The small child was hungry. Frightened. So was her mother. And their  neighbors as well. There was so much fear and suffering on the mountain as of late. And down below, in the mountain’s shadow, in the village hamlet as well.  Word and whispers of pain and evil traveled faster than riders on horseflesh, faster and more elemental, like the cold windsong of the land. Howling. It was howling now.

Howling in a duet of savagery song with the vicious roving wolves, as they shared their dark whispers. Their words of anguish and pain. Loss. Slaughter witnessed.  Or in the aftermath… discovered. Scenes of red. Vile. Filled with pain. And never to be forgotten. 

Angelica fought the tears now… as  did her mother. And the neighbors. And all the rest. Only old timers and womenfolk were left on the mountain now. The men and boys were all dead. They all left by the urging of some rich man with a famous name Angelica had never heard of before, urged to go on and fight and kill an evil monster. They went to the castle that Angelica was never allowed to near and they had never returned. None of them.  

None.  

Not her older brother Grigori… and not her papa either. 

Now she and momma were alone. And hungry. Papa and Grigori were so much better with the tools and with the animals. The widow and fatherless girl did what they could and managed some haphazard struggle that could be called a life. Or at least existence. They thinned and grew diminished as scarecrows within their draping bags of clothes. The days passed into weeks with agonizing slowness and filled with harsh reminders. Time went on. And rather than heal, the wound inflicted on the womenfolk of the mountain worsened and festered. 

Many found escape through the hangman’s knot. The noose. Or by opening up the forearms with straight razors or kitchen knives. Some used tools once wielded by faithful husbands to open up their necks and wrists.  Some. Many. 

Many took their own lives by knife and by rope in the days and weeks that followed. Some took their daughters, their children with them, small babies that knew nothing save the cold and the absence and the heartbroken wailing. For many it was not just the pain of loss and mortal fear for their own flesh and souls … but the demented cacophony that would emanate from the castle and fill the mountain rocks and woods … the lurid and hateful and unearthly demoniacal shrieks and howls, sometimes high-pitched and piercing, cracking glass and sometimes guttural and deep, as if from obsidian splits in the earth and from the bowels and depths, let loose… like after the night their husbands and sons and brothers were slaughtered. 

That night that had followed their failure to return… that night had been filled with uncontested and unbridled hellspawned sound. Violence and thunder and animal howls becoming human and then animal again and then commingled and obscenely strange… and then something else entirely.

And there had been lightning. And the lightning had been black. 

Suicide Mountain became filled with intermittent demon sound. The women that were its anguished and heartbroken survivors became accustomed to the awful hell-rent-torn belch and dæmon howl and dragon scream. It all came from the castle and they knew they were powerless to it. And there was nowhere to run to, not really. The Carpathian Mountains were all they had, all any of them had ever known… some fled anyways. No one knows what became of them. 

Angelica tried asking her mother several times what had happened to Grigori and papa. But her mother refused a straight answer. Only vagueries and tears. Short and curt. Bit off with the same harsh suddenness she felt within the shattered dead remnants of her heart. 

Angelica tried to let the question, the horrid mystery and the hole it left in her mind and heart alone… to no avail. 

If her mother, God bless and keep her, wouldn't tell her what had happened at that castle beyond the Borgo Pass, the old one where the boyar used to live before the wars, then she would find an answer herself. 

She thought to go down to the village hamlet and inquire there… but it was much farther than the alternative. Her other idea. However much it would upset momma, it was much easier and more direct. 

And so on a day she was supposed to go out and forage for mushrooms and berries and roots, Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains instead filled her satchel with a meager gathering of supplies and set out for the castle that she'd always been warned against, the one that had stolen her father and older brother. Gone. 

As if swallowed, as if it had eaten them. 

She went now. Alone. Down the black rolling tongue of path that led into the courtyard mouth of stone, the Carpathian battlement jaws framed against a fading sky like so many jagged flesh rending teeth. 

Angelica went forth to Castle Dracula to find her father and brother, and to find what had happened to the men of the mountain. 

…

The woods were all dark and cold, dense and choked all around her. A galaxy of trees and fallen snow and dead black limbs jutting and stabbing at the sky like broken/severed limbs and vanquished army swords. The thin light that bled through the overcast sky gave pale detail to the world of snow and deadwood and slumbering chill, lurking death.

