A Coven of Vampires (28 page)

Who else had been advised by the bells, I wondered?

I aimed my binoculars at Slater’s Copse, and…they were there, all four, pale figures in the trees, their shaded faces turned toward the near-distant spire across the valley, half-hidden by the low hill. And as they left the cover of the trees and headed for the field adjacent to the cemetery, I saw that indeed they had their picnic baskets with them: a large one which the man and woman carried between them, and a smaller one shared by their children. As usual.

The hearse arrived, containing only the coffin and its occupant, a great many wreaths and garlands, and of course the Reverend Fawcett and Mr Forster, who with John and Billy formed the team of pallbearers. Precise and practised, they carried Muriel Anderson to her grave where the only additional mourner was Jack Boulter, who had gone down from the house to join them. He got down into the flower-decked hole (to assist in the lowering of the coffin, of course) and after the casket had gone down in its loops of silken rope finally climbed out again, assisted by John and Billy. There followed the final service, and the first handful of soil went into the grave.

Through all of this activity my attention had been riveted in the graveyard; now that things were proceeding towards an end, however, I once again turned my glasses on the picnickers. And there they sat cross-legged on their blanket in the long grass outside the cemetery wall, with their picnic baskets between them. But
motionless
as always, with their heads bowed in a sort of grace. They sat there—as they had sat for Joe Anderson, and Mrs Jones the greengrocer-lady, and old George Carter the retired miner, whose soot-clogged lungs had finally collapsed on him—offering up their silent prayers or doing whatever they did.

Meanwhile, in the graveyard:

At last the ceremony was over, and John and Billy set to with their spades while the Reverend Fawcett, Jack Boulter and Mr Forster climbed the knoll to the house, where my uncle met them at the door. I heard him greet them, and the Vicar’s high-pitched, measured answer:

“Zach, Sam here tells me you have a certain book with pictures? I should like to see it, if you don’t mind. And then of course there’s the matter of a roster. For now that we’ve initiated this thing I suppose we must see it through, and certainly I can see a good many long, lonely nights stretch ing ahead.”

“Come in, come in,” my uncle answered. “The book? It’s in my study. By all means come through.”

I
heard
this conversation, as I say, but nothing registered—not for a minute or two, anyway. Until—

There came a gasping and a frantic clattering as my uncle, with the Reverend Fawcett hot on his heels, came flying up the stairs to the landing, then up the short stairs to my room. They burst in, quite literally hurling the door wide, and my uncle was upon me in three great strides.

“Sandy,” he gasped then, “what’s all this about gypsies?” I put my glasses aside and looked at him, and saw that he was holding the sheet of notepaper with my scribbled query. He gripped my shoulder. “Why do you ask if the man in these pictures is a gypsy?”

Finally I knew what he was talking about. “Why, because of their eyes!” I answered. “Their three-cornered eyes.” And as I picked up my binoculars and again trained them on the picnickers, I added: “But you can’t see their faces from up here, because of their great hats….”

My uncle glanced out of the window and his jaw dropped. “Good Lord!” he whispered, eyes bulging in his suddenly white face. He almost snatched the glasses from me, and his huge hands shook as he put them to his eyes. After a moment he said, “My God, my God!” Simply that; and then he thrust the glasses at the Reverend Fawcett.

The Reverend was no less affected; he said, “Dear Jesus! Oh my dear sweet Jesus! In broad daylight! Good heavens, Zach—
in broad daylight
!”

Then my uncle straightened up, towered huge, and his voice was steady again, as he said: “Their shirts—look at their shirts!”

The vicar looked, and grimly nodded. “Their shirts, yes.”

From the foot of the stairs came Jack Boulter’s sudden query: “Zach, Reverend, are you up there? Zach, why man ar’m sorry, but there must be a fault. Damn the thing, but ar’m get’na red light!”

“Fault?” cried my uncle, charging for the door and the stairs, with the vicar right behind him. “There’s no fault, Jack! Press the button, man—
press the button
!” 

Left alone again and not a little astonished, I looked at the gypsies in the field. Their shirts? But they had simply pulled them out of their trousers, so that they fell like small, personal tents to the grass where they sat. Which I imagined must keep them quite cool in the heat of the afternoon. And anyway, they always wore their shirts like that, when they picnicked.

But what was this? To complement the sudden uproar in the house, now there came this additional confusion out side! What could have startled the gypsies like this? What on earth was wrong with them? I threw open the window and leaned out, and without knowing why, found my tongue cleaving to the roof of my mouth as once more, for the last time, I trained my glasses on the picnickers. And how to explain what I saw then? I saw it, but only briefly, in the moments before my uncle was there behind me, clapping his hand over my eyes, snatching the window and curtains shut, prising the glasses from my half-frozen fingers. Saw
and
heard it!

The gypsies straining to their feet and trying to run, overturning their picnic baskets in their sudden frenzy, seeming anchored to the ground by fat white ropes which lengthened behind them as they stumbled outward from their blanket. The agony of their dance there in the long grass, and the way they dragged on their ropes to haul them out of the ground, like strangely hopping blackbirds teasing worms; their terrified faces and shrieking mouths as their hats went flying; their shirts and dresses billowing, and their unbelievable screams. All four of them, screaming as one, but shrill as a keening wind, hissing like steam from a nest of kettles, or lobsters dropped live into boiling water, and yet cold and alien as the sweat on a dead fish!

