The Midnight Hour (11 page)

She stared hard into the moonlit shadows but could see no movement save that given to leaves and branches by the ever-quickening wind. She decided to go back the way she had come, in the hope of finding Alan waiting in the car. He would not have driven off and left her. He just wouldn’t have!

With hurried steps she began to walk.

Edward was woken from his after meal snooze by the noisy return of the vampire.

“Did you forget something?” yawned the elder ghoul. “You’ve been gone less than half an hour.”

The vampire grinned as he completed the transformation from bat shape to human shape.

“I’ve seen a girl in the woods. A virgin!”

Edward jumped to his feet, suddenly and sharply awake.

“What? A…”

He stopped, doubt crawling into his mind. It was, quite simply, too good to be true.

“A virgin in the woods?” His tone was mocking. “Now come on. You’re as bad as the living with their fairies.”

The vampire’s grin faded.

“It’s true,” he protested. “There’s a young virgin tramping along through these bloody woods right now!”

“A girl maybe, but…”

“I’m telling you,” growled the vampire, poking a bony finger at the doubting ghoul. “I can smell a virgin from five hundred yards at least, and I flew right round this one’s head.” He closed his eyes as if in ecstasy. “She smelled beautiful.”

Edward contemplated the vampire for several long seconds before breaking into a grin.

“Let’s go get her then!”

Janet was beginning to doubt that she was retracing her steps. There was no sign of anyone having passed this way for weeks, maybe months. Even, she shuddered, years.

The wind had grown violent within the last five minutes, and it now thrust her thick black hair in front of her eyes, making it difficult to see where she was going. All around her was noise, as the trees seemed to howl and shriek at the unrelenting charge of the wind.

She screamed as she stumbled over a surface root and crashed headlong into the dry carpet of dead vegetation. She cried at the pain that shot through her knee, cut by an age-old discarded piece of broken glass. She screamed a second time as she lifted her head and saw the group of white faced, blood stained, grey shrouded men shuffling steadily towards her, grins fixed on their withered faces.

Needless to say, her second scream was much louder than her first.

Edward cried out in frustration as he saw the girl scramble to her feet and hurry away from them with a limping run.

“We’ll never catch her if she runs!”

The vampire hissed angrily.

“Can’t you move any faster?”

“If ghouls were meant to run the Devil would have given us spiked shoes,” noted Stuart Suckm.

Edward glared at him before turning to the vampire.

“She’s gone out of sight. You’ll have to stop her. You can catch her, we can’t.”

The vampire grinned and nodded.

“I’ll wait for you.”

His body rolled upwards like a snatched at window blind, and then there was a bat which darted between the shuffling ghouls before setting off after the girl.

“Bloody show off,” grumbled Edward.

Janet glanced backwards and kept running.

She couldn’t see them now. She must have lost them.

She grimaced at the pain in her knee but she had to keep going. Couldn’t give them a chance to catch up. But what in God’s name were they? They looked like… she shuddered… dead bodies!

She began to mumble a prayer as she ran, fear tightening in her stomach, blurring her vision with tears.

Surely this was a dream, a nightmare? Things like this just didn’t happen in real life did they?

She screamed as a black shape flashed before her face and then laughed hysterically in reaction. Only a bat, she told herself. A bat can’t hurt you.

The vampire transformed in mid flight and crashed into Janet’s back in his human form. She was unconscious as she hit the ground.

Edward and his followers continued to shuffle steadily forward, their hunger growing painful. The imagined taste of virgin flesh already in their mouths. It wouldn’t be long now.

The vampire looked at Janet, agitated longing clawing at his stomach, his loins, his whole being.

She lay silent and motionless on her back, where he had rolled her. Her skirt had been pulled almost to her waist with the movement and her legs had fallen invitingly open. Nervously, he ran a hand between them and bent his head to her neck, allowing his sharp teeth to gently touch her skin with its pulsing artery beneath.

No!

He pulled away. He couldn’t. He was to share her with the ghouls, and for that she was to remain a virgin. An undrained virgin.

