The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women

by Stephen Jones

  “It is.” Anne turned her arm so that the burn was more clearly visible to them both. “Thanks to Stuart fucking Gordon, I couldn’t afford to take my car in to the garage and I had to change the battery myself. I thought I was being careful …” She shrugged.

  “A new battery, eh? Afraid I can’t help you, miss.” Ken, owner of Ken’s Garage and Auto Body, pressed one knee against the side of the van and leaned, letting it take his weight as he filled the tank. “But if you’re not in a hurry I can go into Bigwood tomorrow and get you one.” Before Vicki could speak, he went on. “No wait, tomorrow’s Sunday, place’ll be closed. Closed Monday too seeing as how it’s Victoria Day.” He shrugged and smiled. “I’ll be open, but that won’t get you a battery.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a new one. I just want to make sure that when I turn her off on the way home I can get her started again.” Leaning back against the closed driver’s side door, she gestured into the work bay where a small pile of old batteries had been more or less stacked against the back wall. “What about one of them?”

  Ken turned, peered, and shook his head. “Damn but you’ve got good eyes, miss. It’s dark as bloody pitch in there.”

  “Thank you.”

  “‘None of them batteries will do you any good though, cause I drained them all a couple of days ago. They’re just too dangerous, eh? You know, if kids get poking around?” He glanced over at the gas pump and carefully squirted the total up to an even thirty-two dollars. “You’re that investigator working up at the lodge, aren’t you?” he asked as he pushed the bills she handed him into a greasy pocket and counted out three loonies in change. “Trying to lay the spirit?”

  “Trying to catch whoever vandalized Stuart Gordon’s car.”

  “He, uh, get that fixed then?”

  “Good as new.” Vicki opened the van door and paused, one foot up on the running board. “I take it he didn’t get it fixed here?”

  “Here?” The slightly worried expression on Ken’s broad face vanished to be replaced by a curled lip and narrowed eyes. “My gas isn’t good enough for that pissant. He’s planning to put his own tanks in if he gets that goddamned yuppie resort built.”

  “If?”

  Much as Anne Kellough had, he glanced toward the lake. “If.”

  About to swing up into the van, two five-gallon glass jars sitting outside the office caught her eye. The lids were off and it looked very much as though they were airing out. “I haven’t seen jars like that in years,” she said, pointing. “I don’t suppose you want to sell them?”

  Ken turned to follow her finger. “Can’t. They belong to my cousin. I just borrowed them, eh? Her kids were supposed to come and get them but, hey, you know kids.”

  According to call-me-Stuart, the village was no place to raise kids.

  Glass jars would be handy for transporting acid mixed with fish bits.

  And where would they have gotten the fish, she wondered, pulling carefully out of the gas station. Maybe from one of the boys who runs the hunting and fishing camp.

  Pete Wegler stood in the door of his trailer, a slightly confused look on his face. “Do I know you?”

  Vicki smiled. “Not yet. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  Ten to twelve. The lights were still on at the lodge. Celluci stood, stretched, and wondered how much longer Vicki was going to be. Surely everyone in Dulvie’s asleep by now.

  Maybe she stopped for a bite to eat.

  The second thought followed the first too quickly for him to prevent it, so he ignored it instead. Turning his back on the lodge, he sat down and stared out at the lake. Water looked almost secretive at night, he decided as his eyes readjusted to the darkness.

  In his business, secretive meant guilty.

  “And if Stuart Gordon has gotten a protective spirit pissed off enough to kill, what then?” he wondered aloud, glancing down at his watch.

  Midnight.

  Which meant absolutely nothing to that ever-expanding catalogue of things that went bump in the night. Experience had taught him that the so-called supernatural was just about as likely to attack at two in the afternoon as at midnight, but he couldn’t not react to the knowledge that he was as far from the dubious safety of daylight as he was able to get.

  Even the night seemed effected.

  Waiting …

  A breeze blew in off the lake and the hair lifted on both his arms.

  Waiting for something to happen.

