Vamphyri!

by Brian Lumley

  This was the part that Dolgikh was going to enjoy: bringing them to their conclusion, and letting them know that he was their executioner.

  Most of the time the four moved in clear light, free of shadows; Krakovitch and his man, the British esper, and the big construction boss. But where the cliff overhung, there they merged with brown and green shade and black darkness. Dolgikh squinted into the sky. The sun was well past its zenith, sinking slowly beyond the looming mass of the Carpathians. In just two more hours it would be twilight, the Carpathians twilight, when the sun would abruptly slip down behind the peaks and ridges. And that was when the “accident” would happen.

  He trained his binoculars on them again. The huge Russian foreman carried a haversack with its strap across one shoulder. A T-shaped metal handle protruded: the firing box for gelignite charges. Dolgikh nodded to himself. Earlier in the day he’d watched them lay charges in and around the old ruins; now they were going to blow the place and whatever it contained—a fabulous weapon according to that twisted dwarf Ivan Gerenko—to hell! So they thought, but that was what Dolgikh was here to prevent.

  He put his binoculars away, waited impatiently until they were safely off the ledge and into the woods of the overgrown slope beyond, then quickly moved in pursuit—for the last time. The cat and mouse game was over and it was time for the kill. They were out of sight in the trees now, with perhaps a mile to go to the ruins, and so Dolgikh must make haste.

  He checked his blunt, blued-steel, standard issue Tokarev automatic, shoved home the clip of snub-nosed rounds and reholstered the heavy weapon under his arm. Then he stepped out from cover. Directly opposite his position. across the narrow gorge, the new road came to an abrupt end. This was the point at which someone had decided it wouldn’t be cost effective to proceed further. Rubble from the blasted cliff filled the depression, forming a dam for the mountain steam. A small lake lay smooth as a mirror behind it. Beneath the dam the water had forced a route, erupting in a torrent where the much reduced stream continued its course down towards the plain.

  Dolgikh scrambled down to the jumbled debris which formed the bridge of the dam and nimbly made his way across and up on to the road. A minute more and he’d left the tarmac behind for the narrow, treacherous surface of the scree-littered ledge. And without further pause he followed in the tracks of his quarry. As he went, he thought back on the events of the day …

  This morning he’d followed them when they first came up here. Finding their car parked on the road, he’d hidden his Fiat in a dense clump of bushes and tracked them on foot along this very ledge. Then, at the apex of the gorge where the two sides almost came together, they’d entered crumbling old ruins and searched through them. Dolgikh had observed, keeping well back. For maybe two hours they’d busied themselves digging in the ruins. By the time they were ready to leave they all seemed much subdued. Dolgikh didn’t know what they’d found, or failed to find, but in any case he’d been told that it was probably dangerous and warned to steer clear.

  Seeing them about to leave, he’d quickly hurried back to his car, waited for them to show up. And in passing, so as to be on the safe side, he’d fitted their vehicle with a magnetic bug. They’d driven back into Kolomyya then, with Dolgikh close behind but keeping just out of sight. He’d almost caught up with them where they stopped, half-way back along the new road, to talk with a party of gypsies in their encampment. But in a few minutes they’d been on their way again, and still they hadn’t seen him.

  Kolomyya was a railhead and meeting point for four tracks, from Khust, Ivano-Frankovsk, Chernovtsy and Gorodenka; every other building seemed to be a warehouse or storage depot. It wasn’t hard to find one’s way about; the industrial and commercial sides of the town were distinctly separate. The four men Dolgikh followed had driven to the town’s main telephone exchange, parked outside and gone in.

  Dolgikh parked his Fiat, stopped a passerby and asked about public call boxes. “Three!” the man told him, obviously disgusted. “Only three public telephones in a town as big as this! And all of them constantly in use. So if you’re in a hurry you’d best make your call here, at the exchange. They’ll put you through quick as a flash.”

