The Spinetinglers Anthology 2009

by Неизвестный

  After a few moments he risks a glance around. He sees the distant blue lights of the retreating engine – and then he doesn’t. Blackness has engulfed the far end of the street and it is advancing.

  Jamie has seen his first death tonight. Not only that, the boy who died was his best friend, Arron. He can still hear him screaming – so loudly, so dreadfully, that it is as though the event is still occurring. Already, Jamie wonders if he will ever be free of the sound, or if he will ever be able to forget what he saw.

  The hand.

  The hand that had appeared from Arron’s own mouth. Something inside him... tearing at the flesh of the boy’s face until blood had..

  Jamie sets the memory aside. He knows that if he does not, he will not survive this night.

  Another glance back. Closer now. Much closer.

  Too close.

  He will not make it.

  Ahead he sees a final chance – a final hope. A car door is open as a woman starts to climb in. Jamie puts his head down, and pedals for his soul..

  ***

  Miriam cannot explain this sudden compulsion to drive. The sports car is new, yes, but she is not one to drive solely for the joy of it – her token environmental conscience forbids it.

  Yet the walls had seemed to close in on her. Suddenly, despite having never been claustrophobic, she could perfectly understand that fear. She had to get out – to the open where she could see the sky and feel fresh air on her face.

  And then there had been the noises next door – an argument or a fight. It had disturbed her enormously.

  She unlocks the Boxster and is about to drop inside when the sound of scraping metal scares her half to death. She wheels around.

  A boy has come off his bicycle in the road just behind her. Immediately he gets back to his feet, and makes no attempt to nurse himself or to retrieve his fallen transport.

  “Help me,” he says.

  She puts a hand on his shoulder, peering through the darkness to ascertain the extent of his injuries.

  “Where does it hurt?”

  He takes another step forward, invading her personal space uncomfortably. “Help me,” he repeats. “We have to go.” He clutches at her blouse with dirty fingers, then half twists around to point back the way he has come.

  She would step away, but her own car is at her back and there is nowhere to go. She finds herself following his indication. She sees nothing of note – only an unusual pall of dust or smoke that seems to drift towards them from the direction of town. “Look, I can call...” she begins.

  Then the screaming starts. From that unusual cloud, people are screaming. Or something is. She hears dull, metallic thuds. Smashing glass. Car alarms.

  “Go,” the boy insists, “go now!”

  And then there comes the sound of a detonation, something so powerful and lurid that briefly the cloud is illuminated from within. For a tiny fraction of a second she sees silhouettes in the darkness – impossible shapes and forms, advancing steadily.

  “Get in!” she says.

  The engine roars. Rear tyres scrabble and smoke. They are moving..

  ***

  Thomas hears the sound of a car revving outside – the screech of tyres.

  His gaze returns to the knife he holds – the shining, reflective, impossibly heavy blade. How long has he stood this way? He realises he can hold it no longer. He realises that there is nothing – nothing – wrong with what he will do.

  As the blade begins its downward, razor’s arc she begins to scream. And then it is through her, and the world turns red.

  Thomas, smiling, faces the window as the first tendrils of shadow seep soundlessly into the small room.

  He is still smiling when black fingers emerge from his throat..

  ***

  Slippers lost, feet bare.

  No rest.

  No pause.

  She hopes the monsters will be like the flowers and the snow – destined delicately to fade. She thinks maybe, just maybe if she never goes home to him, the nightmares will end.

  Jenny keeps her back to the shadow and she runs.

  You Are Mine

  by Steven Beeho

  Guns were aimed. There was no escape.

  He smiled. It was slow, but not lazy. He relished this, his look fixed forward while behind him his strident women glowered. Each tall, each strong and supple, they were poised to fight to any end, and yet would only do so at his signal. He gave it, but not to them.

  “Please,” he purred. “Shoot.”

