by Tony Lewis
Table of Contents
Wherewolf
Cup and Sorcery
Wuthering Frights
Skullenia
Books 1-3 of the Skullenia series
Tony Lewis
Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Tony Lewis
Layout Copyright (C) 2014 by Creativia
Published 2014 by Creativia
eBook design by Creativia (www.creativia.org)
ISBN 978-952-7114-44-5 (mobi), 978-952-7114-45-2 (paperback)
Cover art by http://www.thecovercollection.com/
Interior art by Sharon Lewis
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.
For James
Maybe you’ll read this book
Love, Dad
For Mum and Dad who let me read horror stories when I was seven.
Wherewolf
The woods were silent and still as a fresh corpse. The faint rustling of small woodland creatures and the predators hunting them barely registered as sound at all, as they waged their nocturnal battles. The moon was full and high in the ebony sky, but the dense foliage of the lofty, ancient trees was enough to ensure that only a meagre amount of its light filtered through to illuminate the forest floor below.
Just then, an almost imperceptible footfall disturbed the pristine hush, and a quiet whisper floated across the gloomy air.
“Do we have to do this now?”
“Well, when else do you suggest we do it? Mid-day perhaps? Don’t think you’ll find many werewolves strolling about trying to work on their tan.”
“Okay, fine, but bear in mind what happened to the last two guys who got this job.”
“Go on, then?”
“They were totally unprepared and hadn’t done their research. They even brought silver bullets, for goodness sake, and everyone knows they don’t work.”
“Well, what happened to them then?”
“One was never found, and all they found of the other one was his hat.”
“And?”
“His head was still in it!”
“So you just presume he was eaten by a wolf,” came the sarcastic reply.
“Well, what else could have done that out here? A Boy Scout gone postal? Tied one too many reef knots and completely unravelled?”
“Maybe Cowan got fed up with his constant whining and cut his head off to shut him up.”
“Don’t wind me up, I’m nervous enough as it is.”
“I didn’t know you were afraid of the dark.”
“It’s not the dark that bothers me. It’s what’s hiding in it that gives me the willies. Especially out here.”
A quiet huff issued across the tangible gloom.
“There’s really nothing to worry about. We’ve brought everything we need. Wolf’s Bane, chains and padlocks, dog whistle.”
“Yeah, and half a sheep festering in that bag. I can smell it from here. It stinks! That’d make a maggot think twice. Smells so strong there’s more chance of us getting attacked by a shark!”
“I really don’t know why you came out here, Alf,” said the first figure, dropping the meat laden sack to the ground, where it landed with a glutinous squelch, “whining and jumping at your own shadow.”
“It’s too dark for a shadow. It’s like being down the bottom of a bloody well.”
“Look all…”
“Sssshhhh.”
“What?”
A hushed, almost indiscernible sound had punctured the abyssal silence. It was as soft as rubbing velvet on a baby’s cheek, but resounded like a gunshot because the forest was so still. Both men were hunched over, straining their ears for all they were worth, trying not only to figure out what they had heard but where it had come from, and from what.
Alf was now way beyond his initial fears about the venture. He had now arrived at St. Panic Station. He wanted to flee, but his feet were glued to the floor, knees trembling, and his bowels quickly turning to water.
“Hey!” he whispered, “where is it?”
“I don’t know for sure,” replied his companion, “but I think it might be behind us.”
Whatever it was emitted a low growl that the two men felt, rather than heard, deep in their chests.
“We’re in trouble.”
The snarl grew louder and more menacing.
“We’re definitely in tro…”
All Alf saw was a large, vague shape launch itself at his friend’s back, with enough force to carry him to the forest floor. He felt a chilled rush of air sweep past his cheek and detected the unmistakable odour of damp dog.
His stricken partner screamed once and was then silenced, his cry replaced by a sickeningly liquid crunch. Alf gazed in fascinated horror as a head the size of a horse’s turned towards him and two intense red eyes fixed him with a wicked glare. Thick dark fluid dripped from teeth the length of an index finger as the creatures’ breath formed a miasmal cloud before it. An instant later the massive beast launched itself at the lone hunter, hell bent on rending him to shredded chunks so that it could continue its grizzly feast.
Alf reacted instinctively, his adrenal gland pumping for all it was worth, and before he was consciously aware of what he was doing, he was turning to flee. As his right foot pivoted, the toe of his boot caught on something wooden and, even though every muscle and sinew in his body fought to keep him upright, he lost his balance and crashed heavily to the leaf strewn forest floor. Time seemed to slow and as he fell, he turned his head. The werewolf was nearly on him. It was in full flight, all four legs off the ground, slavering jaws wide open and ready to strike. Alf brought his left arm round, intent on finding purchase to spur him to his feet and away from what was going to be the most certain of certain deaths. His grasping fingers, however, did not hit the soil. They touched and unconsciously closed around a piece of frigid wood that was much too uniform to be a part of any tree. With time now seemingly standing still, he brought the object closer to him realising, with a flash of intense relief that it was the high powered rifle that he and his recently deceased acquaintance had brought with them. The wolf was now close enough that he could see the small red capillaries in its eyes and smell its foetid, meaty breath. Without a second thought, Alf brought the barrel of the weapon to bear on the creature and pulled the trigger, sending a hollow point bullet straight at it. Alf didn’t see where the bullet penetrated, but the sudden silence and the fact that he wasn’t being torn limb from flailing limb told him all that he needed to know. He collapsed back onto the forest floor and let out the breath that he had been holding for what had seemed like an eternity.
