The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

It was an old cemetery, and they had been long dead. Those who died nowadays were put in the new burying-place on the hill, close to the Bois d'Amour and within sound of the bells that called the living to mass. But the little church where the mass was celebrated stood faithfully beside the older dead; a new church, indeed, had not been built in that forgotten corner of Finisterre for centuries, not since the calvary on its pile of stones had been raised in the tiny square, surrounded then, as now, perhaps, by gray naked cottages; not since the castle with its round tower, down on the river, had been erected for the Counts of Croisac. But the stone walls enclosing that ancient cemetery had been kept in good repair, and there were no weeds within, nor toppling headstones. It looked cold and gray and desolate, like all the cemeteries of Brittany, but it was made hideous neither by tawdry gew-gaws nor the license of time.



And sometimes it was close to a picture of early beauty. When the village celebrated its yearly pardon, a great procession came out of the church--priests in glittering robes, young men in their gala costume of black and silver, holding flashing standards aloft, and many maidens in flapping white head-dress and collar, black frocks and aprons flaunting with ribbons and lace. They marched, chanting, down the road beside the wall of the cemetery, where lay the generations that in their day had held the banners and chanted the service of the pardon. For the dead were peasants and priests--the Croisacs had their burying-place in a hollow of the hills behind the castle--old men and women who had wept and died for the fishermen that had gone to the grande pche and returned no more, and now and again a child, slept there. Those who walked past the dead at the pardon, or after the marriage ceremony, or took part in any one of the minor religious festivals with which the Catholic village enlivens its existence--all, young and old, looked grave and sad. For the women from childhood know that their lot is to wait and dread and weep, and the men that the ocean is treacherous and cruel, but that bread can be wrung from no other master.



Therefore the living have little sympathy for the dead who have laid down their crushing burden; and the dead under their stones slumber contentedly enough. There is no envy among them for the young who wander at evening and pledge their troth in the Bois d'Amour, only pity for the groups of women who wash their linen in the creek that flows to the river. They look like pictures in the green quiet book of nature, these women, in their glistening white head-gear and deep collars; but the dead know better than to envy them, and the women--and the lovers--know better than to pity the dead.



The dead lay at rest in their boxes and thanked God they were quiet and had found everlasting peace.



And one day even this, for which they had patiently endured life, was taken from them.



The village was picturesque and there was none quite like it, even in Finisterre. Artists discovered it and made it famous. After the artists followed the tourists, and the old creaking diligence became an absurdity. Brittany was the fashion for three months of the year, and wherever there is fashion there is at least one railway. The one built to satisfy the thousands who wished to visit the wild, sad beauties of the west of France was laid along the road beside the little cemetery of this tale.



It takes a long while to awaken the dead. These heard neither the voluble working-men nor even the first snort of the engine. And, of course, they neither heard nor knew of the pleadings of the old priest that the line should be laid elsewhere. One night he came out into the old cemetery and sat on a grave and wept. For he loved his dead and felt it to be a tragic pity that the greed of money, and the fever of travel, and the petty ambitions of men whose place was in the great cities where such ambitions were born, should shatter forever the holy calm of those who had suffered so much on earth. He had known many of them in life, for he was very old; and although he believed, like all good Catholics, in heaven and purgatory and hell, yet he always saw his friends as he had buried them, peacefully asleep in their coffins, the souls lying with folded hands like the bodies that held them, patiently awaiting the final call. He would never have told you, this good old priest, that he believed heaven to be a great echoing palace in which God and the archangels dwelt alone waiting for that great day when the elected dead should rise and enter the Presence together, for he was a simple old man who had read and thought little; but he had a zigzag of fancy in his humble mind, and he saw his friends and his ancestors' friends as I have related to you, soul and body in the deep undreaming sleep of death, but sleep, not a rotted body deserted by its affrighted mate; and to all who sleep there comes, sooner or later, the time of awakening.



He knew that they had slept through the wild storms that rage on the coast of Finisterre, when ships are flung on the rocks and trees crash down in the Bois d'Amour. He knew that the soft, slow chantings of the pardon never struck a chord in those frozen memories, meagre and monotonous as their store had been; nor the bagpipes down in the open village hall--a mere roof on poles--when the bride and her friends danced for three days without a smile on their sad brown faces.



All this the dead had known in life and it could not disturb nor interest them now. But that hideous intruder from modern civilization, a train of cars with a screeching engine, that would shake the earth which held them and rend the peaceful air with such discordant sounds that neither dead nor living could sleep! His life had been one long unbroken sacrifice, and he sought in vain to imagine one greater, which he would cheerfully assume could this disaster be spared his dead.



But the railway was built, and the first night the train went screaming by, shaking the earth and rattling the windows of the church, he went out and out and sprinkled every grave with holy water.



And thereafter twice a day, at dawn and at night, as the train tore a tunnel in the quiet air, like the plebian upstart it was, he sprinkled every grave, rising sometimes from a bed of pain, at other times defying wind and rain and hail. And for a while he believed that his holy device had deepened the sleep of his dead, locked them beyond the power of man to awake. But one night he heard them muttering.



It was late. There were but a few stars on a black sky. Not a breath of wind came over the lonely plains beyond, or from the sea. There would be no wrecks to-night , and all the world seemed at peace. The lights were out in the village. One burned in the tower of Croisac, where the young wife of the count lay ill. The priest had been with her when the train thundered by, and she had whispered to him:



"Would that I were on it! Oh, this lonely lonely land! this cold echoing ch‰teau, with no one to speak to day after day! If it kills me, mon pre, make him lay me in the cemetery by the road, that twice a day I may hear the train go by--the train that goes to Paris! If they put me down there over the hill, I will shriek in my coffin every night."



The priest had ministered as best he could to the ailing soul of the young noblewoman, with whose like he seldom dealt, and hastened back to his dead. He mused, as he toiled along the dark road with rheumatic legs, on the fact that the woman should have the same fancy as himself.



"If she is really sincere, poor young thing, " he thought aloud, " I will forbear to sprinkle holy-water on her grave. For those who suffer while alive should have all they desire after death, and I am afraid the count neglects her. But I pray God that my dead have not heard that monster to-night." And he tucked his gown under his arm and hurriedly told his rosary.



But when he went about among the graves with the holy-water he heard the dead muttering.



"Jean-Marie, " said a voice, fumbling among its unused tones for forgotten notes, " art thou ready? Surely that is the last call."



"Nay, nay," rumbled another voice, "that is not the sound of a trumpet, Franois. That will be sudden and loud and sharp, like the great blasts of the north when they come plunging over the sea from out the awful gorges of Iceland.



Dost thou remember them, Franois? Thank the good God they spared us to die in our beds with our grandchildren about us and only the little wind sighing in the Bois d'Amour. Ah, the poor comrades that died in their manhood, that went to the grande pche once too often! Dost thou remember when the great wave curled round Ignace like his poor wife's arms, and we saw him no more? We clasped each other's hands, for we believed that we should follow, but we lived and went again and again to the grande pche, and died in our beds. Gr‰ce ˆ Dieu!"



"Why dost thou think of that now--here in the grave where it matters not, even to the living?"



"I know not; but it was of that night when Ignace went down that I thought as the living breath went out of me. Of what didst thou think as thou layest dying?"



"Of the money I owed to Dominique and could not pay. I sought to ask my son to pay it, but death had come suddenly and I could not speak. God knows how they treat my name to-day in the village of St. Hilaire."



"Thou art forgotten," murmured another voice. I died forty years after thee and men remember not so long in Finisterre. But thy son was my friend and I remember that he paid the money."



"And my son, what of him? Is he, too, here?"



"Nay; he lies deep in the northern sea. It was his second voyage, and he had returned with a purse for the young wife, the first time. But he returned no more, and she washed in the river for the dames of Croisac, and by-and-by she died. I would have married her but she said it was enough to lose one husband. I married another, and she grew ten years in every three that I went to the grande pche. Alas for Brittany, she has no youth!"



"And thou? Wert thou an old man when thou camest here?"