Still, he argued with himself, it was a long time since he’d had a virgin. A hell of a long time!

Grinning, he turned to look back to where, in a few minute’s time, the ghouls would appear. The vampire shrugged his shoulders and spoke to the unconscious girl.

“You can’t fight it you know. Not when it’s in your nature.”

Edward stared angrily at the girl. She was white, deflated, drained of blood. Legs wide open. Skirt thrown up around her shoulders. He grabbed at her torn panties where they had been hastily thrown and stared at them. His eyes jerked skywards as a bat darted among the upper branches of the wood. It seemed to be laughing at him.

“Bloody vampires,” he grumbled, turning away from the dead girl. “Think they own the world. That was probably the first and last time a virgin will come through these woods alone and at night, and he has to ruin it for us!”

He stuck two fingers up at the circling bat and shouted, “Bastard!”

The bat seemed to laugh all the more.

Stuart Suckm shuffled forwards and shyly touched the dead girl’s legs. “I wonder what it’s like?” he muttered to himself.

Edward stared at him, suddenly alert.

Stuart seemed unaware of the interest and continued to mutter, running his hands along the girl’s pale thighs.

“I never had a woman when I was alive,” he said sadly.

The assembled ghouls turned on him with wide hungry smiles.

Edward licked his fingers appreciatively.

“There’s nothing quite like virgin flesh,” he said, relaxing back against a suitably angled gravestone, his appetite almost fully sated. “Nothing fills you up quite so well.”

The other ghouls, many still eating, mumbled their agreement.

Edward smiled. The world certainly looked a better place on a full stomach. He even found himself considering forgiveness for the selfish vampire who had so nearly robbed them all of a taste of virginity.

“Ah yes,” he said, pleased with Undeath generally. “There’s nothing quite like…”

A chewing ghoul broke wind loudly and the assembly giggled like schoolboys. Edward laughed as the guilty ghoul apologised.

“Never mind,” he said. “Stuart Suckm always did have a knack for interrupting!”

He tore another finger from the corpse and chewed contentedly.

DEATH BY POPCORN

Four girls in two weeks. Tortured. Mutilated. Murdered!

Crystal Roberts tore her eyes away from the headline and stuffed the paper into the black trash bag she dragged behind her. The thought of a killer prowling around her neighbourhood was frightening, so she tried her best
not
to think about it.

She reached under the flipped-up cinema seat on her left but couldn’t reach the discarded coca-cola can. She sighed, lay down flat on her stomach and edged under the seat. She reached again, grabbed the can, and banged her head on the underside of the seat as she straightened up.

“Shit!”

“Language Crystal. It’s just as well there are no customers about.”

She looked over her shoulder at the man who stood at the end of the aisle. Rupert Jenkins, the manager of this small, local cinema. He was tall, fat and permanently sweaty, with a lustful leer in his eyes and, according to some of the girls, fast and groping hands. Not that he’d tried anything with her yet, but she was suddenly very aware of how short the skirt of her uniform was, and the fact that, lying on the ground as she had been, he had probably got quite a view.

In two weeks she would be 18. She worried that Mr Jenkins would suddenly become more than just a drooling onlooker. He was surprisingly puritan in some ways, disgustingly perverse in others.

She shifted her position, drew her legs in under her, pulled the skirt down as far as it would go, which was not far, and checked the zipper that ran the length of the top. She had heard that Mr Jenkins had designed the uniform himself.

“Sorry Mr Jenkins.”

“Well, we’ll forget it this time Crystal.” His eyes flickered to her breasts, the cleavage prominent above the low V of the uniform top. “Now, the reason I came here was to tell you the others have all left. I’m just about to lock up. Will you be long?”

Everyone left? Including Richard from the concessions stand? She had hoped that tonight he would wait for her, tonight he would ask her out. She had hoped that for the past two months or so, ever since he started work there. Richard. Tall, slim, muscular, and four years older than her. Still, she hoped.

“No Mr Jenkins. Just one more aisle after this, then I’m done cleaning.”

