Vampire Untitled (Vampire Untitled Trilogy Book 1)

by Lee McGeorge

  Nisha broke it off because she’d needed to vomit. He didn’t finish. It was a hopeless and lousy experience.

  The next day he’d telephoned to try and arrange a more sober date and this was where it had all gone desperately, horribly wrong.

  “You fucking raped me!” She’d screamed. “Don’t you know not to have sex with a girl who’s drunk? I couldn’t defend myself. I couldn’t say no. I should call the police you fucking pig rapist scum!”

  That wasn’t the way Paul remembered it. She’d been the instigator, she’d been the one wanting sex, but in her sobriety all things were reversed and for Paul things were terrifyingly worse. This wasn’t just a rejection of his affections, these were life changing allegations, false allegations, that he couldn’t figure how to defend against.

  He’d fancied her for six months. He wanted to be with her and make her feel special. Her actions left him paralysed with terror. It was three months since, it was still painful, he still thought about it every day and he still stayed awake worried he may get a visit from the police.

  Nisha.

  Fucking Nisha.

  Ildico wasn’t like that. Ildico was nice, she was sweet. Ildico wouldn’t have drunken sex then cry date-rape. Ildico needed to be treated properly, like a princess, with care and respect.

  Respect...

  His logical inner monologue said the word respect. His imagination had her on all fours like a dog, licking and sucking his balls like a whore.

  “It’s just human nature,” Paul said as he rubbed his eyes firmly, trying to clean the picture from his imagination, but it was one of those things that once seen could never be unseen.

  The truth was, he wanted it. He wanted to treat Ildico the way Nisha had falsely claimed he treated her. He’d never had that thought before in his life. He’d never fantasised it, wanted it, desired it.

  Until now.

  “Just enjoy it,” he said sheepishly. “It’s just a fantasy, it can’t hurt.”

  Within seconds his imagination had Ildico stripped naked, crying like when he’d first met her, blackened tears of smudged makeup on her cheeks. She was kneeling on the floor with her knees apart, her wrists tied together from a rope slung from a ceiling beam. She was helpless. Sexually open. Submissive. He called her a bitch and slapped her face and she played along, accepting it whilst crying. She was unable to defend against him and the power play charged his imagination with fierce eroticism. He had her for whatever whim took him. He had her completely, he owned her sexually, and she knew that she was owned.

  Nisha was the trigger for this.

  It was his revenge against Nisha transposed onto Ildico.

  Ildico deserves better. Nisha deserved to be punished, not Ildico.

  Ildico is wonderful.

  ----- X -----

  Ildico sensually tortured him all day, always hovering just off-stage, ready to interject herself onto whatever he was trying to work on. Despite the torment he’d managed to be productive. Inspiration spilled onto the wall panels. This morning’s visit to the forest, the crazy person in camouflage and the uncontrollable fantasies all had a place. Stick to what you know, his tutors had always said; after today he knew how it felt to be stalked, soaked, threatened and seduced. The little fantasies of Ildico were transposed onto fictional women who he was more comfortable abusing with his mind. The spider vampires were in the mix and looking good. The idea of men searching the forests for a missing girl, even a mysterious force that could be identified as the Shadowbeast had a cameo. There weren’t any narratives or plot lines yet but a few characters were coming to life and action scenes appeared that were looking for a story to be a part of. There was a complex prison escape inspired by the basement to the block that was looking good and a fabulous wicked-witch type character who sensuously placed plague-ridden ticks onto the skin of bound and naked teenaged boys. All in all the universe was growing, it fitted the brief and it was a fun place to visit.

  He ended the day drinking red wine and listening to music. Ideas sloshed around drunkenly as he made his way to bed. He was thinking of being chased in the forest. He was thinking of semi-naked women in bondage scenarios, ideas of mythical monsters and insidious humans in a landscape that would be terrifying if real but entertaining to read about. He lay in bed with all of these motifs drifting through his consciousness. His final thought was a warm and arousing sensation of Ildico in the bed with him, straddling him, making love gently.

  And then he fell asleep.