  About fifteen feet from shore, a fish broke through the surface of the water like Alice going the wrong way through the Looking Glass. It leapt up, up, and was suddenly grabbed by the end of a glistening, gray tube as big around as his biceps. Teeth, or claws, or something back inside the tube’s opening sank into the fish and together they finished the arch of the leap. A hump, the same glistening gray, slid up and back into the water, followed by what could only have been the propelling beat of a flat tail. From teeth to tail the whole thing had to be at least nine feet long.

  “Jesus H. Christ.” He took a deep breath and added, “On crutches.”

  “I’m telling you, Vicki, I saw the spirit of the lake manifest.”

  “You saw something eat a fish.” Vicki stared out at the water but saw only the reflection of a thousand stars. “You probably saw a bigger fish eat a fish. A long, narrow pike leaping up after a nice fat bass.”

  About to deny he’d seen any such thing, Celluci suddenly frowned. “How do you know so much about fish?”

  “I had a little talk with Pete Wegler tonight. He provided the fish for the acid bath, provided by Ken the garage-man, in glass jars provided by Ken’s cousin, Kathy Boomhower—the mother who went much beyond name-calling with our boy Stuart. Anne Kellough did the deed—she’s convinced Gordon called in the Health Department to get his hands on the property—having been transported quietly to the site in Frank Patton’s canoe.” She grinned. “I feel like Hercule Perot on the Orient Express.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m feeling a lot more Stephen King than Agatha Christie.”

  Sobering, Vicki laid her hand on the barricade of his crossed arms and studied his face. “You’re really freaked by this, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know exactly what I saw, but I didn’t see a fish get eaten by another fish.”

  The muscles under her hand were rigid and he was staring past her, out at the lake. “Mike, what is it?”

  “I told you, Vicki. I don’t know exactly what I saw.” In spite of everything, he still liked his world defined. Reluctantly transferring his gaze to the pale oval of her upturned face, he sighed. “How much, if any, of this do you want me to tell Mr. Gordon tomorrow?”

  “How about none? I’ll tell him myself after sunset.”

  “Fine. It’s late, I’m turning in. I assume you’ll be staking out the parking lot for the rest of the night.”

  “What for? I guarantee the vengeful spirit won’t be back.” Her voice suggested that in a direct, one-on-one confrontation, a vengeful spirit wouldn’t stand a chance. Celluci remembered the thing that rose up out of the lake and wasn’t so sure.

  “That doesn’t matter, you promised twenty-four-hour protection.”

  “Yeah, but …” His expression told her that if she wasn’t going to stay, he would. “Fine, I’ll watch the car. Happy?”

  “That you’re doing what you said you were going to do? Ecstatic.” Celluci unfolded his arms, pulled her close enough to kiss the frown lines between her brows, and headed for the lodge. She had a little talk with Pete Wegler, my ass. He knew Vicki had to feed off others, but he didn’t have to like it.

  Should never have mentioned Pete Wegler. She settled down on the rock still warm from Celluci’s body heat and tried unsuccessfully to penetrate the darkness of the lake. When something rustled in the underbrush bordering the parking lot, she hissed without turning her head. The rustling moved away with considerably more speed than it had used to arrive. The secrets of the lake continued to elude her.

  �
��This isn’t mysterious, it’s irritating.”

  As Celluci wandered around the lodge, turning off lights, he could hear Stuart snoring through the door of one of the two main-floor bedrooms. In the few hours he’d been outside, the other man had managed to leave a trail of debris from one end of the place to the other. On top of that, he’d used up the last of the toilet paper on the roll and hadn’t replaced it; he’d put the almost empty coffee pot back on the coffee maker with the machine still on so that the dregs had baked onto the glass, and he’d eaten a piece of Celluci’s chicken, tossing the gnawed bone back into the bucket. Celluci didn’t mind him eating the piece of chicken, but the last thing he wanted was Stuart Gordon’s spit over the rest of the bird.

  Dropping the bone into the garbage, he noticed a crumpled piece of paper and fished it out. Apparently the resort was destined to grow beyond its current boundaries. Destined to grow all the way around the lake, devouring Dulvie as it went.

  “Which would put Stuart Gordon’s spit all over the rest of the area.”

