The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  “Gie me the groat again, canny young man; the day it is short and the night it is lang, the dearest siller that ever I wan.

  “The tailor fell thro’ the bed, thimbles an’ a‘.”

  TINA RATH

  A Trick of the Dark

  TINA RATH SOLD HER FIRST dark fantasy story to Catholic Fireside in 1974. Since then her short fiction has appeared in both the small and mainstream press, including Ghosts & Scholars, All Hallows, Women’s Realm, Bella and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

  Her stories have been anthologized in The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Horror Stories, Midnight Never Comes, Seriously Comic Fantasy, Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XV and The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women.

  With her husband, Tony, she has co-written stories for editor Mike Ashley’s Royal Whodunnits and Shakespearean Detectives, and together they run Parlour Voices, a live reading/performance group.

  More recently, Rath received a degree from London University for her thesis on ‘The Vampire in Popular Fiction’, and she edited Conventional Vampires, a thirtieth anniversary collection of vampire stories for The Dracula Society.

  “The inspiration for this story was the cover of a paperback edition of Dracula (The Most Famous Horror Story Ever Told’),” reveals the author. “The illustration was obviously inspired by the Bela Lugosi Dracula film, and shows the Count in his vampire cloak bending menacingly over the sleeping Lucy. She is wearing a frilly nightie; there is a pretty coverlet on the bed, and a flowered lamp beside it.

  “The contrast between the cosy bedroom and the dark, menacing (but erotic) figure of the vampire fascinated me and I tried to reproduce this atmosphere in my story. I hope I have succeeded.”

  ‘A Trick of the Dark’ is published here for the first time.

  “WHAT JOB FINISHES JUST at sunset?

  Margaret jumped slightly. “What a weird question, darling. Park keeper, I suppose.” Something made her turn to look at her daughter. She was propped up against her pillows, looking, Margaret thought guiltily, about ten years old. She must keep remembering, she told herself fiercely, that Maddie was nineteen. This silly heart-thing, as she called it, was keeping her in bed for much longer than they’d ever thought it would, but it couldn’t stop her growing up . . . she must listen to her, and talk to her like a grown-up.

  Intending to do just that, she went to sit on the edge of the bed. It was covered with a glossy pink eiderdown, embroidered with fat pink and mauve peonies. The lamp on Maddie’s bedside table had a rosy shade. Maddie was wearing a pink bed-jacket, lovingly crocheted by her grandmother, and Maddie’s pale blonde hair was tied back with a pink ribbon . . . but in the midst of this plethora of pink Maddie’s face looked pale and peaky. The words of a story that Margaret had read to Maddie once – how many years ago? – came back to her: “Peak and pine, peak and pine.” It was about a changeling child who never thrived, but lay in the cradle, crying and fretting, peaking and pining . . . in the end the creature had gone back to its own people, and she supposed that the healthy child had somehow got back to his mother, but she couldn’t remember. Margaret shivered, wondering why people thought such horrid stories were suitable for children.

  “What made you wonder who finishes work at sunset?” she asked.

  “Oh – nothing,” Maddie looked oddly shy, as she might have done if her mother had asked her about a boy who had partnered her at tennis, or asked her to a dance. If such a thing could ever have happened. She played with the pink ribbons at her neck and a little, a very little colour crept into that pale face. “It’s just – well – I can’t read all day, or—” She hesitated and Margaret mentally filled in the gap. She had her embroidery, her knitting, those huge complicated jigsaws that her friends were so good about finding for her, a notebook for jotting down those funny little verses that someone was going to ask someone’s uncle about publishing . . . but all that couldn’t keep her occupied all day.

  “Sometimes I just look out of the window,” Maddie said.

  “Oh, darling . . .” Margaret couldn’t bear to think of her daughter just lying there – just looking out of the window. “Why don’t you call me when you get bored? We could have some lovely talks. Or I could telephone Bunty or Cissie or—”

  It’s getting quite autumnal after all, she thought, and Maddie’s friends won’t be out so much, playing tennis, or swimming or . . . You couldn’t expect them to sit for hours in a sickroom. They dashed in, tanned and breathless from their games and bicycle rides, or windblown and glowing from a winter walk, and dropped off a jigsaw or a new novel . . . and went away.

