The Vampire Megapack: 27 Modern and Classic Vampire Stories

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  Howard jerked the wheel and banged on it so hard the horn blew.

  “I’ll say it’s crazy. I don’t know what really happened, Larry, or what those people did to you—and I think it must have been really terrible—but I do know that you are talking crazy stuff, because dead people don’t come back to life or sleep daytimes in coffins under your basement floor—you’re talking vampires, kid, and they only exist in movies. I think maybe you’ve seen too many movies, and your head is all screwed up and you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”

  We drove on, through the darkness and the storm, quiet again. I listened to the night and heard its voice, but the night was empty. There was only Howard. I slid over beside him and put my arm around him. He slid his arm around me, under my jacket, under my t-shirt.

  “You’re so cold you’ll get sick,” he said.

  I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Can we still be friends?”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. We can be friends.”

  “You won’t hurt me?”

  He drew away quickly and gripped the wheel hard with both hands. “Oh, Larry…the ones I’m with, I never hurt them, never. I give them money and new clothes, whatever they want, but I never hurt them…”

  “Then we can be friends?”

  “Like I said, yes.”

  “Because Mr. Andrescu hurt me quite a lot. First he hurt Mrs. Dade and Mrs. Lovell and Mrs. Freeman, like he had Mrs. Walker, and we buried them all, and they all came back, every night, and sometimes there were others who came for the ceremonies, who died; but in the end it was only me and my mom living in the house by day, and I wanted to run away so bad, but Mom said no, because Mr. Andrescu could follow me anywhere and I mustn’t make him mad. So Mr. Andrescu came for me in the end, one night, and he tore my bedroom door right off the hinges. I thought his eyes were on fire. They were like a wolf’s eyes, all glowing with light. He carried me downstairs like I was a baby, crushing me. His arms felt like cold stone, but alive. `Your mother saved you until the very last,’ he said to me, `but now you are mine.’ I screamed for her, but she didn’t answer, she didn’t come and help me, and then she was there in the basement with all the other ladies. She hugged me one last time, and cried, and said how sorry she was that it had turned out this way, that she didn’t want it to, but there was nothing she could do. I didn’t believe her. I knew she could have done something. But she didn’t. I cried too, and held her, and she was warm…then Mr. Andrescu pulled me away and he hurt me so much…They tore my clothes off and hung me up by the wrists from the pipes in the ceiling…and first Mr. Andrescu cut open my legs and caught the blood in his hands. He drank some and gave it to the others, and they all drank, even my mother, though she wasn’t dead yet, not like the others. If she had been, she wouldn’t have been able to help herself, but she wasn’t. They hurt me more, beat me with pieces of electrical cord…and they cut designs, sigils, into me with knives, and all of them were covered with my blood, rubbing it all over themselves and moaning. I screamed for my mom to help me, but she didn’t, she didn’t because he’d already sold her soul to Mr. Andrescu. Only when he was going to cut my heart out with his knife did she do anything. She tried to pull him away. She said he’d promised not to do that, and he only laughed and said it didn’t make any difference anyway. I suppose it didn’t, in the end.”

  Howard was the one who was crying, in the end. “You really are crazy, kid. You really are. You need help. Well we’ll be friends and I’ll see that you get help. I will. I promise.”

  “Look. There’s a motel. Let’s stop.”

  He glanced at his watch. “Nearly four in the morning. I guess we should.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  And in the motel room, I showed him the marks Mr. Andrescu had made on my body, the sigils, and the ragged holes in my hands and feet. He and the ladies had nailed some boards together and actually crucified me in the basement. When I was hanging there, almost dead but feeling so much pain, Mr. Andrescu appeared out of a red mist, his eyes burning. He seemed to float in the air. He could make me like himself, he said, and I could live forever, and I wouldn’t hurt anymore. Yes, I said, yes, please, make it stop, please, make it stop. And I called out to my mother then, but she didn’t hear me, and Mr. Andrescu’s arms crushed me like stone. I remember his eyes, gleaming in the red mist like two moons behind a thin layer of cloud.

