A Coven of Vampires

by Brian Lumley

  Finally I knew what he was talking about. “Why, because of their eyes!” I answered. “Their three-cornered eyes.” And as I picked up my binoculars and again trained them on the picnickers, I added: “But you can’t see their faces from up here, because of their great hats….”

  My uncle glanced out of the window and his jaw dropped. “Good Lord!” he whispered, eyes bulging in his suddenly white face. He almost snatched the glasses from me, and his huge hands shook as he put them to his eyes. After a moment he said, “My God, my God!” Simply that; and then he thrust the glasses at the Reverend Fawcett.

  The Reverend was no less affected; he said, “Dear Jesus! Oh my dear sweet Jesus! In broad daylight! Good heavens, Zach—in broad daylight!”

  Then my uncle straightened up, towered huge, and his voice was steady again, as he said: “Their shirts—look at their shirts!”

  The vicar looked, and grimly nodded. “Their shirts, yes.”

  From the foot of the stairs came Jack Boulter’s sudden query: “Zach, Reverend, are you up there? Zach, why man ar’m sorry, but there must be a fault. Damn the thing, but ar’m get’na red light!”

  “Fault?” cried my uncle, charging for the door and the stairs, with the vicar right behind him. “There’s no fault, Jack! Press the button, man—press the button!”

  Left alone again and not a little astonished, I looked at the gypsies in the field. Their shirts? But they had simply pulled them out of their trousers, so that they fell like small, personal tents to the grass where they sat. Which I imagined must keep them quite cool in the heat of the afternoon. And anyway, they always wore their shirts like that, when they picnicked.

  But what was this? To complement the sudden uproar in the house, now there came this additional confusion out side! What could have startled the gypsies like this? What on earth was wrong with them? I threw open the window and leaned out, and without knowing why, found my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth as once more, for the last time, I trained my glasses on the picnickers. And how to explain what I saw then? I saw it, but only briefly, in the moments before my uncle was there behind me, clapping his hand over my eyes, snatching the window and curtains shut, prising the glasses from my half-frozen fingers. Saw and heard it!

  The gypsies straining to their feet and trying to run, overturning their picnic baskets in their sudden frenzy, seeming anchored to the ground by fat white ropes which lengthened behind them as they stumbled outward from their blanket. The agony of their dance there in the long grass, and the way they dragged on their ropes to haul them out of the ground, like strangely hopping blackbirds teasing worms; their terrified faces and shrieking mouths as their hats went flying; their shirts and dresses billowing, and their unbelievable screams. All four of them, screaming as one, but shrill as a keening wind, hissing like steam from a nest of kettles, or lobsters dropped live into boiling water, and yet cold and alien as the sweat on a dead fish!

  And then the man’s rope, incredibly long and taut as a bowstring, suddenly coming free of the ground—and likewise, one after another, the ropes of his family—and all of them living things that writhed like snakes and sprayed crimson from their raw red ends!

  But all glimpsed so briefly, before my uncle intervened, and so little of it registering upon a mind which really couldn’t accept it—not then. I had been aware, though, of the villagers where they advanced inexorably across the field, armed with the picks and shovels of their trade (what? Ask John and Billy to keep mum about such as this? Even for a guinea?). And of the gypsies spinning like dervishes, coiling up those awful appendages about their waists, then wheeling more slowly and gradually crumpling exhausted to the earth; and of their picnic baskets scattered on the grass, all tumbled and…empty.

  • • •

  I’ve since discovered that in certain foreign parts “Obour” means “night demon”, or “ghost”, or “vampire”. While in others it means simply “ghoul”. As for the gypsies: I know their caravan was burned out that same night, and that their bones were discovered in the ashes. It hardly worried me then and it doesn’t now, and I’m glad that you don’t see nearly so many of them around these days; but of course I’m prejudiced.

  As they say in the northeast, a burden shared is a burden halved. But really, my dreams have been a terrible burden, and I can’t see why I should continue to bear it alone.

  This then has been my rite of exorcism. At least I hope so….

