Best New Vampire Tales (Vol.1)
Page 9
Standing within, gazing at them through haloed prisms, formed of the brilliance of his glory, seen through the mirrors of his tears, the Son of Man regarded them with great sadness, and endless love.
Their own eyes, devoid of natural light, flickered with the pain of loss, and the wonder of the intensity of his love. No word did they speak, only awaited their fate and drank in the sight of their Lord.
“Though I suffer not your curse, I will be with you,” Jesus spoke. “A time will come when I walk these roads again––you will be there, and I will remember.”
Turning, Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot, called traitor, fled into the darkness, overcome with hunger and pain, tethered in the cutting bonds of evil. Alone once more, Jesus stood, weeping tears of glittering sadness to wet the sand at his feet.
They blurred his sight. Time was so short. He could not follow them, could do nothing but accept their sacrifice. It should have been his alone. He turned, walking forth to embrace the world.
* * *
Judas 30:1
Running from the tomb, where Jesus stood, resurrected, Judas stole a length of rope from a nearby home. Coming upon a tall tree, he cast it upon a sturdy branch. Putting to the end of the rope a noose, he climbed to a branch high above the ground, fixed the rope to his neck, and leapt, hanging himself. Finding him thus, the people spoke against him, led by Simon, called Peter, saying, “He has taken his life from shame, for he betrayed his Lord.”
Mary Magdalene, running to where the disciples were gathered, said, “I have seen the Lord, and he is risen.”
And Jesus appeared other times to his disciples, speaking words of comfort and salvation, and was raised once more to his throne in Heaven. We, who hunger, remain. The rope has failed to relieve me of my burden. In the bark of the tree where we left the rope, Mary inscribed the words,
Here hung one who loves beyond life.
May God forgive us.
Morning Sickness
WILLIAM MEIKLE
We knew it was a bad idea to isolate ourselves when it was so near her time but it had been years since our last holiday and besides, her doctors assured us that we were at least three weeks away from the birth.
It wasn’t planned, not at all. We’d settled for a couple of weeks rest and I’d booked a three month sabbatical from the office, hoping to get some work done on the house. Then we won the competition––a week in Britain, anywhere of our choosing as long as we took the holiday within the next month. One day we were in our flat in London, surrounded by the building’s half-finished work––noise, dust and general aggravation––the next we were all alone on the west coast of Scotland, in a cottage by the shore on Jura. It was just us, the seals and the view over the sea to Argyll.
I wasn’t sure at first. I wanted to be near a hospital in case of emergencies, but she insisted. It would be our last holiday alone for a while; she was fit, healthy and she wanted to do it.
The nearest house was five miles south––the nearest doctor twice that distance. To the north and west there was only the rugged hills and the deer. We didn’t even have a boat. At least there was a road: a single-track lane with passing places. It had been recently resurfaced and we had been provided with a new Range Rover for the duration. I was confident that we could reach the doctor’s house in less than twenty minutes in event of an emergency, which was quicker than I could have managed in London. I had talked myself round to the idea and I wasn’t worried. I should have been.
We arrived late. Jura is not the easiest place to get to. It involved a flight to Glasgow and a short hop over to Islay. The Range Rover was waiting at Islay airport, which is more a glorified field than an airstrip. After that it’s a fifteen-mile trip to the Port Askaig ferry, which is small and rickety and on a calm day can take four cars across the half mile of treacherous waters towards the stunning mountains of Jura.
Once on the island, it was a single-track road all the way, twenty miles, with Craighouse, the only town, halfway along. We were going right to the far end.
We stopped at the one and only hotel for a meal, but we were too late to pick up any other provisions; that would have to wait till morning.
It was dark when we arrived and Sandra was too tired to do anything other than fall into bed and sleep. As for me, I was restless. I never believed that I would miss the bustle of London’s streets, but the lack of noise here had me on edge. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the sea on the rocks only ten yards from the cottage’s front door. Occasionally there would be the forlorn cry of a gull or the croaking of a crow, apart from that it was silent and dark and strangely disquieting.
