Best New Vampire Tales: Vol 1 Part 29

COLLEEN ANDERSON ~ is a writer with fiction and poetry that has appeared in over 100 publications, with newer works in OnSpec Magazine and Don Juan & Men. She is a member of SFWA, SF Canada, the Editors' a.s.sociation of Canada, and is the a.s.sistant poetry editor at Chizine. New work will be coming out in Evolve, Alison's Wonderland and Horror Library Vol. 4.

BARBARA RODEN ~ is a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and publisher, whose short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection, Horror: Best of the Year 2005, Bound for Evil, Strange Tales 2, Gaslight Grimoire, Gaslight Grotesque, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010, Best New Horror 21, and Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Her first collection, Northwest Pa.s.sages, was published in 2009; the t.i.tle story was nominated for the Stoker, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy awards, while the book received a World Fantasy Award nomination for Best Collection.

TIM WAGGONER ~ wrote his first story at the age of five, when he created a comic book version of King Kong vs. G.o.dzilla on a stenographer's pad. It took him a few more years until he began selling professionally, though. Overall, he's published over 70 stories of fantasy and horror as well as hundreds of nonfiction articles. In addition to writing fiction, Tim has worked as an editor and a newspaper reporter. He currently teaches creative writing at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and in the MA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University. He has two bright and beautiful daughters. Tim hopes to continue writing and teaching until he keels over dead, after which he wants to be stuffed and mounted, and then placed in front of his computer terminal.

JOHN L. FRENCH ~ is familiar with monsters. Having worked over thirty years for the Baltimore Police Department as a crime scene investigator, he witnessed more than his share of what horrors one person can inflict on another. Working with patrol officers and detectives, John has been involved in putting many of these people behind bars for very long sentences. In 1992 John began writing crime fiction, basing his stories on his experiences on the streets of what some have called one of the most dangerous cities in the country. His books include The Devil Of Harbor City, Souls On Fire, Past Sins, Here There Be Monsters and (with Patrick Thomas) Bullets And Brimstone and the upcoming From The Shadows. He is the editor of Bad Cop, No Donut, which features tales of police behaving badly.

ALAN SMALE ~ writes fantasy and horror, alternate and twisted history, urban fantasy and slipstream, with over two-dozen stories published in speculative fiction magazines and original anthologies. Born and raised in England, he lives in Maryland and works as an astrophysicist and data archive manager at NASA's G.o.ddard s.p.a.ce Flight Center. In what is humorously referred to as his 'spare time', he sings ba.s.s and serves as Business Manager for high-energy vocal band The Chromatics, and performs occasionally in Community Theater.

DAVID M. FITZPATRICK ~ has 50 short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. He has edited or co-edited several anthologies, with many new t.i.tles coming this year. By day, he works as a newspaper writer; by night, he occasionally teaches creative writing. He lives in Brewer, Maine, across the river from Bangor, and he hopes Stephen King's Muse accidentally lands on his house by mistake. No luck yet.

DON WEBB ~ Don's latest book Webb's Weird Wild West is a collection of weird surreal westerns. Webb has 14 books out now, with two more due from Wildside Press. His nonfiction deals with esoteric topics ranging from Aleister Crowley to the Greek Magical Papyri, His fiction has worn awards ranging form the Fiction Collective Award to the Death Equinox Idiot Savant Award. He teaches High School English at a rural Texas reform school by day and Creative Writing for UCLA Extension by night. He has a lovely wife Guiniviere and two cats Sascha and Big Pig.