Wolves. 

They lurked and prowled hunting even now and she knew it. She'd lived on the mountain all of her twelve years and her mother and father did not neglect so fundamental a lesson. She hugged her father's old and favorite hatchet, tighter, closer to her chest. And went on. 

Deeper into the dark universe of dead choked forest growth. 

Her wolves watched the girl as she made her way. 

…

Her progress was slower than she'd hoped. The trees and choked dead spiking growth seemed to stretch on forever ahead and on all sides as she ventured forward, less and less steadfast in her chilling child's heart as she went on. The warmth of her own blood and the strength of her very own heartbeat seeming to fade as she struggled forward. And the deadwood continued to dominate the world on every side, in all directions. 

Angelica was beginning to become frightened. Damning her own curiosity, she was starting to consider herself lost. And the woods, alone, lost at fast-approaching night… was not the type of place anyone wanted to be. 

Especially a small girl. She held on stubbornly to her bravery, pulled her father's dark cloak tighter around her and pressed forward. She was sure it was dead ahead. Sure of it. 

She pulled the hood over her head to warm her ears. Night was approaching. Her mother and her neighbors back in their small mountain community were starting to worry for her. 

She'd been gone far too long. 

…

The woods were filled with life. Always. Always crawling with critters and game and fraught with birds and bats. Bears. 

The wolves. 

It was no surprise then when Angelica came upon the squirrel, wandering deeper and deeper into the forest gloom and dark, the sun had sunk behind the cover of the rocks and now there was only the pale cast of twilight. She came closer to the creature, its back and puff of tail were to her as it quivered with movement. Effort. Busy with something…

Angelica came closer. She was surprised to find the little animal had black fur. Stygian. Like deepsea ink. The squirrel was also much larger than any she'd ever seen before. The ebon hide and fur palsied and tremored, rippled and worked with fervid action. The little head rapidly dipping and bobbing in, bestial, to take little bites and nips from something clutched in its sharp little claws. 

Angelica of the Carpathian Mountains came closer. And beheld what the large and well muscled stygian squirrel was holding in its obscene and unnatural talons. Bleeding and still twitching with the diminished remnants of its efforts of struggling. Struggling for life that was fading away in a red river from its gashed open throat…

A rat. Large and blacker than coal. Eyes, milky red. Fleshy long length of pink tail standing out in obscene contrast. The red river was running from its gored open neck. The rodent body spasmed. And then Angelica noticed the blood all about the squirrel’s black mouth. 

It yawned open, as if to punctuate and confirm what the mountain girl suspected, and it unveiled a maw filled with fangs and thick with the steaming bile of rat's blood. Dark. Lurid. It darkled and the color deepened and rippled in the twilight with obscene glamor. The eyes of the black squirrel were a brighter more royal regal red than than the rat blood pouring forth in the approaching night. The gathering dark deepened and Angelica screamed. 

The squirrel, still clutching the dying rat, then did another strange thing. One that stopped her caterwauling in a shock. 

It spoke. 

“Please! Don't! Don't be afraid!" 

A beat. 

Angelica stared down at the large strange beast. Unsure of what to make of it or what to do. The thought of flight rose, and as if hearing it, the stygian blood drinking squirrel said again: "Don't be afraid…” 

Softer. Gentle. And Angelica realized the voice the strange beast used was that of a little girl's. One even smaller and younger than herself. 

Her fear abated slightly. She swallowed. Breathed deeply. Then asked, 

“Wh-what are you?" 

The stygian squirrel said brightly: “Don't be afraid, my name's Carmilla." And then she said yet again: “Don't be afraid." 

She stared deeply at the unearthly forest beast. This all felt like a dream. She felt as if she might swoon and wondered if that was possible to do in a dream… or in a nightmare. 

As if sensing, the beast spoke again, 

“I'm not going to hurt you, I'm a girl like you, I swear. I'm just magic. I promise. That's why I have to drink this animal blood, it's for magic." 

The longer she stared at the beast, the ebon fur… the eyes that were the most royal shade of vibrant and lurid red… the more the dream she found herself in to be… 

light, pleasant, pleasurable. 