  In about ten minutes Krakovitch and his party had left the exchange, got into their car and driven off. Their tracker had been torn two ways: to follow them, or find out who they’d contacted and why. Since their car was bugged and he could always find them later, he’d decided on the latter course. Inside the small but busy exchange he’d wasted no time but asked for the manager. His KGB ID had guaranteed immediate co-operation. It turned out that Krakovitch had called Moscow—but not a number Dolgikh was familiar with. It seemed that the head of E-Branch had required higher authorization for something or other; there had been some talk of blasting, and the big man in overalls had been very much involved. Krakovitch had allowed him also to use the phone. That was as much as anyone at the exchange knew of the matter. Dolgikh had then asked to be put through to Gerenko at the Chateau Bronnitsy, to whom he’d passed on all that he had learned.

  At first Gerenko had seemed confused, but then: “They’re working directly through Brezhnev’s contact!” he’d snapped. “Not through me. Which can only mean that they suspect! Theo, make sure you get them all. Yes, including that construction foreman. And when it’s done let me know at once.”

  Tracking the bug he’d planted, Dolgikh had arrived at the depot of a local civil engineering firm in the town just in time to see Gulharov and Volkonsky loading a box of explosives into the boot of their car while Krakovitch and Quint looked on. Obviously the big Russian foreman was now a member of their team. Equally obvious, their contact in Moscow had cleared the use of materials for blasting. While Dolgikh still did not know what they intended to destroy, he did have an idea where it was. And what was more, that was as good a place as any for them to die …

  While Theo Dolgikh was thinking back on the day’s events, Carl Quint’s mind was similarly engaged; and now that the broken fangs of Faethor Ferenczy’s castle once more appeared through the dark, motionless pines, so his memory instinctively homed in on what he and Felix Krakovitch had found there during their first visit this morning. All four of them had been present, but only he and Krakovitch had known where to look.

  The place had been almost magnetic in their psychically enhanced minds; the exact spot had drawn them like iron filings to a magnet. Except they were not filings, and it was not their intention to get stuck here. Quint remembered now how it had been …

  “Faethor’s castle,” he’d breathed, as they came to a halt at the very rim of the ruins. “The mountain fastness of a vampire!” And in the eye of his mind he’d seen it again as it must have been a thousand years ago.

  Volkonsky would have gone clambering into and amongst the crumbling stone blocks, but Krakovitch had stopped him. The ganger knew nothing at all of what was buried here, and Krakovitch didn’t intend to tell him. Volkonsky, was down to earth as any man could be. At the moment he was committed to assist them. but that might change if they tried to tell him what they were doing here. And so Krakovitch had simply warned, “Be careful! Try not to disturb anything …” And the big Russian had shrugged and climbed down again from the tumbled mass of the decaying old pile.

  Then Quint and Krakovitch together had simply stared at the place and touched its stones, and let the aura of its antiquity and its immemorial evil wash over them. They’d breathed its essence, tasted of its mystery and let their talents lead them to its innermost secret. As they had picked their way carefully, almost timidly through the fallen rubble of ancient masonry, suddenly Quint had come to an abrupt halt and said huskily, “Oh, yes, it was here all right. It still is here! This is the place!”

  And Krakovitch had agreed: “Yes, I sense it too. But I only sense it—I don’t fear it. There’s no warning to bar me from this place. I’m sure that there was a great evil here, but it’s gone now, extinct, utterly lifeless.”

  Quint had nodded,
sighed his relief. “That’s my feeling, too; still here, but no longer active. It’s been too long. There was nothing to sustain it.”

  Then they had stared at each other, both of them thinking the identical thought. Finally Krakovitch had given it voice. “Dare we try to find it, perhaps disturb it?”

  For a moment Quint had known fear, but then he’d answered, “If I don’t at least discover what it was like—at the end, I mean—then I’ll wonder about it for the rest of my life. And since we’re both agreed that it’s harmless now …?”