"Sixty. My wife came first, like many wives. She lies here. Jeanne!"



"Is't thy voice, my husband? Not the Lord Jesus Christ's? What miracle is this? I thought that terrible sound was the trumpet of doom."



"It could not be, old Jeanne, for we are still in our graves. When the trump sounds we shall have wings and robes of light, and fly straight up to heaven. Hast thou slept well?"



"Ay! But why are we awakened? Is it time for purgatory? Or have we been there?"



"The good God knows. I remember nothing. Art frightened? Would that I could hold thy hand, as when thou didst slip from life into that long sleep thou didst fear, yet welcome."



"I am frightened, my husband. But it is sweet to hear thy voice, hoarse and hollow as it is from the mould of the grave. Thank the good God thou didst bury me with the rosary in my hands," and she began telling the beads rapidly.



"If God is good," cried Franois, harshly, and his voice came plainly to the priest's ears, as if the lid of the coffin had rotted, "why are we awakened before our time? What foul fiend was it that thundered and screamed through the frozen avenues of my brain? Has God, perchance, been vanquished and does the Evil One reign in His stead?"



"Tut, tut! Thou blasphemest! God reigns, now and always. It is but a punishment He has laid upon us for the sins of earth."



"Truly, we were punished enough before we descended to the peace of this narrow house. Ah, but it is dark and cold! Shall we lie like this for an eternity, perhaps? On earth we longed for death, but feared the grave. I would that I were alive again, poor and old and alone and in pain. It were better than this. Curse the foul fiend that woke us!"



"Curse not, my son," said a soft voice, and the priest stood up and uncovered and crossed himself, for it was the voice of his aged predecessor. " I cannot tell thee what this is that has rudely shaken us in our graves and freed our spirits of their blessed thraldom, and I like not the consciousness of this narrow house, this load of earth on my tired heart. But it is right, it must be right, or it would not be at all--ah, me!"



For a baby cried softly, hopelessly, and from a grave beyond came a mother's anguished attempt to still it.



"Ah, the good God!" she cried. "I, too, thought it was the great call, and that in a moment I should rise and find my child and go to my Ignace, my Ignace whose bones lie white on the floor of the sea. Will he find them, my father, when the dead shall rise again? To lie here and doubt!--that were worse than life."



"Yes, yes," said the priest; " all will be well, my daughter."



"But all is not well, my father, for my baby cries and is alone in a little box in the ground. If I could claw my way to her with my hands--but my old mother lies between us."



"Tell your beads!" commanded the priest, sternly--" tell your beads, all of you. All ye that have not your beads, say the 'Hail Mary!' one hundred times."



Immediately a rapid, monotonous muttering arose from every lonely chamber of that desecrated ground. All obeyed but the baby, who still moaned with the hopeless grief of deserted children. The living priest knew that they would talk no more that night, and went into the church to pray till dawn. He was sick with horror and terror, but not for himself. When the sky was pink and the air full of the sweet scents of morning, and a piercing scream tore a rent in the early silences, he hastened out and sprinkled his graves with a double allowance of holy-water. The train rattled by with two short derisive shrieks, and before the earth had ceased to tremble the priest laid his ear to the ground. Alas, they were still awake!



"The fiend is on the wing again, said Jean-Marie; "but as he passed I felt as if the finger of God touched my brow. It can do us no harm."



"I, too, felt that heavenly caress!" exclaimed the old priest. " And I!" And I!" "And I!" came from every grave but the baby's.



The priest of earth, deeply thankful that his simple device had comforted them, went rapidly down the road to the castle. He forgot that he had not broken his fast nor slept. The count was one of the directors of the railroad, and to him he would make a final appeal.



It was early, but no one slept at Croisac. The young countess was dead. A great bishop had arrived in the night and administered extreme unction. The priest hopefully asked if he might venture into the presence of the bishop. After a long wait in the kitchen, he was told that he could speak with Monsieur l' ƒvque. He followed the servant up the wide spiral stair of the tower, and from its twenty-eighth step entered a room hung with purple cloth stamped with golden fleurs-de-lis. The bishop lay six feet above the floor on one of the splendid carved cabinet beds that are built against the walls in Brittany. Heavy curtains shaded his cold white face. The priest, who was small and bowed, felt immeasurably below that august presence, and sought for words.



"What is it, my son?" asked the bishop, in his cold weary voice. " Is the matter so pressing? I am very tired."



Brokenly, nervously, the priest told his story, and as he strove to convey the tragedy of the tormented dead he not only felt the poverty of his expression--for was little used to narrative-- but the torturing thought assailed him that what he said sounded wild and unnatural, real as it was to him. But he was not prepared for its effect on the bishop. He was standing in the middle of the room, whose gloom was softened and gilded by the waxen lights of a huge candelabra; his eyes, which had wandered unseeingly from one massive piece of carved furniture to another, suddenly lit on the bed, and he stopped abruptly, his tongue rolling out. The bishop was sitting up, livid with wrath.



"And this was thy matter of life and death, thou prating madman!" he thundered. "For this string of foolish lies I am kept from my rest, as if I were another old lunatic like thyself! Thou art not fit to be a priest and have the care of souls. To-morrow--"



But the priest had fled, wringing his hands.



As he stumbled down the winding stair he ran straight into the arms of the count. Monsieur de Croisac had just closed a door behind him. He opened it, and, leading the priest into the room, pointed to his dead countess, who lay high up against the wall, her hands clasped, unmindful for evermore of the six feet of carved cupids and lilies that upheld her. On high pedestals at head and foot of her magnificent couch the pale flames rose from tarnished golden candlesticks. The blue hangings of the room, with their white fleurs-de-lis, were faded, like the rugs on the old dim floor; for the splendor of the Croisacs had departed with the Bourbons. The count lived in the old ch‰teau because he must; but he reflected bitterly to-night that if he had made the mistake of bringing a young girl to it, there were several things he might have done to save her from despair and death.



"Pray for her," he said to the priest. "And you will bury her in the old cemetery. It was her last request."



He went out, and the priest sank on his knees and mumbled his prayers for the dead. But his eyes wandered to the high narrow windows through which the countess had stared for hours and days, stared at the fishermen sailing north for the grande pche, followed along the shore of the river by wives and mothers, until their boats were caught in the great waves of the ocean beyond; often at naught more animate than the dark flood, the wooded banks, the ruins, the rain driving like needles through the water. The priest had eaten nothing since his meagre breakfast at twelve the day before, and his imagination was active. He wondered if the soul up there rejoiced in the death of the beautiful restless body, the passionate brooding mind. He could not see her face from where he knelt, only the waxen hands clasping a crucifix. He wondered if the face were peaceful in death, or peevish and angry as when he had seen it last. If the great change had smoothed and sealed it, then perhaps the soul would sink deep under the dark waters, grateful for oblivion, and that cursed train could not awaken it for years to come. Curiosity succeeded wonder. He cut his prayers short, got to his weary swollen feet and pushed a chair to the bed. He mounted it and his face was close to the dead woman's. Alas! it was not peaceful. It was stamped with the tragedy of a bitter renunciation. After all, she had been young, and at the last had died unwillingly. There was still a fierce tenseness about the nostrils, and her upper lip was curled as if her last word had been an imprecation. But she was very beautiful, despite the emaciation of her features. Her black hair nearly covered the bed, and her lashes looked too heavy for the sunken cheeks.



"Pauvre petite!" thought the priest. " No, she will not rest, nor would she wish to. I will not sprinkle holy-water on her grave. It is wondrous that monster can give comfort to any one, but if he can, so be it."



He went into the little oratory adjoining the bedroom and prayed more fervently. But when the watchers came an hour later they found him in a stupor, huddled at the foot of the altar.



When he awoke he was in his own bed in his little house beside the church. But it was four days before they would let him rise to go about his duties, and by that time the countess was in her grave.



The old housekeeper left him to take care of himself. He waited eagerly for the night. It was raining thinly, a gray quiet rain that blurred the landscape and soaked the ground in the Bois d'Amour. It was wet about the graves, too; but the priest had given little heed to the elements in his long life of crucified self, and as he heard the remote echo of the evening train he hastened out with his holy-water and had sprinkled every grave but one when the train sped by.