  Guns rattled, bullets came in sharp waves and slammed in. He bent back, forced to by the impact of numerous hard hits, and behind him his women reeled as well. Each arched with feline adeptness, falling, falling, hovering, and then..

  He snapped upright and his eyes fumed with a malicious crimson stare, and his smile was open to reveal lustrous fangs. The women corrected themselves the moment he did, as though obeying pulls on strings, none even marked by the shots. Their eyes were a hateful yellow, if their fangs gleamed equally as his. Now they coiled.

  “Slaughter them,” he sighed, such was his love of this, and they howled in their delight to obey and to rend. They pounced, men wailed in horror and agony, some guns let out pitiful bleats, and then blood was unfurled in magnificent bursts to drench the walls.

  It was a splendid scene, artistic and chaotic in equal measure, and he sauntered through without concern, or even a splash. He stepped out into the hallway, paused to smooth his white hair, eyes no longer blazing as he stood serene, and then he angled his head upward, and sniffed. He turned on a heel and walked into a darkened room, the cacophony of mayhem still pleasing his ears, and he surveyed the shadows, and then he put a hand on a wall.

  He slithered up it, flexed and then snaked across the ceiling. He moved in a circle over the clutter in here, hands caressing only, needing no more. He began to circle again, and then she bolted.

  She jarred and looked back. He was on the floor, one hand beneath his chin, the other upon her ankle. She shook him off, or tried to, and few would have been able to resist her athletic limb’s vigorous actions, except he merely squeezed, and then reeled her in.

  “You like hide and seek, do you? How coy. Very well. Go.”

  He released her. She ran, out of the room and into his grasp.

  “No, no, no, that’s not how you play. You have to find me.” With that, he threw her down the steps, and caught her. “Well done. I give up.”

  “What the fuck are you?” she screeched.

  He set her on her feet. “More than you will ever be, I’m afraid,” he revealed, seeming to savour this and yet also cold in the bare truth of it.

  “Are you a... vampire?” She sought any explanation, and yet he merely smiled.

  “No, but they are.” She looked up and saw his women standing tall and proud at the top of the stairs, each sucking the blood from their fingers. They regarded her with deadly intent, and yet she knew she was safe from them, because of him. She summoned all her spirit and faced him – except he was the one to speak. “I am the highest there can be, but for one, the one.” His smirk grew. “I am all powerful, and yet a slave, I am glorious, and yet a horror and I am to be in awe of, and yet dismissed. Tell me.” She could only stammer. “My dear, do not fear me,” he sang softly, stroking her face, “for I am an Angel.”

  “Never,” she denounced with a whisper and tried to pull away, yet his fingers took hold upon her face. “Angels. they’re holy, pure.”

  “Oh, I do apologise, I bow to your greater knowledge of my kind,” he snapped with such sarcasm it could run off his tongue. “Let me boast this, frail thing; I am no slave, nor can I be dismissed, because I have already been. I was struck from my lofty perch and now must walk among you, and so I do, or rather I walk over you, when I choose.” He laughed to her even as his hand gripped enough to cause pain.

  “Lucifer,” she gasped.

  “That prick?” He turned and spat. “A lowly wretch who sought what none can ha
ve. A waste of talent and a fitting existence for such an ego. Hmmm, no, that is not my name, nor will you know it; I lack the fame to be written off, good or bad. I was a mere loyal lackey, I took my orders and saw them through to the utmost, until... well, until I became royally fucked off, I suppose.” He snarled at her, eyes flashing red once more. “Don’t dare think that, bitch. The wonders of above are not yours to judge or long for, you cannot begin to imagine what lies in store. I know, and I defy it! A humble tool for all existence? A meek pet for as long as I think? Never! Yes, never, my young piece of humanity. I will one day end and glad of it; I chose death over immortality, and it makes me so happy.” He threw back his head and howled with joy, and when he returned to her his eyes were normal orbs once more, if bearing a look she felt to the back of her mind.