  “I don’t mind, mummy,” Maddie was saying. “It’s amazing what you can see, even in a quiet street like this. I mean, that’s why I like this room. Because you can see out.”

  Margaret looked out of the window. Yes. You could see a stretch of pavement, a bit of Mrs Creswell’s hedge, a lamp-post, the postbox and Mrs Monkton’s gate. It was not precisely an enticing view, and she exclaimed, “Oh, darling!” again.

  “You’d be amazed who visits Mrs Monkton in the afternoons,” Maddie said demurely.

  “Good heavens, who—” Margaret exclaimed, but Maddie gave a reassuringly naughty giggle.

  “That would be telling! You’ll have to sit up here one afternoon and watch for yourself.”

  “I might,” Margaret said. But how could she? There was always so much to do downstairs, letters to write, shopping to do, and cook to deal with. (Life to get on with?) She too, she realized, dropped in on Maddie, left her with things to sustain or amuse her. And went away.

  “Perhaps we could move you downstairs, darling,” she said. But that would be so difficult. The doctor had absolutely forbidden Maddie to use the stairs, so how on earth could they manage what Margaret could only, even in the privacy of her thoughts, call “the bathroom problem”? Too shame-making for Maddie to have to ask to be carried up the stairs every time she needed – and who was there to do it during the day? Maddie was very light – much too light – but her mother knew that she could not lift her, let alone carry her, by herself.

  “But you can’t see anything from the sitting-room,” Maddie said.

  “Oh darling—” Margaret realized she was going to have to leave Maddie alone again. Her husband would be home soon and she was beginning to have serious doubts about the advisability of reheating the fish pie . . . She must have a quick word with cook about cheese omelettes. If only cook wasn’t so bad with eggs . . . “What’s this about sunset anyway?” she said briskly.

  “Sunset comes a bit earlier every day,” Maddie said. “And just at sunset a man walks down the street.”

  “The same man, every night?” Margaret asked.

  “The same man, always just after sunset,” Maddie confirmed.

  “Perhaps he’s a postman?” Margaret suggested.

  “Then he’d wear a uniform,” Maddie said patiently. “And the same if he was a parkkeeper I suppose – they wear uniform too, don’t they? Besides, he doesn’t look like a postman.”

  “So – what does he look like?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” Maddie struggled for the right words. “But-can you imagine a beautiful skull?”

  “What! What a horrible idea!” Margaret stood up, clutching the grey foulard at her bosom. “Maddie, if you begin talking like this I shall call Dr Whiston. I don’t care if he doesn’t like coming out after dinner. Skull-headed men walking past the house every night indeed!”

  Maddie pouted. “I didn’t say that. It’s just that his face is very – sculptured. You can see the bones under the skin, especially the cheekbones. It just made me think – he must even have a beautiful skull.”

  “And how is he dressed?” Margaret asked faintly.

  “A white shirt and a sort of loose black coat,” Maddie said. “And he has quite long curly black hair. I think he might be a student.”

  “No hat?” her mother asked, scandalized. �
�He sounds more like an anarchist! Really, Maddie, I wonder if I should go and have a word with the policeman on the corner and tell him that a suspicious character has been hanging about outside the house.”

  “No, mother!” Maddie sounded so anguished that her mother hastily laid a calming hand on her forehead.

  “Now, darling, don’t upset yourself. You must remember what the doctor said. Of course I won’t call him if you don’t want me to, or the policeman. That was a joke, darling! But you mustn’t get yourself upset like this . . . Oh dear, your forehead feels quite clammy. Here, take one of your tablets. I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  And in her very real anxiety for her daughter, worries about the fish pie and well-founded doubts about the substitute omelettes, Margaret almost forgot about the stranger. Almost, but not quite. A meeting with Mrs Monkton one evening when they had both hurried out to catch the last post and met in front of the postbox reminded her and she found herself asking if Mrs Monkton had noticed anyone “hanging about”.