Then he knelt and listened eagerly. It was five days since he had knelt there last. Perhaps they had sunk again to rest. In a moment he wrung his hands and raised them to heaven. All the earth beneath him was filled with lamentation. They wailed formercy, for peace, for rest; they cursed the foul fiend who had shattered the locks of death; and among the voices of men and children the priest distinguished the quavering notes of his aged predecessor; not cursing, but praying with bitter entreaty. The baby was screaming with the accents of mortal terror and its mother was too frantic to care.



"Alas," cried the voice of Jean-Marie, "that they never told us what purgatory was like! What do the priests know? When we were threatened with punishment of our sins not a hint did we have of this. To sleep for a few hours, haunted with the moment of awakening! Then a cruel insult from the earth that is tired of us, and the orchestra of hell. Again! and again! and again! Oh God! How long? How long?"



The priest stumbled to his feet and ran over graves and paths to the mound above the countess. There he would hear a voice praising the monster of night and dawn, a note of content in this terrible chorus of despair which he believed would drive him mad. He vowed that on the morrow he would move his dead, if he had to unbury them with his own hands and carry them up the hill to graves of his own making.



For a moment he heard no sound. He knelt and laid his ear to the grave, then pressed it more closely and held his breath. A long rumbling moan reached it, then another and another. But there were no words.



"Is she moaning in sympathy with my poor friends?" he thought; "or have they terrified her? Why does she not speak to them? Perhaps they would forget their plight were she to tell them of the world they have left so long. But it was not their world. Perhaps that it is which distresses her, for she will be lonelier here than on earth. Ah!"



A sharp horrified cry pierced to his ears, then a gasping shriek, and another; all dying away in a dreadful smothered rumble.



The priest rose and wrung his hands, looking to the wet skies for inspiration.



"Alas!" he sobbed, "she is not content. She has made a terrible mistake. She would rest in the deep sweet peace of death, and that monster of iron and fire and the frantic dead about her are tormenting a soul so tormented in life. There may be rest for her in the vault behind the castle, but not here. I know, and I shall do my duty--now, at once."



He gathered his robes about him and ran as fast as his old legs and rheumatic feet would take him towards the ch‰teau, whose lights gleamed through the rain. On the bank of the river he met a fisherman and begged to be taken by boat. The fisherman wondered, but picked the priest up in his strong arms, lowered him into the boat, and rowed swiftly towards the ch‰teau. When they landed he made fast.



"I will wait for you in the kitchen, my father," he said; and the priest blessed him and hurried up to the castle.



Once more he entered through the door of the great kitchen, with its blue tiles, its glittering brass and bronze warming-pans which had comforted nobles and monarchs in the days of Croisac splendor. He sank into a chair beside the stove while a maid hastened to the count. She returned while the priest was still shivering, and announced that her master would see his holy visitor in the library.



It was a dreary room where the count sat waiting, for the priest, and it smelled of musty calf, for the books on the shelves were old. A few novels and newspapers lay on the heavy table, a fire burned on the andirons, but the paper on the wall was very dark and the fleurs-de-lis were tarnished and dull. The count, when at home, divided his time between this library and the water, when he could not chase the boar or the stag in the forests. But he often went to Paris, where he could afford the life of a bachelor in a wing of his great hotel; he had known too much of the extravagance of women to give his wife the key of the faded salons. He had loved the beautiful girl when he married her, but her repinings and bitter discontent had alienated him, and during the past year he had held himself aloof from her in sullen resentment. Too late he understood, and dreamed passionately of atonement. She had been a high-spirited brilliant eager creature, and her unsatisfied mind had dwelt constantly on the world she had vividly enjoyed for one year. And he had given her so little in return!



He rose as the priest entered, and bowed low. The visit bored him, but the good old priest commanded his respect; moreover, he had performed many offices and rites in his family. He moved a chair towards his guest, but the old man shook his head and nervously twisted his hands together.



"Alas, monsieur le comte," he said, "it may be that you, too, will tell me that I am an old lunatic, as did Monsieur l' ƒvque. Yet I must speak, even if you tell your servants to fling me out of the ch‰teau."



The count had started slightly. He recalled certain acid comments of the bishop, followed by a statement that a young curŽ should be sent, gently to supersede the old priest, who was in his dotage. But he replied suavely:



"You know, my father, that no one in this castle will ever show you disrespect. Say what you wish; have no fear. But will you not sit down? I am very tired."



The priest took the chair and fixed his eyes appealingly on the count.



"It is this, monsieur." He spoke rapidly, lest his courage should go. "That terrible train, with its brute of iron and live coals and foul smoke and screeching throat, has awakened my dead. I guarded them with holy-water and they heard it not, until one night when I missed--I was with madam as the train shrieked by shaking the nail out of the coffins. I hurried back, but the mischief was done, the dead were awake, the dear sleep of eternity was shattered. They thought it was the last trump and wondered why they still were in their graves. But they talked together and it was not so bad at the first. But now they are frantic. They are in hell, and I have come to beseech you to see that they are moved far up on the hill. Ah, think, think, monsieur, what it is to have the last long sleep of the grave so rudely disturbed--the sleep for which we live and endure so patiently!"



He stopped abruptly and caught his breath. The count had listened without change of countenance, convinced that he was facing a madman. But the farce wearied him, and involuntarily his hand had moved towards a bell on the table.



"Ah, monsieur, not yet! not yet!" panted the priest. "It is of the countess I came to speak. I had forgotten. She told me she wished to lie there and listen to the train go by to Paris, so I sprinkled no holy-water on her grave. But she, too, is wretched and horror-stricken, monsieur. She moans and screams. Her coffin is new and strong, and I cannot hear her words, but I have heard those frightful sounds from her grave to-night, monsieur; I swear it on the cross. Ah, monsieur, thou dost believe me at last!"



For the count, as white as the woman had been in her coffin, and shaking from head to foot, had staggered from his chair and was staring at the priest as if he saw the ghost of his countess. "You heard--?" he gasped.



"She is not at peace, monsieur. She moans and shrieks in a terrible, smothered way, as if a hand were on her mouth--"



But he had uttered the last of his words. The count had suddenly recovered himself and dashed from the room. The priest passed his hand across his forehead and sank slowly to the floor.



"He will see that I spoke the truth," he thought, as he fell asleep, "and to-morrow he will intercede for my poor friends."







The priest lies high on the hill where no train will ever disturb him, and his old comrades of the violated cemetery are close about him. For the Count and Countess of Croisac, who adore his memory, hastened to give him in death what he most had desired in the last of his life. And with them all things are well, for a man, too, may be born again, and without descending into the grave.

When she walks into the hotel I know three things: she is beautiful, I am in love with her and she is too young to die.

Usually, I try not to get involved with the decisions our clients have made. I'm just a hotel clerk, not a karmic angel, and if someone wants to kill themselves then my job is just to get a positive ID, check that they're good for the cleaning bond, and give them a key. But this time, on the spot, I make a decision: I'm going to try to save her life.

Her biometrics check out. She is Slimolina Endorarella House, aged twenty-four, just old enough to be legal for our kind of establishment, and he is John Morgan Mandroheim, aged sixty-four. She is in her pink party dress mode, complete with an absurdly large teddy bear with soft brown fluffy hair, whereas he is in his conservative business conference rigout. It annoys me that he seems to have no problems with the suitcase he is toting, which is large and looks extremely heavy.

"We've reserved the Guillotine Room," he says.

"So I see, sir," I say.

The Guillotine Room, that is the place which gives me nightmares. The biosensors were down one day and I had to go in to see if the client had left the hotel or whether he was inside. Well, he was inside, all right, headless, his lopped-off hands scattered to either side of the blade.

It's a big industrial machine, the guillotine, and you lie down, take hold of the controls and throw the switch, and, blam, that's it.

And the result is garbage. That's what got me about the corpse I walked in on. It was so totally ugly, no sense of pose or poise or arrangement, just garbage. I think fewer people would kill themselves if they knew just how bad they'd look when dead.

