Night Things: The Monster Collection

by West, Terry M.

  "How do I know you won't hurt her whether I do as you say or not?" Gary asked.

  "I never lie," Dracula said, his eyebrows arching ever slightly and his face a stone of sincerity. "A deity need not behave treacherously. You will die for your crimes. There can be no other course for what you have done against us and I will not tell you otherwise. But your penance will be to help us succeed at our mission before I rip you apart in front of these spectators. Your little girl will be spared and my word is as good as God's, if you believe in such a thing."

  Dracula motioned for Ella to take Holly away. Ella took Holly's hand and began to pull her back into the congregation of the dead on the tracks. Holly's eyes pleaded with Gary. Gary gave her a hopeful smile.

  "It's okay, Holly," he promised quietly. "You're going to be all right."

  Gary watched as long as he could until she disappeared. He then turned back to Dracula. "What do you want me to do?" he asked in resignation.

  "There are only a few who can oppose my plans", Dracula started. "Johnny Stücke is my biggest difficulty. I understand that you and he are close. I need you to gather information. Tell me when and where Johnny may be on a particular day. I may ask for security codes for his building. You give me what I ask for, and your daughter will walk away from this."

  "I will do whatever you say," Gary agreed. "But can you please tell me what it is you intend to do? Do you want to kill John Johnny Stücke?"

  "Yes I intend to destroy him. But it is a painful thing for me. Believe it or not, Johnny and I were friends. Family," Dracula said, sad memories illuminating his dead face. "I found him in the Arctic, before he had a name. He isn't your usual night thing. He doesn't hear my thoughts like most of the others. We aren't intrinsically connected. But I took him under my wing nonetheless. He was a good soldier- like a son to me- but he committed an act against my other children and I had to cast him out. He spent the years that followed openly defying my glorious mission."

  "And what mission would that be?" Gary asked cautiously.

  "I want to extinguish all human life," Dracula revealed with no hesitation. "I have always known that man was meant only to be a small blip in the evolution of this world. We are the next step."

  "So, you want to kill everybody? What would you and your people eat?" Gary said.

  "I have many scientists dedicated to my cause. Our food will be grown in test tubes. We can create humans without wills or minds."

  "Genetically engineered food, bitch," a grinning zombie in the front chimed in.

  Dracula chuckled and pointed to the good-natured heckler. "Indeed. Thank you, Douglas."

  The vampire king turned his attention back to Gary.

  "My scientists talk about stem cells and cloning," he explained. "They say we can synthesize blood now, from very little human DNA. Mankind in its current form need not exist for us to survive. We would do better without them. Of course, Johnny Stücke doesn't see it that way. He is a self loathing night thing. He is much more sympathetic to you and your kind. Johnny Stücke has small ambitions. He would like to rule the city, but that is the extent of his goal. He wants to stay in the shadows- the closet- and profit from the exploitation he creates with you. And it's not just the pornography. He uses the Night Things in prostitution rings, drug peddling; any dark business where he can take advantage of our kind. The Night Things have recognized him as an enemy for a couple of years now. But he is powerful and they were too fearful to rise against him. But now I am here and the war shall begin."

  Dracula swept his arm symbolically over the crowd. "Look at them all standing shoulder to shoulder. Shifter next to vampire. Ghoul near zombie. When you see them, you perceive monsters. But I see tomorrow's children. United against the ultimate enemy."

  Gary looked at the devoted and obedient army. Again his head swam in panic. An organized mob of Night Things scared him deeper than anything else he could imagine.

  "I hate to break this to you, but the Night Things hate each other," Gary interjected, finding a flaw in Dracula's plan and pulling at it. "Ghouls and zombies, shifters and vamps- they battle all of the time. You say that your presence has a calming effect on them. But if you weren't here they would be ready to devour each other."

  "There is strife with any civilization," Dracula insisted. "We aren't immune to prejudice. All we can do is combat it, as any group does. We shall have to start our own rainbow coalition I suppose."

  Gary imagined a pitch black arc of color in the sky at the suggestion. He would have found the thought amusing under kinder circumstances.

  "The humans are a distraction. Once they are gone and we take the head of society's table, we will restructure with laws and rules. We will clarify roles and obligations. Our conquest begins in Manhattan, appropriately enough. Under lady liberty's shadow. But enough discussion. It is time for you to take your leave, Mr. Hack. We have your number. And we will definitely be in touch."

  Detective Thomas walked back into the light and covered Gary's head with the black hood.

  "Remember that your daughter is down here with us in the darkness," Dracula whispered into Gary's ear. "And everything in the underground hungers."

  4.

  Gary took off the hood when he was commanded. The devil cabbie who had picked him up was now dropping him off at the exact same spot.

  He clambered out of the taxi, his knees weak and stomach churning with nausea. It was a combination of the fearful stress and his need for heroin.

