Here Be Monsters
Page 10
And waited to see.
Spider Bag
M.T. Murphy
©2011
All rights reserved.
Edited by Erin Stropes
“Are you ready to become food for the immortals, Lindsey?” he asked.
She stared at the vampire’s glistening fangs and nodded. Her friend hesitated for a moment, also regarding the protruding teeth that had suddenly appeared. Then she nodded as well.
The other vampire groaned. “Doug, did you just rip off that line from a movie?”
“I don’t know. Shut up. We’re doing a thing.” Doug knelt in front of where Lindsey sat on the couch and caressed her cheek. “Don’t mind my friend. He’s a young one.”
The other vampire fiddled with the buttons of his silk shirt and avoided looking at the woman who awaited him.
“Chad,” snapped Doug, “Susan is waiting.”
“My name is Britney,” said the woman sitting on the couch. If being called the wrong name bothered her, she hid it remarkably well with a beaming smile.
“Whatever,” Doug replied. “These women are placing their immortal souls in our hands. They have waited long enough. Let’s give them the dark gift.”
With a marked lack of enthusiasm, Chad knelt in front of Britney and placed his hand on her cheek. He was a mirror image of the other vampire, with one hand on the victim and the other hand by his side.
Both women were wearing black dresses and heavy white makeup. If they were to be transformed into vampires, they already looked the part.
“Did you wear what we instructed?” Doug asked.
Lindsey nodded breathlessly. “Yes. I’m wearing the black lacy kind.”
“And I’m wearing the same thing, only white,” Britney said.
“Good.” Doug brushed a few stray blonde hairs out of Lindsey’s face. “Close your eyes and we can begin.”
Both women did as he instructed.
The two vampires looked at each other and took identical straight razor blades out of their back pockets. They slowly positioned the blades over the women’s throats.
Doug nodded. It was time.
A thunderous knocking shattered the silence.
Lindsey and Britney jumped and looked toward the front door. Their hosts jumped as well, narrowly avoiding slicing them open prematurely.
“Holy heart attack,” cried Chad as he quickly hid the razor from view by holding it against his leg.
“I thought your brother and his wife were gone all weekend,” Doug said, palming his own razor.
“They are,” Chad replied.
The knocking sounded again, this time louder. The walls shook, and a large, ornate painting of a sad clown fell to the floor, cracking the glass of the frame.
“My brother’s going to kill me,” Chad groaned.
“Just see who’s at the door and get rid of them,” Doug said.
Chad opened the door as far as the security chain would allow and peered outside.
A man with dark, shaggy hair stood outside, sniffing the door frame and mumbling to himself. With his faded Rolling Stones shirt, leather jacket, and jeans he would have easily blended into a crowd, save for the ridiculous sideburns that dangled past the edge of his jaw line.
“Can I help you?” Chad asked as insincerely as he could manage.
“This is the place,” the man said with a hint of an Irish brogue. “It has to be. But the scent is all wrong. I don’t smell death. I only smell…” His eyes drifted away from the door frame and settled on Chad’s open mouth. “Ah, there we go. What big fangs you have.”
He shoved the door open, ripping the chain out of the wall and sending Chad tumbling to the floor.
Doug brandished his razor, but did not make a move towards the intruder. “Who the hell are you?”
“Name’s Mickey,” the man said. “But that’s not important.” He ignored the vampires and glared at the women on the couch. His already red irises took on an eerie glow. He smiled, revealing his own abnormally large canine teeth.
The two young women trembled in horror and looked helplessly at their vampire hosts. The vampires made no move to protect them.
Mickey took a step towards the couch. “Do I really need to tell you what to do next?”
Neither woman moved a muscle.
“Run,” he snarled. They scrambled to their feet and rushed toward the door.
“No,” Doug gasped. He tried to grab Lindsey’s wrist, but Mickey clamped a hand down on his throat and flung him to the couch.
The women ran out the door and did not look back. They clamored into their rusty old sedan parked on the curb and drove away, leaving the neighborhood full of young urban professionals none the wiser.
Chad found a reserve of courage and rushed at Mickey, thrusting the blade into his neck.
The shaggy stranger didn’t flinch as the metal sank into his skin.
Chad tried to push the blade in further, but Mickey grabbed his right hand, squeezed, and twisted, breaking Chad’s thumb, index, and ring fingers with a sickening crack. The young vampire barely managed to let out a yelp before Mickey tossed him onto the couch next to Doug.
He removed the blade from his neck and tossed it to the floor. “Even for vampires, you guys are really weak.”
“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.” Chad held his injured hand and buried his face in the arm of the plush maroon couch.
“That’s right.” Doug tried to sound forceful and confident, but instead he sounded like what he was: a guy who was in over his head and knew it. “We are vampires. We may be young, but our master is old. If you lay another finger on us, you’re dead.”
Mickey slammed the front door and regarded the vampires with narrowed eyes. “Okay. If you’re vampires, what does that make me?” He smiled, again displaying the four disproportionately large, pointed canine teeth.
“A lonely vampire looking for friends?” Doug asked, with a hint of hope in his voice.
Mickey shook his head. “Not even close.”