“Never again,” he muttered to himself.
* * *
“Dinner time, Boss!”
“Oh, good grief, do I have to?”
“I fink you do, uverwise you put your, umm, immortal soul in, drier, uh dire peril, decci, dicec, mess up your very flush and, um, bones, and spend ‘ternity wandring bout da efereal neverworld.”
Ollie Splint closed his eyes and sighed, trying to push the thought of dinner from his mind. Ollie was a vampire. Well, he was half vampire. His father, Glut the Bodyripper, was renowned throughout the undead world as one of the most bloodthirsty and malevolent creatures ever to don the black cape and fangs. His mother, however, wasn’t such a denizen of the dark. Her name was Sharon Goldsmith and she was, to this day, an assistant in a small library in Cardiff. H
is father had met her during one of his many night time hunting expeditions. She had been on a college gap year and was hiking through Eastern Europe to broaden her mind and expand on her life experience. He was out for blood, pure and simple. No frills, and nothing else in mind other than sinking his fangs into fresh, succulent flesh. Their meeting, however, had been a revelation to them both. In all his centuries of existence he had never been so affected by a human female, and as impossible as it may seem, he had actually fallen in love. As with most males pierced by Cupid’s arrow, and realising that if he wanted to stay with Sharon he needed to be truthful with her, he explained his, how shall we put it, colourful lifestyle. She took it on board and dealt with the knowledge in a surprisingly level headed fashion because, if the truth be known, she was as smitten with the giant blood sucker as he was with her. They had never married of course, because vampires simply don’t do that, but she had been afforded the greatest honour that a male vampire can bestow on a human female. He chose her to bear his child. To this day he still visited with her several times a year.
So Ollie, thanks to his mixed parentage, had been blessed with some very distinct and somewhat odd character traits. He could mesmerise anyone he liked, as long as they had the brain of an over the hill heavyweight boxer and the IQ of a boiled turnip, he needed to avoid direct sunlight, but could go out in it if he wrapped up like an Eskimo who really hated the cold, he slept in a coffin the size of a piano crate and, for some strange reason, he could make his left foot invisible. On a good night, if he’d had plenty of sleep and concentrated really hard, he could turn himself into a decently sized bat. Well, he had managed it once, but had gotten fed up with the entire process after spending three hours hanging upside down before passing water all over his own face, passing out and falling to the floor.
On the flip side of all these black talents, he was also fond of a cup of Earl Grey tea. Decaf, of course, vampires can be stroppy enough even when they’ve had a good day’s sleep. Marmite sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and a good cry at anything remotely sentimental. And try shaving when you didn’t have a reflection. His heritage was also the reason for his rather peculiar moniker. In true vampire tradition where the male offspring’s title was meant to be something as vile as possible, his given title was actually Gore the Spinesplitter, but once he had reached an age where these things mattered, he had decided that it would be next to impossible trying to go through eternity with a name like that. Have you ever tried reserving a restaurant table in the name of Spinesplitter? People do tend to treat you in a strange manner, usually before running away and phoning the police. Ollie did, however, love his old Dad, so as a sign of respect rather than changing his name completely, he had contracted it to the reasonably more user friendly Splint. Ollie was the name of a pet cat that he had once had as a boy. A cat that had mysteriously disappeared one weekend when his cousin, Grind the Felinekiller, aged nine and a half had come for a sleepover.
The main bugbear in Ollie’s life, though, was a total and utter loathing of the sight, smell, taste and feel of blood. It made him shudder every time he thought about it, which was twice a day in fact, a pint at a time. It was no fun being a creature of the night when blood-letting and everything related to the vile substance made you retch. The twice yearly meeting of the Vampire Union, V.L.A.D (Vampires Love a Drop) was a complete nightmare. The other members, happily throwing gallons of AB negative down their necks, would pull his fangs out if they discovered he had smuggled in a couple of bottles of strawberry flavoured Ribena.
As Flug placed the tray on Ollie’s desk and backed off slightly, Ollie thought about what Flug had just said. It sounded wooden and stilted, almost rehearsed. He could never come up with anything like that on his own.
“You’ve been looking at the pretty pictures in vampire comics again haven’t you, Flug?”
“Yeah. Me like da hunters. Dey cool,” he rumbled.
“I’m sure.”
“And good cooks.”
“Cooks?” asked Ollie.
“Dey do good stuff wiv steaks, me like steaks.”
Ollie gazed despondently at the hulk before him.