  ZACK PHALANX IS VLAD THE IMPALER

  Harry S. Skatsman, Jr., was livid. He was a tiny, fat, cigar-chewing, fire-eating, primadonna-taming, scene-shooting ball of absolutely livid livid. Of all things: an accident! And on his birthday, too! Zack Phalanx, superstar, “King of the Bad Guys”, had been involved in some minor accident back in Beverly Hills; an accident which, however temporarily, had curtailed his appearance on location.

  Skatsman groaned, his scarlet jowls drooping and much of the anger rushing out of him in one vast sigh. What if the accident was worse than he’d been told? What if Zack was out of the film (horrible thought) permanently? All that so-expensive advance publicity—all the bother over visas and work permits, and the trouble with the local villagers—all for nothing. Of course, they could always get someone to fill Zack’s place (Kurt Douglash, perhaps?) but it wouldn’t be the same. In his mind’s eye Skatsman could see the head lines in the film rags already: “Zack Phalanx WAS Vlad the Impaler!”

  The little fat man groaned again at this mental picture, then leaned forward in his plush leather seat and snarled (he never spoke to anyone, always snarled) at his driver: “Joe, you sure the message said Zack was only slightly hurt? He didn’t stick himself on his steering wheel or something?”

  “Yeah, slightly hurt,” Joe grunted. “Minor accident.” Joe had been driving his boss now for so many years, on location in so many parts of the world, that Skatsman’s snarls no longer fazed him—

  —But they fazed most everyone else.

  Even as the big car ploughed steadily through mid-afternoon mist as it rose up out of the valleys on old, winding roads that were often only just third class, high above in the village-sized huddle of caravans, huts and shacks, up in the glowering Carpathian Mountains, Harry S. Skatsman’s colleagues prepared themselves for all hell let loose when the florid, fiery little director returned.

  They all knew now that Zack Phalanx had been injured, that his arrival at Jlaskavya airport had been “unavoidably delayed”. And they knew moreover just exactly what that meant where Skatsman was concerned. The little fat man would be utterly unapproachable, poisonous, raging one minute and sobbing the next in unashamed frustration, until “Old Grim-Grin” (as Phalanx was fondly known in movie circles) showed up. Then they could shoot his all-important scenes.

  This dread of the director in dire mood was shared by all and sundry, from the producer, Jerry Sollinger (a man of no mean status himself), right down to Sam “Sugar” Sweeney, the coffee-boy—who was in fact a man of sixty-three—and including sloe-eyed Shani Silarno, the heroine of this, Skatsman’s fourteenth epic.

  Oh, there was going to be a fuss, all right, but what—they all asked among themselves—would the fuss really be all about? For in all truth Zack Phalanx’s scenes were not to be many. His magic box-office name on the billboards, starred as Vlad the Impaler himself, was simply to be a draw, a “name” to pull the crowds. For the same reason Shani Silarno was cheesecake, though certainly she had far more footage than the grim, scar-faced, sardonic, ugly, friendly “star” of the picture.

  And most of that picture, filmed already, had been dashed off to Hollywood for the usual pre-release publicity screenings—except for the Phalanx scenes, which, now that the star was known to be out of it, however temporarily, Jerry Sollinger had explained away in a hastily drummed-up, fabulously expensive telephone call as being simply too terrific, too fantastically good to be shown in any detail before the actual premier. Of course, the gossip columnists would know better, but hopefully before they got the
ir wicked little claws into the story Phalanx would be out here in Romania and all would be well….

  But meanwhile the important battle scenes, all ketchup and senf though they were, would have to wait on the arrival of Old Grim-Grin, injured in some minor traffic accident.

  Producer Jerry Sollinger was beginning to wish he’d never heard of Vlad the Impaler; or rather, that Harry S. Skatsman had never heard of him. Sollinger could still remember when first the fat little director had snarled into his office to slam down upon his desk a file composed of bits and pieces of collected facts and lore concerning one Vlad Dracula. This Vlad—Vlad being a title of some sort, possibly “Prince”—had been a fifteenth-century warlord, a Wallach of incredible cruelty. Like his ancestors before him, he had led his people against wave after wave of invading Turks, Magyars, Bulgars, Lombards and others equally barbaric, to beat them back from his princedom aerie in the foreboding mountains of Carpathia.