Anyway, I can't let that happen to my adored and darling Slimolina, she of the china face, the fine blonde hair, I just can't. I've got to save her. Somehow, I've got to communicate the fact that killing yourself is a bad thing.

"Is there a problem?" says Mr Mandroheim.

"Bank's a little slow confirming the credit rating, sir," I say. "Won't be a moment."

And then I see Godfried Dormant, our regular nut, coming in through the front door. It's only 7.40 pm. I'm only forty minutes into my twelve-hour solo shift, and here he is. He'll be on us before I can figure out how to get through to Slimolina. I'm almost out of time here. How do I make contact?

"Hope there's not a bomb in the bear," I say to Slimolina.

"No," she says, with a flushed and happy laugh that sounds a bit drunk. "But Teddy will kill twice before we're done. Twice? No, three times. There are three of them."

"Slim," says Mr Mandroheim, paternal and dominant, not angry but definitely in charge, warning Slim to keep her pretty mouth shut. "Credit checks out, son? The key, thanks."

No choice. I hand over the card key and they're on their way, him lugging the suitcase because this bare bones establishment doesn't run to anything as fancy as a bellboy, and I'm face to face with Godfried, the last person I want to see right now.

"You want to check in?" I say. "The Exhaust Room is free. Turn on the big engine and the next stop is Heaven Central. Or somewhere."

I can't believe I've just gone and done that. Invited him to kill himself, I mean. It's not my style. And, on top of that, it's technically illegal. If he wants to make an issue of it, I could lose my job. And then I'd be vulnerable to ending up you-know-where. But Godfried doesn't notice my blunder. That's the thing about nuts: they run on rails. They don't deviate.

"Have you thought about it?" says Godfried, picking up our conversation exactly where we left it, perhaps a week ago.

"How can I help you, sir?" I say, play-acting the role of hotel clerk, and pretending I don't recognize this conversation.

"No, you haven't thought about it, have you?" says Godfried. "Your responsibility to the living. Killing people is okay with you. You're a virtuous young Nazi, that's what you are."

No, I'm not, I'm a scardy cat hiding from the draft and the Bad Place by holding onto this job, which I was lucky enough to get in a lottery run by the Social Hygiene Department.

"You've got nothing to say for yourself, have you?" says Godfried.

"I can give you some of our literature if you'd like, sir."

I have the pamphlets if he wants. I've read them myself, and they make sense. Sort of. Sometimes.

I mean, the tragic story of the young husband who was innocently bopping along the street when a suicide plunged down on him from forty-seven storeys up, putting him in hospital and leaving him paralyzed for life. That gives me a rationale for my job.

Then there was the guy who tried to use his apartment's gas supply to make an explosive exit, but survived the blast, which killed twenty-four of his innocent neighbors. And the train driver stories! You're driving a train, someone jumps in front of you, you can't stop the machine. It's mechanically impossible. But you're still left with the guilt of having killed someone.

"You're going to go to Hell," says Godfried, starting to escalate into his ranting number, and I wonder whether to call the cops now or let him wind himself up a little more.

If I do call the cops, it's better to have Godfried at the screaming stage. At least, that's my theory, though the cops are actually very good at removing troublemakers, even the quiet ones. Before I started this job I would never have called the cops for any reason, but it's become routine. Your neighborly friends, the police. I never thought I would have started to think like that, but I have.

I'm debating it when Mr Hoglinson rolls in, full of smiles in a way that makes him seem a little drunk, although I happen to know he's a teetotaller.

"The Noose Room, I think," he says.

"Certainly, sir," I say.

And because he's been here so many times before, it's a ten second transaction, and Mr Hoglinson has his card key, and Godfried is asking if he has time to talk, and Mr Hoglinson says yes, and they end up walking off to the vending machine area.

Because of the nature of my job, I don't get to meet a large number of repeat customers, but Mr Hoglinson is one of the few. He's strange in more ways than one, but the strangest, for my money, is that he likes to talk to nuts.

Mr Hoglinson has talked to me so often that I know, by rote, what he will tell Godfired. About how he constructed his elaborate fantasy suicide, complete with a ritual involving hot coffee and exquisite chocolates. And about how, when he actually came to the moment, he realized that he didn't want to kill himself at all. Rather, what he wanted was simply to step free from the overwhelming pressures of his life for a few hours. So now he comes here not to do the act but to perform the ritual.

The problem is (as Mr Hoglinson has told me) that we do not come cheap. The addictive attraction of the ritual is starting to become a source of financial stress, and Mr Hoglinson may face the day when he has to break the habit. Or (more exactly, I think, though he has never said this) either say goodbye to us forever or go ahead and kill himself.

Suicide rituals? I would advise against them. Try pumping iron instead, and see what that does for you.

"Excuse me?"

I look up and there she is, my beloved, my Slimolina, complete with teddy bear. And I'm overcome with job and guilt. Joy, because I still have a chance to save the darling one. Guilt, because I'd already written the mission off as hopeless. Just as well I figured out how to dodge the draft, because I'd be hopeless on a battlefield.

"Ms House," I say. "What can I do for you?"

"He's hopeless," says Slimolina, with an indulgent smile. "He forgot the diapers. We absolutely must have the diapers."

"Diapers?" I say.

"For Teddy," says Slimolina.

I'm confused. Diapers for Teddy? Now that's weird. And this job, well, it doesn't do as much as you might think to prepare you for the weird. Most suicides, both those who go ahead and do it and those who think again, they're not weird. Rather, they're totally normal. Your average law-abiding citizen with a death wish.

"There's a supermarket two minutes down the road," I say. "They might have what you need."

"Oh, but we can't go out," says Slimolina. "The watchers have closed in."

"Watchers?" I say, my sense of confusion increasing.

"In the pay of the wicked witch of Endor," says Slimolina. Then giggles. "His wife, I mean. If they saw us buying diapers then that would be evidence."

I'm lost, but she doesn't explain. Instead, she puts money on the counter.

"Go buy for us," she says. "Please."

"Sorry," I say. "My job. Maybe a taxi driver?"

"You can't trust taxi drivers," says Slimolina. "They talk. I'll leave the money here. If you can help us, call the room, any time."

Then she's hurrying off, ardent for something. Which is strange, because suicidal people aren't like that. They may be emotionally flat, or confused, or hairtrigger anxious, or angry to a frightening degree, but they're certainly not happily enthusiastic.

I can't quite figure out what's going on here, but I get the feeling that Slimolina does not think she's going to die, and it occurs to me that maybe Mr Mandroheim is planning the perfect murder. Maybe he's enticed her into the Guillotine Room with the promise of kinky games, and maybe his plan is to trigger the guillotine at a strategic moment, and it's goodbye to a girl pet who has perhaps become tiresome.

It's a workable hypothesis. A murder disguised as a suicide pact, with the guy changing his mind after the woman makes a messy exit. What should I do? Call the cops?

As I'm thinking about it, I hear approaching sirens, and suddenly the cops are here to evacuate us to check out a bomb threat. And I know, right off, that my darling Slimolina has called in the threat. Either her or her Mr Mandroheim.

All the guests are evacuated except for the guy who checked into the Slab Room before I came on shift. He's now lying beneath a slab of polished basalt which weighs ten metric tons, and he won't be going anywhere until a professional cleaning crew shows up tomorrow to remove the splintered ooze of his remains.

"Any suspicious characters hanging around here tonight?" says Sergeant Burke, who has got to know me pretty well in the months since I started this job.

"Godfried Dormant was making a nuisance of himself earlier," I say, promptly.

And I have the satisfaction of seeing the said Godfried Dormant arrested and taken away for interrogation. He'll complain to management, I guess, but, given that he never checks in, who cares?

So, anyway, while the dogs and the robot probes check through the hotel, I join the guests who are milling around outside, and I see Slimolina with her Mr Mandroheim, both of them still fully dressed, and she looks at me and flashes me a big smile, and I know it's my go signal.