“Good, well…” He took one more look at her breasts, her thighs, her young firm body. “I’ll be in the main foyer when you’re done.”

She watched as he walked away, waiting until he was out of the doorway before turning and crawling along the aisle once more, gathering the trash left behind by the evening’s customers, grumbling to herself as she went.

“17 years old. Still living at home with my parents. No boyfriend. Got a crush on a guy four years older than me who hardly knows I exist. Working for an old letch in a dead-end job… Why do I bother?”

She knew why, of course. She needed money to get away from this small town, to go to college in New York, or Los Angeles, or any big place. Anywhere but small town Ravensville, CA. There weren’t many places in town that an unskilled 17 year old could get money. Not legitimately anyway.

She stuffed the last of the trash into the black sack and pushed herself to her feet. She reached up to the small band holding her ponytail in place and dragged it out. Black hair, long and straight, fell over her shoulders as she shook it out. It felt good to let it loose. She only wore it in a ponytail for work.

There was a dull
thump
from over by the door, outside in the foyer. It startled her. Her hand flew to her chest as if to calm the beating of her heart.

“I’m coming Mr Jenkins,” she called, turning to look towards the exit at the back of the cinema. There was no sign of the manager, but he was obviously getting impatient. Banging things about.

I’d better hurry up before he locks me in!

She tied a knot in the sack and made to carry it. Too heavy. Instead she dragged it behind her as she trudged up the centre aisle.

Another
thump
. This time with a wet, squashy aftersound.

“Ok, ok. I’m coming.”

What was he doing out there? Beating up on abandoned half full drink cartons? Whatever he was doing it sounded like he was getting pissed.

She quickened her pace, still dragging the sack.

The foyer was dark when she pushed her way into it. The only light came from two drinks machines against the far wall and the half open door of the office behind the main desk.

She sighed. She knew he was an impatient man but he had never switched the lights off on her before.

“Mr Jenkins? I’ve finished now.” There was no answer. “Mr Jenkins?”

She left the black sack of trash by the desk and made her way cautiously through the dark towards the office.

Is he deaf? Why doesn’t he answer me?

“Mr Jenkins?”

Her foot slipped from under her, sliding in something wet on the floor. She fell heavily, sharp pain shooting up her spine. She gritted her teeth, didn’t want to cry out. Whatever game Jenkins was playing she didn’t want to give him anything to laugh about.

As she waited for the sudden pain to ease she slid her heel back and forth. Something very wet on the floor. Had he spilt something while tidying up? A drink? Maybe that was the noise she heard.

She could see little in the partial light but could vaguely make out a darkness around her foot. She lifted her leg and could see strands of whatever it was stretching with her for a moment before snapping back. Something thick and sticky.

The black trailed away, snaking towards the office door. As if something was dragged, something wet and oozing. Her stomach turned, twisted. It almost had the look of blood about it, thick and black/red where it passed close to the drinks machines and their light. But it couldn’t be blood. How could there be blood on the foyer floor? Jenkins had spilt something, or broken something, dumped it in a sack and then dragged the sack to the office, not realising he was leaving a trail.

That made more sense to her, but did little to calm her tumbling stomach or racing heartbeat.

She pulled herself to her feet with the help of the desk and, stepping carefully over the dark mess on the floor, approached the office door. Her right foot stuck with each step and made a clicking sound as she pulled it free.

“Mr Jenkins? Are you in there?” She reached the half open door and pushed it gently. It swung inwards for a few inches and then abruptly stopped, as if it hit something. “Don’t kid around Mr Jenkins. I’m ready to go home now.”

She leaned into the room, peering around the door to see what the obstruction was.

And screamed.

Mr Jenkins lay on the floor, the door against his shoulder, his face obscured by a mask of blood and tissue that had oozed from his skull, a skull that was crushed, little more than a hole filled with broken bone and matted hair.

Crystal turned away from the office, doubled over, gagging and spluttering. She fought down the urge to vomit but could do nothing about the tears that stung her eyes or the shaking that convulsed her body.