STEVE VERNON has been writing dark fiction for an awful lot of years. You'll find his work in the pages of Cemetery Dance, Tor's Year's Best Horror, The Horror Show, Flesh & Blood, Hot Blood, Horror Garage and many other tastefully t.i.tled markets and magazines. Steve's ghost story collections Wicked Woods, Halifax Haunts, and Haunted Harbours (Nimbus) are available in many Maritime bookstores. Steve has been doing a lot of work with e-publisher Crossroad Press. Look for his out-of-print weird west novella Long Horn, Big s.h.a.ggy, his dark superhero collection Nothing To Lose as well as a follow-up volume, and a brand new never-before-published novel of historical horror Devil Tree due out in e-book format from Crossroad Press in the year 2011. Finally, Steve's first YA novel, Sinking Deeper a a touching tale of sea monsters and caber tossing a will be released in the spring of 2011 from Nimbus Publis.h.i.+ng. For more info go to Steve Vernon's website.

SCOTT HARPER ~ works in the waste management system, otherwise known as law enforcement. When he's not at work or in the gym, he dreams of writing the perfect vampire story a s.e.xy, dark and violent. His stories have been published in a number of venues, including s.p.a.ce and Time Magazine; his story Let Loose is scheduled for publication later this year in an anthology called Groanology. He lives in Huntington Beach, California with his wife, son and dog.

NANCY KILPATRICK ~ Nancy's generational "The Power of the Blood" vampire series includes the novels Child Of The Night, Near Death, Reborn, Bloodlover and Transformation. As One Dead was a collaboration with Don Ba.s.singthwaite for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade series, while Dracul: A Love Story was a novelization of a stage play of the same name. Her other novels include Jason X: Planet Of The Beast and Jason X: To The Third Power. She compiled the non-fiction study The Goth Bible: A Compendium For The Darkly Inclined for St. Martin's Press, and co-edited the anthologies Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories From The Edge (with Nancy Holder) and Graven Images And In The Shadow Of The Gargoyle (both with Thomas Roche). Her short fiction is collected in s.e.x And The Single Vampire, Endorphins, The Vampire Stories Of Nancy Kilpatrick and Cold Comfort. Under the pseudonym "Amarantha Knight" she has written a number of erotic novels in The Darker Pa.s.sions series, including Dracula, Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, The Fall Of The House Of Usher, The Portrait Of Dorian Gray, The Pit And The Pendulum, Carmilla and Curse Of The Mummy, as well as editing the anthologies Love Bites, Flesh Fantastic, s.e.x Macabre, Seductive Spectres and Demon s.e.x. Originally published by Masquerade Books, they are currently being reprinted by Circlet Press.

Preview of: JAMES ROY DALEY'S - TERROR TOWN ~~~~ PROLOGUE: CLOVEN ROCK.

The people that lived in Cloven Rock considered the town's final Monday a beautiful one, like most of the days in the recent weeks. The sun was s.h.i.+ning; the air was clean and warm. Flowers bloomed and birds sat among the branches singing songs only birds could understand. Dogs chased master's Frisbees and people said h.e.l.lo to strangers, not to suggest that thousands of tourists roamed the beachfront or the area that pa.s.sed as the downtown core. That wasn't the case; there were only a few. If you asked one of the locals why things were this way, the answer would be simple: Cloven Rock was an inclusive town, an uncomplicated town, a town that didn't encourage a vacationer crowd even though sightseers would have flocked to it religiously. Many residents thought the town was special and they were right. It was special. It wasn't a small place trying to be a big place. It was a town without civic uncertainty.

The Yacht Club Swimming Pool, a Cloven Rock favorite, had a full house the day before the town was lost. They also had an open door policy; if you were respectful, courteous, and didn't pee in the pool, you were welcome anytime. Also on that day, friends sailed the calm waters of Cloven Lake and children built sandcastles on Holbrook Beach. Kids played in Easton Park while the people on the large wooden deck at the Waterfront Cafe enjoyed the spectacular view. The post office closed early. An ice cream store called Tabby's Goodies was doing good business and a mile and a half up the road the men and woman working at the Cloven Rock Docks fought for, and won, a fifty-cent raise. Spirits were high at the Docks, and the personnel were getting along just fine. It wasn't surprising. Nearly half the workforce was related and the other half was considered family.

