Coffin’s eyes went wide and he awkwardly grabbed at his head, smoothing back his hair. “I er…I am a slave to vanity. My hair is not as dark as my soul and I wish to-”
“Just save it,” said Vanessa. “You’re no vampire. This whole thing is just a game to you.”
Coffin looked at her confused. “Well…yeah. You don’t really think I’m a vampire, do you?”
“No,” said Vanessa. “I do not.”
“But you hoped I were?”
Vanessa sighed and looked away. She was embarrassed.
Coffin let out a laugh that sounded more surprised than cruel. “Wow! You must have a screw loose. This is all just a game. People use Dungeon.com for fun – for hook-ups. It’s just role-playing. Nobody thinks it’s real.”
“Apparently not,” said Vanessa.
“Look,” said Coffin. “My real name is Adam, but you got to admit that I’m pretty convincing. Was it the hair dye that ruined it for you?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No. It was your fangs.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “These babies cost a fortune. No one can tell they’re fake.”
“I can.”
“How?”
Vanessa decided to show her own teeth. She was going to get something out of tonight. “Because,” she snarled, “a real vampire’s fangs are at the bottom.” She leapt across the table and sank her hooked lower teeth into the soft flesh beneath Adam’s chin. He tried to jump backwards but that just made her barbed fangs sink in deeper. She grappled him to the floor and then tore her jaws free, ripping loose a huge chunk of flesh. Then she sunk her fangs into his jugular and drank him dry.
“The other thing you got wrong,” she said to Adam’s dead body, “is that we can’t share our ‘gift’. If it was that easy to make other vampires then I wouldn’t be so alone that I have to join ridiculous websites.”
It had been almost a hundred years since Vanessa had seen another of her kind, and this shambolic meeting had been her biggest hope in a long time. The whole encounter had left her feeling even more alone, and her hope to find a mate was beginning to look even more unlikely. But she would not give up.
Have to eat a few frogs to find a prince.
COLD SHOULDER
“Any more wine?” asked Amanda.
John turned to his wife and sighed. “Haven’t you had enough tonight?”
“Just go get another bottle and stop giving me grief. It’s not like I have work tomorrow. Maybe not all week if it keeps snowing like this – Whoop!”
John shook his head. He knew his wife was drunk because he was too. They’d polished off a bottle of red each and the heavy feeling it left him was dragging him towards sleep. Amanda was different though – she never quit while the night was still young. There was no point arguing with her, so John diligently went and got another bottle of Shiraz from the kitchen cabinet. There was another three bottles after this one and he worried. His wife would never drink them all – nowhere near in fact – but she may well keep going until she passed out.
Or turns nasty.
John re-entered the living room and unscrewed the bottle cap. He leant over Amanda’s glass and started pouring until the glass was almost full. He then topped up his own glass halfway.
“Sit down, honey. Never Mind The Buzzcocks is coming on. You like that.”
He did and was grateful that his wife was in an accommodating mood. He sat down beside her and put a hand on her lap. It was a struggle to focus on the television, however, because something was on his mind. “You think Jess is going to make it home from work okay?”
“Yeah,” slurred Amanda. “Why wouldn’t she?”
John shrugged. “The snow’s gotten pretty bad. Have you seen it recently?”
“Couple hours ago. Wasn’t that bad.”
“It is now. I’m starting to get a bit worried. You think I should try and walk down and meet her from the supermarket. Her shift finishes in ten minutes.”
Amanda turned the TV up slightly and frowned. “She’ll be fine. If you leave now you’d only end up missing her.”
John thought she was probably right. The weather was close to a full-blown blizzard now and it was difficult to see beyond a couple of feet. Unless he knew the exact path that his daughter took home, they would miss each other. He didn’t fancy going out in the cold pointlessly.
On the television, the programme began and John and his wife watched it. It was funny, but John couldn’t find it in him to laugh. The same wasn’t true of Amanda who was cackling at every joke, even if it was only mildly funny.
How the hell did we end up like this, he thought to himself secretly. Amanda hadn’t always been like this. The underlying edge of aggression she now possessed seemed to grow more volatile each year, and her drinking was becoming more commonplace. His own drinking had gotten much worse than it used to be too. After twenty years of marriage, an unspoken resentment had begun to take control of their relationship. John didn’t know how to stop it and was unsure if he even wanted to. It felt like something needed to change.
He wouldn’t change the past though. Most of those twenty married years had been joyous, moving down to contentedness in the latter half. And of course they had a beautiful daughter. Jess being born was the proudest moment of John’s life and he never stopped feeling that way about her. She was a strong girl with a character he admired. In fact she seemed to have many of her mother’s good points – he just hoped that she lacked some of the worst.
“You paying attention?” Amanda asked him, breaking him away from his thoughts.