His smile faded and he lunged for Doug, pinning him back against the couch and forcing his head to the side. He sniffed his neck. “All wrong,” he muttered, and reached over to drag Chad’s head down and smell him as well.
“What the hell is this?” he growled. Then he forced Doug’s mouth open. He grabbed the two sharp, pearly-white vampire teeth and pulled. They popped free with little resistance, revealing normal human teeth beneath.
He looked at Chad. “And you?”
Chad held his broken fingers tight against his body and voluntarily removed his own fake vampire teeth with the other hand.
Mickey stood and took a step back, looking the two men up and down. “You aren’t vampires. Eight-hundred-dollar silk shirts? Leather pants? Ten gallons of hair gel? You’re just…” He paused, searching for the right word. “You’re just stupid.”
“Please don’t kill us,” Doug blurted. He suddenly noticed he was still holding the razor.
Mickey noticed as well. “You going to use that?” He turned his head, giving both men a view of the damage caused by Chad’s razor. Only a barely noticeable scab remained.
Doug tossed the razor away without hesitation.
“I should kill you both right now for being idiots,” Mickey said, “but you have sparked my curiosity. Why are you playing dress-up, and why were you going to murder those two women?” He sat down on the coffee table in front of them and drummed his claw-tipped fingers on the wood.
“What?” Doug managed to sound shocked. “We weren’t going to kill them. We were just …” His words trailed off when Mickey’s expression grew even more sour. “Oh my god. You can tell I’m lying, can’t you.”
Mickey nodded.
Doug burst into a fit of hysterical crying. Between sobs, he blurted out a frantic explanation. “It was Hines. He promised to make us vampires, but first we had to dress up like this and bring him an offering.”
“The women?” Mickey asked.
“No…”
&
nbsp; “Their blood?”
“No.”
“What, then? Their heads? Their skin? Their teeth?”
Doug’s gaze drifted to the floor. “No. Their underwear.”
The answer hung in the air like a two-ton flying pink elephant that no one wanted to acknowledge. Mickey’s eyes narrowed. Finally he stood with a sigh.
“Whatever. Lucy … I mean, Lucifera, the master vampire of Los Angeles, wanted me to give a message to the vampire or vampires responsible for the rash of bodies popping up lately. Are you two morons responsible for that?”
“No,” said Chad with a sigh of relief. Both men shook their heads.
“Lucy doesn’t care who or why you kill. I don’t either. The point is, even though you’re technically outside her lands, you’re being sloppy and making waves. And those waves are splashing over into L.A.”
“You don’t understand,” Doug said, his crying finally dying down. “Tonight was the first time we tried to do this. We’re not vampires. We want to be, but we aren’t. We haven’t killed anyone yet. It was Hines. He must be recruiting more than just us. He’s the one you want.”
“You expect me to believe that a master vampire told you to dress like clowns and kill two women not for their blood, but for their bloomers?”
“It’s true!” Doug stood, dragging Chad to his feet with him.
“I told Lucy I should just kill whoever was responsible, but she insisted I give them a chance to pack up and leave first.”
“Please, don’t kill me,” Doug pleaded. “There really is a vampire named Hines.”
“Tell you what. I have to kill one of you just on principle,” Mickey said. “The first one of you that can tell me exactly how to find this Hines character lives a bit longer. The other dies, now.”
The men’s eyes grew wide. They glanced at each other frantically.
Chad looked back at Mickey. “Wait,” he said.
Doug pushed his friend to the couch. “Go five blocks east and take a left. He’s in an old white house with lime green shutters at the end of the cul-de-sac. You can’t miss it.” By the time he finished speaking, he was out of breath. He panted and smiled, then looked down at his injured friend on the couch. “Sorry, dude.”
Chad stared at him, his eyes wide with horror.
“Thanks,” Mickey said.
He grabbed Doug’s head with both hands and wrenched it to the side. Bones broke and ligaments and tendons popped as he twisted the man’s head around so it faced backward, then let the lifeless body drop to the couch. It landed with the head cocked at an awkward angle, face pointed toward the other man.
Chad found himself looking directly into Doug’s dead eyes. He wanted to run away, but he didn’t know where to run. Instead, he voiced the only semi-coherent thought in his head. “You said the quickest with the directions got to live.”
“Huh?” Mickey stroked a sideburn as he pondered this. “I guess I did, didn’t I. Oh well. I didn’t like him.”
“And you like me?”
“Not really, but you actually tried to fight me. Idiot human vampire wannabe number one there just rolled over. I hate wimps.”
Mickey picked Doug’s corpse up with one hand and tossed it into the corner, knocking over an end table covered with tiny unicorn figurines. He sat down on the couch next to Chad and made himself comfortable. “Tell me about this so-called master vampire.”
“Are you a vampire?” the man asked.
“No. I’m something much, much worse.” Mickey nodded toward Doug’s corpse. “Would you like me to give your neck the owl treatment as well?”
Chad shook his head as quickly as his body would allow it. “What do you want to know?”
“For starters, what does Hines look like?”