Two minutes on foot. And two minutes back. If this feeds back to managment, I'm jobless, and the next step is the draft. But I take the risk.

Although it's not far, on my return at first I think that everyone has gone back inside. I have a moment of sheer panic. All I can see is the blank gray sheetrock of the building's facade reaching up to the big red neon sign which says "GRAND TERMINUS SUICIDE HOTEL." They've gone inside. I'll be found out for sure, because someone always wants to check out after an incident like this.

Then I see that our guests have gathered across the road, where one of the new traveling coffee shop vans has pulled out, and I join them. I hope to get close to Slimolina, but Sergeant Burke intercepts me. He has a few questions about our guests, which I answer, in most cases honestly. Recently, the government has taken a "get tough" line on bomb scare calls, and I know Sergeant Burke will have to file a report which at least looks good.

Then at last we're given the all clear and we go back inside, and, as expected, half our guests leave. No refunds - that's our policy. A few grumbles about that.

How many would have killed themselves if not for the bomb scare? There's no telling. Some nights we have no fatalities at all. Other nights, one hundred percent. It's erratic. Maybe someone's writing a thesis on it.

Impatiently, I wait for Slimolina to show up at the front desk to see what success I had. But she doesn't show. Two full hours go by, with nothing happening but the arrival of two sour, anxious kids, neither of them older than twenty, maximum. She's pregnant, I guess, or he's been drafted, or maybe a combination of both. They think their worlds are ending in ruin, and they don't realize their situation is totally survivable.

Anyway, the kids try to check in, but the guy's ID shows him as being thirty-four years old, which is impossible. Even though the biometrics check out, the boy, at least, is using fake ID, and I call the cops.

This is kind of worrying: someone with fake ID which cheats the biometrics. For months, the government has been telling us that the rumors are untrue. But, given that the rumors are true, my job could be getting a lot more difficult.

Five minutes after the cops have taken away a pair of protesting kids, Slimonlina finally puts in her appearance. She looks tired, and there are lines of strain on her face. She looks older than twenty-four. How much older? I don't know. But this night is aging her.

"Did you get them?" she asks, impatiently, dispensing with any preliminaries.

"They didn't have any," I say. "Only some, uh, adult incontinence pants."

"Let me see," she says. "Well, they'll do, I think. Teddy's about that size. Keep the change, and thank you."

I wait for a thank you smile but there is no smile. She's right out of smiles. She's turning to go, and I'm trying to come up with the right words, and right then, at the worst possible moment, the traveling salesman guy shows up, Mr Gray, puffing up to the front desk, his angry face red (I think he has a problem with high blood pressure), and launching into his complaint even before I've properly registered his arrival.

"Screaming!" he says. "The guy keeps screaming, I'm trying to sleep!"

"In pain?" I say, wondering if we've got an embarrassing Code Seven on our hands.

And already Slimolina has gone. How fast that woman vanished!

"No, not pain," says Mr Gray, who pays our premiums so he can be sure of a good night's sleep, with no raucous hotel parties going on next door. "Ranting, more like it. On the phone."

So I go with Mr Gray (there's no option) and, as we head along the corridor to his room on the fifth floor, I hear it, a huge voice raving at someone on the phone.

"I'll do it, Mavis, I really will! I'll stick my head in and I'll pull the trigger, and that's it! You sign those papers and fax me the proof or I'll do it, I really will."

Mr Blortstlom. Again. Who has booked himself the Shotgun Room. (Worried about messing up the gunshot and ending up a vegetable? Our technical solution will solve your worries. You can pull the trigger with peace of mind, in the sure certainty that you're going to be most thoroughly dead.)

I hammer on the door and tell Mr Blortstlom he's leaving the hotel, now. He doesn't want to, however, and Mr Gray is gracious enough to accept an apology from him, so the issue gets smoothed over.

Actually, what Mr Blortstlom doesn't realize is that he's playing a dangerous game, one that may very well end up with him leaving this place in a body bag. He thinks he's just terrorizing his wife, but the problem with promising to kill yourself is that it's really easy to talk yourself into doing exactly that.

So we're all smoothed down and settled, and the hotel is at peace, and I find myself walking toward the Guillotine Room, though I have no idea what I'll do when I arrive there.

Just as I get there, there's a scream. From inside the Guillotine Room. Slimolina's scream. A wrenched sound of shocked agony. The scream is hauled out of her as if it's been wrenched from her bowels, red and bloody, on a huge fishhook.

I can only imagine -

Well, at first I can't imagine. A scream like that? I've never heard anything like it. And then an image forms. Slimolina, cut in half at the waist. Her amputated forward half finding the strength for that one rending scream. It's a really horrific thought, but I can't shake it.

Anyway, the bad news is that I've arrived too late. Something irreversable has happened. That scream was not the kind of thing you kiss better and comfort with a smile. So I go back to the front desk and I wait in what is now the silence of night.

Then nothing happens for the longest time until, at 5.15 am, Slimolina and Mr Mandroheim come down to check out. I'm surprised that they're alive. And I'm surprised that they're checking out at this absurdly early hour.

"Sir," I say, "you had a suitcase."

"The cleaning bond takes care of that kind of thing," says Mr Mandroheim. "Doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir," I say.

"Get us a cab, would you?" says Slimolina, tired and snappish.

As I phone for the cab, I take stock of Slimolina, and I realize three things. One is that she is no longer young. She has aged somehow, becoming more like thirty-four than twenty-four. The other is that she is no longer beautiful. She has hardened in an unpleasant way, becoming something barbed, rigorous, not nice to be near. And the third thing I realize is that I am no longer in love with her.

The cab comes and Slimolina and Mr Mandroheim leave and I go up to the room. It's standard practice. You check to see if the guests have trashed the place.

What I find is a guillotined bear. It's been sliced in half. And there are other things sliced in half, too. On one of the two twin beds. They're photographs, speckled with blood. I don't know where the blood came from. Maybe from the suitcase, which I lying in a collapsed huddle in the corner, evidently one of these new high-tech "empty and compress" models.

The photos show a woman who had trophy wife looks some years back but who is no longer top model quality. At a guess, she's Mr Mandroheim's wife. And there are photos of two children, aged maybe four or five.

And I remember what Slimolina said when she checked in, something about Teddy planning on killing three people. And I know these three people are dead. The wife and the two kids. I don't know how I know it, but I do.

Tonight, something unspeakable happened in this hotel. And, for the very first time since I started this job, I find myself conscious of being in the presence of evil.

I log the room for Ms Mavis to look at when she gets in later today. She's our professional on the cleaning front. She'll assess the blood damage and figure out how much we should charge our transient guests. Not much, I guess. Not nearly as much as they should be paying.

Back at the front desk, I get out the application forms. They're long and complicated, but they're already filled in. All they need is my signature. I sign, and I put them into the government's preaddressed envelope, and I seal the envelope. All I need to do now is mail them, which I'll do at the train station on the way home.

I've had these forms for days now. Hesitating. Unable to make up my mind. From hotel clerk to executioner. It's a move up, undoubtedly. But who wants to be an executioner? It won't play well at parties, to start with. "My job? Oh, I kill people, professionally, for the state."

However, tonight has soured me against the human race. I'm tired of watching them blunder their way to their own terminations, too often doubtful, hesitant, not sure what they really want. I want to take a more active role. I want to get in there and kill someone. Yeah, Slimolina, maybe I could start with you.

The photos are still in the room. Evidence of something. And I know who phoned in the false bomb alarm. I can't prove anything, but my accusation would be sufficient for an arrest. Arrested this morning, while she's still shattered, Slimolina would break under interrogation. I think.

I phone the cops and try to get through to Sergeant Burke, but he's gone off duty. However, I have his private cellphone number. He told me to phone him if I ever had anything "good." I ring him and give him a quick rundown.

"Mandroheim," he says. The name seems to mean something to him. "Yeah, this could be interesting. Feed me the ID data and I'll get onto it."

And by that time Charley has shown up, and it's time for me to go home and get a proper rest, which, by this time, I really feel truly entitled to.