He nodded to her. “Just tired. Think I might go to bed soon.”
Amanda huffed. “God, when did you become such a fuddy duddy? It’s not even ten yet.”
“I just can’t hold my wine like some people.”
Amanda scowled at him and leant away on the sofa. “What is that supposed to mean?”
John sighed and got up from the sofa. “Nothing. Nothing at all. You just do whatever you want, while I go to bed. Think that would suit both of us.”
“Would suit me better if your bed was somewhere else.”
Amanda often said nasty things when she was drunk, but that one was uncalled for. He turned around and faced her. “You keep saying things like that and you may just get your wish.”
Amanda stood up and came at him. “Don’t you threaten me.”
He took a step away from her. “You’re the one who bloody said it! Just sit back down. I’m not in the mood.”
He tried to walk away, but Amanda followed. “What’s your problem, John?”
He carried on walking. “What’s my problem? I’m fine. I just want to go to bed.”
“No,” said Amanda. “I want to know what your problem is.”
John hadn’t been aware that he had voiced a problem, but rationality was never a key component of one of Amanda’s arguments. He was starting to feel angry, but he had to keep a lid on it. The last thing the situation needed was two drunken people going at each other.
“Stop walking away,” Amanda shouted after him.
He did so, turning to look at her. He tried to stay calm. “Look, honey, I’m sorry if I upset you. I don’t want to fight. I’m just worried about Jess.”
Amanda huffed. “You needn’t be.”
Something about the way she had just said that raised the hackles on John’s neck. He felt a sudden stone of dread in his guts. “What do you mean by that?”
Amanda laughed and walked away. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“No,” said John, following back after her. “What are you talking about? Why would I not worry about my own goddamn daughter?”
Amanda spun around and looked at him with a hatred that John hadn’t realised she’d had for him. Their marriage really was over, he realised. The suffocating sadness that he felt was lessened slightly by the relief that also took root inside of him. He didn’t care about any of that right now though. He wanted to know what Amanda had meant. She told him
.
“She’s not even your daughter,” she shouted at him. “She never has been. I was fucking one of the neighbours when we lived in Burnley.”
They’d lived in Burnley at the start of their marriage, almost twenty years ago and left five years later. Jess was seventeen. Amanda sat back down on the sofa and stared at the television as though she hadn’t said anything. John felt a loathing for his wife now that was almost boundless.
He stood in front of her, blocking the television. “Say that again, and if you’re lying…”
Amanda scowled upwards at him. “If I’m lying, what? What the fuck you going to do? Just get out of this house and don’t come back. Jess isn’t your daughter so you’ve got no reason to be here.”
Rage took a hold of John as if his entire body was merely a marionette on a flimsy set of strings. Without thinking about it, or even realising he was about to do it, John picked up the half-full bottle of red wine and walloped it over his wife’s head. Amanda fell back, stunned, blood already seeping from a crack on her forehead. The bottle had not broken, so John swung it again, hitting her in the temple. The shock left Amanda’s face and was replaced by a look of bewilderment. Still the bottle did not break. Infected with an unbridled rage, down to his very soul, John swung one last time with all his might. This time the bottle shattered, smashing off Amanda’s forehead with an almighty crack!
John had never seen a dead body before, but he knew he was looking at one right now. He was glad. Now his wife would not become the full-blown monster she was threatening to become. The decaying rot of her spirit had been halted by death and she would pass on with her memory intact. A tear escaped John’s eye as he realised he would get to remember his wife as the woman he had loved for so long.
John picked up the wine-soaked dead body from the sofa and started dragging it to the front door. The plan was to dump her somewhere, close by, on the estate. Later he’d call the police and claim she hadn’t come home. Until then, he would dump the body and return, sit back and wait for his daughter to get home. He looked forward to raising Jess alone.
NEWS AND WEATHER
“This is Jane Hamilton, signing off for Midlands-UK News.” Jane handed her microphone to a production assistant and let out a shiver. She was wearing a huge pink ski-jacket but the cold was still getting through. “Was that okay, Steve?”
Her cameraman, Steve, gave her a thumbs up. “Perfect. There might have been a slight issue with snow on the lens, but nothing we could do with things the way they are. “
“I know, it’s crazy, right?” Jane looked down from the motorway bridge and examined the tipped-over transit van. She had no idea what the contents were, spilled all over the snow, and each second only shrouded them further in layers of fine white powder. As a professional news reporter, Rule One was always to remain unaffected by the stories she was reporting, but this one gave her the willies. All of the meteorologists back at the studio were flummoxed by the recent weather – a few went so far as to say it was impossible. She took their expert opinions very seriously and had some serious anxiety about what the coming days would bring. People had already started dying and she couldn’t help but worry that the toll would continue to rise substantially.
“You okay, Jane?”