The Cloven Rock Police Department was not at full strength when things turned ugly. One officer was on vacation, one had gone home due to an illness in the family, and two had the day off. Of the nine remaining officials, only Tony Costantino, Joel Kirkwood, and Mary O'Neill, were on duty when the reports came in. The other four were either at home or on call. Normally this wouldn't be deemed a problem. Most locals figured a thirteen-person police force was nothing short of overkill anyhow. The Rock hadn't had a st.i.tch of recorded violence in six years.

The community as a whole didn't know horror, as most tight-knit communities can understand. It knew long days, family activities, and simple living. It knew Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It knew family.

But sadly, like all communities, Cloven Rock had its share of tragedy.

2007 was a bad year.

It was the year a local artist named George Gramme had his hands caught in his motorcycle chain while he was working on it. He suffered two broken wrists and lost four of his fingers. He also lost his artistic spirit and the means to keep that spirit alive. In the weeks following, he put his motorcycle up for sale and fell into a state of depression that changed him into a different man.

Two weeks later the town's senior librarian, Angela Lore, died from cancer on the same day that 'odd-job' Martin West fell off a ladder and broke both of his legs while s.h.i.+ngling his neighbor's roof.

2007 was also the year a car accident claimed the lives of three teenagers.

As the story goes, a half dozen youngsters were drinking on the unnamed road surrounding Holbrook's pond. After several hours of alcohol consumption, the six youths plunked their b.u.t.ts inside two vehicles. In one car, Andrew Cowles and Dean Lee, a pair of borderline delinquents, drove home without incident and arrived safely. The second car, loaded with four of the sweetest kids you'd ever meet, weren't so lucky. Two brothers, Guy and Henri Lemont, along with May Lewis and Lizzy Backstrom, the youngest of the crew, decided it would be a good idea to take a quick jaunt to Hoppers Gas on the 9 line. But on the way to Hoppers something stepped onto the road causing Guy to swerve left and lose control of the vehicle.

As luck would have it, Stanley Rosenstein, a foreman at the Docks and an all-around good guy, pulled his truck from his driveway the same moment Guy changed lanes.

Guy didn't see the truck in time. The car clipped Stanley's front b.u.mper, veered off the road, rolled three times, and slammed into a large maple tree, roof first. The two brothers, Guy and Henri, were killed instantly. May Lewis spent nine days in critical condition before she pa.s.sed away while her parents and grandparents watched. Lizzy Backstrom escaped with a broken back, three broken ribs, a punctured lung, two broken legs, and wide a.s.sortment of cuts, sc.r.a.pes and bruises. Most figured she was lucky to be alive. A few figured she was unlucky to be alive. Once she was able to speak she said a bear stepped in front of the car and Guy swerved to miss it. There weren't many bears in Cloven Rock so the statement generated a cl.u.s.ter of questions she wasn't prepared to answer. She pushed the inquisition aside, saying, "It might not have been a bear but wasn't a deer either. I don't know what it was."

Two months later, Lizzy broke down in tears, telling her friend Julie Stapleton that a monster the size of a tank stepped in front of Guy's car and she got a real good look at it. She said the beast seemed like something from another planet and if Guy were alive he'd be the first to confirm.

Julie, sworn to secrecy, became worried about Lizzy's mental wellbeing. She thought her friend had brain damage. Of course, Julie's knowledge on matters concerning the brain could have been written on the on tip of her thumb, but that hardly mattered. She also didn't know that Stanley Rosensteinaathe man driving the pickup that fateful nightaahad a similar story. If she had known this little noodle of information she may have kept her big mouth shut. Or talked to Lizzy. Either way, that's not what happened. Instead, Julie betrayed her oath, feeling it was necessary to tell Lizzy's parents what their daughter was thinking. This forced a confrontation between Mr. and Mrs. Backstrom and Lizzy, who denied everything and never spoke to Julie again. Not ever. And a year later Stanley Rosenstein found himself separated from his wife, in rehab, and in need of psychiatric evaluation.

He thought there were monsters in Cloven Rock.

a*a There were other tragedies.