  And so they had called up Gulharov and Volkonsky to the place where they stood, and all four of them had set to work. At first the going was easy and they used makeshift implements and their bare hands to clear away masses of loose dirt and rubble. Soon they’d revealed the inner core of an ancient stone staircase, with the steps winding on the outside. The stone had been scorched black with fire and was scarred by jagged cracks as from great heat. Apparently Thibor’s plan had worked: the spiral stairwell leading downstairs had been blocked by blazing debris, burying the vampire women and the unfortunate Ehrig alive. Yes, and the burrowing proto-thing too. All of them, buried alive—or undead. But a thousand years is a long time, in which even the undead might truly die.

  Then Volkonsky had got his massive arms around a great block of fractured rock and eased it upwards from the rubble which seemed to completely choke the stairwell. Suddenly it had come loose, at which Gulharov had added his own not inconsiderable muscle to the task. Together they’d heaved the block up and over the rim of the excavation—at which the debris at their feet had sighed and settled down a little, and a blast of foul air had rushed up into their faces!

  They’d jumped back, startled, but still there had been no threat in it, no sense of impending danger. After a moment, taking Gulharov’s arm to steady himself, the big Russian foreman had stepped down from the already uncovered stone steps onto the now dubious surface of the material blocking the descent. Still clinging to Gulharov he’d stamped first one foot, then the other—and at once gone down with a cry of alarm up to his waist in the stuff as it suddenly shifted and gave way under him!

  Then the earth had seemed to rumble and shudder a little; Volkonsky had clung to Gulharov for dear life; Quint and Krakovitch had thrown themselves flat and reached down from above to grab hold of the ganger under his armpits. But he’d been quite safe, for already his feet had found purchase on unseen steps below.

  And as they’d all four watched in astonishment, so the choking debris around Volkonsky’s thighs had settled down, collapsing in upon itself, sinking like quicksand into the hollow depths of the stairwell. Hollow, yes! The stairs had not been completely choked but merely plugged, and now the plug had been removed.

  “Now it’s our turn,” Quint had said when the dust had settled and they could breathe freely. “You and me, Felix. We can’t let Mikhail go down there ahead of us, for he has no idea what he’s up against. If there is still an element of danger attached to it, we should be the first ones down there.”

  They’d climbed down beside Volkonsky, paused and looked at each other. “We’re unarmed,” Krakovitch had pointed out.

  Up above, Sergei Gulharov had produced an automatic pistol, passed it down to them. Volkonsky saw it, laughed. He spoke to Krakovitch who smiled.

  Quint asked, “What did he say?”

  “He said, why do we need a gun if we’re seeking treasure?” Krakovitch answered.

  “Tell him we’re scared of spiders!” said Quint; and taking the gun, he had started down the littered steps. What good bullets would be if the vampires were still extant he couldn’t have said, but at least the feel of the weapon in his hand was a comfort.

  Blackened chunks of rock, large and small, cluttered the stairs so badly that Quint was often obliged to climb over them; but after turning through another full spiral, at last the steps were clear of all but small pieces of rubble, pebbles and sand sifted down from above. And at last he had been at the bottom, with Krakovitch and the others close on his heels. Light filtered down from above, but not much.

  “It’s no good,” Quint had complained, shaking his head. “We can’t go in there, not without proper light.” His voice had echoed as in a tomb, which was what the place was. The place he spoke of was a room, a dungeon—the dungeon, for it could be no other place than Thibor’s prison—beyond a low, arched stone doorway. Maybe Quint’s reluctance had been his final attempt to back away from this thing, maybe not; whichever, the resourceful Gulharov had the answer. He’d produced a small, flat pocket torch, passed it to Quint who shone its beam ahead of him. There under the arch of the doorway, fossilized timber—ages—blackened fragments of oak—lying in a pile, with red splashes of rust marking the passing of defunct nails and bands of iron: all that remained of a once stout door. And beyond that, only darkness.

  Then, stooping a little to avoid a keystone which had settled somewhat through the centuries, Quint had stepped warily under the archway, pausing just inside the dungeon. And there he’d aimed his torch in a slow circle to illumine each wall and corner of the place. The cell was quite large, larger than he’d expected; it had corners, niches, ledges and recesses where the beam of light couldn’t follow, and it seemed cut from living rock.

