The Vampire Sextette

by Edited by Marvin Kaye

  —What do you call it?

  —We call it the Hellhouse.

  —Why?

  —Well, sir, on account of… it's big enough to be a house, what with all the underground passages it's supposed to have… and it's got this entranceway… well, a fake entranceway… that looks like the mouth of hell… a big old demon's jaw in stone with a stone door that can't be opened. Well… I didn't think it could be opened. But then… I saw Jody sort of standing there… at the stone mouth… you could see the sculpted flames of hell there… and he was just standing there. Just staring. Like he'd seen something… supernatural. Well, I kind of snuck up behind him. I guess I startled him because when he felt me breathing down his neck he screamed up a storm. I mean he had like a panic attack, and I hadn't never seen him lose his cool before. I got him calmed down. I kept saying, It ain't so bad, Jody, nothing bad's happened yet, maybe we just lost a bit of blood is all. Maybe we're a bit weak from that, you know, dizzy, seeing things. When you lose blood you see things. We learned that in school. But he was all, I saw what I saw. I said, What did you see? and he said, Nothing. Fucking nothing, and don't ask me again. I ain't crazy. I said, Nobody said you was. Just tell me what you seen there.

  —And did the defendant respond?

  —Yeah.

  —What did he say?

  —He more than said, sir. Well, at first he just murmured, They went through the doorway, they just up and walked right on through there like it was air, I can feel them inside there, feel the heat of their souls inside the dead, empty space… but pretty soon he was a-banging on that stone with his fists, like he should have been able to melt right through it. Well, what do you know? The wall started to give.

  —He shattered a mausoleum wall with his fists?

  —Not hardly, sir. I mean the wall and him seemed to kind of meld together, and he was sort of sinking into it.

  —What did you do, Jeremy?

  —I thought he was going to die. I mean, getting sucked into a Jell-o kind of a wall, it was one of them Poltergeist-style special effects, like you see in movies. So I guess I grabbed on to him, and that's how I ended up getting pulled inside, too. The stone felt mushy. Oily, you know. It made my flesh crawl. But the wall closed right up again as soon as we got through, and it was dark as shit in there, and won't no way to get back out. I almost shat my pants, I don't mind telling you, sir, it was that scary. The air was all moist and stale-smelling. I don't know how dead people are supposed to smell, but I could feel death there. Well, after a time, you could start to see a bit of light. Water was dripping. Where we were was a kind of corridor leading downward. And we heard voices. From down below. I was shaking, sir. And then Jody said the strangest thing. He said, Jer, we been buddies for a long time, but there's places you weren't meant to go… places I have to go alone. You weren't meant to pass through to this place, but you held on to me, and maybe that's good, because if anything ever happens to me, you can bear witness one day, you can speak the truth about me, shout it out, even if nobody ever believes you, or even understands what you say. I ain't long for this world, Jer, but I'm meant to go out like a comet, not like a lil' old candle. You know that, don't you? I've always been different… like everyone's born facing the same way, their butts to the past, their faces to the future, but not me, I go sideways, past and future are a sidestream to me, a path I can never tread.

  —Quite a speech for a teenager, don't you think?

  —Objection! Calls for speculation.

  —Ah, I see that the Madame Prosecutor has awakened. Sustained.

  —That's all right, Your Honor, I was only being rhetorical.

  Mr. Kindred… Jeremy… I'll say it a different way. Did your friend, the defendant, often make long speeches like that?

  —Not often. But more than any other kid I knew. If he got going, he could talk up a storm. Almost like a preacher, except it would be all about violence and death and dark things.

  —Are you aware that the defendant hasn't said a word since he was taken into custody?

  —I've heard that, sir.

  —So he's definitely changed.

  —Yes, sir. He ain't human no more.

  —Literally?

  —Well, sir, I was getting to that.

  —Proceed.

  —Well, like I said, there was voices. And the corridor leading downward. And the light, you see, the light came from down below. A flickering, red light, kind of like the flames of hell, I guess. And even though Jody told me, No, you stay up here, this is for me alone… well, I guess I couldn't help following him down there. I was curious, sure. But it was also creepy as shit, and I didn't want to be alone.

  —Did the defendant know you were following him?

  —Sort of. But you see, he was like in his own world. He really didn't pay me no mind at all. I was like a puppy dog or something… no, a shadow more like, a nothing.

  —To whom did the voices belong?