The End

Taragon Arc thrust his sword into the belly of the Mantavil Orc, and it screamed, and coughed green blood. Dying, it tried to claw him. He threw up his strong left arm. Claws screamed across chain mail. The foul stench of burning rubber enveloped him. He was eye to eye with the orc, and the orc's eyes were red, red as the sun sinking through smoke.

"Die," said Taragon, twisting the sword.

And the orc coughed smoke and died.







*





Taragon Arc returned to the fair city of Chestarinda, the Crystal City which was the capital of Nalahash, on the very day that the evil wizard Lokarj laid waste to the Harp Tower. Ten thousand people, gathered for the Festival of Flowers, perished.

"I charge you with our vengeance," said the Drax Lord, a week later.

The Drax Lord, Pilbert Avida by name, had made his money in the chicken entrail business, and his mastery of advertising had made him the winner of the recent election.

Some warriors had little time for Pilbert, who had paid a substitute to carry a spear for him in the Yen Yegle Wars. But Taragon Arc respected Pilbert's toughness. The untested Drax Lord was holding up well in the face of an unprecedented challenge.

"The wizard Lokarj has long been sheltered by the warlords of Doomant Slares," said Pilbert. "You will march forth with an army, defeat the warlords and slay Lokarj."

"I hear and obey, my lord," said Taragon.





*





Six months later, it was done. True, the evil wizard Lokarj had guilefully slipped free from the pursuit which had sought to encompass his death. However, the warlords of Doomant Slares had been defeated, and their lands lay in ruin.

Once again, Taragon Arc was summoned into the presence of the Drax Lord, Pilbert Avida.

"Why do you think I have called you here?" asked Pilbert.

"I venture," said Taragon, who was a man of plain-spoken honesty, "that you wish me to finish what I have begun. The lands of Doomant Slares need fifty years of governance to subdue their turbulent peoples to a state of civilized productiveness. I am willing to undertake that task of governance, should you wish it."

"We have smashed them," said Pilbert, waving away the suggestion. "It is sufficient. No, I wish you to subdue, next, Volgo Chantra."

"The White Orc?" said Taragon, in surprise.

"The same," said Pilbert.

"But, my lord," said Taragon. "Why?"

"He is evil," said Pilbert. "Do you doubt it?"

"I doubt it not, my lord," said Taragon. "But evil orcs are many. The lands of the White Orc are far distant. He is helpless to hurt us."

"He is evil!" said Pilbert, his voice rising to a shriek. "Lokarj struck at our people! He killed ten thousand! Are you going to stand shoulder to shoulder with one who hates us, who would eat us alive if he could?"

At that, Taragon Arc was silent. Arguments welled up, but he suppressed them. The largest argument was that the evil wizard Lokarj, he who had destroyed the Harp Tower, had nothing whatsoever to do with the White Orc. Orcs and wizards were enemies, and one would kill the other as soon as look at him.

"If you hate the rat, make war on the cockroach," said Pilbert, apparently quoting some gem of proverbial wisdom, though Taragon was a stranger to the quote.

As Taragon maintained his soldierly silence, Pilbert walked to the window and looked out over the city.

"I wish," said Pilbert, "to bring death and chaos to my enemies."

Then he was silent. Waiting for a reply?

"When the pillars of reality totter," said Taragon, quoting from the Soldier's Creed, "it is for the strong to uphold the sky."

"Death and chaos," said Pilbert, licking his tongue across his lips. "Death and chaos."

And, for just a moment, Taragon smelt the faintest whiff of ... well, he did not like to think what. A soldier should not acknowledge his own hallucinations.





*





Pilbert Avida, the Drax Lord of the fair city of Chestarinda, the Crystal City, the city of Everlasting Light, spake unto the people.

"Our enemies have struck against us," said Pilbert. "They have destroyed the Harp Tower and have slain ten thousand of our loved ones. To put an end to the threats against us, we must march forth and do battle with the White Orc.

"Know that the White Orc is evil incarnate. In his rape rooms, he seizes the captive elven maiden. He forces her face into his armpit. He forces her to bite upon the iron nipples that lives there. The nipple swells, and out from it there spurt his genetic lances.

""She thrashes, trapped in his grasp. He flexes his arm. The iron nipple breaks her teeth. He pulls from her gums the splintered fragments of her shattered teeth, laughing at her agony.

"Then she is caged, and the pregnancies begin, swelling in her cheeks, her buttocks, her breasts - wherever the genetic lances find their rest. She endures nine months of agony, her body bloated with a dozen orc cysts, until she dies, screaming, as the newborn eat their way out."

All this the Drax Lord said, and more. And it was all true. Taragon Arc knew that. There was no exaggerating the evil of the White Orc.

It was a somber and chastened Taragon who marched forth at the head of the army. How had he been so weak as to waver in his duty? What had blinded his eyes to the obviousness of that duty? He must face the White Orc and slaughter this most absolute of evils.

Six months later, Taragon Arc slammed his sword into the belly of the White Orc. Chin to chin they struggled, the orc's eyes as red as blood, the hideous stench of burning rubber seething from the orc's mouth. Then the orc coughed smoke and died.





*





"Good," said the Drax Lord, visiting the White Orc's capital six months later. "Good. Very good. You have done an excellent job."

"My lord is too kind," said Taragon Arc. "I regret to say that the lands are in chaos."

So they were, so they were. During his rule, the White Orc had held the entire population in slavery, forcing obedience to the law. Now, with the oppressor gone, the people were free to do as they wished. And what they wished to do, in many cases, was to loot, kill, drink, fight and rape.

"We have defeated the enemy," said Pilbert. "That is the important thing. We have taught Lokarj a lesson. He can run, he can hide, but we can lay waste to the cities of his comforters, we can bring chaos to the lands of his allies, actual and potential. He must be suffering in consequences of our victory."

Taragon kept his face expressionless, not sure what emotion it might display if he gave it free play.

"And now," said Pilbert. "The future. What are you ideas?"

"If my lord could give me ten more legions," said Taragon, "I could bring order to this troubled land. I could build schools, discipline the people to productivity and enforce the rule of law. Inside of twenty years this land could be flourishing, a model of prosperity."

"I cannot spare you the legions," said Pilbert. "They are needed for other wars."

"Other wars?" said Taragon, confused. "But against whom?"

"We have to attack Onctus Derzavam to bring peace to Harajuku Mace," said Pilbert.

"My lord?" said Taragon, confused. "There is ... with respect, my lord, there is no common border between Onctus Derzavam and Harajuku Mace."

"The praise singers of Onctus Derzavam chant encouragements for the child-killers who trouble the peace of Harajuku Mace," said Pilbert. "The Macians have always been the most important of our allies. If we burn and slaughter in Onctus Derzavam, it will teach the child-killers to behave themselves."

"I have heard," ventured Taragon, "that the child-killers resent the imprisonment of their god, and have vowed that nothing will stop them in their endeavors to set him free."

"Force sufficient," said Pilbert, "will bring them to order."

Then, having won the argument - at least, discussion was plainly at an end - Pilbert wandered to the window, and stood in silent contemplation, watching smoke rise from sundry buildings in the White Orc's defeated capital.

"If I might venture something, my lord," said Taragon.

"Speak," said Pilbert.

"Since I have an insufficiency of force at my disposal," said Taragon, "I regret that in this city ... well, my lord ... the unfortunate thing is that rape has become very much the commonplace crime."

"Really?" said Pilbert.

"The virgins are abducted, my lord," said Taragon. "They disappear. There has been the most ... my lord ... there have been small children, girls who are not ... not yet ...."

And there Taragon stopped, unable to continue. He had been raised in the stern traditions of chivalry. He had been taught that it is the duty of the strong to protect the weak. He had been taught that the purpose of war is to bring, out of chaos and slaughter, justice and peace.

And it was breaking his heart that all his strength, all his resolve, all his warskill, was inadequate in the face of the disaster that he faced, the disaster of a society which had disintegrated.

"My lord," said Taragon, trying one last time. "A child of nine. Blood on her thighs. Screaming, my lord."