  When I told Howard all of my story, and even opened my knapsack and showed him what was inside, he was the one who did the screaming, but only briefly, before he died. When somebody knocked on the door and asked if we were all right, I said we were, it was only a bad dream. But it was the kind of bad dream that never ends, not for me, not for Howard, a dream he would go on dreaming too and try to understand, as I have tried to understand.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him. “It really isn’t.”

  Maybe Mr. Andrescu could explain it all to him, tell him how we change, how I was still changing, how I hadn’t run away from home at all, but had gone out into the world because Mr. Andrescu sent me, to propagate our kind. Those were his very words. And I had. I had made Howard like myself.

  He was my first. I was still changing, from the boy my mother had sold in a useless attempt to save herself and Mr. Andrescu had murdered, into someone else, who went on, remembering and dreaming and continuing the story; the boy who wanted to go on loving his mother despite what she had done and somehow couldn’t.

  I tried, though. That was why I kept her head and carried it with me in my knapsack. In the daytime, when I slept in the sheltering darkness, I spoke to her in my dreams, and told her my story over and over, and she told me hers.

  THE SECRET OF KRALITZ, by Henry Kuttner

  I awoke from profound sleep to find two black-swathed forms standing silently beside me, their faces pale blurs in the gloom. As I blinked to clear my sleep-dimmed eyes, one of them beckoned impatiently, and suddenly I realized the purpose of this midnight summons. For years I had been expecting it, ever since my father, the Baron Kralitz, had revealed to me the secret and the curse that hung over our ancient house. And so, without a word, I rose and followed my guides as they led me along the gloomy corridors of the castle that had been my home since birth.

  As I proceeded there rose up in my mind the stern face of my father, and in my ears rang his solemn words as he told me of the legendary curse of the House of Kralitz, the unknown secret that was imparted to the eldest son of each generation—at a certain time.

  “When?” I had asked my father as he lay on his death-bed, fighting back the approach of dissolution.

  “When you are able to understand,” he had told me, watching my face intently from beneath his tufted white brows. “Some are told the secret sooner than others. Since the first Baron Kralitz the secret has been handed down—”

  He clutched at his breast and paused. It was fully five minutes before he had gathered his strength to speak again in his rolling, powerful voice. No gasping, death-bed confessions for the Baron Kralitz!

  He said at last, “You have seen the ruins of the old monastery near the village, Franz. The first Baron burnt it and put the monks to the sword. The Abbot interfered too often with the Baron’s whims. A girl sought shelter and the Abbot refused to give her up at the Baron’s demand. His patience was at an end—you know the tales they still tell about him.

  “He slew the Abbot, burned the monastery, and took the girl. Before he died the Abbot cursed his slayer, and cursed his sons for unborn generations. And it is the nature of this curse that is the secret of our house.

  “I may not tell you what the curse is. Do not seek to discover it before it is revealed to you. Wait patiently, and in due time you will be taken by the warders of the secret down the stairway to the underground cavern. And then you will learn the secret of Kralitz.”

  As the last word passed my father’s lips he died, his stern face still set in its harsh lines.

  * * * *

  D
eep in my memories, I had not noticed our path, but now the dark forms of my guides paused beside a gap in the stone flagging, where a stairway which I had never seen during my wanderings about the castle led into subterranean depths. Down this stairway I was conducted, and presently I came to realize that there was light of a sort—a dim, phosphorescent radiance that came from no recognizable source, and seemed to be less actual light than the accustoming of my eyes to the near-darkness.

  I went down for a long time. The stairway turned and twisted in the rock, and the bobbing forms ahead were my only relief from the monotony of the interminable descent. And at last, deep underground, the long stairway ended, and I gazed over the shoulders of my guides at the great door that barred my path. It was roughly chiseled from the solid stone, and upon it were curious and strangely disquieting carvings, symbols which I did not recognize. It swung open, and I passed through and paused, staring about me through a gray sea of mist.