  “A young man?” that lady exclaimed with a flash of what Margaret decided was rather indecent excitement. “But darling, there are no young men left.” Margaret raised a hand in mute protest only to have it brushed aside by Mrs Monkton. “Well, not nearly enough to go round, anyway. I expect this one was waiting for Elsie.”

  Elsie worked for both Mrs Monkton and Margaret, coming in several times a week to do “the rough”, the cleaning that was beneath Margaret’s cook and Mrs Monkton’s extremely superior maid. She was a handsome girl with, it was rumoured, an obliging disposition, the sort who would never have been allowed across the threshold of a respectable household when Margaret was young. But nowadays . . . Mrs Monkton’s suggestion did set Margaret’s mind at rest. A hatless young man – yes, he must be waiting for Elsie. She might “have a word” with the girl about the propriety of encouraging young men to hang about the street for her; but, on the other hand, she might not . . . She hurried back home.

  Bunty’s mother came to tea, full of news. Bunty’s elder sister was getting engaged to someone her mother described as “a bit n.q.o.s., but what can you do . . .” “N.q.o.s.” was a rather transparent code for “not quite our sort”. The young man’s father was, it appeared, very, very rich, though no one was quite sure where he had made his money. He was going to give – to give outright! – (Bunty’s mother had gasped) a big house in Surrey to the young couple. And he was going to furnish it too, unfortunately, according to his own somewhat . . . individual . . . taste.

  “Chrome, my dear, chrome from floor to ceiling. The dining room looks like a milk bar. And as for the bedroom – Jack says” – she lowered her voice – “he says it looks like an avant-garde brothel in Berlin. Although how he knows anything about them I’m sure I’m not going to ask. But he’s having nothing to do with the wedding,” she added, sipping her tea as if it were hemlock. “I wonder my dear – would dear little Maddie be well enough to be a bridesmaid? It won’t be until next June. I want to keep Pammy to myself for as long as I can . . .” She dabbed at her eyes.

  “Of course,” Margaret murmured doubtfully. And then, with more determination, “I’ll ask the doctor.”

  And, rather surprising herself, she did. On Dr Whiston’s next visit to Maddie, Margaret lured him into the sitting room with the offer of a glass of sherry and let him boom on for a while on how well Maddie was responding to his treatment. Then she asked the Question, the one she had, until that moment, not dared to ask.

  “But when will Maddie be – quite well? Could she be a bridesmaid, say, in June next year?”

  The doctor paused, sherry halfway to his lips. He was not used to being questioned. Margaret realized that he thought she had been intolerably frivolous. “Bridesmaid?” the doctor boomed. And then thawed, visibly. Women, he knew, cared about such things. “Brides-maid! Well, why not? Provided she goes on as well as she has been. And you don’t let her get too excited. Not too many dress fittings, you know, and see you get her home early after the wedding. No dancing and only a tiny glass of champagne . . .”

  “And will she ever we well enough . . . to . . . to . . . marry herself and to . . .” But Margaret could not bring herself to finish that sentence to a man, not even a medical man.

  “Marry – well, I wouldn’t advise it. And babies? No. No. Still, that’s the modern girl, isn’t it? No use for husbands and children these days—” and he boomed himself out of the house.

  Margaret remembered that the doctor had married a much younger woman. Presumably the marriage was not a success . . . then she let herself think of Maddie. She wondered if Bunty’s mother would like to exchange places with her. Margaret would never have to lose her daughter to the son of a nouveau riche war profiteer. Never . . . and she sat down in her pretty chintz-covered armchair and cried as quietly as she could, in case Maddie heard her. For some reason she never asked herself how far the doctor’s confident boom might carry. Later she went up to her daughter, smiling gallantly.

  “The doctor’s so pleased with you, Maddie,” she said. “He thinks you’ll be well enough to be Pammy’s bridesmaid! You’ll have to be sure you finish her present in good time.”

  Margaret had bought a tray cloth and six place mats stamped with the design of a figure in a poke bonnet and a crinoline, surrounded by flowers. Maddie was supposed to be embroidering them in tasteful naturalistic shades of pink, mauve and green, as a wedding gift for Pammy, but she seemed to have little enthusiasm for the task. Her mother stared at her, lying back in her nest of pillows. “Peak and pine! Peak and pine!” said the voice in her head.