It was very late by the time I snuggled into bed, taking advantage of the radiating heat from my pregnant wife beside me. I believe I slept soundly, I don’t remember any dreams and nothing disturbed me during the night.
She woke me the next morning with a whisper.
‘Get up. Hurry. You’ve got to see this.’
I was still groggy when I raised my head to see her leaving the room. I got out of bed, wincing at the cold seeping through the floorboards, and joined her at the window in the front room.
‘Look’, she said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’
It was very early morning. The sun was just coming up over the hills of Argyll, spreading a pink glow across the wispy clouds.
The sea was being slightly ruffled by a small breeze; there in the foreground, in front of the house, at the edge of the small lawn, sat three otters––obviously a mother and two smaller young. They trotted along the shore then slipped into the water.
We crept out, still naked, and watched them cavorting among the huge fronds of seaweed until I slipped on the wet grass. My sudden movement caused them to dive, resurfacing again much farther out.
Sandra came over and squeezed me, her full belly pressing its heat against my flesh.
“Thanks for bringing us here John. I love it.” We kissed and I marveled at how hot and alive and heavy with life she had become. It was only as we turned back to the house that I noticed the mound.
It had been too dark the night before to see any details of the surrounding area, but now I could see that the cottage was built on a small raised piece of land between two arms of a river. We had come across a small bridge but in the dark I had failed to notice it.
Behind the cottage where the rivers split there was a huge stone cairn, standing eight to ten feet high, topped off with a cross which looked to be the same height as the cairn and made of solid iron. Around the cairn there was a wrought iron fence with spiked railings jutting up towards the sky.
“Why would they put something like that out here?” she asked me. “I thought cairns were usually built on top of hills?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s for someone who died either here or at sea near here. We can ask in town if you like?” I turned towards her, noticing the goose pimples on her arms. “Get yourself inside and put some clothes on; we don’t want you to catch a chill. Anyway, by the time we get going and get to town the shop will be open.”
When we eventually got to the shop it was ten o’clock; there had been many things to see on the drive down.
The shop held only basic foods: eggs, bacon, cheese––nothing too fancy, but Sandra had gotten over her cravings for exotica and we would be able to stock up with most of our needs for the week. Sandra was the focus of much talk and was in danger of excessive mothering from some of the women we met. We turned down several offers of a warm room closer to town, and the shop owner took our list from us, promising that she would make it up and we could collect it later.
Luckily the hotel served a late breakfast. The pace of life on the island moved slowly and you could run breakfast into lunch into supper without leaving the hotel grounds. We managed to escape at one in the afternoon, weighed down by bacon and sausages and swilling with coffee.
It was only when we stopped by the shop to pick up our supplies that I remembered the cairn.
The sho
pkeeper tried to hide her movement but I caught it––the sign against the evil eye, two pronged fingers stabbing at me as she spoke. “You don’t have to worry about that sir. It’s only an old memorial. Some say there used to be a plaque fixed to it but no one can remember what it’ was there for.”
I noticed that the rest of the customers in the shop had fallen silent. I supposed that the cairn was the focus for some old superstition. That didn’t bother me, but I wasn’t about to tell Sandra. Unlike me, she held a fascination for the supernatural. Anything that went bump in the night or was out of the ordinary, she fell for it. I could never understand the fascination with scaring yourself half to death, but I knew if she found out there was something weird about the cairn she would not stop until she had wrinkled out the story. In the car on the way to the cottage I told her it was a war memorial and let the subject drop. She didn’t ask any questions.
We got back in the late afternoon, having made numerous stops to marvel at the stunning variety of life around us. Sandra made a big show of hand-washing our traveling clothes and hanging them from a clothesline at the back of the house.
