Here Be Monsters - an Anthology of Monster Tales (15 page)

“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…”

“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 the 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.”

“The one with all the webs and black widows?”

“That’s the one,”
Chad
replied.

“Figures.”

Mickey brushed past
Chad
and moved toward the open door. The spiders began to close in on both of them, their numbers covering every visible inch of the floor.

Mickey took off his leather jacket. “Turn around and face the exit. When they scatter, I suggest you run. No matter what happens, do not look at me. You look at me and you’ll wish I’d let the spiders get you.”

Chad
did as he was instructed. “I believe you,” he said. The front door was only ten steps away—six if he ran.