  I stood upon a gentle slope that fell away into the fog-hidden distance, from which came a pandemonium of muffled bellowing and high-pitched, shrill squeakings vaguely akin to obscene laughter. Dark, half-glimpsed shapes swam into sight through the haze and disappeared again, and great vague shadows swept overhead on silent wings. Almost beside me was a long rectangular table of stone, and at this table two score of men were seated, watching me from eyes that gleamed dully out of deep sockets. My two guides silently took their places among them.

  And suddenly the thick fog began to lift. It was swept raggedly away on the breath of a chill wind. The far dim reaches of the cavern were revealed as the mist swiftly dissipated, and I stood silent in the grip of a mighty fear, and, strangely, an equally potent, unaccountable thrill of delight. A part of my mind seemed to ask, “What horror is this?” And another part whispered, “You know this place!”

  But I could never have seen it before. If I had realized what lay far beneath the castle I could never have slept at night for the fear that would have obsessed me. For, standing silent with conflicting tides of horror and ecstasy racing through me, I saw the weird inhabitants of the underground world.

  Demons, monsters, unnamable things! Nightmare colossi strode bellowing through the murk, and amorphous gray things like giant slugs walked upright on stumpy legs. Creatures of shapeless soft pulp, beings with flame-shot eyes scattered over their misshapen bodies like fabled Argus, writhed and twisted there in the evil glow. Winged things that were not bats swooped and fluttered in the tenebrous air, whispering sibilantly—whispering in human voices.

  Far away at the bottom of the slope I could see the chill gleam of water, a hidden, sunless sea. Shapes mercifully almost hidden by distance and the semi-darkness sported and cried, troubling the surface of the lake, the size of which I could only conjecture. And a flapping thing whose leathery wings stretched like a tent above my head swooped and hovered for a moment, staring with flaming eyes, and then darted off and was lost in the gloom.

  And all the while, as I shuddered with fear and loathing, within me was this evil glee—this voice which whispered, “You know this place! You belong here! Is it not good to be home?”

  I glanced behind me. The great door had swung silently shut, and escape was impossible. And then pride came to my aid. I was a Kralitz. And a Kralitz would not acknowledge fear in the face of the devil himself!

  * * * *

  I stepped forward and confronted the warders, who were still seated regarding me intently from eyes in which a smoldering fire seemed to burn. Fighting down an insane dread that I might find before me an array of fleshless skeletons, I stepped to the head of the table, where there was a sort of crude throne, and peered closely at the silent figure on my right.

  It was no bare skull at which I gazed, but a bearded, deadly-pale face. The curved, voluptuous lips were crimson, looking almost rouged, and the dull eyes stared through me bleakly. Inhuman agony had etched itself in deep lines on the white face, and gnawing anguish smoldered in the sunken eyes. I cannot hope to convey the utter strangeness, the atmosphere of unearthliness that surrounded him, almost as palpable as the fetid tomb-stench that welled from his dark garments. He waved a black-swathed arm to the vacant seat at the head of the table, and I sat down.

  This nightmare sense of unreality! I seemed to be in a dream, with a hidden part of my mind slowly waking from sleep into evil life to take command of my faculties. The table was set with old-fashioned goblets and trenchers such as had not been used for hundreds of years. There was meat on the trenchers, and red liquor in the jeweled goblets. A heady, overpowering fragrance swam up into my nostrils, mixed with the grave-smell of my companions and the musty odor of a dank and sunless place.

  Every white face was turned to me, faces that seemed oddly familiar, although I did not know why. Each face was alike in its blood-red, sensual lips and its expression of gnawing agony, and burning black eyes like the abysmal pits of Tartarus stared at me until I felt the short hairs stir on my neck. But—I was a Kralitz! I stood up and said boldly in archaic German that somehow came familiarly from my lips, “I am Franz, twenty-first Baron Kralitz. What do you want with me?”

  A murmur of approval went around the long table. There was a stir. From the foot of the board a huge bearded man arose, a man with a frightful scar that made the left side of his face a horror of healed white tissue. Again the odd thrill of familiarity ran through me; I had seen that face before, and vaguely I remembered looking at it through dim twilight.

