by Brian Lumley
Kyle drew air in a gasp. ‘He’s still there?’
Keogh nodded, changed his mind and shook his head. He tried to speak; his outline wavered and collapsed; he disappeared in a scattering of brilliant blue motes. For a moment Kyle thought his mind still remained, but it was only Carl Quint whispering: ‘No, not Thibor. He’s not there. Not him, but what he left behind!’
Chapter Seven
11.00 P.M., the first Friday in September, 1977: in Genoa Alec Kyle and Carl Quint were hurrying through rain-slick cobbled alleys toward their rendezvous with Felix Krakovitch at a dive called Frankie’s Franchise.
But seven hundred miles away in Devon, England, the time was 10.00 P.M. on a sultry Indian summer evening. At Harkley House, Yulian Bodescu lay naked on his back on the bed in his spacious garret room and considered the events of the last few days. In many ways they had been very satisfactory days, but they had been fraught with danger, too. He had not known the extent of his influence before, for the people at school and later Georgina had all been weak and hardly provided suitable yardsticks. The Lakes had been the true test, and Yulian had sailed through that with very little difficulty.
George Lake had been the only real obstacle, but even that had been an accidental encounter, when Yulian wasn’t quite ready for him. The youth smiled a slow smile and gently touched his shoulder. There was a dull ache there now, but that was all. And where was ‘Uncle George’ now? He was down in the vaults with his wife, Anne, that’s where. Down where he belonged, with Viad standing guard on the door. Not that Yulian believed that to be absolutely necessary: it was a precaution, that’s all. As for the Other: that had left its vat, gone into hiding in the earth where the cellars were darkest.
Then there was Yulian’s ‘mother’, Georgina. She was in her room, lost in self-pity, in her permanent state of terror. As she had been for the last year, since the time he did it to her. If she hadn’t cut her hand that time it might never have happened. But she had, and then shown him the blood. Something had happened to him then — the same thing that happened every time he saw blood — but on this occasion it had been different. He had been unable to control it. When he had bandaged her hand, he’d deliberately let something… something of himself, get into the wound. Georgina hadn’t seen it, but Yuiian had. He had made it.
She had been ill for a long time, and when she recovered… well, she had never really recovered. Not fully. And Yulian had known that it had grown in her, and that he was its master. She had known it too, which was what terrified her.
His ‘mother’, yes. Actually, Yulian had never considered her his mother at all. He had come out of her, he knew that, but he’d always felt that he was more the son of a father — but not a father in the ordinary sense of the word. The son of… of something else. Which was why this evening he had asked her (as he’d asked her a hundred times before) about Ilya Bodescu, and about the way he died, and where he died. And to make sure he got the entire story in every last detail, this time he’d hypnotised her into the deepest possible trance.
And as Georgina had told him how it had been, so his mind had been lured east, across oceans and mountains and plains, over fields and cities and rivers, to a place which had always existed in the innermost eye of his mind; a place of hills and woods and… and yes, that was it! A place of low wooded hills in the shape of a cross. The cruciform hills. A place he would have to visit. Very soon.
He would have to, for that’s where the answer lay. He was in thrall to that place as much as the rest of them in the house were in thrall to him, which was to say totally.
And the strength of its seduction was just as great. It was a strength he had not realised until George had come back. Back from his grave in Blagdon cemetery, back from the dead. At first that had been a shock — then an all-consuming curiosity — finally a revelation! For it had told Yulian what he was. Not who he was but what. And certainly he was more than merely the son of Ilya and Georgina Bodescu.
Yulian knew that he was not entirely human, that a large part of him was utterly inhuman, and the knowledge thrilled him. He could hypnotise people to do his will, whatever he desired. He could produce new life, of a sort, out of himself. He could change living beings, people, into creatures like himself. Oh, they did not have his strength, his weird talents, but that was all to the good. The change made them his slaves, made him their absolute master.
More, he was a necromancer: he could open up dead bodies and learn the secrets of their lives. He knew how to prowl like a cat, swim like a fish, savage like a dog. The thought had occurred to him that given wings he might even fly — like a bat. Like a vampire bat!
