A Coven of Vampires

Powell. Refer it to Powell.

That could well be the answer. Geoffrey Powell, who cribbed all my work at Oxford where we studied together, and stole my girl, too, and lives with her in that big house which should really be mine, making mine look like a kennel. Yes, I shall refer the matter to him. Big-headed, pompous bastard that he is, in his Harley Street consultancy, still he might be the only one to come up with the right answer. And if he does, certainly it will have been worth his exorbitant fee.

None of which would be necessary if Miles Clayton had gone to Powell in the first place; but he didn't, he came to me. He was overdue for a shave, bleary-eyed, and the smell on his breath was probably whisky. He didn't reek of drink, no, but he'd had a few. On the other hand his clothes were of an expensive cut, his car was new and rather superior to mine, and his wallet when he gave me his card was certainly well-stuffed.

A large, florid man, Miles Clayton smoked fat cigars and dealt in fancy liqueur chocolates which he imported. If this rather brief description of him makes him seem disagreeable or unpleasant, that is not the impression I wish to convey; on the contrary, he was a very 'nice' man. One cannot help one's looks. And of course, in his condition, which was other than usual . . .

Anyway, this is the story he told me: I was in Germany on business. The Teutoberger Wald. Been over there for five days, driving myself from venue to venue, and was up in the mountains around Holzminden to visit a small family firm specializing in dark chocolate brandies.

I had just got used to driving on the right-hand side of the road - or at least I thought I had - when it happened.

On the outskirts of a tiny village, where the road swept out of miles of pine forest and down into the harbour of a valley saddled between three hills, suddenly I found myself back on the left again! It must have been the absence of other vehicles, the repetitious twisting and twining of the road where it followed the contours through the trees, which was almost hypnotic, the sheer loveliness of the scenery all about. Anyway, I started to correct my error immediately; but in the next moment, coming around a bend into a built-up area-I mean, she was just there! Now, I believe that by then I was on the right side of the road again - my side, I mean -but having just the moment before corrected myself . . . maybe I was a bit confused, d'you see? Whichever, I didn't react fast enough: even as I slammed my brakes on I was into her. Bump! She went up in the air, banged about on the roof-rack, plopped down on the road behind me. By which time I'd just about slewed to a halt.

I'd been well inside the limit - well, just inside it; it hadn't been my fault at all; she'd just appeared there, right the hell in my way! And it had happened right outside the local police station, where as luck would have it an 'Offizier' had just come out of the door. He'd seen the whole thing.

After that things happened very quickly. I suppose I was very nearly in a state of shock. I got out of the car, fell down -1 was shaken, d'you see? - got up again and went to where the officer was kneeling beside her. On my way I'd seen the dent in my bonnet, the way the mascot was bent right back, a little blood on the roof-rack. But oh my God, there was a great deal more blood on the road, around the crumpled form of the girl!

Her dress at the front was torn, red and wet under her left breast, and blood was pumping from a great laceration in her neck. I thought about her being torn by the roof-rack and it made me grind my teeth. She was conscious, but only just.

The officer was a good 'un: cool as a cucumber, efficient as only the Germans can be. 'Go inside,' he told me. 'Hold the doors open for me. I have to move her.' And he very gently picked her up. I held the doors for him while he carried her inside the police station, into a room where he laid her down on a bed. Then he did what he could to staunch her wounds. Where her dress was torn I saw a wound which I couldn't believe I - my car - was responsible for. It was round and black in its middle, as if a bite had been taken out of her. I could see ribs in there. Then the officer put a thickly wadded dressing over it.

'Wait,' he told me, 'and I'll call an ambulance.' Of course he called it a 'Krankenwagen', but I'm quite fluent with German; I'll simply tell it all in English.

Anyway, he left the room and I heard him using a telephone. The girl caught at my hand. I sat there sweating, looking at her, and I saw how young she was, and how pretty. 'Oh, my God!' I said.

'My God!

She patted my hand. I mean, she patted ill 'It wasn't your fault,' she said. 'An accident.'

'But . . . but . . .' It was all I could say.

'An accident,' she repeated. Her blood had seeped right through the mattress where she lay and was dripping on the floor. The young policeman was still on the phone.

'For God's sake hurry up!' I called out to him.

The girl was in a great deal of pain. Her face had twisted up and the dressing had come away from her side again. I pressed it home, gritted my teeth when I saw her grit hers. 'God! - if there's anything I can do-' I said.

'The devil,' she answered me, looking me straight in the eye. 'Don't ask it of God. This isn't His work.' She was sinking into delirium.

'Listen,' I gasped, wringing my hands. 'I have money. A great deal. Only hang on, and-'

'No,' she said, her voice a whisper. 'I can't. This is punishment. I had forsaken . . .'

'Yes?'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. It's the end of me, and the end of Uzzi.'

Uzzi? Her child? A pet cat or dog? 'Listen,' I gabbled desperately. 'While you're recovering, I'll look after Uzzi. I'll-'

She shook her head, but oh so weakly. 'No,' she forced something of a smile, more a grimace, on to her face. I'll not recover. And don't . . . don't worry about . . . about Uzzi.'

'God!' I cried again. 'Don't die, please don't die. I'll look after Uzzi. I swear it!' I hardly knew what I was saying.

'Swear it?' Her eyes had shot wide open. She reached out a bloody, trembling hand towards my lips, as if to seal them . . . and fell back. Her eyes stayed open. When the policeman came back into the room he closed them and covered her body with a blanket. Covered her face, too . . .

That was the end of it - or should have been.

The ambulance came and took her away. I gave a written statement of what had happened. The policeman had seen the entire thing and corroborated my statement: it hadn't been my fault, no blame at all attached to me. There might be an inquest but I wouldn't be required to attend; the evidence of a police witness would suffice. I found it all too easy, too . . . simple! A girl was dead, and I was being told -quite literally - to drive on, not to concern myself.

