replied. “In fact I once tried to buy a cane from a man in New Spain who claimed it was the very cane carried by the Vampire Lord Ruthven and…”
“Lord Ruthven is a fictional character from a book”, Claudia sighed, interrupting him, the annoyance clear in her voice. Then she calmed herself, her voice becoming sweet and angelic once more: “Tell me though, Leroy, if you believe in Lord Ruthven, then you must also believe in other vampires as well, right?”
Leroy
nodded his head.
“Well for once”, continued Claudia with a sudden dark gleam in her eyes. “You’d be correct!”
As Leroy sat tied and helpless, a horrible transformation began to take place before him.
Claudia’s eyes became large and catlike, the white skin on her face faded and decayed to a deathly gray, her face stretched downwards to accommodate a new set of huge sharp teeth as two exaggerated fangs hung down past her chin. The rest of her body twisted and elongated as fingers became claws, her torso and neck stretched, making her weave and sway, serpent like. Now, in her true form, she gazed at the horrified little man before her as the hunger inside her grew. It was tempting to kill him right then and there. Eat his miserable soul and be done with it, but she planned on having her fun first, the food could wait just a little while longer.
The loathsome terror before him reached out and grabbed Leroy’s face with its claws. “Tell me Leroy”, Claudia’s voice had lost all its beauty. “I know you wanted me before. Do you want me now?”
Leroy did not speak.
Having received no answer, the vampire squeezed its claws into Leroy’s cheeks. Blood flowed down his jaw in rivers. Leroy screamed in agony.
“You will answer me in words or in screams,” Claudia said, smiling wickedly. “Understand?”
Leroy fell silent again.
The vampire, gave Leroy a slap across the face, busting his lip and nose.
“When I ask you a question, you will answer me or suffer. Do you understand?”
Leroy nodded his head.
“When I’m dead. Once you’ve killed me, will I become like you?” Leroy asked.
Again, the vampire gave out a hideous laugh before drawing itself up to its full height in front of him. “We vampires are truly evil. Even when we existed as pathetic humans, our hearts and thoughts were of a design of pure wickedness.” She then pointed to the jar on the mantelpiece saying: “Franz I for example, now he had potential. You however, don’t! You are a moron, a simpleton, a plain and simple nigger.” Then she brought her face down angrily to his, and with a vicious snarl, said: “Don’t you dare suggest that a little nigger like you could ever become something like me! Vampires are of the noblest malevolence.”
She then sat back in the dinner chair, the anger removed from her face; replaced by the terrible mask of hatred that she’d first sported. “But come on, Leroy, surely you must have learned something of my kind when investigating all the poppycock you love to drivel on about! What about, say, the way we eat, not just on your blood like some overgrown mosquito, but on the spirit that resides within the blood – sucking out your soul and devouring all that you are. You mean to tell me that you haven’t learned any of this?”
The vampire shook her head in mock disappointment. “What about hunters? You never heard of them either? Vile lowlife scumbags with nothing better to do than to hunt vampires. No? You never heard of the so-called legendary vampire hunter Nat Turner, said to be able to hunt and kill vampires with inconceivable skill and fearsome techniques? No?!”
Leroy shook his head. The vampire sneered at him.
“So basically”, continued the vampire. “You’ve learned only the dullest, saddest, dumbest drivel that the morons of the world have dreamed up. And what is worse, you actually believe it!” Claudia sprang to her deformed feet. “Let’s take a look at this amazing collection of yours, shall we?”
The vampire spun Leroy around in his chair so he faced the mantelpiece. “Let’s see. Franz I’s missing nose.” She picked up the jar and unscrewed the top. Then reaching in with her long sharp claws, plucked the brown floating ball out of the vinegar inside. Putting it to her nose, she gave it a cautious sniff. “Hmmm. My acute sense of smell can definitely say that this, even for the many years it has been smothered in vinegar, is certainly not of flesh. I would say that what we have here is most definitely a walnut!” And with that, she popped it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. “Oh, by the way, that’s another myth that vampires can’t eat food. One of the highlights of being undead for so long is that I have had the privilege of sampling all types of delicacies from many countries over many years. It’s just that every so often I’ve got to eat a human as well!”
She flashed a smile at Leroy and then returned her attention to the mantelpiece. “Now then, let’s see. What shall we look at next? Ah yes, Yeti fur.”
Smashing open the glass box with a sharp rap from her gnarled knuckles, she pulled out the small piece of long brownish fur. Raising the fur to her nose she gave another sniff. “Well, well, well! This piece of fur that you’ve got here is indeed, I believe, most probably from Tibet. However, as anyone but yourself might guess, it’s not the fur of the mysterious and non-existent Yeti. It’s actually Yak fur.” Placing the small piece of Yak hair atop his head, she then gave a slight guttural chuckle as she gazed down at the sad spectacle that Leroy presented.
“Last, and probably least, we have this. Ectoplasm!” She held up the tube with the white, gooey liquid inside. She took a sniff. “Paste…made from sea water and flour.” Giggling, she poured the gooey white liquid all over the top of Leroy’s Yeti wig.