Beside him on a bedside table lay a hardback book titled The Vampire in Fact and Fiction. Now he reached out a slender hand to touch its cover, trace the figure of a bat in flight impressed into the black binding cloth. Absorbing, certainly — but the title was a lie, as were the contents. Much of the alleged fiction was fact (Yulian was the living proof), and some of the supposed fact was fiction.
Sunlight, for instance. It didn’t kill. It might, if he should ever be foolish enough to stretch himself out in a sheltered cove in midsummer for more than a minute or two. It must be some sort of chemical reaction, he thought. Photophobia was common enough even among ordinary men. Mushrooms grow best-under a covering of straw through foggy, late September nights. And he’d read somewhere that in Cyprus one can find the selfsame edible species, except they never break the surface. They push up the parched earth until cracks appear, which tell the locals where to find them. They didn’t much care for sunlight, mushrooms, but it wouldn’t kill them. No, Yulian was wary of the sun but not afraid of it. It was a question of being careful, that’s all.
As for sleeping through the day in a coffin full of native soil: sheer fallacy. He did occasionally sleep during the day, but that was because he often spent much of the night deep in thought, or prowling the estate. He preferred night, true, because then, in the darkness or in the moonlight, he felt closer to his source, closer to understanding the true nature of his being.
Then there was the vampire’s lust for blood: false, at least in Yulian’s case. Oh, the sight of blood aroused him, did things to him internally, worked him into a passion; but drinking it from a victim’s veins was hardly the delight described in the various fictions. He did like rare meat, however, and plenty of it, and had never been much of a one for greens. On the other hand, the thing Yulian had grown in the vat in the cellar, that had thrived on blood! On blood, flesh, anything animate or ex-animate. On flesh or the red juice of flesh, alive or dead! It didn’t need to eat, Yulian knew, but it would if it could. It would have absorbed George, too, if he hadn’t been there to stop it.
The Other… Yulian shuddered deliciously. It knew him for its master, but that was its sum total of knowledge. He had grown it from himself, and remembered how that had come about:
Just after he’d been expelled from school, the first of what he had always supposed to be his adult teeth had come loose. It was a back tooth and painful. But he wouldn’t see a dentist. Working and worrying at it, one — night he’d broken the thread. And he’d examined the tooth closely, finding it curious that this was part of himself which had been shed. White bone and a thread of gristle, the red root. He’d put it in a saucer on the window ledge of his bedroom. But in the morning he heard it clatter to the floor. The core had put out tiny white rootlets, and the tooth was dragging itself like a hermit crab out of the morning light.
Yulian’s teeth, except the back ones, had always been sharp as knives and chisel-tipped, but human teeth for all that. Certainly not animal teeth. The one which had pushed out the lost one was anything but human. It was a fang. Since then most of his teeth had been replaced, and the new ones were all fangs. Especially the eye-teeth. His jaws had changed too, to accommodate them.
Sometimes he thought: perhaps I’m the cause of this change in myself. Maybe I’m making it happen. Willing it. Mind over matter. Because I’m evil.
Georgina had used to say that to him sometimes, tell him he was evil. That was when he was small and she still had a measure of control over him, when he’d done things she didn’t like. When he’d first started to experiment with his necromancy. Ah, but there’d been many things she hadn’t liked since then!
Georgina — ‘mother’ — terror stricken chicken penned with a fox cub, watching him grow sleek and strong. For as Yulian had grown older, so the element of control had changed, passed into his hands. It was his eyes; he only had to look at her with those eyes of his and… and she was powerless. The teachers and pupils at his school, too. And with use, so he’d become expert in hypnotism. Practice makes perfect. To that extent, at least, the book was correct: the vampire is quite capable of mesmerising its prey.
But what about mortality — or immortality, undeath? That was still a puzzle, a mystery — but it was one he’d soon resolve. Now that he had George there was very little he couldn’t resolve. For George was still in large part a man. Returned from the grave, undead, yes, but his flesh was still a man’s flesh. And that which was within him couldn’t have grown very large in so short a time. Unlike the Other, which had had plenty of time.