  “Do you ever see your young man any more?” she asked, more to distract herself than because she was really concerned.

  “Oh, no,” Maddie said, raising her shadowed eyes to her mother. “I don’t think he was ever there at all. It was a trick of the dark.”

  “Trick of the light, surely,” Margaret said. And then, almost against her will, “Do you remember that story I used to read you? About the changeling child?”

  “What, the one that lay in the cradle saying ‘I’m old, I’m old, I’m ever so old’?” Maddie said. “Whatever made you think of that?”

  “I don’t know,” Margaret gasped. “But you know how you sometimes get silly words going round and round your head – it’s as if I can’t stop repeating those words from the story. ‘Peak and pine!’ to myself over and over again.” There, she had said it aloud. That must exorcize them, surely.

  “But that’s not from the changeling story,” Maddie said. “It’s from ‘Christabel’, – you know, Coleridge’s poem about the weird Lady Geraldine. She says it to the mother’s ghost: ‘Off wandering mother! Peak and pine!’ We read it at school, but Miss Brownrigg made us miss out all that bit about Geraldine’s breasts.”

  “I should think so, too,” Margaret said weakly.

  Autumn became winter, although few people noticed by what tiny degrees the days grew shorter and shorter until sunset came at around four o’clock. Except perhaps Maddie, sitting propped up on her pillows, and watching every day for the young man who still walked down the street every evening, in spite of what she had told her mother. And even she could not have said just when he stopped walking directly past the window, and took to standing in that dark spot just between the lamp-post and the postbox, looking up at her . . .

  “Where’s your little silver cross, darling?” Margaret said suddenly, wondering vaguely when she had last seen Maddie wearing it.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Maddie said, too casually. “I think the clasp must have broken and it slipped off.”

  “Oh, but—” Margaret looked helplessly at her daughter. “I do hope Elsie hasn’t picked it up. I sometimes think . . .”

  “I expect it’ll turn up,” Maddie said. Her gaze slid away from her mother’s face and returned to the window.

  “How’s Pammy’s present coming along?” Margaret asked, speaking to that white reflection in the dark glass, trying to make her daughter
turn back to her. She picked up Maddie’s work-bag. And stared. One of the place mats had been completed. But the figure of the lady had been embroidered in shades of black and it was standing in the midst of scarlet roses and tall purple lilies. It was cleverly done: every fold and flounce was picked out . . . but Margaret found it rather disturbing. She was glad that the poke bonnet hid the figure’s face . . . She looked up to realize that Maddie was looking at her almost slyly.

  “Don’t you like it?” her daughter asked.

  “It’s – it’s quite modern isn’t it?”

  “What, lazy daisies and crinoline ladies, modern?” How long had Maddie’s voice had that lazy mocking tone? She sounded like a world-weary adult talking to a very young and silly child.

  Margaret put the work down.

  “You will be all right, darling, won’t you?” Margaret said, rushing into her daughter’s room one cold December afternoon. “Only I must do some Christmas shopping, I really must . . .”

  “Of course you must, mummy,” Maddie said. “You’ve got my list, haven’t you? Do try to find something really nice for Bunty, she’s been so kind . . .”

  And what I would really like to give her, Maddie thought, is a whole parcel of jigsaws . . . and all the time in the world to see how she likes them . . . She leaned against her pillows, watching her mother scurry down the street. Margaret would catch a bus at the corner by the church, and then an Underground train, and then face the crowded streets and shops of a near-Christmas West End London. Maddie would have plenty of time to herself. She knew (although her mother did not) that cook would be going out to have tea with her friend at Mrs Cresswell’s at half-past three, and for at least one blessed hour Maddie would be entirely alone in the house.

  She pulled herself further up in the bed, and fumbled in the drawer of her bedside table to find the contraband she had managed to persuade Elsie to bring in for her. Elsie had proved much more useful than Bunty or Cissie or any of her kind friends. She sorted through the scarlet lipstick, the eyeblack, the facepowder, and began to draw the kind of face she knew she had always wanted on the blank canvas of her pale skin. After twenty minutes of careful work she felt that she had succeeded rather well.