'But her family . . .'

'No family. She lived alone. Here, in the village.'

'Relations, friends . . .'

He shook his head. 'None.'

'What? A pretty girl like that? I can't believe-'

'Wait,' he said, cutting me short. 'Look, she wasn't... an innocent. She wasn't ... a good person.'

'What? Do you mean she was a whore? A criminal, perhaps? But what does that matter? I mean-'

'Please!' he said. 'I know what you mean. Very well: yes, she was a criminal. And I agree, that doesn't matter at all. But you are not to blame. I doubt if you'll ever hear anything about this again.'

It wasn't until I reached my destination later that night that I remembered Uzzi. I'd sworn to take care of him/her, whatever Uzzi was. A pet, I supposed. Ah, well - the Germans are a pretty humane lot, in their way. Doubtless Uzzi would find a new home. In any case, it was out of my hands now. If I didn't feel so guilty, maybe I'd even be a little relieved that I was out of the affair so light.

But I did recall seeing something in that police station that struck me as strange. Well, perhaps not then, but more recently it has taken on a certain significance. It was while I was waiting for the ambulance men to take the girl's body away that I noticed a stack of old, browning occurrence books on a shelf behind the duty desk: those great, ledger like diary things in which the officer on duty at the desk keeps his daily log or record. The books were old, as I've said, and the dates on some of their spines went back as far as the mid-1930s, before the war.

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 1 woke up bathed in stinking sweat - I thought it was sweat - following a night of hideous dreams. I couldn't remember what those nightmares 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 / 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. Pillowcases, 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 something. 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 terrifying. 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, anaesthetise 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 1:30,1 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 per cent 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 something 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.'

'Mind and body are linked, Miles,' I continued. 'It's not just a one-way deal - each controls the other. The problem is your guilt. You're doing this to yourself!'

His interest at once turned to anger. Which was what I'd more than half expected. 'Am I really paying you for this?' he said. 'You mean you think I'm eating my own side away? That everything that's happening to me is generated up here?' He tapped his head. 'And does that explain why my bed's a swamp every time I sleep in it, after Uzzi's visited me? I mean, are you really telling me that I'm-'

'Insane? But that's what you came to find out, isn't it?'

He closed his grimacing mouth, slumped down in his chair. 'And am I?'

'No,' I shook my head. 'You just feel guilty, that's all, and you feel you have a great debt to pay.'

His eyes opened wide and I knew he was hooked. And I believed I knew how to cure him. 'A debt?' he said. 'To the girl, d'you mean?'

I nodded. To her, and to Uzzi.'

He shrank down again. 'You're forgetting something,' he said. 'I've seen Uzzi!'

'But only in the night, in the dark, when you're half asleep and your conscience is most vulnerable. Only wake up, turn on the light, and - no Uzzi. It's a figment of darkness, of the night, of your mind.

'Guilt . . .' he said. But there was hope in his eyes.

'Oh, yes!' I drove my point home. 'Guilty, because you can't be sure even now that you were driving on the correct side of the road. Guilty - because you'd let your attention wander. Guilty, of course, for you drove your car into that poor girl and broke her body. Guilty, because there was nothing you could do to save her - and more especially guilty, in your own mind, because you got off scot-free. But worst of all: guilty because you couldn't even honour her last request, that you look after Uzzi! And so your mind's paying your debt for you, and in so doing is slowly destroying your body - and must soon destroy itself, too. Except we won't allow that.

Psychosomatic, as I said.'

He put his face in his hands and sobbed, real tears that dripped from between his fingers. 'God, yes!' his muffled, racked voice came to me. 'God, I am guilty!'

'But you're not,' I told him, 'and there is a cure.'

He looked up and his face was pink jelly. 'A ... a cure?'

'Of course. To begin with, you weren't to blame for the accident. Now, I know you've said you weren't to blame, but you have to really believe it. After all, that young German policeman saw the whole thing, didn't he? So that's all it was, an accident. There are thousands just like it, all over the world, every day. As for Uzzi: you were probably right. A pet kitten, or maybe a dog.

But Germany's a civilized country. Uzzi will be taken care of.'

He stood up, stumbled to my desk, almost fell across it to grasp my hand. 'Lord, if only I could be sure of that!'

'Listen,' I said. 'You can be sure. It was that promise you made, that's all, when you swore you'd look after him. That's what made the connection in your mind. A wrong connection. And now all we have to do is break it.'

'And you can do that?' He was crushing my hand. I gently freed myself, said:

'Of course. For I have no belief in such things. Now, Miles, I want you to try very hard and remember everything we've talked about. You'll very soon see how it all makes sense. And I want you to believe that you're going to be OK. As for Uzzi: you can forget all about that. You see, I'll take care of Uzzi. I swear I will!'

That was a week ago. I've tried to contact Clayton but he's in Switzerland. I understand they make fabulous chocolates there. My God, chocolates!

My bedroom's a mess and there's this horrible sore in the middle of my chest and my wife has run away, where I don't know.

I woke up this morning at 4:00, and Uzzi was lying on me like some obscene nightmare lover, with those . . . appendages sliming on my face.

That's why I've made up a story - similar to Clayton's, except mine is a false one, about a gypsy curse - which I plan to tell to that fat greasy bastard Powell. Yes, I'll refer my case to him, and then I'll take a nice long trip abroad somewhere. No guilt will attach to me, for I don't believe in such. And I know that Powell doesn't either. After all, he has my office, the girl I should have, the house I should rightly occupy. So why shouldn't he have this, too?

It couldn't happen to a nicer fellow.

Uzzi . . . Uzzi . . . Uzzi. . .