Yulian had, of course, experimented with the Other. His experiments had told him very little, but it was better than nothing. According to the fiction, vampires were supposed to succumb to the sharpened stake. The Other ignored the stake, seemed impervious to it. Trying to stake it was like trying to leave an imprint on water. The Other could be solid enough at times: it could form teeth, rudimentary hands, even eyes. But in the main its tissues were protoplasmic, gelatinous. And as for putting a stake through its ‘heart’ or cutting off its ‘head’.
And yet it wasn’t indestructible, it wasn’t immortal. It could die, could be killed. Yulian had burned part of it in an incinerator down there in the cellars. And by God — if there was a God, which Yulian doubted — it hadn’t liked that! He was perfectly sure that he wouldn’t have liked it either. And that was a thought which occasionally worried him: if ever he were discovered, if men found out what
he was, would they try to burn him? He supposed they — would. But who could possibly find him out? And if
someone did, who would believe it? The police weren’t much likely to listen to a story about vampires, now were they? On the other hand, what with the local ‘satanic cult’, maybe they were!
Again he smiled his awful smile. It was funny now, but it hadn’t been at all funny when the police came knocking at the door the day after George came back. He had very nearly made a serious mistake then, had gone too quickly on his guard, on the defensive. But of course they’d put his nervousness down to the recent loss of his ‘uncle’. If only they’d been able to know the truth, that in fact George Lake was right under their feet, whining and shivering in the cellars. And even so, what could they have done about it? It was hardly Yulian’s fault that George wouldn’t lie still, was it?
And that was another part of the legend which was a fact: that when a vampire killed a victim in a certain way, then that victim would return as one of the undead. Three nights George had lain there, and on the fourth he’d clawed his way out. A mere man buried alive could never have done it, but the vampire in him had given George all the strength he needed and more. The vampire which had been part of the Other, which had put one of its pseudohands into him and stopped George’s heart. The Other which had been part of Yulian, in fact Yulian’s tooth.
What a torn and bloodied state George had been in when Yulian opened the door to him that night. And how the house had rung to his demented sobbing and shrieking, until Yulian had grown angry with him, told him to be quiet and locked him in the cellar. And there he’d stayed.
Yulian watched the silver light of the moon creeping through a crack in his curtains, channelled his thoughts anew. What had he been recounting? Ah, yes, the police.
They had come to report a shocking crime, the illegal opening of George Lake’s grave by person or persons unknown, and the theft of his corpse. Was Mrs Lake still residing at Harkley House?
Why, yes she was, but she was still suffering from the shock of her husband’s death. If it wasn’t absolutely necessary that they see her, Yulian would prefer to break the news to her himself. But who could be responsible for so despicable a crime?
Well, sir, we do believe we’ve got one of them there cults at work in these here parts, despoiling graveyards and the like and holding, er, sabbats? Druids or some such. Devil worshippers, you know? But this time they’ve gone too far! Don’t you worry, sir, we’ll get ‘em in the end. But do break it easy to his missus, all right?
Of course, of course. And thank you for bringing us this news, terrible though it is. I certainly don’t envy you your job.
All in a day’s work, sir. Sorry we’ve nothing good to report, that’s all. Good night to you.
And that was that.
But again he had strayed, and once more he was obliged to focus his thoughts back on the ‘legend’ of the vampire. Mirrors: vampires hated mirrors because they had no reflections. False — and yet in a way true. Yulian did have a reflection; but sometimes, looking in a glass, especially at night, he saw far more than others could see. For he knew what he was looking at, that it was something alien to man. And he had wondered: if others saw him like that, reflected in a glass, would they too see the real thing, the monster behind the man?
And lastly there was the vampire’s lust, the way he sated himself on women. Now Yulian had tasted the blood — and more than the blood — of women, and had found it rich as deep red wine. It excited him as all blood did, but not so much that he’d glut himself on it. Georgina, Anne, Helen — he’d tried the blood of all three. And certainly, in good time, he would try the blood of many more.
