A Coven of Vampires (20 page)

The spines read:
Polizei Hohenstadt
,
followed by the specific dates when the books were first taken into use, and the dates when they’d been completed and closed. These particulars were written in capitals, in heavy black ink, on labels glued to the spines. Several of the labels had fallen off, however, and the unfaded spines where they’d been bore a uniform legend:
Polizei Hexenstadt
,
and then the dates as before. So that it seemed fairly obvious to me that at some time in the not too distant past the town had been renamed.

The reason I make mention of this is very simple to explain:
Hexenstadt
means “Witch Town”. This is a fairly trivial fact which, in the circumstances, I might reasonably be expected to forget. But I haven’t been allowed to forget it….

The morning after the accident I woke up bathed in stinking sweat—I thought it was sweat—following a night of hideous dreams. I couldn’t remember what those night mares were for sure, except I believe they went over, time and time again, the details of the accident and that look on the girl’s face as she died, when I swore I’d take care of her Uzzi.

My hosts were the manufacturers of those chocolates I mentioned. God only knows what they’d think of me when I left and they came to tidy up my room! It stank as if a pig had spent the night there—or something worse than a pig. I thought that
I
had made the room smell like that.

I threw open the windows, let in the sweet mountain air, and dumped my bedsheets into a dirty linen basket. Pillow cases, too. Then I found fresh linen in a drawer and decked the bed, set the room to rights again.

After a shower I felt better, but I must have struggled in the night or been lying in an awkward position or some thing. My left side ached just under the armpit, causing me to favour that arm and hold it a little tenderly away from my side. But about what I’ve said with regard to the condition of my bedding:

Please understand, I have always been the most scrupulous of men personally. It’s been a habit of mine as long as I can remember to bathe or at least shower every night, and often in the mornings, too. It was quite beyond me to fathom what sort of nightmare could squeeze juices like
those
from a man’s pores!

Two days later I was on the car ferry out of Bremerhaven and so returned home. And no repetition of those terrible dreams until I found myself back at work here in London. Then, just a week ago—

The same thing again, but this time in earnest! And it has steadily progressed, worsened, until finally I’ve found myself driven to come and see you. Not that I’ve told you all of it—not yet—nor even the half of it. But God it’s so weird, so utterly horrible that—

—That the fact is, I think I’m losing my mind!

I’ve told you about the “sweat”, which I thought was mine. Well, and at first I
did
think it—what else was I supposed to think? But as it got worse I knew it couldn’t be mine. No man—nor any living, breathing, healthy creature of God’s sweet earth—could possibly exist and have poison like that in him! Well, perhaps there are creatures that could: the octopus, maybe. Slugs and snails. But nothing remotely human.

My dreams began to change, take on a new and more desperately frightening form. So simple, and yet so terrify ing. Part of it was the sensation of having somebody or something else in bed with me, a living person or being that snuggled to me as if for warmth and fastened to my flesh like a suckling child. With a child’s greed, yes—but without its love or vulnerability. And most certainly far larger and stronger than any child. That was part of it.

The other part was….

You know how a cat purrs? Well, something in those nightmares of mine purred. But not like a cat. It did express a sort of satisfaction, contentedness, but that was where the similarity ended. Nor was it truly a purring, no, it was more the wet, frothy, huskily breathed repetition of a single word, spoken slaveringly over and over again:
Uzzi
—Uzzi—Uzzi!

Finally, Monday morning just four days ago, the thing reached its peak. Or perhaps I should say it reached
a
peak. The dream was the same as before: a sort of lulling, warm embrace, a hypnotic drifting on some slimy ocean whose tides were irresistible. And deep inside a gnawing horror of some monstrous, impossible thing, which drifted with me and sang to me its hypnotic lullaby. Sang to me to numb my mind, anaesthetised me to the pain of its damned, leech-like sucking!