  “He forgives you know. I do not, nor do I forget. I was sent here to wither – I refuse. I feed on you, on his darlings, and for each act of vile depravity I perform I return the debt of a century of humility. I live to spite Him, and all else, and to just enjoy what I have taken up for myself. Life!”

  He was rapturous, he was intent, he was sly, he was sadistic. He made her turn and look on his women, grasp ever more torturous.

  “I make them. I am their Eve.” He chuckled. “This is not mere conversion I speak of, I mould them how I desire. Look at them, strong and sleek, hunters of unquestionable splendour. I will do this to you also.” She shuddered and he felt it. “You fear becoming like them?” he doubted with scorn. “Look and behold my work, the graceful length of the legs, the supple arch of the spine, the sculpted beauty of their faces that even a homophobe like you must be drawn to. Yes I know you, your pride, your certainty, your obedient nature. You are a lapdog; I will make you an exquisite beast.”

  “I’ll never accept your want of me,” she denounced with her weakening willpower.

  “You will, they did, and now they revel.” He wrenched her head back and whispered so close lips brushed her ear. “You think you know them? My demonic and darling pack? Vampires, that’s what you think you know. You know nothing!” Teeth tore off a light layer of skin as he snapped at her. “Those pale constructs would weep and cower before them, let alone what I would do to something so pathetic it feared the sun. They are my creations, my will is theirs and so nothing is beyond them, if I serve it to them.” He licked the blemish and it faded, and then turned her back to him. Both hands held her head now; her arms hung useless at her sides. Despite her tall and firm stature, she could not oppose him.

  “Yes, I want you; you are just my type,” he said and licked fangs as he leered. She flinched in disgust. “Hmmm, no, you miss my point entirely. You have no idea what this is about, do you?” He looked disappointed.

  “Just get on with it,” she snapped.

  His face went cold. The slightest pressure came from his fingers and she hissed in pain; she could feel her skull cracking with growing webs of damage. His eyes burned yet again and hers could only roll upward to evade the stare.

  “You think this is a favour I bestow on you?” he murmured, voice dead, so chilled she shivered helplessly. “That this is a privilege I hand out? I thought you ripe, instead I smell rottenness. She is yours.”

  He cast her away and his women descended the steps with mouths open to feast.

  “Please!” she screamed before she could think, and wanted to stop even as she carried on. Images of limbs being plucked and heads tossed into the air before eyes were sucked out propelled her on. “Let me. earn, I want to earn the right,” she gasped.

  Now his contempt broke out into joy.

  “There we are, noble paladin saves pretty neck, let today’s headline be.” He walked to her, his long silver coat a shimmer with each step, and then he leaned down over her. “Shall we resume our game then? Let’s see, you found me, which cost you your friends, and then I found you, but then you found me again so.. Run, please.”

  His hand arced out and she reeled as fingers tore gouges across her face. She watched as he tasted, pressing his tongue beneath the nails to capture every morsel, and then she pushed herself up and forward, racing for the door.

  She didn’t know if he was chasing her, or his women, or both or none. All she craved was escape. She burst heedless through the night because any danger she crashed into, none could equal the one she fled.

  ***

  She sat in the cafe, back to a wall, gun in her lap with one hand resting on it, other stirring her seventh coffee. She hadn’t slept, how could she? She hadn’t gone home, unsure whether she feared leading him there or that he would be waiting for her. She just waited, darkened eyes riveted to the door as customers came and went. If she could get to the base she would be safe from him, except when..

  She froze. Two women came in, his women, and their gaze was on her immediately. They sat at a free table, side-by-side, and neither stare flickered for a moment. She felt the scars on her face itching as if in response to their presence, or perhaps merely her mind restless and wild. She saw him still.

  A waitress came and asked the women for an order. Neither spoke. The waitress followed their gaze to her and frowned, then returned to them and repeated her question.