For some time, the Drax Lord was silent, and it seemed to Taragon Arc that the Drax Lord was not going to reply. Then, finally, Pilbert Avida spoke, giving Taragon the benefit of a chicken entrail vendor's wisdom.

"Stuff happens," said Pilbert.





*





A day later, Taragon received orders in writing from the Drax Lord. "You have wasted enough of your talent on this dismal city of slum dwellers," wrote the Drax Lord, in part. "I wish you to command our troops in the war against Onctus Derzam. Are you ready?"

Taragon would have prefered to answer the question eye to eye, but apparently this was not to be. Feeling, somehow, that he committed some kind of sin against the nation's supreme leadership, and was now an outcast, denied access to the inner circle, Taragon penned a letter accepting his orders.

"My lord," wrote Taragon, in conclusion. "My greatest wish has ever been to serve."





*





Ten years later, Taragon Arc finally marched home to the Crystal City, the destruction of twenty nations behind him.

It had been a hard ten years for the Crystal City of Chestarinda. In the years of Taragon's absence it had been discovered that many citizens, previously thought to be loyal, were in truth sympathizers of the evil wizard Lokarj, covert supporters of the Dream Cult of the White Orc's Armpit, or fellow travelers who dared give themselves to treason, bellyaching at the cost of the state's eternal war against unending evil.

When Taragon entered Chestarinda after his long absence, he saw, everywhere, the evidence of the necessary work of preserving the security of the state.

There were people slumped in the starvation cages which were build along either side of the Marble Avenue. People hanging from their thumbs on the walls to either side of the great Gate of Love and Liberty. People, many of them, wearing the iron collar of a General Purpose Slave, their liberty forfeit, their master of the moment being whoever chose to command them, perhaps to labor, perhaps to suffer, perhaps to defile themselves in obscene submission.

"I will speak of this to the Drax Lord," said Taragon, troubled by what he saw. "I do not imagine that he knows his minions have gone to such ... excess."

And, so thinking, he rode to the Drax Lord's palace, for he had been commanded to report immediately upon his return to the city.





*





"The Drax Lord has lately been suffering from a bad case of conjuntivities," said the Head Steward. "His eyes are inflamed. It is an embarrassment to which you will not refer during your audience."

"I see," said Taragon.

When he entered the audience chamber, he found it dimly lit and full of the scent of incense. There was incense burning everywhere, filling the chamber with a haze of smoke. On an iron throne flanked by pyramids of skulls sat the Drax Lord, who was larger than Taragon remembered him.

"Greetings, Taragon," said the Drax Lord, in a voice that was deeper and stronger than Taragon remembered, a voice of gravel. "Lay down your sword and approach."

Obediently, Taragon laid down his sword and approached the Drax Lord.

"Taragon," said the Drax Lord, reaching out with his hands, which were gloved with white. "Give me your hands."

Though puzzled at this new and unfamiliar custom, Taragon clasped the Drax Lord's hands with his.

And the Drax Lord squeezed, breaking every bone in each of Taragon's hands. The Drax Lord's eyes flared wide open, and the eyes were red, red as a cauldron of boiling blood. The Drax Lord breathed out, and the stench of burning rubbing enveloped Taragon.

"Now!" said the Drax Lord.

And Taragon was flipped, forced, manhandled, his head slammed into the cavity of the orc lord's armpit. The iron teat grated against his resisting teeth.

No!

He. Would. Not. Open. His. Mouth.

"Defy me?" roared the Drax Lord.

And the armpit convused, and the iron teat telescoped forward, smashing Taragon's teeth, lurching into the softness of the mouth, skewering his tongue, and the genetic lances squealed out, and the Drax Lord screamed in a high ecstacy of achievement.

Later, much later, relaxed in the aftermath of his prolonged pleasures, the Drax Lord threw Taragon's limp and unresisting body into a holding cage. It would be interesting to watch him swell and ripen in the months ahead.

"I wish," said the Drax Lord, softly, treasuring the words, "to bring death and destruction to my enemies."

It was one of the Drax Lord's strengths that he knew his natural enemies when he saw them. And Taragon's fatal weakness - well, Taragon's fatal weakness was that he did not

My bones ache, the pain brings back memories.....memories from long ago, painful childhood memories........



then my thoughts return, i feel the strength start to surge through my body. It is time, time to walk in the shadows, time to feel the night bring life to my body.



I move slowly at first, taking in my surroundings. Glasgow is so much more darker than the streets of New York. I move from street to street, I know she can feel me coming......i watched her almost a week ago, how she moved as she danced with her friend, I watched for such a long time. Her smile, her eyes.....the flowing locks of her hair brush against her soft tanned skin.......I was drawn to her like she was to me. I have waited for this moment........



she sleeps as i enter her room, her scent is strong, i need to take her, to feel her.....to taste her. She sighs as i sit by her side, as i lift her towards me she opens her eyes and looks into mine, she sighs again as i take her into the darkness.......my queen

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God." -Deuteronomy 18:10-13

The salem witch craft troubles all began in New England in the winter of 1692, a year of political uncertainty throughout the Massachusetts Bay Colony.



In the kitchen of the Salem parsonage, a West Indian slave named Tituba amused the minister's 9 year old daughter, Elizabeth Parris and her 11 year old cousin, Abigail, with witch craft, tricksand spells and tales of the occult. Sometimes Tituba told fortunes by studying patterns of egg whites in a glass, a pastime that to the 17th century Puritan was devilry, but one that captivated the adolescent neighbour girls who visited Tituba's kitchen.



As winter wore on, the girls began to behave bizarrely. When the village doctor called and could find nothing physically wrong with the girls, he concluded that the evil hand is on them.



Mr. Parris begged the afflicted girls to name the witches, and so Elizabeth blurted out the name of Tituba and other names such as Sarah Good, a despised pipe-smoking beggar, and Sarah Osborne, who had scandalized the village by living openly with a man before marriage. At a hearing in early March the Salem witch craft trial began. Tituba confessed that she was indeed a witch. She also claimed that she was one of many witches in the village and that a tall man from Boston had shown her a book listing all the witches in the colony.



With that, the salem witch craft trial began.

In seven months time, seven men and thirteen women were executed for practicing witch craft, many on the basis of the testimony of ghosts and specters. Those who would not confess were killed and Tituba was spared and sold by the Parrises.



When the frenzied accusations reached the apex of colonial society, public opinion turned. Within 18 months, Governor William Phips had pardoned all suspected witches who had not been executed, even the executed were exonerated, though the name Salem endures as a symbol of societal madness.

Fresh out of journalist’s college, Jennifer always knew she’d have to start at the bottom. Nevertheless, as she sat squirming under the gimlet eye of the tweed jacketed and very scary chief editor of the Ridmorthampton Local Journal, she knew that there was an opportunity at hand that had to be grasped at any cost.



Ms Teresa Tresty, editor in chief, drew her stiff backed executive leather chair tightly into her leather topped desk, patted her tight bun with a white whizened hand and spoke in a frosty voice.



“Jennifer, you must understand that you are in a no win situation. Since our lead reporter is indisposed, I have no choice but to elevate you to this important post temporarily. If you make a mess of this job, which you probably will, I will make sure your reporter career is finished. If you manage to survive the enormous challenge of stepping into the boots of an ace reporter with 30 years’ experience, it will only be for a short time. Margaret will be back as soon as she’s recovered and you’ll be back to filing paper clips for the rest of your contract.”



Ms Teresa Tresty did not like cub reporters. She’d edited the Ridmorthampton Local Journal for more years than anybody could remember and most of the population in this elderly, small West Country town had very long memories. Not that there was very much to remember. Most things stayed the same from week to week and year to year and that was the way the elderly population liked it.



Jennifer had been a mistake. The sole ancient shareholder of the Ridmorthampton Local Journal had been visiting when Jennifer had dropped in unannounced with her CV and a determined willingness to undertake any job, however menial. The old man had taken a liking to her long corn colored hair, sprinkling of freckles around her nose and wide willing blue eyes, not to mention her young slim figure.