  ----- X -----

  There was no lighting on the stairwell, he was clicking the timed light switch but it made nothing but a click. He stepped back into the apartment and searched for the flashlight he’d bought. There was no power in the apartment either. Another blackout no doubt, but it wasn’t entirely dark. Edges seemed to be highlighted in a delicate blue hue; a laser’s edge to everything from an unknown source. The flashlight threw a pure straight beam of cool white light in a narrow arc and it picked out the details, but the blue edging made the stairwell navigable.

  Paul descended carefully, holding on to the handrail, not so much to keep himself upright but more to find his way. There were six floors to wind down and doing it in darkness would be treacherous. He noticed there was a breath of wind, a draught blowing into the stairwell from somewhere; when he listened intently, it sounded like breathing, like that sound he’d heard from the basement.

  The basement... he should check it whilst nobody was around.

  On the ground floor Paul examined the steel door leading to the lower level. It was unlocked; perhaps it was never locked. It swung inwards easily with a squeal of rubbing metal. He wished it had opened silently, he wished that he could just explore and be silent and invisible.

  He descended the concrete stairs gingerly feeling the air change to that same still and frozen atmosphere he’d experienced in the early morning forest. The moment he touched both feet onto the ground something caught his eye, a sparkle, some distance ahead of him. Something on the floor that seemed to twinkle in the beam of the flashlight.

  He walked to it almost holding his breath, somehow feeling it important to remain as quiet as possible. Before he even bent down to the shining object he knew what it was. The cross, the little silver cross that had been tied around the wrist of a buried man. He crouched to examine and found it still had the rough twine threaded through one end.

  As he turned it in his fingers there was a subtle shift in the atmosphere as though he’d tripped some invisible alarm. He clicked off the flashlight and remained crouched in darkness. It was then he realised what the change had been. The basement was not highlighted in the blue light of the staircase; down here it was ruby red. The glow was strange, ethereal, mysterious; he couldn’t tell where the light source came from. Edges seemed to glow from within, drawing just enough of an outline to show the location. It was the same concrete basement, the same heavy bulkhead doors lining the walls. It should have been pitch black, yet somehow it was alive with a warmth of barely perceptible red light that was part real and part imagined.

  The atmosphere was breathing, exhaling, blowing a sickly human breath along the corridor which set something moving above him. Lined in that barely perceptible red edging Paul saw what it was. Crucifixes, hundreds of them, hanging down from the dirty pipes that were suspended from the ceiling. The first was the cruciform, the silver figurine of Christ that guarded the entrance to the shrine in the forest; that cruciform was here now, in the basement hell signifying the start of a trail that whispered to be followed.

  Follow the trail, follow the crucifixes.

  The trail of crosses ended after many turns and twists of the corridor. The final one was wide and flat with a painted image of Christ the likes of which he had never seen. Jesus was falling from the cross, the spear wound to the side had caused evisceration and his intestines spilled in a jumble of biology from the wound, his right hand had ripped free from the nail and pointed away. When Paul followed the gaze of Jesus a
nd the pointing finger he saw they pointed to a gap in the wall. It was narrow, perhaps only eighteen inches wide, but when Paul shone the flashlight into the space he saw it opened into a new chamber. Jesus had shown him the way.

  Paul pressed through into a space that was barely four feet wide. Another corridor with walls that looked charred or soot covered with the alligator-skin texture of burnt wood.

  He slipped; it was only a slight skid, but there was something on the floor. Under the cold stare of the flashlight beam he saw that the floor was glistening with blood. There was flesh of some kind too, greasy and wet, like the spilled intestines of Christ. Caution took control of his movements. Don’t fall over as you follow this blood trail, don’t fall into it.

  With the beam angled down, Paul followed the trail of injury further until the corridor widened out into a chamber, the walls of which were too distant and wrapped in darkness to be seen. The only sensation to the size of the chamber was the sound of his footsteps which were echoing longer and longer as the darkness enlarged.

  The white cross that marked the grave of a vampire. It was here, in the centre. This was the point he was searching for. He walked to it with firm strides, hearing his footsteps now reverberate as though he were in a great mausoleum.