  The man spoke in the old guttural German. “We greet you, Franz, Baron Kralitz. We greet you and pledge you, Franz—and we pledge the House of Kralitz!”

  With that he caught up the goblet before him and held it high. All along the long table the black-swathed ones arose, and each held high his jeweled cup, and pledged me. They drank deeply, savoring the liquor, and I made the bow custom demanded. I said, in words that sprang almost unbidden from my mouth:

  “I greet you, who are the warders of the secret of Kralitz, and I pledge you in return.”

  All about me, to the farthermost reaches of the dim cavern, a hush fell, and the bellows and howlings, and the insane tittering of the flying things, were no longer heard. My companions leaned expectantly toward me. Standing alone at the head of the board, I raised my goblet and drank. The liquor was heady, exhilarating, with a faintly brackish flavor.

  And abruptly I knew why the pain-racked, ruined face of my companion had seemed familiar; I had seen it often among the portraits of my ancestors, the frowning, disfigured visage of the founder of the House of Kralitz that glared down from the gloom of the great hall. In that fierce white light of revelation I knew my companions for what they were; I recognized them, one by one, remembering their canvas counterparts. But there was a change! Like an impalpable veil, the stamp of ineradicable evil lay on the tortured faces of my hosts, strangely altering their features, so that I could not always be sure I recognized them. One pale, sardonic face reminded me of my father, but I could not be sure, so monstrously altered was its expression.

  I was dining with my ancestors—the House of Kralitz!

  My cup was still held high, and I drained it, for somehow the grim revelation was not entirely unexpected. A strange glow thrilled through my veins, and I laughed aloud for the evil delight that was in me. The others laughed too, a deep-throated merriment like the barking of wolves—tortured laughter from men stretched on the rack, mad laughter in hell! And all through the hazy cavern came the clamor of the devil’s brood! Great figures that towered many spans high rocked with thundering glee, and the flying things tittered slyly overhead. And out over the vast expanse swept the wave of frightful mirth, until the half-seen things in the black waters sent out bellows that tore at my eardrums, and the unseen roof far overhead sent back roaring echoes of the clamor.

  And I laughed with them, laughed insanely, until I dropped exhausted into my seat and watched the scarred man at the other end of the table as he spoke.

  “You are worthy to be of our company
, and worthy to eat at the same board. We have pledged each other, and you are one of us; we shall eat together.”

  And we fell to, tearing like hungry beasts at the succulent white meat in the jeweled trenchers. Strange monsters served us, and at a chill touch on my arm I turned to find a dreadful crimson thing, like a skinned child, refilling my goblet. Strange, strange and utterly blasphemous was our feast. We shouted and laughed and fed there in the hazy light, while all around us thundered the evil horde. There was hell beneath Castle Kralitz, and it held high carnival this night.

  * * * *

  Presently we sang a fierce drinking-song, swinging the deep cups back and forth in rhythm with our shouted chant. It was an archaic song, but the obsolete words were no handicap, for I mouthed them as though they had been learned at my mother’s knee. And at the thought of my mother a trembling and a weakness ran through me abruptly, but I banished it with a draft of the heady liquor.

  Long, long we shouted and sang and caroused there in the great cavern, and after a time we arose together and trooped to where a narrow, high-arched bridge spanned the tenebrous waters of the lake. But I may not speak of what was at the other end of the bridge, nor of the unnamable things that I saw—and did! I learned of the fungoid, inhuman beings that dwell on far cold Yuggoth, of the cyclopean shapes that attend unsleeping Cthulhu in his submarine city, of the strange pleasures that the followers of leprous, subterranean Yog-Sothoth may possess, and I learned, too, of the unbelievable manner in which Iod, the Source, is worshipped beyond the outer galaxies. I plumbed the blackest pits of hell and came back—laughing. I was one with the rest of those dark warders, and I joined them in the saturnalia of horror until the scarred man spoke to us again.