The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Part One



I cast a glance around the cluttered room, wondering where to start.

“I don't want anything for it.” the landlady said. “I just want shut of it all, so if there's anything of use to you, you're welcome to it.”



From what I could see, the items of value would barely cover the cost of disposing of the trash, but there was little work around, and she was paying me a few quid for a morning's work. In honesty, it would probably take the whole day, and maybe another day if I was to bother sorting out the crud from the promising stuff.



The bureaux would sell - they are usually popular, and I could sell the bookshelves easily enough as long as I pitched the price low enough. House clearances are something of an art these days. Gone are the days you could take a van full of bulky waste down to the tip and have it landfilled – now it all has to be sorted, weighed, processed, and moved to a recycling plant – at a cost.



The more I could find a use for, the less I would have to pay, so the bigger my profit margin. The iron bed will fetch a couple of quid at the scrap metal yard, and I knew a rag merchant who will be happy to take the bedding off my hands. I might get a few quid for the wardrobe and chest of drawers, and I could sell the picture frames at Sunday's car-boot.



The books and papers would be my bugbear. Nobody wants books these days, particularly dusty old ones. Maybe I could get the local charity shops to take them off my hands – but they didn’t look like the sort they would want.



I picked one up and flicked through the pages, almost reeling from the awful musky smell that arose from the yellowed dusty pages.



“He was always wasting his money on rubbish like that.” explained the landlady. “strange old books that nobody's ever heard of, weird statues, funny looking jewellery. I wouldn’t give you tuppence for em, but he collected that rubbish like it was treasure or something.”



I picked up a heavy onyx figurine from the cluttered dresser and shuddered.

“See what I mean” the landlady said, “Horrible thing isn't it? Something like that on my dresser would give me nightmares.”



I had to agree – the thing was monstrous. I examined it closer to try to figure out what it was meant to be. The head looked like some sort of goat. Or a dragon perhaps? Something with a long snout and horns anyway. The body could have been a goat, or a sheep. The hind legs ended in hooves, but the forelegs were more like arms, ending in ape-like paws (or hands) with hideous talons. The tail was long and slender and undulated like a cat or monkey tail, but there were webbed, bat-like wings growing from it's back.



The whole thing was a chimera, a mix of several creatures, but the detail was quite fine. It seemed to be sitting on it's haunches in the way that a dog sits when it is alert. I tried not to stare at it's groin, but the attention to detail that had been lavished on the statue did not stop at it's shaggy fur. Sprouting rudely from the exposed under-belly was a sheath and testicles of immense size, and standing erect from the sheath was a bizarrely shaped penis.

“Maybe that's why he killed himself” she reflected, “Driven mad by bad dreams. There's something unwholesome about those books he read.”.



I put the statue down and began to sift through the books. A lot of them had Latin names, and several seemed to be in some foreign script that I couldn’t even read. Quite possibly Arabic maybe, or Hebrew?



I shrugged and began packing them into boxes and tea-crates to load into my van. There were a few other strange figurines too – one of a devil-like figure sitting on a globe that seemed part man, part woman, and part goat. I've seen that on record sleeves and T-shirts, and another statuette was of some sort of dragon with an octopus for a head.



Some of the things looked like the sort of creatures you see in computer games, and I wondered if maybe he was an obsessive gamer. But his collection looked old – far too old to have been created in the computer age. Maybe collectors would be interested in some of those books. In fact, I was pretty sure that as hideous as his statues were, they would probably fetch a tidy sum on E-Bay. I suppose I could put up with them in my home for a month or two if they could make me money. I didn’t get to where I am today by throwing stuff away – there's a market for anything if you look hard enough.



Satisfying myself that there was enough enough sale value in the good stuff to make it worthwhile, I called Alan on my mobile and told him where to come. Alan's one of several local unemployed teenagers I sometimes employ to do the donkey work. He's not a shirker, and for twenty quid and a couple of pints at the pub afterwards he'll help move the stuff into the van. I know that's twenty quid more to add onto my expenses, but to be frank there's no way I can get a wardrobe up a flight of steps without doing myself a mischief, and he'll cut the time in half at the very least.



I started sorting and packing whilst waiting for him, the plan being to get all the stuff I want in storage at the front, then the stuff for the shop, and crap at the back so I can take it straight round to the recycling centre. Looking closer at the books I began to change my opinion – they looked like the sort of stuff the Goth kids will just lap up. I could tear the pages with pictures out and put them in frames – probably get enough from that alone to cover the expenses for this job.



By the time Alan got to the flat I'd packed most of the books, got all the bedding and clothes in bin-liners to take to Frankie, and was packing the knick-knacks into a tea chest. It looked like I’d have to use a second one, but I have plenty, and almost all of the weird crap in the collection is likely to fetch a good price at the car-boot sales.



As it happened, I had miscalculated a little and by 2pm we had the van full of crates and furniture, with at least half a van full of crap still in the basement flat.



“Are we taking this lot to the tip now?” Alan asked as we closed the tail of the Luton.

“Nah! This is all going to the lock-up.” I told him.

“That rubbish? You'll never sell that – it's ancient.”

“That dresser is quality mate.” I told him. “that's solid oak – not chipboard and MDF like your modern rubbish.”

“Looks like the sort of thing my Granny had. No bugger round here will have it. Wont fit in with their new suites.”

“Not round here perhaps.” I agreed, “But folks 'll pay a bunch for stuff like that down south. Your granny has sense.”



Maybe I had been a little too enthusiastic – We struggled to fit it in the lock-up, and I ended up having to take the two crates of knick-knacks and four boxes of books to my home before heading back to the basement flat to finish emptying it.



We took the trash round to the municipal recycling centre, paid more than I would have liked but less than I calculated for to dump the shit, then took the bags of bedding and clothes to Frankie's, and finally weighed the bed and the cooker in for scrap at the scrap metal yard, and donated the fridge and electric fire to one of the charities that sold electricals. I was surprised there wasn't a TV to get rid of too, but I expect the landlady skimmed that off first for one of the other tenants. There was an old computer, but it looked at least ten years old, and very low end. Still, I took it anyway just in case there was anything interesting on the hard drive.



At last the job was done, so after parking the van I took Alan to the pub for a well earned pint or two.



(to be continued)