  The cross seemed to be lit from a pinhole of light coming from an imperceptibly high ceiling. He knew this was the goal, the end of the journey and after taking a deep breath he reached out a hand and touched it.

  “I’m here,” he said. “I’m ready. Show me what it is you want me to see.”

  The sensation of movement. Sounds. The slow-motion groans of ancient machinery coming to life. The cross remained glowing in its pin-spot of white light but from high above came a soft arc of ruby red. It started at the ceiling and spread out and down, illuminating the space and showing its shape. It was a dome of some kind. The walls were decorated in what appeared to be wooden panels that contained classical paintings. He saw the sacred heart painting of Christ from the living room. He saw the disembowelled Jesus falling from the cross. He saw a painting of a girl being raped by a man with goat horns growing from his head. He saw a painting of a man hanging from a noose, again with his bowels hanging between his eviscerated abdomen and the floor. There were images of ancient surgery carried out with long fine blades. There was a castration as old men with beards sliced off the testicles of a young boy to make him a eunuch. There was another image of the wicked queen from his story biting into the severed testicle of a baby boy as though it were an olive. There were orgies of sexual violence in every single picture and in pride of place was Ildico; she stood naked like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, a perfect beauty emerged from a clamshell, but this painting had no cherubs bringing clothes for her to dress, rather it had wolves viewing her as a meal. It had creatures of blood lust thirsting for her. Only her radiant purity was keeping them at bay. In this gallery of filth and degradation, she was the only chink of light.

  “You are purity, Ildico,” Paul said. “Nothing must happen to you, else darkness will consume us all.”

  The light in the chamber lowered in brightness but intensified in colour; womb red sucking the details from the paintings away until they were barely visible. Everything was fading away.

  But then Paul realised there was something else here. The picture of Ildico’s perfection was part of the mystery, but it was only one side to the coin. It was the nice side, the pleasantness. There was something else in here that was the darkness, the insidious, a thing that was consuming the heat in the air, the very warmth of his humanity.

  Paul saw it.

  Standing by the edge of the dome was a... it was hard to explain or rationalise even as he looked at it... it was the shape of a man but there was no form. Like a living silhouette, or a shadow. This thing didn’t fill any physical space, rather it was empty space, void, it was an emptiness that pulled inwards, sucking the life from the atmosphere and replacing it with a coldness. It looked like a man, but it wasn’t flesh; it was a three dimensional shadow.

  The thing stared at Paul for a moment, then leaned forward, stretching its arms out, splaying long dark fingers that ended in points. A soft glow caught the edge of its eye sockets which for an instant flickered like fire.

  It’s coming to life, Paul thought.

  The being suddenly cracked all across its body. Hairline, whisper fine cracks that showed a fire of ruby red flames within. It was as though the man were coated in the blackest of paints, but those cobwebs of cracks running over his body showed a crimson fire burning inside the black shell.

  Then it opened its eyes. Glaring, luminous red eyes that spoke a language of ruthless violence. Its stance dropped lower like a runner on the starting blocks. The chest expanded to take a breath which it blew out with a sickly smell and that same sound of a breath that he’d heard before.

  It was going to attack. The posture, the attitude, this thing that was forming, was preparing to unleash a rush of violence.

  Paul backed away. He spun around with the flashlight looking for the exit to the dome. He saw it and moved back faster. He heard that exhaled breath again, more fiercely as the creature purged. The breath came like a snarl, with force, he felt it on the back of his neck.

  Without knowing how it had happened he was running. His feet thundering back along the inclined passageway back to the basement corridor. He felt constricted, as though his chest was bound with ropes that made it hard to breathe. He knew the monster was behind him and without looking he could tell it had started to run. It was the camouflaged thing in the forest chasing him again, but this time, he knew there would be no escape. Instinctively, he knew that his evasion in the forest had only postponed the inevitable.