  Quint aimed the beam at the floor. Dust, the filtered dust of ages, lay uniformly thick everywhere. No footprint disturbed it. In roughly the centre of the floor, a humped formation of stone, possibly bedrock, strained grotesquely upwards. It seemed there was nothing here, and yet Quint’s psychic intuition told him otherwise. His, and Krakovitch’s too.

  “We were right,” Krakovitch’s voice had echoed dolefully. He’d moved to come up alongside Quint. “They are finished. They were here and we sense them even now, but time has put paid to them.” He’d moved forward, leaned his weight on the anomalous hump of rock—which at once crumbled under his hand!

  In the next moment he’d jumped back with a cry of sheer horror, colliding with Quint, grabbing him and hugging him close. “Oh God! Carl—Carl! It’s not … not stone!”

  Gulharov and Volkonsky, both of them suddenly electrified, had steadied Krakovitch while Quint shone his torch directly at the humped mass. Then, mouth gaping and heart fluttering, the Englishman had breathed, “Did you sense … anything?”

  The other shook his head, took a deep breath. “No, no. My reaction, that was simply shock—not a warning. Thank God for that at least! My talent is working—believe me it is working—but it reveals nothing. I was shocked, just shocked …”

  “But just look at this … this thing!” Quint had been awed. He’d moved forward, carefully blow dust from the surface of the mass and used a handkerchief to dust it down. Parts of it, anyway. For even a perfunctory dusting had revealed—total horror!

  The thing was slumped where in uncounted years past it had groped one last time upwards from the packed earth of the floor. It was one mass now—the mummified remains of one creature—but clearly it was composed of more than one person. Hunger and possibly madness had forced the issue: the hunger of the proto-flesh in the earth, the madness of Ehrig and the women. There had been no way out and, weak with hunger, the vampires had been unable to resist the advances of the mindless, subterranean “creeper.” It had probably taken them one by one, adding them to its bulk. And now that bulk lay here, fallen where it had finally, mercifully “died.” In the end, governed only by weak impulse and indeterminate instinct, perhaps it had attempted to reconstitute the others. Certainly there was evidence to that effect.

  It had the breasts of women, and a half-formed male head, and many pseudohands. Eyes, bulging behind their closed lids, were everywhere. And mouths, some human and others inhuman. Yes, and there were other features much worse than these …

  Emboldened, Gulharov and Volkonsky had come forward; the latter, before he could be cautioned, had reached out a hand and laid it upon a cold, shrivelled breast where it protruded alongside a flabby-lipped mouth. All was the colour of
leather and looked solid enough, but no sooner had the big ganger touched the teat than it crumbled into dust. Volkonsky snatched back his hand with an oath, stepped back a pace. But Sergei Gulharov was much less timid. He knew something of these horrors, and the very thought of them infuriated him.

  Cursing, he lashed out with his foot at the base of the thing where it sprouted from the floor, lashed out again and again. The others had made no attempt to stop him; it was his way of working it out of his system. He waded into the crumbling monstrosity, fists and feet pounding at it. And in a very little while nothing remained but billowing dust and a few fretted bones.

  “Out!” Krakovitch had choked. “Let’s get out of here before we suffocate. Carl.” He’d clutched the other’s arm. “Thank God it was dead!” And with their hands to their mouths, finally they’d climbed back up the stairwell into clean, healthy daylight.

  “That … whatever it was, should be buried,” Volkonsky had growled to Gulharov as they moved away from the ruins.

  “Exactly!” Krakovitch had taken the opportunity to agree with him. “So as to be absolutely certain, it has to be buried. And that’s where you come in …”

  The four had been back to the ruins a second time since then, when Volkonsky had drilled holes, laid charges, unrolled a hundred yards of detonating cable and made electrical connections. And now they’d returned for the third and last time. And as before, Theo Dolgikh had followed them, which was why this would be the last time.

  Now, from the cover of bushes back along the overgrown track near the cliff and its precarious ledge, the KGB man watched Volkonsky put down his firing box at the end of the prepared cable, watched as the party moved on towards the ruins, presumably for one last look.