Four summers before the heartbreaking car accident Simon Wakefield, the town's only dentist, drowned in his backyard swimming pool while his wife Leanne talked to her sister not forty feet away. The year before that, faulty wiring caused a fire that burned Stephen Pebbles' house to the ground. To make matters worse, his insurance expired the week before. Ironically, two weeks later the town was. .h.i.t with a rainstorm that caused over two million dollars in damages. Stephen was quoted as saying that the rain should have come two weeks sooner; it would have saved his life's investments.

The tales go on: tales of love gone astray, broken homes, poor health, and financial ruin. But these stories shouldn't be focused on, even if they're commonly considered the most interesting. Tales of sorrow don't express the true face of Cloven Rock's two hundred and nine years of existence. They pepper it in a negative light that was seldom felt or witnessed.

Cloven Rock was a peaceful community, a pleasant community. It was a place where folks could retire from work and enjoy a simple life. The town was good to grow up in, good to live life in, and good to grow old in. The problems were minimal and living was easy. People were friendly and the air tasted sweet with the spice of nature.

On the eve of its extinction, n.o.body knew what was coming. The locals never expected terror to reveal its vile and horrid face. Not in Cloven Rock. Not in a town of 1,690. The concept seemed out of the question.

But they didn't know the heart of Nicolas Nehalem.

And only Stanley Rosenstein and Lizzy Backstrom had seen the monsters that dwelled in the dark shadows beneath the streets.

Something from another planet, Lizzy had said. If Guy were alive he'd be the first to confirm.

Stanley Rosenstein would have agreed.

It was the first Monday of June when Cloven Rock began showing the world a different face. And for many of the people that lived in the undersized and joyful town, it would be the last Monday they would ever know.