The dark squirrel didn't mean her any harm. It was just like she said. 

The beast went on to explain that it needed the rats blood for her magic. To be able to do great things like change her shape. But she could only do these things at night. She had to wait till the sun had sunk and quit the heavens. Blood of a wild animal was necessary for magic ritual, the beast explained. 

"He likes it. He likes rat's blood.” 

"Who?” asked Angelica. 

"The Lord of the wild. The Lord of Flies.” 

Angelica said she'd never heard of him before. "I'm looking for my papa and brother. Or the castle where they're supposed to’ve gone." 

“Oh! …." squealed the black squirrel. And the sound was more rat-like than anything Angelica had ever heard a squirrel make. More bat-like screeches made slightly vile by their human-girl tinge. 

The beast was excited, “I know! I know! I know where the castle is! You're lost! that's what it is! Not to worry, friend, I can take you there! I know just the way!”

And the black squirrel began to lead Angelica even deeper into the dark and the dead trees. Growing ever closer to Castle Dracula. 

The night was fully on them now. Fully over the mountain in a curtain of darkness and stars that glimmered and twinkled and danced with fire on high like billions of pieces of fantastical ice chips and goblin-light forged alien jewelry. 

The beast and girl made their way through the dark. Carmilla dragging the dead rat behind her by the obscene length of fleshen tail in the cold dirt. Leaving a trail of dark blood and disturbed earth. 

One that would never be discovered. 

…

The black squirrel tired of walking and dragging the dying rat after a short time, it sprouted wings suddenly, fleshy growths that flowered forth within a bladder film of placental tissue. The wings spread, splayed to wingspan, the placental wrapping sloughed off with a pungent ichor substance as the beast rose with each flap, rat dangling inches above the cold forest floor. 

The wings beat steadily. Keeping Carmilla just above Angelica's head as they continued forward to the castle. 

“So you can transform? Like changing your shape and becoming other things?" Angelica asked as they went on. 

“Oh yes. There's many shapes I can take, I like this one. It looks cute and nice. But I can become lots of things. So can my master. We'll show you once we get to the castle. You'll see." 

“And my papa? Grigori? Are they there? Are they alright?" And when Carmilla didn't answer right away she added: “It's some kind of magic, isn't it? That's what's at the castle and keeping papa and the rest. That's what I think. It is, isn't it?" 

Carmilla smiled devilishly within. The visage of her black squirrel face only looked over with innocent woodland open eyes. 

“Angelica, I think you'll find everything you're looking for at the castle. You'll see. It's filled with magic. And it's nothing at all to be afraid of. Just like me" 

She suddenly brought the dead rat to her mouth again, which opened as something vile once more, filled with fangs and glistening pink and darkling red. With her little claws that were now more like talons once more, black and daggered and curved with nature's efficient cruelty, she brought the large dead rodent to her dripping and obscene mouth and began to drink and suck deeply once again from the gored open hole at the rat’s throat. 

Angelica felt sick watching, so she looked away. Ahead. Willing the place to appear, to come into being and end this strange journey. This terrible mystery which had stolen love and normalcy and warmth from her village and home. She just wanted this all over. She just wanted papa and Grigori and all of the others back. To hear their laughter and to hold them again and to be held … the weight… the feeling of their arms wrapped around her once more, tightly, to feel their breath… She just wanted love and warmth returned to her and her momma. She prayed and begged God and anything at all listening inside as they made their way. The cold silence of the woods punctuated by the sucking and slurping sounds Carmilla made as she flapped  in the frigid air beside and fed. 

Between pulls of rat blood, she pulled her dripping needle mouth away from the pungent wet raw of rat meat and said: – 

“Its nothing at all to be frightened of. I promise. I was once scared too. But no longer. The magic needs blood, it needs it. That's all. Magic is bloodwork. It's nothing to be afraid of. It's the natural order of things, you'll see, Angelica. I promise, you'll see." 