  —Well okay, we kept going down deeper and deeper, because the corridor ended in steps, and the steps led us deeper and deeper underground. Maybe we were going into the hillside, I don't know; I lost my sense of direction. Because now there were steps going up, and passageways leading sideways. It was like that story we learned in Mrs. Seymour's class one time, the one with the maze and the bullheaded man and the hero with his ball of yarn. The walls glowed. It was a cold light, millions of dots of light, you know, like you get in caves sometimes, phosphorescence I think it's called. I followed. After what seemed like a long time, it widened into a cave. I think it was part natural, this cave, but there was also a bunch of marble columns and statues of weeping angels and other cool gothic shit. The light came from flaming torches on the walls. Some parts of the walls had paintings, Egyptian stuff, guys with dogs' heads, other parts had been painted over. It was all coated with soot, and when the torches flickered, it looked like them pictures was moving. And at the far end, there were niches in the wall, and in the niches were dead people. I mean some were long dead, like skeletons, but some were fresh… and some of them I recognized. I mean, they went to my school. I mean, they weren't supposed to be dead at all. I mean, I would have heard of it if they'd died, I was in some of the same classes. Well, I wasn't that sure. Like I said, I was dizzy. And the sex thing hadn't totally worn off. I hid behind a big statue. An angel. The Archangel Michael, I think, with a flaming sword. The sword was metal and sort of attached to his hand with a leather thong. And a bronze cross around his neck. His wings were wide enough that I could crouch down and peep through a little chink where his elbow lifted up against his robe. Apart from the sword and the cross he was all marble, and cold. And, well, I wasn't dressed for the cold, so I was shivering as I huddled there, trying not to breathe too much.

  —What did the defendant do at that point?

  —He stood there, in a semicircle of light, facing all of them dead folks, and I saw there was three coffins laying there, fine old coffins made of carved wood with all gold on them. The coffins are just laying there, and the middle one, the grandest one of them all, is closed, but the other two have their lids on the ground next to them, and they're empty, you see. And there's people here. They're hard to see at first, because they're all blended with the shadows, and it takes me a while to make them out. They ain't the same kind of people as the ones in the orgy up there in the cemetery grounds. They're, well, pale-looking. What was that word for the way the walls was all glowing? Phosphorescent. Yeah. That was in their faces, too. When you looked at one of them a long time you could see the cold light clinging to their faces. They all wore black. I don't mean all Dracula capes and stuff. I mean, some of them had capes, but there were clothes from olden times, and clothes you could see down at the Goth coffeehouse over in the next town. There was leather and fishnet stockings. There was black lipstick. Sunken eyes. Some had sweeping robes, you know, the kind that rustle when you walk. And, well, standing next to one of the empty coffins was Cat Sperling, and she was totally naked. And by the other
coffin was

  … shit man, it's weird to think of it now, but it was Constance Thorpe, the little geek that done went down on me next to that gravestone up above. She was naked, too. She looked better than I thought she would. I couldn't believe it. The only two bitches I'd ever really messed around with, and they were standing around bare-ass naked in front of a bunch of ghouls in black. I gotta admit, it was making me, you know, all hot down there all over again. I watched my friend Jody. They didn't seem to notice him at first, them two girls, because they were busy staring into each other's eyes. I mean, I thought I was trapped inside of a lesbo porno. I mean, this was fucking wild. I never dreamed them two would have a thing for each other, I mean, the sexiest girl at Kramer High and some gap-toothed nerd with a thing for cutting up mice and frogs… secretly wanting to dyke it out?… I could see it in their eyes. Cat went without saying, but Constance looked different. A glow in her flesh. Gleaming. Maybe it was sweat. She had hard little nipples. They were inching toward each other. I was all, Holy shit, they're gonna get it on right here, in front of all these people… if they even are people. Cat's upper lip was quivering. The sweat was beading up on it. I could barely look at their pussies. I'd glimpsed pussy before, and in pornos you watch it all you want, but it's on a TV screen. This was different. I was afraid if I stared too long, I don't know, I was gonna have an accident.

  —Your Honor, could the witness get to the point already?

  —Sustained.

  —I'm afraid he's right, Jeremy. The jury doesn't really need to know about your… accidents.

  —Well, I didn't have no accident anyways, sir.

  —Why?

  —Just when I thought the two of them were going to really, you know, get down, the lid of the coffin in the middle started to creak open.

  —A little like yesterday's little incident?