“Now, you really look as pathetic as you actually are. But don’t worry, soon I will snuff out your misery. Should we see what other precious junk you’ve collected?”
The creature scanned the room, a sneer stretched across its wicked mouth. “Where are the rest of them? Where is that…Jesus buttocks thing?”
“In my bedroom,” Leroy croaked. The chest at the foot of my bed.”
The vampire darted off, with frightening speed, through the door. Seconds later, the creature darted back into the room carrying the chest under one arm.
Leroy shook as the vampire stared, unblinking, at him with unkind eyes that enjoyed his plight. The creature took a firm hold of the old wooden chest’s lid and tore it off, nonchalantly tossing it to one side of her. She then gazed down at the contents. “What’s this?” she said, pulling out a pair of white woman’s knickers and shaking them at Leroy. “You have one or two secrets perhaps that you haven’t told me about?”
“They belonged to Lavinia Fisher,” Leroy said. “She murdered dozens of men at the Six Mile Wayfarer House, a hotel owned by her and her husband, John”
“Boring,” the vampire crooned before tossing the bottoms aside and continuing her hunt.
She drew a large, gray convex disc, that appeared to be carved from stone, from a brown leather bag she pulled from the chest. “The undead Jesus thing, I presume?”
The vampire opened its mouth, filling the room with its evil guttural laugh and the stench of rot. “I still can’t believe that a grown man believes in all this rubbish”, said the vampire, once it had finished laughing. “Are all niggers this dumb?”
“Perhaps we are,” Leroy said with a hint of venom in his voice. “Though I do find it hard to take criticism about my belief in the unexplainable from a goddamned vampire!”
“Look at you!” Claudia said, rising up to full height and opening her huge eyes wide. The gray disc was still in its clawed hand. “The nigger has grown something of a backbone. You dare answer me back! Just for that I’m going to tear out your…”
The vampire stopped mid-sentence. It looked down at the gray disk it held. The hand holding the disk began to shake. Claudia opened her hand in an attempt to release the disk but it was as if it were glued to it. The creature grabbed the disk with its free hand and tried prying it away. Both hands became glued to the disk.
The vampire screamed. Pinkish-white smoke billowed up from its clawed hands.
Leroy slowly rose from his chair, pushing the still knotted ropes that once bound him to the floor.
Smoke billowed from every orifice on the vampire’s body and even from under its fingernails. The horrible scream from the beast shook the cabin. A moment later, a pile of ashes lay on the floor where the vampire had stood.
A few whiffs of smoke swirled up from the pile of blackness. On top of these
ashes lay the Great Discarnate Fundament of the Undead Lord and Savior.
For a time, Leroy just stood, gazing at the ashes and the gray disc. Slowly, he went about cleaning up the mess. He bowed slightly over the pile of ash and spoke:
“Apologies, Claudia; I forgot to give you my real name. That was very ungentlemanly of me, but my clients do pay me well for my discretion, as well as my skills. I am Nat Turner…pastor; freedom fighter…monster hunter.”
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Cane
Milton Davis is a research and development chemist, speculative fiction writer and owner of MVmedia, LLC, a micro publishing company specializing in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Soul. Milton is the author of Meji Book One and Meji Book Two; Changa’s Safari Volumes One, Two and Three; Woman of the Woods; Amber and the Hidden City; and From Here to Timbuktu. He is co-editor of six anthologies; Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology and Griot: Sisters of the Spear, with Charles R. Saunders; the Ki Khanga Anthology with Balogun Ojetade; the Steamfunk! anthology, also with Balogun Ojetade; The City cyberfunk anthology; and the Dark Universe space opera anthology. Milton Davis and Balogun Ojetade recently received the Best Screenplay Award for 2014 from the Urban Action Showcase for their African martial arts science fiction script, Ngolo. Milton resides in Metro Atlanta with his wife Vickie and his children Brandon and Alana. You can find Milton online at: http://www.mvmediaatl.com/.
Sea-Walker
Carole McDonnell is a Jamaican-American writer who has spent most of her years surrounded by things literary. Her writings appear in various anthologies including but not limited to, So Long Been Dreaming: Post-colonialism in science fiction; Fantastic Visions III; Jigsaw Nation; Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology; Steamfunk; Life Spices from Seasoned Sistahs: writings by mature women of color; Fantastic Stories of the Imagination; and Lost Trails: Weird Western. Carole McDonnell’s novels are Wind Follower; The Constant Tower; and My Life as an Onion. Her collections of short stories, Spirit Fruit: Collected Speculative Fiction, and Flight and other Stories of the fae, are available on Amazon and Kindle. Her Bible Studies include A Fool’s Journey through Proverbs; Scapegoats and Sacred Cows of Bible Study; and Blogging the Psalms. Her reviews appear in print and at various online sites. Carole is a columnist for several Christian and African-American magazines. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her husband, two sons and their pets.
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