But when I woke up…the nightmare hadn’t gone away. And it was no longer any use kidding myself that this…this slime was sweat! No, for it was in fact slime: a sticky film of the filthy stuff that clung like clear, stinking jelly to my bedsheets—
and to me,
all down my left side! What’s more, there was a deep slimy depression in the bed to the left of where I’d slept: a wet, oval-shaped indentation as if a great cracked egg had lain there all through the night, seeping its fluids into my bed. And worse than any of this, I could no longer fool myself but had to admit that I was in pain; the left-hand side of my ribcage hurt like hell and felt…totally wrong.

I showered, carefully examined myself in a full-length mirror—and went immediately to see my doctor. Oh, yes, for I’d seen something like this before, except that then I’d thought my car was to blame. I also knew that it could get much worse, and I certainly wasn’t going to wait around until it—whatever “it” was—had eaten right through to my ribs!

The doctor took samples—blood, urine, tissue—and said he’d send them for testing. But he couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me, not right there and then. In fact I got the impression he was baffled. He thought it was a purely physical thing, do you see? And I wasn’t about to tell him what I
thought
was wrong with me. How could I? How could I explain to him what I made of the large, darkly indented weeping sore under my armpit? If I’d told him that, he’d think it was my mind that needed mending. And perhaps it is, which is why I’ve come to see you….

So that was four days ago. Since when—

It seemed to me that I must sort out my priorities, take some positive course of action. The first thing I must do was catch this beast “in the act”, as it were. At the doctor’s (on the pretext that I had a lot of night studying to do) I’d got hold of some tablets to help me keep awake. That night I drank a lot of strong, black coffee, put a powerful electric torch under my pillow, finally took two of the tablets before going to bed. I tried to look at a book but after reading the same paragraph five or six times gave it up as a bad job. And at last, at about 1:30, I turned out the light. I wanted it to come, d’you see?

I tried to stay awake, but…

…The luminous hands on my alarm clock stood at 2.55…I was adrift on that alien sea again, but striving against the lure of its tides…and at the same time I was in pain…and I knew that something bulky, clammy-cold and evil was glued to my side, droning its hideous song to keep me asleep:

Uzzi
—Uzzi—Uzzi!

Don’t ask me how I kept from crying out. Have you
tried
to cry out, when you’re only half awake? Maybe I couldn’t. It was like a dream when you want to run but don’t seem to have any legs, when you want to scream and haven’t got a voice. But as I struggled up from sleeping, so my sense of reality got stronger, and with it my feeling of freezing horror!

I was lying on my back and my left arm was draped loosely, over the—torso?—of some slimy, oozing, corrugated oval shape which was pressing itself to me like a limpet. Its stench was that of the tomb, or perhaps some long-dead seabed heaved up to the surface, or a combination of the two with the thick, cloying reek of crushed toadstools thrown in for good measure. And in another moment I was conscious and my mind had switched itself on, and I knew that this was one hundred percent reality. No longer a dream but the real, the
very
real thing. This was Uzzi!

Paralysed? Very nearly. But somehow I managed to work my hand up under my pillow, find my torch and drag it out—and press its rubber stud. And I shone the beam full on the sick-gleaming unnatural
thing
that lay there in the bed with me, sucking on my side!

Should I say it was a monstrous slug? A huge octopus which was all body-sac, with short feelers or tentacles fringed about its suctorial mouth? How to describe a thing which is indescribable, except to a madman? But I do recall that it had eyes. Where placed? Don’t ask me, it’s something I mustn’t dwell on. It’s difficult to tell it without picturing it, which is what I mustn’t do. If I say they tipped
three
of its stubby tentacles…but, God! ...they were very nearly
human
eyes. And evil leered out of them like the devil himself through the gates of hell!

It was Uzzi, the dead German witch’s familiar, and it
was
something that the devil had sent to her out of hell. Except that now Uzzi was mine. And I was Uzzi’s!

All of these thoughts, this knowledge, coming to me in a single instant, from one brief glimpse—the merest blaze of light from my torch—for in the next moment the horror was gone. Just like that: gone! Disappeared from my bed, the room, the house. But not gone far, never gone far; and as usual, it had left its stink and its slime behind….

I staggered through the house putting on all the lights, sobbing, holding my side, loathing Uzzi, myself, this whole nightmare existence in a universe we so wrongly imagine to be neat and tidy and ordered. And then I turned my fire up and sat there before it all through the rest of the night, drinking whisky, burning in my fever of terror and at the same time shuddering right through to my soul.