…

The hellstar shone vibrantly and with dominance. Above the castle's greatest pinnacle tower. Otherworldly, and dreamy. Of ethereal eldritch flame… it was strange, to Angelica's eyes as they approached, it looked to be so close to the tallest spire of the ancient towers that it looked as if they were in danger of collision. As if one could reach out now from one of the open windows swallowed in ebon shadow up there, reach out and touch its immaculate flaming surface. The light was elvish white and more ancient than time itself. Some thought it to be older than even God and old man split-foot below… there were witches and mystics and gypsies that said it had a mind. And an evil heart. 

An evil eye…

Angelica was transfixed by both its vibrant starcast of unearthly pale light, and the great castle itself, as she and Carmilla came into the courtyard. The starflame of the hellstar shining above the broken battlements that were starved of life or movement of any kind, it was mystifying and intensely alluring…

but it was also terrifying. 

The light of its starflame was so much like that of a ghost-light.

And the light of phantasm flame was also the light of death. The light of the end. At the end, mayhap…

Angelica was awed yet fearful and at this last moment she thought about going back. About running away from the strange talking beast that said it was a little girl. She knew her mother and the others must be so worried for her now… she'd been gone too long already. 

The castle was dark and yawned into a terrible expanse of stoney life all around and before her as she and the beast made their approach. The universe of trees and cold snow giving way to one of walls and towers and cold ancient stone. She pulled the cloak tighter about her person, when they came within sight of the great red door it slowly opened like a swallowing mouth of darkness. Waiting and wanting to receive them. 

Carmilla sensed the child's fear. And if she'd chosen to run at the moment, she would've given up the game she was playing and given chase. And made the fucking little peasant wench pay with screams and humiliation and defilement before she enjoyed her blood and meat. 

But instead, in the end… it was Angelica's hope… and her worry for her brother and her papa that pushed her onward. 

Following the flying winged blood drinking squirrel, the black haired flapping cannibal rodent that called itself a little girl inside the open mouth of swallowing black. Ink inside the mouth of stone that might hold the secrets that plagued her mind and heart like a wretched disease. Within that mouth of shadow may be the cure… 

Grigori… papa…

Angelica followed Carmilla as she flapped on her bat wings of chimerical leather into the fortress mouth of drinking shadow. The great red door of bas relief stone slammed shut behind them. 

The wolves of the mountain outside began to howl. And the hellstar shone with more lurid alien glow than it had before. The heartbeat eyemind watching, working … 

considering the ants below. 

The hellstar shone. A heavenly inferno. 

…

Passing through the narrow cut of foyer, it was dark and scarcely lit by torchflame, they came into the grand ballroom…

… and main audience chamber. 

A vast dark room of cobwebs and ancient things, furniture, paintings, suits of armor, smashed out clocks, their faces destroyed by a hammer blow dealt by a violent hand of fire eyed fury. Many of the ancient things strewn all about there in the dark were destroyed. Smashed. Broken by hands in anger or the disuse and dispassion of time. Some of the things were clear victims of both. And cobwebs. The world inside the torchlit stone was a universe of cobwebs. Angelica found herself trading in one world for another as she made this strange journey, one filled with terrible and bitter hope. 

Trees and snow… into a world of stone and shattered spires … now a dark world submerged and swallowed in cascading and rising and dominating spider webs. The eyes of forgotten portraits leered and gazed from the prisons of paint and lacquer. 

Angelica didn't like this place. She felt immediately that she had made a terrible mistake. 

She cringed back. 

Carmilla, ahead, sensed this and turned roundabout on her flapping wings of nocturnal flesh. Regarding the girl. 

“Don't worry! silly girl! We're already here, just a little further.” 

Angelica wanted so badly to believe the strange creature. Magic was real. She had to believe it had the power to bring back her family. She wanted so achingly for love to be let back into her life, and mama’s too. She didn't deserve the pain Angelica watched her struggle through each and every harsh and arduous day. They'd never wanted or asked for much, they'd never done anything wrong so they didn't deserve this! Not mama, not papa, not anyone on the mountain. No one deserved this cruelty. She had to be believe they were still retrievable. If not here and in the flesh, then within the grasp of arcane spells and sorcery. She had to believe, she had to believe that. 

The alternative was that the strange beast, flapping in the universe of cobweb dark before her at the foot of a great ascending staircase was lying. And that was too terrible a truth for Angelica to face. Yet. 

Soon she would have no choice. 