  Bored with watching the lake and frightening off the local wildlife, Vicki pressed her nose against the window of the sports ute and clicked her tongue at the dashboard full of electronic displays, willing to bet that call-me-Stuart didn’t have the slightest idea of what most of them meant.

  “Probably has a trouble light if his air freshener needs … hello.”

  Tucked under the passenger seat was the unmistakable edge of a laptop.

  “And how much do you want to bet this thing’ll scream bloody blue murder if I try and jimmy the door …” Turning toward the now dark lodge, she listened to the sound of two heartbeats. To the slow, regular sound that told her both men were deeply asleep.

  Stuart slept on his back with one hand flung over his head and a slight smile on his thin face. Vicki watched the pulse beat in his throat for a moment. She’d been assured that, if necessary, she could feed off lower life-forms—pigeons, rats, developers—but she was just as glad she’d taken the edge off the Hunger down in the village. Scooping up his car keys, she went out of the room as silently as she’d come in.

  Celluci woke to a decent voice belting out a Beatles tune and came downstairs just as Stuart came out of the bathroom finger-combing damp hair.

  “Good morning, Mike. Can I assume no vengeful spirits of Lake Nepeakea trashed my car in the night?”

  “You can.”

  “Good. Good. Oh, by the way …” His smile could have sold attitude to Americans. “… I’ve used all the hot water.”

  “I guess it’s true what they say about so many of our boys in blue.”

  “And what’s that?” Celluci growled, fortified by two cups of coffee made only slightly bitter by the burned carafe.

  “Well you know, Mike.” Grinning broadly, the developer mimed tipping a bottle to his lips. “I mean, if you can drink that vile brew, you’ve certainly got a drinking problem.” Laughing at his own joke, he headed for the door.

  To begin with, they’re not your boys in blue and then, you can just fucking well drop dead. You try dealing with the world we deal with for a while asshole, it’ll chew you up and spit you out. But although his fist closed around his mug tightly enough for it to creak, all he said was, “Where are you going?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve got to see a lawyer in Bigwood today. Yes, I know what you’re going to say Mike, it’s Sunday. But since this is the last time I’ll be out here for a few weeks, the local legal beagle can see me when I’m available. Just a few loose ends about that nasty business with the surveyor.” He paused, with his hand on the door, voice and manner stripped of all pretensions. “I told them to be sure and finish that part of the shoreline before they quit for the day—I know I’m not, but I feel responsible for that poor woman’s death, and I only wish there was something I could do to make up for it. You can’t make up for someone dying though, can you, Mike?”

  Celluci growled something noncommittal. Right at the moment, the last thing he wanted was to think of Stuart Gordon as a decent human being.

  “I might not be back until after dark but hey, that’s when the spirit’s likely to appear so you won’t need me until then. Right, Mike?” Turning toward the screen where the black flies had settled, waiting for their breakfast to emerge, he shook his head. “The first thing I’m going to do when all this is settled is drain every stream these little bloodsuckers breed in.”

  The water levels in the swamp had dropped in the two weeks since the death of the surveyor. Drenched in the bug spray he’d found under the sink, Celluci followed the path made by the searchers, treading carefully on the higher hummocks no matter how solid the ground looked. When he reached the remains of the police tape, he squatted and peered down into the water. He didn’t expect to find anything, but after Stuart’s confession, he felt he had to come.

  About two inches deep, it was surprisingly clear.

  “No reason for it to be muddy now, there’s nothing stirring it …”

  Something metallic glinted in the mud.

  Gripping the marsh grass on his hummock with one hand, he reached out with the other and managed to get thumb and forefinger around the protruding piece of …

  “Stainless steel measuring tape?”

  It was probably a remnant of the dead surveyor’s equipment. One end of the six-inch piece had been cleanly broken but the other end, the end that had been down in the mud, looked as though it had been dissolved.

  When Anne Kellough had thrown the acid on Stuart’s car, they’d been imitating the spirit of Lake Nepeakea.