The rest of the day passed lazily as we sat on the lawn, drinking long drinks, watching the scenery and making happy plans for our future. We took our food onto the grassy area, sitting on an old rug and throwing occasional morsels to an inquisitive squirrel. I think that evening was the closest to heaven I had ever been.
We were finally forced indoors by a chill, which brought the clouds down the hills just as the sun disappeared and a fine grey mist spread over the sea. It wasn’t long before we adjourned to the bedroom and made tender careful love as the darkness closed in around us. Later, as I was falling asleep, I could hear the wind rising, whistling through the chimneybreasts, causing the trees to rustle and crack.
I woke early and squeezed myself away from Sandra, taking care not to wake her. After boiling some water in the kettle I ventured out to see what the weather was like. The first thing I noticed was the effect of the wind. The washing was gone from the line, torn off the rope during the night. I found a shirt in the left hand stream, a pair of underpants halfway up a tree, and Sandra’s blouse hanging from one arm of the cross on the cairn.
I retrieved everything I could find before moving to the mound of stones. I stepped over the railing, nearly injuring myself on the spikes as I clambered up the rocks, dislodging a few in the process, and gaining several bruises on my knees.
The blouse was wrapped around the rusted spar. Straining and stretching I could just about reach it. Catching hold of the blouse I pulled. My footing gave way and I fell, pulling the blouse with me. I felt the material tear before something solid and heavy hit me on the head, forcing me onto the rolling, dislodged rocks until I was brought up against the railings.
I heard a loud creaking and looked up to see the cross, now with a spar missing, swaying from side to side in the breeze. When I looked down I found the missing piece lying by my side with Sandra’s blouse wrapped around it. I left it there as I hauled myself over the railings and hobbled back to the house.
That was it for the rest of the day. I was dazed, bleeding from a head wound with bruises over much of my body. Sandra wanted to fetch the doctor but I talked her out of it. I didn’t want anybody to know that I had defaced the memorial––not yet anyway, not until I had the chance to repair the damage. I spent the day in bed, most of the time with Sandra beside me, nursing my wounds and wondering what the islanders’ reaction would be. As darkness filled the room Sandra fell asleep but I laid awake, listening to the creaking of the cross and the rasping of iron against stone as it swayed back and forth in the wind.
At some point I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by a cold draft hitting me on the back of the neck. I rolled over, hoping to snuggle against my wife’s warm body, but I met only more empty space. It took several seconds for me to realize that she wasn’t in the bed.
Moonlight was streaming in through the window enough for me to make out her pale figure and the cross that bobbed and swayed hypnotically in front of her. I was out of the room and onto the grass before I realized we were both naked.
I went back to fetch some clothes; I pulled on a long jumper and picked up an overcoat for her. When I returned to the door I could see she was not alone.
He stood inside the railing, thin and white, tall and naked, beckoning to her with one long white finger, saliva dripping from his mouth. My mind screamed vampire––I wasn’t stupid. I’d seen the films; I knew what the long teeth meant.
I was twenty yards away when she reached out to take his hand, ten yards away when he bent his head to her neck. His long hand stroked across the swell of her belly. I was close enough to see his eyes sparkle once he realized she was pregnant. I could see the blood oozing across her shoulders as he gulped noisily against her neck; the dark liquid glowed black in the moonlight.
He still hadn’t noticed me, until I gripped his head and pulled it away from its feed. I realized at once it had been a mistake. He lifted me off the ground, causing the muscles of my back, which were already tender from their earlier bruising, to scream out in white-hot agony.
The beast stared at me from the deep silver pools of his eyes. My feet were flailing as I tried to wriggle from his grasp. He pulled me close to his face––so close I could feel the cold dampness of his breath and see my wife’s blood glistening on the curved fangs. Suddenly I was lifted higher, above his head, and thrown, dumped to the ground, forgotten.
I knew what he wanted; I had seen the lust in his eyes.