  He never saw it when it caught him. It hit his back like a shotgun blast, throwing him forward and crashing him to the floor. He felt the slicing razor fingers that tore through the clothes across his shoulders. He felt its claws sink into his flesh and rip the skin away. He tried to scream but couldn’t inhale, the thing was on his back, pressing him into the floor too heavily. He felt everything, the way it crunched the vertebrae of his spine, the way it clawed at his lungs with sharp talons through a hole it had cut in his back. The agony was excruciating. Pain was shooting everywhere. Help me.

  Help

  Help me, Please.

  He felt its teeth sink into his heart and he felt as his body began to convulse and shake. He shook uncontrollably like he was having a seizure. Air wasn’t going into his body and he could feel the world spinning, gravity playing tricks. Was this drowning, was this the sensation? He was suffocating for certain. But it wasn’t water that surrounded him, it was solid, cold and clammy.

  They’re burying me... Oh God... Oh God, please, they’re burying me alive, they think I’m dead, but I’m alive.

  Then came the blows, powerful heavy blows that snapped his spine with each pounding strike of the hammer.

  I can’t breathe... Please... Don’t kill me...

  Please

  Please.

  I’m not a vampire.

  Don’t kill me.

  Don’t.

  Kill me.

  Kill me.

  Kill me.

  Then came the roaring screeching sound that shot through him like he was in the electric chair. Craccck-a-caaaaaark.

  Daylight.

  The cockerel was crowing.

  Paul woke in pain and almost cried out in agony as he tried to move in bed. Searing, serious pain like a touched nerve hit him on every joint and muscle in his body. Something was wrong. Something was very seriously wrong.

  ----- X -----

  The day was spent in a feverish stupor. Paul admonished himself repeatedly for falling in the stream and getting soaked in ice water. His body ached all over. His joints were stiff, his muscles were pained, his eyes hurt like he was getting a headache, his throat and neck felt swollen and he was burning a temperature. He’d managed to convince himself it was a bad cold, or at worst a genuine infl
uenza infection. In which case he knew all he had to do was ride it out by keeping warm, drinking fluids and taking paracetamol to keep his temperature down.

  He’d settled in the kitchen with the oven on full to make the place warm and had a blanket wrapped around him like a shawl. He had the laptop and legal pad beside him to work if he felt inspired but it was stupid to expect any creativity today. He managed to sketch out some interesting ideas from the crazy dream of the vampire in the basement but the thoughts didn’t sit comfortably in the Shadowbeast universe. Mostly he played cards on the computer. Occasionally he’d boil a pan of water to make hot drinks. Hours ticked by with no other activity. For lunch he had a frozen pizza which was a salt and taste overload. It would have been a great pick-me-up meal if he hadn’t been so sick and miserable to enjoy it. For dinner he warmed a tin of soup and dipped in crusty bread; it took over an hour to eat it and he had to force it by the end.

  By six in the evening he was exhausted and ready for bed. He didn’t expect to sleep well as he’d been so inactive during the day, but as he undressed he felt sleep approaching like a hypnotist counting backwards from ten. The moment his head touched the pillow, he was out.

  ----- X -----

  Vampires on the brain. I must have vampires on the brain. Paul sat on the edge of the bed with what felt like a bad hangover. He’d slept the whole night, but in those sleeping hours he’d fought the world. His head pounded. Outside the window the cockerel screeched its wake up call. It was just before six meaning he’d slept through twelve hours of what seemed like physical torture. He’d dreamt a lot and had disjointed memories of horrible images, truly horrible. He’d seen throats slit, children trapped in the gears of fairground rides, Islamists beheading people in internet videos, Christian witch hunters burning people alive in Africa, serial killers kidnapping vulnerable women, hangings, mutilations, amputations and a whole library of medieval torture devices. There was no reason for it. He knew he was supposed to be writing a horror story, but this was reality he’d been dreaming about. He was supposed to be writing sexy monsters for teenagers, not photographing war crimes for evidence. The only part that was remotely connected to the current project was throughout all of his dreams, the perpetrators of violence seemed to share a common identity. Whether it was a Muslim fanatic with a gun or an Inquisitor with the pear of anguish, they were all... vampires.