This is what happened: a*a *

~~~~ CHAPTER ONE: NICOLAS NEHALEM.

Nicolas Nehalem woke up from a happy dream and s.h.i.+fted his near-dead weight into a new position. His eyes opened and closed, opened and closed. He licked the dryness from his lips and ran his tongue across his teeth while forcing himself awake. The dream faded; he was some form of insect, if he remembered correctly, and upon awaking he noticed that his left hand felt funny. He could feel pins and needles p.r.i.c.king his fingers and a lack of sensation in his thumb and wrist. He must have been sleeping wrong, cutting off the circulation.

No biggie; it would pa.s.s.

The room was dark. A cool breeze blew through the open window, causing the thin off-white drapes to flutter. The clock on the nightstand said it was 4:08 am and while Nicolas was looking at it time moved ahead by one minute.

The babies were crying again. And they were crying loudly.

It was the crying that woke him. The babies seemed to cry more and more these days. He wondered if the girls missed their mothers. It was only logical if they did.

Nicolas sat up. He clicked on a lamp, grabbed his librarian-issue spectacles from the nightstand, and slid them on his face. He put his feet on the cold hardwood floor one after another. CLUMP. CLUMP. For no real reason he looked over his shoulder, lifted his feet, and dropped them down again. CLUMP. CLUMP.

The other side of the bed was empty. It was always empty.

He put a hand into the vacant s.p.a.ce and squeezed the sheets with his fingers.

Taking care of the girls would be easier if he wasn't alone with the job. Being a father was hard, and being an only parent was harder still. Some days he wasn't sure if he could take the pressure of fatherhood. It was tougher than it seemed.

He pulled his hand away from the sheets and stumbled across the room. He entered the bathroom, washed his hands very thoroughly and poured himself a cup of water. The cup had a picture of a clown on it. The clown had a big red nose and was holding a balloon. The water inside the mug was warm but he didn't mind. His throat felt parched and the liquid quenched his thirst nicely. He poured himself a second helping, re-entered the bedroom, and sat the cup on the nightstand, next to the clock and the lamp.

A brown-checkered housecoat hung from a s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s hook on the bedroom door. A pair of furry blue slippers sat near the dresser. He put the housecoat on and tied the cotton belt in a cute little bow. He slid his feet into the slippers and stumbled down the hall, rubbing the sleep-cooties from his eyes.

With a yawn and a burp he glanced into a spare bedroom.

The room was loaded with boxes. Not empty boxes. Full boxes. Boxes filled with goodies that go BANG.

Beside this room was a second spare bedroom. He stopped at the door and looked inside. There was no bed in the room. No dressers either. Nicolas had converted the room into his own private laboratory.

He was making stuff, just in case.

He had boxes of diatomaceous earth, sodium carbonate, ballist.i.te, ethanol, ether, guncotton, sulfuric acid, oleum, azeotropic, nitric acid, and about ten other things that were hard to find at the local convenience store. He also had a large maple desk that housed a laboratory distillation setup. This setup included a heating tray, a still pot, a boiling thermometer, condenser, distillate/receiving flask, a vacuum/gas inlet, a still receiver, a heating bath, and a cooling bath.

Looking at his toys, Nicolas nodded and smiled.

They were fine; he was just making sure.

He entered the kitchen, flicked on the overhead light, and opened the refrigerator door. The inside of the fridge needed to be cleaned; it had adopted a funny smell. There were a few items that had really gone bad, including an old turkey sandwich that was sitting behind an empty carton of orange juice on the bottom shelf. The sandwich was nearly four weeks old and had turned green and black with mold. The spores inside the sandwich bag looked like moon craters.

Nicolas didn't notice. Or maybe he didn't care.

A bottle of baby formula sat on the top shelf, ready to go. In Nicolas' current state of semi-awareness his fatherly duties just became ten times easier. It was a small victory but a good one.

The babies kept crying. Or was it just one?

Yesaaone voice, not two. He wondered whose throat the wailing had sp.a.w.ned from.

Someone was being bad. Someone was being good.

He warmed the bottle in the microwave for two minutes and forty-five seconds while looking at his warped reflection in the kitchen window. His light brown hair was sticking straight up on one side, his eyes were puffy and his five o'clock shadow had become a three-day-old beard. He wasn't extremely overweight, but the way his fat bunched around his waistline was far from attractive. He was thirty-eight years old but looked fifty or more.

Probably not getting enough sleep, he a.s.sumed.

A bell rang. He opened the microwave door and retrieved the formula. The bottle was too hot, way too hot. Crazy hot. He tested it on his arm and felt the milky fluid burn like liquid fire.

Good enough.

He opened the door to the bas.e.m.e.nt, walked down a rickety staircase, and clicked on a florescent light, spooking a c.o.c.kroach from its resting place. The roach scurried across the wall in an arched line and Nicolas tried to catch it between his finger and his thumb. He missed. The c.o.c.kroach fell to the floor. Its tiny legs hustled towards a crack in the wall and in it went. The bug was gone.

Oh well, he thought. Better luck next time.