She let out a breath and watched it steam in front of her face. “Yeah, Steve. Thanks. I just don’t like this cold.”
“You want me to get one of the guys to fetch you a coffee from the van? There’s still a bit left in the Thermos.”
Jane cringed at the thought of the stale taste of lukewarm coffee from a flask. “No, thanks, that’s okay. I just want to get back to the studio. There’s going to be other things to report before the night is through, I can feel it.”
“You’re probably right,” agreed Steve. “We’ll get going in a few minutes. Mike and Tony are just trying to dig the van loose.”
Jane’s eyes widened. “What?”
Steve tutted. “Hard to believe, but in the short time you were reporting, the snow was heavy enough to cover the wheels.”
“Oh, hell!”
Steve waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it, Kitten. We’ll be gone in a jiffy.”
Jane narrowed her eyes. “I told you to stop calling me that. We’re not together anymore.”
“Pity,” said Steve. “You look hot in that ski-jacket.”
Jane laughed and decided to head for the van. The snow was beginning to melt through her boots and her thick socks were becoming soaked. It was hard to walk and, after only a few steps, her calves began to ache. She wanted nothing more than to wrap up warm at home with a DVD and her cat, Thompson, but she knew the night would be long. At times like this it was all hands on deck. The freak weather conditions would keep every news channel in the world busy until its cause was known.
“Hey, Mike, how’s it going?”
Mike was kneeling next to the van, mini-shovel in hand. “My hands are so numb you could put them on a pair of tits and I wouldn’t even know.”
“Charming,” said Jane, laughing. “I guess I should stay out of the van until you’re done. My weight would probably make it harder to get the van free?”
“Dunno,” said Mike, “but don’t worry about it. I’ll manage.”
“You’re a dear,” said Jane. She patted him on the head and stepped into the van via the side door, then slid it shut after her. The van was slightly warmer than outside, but was still uncomfortably chilly. A bank of blinking monitors lined one side and she sat on the stool in front of them. The monitor on the left showed the studio feed that was currently going out live to the nation. The monitor on the right showed the feed from Steve’s camera outside – the images were still streaming but were not being recorded. Back at the studio, one of her colleagues was interviewing an ecology expert. He was currently refuting claims that a damaged Ozone layer could be the cause of all the snow.
Something caught her attention on the other monitor. The camera mounted on a tripod outside had picked up the image of Tony, the other production assistant. He was currently taking a piss off the top of the bridge to the deserted road below.
“Nice,” Jane commented, shaking her head. Steve was in the picture too, speaking on his phone. He was probably checking in with the studio to confirm it was okay to come in. Beyond them both of the men, though, was something else: a dark shape in the background, partly out of focus and obscured by the snowfall.
What is that?
The shape seemed to be coming closer, heading towards Steve and Mike at the centre of the bridge. Jane leant closer to the screen to try and make out some further details. The dark shadow didn’t seem like another person. It was closer to a small vehicle than anything else – perhaps a motorcycle.
As Jane continued watching, the shadow continued getting closer. Inch by inch, the shape revealed itself. When it became clearer, Jane was even more confused.
“What the…?”
It appeared to be an animal of some kind; a huge dog maybe – but too big and too hairy. It was creeping up slowly behind Tony, who was still taking a leak.
Jesus, is that guy part-camel or what?
Jane kept waiting for Tony or Steve to notice the creature, but they did not. She tried urging them through the monitor to look around, but of course she knew it was hopeless – she wasn’t telepathic. Just when she was about to lean out of the van and shout for their attention, the creature made itself known to the two men outside.
The over-sized hound pounced at Tony from behind, crushing him up against the bridges railings. The monitor didn’t give out sound but Jane could hear his startled cries from inside the van anyway. The bloodcurdling screams that followed were unpleasant enough, but twinned with the disturbing images on the feed monitor they were horrifying. The beast outside had pinned Tony to the ground and was ripping and tearing at his back. The snow turned red all around.
Steve realised the situation and made a run for it, most likely heading for the van. He exited the view of the came
ra and Jane was left wondering how close by he was. A second later her stomach turned as she watched the hound-beast leaving the mutilated corpse of Tony behind to give chase to Steve.
Jane stared at the monitor and tried to control her breathing. Steve’s screams were coming closer and it wasn’t long before she heard Mike’s join them. Outside of the van the two men were being attacked by something she couldn’t describe – something unnatural.
Banging at the van door.
“Jane, let me in. Open the door.” It was Steve.
Jane stared at the door handle and found herself unable to move from her seat. Every part of her mind screamed at her to let Steve in, but every fibre of her nerve-endings refused to let her move. Steve continued to scream as ripping sounds began. Whatever was out there was ripping him to shreds. Mike was probably already dead, and here she was, hiding like a coward while it all happened only inches away from her.
Thrillobytes: bite-sized horror Page 8