“He’s unremarkable. Looks like he’s in his thirties. Tall, with small, beady eyes. They’re always darting around. Even when he’s looking at you, it’s like he’s looking over your head or through you. He’s always rubbing his hands together and grinding his teeth while he sits on his big leather sofa.” Suddenly, Chad slid to the far side of the couch and pointed at the floor near Mickey’s feet. “What the hell?”
A bulging brown spider the size of a large hand was creeping toward him.
Mickey grabbed the heavy oak coffee table. He swung it with a snarl, slamming it into the spider. He lifted it and slammed it again, then once more. The wood splintered and opened a large crack in the floor.
He lifted his makeshift swatter, revealing a messy pile of twitching legs and spider innards. Then he slammed the table on it one final time and left it there.
“Are you familiar with the term overkill?” Chad asked.
Mickey shuddered. “I hate spiders.”
“You hate spiders or you’re afraid of spiders?”
He grabbed Chad by the throat and dragged him to his feet. “Oi … you. Shut up and start walking.”
Chad took a last look at his friend’s body. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt bad leaving him in a heap on the floor.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Mickey said, “I plan to burn the place down and make it look like an accident later.”
“It really doesn’t.”
They left the house and headed east.
“If you have issues with spiders,” Chad said, “you won’t like Hines’ place.”
“Why is that?”
“I have never seen so many spiders in one place in my life. He told me it was a vampire thing. Most of them look like smaller versions of the one you just killed.”
Mickey mumbled something. It sounded profane, but Chad couldn’t understand the language.
As they walked, Chad scanned their surroundings for any chance of escape. The neighborhood was full of warm, inviting houses that looked lived in. It was late, so most of the lights were out. Still, if he screamed, maybe—
“If you’re thinking about screaming or running,” Mickey said, “understand that I’ll just rip out your throat and toss you in the bushes. I already know where to go.” He reached toward Chad’s throat with a clawed hand, but stopped just short. Then he snapped his fingers, drawing a startled yelp from the man. “Keep talking and I might not kill you when we get there. How do you even know this Hines character is a vampire? Is he unnecessarily broody and melancholy? Does he recite poetry for his pet spiders?”
Chad didn’t like the idea that his life depended on the whim of the killer before him, but it seemed unlikely he would get a better offer. “Hines has to be a vampire. He crushed a pool ball with his bare hands and climbed up the side of a building the night we met him. He told Doug to try and stab him and the knife blade bent on his chest without even breaking the skin.”
“Parlor tricks,” grumbled Mickey.
“You don’t understand. He also showed us his fangs.” Chad shook his head, wishing he could forget the image.
“I have fangs. What’s the big deal?”
“Not like Hines’ fangs. He opened his mouth and it stretched out like rubber. These two dripping fangs flipped down. They were the size of bananas.”
“That settles it. I don’t know what your buddy Hines is, but he’s not a vampire. Vampire fangs don’t resemble any fruit I’ve ever seen, nor are they retractable. Sometimes a bloodsucker will mess with your head so you don’t notice the fangs, but they’re always there.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence. It seemed to Chad that there were more spiders out than he had ever noticed before. It felt like they were watching them as they walked. It was paranoia. It had to be. Mickey was almost as frightening as Hines, but every time they passed a spider, big or small, Chad could see him cringe.
When they arrived at the house, it hardly seemed fit for the lair of a master vampire. It was nearly identical to the other forty-three red brick garden homes on the street. Mickey pushed Chad forward toward the door. “Open it,” he said.
“Why me?”
Mickey pointed at the top of the door. Five black widows with bodies th
e size of grapes patrolled a thick web over the threshold. “Because I don’t want to touch it.”
Chad watched the black things crawl slowly around their web. He didn’t know much about spiders, but he knew black widows were not the most poisonous variety. They paid him little mind, so he tried the doorknob. The door opened without a hitch, no key required.
Mickey shoved Chad through, then hustled through himself, slamming the door quickly.
They both surveyed the interior. Webs covered every wall and surface. A single lamp illuminated the room.
Chad felt a light tickling sensation in his hair. “Please tell me that’s you,” he said.
Mickey’s hand collided with the top of his head.
Chad was about to complain, but the muffled sound of something hitting the floor stopped him.
“You’re welcome,” Mickey said.
A brown spider, nearly as big as the one from earlier, flipped itself back upright and scurried away.
In the stillness that followed its departure, Chad became aware of a faint buzzing coming from deep within the house. At first it sounded as though someone had left a faucet on in a distant sink, but after a few moments it had grown in intensity until it sounded like stady rain on the roof.
“Is it raining?” Mickey asked.
“Seems it never rains in southern California,” Chad replied with a weak smile.
“I should kill you just for that.”
“Not a Hammond fan?”
Mickey growled and shoved Chad forward. “Keep walking.”
Chad took two steps, but stopped when the shadows began to crawl.
An army of brown spiders flowed into the room from cracks in the ceiling and holes in baseboards. The patter of their feet grew louder in the darkness as they lined the edge of the room. Most were about the size of a human hand, but a few of the things were as large as cats.
Mickey shuddered.
“Can I run away now?” asked Chad.
“In a minute. Where is Hines?”
“Through that open door on the other side of the room.”