  But there was one more stop he had to make before going home and killing his want. He hailed another taxi. The yellow cab scooted to the curb. He climbed in and instructed the driver to 14th.

  The evening was in full bloom, and Gary saw the Night Things mixed in with the regular warm-bodied New Yorkers. The taxi veered to the curb at 14th. Gary paid the man and lumbered out of the vehicle.

  He had been deposited scant feet from Abraham's cart. Abraham was a street vendor who sold mystical items of protection for use against the Night Things. He was a muscular, handsome and charismatic African-American man. He had a myriad of tattoos on his skin that displayed magical symbols. Of course, none of his ink was on display that cold night. Gary had a hard time figuring the man's age. If Abraham was on the youthful side, then the wisdom of his ancestors held a good seat in his mind.

  Abraham, who also went by the moniker of the medicine man, sat looking rather bored behind his cart of magic talismans and herbs and potions.

  Gary approached Abraham. The man immediately recognized him.

  "You lose another gris-gris bag?" he asked. "It might be cheaper if you buy them by the box, my friend."

  Abraham's heritage was another mystery to Gary. He was definitely exotic, but Gary didn't know if the mystic air around him was from an untamed part of Louisiana or the African continent itself.

  "I need your help," Gary said dourly.

  "With what?" Abraham asked, seeming to sense more than his cart could provide.

  Gary looked around, making sure no Night Things were within earshot. But honestly, it was a chore he shouldn't have expended energy on. The Night Things were deathly afraid of Abraham.

  "I got into some trouble working on some projects that I shouldn't have," Gary explained quietly. "The Night Things were involved."

  "What kind of projects?" Abraham asked. Foul surprise hardened his face.

  "I don't want to get into it," Gary stressed. "But the end result is they have my daughter. And if I don't help them move against another powerful night thing, they are going to kill her."

  "Who do they want to oppose?" Abraham demanded.

  "Johnny Stücke," Gary confessed.

  "The mobster monster?" Abraham said.

  "Yes," Gary replied.

  The medicine man thought on it, and Gary could tell that he didn't necessarily think ridding New York of Johnny Stücke was a bad thing. He finally asked, "Who has your girl?"

  Gary said the name in a whisper. "Dracula."

  Abraham immediate
ly pulled a machete into view and waved it toward Gary. "If Dracula has your daughter, mourn her. I don't know what kind of arrangement you had with these evil mothers, but that is on you. I won't get mixed up in this, especially with the oldest and most powerful vampire involved. So you take your business elsewhere, man. I don't want to see your fucking face here again."

  Gary held up his hands helplessly. "I'll pay you any amount!"

  "I said go," Abraham hissed forcefully. He came around the cart brandishing the machete.

  Gary got the message and retreated. He turned a corner and immediately vomited on the sidewalk of Broadway. Pedestrians grimaced and stepped around him apathetically as they strode toward Greenwich Village.

  Gary had to go home and indulge. He wouldn't be able to accomplish anything in this state. But he had to pace it; do enough to keep the monkey from shrieking in his ear but not too much to keep his brain from functioning. He waved for another taxi.

  5.

  Gary had gone straight home, intent on steadying himself and finding a plan of action. But he always lost count of what was going up his nose. There weren't track marks to keep inventory of, since needles terrified him.

  He had taken too much to think and instead his overwhelmed and frightened form gave in to exhaustion. He slept on his couch and his mind was under a deep shroud.

  "Gary."

  He roused groggily. He lifted his head slightly, moaning from the effort, but there was only silence in his apartment. Gary could hear only the nighttime traffic through his apartment window. So he dropped back into sleep, his head slumping to the sofa.

  "Gary."

  The second time he heard it, he opened his eyes. Gary stretched his fat form to a sitting position, feeling like a beached whale flopping around for water. He was more awake now, and shame swelled in him when he realized he had passed out.

  He looked across the small living room to a recliner set near the window. His ex-wife, Pamela, sat in the chair and stared coldly at him.

  "Jesus H. Christ!" Gary cried. He shrank back fearfully on the sofa.

  Pamela looked a mess. She was bloodied and half of her neck had been chewed off. Her legs were gory stumps just below the knees and one arm was completely torn from the shoulder. This left her one hand and she used it to point an accusatory finger toward her worthless ex-husband.

  "You son of a bitch," Pamela said.

  Gary stammered and his mouth gaped like a fish out of water .

  "I just wanted you to see what they did to me," Pamela said. Her appearance transformed to a less ghastly vision. She wore her favorite blue jogging suit, her chosen attire when relaxing in her house. Her flesh was so pale that it gave off a haunting glow and her eyes were dark and sunken.

  "You know this all sits on your doorstep," Pamela said harshly, and Gary had never seen her so full of anger and hate. "All of it is your fault. I'm dead because of you. My husband is dead because of you. My daughter is in the clutches of a maniacal vampire because of you. I don't know how you can sleep, even with the drugs."