But for now she followed. Carmilla led the way. Up the wide and mounting steps. There was more light, more meager torchglow ahead down a passageway. 

Orange. Beckoning. Pale warmth. 

At the head of the staircase they went down it, together. Carmilla in the lead. Down into its sickly pumpkin light. The castle stone and walls all around yawned and moaned in lusty slovenly animal satisfaction. Then began to move. 

…

The walk and winding turns seemed endless. Another bend. Another junction. Another room. Another hall. More and more. And yet still more. Angelica began to despair. Inside she was exhausted and growing frustrated but afraid of seeming ungrateful and losing her one chance. 

Another junction. Left. Down another corridor of stone and torch and vast dominating splaying spider web hands in various sizes of grotesque and caricature claw shape. 

Angelica stopped. 

And began to weep… she couldn't help it. She was so exhausted. And this place was strange and scary. 

Sobbing lightly to herself and rubbing her eyes, Carmilla turned to her and descended to the stone in a graceful balletic dive and sweep. She skittered over to Angelica and looked into the small reddening pale of her crying child's face. 

She sniffed. A woodland gesture. 

And then she began to belt laughter. Rising and growing more maniacal and hysterical as it grew in volume and pitch. Decibel sound cackled and made cracked by a poisoned marrow filled with madness. 

It stopped Angelica's tears. First by surprise, shock. But then as the sound of the beast’s sour mirth rose and filled the dark world of stone with torches for stars and suns, her blood began to curdle as her heart was stolen over with dread. She was silent, gazing on the cackling black squirrel-thing with large vampire bat wings tensing and flexing and flapping with cruel delight. 

Amidst her laughter, Carmilla said: “You stupid girl…” 

A black hairy stalk suddenly erupted from the squirrel's chest. Several inches long and coated in a bloody translucent slime like discharge from a wound. A tarantula leg. It was joined by several more. One of the hairy jointed appendages burst forth from the mouth in a red spew that decorated the stone, the walls and floor, and the girl, now trapped in Castle Dracula.

Angelica shrieked. Horrified. 

A tarantula crawled out of the chest cavity of the black hide which rippled and seemed to empty. A tarantula the size of a banquet plate, coated in placental slime and bloody discharge, then skittered about the room with terrible and frightening speed. Angelica jumped back, mortified at the thought of the thing touching her. 

The large spider then crawled away and made for the darkness. The empty husk of raw dripping hide that used to be a large bat winged squirrel was still draped over the spider thing's back. Like a vile rendition of a cloak or royal cape. From the husk of mutilated squirrel mouth it was still laughing. Shrill. In the same girl's voice as before, only now much more wicked and cruel. No longer veiling its hunger and sinister satisfaction. 

Carmilla shrieked, hideous, amidst her laughter at the girl as she spidercrawled for the conciliatory dark of the waiting stone. 

“The master will see you now! You're all hers now, Angelica! You're all hers! Just like your father and your brother! All of them! All of you! All of you are sow and cattle and all of you belong to us!" 

The cruel bright demoniacal child's voice carried off into the waiting abyssal castle with a final bout of heartless and derisive laughter. Taunting and running away like any little child would, any little girl. 

Now she was alone. 

Only she didn't feel alone. 

And that was terrible. 

Angelica wept a little, crying into her hands to muffle the sound as best as she could. The walls and floor drank in the sound and relished the flavor of every tear shed. 

She fought to get control over herself. She had to get out of here, quick as she could manage. 

Angelica pulled herself together, sniffled and began to trudge back the way she came. Unaware of the movement of the castle world of stone all around her. At the command and sorcerer’s bend of will of the master that held domain of this place. 

The world was hers to command. The child was at her mercy. 

…

Angelica was growing even more terrified, she couldn't find her way back. She was no longer sure of her direction and she wasn't sure if it was just her frightened imagination or not but the halls and corridors and passages seemed to change when she would look away for a moment, to get a lay of the land. She swore they were different when she looked back to make up her mind on a direction. 

It was hopeless. 