But his attitude towards taking blood puzzled him. If he were a true vampire, surely blood would be the driving force of his life. And yet it wasn’t. Perhaps his metamorphosis wasn’t yet complete. Perhaps, as the change waxed in him, so the human part would wane, disappear altogether. And then he’d become a vampire full-blown. Or full-blooded?
Lust, yes… but there was more to lust than mere bloodlust. Much more. And little wonder the women in the fiction succumbed so readily to the vampire’s charms. Especially after the first time. Hah! What woman had ever truly felt fulfilled in the arms of a man? Not one! They only thought they had because they didn’t know better. What, ‘fulfilled’? Filled full? By a mere man? Utterly impossible! But by a vampire.
Yulian turned a little on to his side and gazed in the moon-pierced darkness of his room at the girl beside him. Cousin Helen. She was very beautiful and had been very innocent. Not quite pure, but very nearly. Who it was took her virginity… but what did that matter? In fact he had taken nothing, and he had given very little. They had been fumbling lovers for an hour.
But now? Now she knew what it was to be ‘fulfilled’. Indeed, she knew that if Yulian willed it he could fill her to bursting — literally!
A chuckle rose in his throat, formed on his lips like a bubble of bile. Oh,yes, for the Other wasn’t the only one who could put out pseudopod extensions of himself! Yulian held back the laughter he felt welling inside, reached out a hand and with a deceptive gentleness stroked Helen’s cool, rounded flank.
Even deeply asleep and dreaming the dreams of the damned, still she shuddered under the touch of his hand. Gooseflesh appeared and her breathing rapidly mounted to a moaning pant. She whined in her hypnotic sleep like a thin wind through a cracked board. Her hypnotic sleep, yes. The power of hypnotism, and that of telepathy which was its kin.
Nowhere in the literature — except for the occasional hint in some of the better fictions — had Yulian discovered mention of the vampire’s control of others by will and the reading of minds at a distance; and yet this, too, was one of his powers. It was very inchoate as yet, as were all his talents, but it was also very real. Once touched by Yulian, once invaded by him physically, then his
victim was an open book to him, even at a distance. Even now, if he reached out his mind in a certain way… there! Those were the dull, vacuous ‘thoughts’ of the Other. No, not even that: he had merely touched upon the Other’s instinctive sense of being, a sort of basic animal awareness. The Other was aware of himself — itself? — in much the same way as an amoeba is aware; and because it had been part of him, Yulian could sense that awareness.
Now that he had taken or used Helen, Anne, George and Georgina, why, he could sense all of them! He let his exterior thoughts leave the Other and wander, and
and there was Anne, asleep in some cold, damp corner down there in the dark. And there, too, was George. Except that George was not asleep.
George. Yulian knew he would soon have to do something about George. He wasn’t behaving as he should. There was an obstinacy in him. Oh, he’d been completely under Yulian’s control in the beginning, just like the women. But just recently.
Yulian focused on George’s mind, wormed his way silently into his thoughts and — a pit of black hatred shot with flashes of red rage! Lust, too — a bestial lust Yulian could scarce believe — and not only for blood but also.
revenge?
Frowning, Yulian withdrew his mind before George could sense him. Obviously he would have to deal with his uncle sooner than he’d thought. He had already decided to make use of him — knew how he would use him — but now he must set a definite date on it. Like tomorrow. He left the unsuspecting undead creature raging and prowling the cellars, and — What was that?
Hair prickling at the nape of his neck, Yulian swung his legs down to the floor and stood up. It hadn’t been one of the women, and he’d only just left George, so who had it been? Someone close by was thinking thoughts about Harkley House, thoughts about Yulian himself! He went to the curtains, opened them six inches, stared anxiously out at the night.
Out there, the estate. The old derelict buildings, gravel path, shrubbery and copse; the high perimeter wall and gate; the road beyond the gate, a ribbon of light under the moon, and beyond that a tall hedge. Yulian wrinkled his nose, sniffed suspiciously like a dog at a stranger. Oh, yes, a stranger — there! In the hedgerow, that glint of moonlight on glass, the dull red glow of a cigarette’s tip. Someone in the shadow of the hedge, watching Harkley. Watching Yulian!