  "I'm sorry Pammy," Gary croaked, calling upon his ex-wife's nickname. "I don't know what else to say. You're right. They came to you because of me. Christ, I don't know if I'm really talking to you or if this is just my conscience fucking with me."

  "You live in a time where monsters boldly walk the face of the earth and you suddenly have an issue with whether or not a ghost is real?" Pamela said. "We're here, Gary. Always."

  Pamela shifted a bit more toward her ex, whose fear and guilt rendered him helpless.

  "This is all just an insane nightmare," she said, and her eyes softened from indignation into misery. "But you know what the real madness is here? I used to be fairly tolerant of the Night Things. You know how I feel about equality and rights. But now- I think they should all be wiped off the face of the planet. All of them. But the most disturbing thing? They told me what you did to them, Gary. The snuff films. Who are you? The man I married years ago certainly would not have stooped to that violently obscene level."

  Gary's eyes fell to the floor. Ghost or hallucination, this was still a really hard pill for him to swallow.

  "I just didn't think of them as anything but dead flesh, I guess," Gary said quietly. "I know it's hard to comprehend, but they just seemed like things that were beyond pain. Beyond any kind of sympathy I could call upon. I don't know why that is."

  "You were hurting and exploiting those monsters for profit. So they came after us to hurt you."

  "I sank into this filthy quagmire of a life, and I couldn't find a way to pull myself out," Gary said, not looking for any forgiveness or understanding. He knew this ghost would give him neither. "I know what I did was wrong, and I remember every name of every night thing that I killed in the name of cinema. I've been lucky steering my boss away from that sort of work recently. But when there are no rules, bad things will happen. Laws only come after people do awful things."

  "You knew, Gary. You knew it was wrong from the start. You just didn't care because there were no consequences, or so you thought. You didn't think they were organized or cared enough about their own to seek you out for vengeance."

  Pamela glowered at him like a rabid crone.

  "I'm going to save Holly, Pammy," Gary swore. "I know I'm not worth a shit, but I swear to you I will get her away from this. I don't care what I have to do or who I have to betray. They're not going to kill my daughter."

  "When you die, if you have business here, you can latch on to this world and not cross," Pamela explained. "They tell me that when you're satisfied, you can just let go and dissolve into the hereafter. If my little girl dies or is reborn as something even worse than death, I will cement my feet in your reality, Gary. If you thought you couldn't get rid of me when you divorced me, believe me when I say that you will never have a peaceful moment if my little girl doesn't come out of this. And if you think dying will spare you, I will follow you right into the next world. You'll never be free, Gary. Don't fuck this up."

  Gary dipped his face into his palms and dried his moist eyes.

  "Pammy," he said, looking back up.

  She was gone and dawn was slowly brightening the sky.

  6.

  Galway, Ireland

  August 21st, 1894

  Primul did not know why Dracula had moved them from Leeds. There they had acquired a nice home, fitted against daylight, in Briggate and had been happy for many years. After living an eternal moment to moment existence, Dracula had suddenly caught a wild impulse and he had sought out and converted a group of young humans. Dracula seldom shared his schemes with Primul, but in all fairness, the first son never asked about them. He trusted his father. But it did seem as if a switch of some kind had tripped inside the vampire and a growing tribe was now the most imperative thing in the universe. After creating his brood, Dracula had insisted they find a bigger and better place to build his proposed Eden for monsters. Primul had liked it more when it had just been he and father.

  He didn't care much for the brash and spoiled children that had suckled Dracula's vein. But he couldn't discount a streak of jealously in his feelings toward his adopted siblings. Dracula's converts were a burden to Primul. He knew he shouldn't resent them, but he often did. They were arrogant and rude children. He did not like being their guardian when Dracula wasn't about. They fought and argued with him. They reminded him constantly that they were blood bound while Primul had been a doorstep baby.

  Primul still ached from the boat trip. They had been ferried in, crated in luggage, to the Galway Bay. It may have been an acceptable mode of transportation for Dracula, but Primul hadn't liked it one bit. He had been stuffed into a box and bumped around for days. It was good to finally stretch his legs on the moist soil of Ireland. Dracula's other children were still on the water. They would arrive the following night. Dracula had gone ahead first, with his eldest child, to survey their new lair.

  Primul and his father stepped into the moonlit moors that surrounded the Rock of Cas
hel. Primul saw the stunning stone kingdom in the silver glow. It was breathtaking. A group of medieval buildings perched on a tremendous highland that overlooked the slumbering city of Galway.

  "This is our new home," Dracula said, as they ventured toward the quiet stone. "The Rock of Cashel. It has also been called the Rock of Kings. It will be a good place for us to thrive."

  "It is much too large," Primul observed. "What are those structures?"