“S-T-A-K-E-S. Not S-T-E-A-K-S, you bonehead,” said Ollie breaking down, spelling the words as if he were addressing a particularly stupid child, or an adult from Chatham. He chose to gloss over the fact that Flug’s apparent hero spent the majority of his time nailing vampires to the floor, and no doubt yanking out their fangs for souvenirs.
A dry, rasping laugh came from a shadowy figure lurking in the doorway.
“It’s no good spelling it out, Boss. You know he has trouble stringing sentences together. And understanding them for that matter, let alone a whole word.”
“He’d have trouble stringing two beads together. And what can I do for you, Stitches?”
Phillip “Stitches” Meeup ambled over towards Ollie’s desk. He had a rolling, lopsided gait and a dusty, grey, sort of thrown together look about him, which he virtually was. In the one hundred and sixty years since his reanimation, wear and tear had taken its toll on the zombie’s joints, muscles and tissues. Parts of him were forever falling off and no amount of cod liver oil or Sanatogen were going to keep the extreme ageing process at bay. He carried around a small sewing kit at all times in case of any mishaps, hence his apt, if not very imaginative, nickname.
He sat in a chair facing Ollie.
“Just wondered if we’ve had any jobs come in. Shouldn’t you be drinking that, by the way? You don’t want it to clot,” he said, pointing to the blood filled tankard.
Ollie grimaced and reached for the revolting refreshment.
“Thank you sooooo much for reminding me,” he growled.
Stitches sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, eliciting a loud crack and a worrying puff of dust.
“No problem, sunshine. You know me, always glad to help.”
Ollie paused with the tankard a few inches from his mouth.
“How many times have I told you it’s not funny to call a vampire sunshine?”
“Makes me laugh.”
“That’s no guarantee of comedic quality. Excuse me.”
Ollie clamped his eyes shut and pinched his nose before taking a deep breath, dry swallowing, sniffing loudly, clearing his throat, sniffing again and, if it were possible, pinching his nose even tighter, before drinking it straight down.
“Yuck,” choked Ollie, slamming the empty tankard onto his desk. He belched massively and what felt like half a strapping six footers lifeblood bubbled up into his throat.
“Wot matter, Boss. You no like?” enquired Flug, a concerned look on his face.
“No, it was bloody awful,” offered Stitches.
Ollie wiped his mouth with a silk hanky.
“Can’t you find something to do, Flug? Go and play with rocks or something, and take that rancid thing with you,” Ollie gestured towards the empty tankard.
“Okay, Boss,” replied Flug and thudded out of the office.
Stitches sniggered.
“Of all the luck. Any other monster you come across was made by a mad genius or a biology student with a grudge at the very least, but not our Flug.”
“I know,” replied Ollie, shuffling papers in the vain hope of looking efficient. “You wouldn’t think an accountant would have that much spare time. And come on, bolts through the neck. Yes, we all expect that, but one through the forehead?”
“He can pick up radio on that thing, you know,” said the zombie.
“Really!”
“Yeah. On a clear night with no wind, face him north on the roof, clip an aerial to his bolt and drop his trousers, the shipping forecast comes out lovely.”
Ollie frowned.
“Seems like a lot of hassle just to listen to boat news. And why drop his trousers, does that help with the reception?”
“I’m not sure,” pondered Stitches, “but the first time we did it they fell down, so I suppose it’s become a sort of tradition.”
&nbs
p; “Traditions,” Ollie said, with a heavy hint of sarcasm in his voice, “are time honoured practices, passed down through the ages that take on revered significance. Pulling down that lunkhead’s trolleys does not count. How often do you perform this ancient and hallowed rite then?”
“We started last Friday night.”
“How noble, how holy. This has the potential to become legendary, you know.”
Stitches lowered his gaze and concentrated on his lap.
“Just a bit of fun is all,” he murmured.
“Just one more thing”, Ollie continued. “Why the shipping forecast? We live two hundred miles from the coast.”
“It’s all we can pick up apart from Radio Moscow. We tried to get Metal Breakfast Radio, but it wouldn’t have it.”
Ollie rubbed a hand over his face and let out a sigh. ‘I’m losing the will to unlive’ he thought.
“Changing the subject ever so slightly, where’s Ronnie?” asked Ollie.
“I haven’t seen him.”
“Of course you haven’t seen him, he’s invisible. I meant do you know where he is?”
“Nope.”
Ollie got up from behind his desk and walked around in front of it, to stretch his legs.
“What was it you came in here for anyway? It seems like decades ago.”
Stitches stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it about to try and dislodge an errant particle of dust that was annoying him.
“Oh, yeah. I was just wondering if we’d had any work come in.”
“Not at the mome… uhh, your finger.”
“What about it?”
“Take it out of your head. It looks like you’re either growing a tusk or you’re one of those sad acts who can’t go five steps outside their house without attaching an antenna to their skull, in case they miss a really important phone call.”
Stitches reached up with his now four fingered hand and retrieved his disembodied digit.
“I thought it’d gone quiet,” he said, getting his sewing kit from an inside pocket.