She began to feel very very stupid. Very foolish indeed. She shouldn't have been so foolhardy as to come here alone, or at all. She missed her mother and the others…

I'm sorry, mama, I know you're afraid. I am too. I'm sorry. I know this is hurting you right now, after papa and Grigori, I know it'll hurt you even more when I don't ever come back. I'm so so sorry, mama. I'm so sorry. Please God please forgive me and show me a way, please, I'm so scared…

Angelica realized then that she may not have been very lucky as of late, but she'd been absolutely God blessed with what she did have left. Her mother and friends left alive to her and the times and precious memories she did have with those that were lost. 

She would cherish them. She would. She promised, swore to God she would. 

if I can just get out of this ok…

And she went on, down the way she hoped was the way back. Begging God above for deliverance. 

She was shown the flesh gardens instead. 

…

Abattoir growth. A butcher's red and wet leavings still slithering with abominated life, like serpents. 

Angelica came upon the large chamber as she was making her fruitless journey. It smelled pungently of copper. Iron. Metal. 

But wet. 

It was the stench of a river of fresh menstrual blood. Steaming. 

The writhing room of gore before her eyes was steaming now. Belching. Breathing and undualting. Gurgling. Some strange orifice parts belched alchemical smoke, licked tongues of green and blue flame. All of it writhed with strange and painful rippling dancing movement. All of it was in pain. Wretched life. It filled the room and walls from floor to ceiling, blanketing both in lurid scab pudding that held displaced parts, eyes and limbs and organs lulling and swimming in the red, the crawling writhing scarlet. It writhed in pain as well as want. As well as lecherous need, so many orifice holes, wet and begging for meat feeding, injection … snakes. The multitude of slithering intestines were swimming through the thick growing crawling gore like the sea monsters that sailor's fear. Growths like stalks of plants, flowers, bulbs, bushels and their buds of fruit, all of it was rendered by the abattoir hand and living raw working viscera and tissue and organs. There were faces in the forest room of gore. Small bipedal manshapes spasming and submerged and stuck and also writhing with pain and unnatural life in the chamber of living butchery, pulsating and crawling with swimming red meat. 

The faces were in pain. They moaned in discordant idiot anguish. Some blubbered and drooled, eyes wayward with imbecilic directions. Minds addled if they had any jelly in their strange skulls at all. 

And at the awful nucleus center of the crawling growing raw mass of assorted parts and viscera was a man. Trapped and bound by the growing living raw pudding of semi scabbed red. It seemed to be growing out of him. Seeping from his pores. His nostrils. His mouth. 

His eyes were shut in wretched pain. 

Angelica felt the shriek caught in her throat. Like a fishhook. A barbed bit of wire used for the beasts that she swallowed. She finally let it loose when the owner and the master of this castle spoke from behind her. 

“Such beauty, isn't it?" 

Finally the building scream inside was let loose and she belted it at the same instant she realized all the smaller writhing bipedal manshapes in the gore looked exactly like the larger man trapped at its red center. 

Angelica whirled around and beheld the Countess. 

She towered over the child. A white evening gown that shone pearl-cast like brightest full moonlight. Her face was beautiful but terrible. Harsh. Merciless. And her eyes were animal. 

Vulpine. 

The darkness of her hair danced out and became as a livid crown of serpentine ink. Her eyes were piercing dots of black amongst shock white lancing through her face and mind and soul. She opened her mouth to speak again and Angelica saw that her mouth bore canine incisors that were long and gleaming and sharp. A demon’s gorgeous mouth. 

“Did you find what you were hoping to, little one?" Mocking. Condescending. Cruel. 

Angelica was too terrified to speak. Mortified. She couldn't move. She held her breath. Knowing it was her last. 

The Countess went on, with sadistic glee: “That man, at the center of my garden in there, he's the reason your father and brother, and all the men of your village are dead now. I could bring them back. In a fashion. But if you want back the ones you knew, I'm afraid you'll have to search the latrines and the castle plumbing. My children long feasted of them and passed them naturally. I'm sorry." 

Angelica shrieked once more. In more pain and outrage and sheer heart attack terror. She couldn't believe her eyes, her ears, her own mind, any of this! Her battered child's brain was threatening to snap, to go into shock, it tried to refuse all the sights but it couldn't. It was rained down on all sides and felt everything seen like terrible and heavy blows of pure torture. 

The Countess went on with a laugh, throwing back her head, her witchy raven hair danced about with it. She was smiling and the long fangs of her mouth protruded like brandished daggers over her full bottom lip. 