  He was, in short, the original Dracula; but whichever historian appended the words “the Impaler” to his name had in mind a different sort of impaling than did Bram Stoker when he wrote his popular novel. Vlad V Tsepeth Dracula of Wallachia had earned his name by sticking the captured hundreds of his enemies vertically on rank after rank of upright stakes, where they might sit and scream out the mercifully short remainder of their lives in hideous agony while he and other nobles laughed and cantered their warhorses up and down amidst the blood and gore.

  The vampire legend in connection with Vlad V probably sprang up not only from this monstrous method of execution, but also from the fact that a Wallachian curse has it (despite his lying dead for over five hundred years) that Vlad the Impaler “will return from the grave with his warriors of old to protect his lands if ever again invaders penetrate his boundaries.”

  This, roughly, was the information Skatsman’s file contained, and to its cover he had stapled a single sheet of paper bearing the following storyline, his synoptic “plan” of the epic-to-be:

  “Vlad Drac, (Zack Phalanx), scorned by his subjects and the sovereigns of neighbouring kingdoms and princedoms alike for his chicken, pacifist ways, finally loses his cool and takes up the sword against the invader (something like Friendly Persuasion but with mountains and battleaxes). This only after his castle has been burned right off the edge of its precipice by the advancing Turks, and after his niece, the young Princess Minerna, (Shani Silarno), has been raped by the Turk barbarian boss, (Tony Kwinn?). To conclude, we’ll have Vlad V suicide after his boys mistakenly stick his mistress, (Glory Graeme?), who has dressed like a Turk camp-follower to escape the invaders, not realizing that Vlad has already whupped them? Robert Black can whip this up into something good.” To this brief, almost cryptic outline, Skatsman had appended his signature.

  And from that simple seed, the idea had blossomed, mushrooming into a giant project, an epic; by which time it had been too late for Sollinger to back out. Truth of the matter was that the producer was a little fearful of these so-called “epic” productions: just such a project had almost ruined him many years ago. But with such a story—with the awesome, disquieting grandeur of the Carpathian Moun tains as background, with a list of stars literally typecast into the very parts for which they were acclaimed and which they played best, with Skatsman as director (and he was a very good director, despite his tantrums)—well, what could go wrong?

  Much could go wrong….

  And yet at first it had seemed like plain sailing. The new peace-pact with the Eastern-bloc countries had helped them in the end to get the necessary visas; that and the promise of recruitment as extras of hundreds of the poor, local villagers into bit parts. And this latter of course had saved much on costumary, for the dress and costumes of these people had not much changed in five centuries. On the other hand, there had been little of the film-star in them. When they were used, each fragment of each and every scene had to be directed with the most minute attention to detail, always through an interpreter and invariably with the end result that Skatsman, before he could be satisfied, would have the set in uproar. The stars would be threatening to walk out, the local “actors” themselves gibbering in fear of the little man’s temper, as though the director were the great Vlad V himself resurrected!

  Indeed, when finally those locals—all two hundred eighty of them—had walked off the set, flatly refusing to work any longer on the giant production, Skatsman had been blamed. Not to his face, of course not, but behind his back the cast and technicians had “known” that he was the spanner in the works. This did not explain, though, the fact that when Philar Jontz the PR man went after the runaways, in fact to pay them their last wages, he discovered two empty villages! Not only had the rather primitive “actors” deserted the film—not that it mattered greatly, for all of their important scenes were already in the can—but they had taken their families, friends, indeed the entire populations of their home villages with them. Stranger still, the quaint old town into which they had all moved en masse was only a mile or so further down the mountain road. Whatever they were running away from, well, they had not bothered to run very far!

  Ever the PR man, Jontz had followed them, only to discover that in the now badly overcrowded town no one would have anything to do with him, neither refugees nor regular inhabitants. Mystified, he had returned to his colleagues.