The bas.e.m.e.nt smelled bad, much worse than the inside of the fridge. It smelled like p.i.s.s, s.h.i.+t, sweat, blood, and rot.

The crying was louder now, much louder. If he had neighbors they'd complain for sure. This was a nugget of information that didn't sit well with Nicolas, not in the slightest. Neighbors shouldn't have to put up with such nonsense. It just wasn't right. If he lived next to a noisy house he'd be seething in anger and out of his mind with rage.

Nicolas walked through a room that housed hundreds of shoes, countless jeans, s.h.i.+rts, socks, underwear, hats, wallets, belts, watches, and coats. He opened a cellar door and turned on another light.

The crying stopped immediately.

He walked down a second staircase. It only had nine stairs and none of them were very big. The unfinished room at the base of the staircase had a very low ceiling. Walking inside the room meant that you had to crouch down and tuck your head into your shoulders like a turtle. The room was cold; it was always cold. In the wintertime it was freezing. The walls were made of rock and seemed permanently moist.

The smell of s.h.i.+t and p.i.s.s was strong now, strong enough to make a healthy man sick and a sick man pa.s.s out.

And there she was: Cathy Eldritch.

Cathy was thirty-one years old; her birthday fell on New Years Eve. She was right where Nicolas had left her... fourteen years agoaa Inside a cage.

2.

Cathy Eldritch was naked and covered in scars. Her ribcage stuck out from her skin and her muscles had wilted to noodles. Her large and unsightly nipples were dry and cracked, centering b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were non-existent. Her arms and legs were nothing more then sticks, elbows, and knees. Her few remaining teeth were black and rotting; her hair was long and crawling with bugs. Below the pits that housed her bright and sunken eyesaaeyes that seemed far too alive and knowing, like Sun G.o.ds buried in an apocalyptic badlandaaher nose had become as thin as a wafer and crusted with dehydrated wounds. Lips that were so tragically withered and cracked made her look like a mummy, or a living corpse, or like a horror story monster that needed to be buried in the earth and forgotten, a ghoul that lurked in the darkest corners of the most twisted and perverted minds. All of her toes and three of her fingers had been amputated, proof she had been a bad girl thirteen times.

Nicolas named Cathy Eldritch: Kathy the Kitten.

She was a trooper and he knew it; n.o.body lasted fourteen years. It seemed d.a.m.n near impossible.

Nicolas Nehalem approached the wire cage, which was nothing more than a modified, three-foot by three-foot square. He smiled a strange and outlandish smile, laced in twisted logic and perverted reason.

After opening a small door on the right side of the pen, he dropped the bottle of formula inside. The bottle rolled between two walls of wire and landed on the caged floor.

Cathy couldn't reach the bottle. Not yet. Not until Nicolas released a lever that would unlock a small door inside the coop.

"What do you say, Kathy?" He adjusted his gla.s.ses and slid a hand beneath his housecoat. He began stroking himself calmly.

Cathy's eyes were filled with starvation and madness.

At one time she wanted to kill this man, make him pay, make him bleed. She had despised him more than anything else in the world. Now she only wanted her nightmare to be over. She wanted to die. Not in theory, and not in some exaggerated way that people say it but don't really mean it. She wanted to die for real. She wanted this life to end and whatever was waiting for her on the other side to begin. And she was close, so close. She had been clinging to death's front door for as long as she could remember. All she had to do was stop drinking the formula and she would cross over. All she had to do was die. But she couldn't. She just couldn't. She was famishedaaand her hunger wouldn't allow her mind to say no to the bottle. She needed the bottle, the formula. And for this reason she didn't hate Nicolas. Not now. She hated herself for needing him.

She said, "Thank you daddy. I love you."

"Very well done," Nicolas replied, knowing she hated expressing her love. His voice sounded calm, yet agitated; it always sounded agitated. "You're a good baby today, yes you are; yes you are."

Nicolas wrinkled his nose playfully, raised his shoulders and opened his housecoat so Cathy could see his semi-erect p.e.n.i.s. He released the lever on top of the cage.

The bottle rolled another two inches.

Cathy rammed a hand through the small cage door and grabbed the formula; flies buzzed around her. She put the bottle to her mouth and drank greedily, burning her mouth and tongue. She hardly even noticed.

On the other side of the room were two more cages. One was empty. It had been empty for three weeks. The other cage had a young girl in it. The girl's name was Olive Thrift. She was fourteen years old, might have been Asian. At this stage, it was hard to tell.

Nicolas named her Pumpkin.

Olive said, "Daddy, may I have a bottle too? I've been very good lately. I didn't cry tonight or anything. Honest I didn't."

"I'm sorry dear," Nicolas said, stepping away from Kathy the Kitten. "I only brought one bottle with me. I guess I wasn't thinking."

"Oh." Olive's eyes slipped down to the stumps on her hands. She only had three fingers left; she didn't want to lose them. A multi-legged insect walked across her face and she swatted it away thoughtlessly. "Okay daddy. I understand. I love you."

"I love you too, Pumpkin. Have a nice night. I'll see you tomorrow, or maybe the next day."