And then the man’s rope, incredibly long and taut as a bowstring, suddenly coming free of the ground—and likewise, one after another, the ropes of his family—and all of them
living things
that writhed like snakes and sprayed crimson from their raw red ends!

But all glimpsed so briefly, before my uncle intervened, and so little of it registering upon a mind which really couldn’t accept it—not then. I had been aware, though, of the villagers where they advanced inexorably across the field, armed with the picks and shovels of their trade (what? Ask John and Billy to keep mum about such as this? Even for a guinea?). And of the gypsies spinning like dervishes, coiling up those awful appendages about their waists, then wheeling more slowly and gradually crumpling exhausted to the earth; and of their picnic baskets scattered on the grass, all tumbled and…empty.

• • •

I’ve since discovered that in certain foreign parts “Obour” means “night demon”, or “ghost”, or “vampire”. While in others it means simply “ghoul”. As for the gypsies: I know their caravan was burned out that same night, and that their bones were discovered in the ashes. It hardly worried me then and it doesn’t now, and I’m glad that you don’t see nearly so many of them around these days; but of course I’m prejudiced.

As they say in the northeast, a burden shared is a burden halved. But really, my dreams have been a terrible burden, and I can’t see why I should continue to bear it alone.

This then has been my rite of exorcism. At least I hope so….

ZACK PHALANX
IS
VLAD THE IMPALER

Harry S. Skatsman, Jr., was livid. He was a tiny, fat, cigar-chewing, fire-eating, primadonna-taming, scene-shooting ball of absolutely livid livid. Of all things: an accident! And on his birthday, too! Zack Phalanx, superstar, “King of the Bad Guys”, had been involved in some minor accident back in Beverly Hills; an accident which, however temporarily, had curtailed his appearance on location.

Skatsman groaned, his scarlet jowls drooping and much of the anger rushing out of him in one vast sigh. What if the accident was worse than he’d been told? What if Zack was out of the film (horrible thought) permanently? All that
so-expensive
advance publicity—all the bother over visas and work permits, and the trouble with the local villagers—all for nothing. Of course, they could always get someone to fill Zack’s place (Kurt Douglash, perhaps?) but it wouldn’t be the same. In his mind’s eye Skatsman could see the head lines in the film rags already:
“Zack Phalanx WAS Vlad the Impaler!”

The little fat man groaned again at this mental picture, then leaned forward in his plush leather seat and snarled (he never spoke to anyone, always snarled) at his driver: “Joe, you sure the message said Zack was only
slightly
hurt? He didn’t
stick
himself on his steering wheel or something?”

“Yeah, slightly hurt,” Joe grunted. “Minor accident.” Joe had been driving his boss now for so many years, on location in so many parts of the world, that Skatsman’s snarls no longer fazed him—

—But they fazed most everyone else.

Even as the big car ploughed steadily through mid-afternoon mist as it rose up out of the valleys on old, winding roads that were often only just third class, high above in the village-sized huddle of caravans, huts and shacks, up in the glowering Carpathian Mountains, Harry S. Skatsman’s colleagues prepared themselves for all hell let loose when the florid, fiery little director returned.

They all knew now that Zack Phalanx had been injured, that his arrival at Jlaskavya airport had been “unavoidably delayed”. And they knew moreover just exactly what that meant where Skatsman was concerned. The little fat man would be utterly unapproachable, poisonous, raging one minute and sobbing the next in unashamed frustration, until “Old Grim-Grin” (as Phalanx was fondly known in movie circles) showed up. Then they could shoot his all-important scenes.

This dread of the director in dire mood was shared by all and sundry, from the producer, Jerry Sollinger (a man of no mean status himself), right down to Sam “Sugar” Sweeney, the coffee-boy—who was in fact a man of sixty-three—and including sloe-eyed Shani Silarno, the heroine of this, Skatsman’s fourteenth epic.

Oh, there was going to be a fuss, all right, but what—they all asked among themselves—would the fuss really be all about? For in all truth Zack Phalanx’s scenes were not to be many. His magic box-office name on the billboards, starred as Vlad the Impaler himself, was simply to be a draw, a “name” to pull the crowds. For the same reason Shani Silarno was cheesecake, though certainly she had far more footage than the grim, scar-faced, sardonic, ugly, friendly “star” of the picture.

And most of that picture, filmed already, had been dashed off to Hollywood for the usual pre-release publicity screenings—except for the Phalanx scenes, which, now that the star was known to be out of it, however temporarily, Jerry Sollinger had explained away in a hastily drummed-up, fabulously expensive telephone call as being simply too terrific, too fantastically
good
to be shown in any detail before the actual premier. Of course, the gossip columnists would know better, but hopefully before they got their wicked little claws into the story Phalanx would be out here in Romania and all would be well….

But meanwhile the important battle scenes, all ketchup and
senf
though they were, would have to wait on the arrival of Old Grim-Grin, injured in some minor traffic accident.

Producer Jerry Sollinger was beginning to wish he’d never heard of Vlad the Impaler; or rather, that Harry S. Skatsman had never heard of him. Sollinger could still remember when first the fat little director had snarled into his office to slam down upon his desk a file composed of bits and pieces of collected facts and lore concerning one Vlad Dracula. This Vlad—Vlad being a title of some sort, possibly “Prince”—had been a fifteenth-century warlord, a Wallach of incredible cruelty. Like his ancestors before him, he had led his people against wave after wave of invading Turks, Magyars, Bulgars, Lombards and others equally barbaric, to beat them back from his princedom aerie in the foreboding mountains of Carpathia.