When she’d stood in front of the editor in chief’s desk making her pitch, he’d positioned his small round and rather fat body closely beside her. She’d not flinched and, from his point of view, she was immediately hired.



Ms Teresa Tresty, editor in chief, was given no choice. Naturally, she’d made sure that the terms of employment were demanding to the point of unreasonableness and the salary was so low that Jennifer was practically paying the Ridmorthampton Local Journal to be there.



On Jennifer’s first day, Ms Teresa Tresty had fully intended to relegate Jennifer to the basement with the job of sorting the library of back issues into date order and out of the subject order in which they had been placed by a previous work experience junior reporter ten years ago.



The car accident of her chief (and only) reporter (and close friend) immediately put paid to these plans. Worst still, the sole elderly shareholder had somehow heard about the accident and immediately and enthusiastically endorsed Jennifer’s written request to step into the vacant position.



All was not yet lost, though. Ms Teresa Tresty had not commanded her position of editor in chief for all these years without having a trick or two up her elegantly starched sleeve.



“There is a tradition that there are vampires in the hill mines in the easterly woods close to Ridmorthampton!”



Jennifer’s eyes widened, incredulously. ”



It’s time that we did an article on this folklore. We will run it in two weeks’ besides the births, deaths and marriages on page two so it had better be good. Any questions?”



“But vampires don’t exist,” said Jennifer.



“The local vampire stories exist and they have existed for many centuries so that is enough young Miss. Find somebody to interview and I want your copy within seven days, properly spelt and ready for publishing. Let me down and you’re out. There are people locally who could be helping us out in these difficult times.”



Ms Teresa Tresty was of course referring to her best friend at the WI who also edited the monthly church magazine and who could be relied on to do exactly what the editor in chief required, after a convivial coffee break to discuss local gossip, of course.



Five hours later, Jennifer almost wished that some other local person had been given this job. Endless telephone calls to incredulous local dignitaries, officials, assorted librarians and museum curators had drawn a complete blank. They’d been polite and some even asked her if, as a rookie, she’d been sent to get the equivalent of a glass hammer.



One or two of them had heard of vampire stories in the long distant past but none gave them any credibility.



As a last resort, while the sun was setting towards the dark hills to the East, Jennifer rang the local radio station. She was so desperate for a response that she even gave her personal cell phone number over the air.



The radio DJ had a gently chided her but she’d stuck to her guns. Now there was very little that could be done except wait and hope.



As Jennifer walked back to her room in her local low priced hostel along the quiet, tidy streets of Ridmorthampton with the rows of single story, wooden terraced homes with their wicker gates and white fences, she spotted Ms Teresa Tresty’s diminutive form contentedly sunbathing in her back garden by the pool.



The contrast between their different situations was so obvious that it was laughable. Vowing to get even, not mad, Jennifer moved on past, quietly, without calling out.



Amazingly, two hours after the radio interview during which she’d asked for anybody with information about local vampire legends to call her, Jennifer’s cell phone rang.



The caller sounded very young and shy.



“I heard you on the radio.” His voice seemed to come from far away. “You see, the thing is, I am a vampire.”



Jennifer rolled her eyes silently. This was all she needed.



She had expected loony calls but had hoped there would be none. She reached for a pad of paper she’d placed close to the telephone for this purpose, determined to be professional.



“How long have you been a vampire?”



“All my life really, vampires live for a long time. Some in my family are thousands of years old.”



“And your name is?”



“I’d rather not say. It’s all a bit embarrassing. You see I don’t really want to be a vampire but my parents insisted on it.”



“What is it about being a vampire that you don’t like?”



“Well it seems so mean to have to leap on people and suck their blood when they’re unwilling. Afterwards, they become the undead which can’t be very nice for them.”



“Perhaps you wouldn’t mind being a vampire if you were able to get their permission?”



“Well it would be I start, I suppose. I quite like the taste of blood. I suppose it is hereditary.”



“Would you be available for an interview and, perhaps, some photographs?”



“I’d be willing but … Is there any money involved?”



Jennifer stifled a giggle. The possibility of having a budget with real money to use to pay for a story was about as remote as the idea she was actually talking to a genuine vampire.



“I’m sorry, that would be out of the question.”



“Well, perhaps we could come to another arrangement.”



Jennifer’s face reddened and two bright sparks of red burned high up in her cheeks. She fought to keep her voice even.



“What exactly did you have in mind?”



“We could do a trade. You could get your pictures and I would get a willing subject.”



“It’s a bit steep to have to become the undead just for a few pictures,” said Jennifer, tightly.



“I wouldn’t have to bite very hard. Just a nibble really. You would hardly know it was happening. You wouldn’t even need to take the photographs because I have some already taken.”



“Sort of like a vampire models portfolio?”



“That’s right! I had ideas of becoming a model once, I’ve got long dark hair, dark eyes and many ladies find my personality amazingly magnetic.”



“I can imagine,” said Jennifer wryly.



“Is it a deal, then?”



Jennifer thought for a minute. The whole thing was totally ridiculous, but maybe there was mileage in it.



She wished she’d never started with this local newspaper. She didn’t care about the job any more or about the stupid person who thought he was a vampire.



“It’s a deal,” she said, carelessly.



“Have you got a pencil and paper to record the address so you can come around much later tonight. Don’t worry, if I’m asleep. Just have your nibble and drop the photographs in to the Ridmorthampton Local Journal for me to pick up in the morning. I’d really rather not know anything about it … I mean, while you’re nibbling.”



“Gee, thanks a million, you won’t be disappointed with the photographs, I promise. Knowing that you have agreed to be nibbled makes all the difference and you sound so young and lovely.”



Jennifer gave him the address, with a slow smile on her face.



“I’m going to ring off now and get an early night,” she said.



“Goodnight! My dear,” he said. “See you later!”



———-



The next morning, Jennifer woke with a start and, with a great deal of pleasure, reviewed the night before and her steamy date with the local radio station disc jockey.



He’d asked her out after they had gone off air, while the station was putting out some advertising. He’d sounded rather nice so she’d said yes and she hadn’t been disappointed.



Tall, fair haired, wiry and intelligent. They’d spent the evening laughing about the locals in Ridmorthampton and then walked through the night together by the river. His company had been wonderful and his kisses pressing. Jennifer had strict rules on first dates but was very much looking forward to the second when she planned to let her hair down.



So, despite her late night, Jennifer was bright eyed and bushy tailed when she entered the rather unusually quiet office of the Ridmorthampton Local Journal.



The short rotund owner of the Ridmorthampton Local Journal was already there, sitting behind the editor’s desk, and looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.



“Early this morning, I was called out by the police to the most awful sight I have ever seen in my life. I’m afraid that the editor in chief of this newspaper passed away in the night in horrific circumstances. In short, she was attacked. The police said they’d never seen anything like it before in their lives. They will have a full inquiry and I’m finding it all most exhausting and very distressing. Nothing like this ever happens in Ridmorthampton.”



Serenely, Jennifer moved around behind him and gently massaged his neck.



“You don’t need to worry about anything,” she said. “I will make sure everything runs smoothly at the Ridmorthampton Local Journal.”



“You are so wonderful,” he said. “Of course, you will have to act up as the editor in chief. I know this will be a great burdon to you so soon but I will make sure you get the appropriate salary.”



As he left, Jennifer planted a gentle kiss on his left cheek, then turned around to survey her new domain.



Whether the young man who had called her last night had truly been a vampire, she didn’t know.



Doubtless, finding a skinny old woman in bed instead of a tender young maiden must have been a surprise which may have been upsetting for him and certainly for Ms Teresa Tresty.



Or perhaps it had been a hoax call and the man over the phone hadn’t turned up to the editor’s address that Jennifer had given him .



In any case, she’d spent the evening and most of the night with the radio station DJ so nobody would be asking her questions.



This morning, she’d turned up expecting to be fired and not really caring. Instead, she’d been put in charge of the whole newspaper and had got the job of her dreams.



She’d order extra copies of the Ridmorthampton Local Journal to be printed this week. A good murder always increased circulation!



Much better than silly old vampires.



The End