  —Oh, no, sir. It was real slow, like. And then all the people there fell on the floor. I don't mean they tripped, I mean they fell to their knees, faces in the dust, even the two naked bitches. It was like, you know, I seen this movie about an ancient Chinese emperor, it was death to look him directly in the face. I could feel… fear in the room… and power. Real power. I was scared. I narrowly avoided one kind of accident, and now I was fixing to have another kind. Well, the lid was creaking open. Dust was flying. The lid swung up, and this old man was sitting up slowly. He was old, real old. Okay, he didn't look that old, but you could feel it in him. And he spoke. Slowly. Like he was having trouble remembering how to speak. Later they done told me that his kind don't have much use for talking amongst themselves; it's chiefly for the benefit of the ones that are still human. Oh, it won't English, neither. But one of the guys in black got up off his knees and crept up closer, and he translated everything in a flat, echoey voice. The first thing he says is, The Duke asks what new creatures come before him today.

  —Meaning the two girls?

  —Yes, sir, I guess, because the sex goddess and the geek stand up, and they're all coyly looking at the floor and half smiling, and their nipples are still hard. And they both say, Your Grace, we humbly beg for the honor of attending you. Well, His Grace mumbles something, and the translator says, How may you prove your worthiness? And they answer, We are yours entirely, body, soul, in life and death and undeath. We wish to become consorts of the darkness. We wish the everlasting night. We pine for the sunset. We abhor the light. We have listened in the wilderness and heard the music of the night.

  —The sex goddess and the geek, as you call them, said all that? In those precise words?

  —I reckon it was learned from a book or something, sir.

  —So this appeared to be some kind of ritual?

  —Yes, sir.

  —Your Honor, I thought that this trial was about the defendant, not the erotic fantasies of some disturbed adolescent. I must continue to protest this undignified latitude in allowing endless filth to spew forth from the witness without any real connection to the defendant's guilt or innocence!

  —Yes, yes, sustained, sustained, though I'm sure the lurid details will all be in your next book, Counselor!

  —I resent that, Your Honor!

  —Be quiet and let the kid tell the rest of his story. If the defense would care to continue… I'm as anxious to get to the relevance of this as anyone else here.

  —Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Kindred… Jeremy… go on. Go easy on the sex. Unless it specifically concerns the defendant.

  —All right, sir.

  —Tell us about the defendant and his role in all this, then.

  —Well, the translator guy, he says to the two girls, You know that before you can cross over, you must bid the flesh farewell… and you must find a willing lamb… a sacrifice. And Cat Sperling said, We have such a lamb, Your Grace. We've tracked him, we've lured him, we've cornered him, and we have him.

  —And by "him," they meant the defendant?

  —I guess so, sir, cause Jody done stepped forward.

  —What was the defendant's demeanor?

  —Huh?

  —How did he look?

  —Pale, sir, real pale. But determined, too. Whatever was about to happen, it looked like he'd thought it over and was gonna do it, no matter what. Grim, sir, real grim. It's amazing to me how young he looks at that moment. I know he's really older than me, but he comes off like a little kid. Scrawny. And so pale. Maybe that phosphorescence shit was rubbing off on him. He looked back only once. Looked me right in the eye. Knew I was there, knew I was watching. No one else saw, no one else knew. I thought about what he said to me earlier. I ain't long for this world, Jer, but I'm meant to go out like a comet, not like a lil' old candle. Jody was fixing to die. I realized that. All of a sudden. Something had happened between him and Cat Sperling. Something that had pushed him over the edge. Like the preacher says on Hour of Power, into the abyss.

  Well, the translator dude says to Jody, Do you come here of your own free will? And Jody's all, I do. Then the guy says, You will lose a lot of blood. Perhaps you will even die. But if you survive this ritual, you will be on the way to a different plane of existence. The one who brings you to us, the woman formerly called Cat, she was once such a lamb. To surrender yourself to the dark, to let the undead feast upon you, is to step blindfolded off the edge of the bottomless pit. You must trust. You must believe. Darkness will love you. Darkness will enfold you. Darkness will shield you. Do you accept such a destiny? If you do not, speak now, and in the morning you will wake up in your own bed, and remember nothing. But if you say aye, you will never again know where you will wake up in the morning: in your own bed, on a bed of thorns, in a coffin, in the wormy earth. Think carefully before you answer, Jody Palmer. It may be that you will never again see daylight. Some who have a special affinity for our kind… make the passage in a single night… and wake to eternal darkness. For most… well, for some there is the true death… but they would never have made the crossing; anyway… it's a talent you're born with. And for some, a slow, agonizing sickness that may or may not lead to death and the crossing into undeath. We cannot tell. There is no science of vampirology. Do you understand what we are telling you? And Jody was all, Yes.