  Celluci inhaled deeply and spit a mouthful of suicidal black flies out into the swamp. “I think it’s time to talk to Mary Joseph.”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  Enjoying the first decent cup of coffee he’d had in days, Celluci walked to the edge of the porch and stared out at the lake. Unlike most of Dulvie, separated from the water by the road, Mary Joseph’s house was right on the shore. “I can feel something,” he admitted.

  “You can feel the spirit of the lake, angered by this man from the city. Another cookie?”

  “No, thank you.” He’d had one and it was without question the worst cookie he’d ever eaten. “Tell me about the spirit of the lake, Ms. Joseph. Have you seen it?”

  “Oh yes. Well, not exactly it, but I’ve seen the wake of its passing.” She gestured out toward the water but, at the moment, the lake was perfectly calm. “Most water has a protective spirit, you know. Wells and springs, lakes and rivers, it’s why we throw coins into fountains, so that the spirits will exchange them for luck. Kelpies, selkies, mermaids, Jenny Greenteeth, Peg Powler, the Fideal … all water spirits.”

  “And one of them, is that what’s out there?” Somehow he couldn’t reconcile mermaids to that toothed trunk snaking out of the water.

  “Oh no, our water spirit is a new-world water spirit. The Cree called it a mantouche—surely you recognize the similarity to the word Manitou or Great Spirit? Only the deepest lakes with the best fishing had them. They protected the lakes and the area around the lakes and, in return …”

  “Were revered?”

  “Well, no actually. They were left strictly alone.”

  “You told the paper that the spirit had manifested twice before?”

  “Twice that we know of,” she corrected. “The first recorded manifestation occurred in 1762 and was included in the notes on native spirituality that one of the exploring Jesuits sent back to France.”

  Product of a Catholic school education, Celluci wasn’t entirely certain the involvement of the Jesuits added credibility. “What happened?”

  “It was spring. A pair of white trappers had been at the lake all winter, slaughtering the animals around it. Animals under the lake’s protection. According to the surviving trapper, his partner was coming out of high-water marshes, just after sunset, when his canoe suddenly upended and he disappeared. When the remaining man retrieved the canoe he found that bits had been burned away wit
hout flame, and it carried the mark of all the dead they’d stolen from the lake.”

  “The mark of the dead?”

  “The record says it stank, Detective. Like offal.” About to eat another cookie, she paused. “You do know what offal is?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Did the survivor see anything?”

  “Well, he said he saw what he thought was a giant snake except that it had two stubby wings at the upper end. And you know what that is.”

  … a glistening, gray tube as big around as his biceps. “No.”

  “A wyvern. One of the ancient dragons.”

  “There’s a dragon in the lake?”

  “No, of course not. The spirit of the lake can take many forms. When it’s angry, those who face its anger see a great and terrifying beast. To the trapper, who no doubt had northern European roots, it appeared as a wyvern. The natives would have probably seen a giant serpent. There are many so-called serpent mounds around deep lakes.”

  “But it couldn’t just be a giant serpent?”

  “Detective Celluci, don’t you think that if there was a giant serpent living in this lake that someone would have gotten a good look at it by now? Besides, after the second death the lake was searched extensively with modern equipment—and once or twice since then as well—and nothing has ever been found. That trapper was killed by the spirit of the lake and so was Thomas Stebbing.”

  “Thomas Stebbing?”

  “The recorded death in 1937. I have newspaper clippings …”

  In the spring of 1937, four young men from the University of Toronto came to Lake Nepeakea on a wilderness vacation. Out canoeing with a friend at dusk, Thomas Stebbing saw what he thought was a burned log on the shore and they paddled in to investigate. As his friend watched in horror, the log “attacked” Stebbing, left him burned and dead and “undulated into the lake” on a trail of dead vegetation.

  The investigation turned up nothing at all and the eyewitness account of a “kind of big worm thing” was summarily dismissed. The final, official verdict was that the victim had indeed disturbed a partially burnt log and, as it rolled over him, was burned by the embers and died. The log then rolled into the lake, burning a path as it rolled, and sank. The stench was dismissed as the smell of roasting flesh and the insistence by the friend that the burns were acid burns was completely ignored—in spite of the fact he was a chemistry student and should therefore know what he was talking about.