Since then I haven’t slept at all, and I suppose it’s starting to show.

Well, that’s my story—it’s why I’ve come to see you, Dr Charles. Now tell me: am I mad?

• • •

I had been so wrapped up in Miles Clayton’s story that it took a little time to sink in that he was finished. I shook myself, asked if I might see his wound.

He took off his jacket, opened his shirt and showed me, explaining:

“Of course, it’s had three nights to heal a little. I haven’t slept, haven’t let myself be alone in the dark for a minute.”

I looked at it: the bruising, the central, sore area itself. I simply looked at it, didn’t touch it, and I came to my conclusions. As Clayton did up his shirt and put his jacket on again, I said: “Do you follow your stars, Miles?”

“Eh?” I’d taken him by surprise. “Astrology, d’you mean? Oh, yes—I’m a Pisces.” He frowned. “A good year ahead, allegedly.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, and maybe not. First I should get that cleared up, if I were you. And then I’d say you probably have a good many good years ahead.”

“Oh?” He looked doubtful, but interested.

I nodded. “Tell me, have you ever had any psychic experiences?”

“Ghosts?” He shook his head. “I’m not saying I don’t believe, mind you. No, for I’m open-minded on such things. But Uzzi is the first time anything like this has—” He paused, looked puzzled. “You changed the subject. I thought you were going to give me your opinion on my wound?”

“It might very well add up to the same thing,” I told him. “In fact I’d be willing to bet you don’t walk under ladders, either.”

“You’d  win your bet,”  he answered, looking tiredly mystified. “Why tempt fate? But what are you getting at?”

“Three possibilities with that trouble of yours,” I told him. “Two of them purely physical. But first tell me something: did you ever have anything like this bruise—this damage, let’s call it—before the accident in Germany?”

“Never so much as a pimple,” he answered. “Now tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Ah!” I smiled. “But it’s more what’s on
your
mind, Miles. Three things, I said—three possibilities. But first let me say this: I for one
don’t
believe in ghosts. I don’t read my star forecasts and I’m not especially careful about ladders, or black cats crossing my path. In other words, I don’t let that sort of thing influence me. But they do influence you. For all that you’re a hard-headed businessman, you’re susceptible to extramundane suggestions.”

He inclined his head. “Extramundane?”

“Not of this world,” I told him. “You’re a believer…in things. Do you believe in God, too?”

He looked a little indignant. “Don’t you?”

“Frankly, no. Nor do I believe in the Devil. Good and evil are real, certainly: evidence of both is all around. But their
origin
lies in the mind. In the minds of men!”

We both sat down. “Go on,” he said.

I looked into his hollow, red-rimmed eyes and smiled. “Right! First the wound in your side. While you’re waiting for that doctor of yours to spark, I’d get a second opinion. Go to a specialist—you can afford it. Now, I’m obviously not that sort of doctor, but having looked at this damage of yours three things spring immediately to mind. One: it’s a cancer. A skin cancer, nasty but not fatal, and you should get it seen to at once. Two: it’s a nest of rodent ulcers, which—”

“What?” He leaned forward. “What sort of ulcers?”

“Rodent,” I repeated. “Burrowing. Gradually working their way under the skin and destroying tissue. I’ve an old friend who gets them, and he also gets treatment for them. Radiation, laser—there are several types of treatment. Every now and then he breaks out, but in a matter of weeks they have it under control. That wound of yours has precisely the same sort of dark indentations around its circumference, and—”

“Teeth marks,” he cut me off. “That’s where Uzzi clamps himself on to me—if it is a ‘he’!’ ” He sighed wearily. “All right, you’ve made two guesses—wrong ones, I’m afraid—so what’s the third?”

I shrugged, said: “It’s psychosomatic—and that
is
some thing I know about. And if all else fails, it’s the only possible diagnosis.”

“Psychosomatic?” He curled his lip, then immediately apologized. “I’m sorry. But does that mean what I think it means?”

“A mental illness,” I answered. “Of a sort.”

“Go on.”