  Within a day or so, however, rumours had found their way back to the mobile town in the mountains. The whispers were vague and inconclusive and no one really bothered much to listen to them, but in essence they gave the lie to anyone who might try to attach the blame to Skatsman. No (the rumours said), the villagers had not been frightened off by the little boss; and no, they had not found the work distasteful—the money had been more than welcome and they were very grateful.

  But did the rich American bosses not know that there had been strange rumblings in the mountains? And were they not aware that in Recjaviscjorska a priest had foretold queer horror in the highlands? Why!—wasn’t it common knowledge that an ancient burial place in the grounds of certain crumbling and massive ruins high in the rocky passes was suddenly most—unquiet? No, better that the Americans be given a wide berth until, one way or the other, they were gone and the mountains were peaceful again.

  Though of course he had his ear to the ground, still it was all far beyond Philar Jontz’s understanding, and even had he thought or bothered himself to look at a map of the region (though there was no reason why he should) it is doubtful that he would have noticed anything at all out of the ordinary. Maps being what they are in that country, in all probability the ancient boundaries would not be marked, and so Jontz would not have seen that the two deserted villages lay within the perimeter of what once had been the princedom of Vlad V Tsepeth Dracula of Wallachia, or that the now bulging town lower down the mountain slopes lay outside the centuried prince’s domain….

  • • •

  Now all this had happened before the latest crisis, but even then Phalanx had been overdue on location, delayed for first one reason and then another in Hollywood. And so a number of restless, wasted days had gone by, until finally came that great morning when the poisonous little director received the telephone message everyone had been waiting and praying for. Old Grim-Grin was on his way at last; he would be on the mid-afternoon flight into Jlaskavya; could someone meet him and his retinue at the airport to escort them to location?

  Could someone meet them, indeed! Skatsman himself would meet them; and without further ado the delighted director had set out in his huge car with Joe, his driver, down the steep mountain roads to distant Jlaskavya.

  For once in his life Skatsman had been truly happy. He had known (he told Joe) that it was all going to be okay. Nothing ever went wrong on his birthday—nothing dared go wrong on his birthday! And thus he had snarled cheer fully to Joe all the way to the dismal airport…where finally he had been informed of his superstar’s latest and most serious delay.

  Having picked up a smattering of the local langua
ge, it was Joe who first received the news, and when Skatsman had recovered from his initial convulsions it was Joe who phoned the facts through to Philar Jontz in the over crowded town where the PR man had not yet given up trying to solve the mystery of the runaway extras. Jontz, in turn, had taken the dread message back to his film friends in the mountains.

  Later, it also fell to the PR man to spot the horde of extras—all costumed for a battle scene, helmeted and leather-sandaled, with a variety of shields, swords, maces and lances—as they came creeping down out of the higher passes, flanked by riders astride great warhorses. The PR man had been astounded, but only for a moment, and then he had given a whoop of understanding.

  Why, Skatsman, the old fraud! They might have expected something like this of him. Wasn’t it his birthday? This explained everything. The runaway extras, the alleged “accident” of Zack Phalanx: it had all been a build-up to the Big Surprise. And surely that great, grim-faced, leading rider was Zack Phalanx?

  Dusk was settling over the mountains like a great grey mantle by that time, and the actors and technicians and all were already settling in their caravans and tents, preparing for the next day’s work or bedding down for the night. Philar Jontz’s cry went up for all of them to hear:

  “Well, I’ll be damned! Zack! Zack Phalanx! Where’s that old rogue Skatsman hiding?” Then they heard his quavering, querying exclamation of disbelief, and finally his awful, rising scream, cut off by a thick sound not unlike a meat cleaver sinking into a side of beef….

  • • •

  Something less than an hour later, Harry S. Skatsman’s big car came round the last bend in the winding mountain road and turned off onto the fringe of the flat, cleared area that housed the sprawling units of the vast, mobile film town. The headlights cut a swathe of light between the shadowed ranks of shacks, trailers, trucks, caravans and tents—illuminating a scene that caused Joe to slam on his brakes so hard that Skatsman almost shot headlong over into the front of the car. Twin rows of stakes stretched away towards a bleak background of dark and sullen moun tains, and atop each stake sat the motionless form of a dressed dummy, head down and arms bound.