  …

  —And?

  —I'm sorry, sir. I was just trying to remember the details. After this it gets kinda all confused.

  —Take your time, Jeremy.

  —Yes sir. Thank you, sir.

  —You're telling us that these… creatures… made an offer to your friend, and he accepted it. An offer that, he believed, would bring about his death and transfiguration… his metamorphosis into a creature beyond life.

  —I reckon so, sir. I mean, there was nothing for him in the real world anyways. He was always kind of a throwaway kid.

  —Did he give any impression of having been coerced into this choice?

  —Maybe he didn't feel he had no choice.

  —What did the defendant do next?

  —He stepped forward. And the translator guy said, First comes t
he consummation of all carnal pleasure. Then comes the drawing of the blood. The first is your farewell to the flesh, you candidates for initiation into the Brotherhood of Blood; the second is your salutation of the spirit.

  —So the defendant believed he was being initiated into some kind of vampiric existence?

  —No, you got it all wrong. Them two girls was the initiates. Jody was the lamb, the offering, the sacrifice.

  —He was willing to die for this?

  —I reckon so.

  —What happened next?

  —It gets confusing, sir. Because the first part of the ritual, that was the "farewell to the flesh" thing, slowly shifted into the second part… the blood ritual. It started with the two girls undressing Jody, slowly, sexily… for example, Cat would undo one of his shirt buttons with her teeth, then Connie would do the next one down, while Cat was sort of sliding her tongue in and out between the buttons, teasing his chest. And they were all rubbing their titties up and down him. Now I knew that Jody really had never had no sex before, well, no more than third base, anyways. But when they finally got the pants off him, he wasn't even hard. He just stood there, with a faraway look, fixing on some dark future he had always dreamed about. But the two girls were at him like there was no tomorrow. I guess, for them, in a way, there wasn't. They surrounded him. They were a blur of arms and legs and lips and tongues and gleaming pussies. I couldn't believe it, but mousy Constance was the wilder of the two bitches. She was squeezing Jody's scrawny ass, pumping against him, even thrusting her tongue in his butt hole. But Cat was more playful. She skimmed her tongue along his arms, his fingers, and when she reached his balls and started flicking at them, he finally started to get aroused. I think he was holding himself in, trying to resist, thinking to himself that giving in to sex was some kind of weakness, that he was there for the violence, not the sex… but no red-blooded guy could stay soft forever with them two working him over. And now they were taking turns, one holding him upright while the other slid up and down on him, spinning him around, making him dizzy, and he was moaning now, I couldn't make out all of it but it was all sick, private stuff, about his childhood, his parents, I don't know… and then it started to turn toward violence… first one girl then the other was raking at him with her nails, nails that seemed to get longer and sharper… nails that seemed to curl up, tighten, into claws… the girls were bucking and heaving as they pushed him down against the middle coffin, where the vampire master dude was still sitting, watching, his eyes slowly reddening… or was that just the flickering of the torches?… I don't know… and the crowd in black was hemming in closer… making it harder for me to see… and I knew they weren't noticing me any more, I even felt safe creeping out from behind the statue… keeping low to the ground… peering through the sea of legs and cloaks… glimpses now… the girls licking their lips… their eyes slitting… bending over him… slicing at his chest, his abdomen with their animal claws… and biting now… I could see fangs. They all had fangs. All them black-clad people with them glowing white faces. Their fangs glistened in the dark like a thousand stars. And there were other sharp things. I saw spikes… razor blades… pocket knives… hypodermics… all ready to harvest my best friend's lifeblood. The girls were still all over him… pleasure transforming into pain… but the others were moving in now… I could see a razor slice just beneath his nipple… I could see a delicate mouth close in on his ankle… and Jody was all convulsing now, I couldn't tell if it was from like an orgasm or whether they was killing the fuck out of him. Jesus, I was scared. I wanted it to stop. Me against a hundred bloodsuckers, what was I thinking? But that was my best friend out there. But did you ever see a pig that's been hit on the head in the slaughterhouse? That's how it looked. I mean, he was shaking like a fucking pile driver. I couldn't stand it. I mean, Jody, you know? Friends since the sixth grade. Camp outs, swimming holes, dirty websites, all the shit young guys grow up together doing. Well, what I done was dumb.