  The nearest rose and punched her, and this was no female strike, or even the precise attack of a trained fighter. The hit came with violent rage unleashed, lithe body behind it, and the waitress’s face had caved in before she hit the wall.

  Others rose, aghast or angry, and the women stepped out to stand in their midst.

  She watched from her seat, gun shaking in clenched grip, but there was little she could see as people rushed to protest or restrain or even punish in revenge. She couldn’t see, but she heard – every break and thud and rake. Then it was clear, several lying crumpled about the two sublime figures, who ran their gazes over everyone gathered so each looked away in fearful shame, until they rested on her. They were fixed once more. One of them smirked, the other remained contemptuous in her predatory aspect. Then they both left.

  She ran out once they had gone and pounded her feet mercilessly as she tore through the streets. She came to the building, she double-checked and even when she knew the women, or any women, or him most of all hadn’t followed her, she still doubted entering. Eventually she did. She greeted the security, she descended the depth and passed through the inner checkpoint, and before she had taken ten steps she was confronted by several anxious superiors.

  “What happened? You said you had them.”

  “Where is the rest of the unit?”

  “What happened to the targets, nothing is left in the house?”

  “Nothing?” Now she questioned them. “Bodies, blood?”

  “No strand of hair, no speck of blood, no trace of the unit or the targets.”

  “We thought you all dead until you arrived.”

  “The rest are,” she revealed, teeth gritting and stomach clenching at the memories. “The targets. they are not what we thought. No cult, no terrorist cell, they. I cannot say the words.”

  “They will be dealt with, we will remove them as we do all stains,” one superior cut in sharply, and all nodded emphatically. Once she had just such unflinching faith in their work. Before last night.

  “Do not go near them. Leave them alone, they..”

  “They are a threat to our society.” It was a sentence of death.

  “They are more of a threat than....” She tried to plea but none would listen.

  She pleaded all day, she told them everything, and when she left she staggered out worse than when she had entered. It would take time as they digested her information, every sentence had to be dissected and calculated with her superiors, yet she had the wits to sense the displeasure and derision they now had for her. Her time was running out, and she was alone.

  ***

  She slept. She had been put past endurance and so collapsed on her bed.

  He came into the lobby of the apartment block, his women following and fanning about him, and a young couple
about to leave for a night out halted at this intrusion. There was an exchange of glances, he looked them over with interest only to then shake his head, and his women split them open.

  “Kill every living thing here,” he announced and they poured up the stairs. He moved to the elevators and sent for all, and a woman stepped into each at a gesture, and then they rose. He strolled about the lobby for a few minutes, looking at his feet, carefully placing toes on carpet patterns, and all the while shrieks of anguish rippled down. Then he went up.

  She awoke. The screams were rising, not just in intensity or number yet actually sweeping up the building. She knew what was coming, with each burst of fresh agony she felt her will be sliced off a slither, and for all her fear she couldn’t move. She remained on her bed as she had crashed onto it, demanding she move, needing a response.

  People ran by her door. Panic was searing the floors. She bolted up and went for her gun, her training her guide, and yet new knowledge stopped her. When they came, what could she do?

  She went for her phone; she could call for backup and have a dozen units here seeking the lost foes. Would it make a difference? She doubted a victory, but it could help her flee again, or at least die defiant, not cornered and cowering.

  She put the phone to her ear as she detected the noise. She wondered if someone was already on the line yet knew before she was listening that it was static, and then doubted. It was a voice, lots, hissing, whispering, washing over each other in a bewildering haze. Whatever it was, that wasn’t a way out for her.

  She made to put the phone down, yet halted. She didn’t want to but she listened again. She listened and kept on listening; she knew she was sensing something only she..

  Her name, no, her full name. The voices even knew her middle name and she told that to no one, ashamed of the free-minded grandmother it came from.

  They said her address, too. The very door number she was currently hiding behind.

  The voices said her birthday, her parents’ names, her school, the academy. Over and over and over and over. They taunted her with their intimate power.