Once more he reached for her, long white arms pulsing red with the blood he had taken, white hair spreading behind him like a cape as he lunged forward. He took her in his arms and crushed her body to him. She moaned a deep groan of pleasure as I writhed on the ground. I tried to get on my feet and block the sucking and moaning sounds from my brain.
I tripped over the broken spar of the cross. I lifted it, hoping to smash it across his skull before an image from the films came into my head: the image of the beast impaled.
He was still oblivious to me as I struck, forcing the heavy rusty metal into his back, putting all my weight behind it.
The screaming started immediately. Sandra was dropped to the ground; black blood pulsed from her throat as the beast raged. It turned towards me, pulling the spar from my hands and taking several layers of skin with it.
I moved back, stumbling over the fallen stones.
The vampire’s eyes pierced me––silver turning to gold and then black as its face opened in a shriek and the first wisps of smoke appeared at its chest. It looked down at the six inches of iron protruding from its breastbone just as the first flame exploded into life, taking away the lower face and much of the head of hair.
It burned a deep golden fire, which consumed it entirely in less than five seconds––a fire which stretched my skin and singed my eyebrows even as I grinned. I was left with the moonlight and the cold and the ashes and the madness echoing round in my head.
The spar was still there, lying in the midst of a heap of smoking ashes. I left it where it was and piled some of the fallen stones on top of it, giggling all the while.
Sandra was breathing heavily when I finally got to her but at least the blood had stopped. As I lifted her into my arms she let out a scream which drove through my skull.
‘The baby. Oh God … it’s coming. It’s coming.’
I don’t remember much of the next half hour, only fragments––driving like a maniac as she sobbed quietly behind me, the sudden light in the deer’s eyes before the car hit it dead on, smashing the car’s headlights into a million tinkling fragments, the small twinkling lights in the black distance as I managed to avoid the cliff edge, and finally, the iron gate on the path, which I almost fell over as the doctor came towards me and I collapsed into a faint.
I have a vague memory of being put in an armchair and force-fed whisky as my wife was carried upstairs and the doctor called for some help.
My legs wouldn’t move and my arms were heavy; sleep called me back again.
I dreamt hot lurid fantasies of violence and fire, of rape and bloodletting, of a cold, black fury that carried all before it. I woke from screams into screams.
My legs pushed me out of the chair and towards the door long before my brain was fully awake. I was halfway up the stairs before I recognized the voice behind the screaming. I reached the door just as the screams stopped.
Early morning sunlight was streaming into the room, lighting a scene which will be forever etched into my memory:
The doctor standing off to one side, his left hand covering his mouth, his right clutching his chest as if to keep his heart in.
An old woman lying across the bed in a dead faint, her grey wisps of hair mingled with the blood from my wife’s legs.
My wife lying on her side, throat muscles straining, mouth opened in a long soundless scream that refuses to come; her gaze is fixed on the writhing shape. She is ignoring the wisps of smoke which are beginning to rise from her legs; the charring and peeling and blackening are immaterial to her pain as she looks upon our child.
And there on the floor lies our future, burning golden in the first rays of the sun, being cleansed in the purifying light of the new day, my son. The last thing I see before darkness takes me away for a long time are the fangs, two tiny spikes sliding out of those new pink gums, the fangs which are the last things to disappear as the fire burns out and the ashes shift in the breeze.
When Barrettes Brought Justice to a Burning Heart
JOHN EVERSON
He staggered from the smoky heat of the bar into the chill autumn wind. The street outside was empty, the cloud-scummed sky a leeching black. Bill Frond’s stomach sloshed as he weaved to the corner, but all the liquor his wallet could afford hadn’t assuaged the burning in his chest. In fact, through the haze of inebriation, he actually felt more wounded now than before he had stomped into Ale’s Head Tavern several hours ago. The fire in his heart had contracted to a pinpoint of heat, leaving behind a blackened void. He feared when the little acid flame that still burned was extinguished he would stop dead in his tracks, a flesh appliance whose batteries had spurted their last current.