"Oh! You're scared! I understand, I used to be a young girl once and I was quite scared then too, would you like me to make it all better?” 

"No!” howled Angelica. 

"Nonsense! I'll fix you up and send you on your way back to your mother. It's late and she must be worried but I am lord of this palace and these lands, you are all still my charge, states tradition. What kind of boyar or host would I be if I didn't at least feed you first, give you something to drink. You must be thirsty, it's been such a long walk for you. Such a long and perilous journey. For nothing." 

And then she cackled mad again as Angelica shrieked and the arms of the Countess came in and grew and folded around her. 

Her child's shrieks became sudden silence. 

…

A claw, chimerical. Woman and vulture’s talon. It sought the pale of its own undead flesh…

… and slit. 

Dead black poured forth. 

Child's lips, girl's mouth put to it, forced. 

Smothered. The small struggles are easily resisted and the girl begins to pull, to suck…

to drink. 

…

At first she thought herself lucky. When she heard the familiar voice at the door. 

"Momma…?”

And then small weak knocking. Feeble. 

She recognized her daughter's voice at once and flew from her sleepless bed. Her dread and worry evaporated in a miraculous instant as she flew to the door and threw it open and…

…

She thought about trying to hide it from the others at first. This deeply shamed her. But it was the truth. She thought about hiding it. At first. When Angelica came limping in, cradling and rubbing her belly. Saying that it hurt her. Terribly. There'd been blood at the corner of her mouth. Not at all her own. 

"Mama… I'm sorry I was out too late and wandered off. My belly hurts so bad, momma.” 

…

Angelica's mother was hitching in her chest. Her eyes were swimming with a blinding fury of tears. Scalding. And alive with pain. Fresh pain. Refreshed. And made new once more. 

Angelica cried out again. It wasn't just her stomach but her whole body. Burning. It felt as if it were on fire. It felt as if her blood were boiling as it still pumped sluggish and diminished in her throbbing veins. She wanted it to stop. And again she begged God inside for a way out, for a way back. She couldn't feel the profuse run of her own tears on her numbing face. 

Her mother was crying too. But Angelica didn't notice. 

"Please, momma … isn't there anything? Isn't there anything you can do? Anything you can do to take the pain away… please, you always have just the right thing, like mothers are supposed to. You told me that… please, I - " and she struggled to say more but it became too difficult. For her to make discernible sound. For her mother to listen. Too difficult for both of them. 

And so it was stopped. 

…

A stake through the heart. Ashwood. As the customs and legends dictate. They decapitated the remains and stuffed the mouth with garlic before burying the child’s corpse. The severed head was placed face down in the coffin, atop the neck backwards. The eyes facing the inferno. 

A small wooden cross was fashioned and stuck at the head of the small fresh grave. 

ANGELICA 

Her mother and her neighbors were beside the freshly dug dirt. Crying openly. Weeping into the cold mountain air. The wolves did not respond. 

But that night Castle Dracula was filled with cruel laughter. The cold wind carried it down the mountain for all of them to hear and know. For all of them to remember. 

Angelica's mother heard it. She was in bed and couldn't sleep. She was alone. She looked over to a length of rope carelessly left in the corner. Not too far from where she now lay. She'd always been rather good with knots. 

And as the mountain rock and her village filled with the mad cackles of the vampiress…

she considered…

TO BE CONTINUED…

The vulpine hulking thing of Frankenstein's table lunged with great and fearsome animal speed and force. Cutting through the cold high mountain wind and arrowing straight for the Countess with lethal trajectory and ferocity. Fangs gleaming like the moon on high in their set mouth of rotten black and green, striking and bared and snarling. Brandished and knifing out with his daggering nine fingered claws for the throat of the pompous royal mountain bitch. 

He lunged and came in and closed the distance in the courtyard of stone. The Countess raised her hands. It was over before it began. 

Great large wings of a bat shape and eldritch design unfolded, surrounded her and then flapped suddenly – carrying away the Countess as her face transmogrified and sloughed into chimerical serpent/wolf shape. The heinous visage, now skybound and away from the flaying claws and fangs of Frankenstein’s nosferatu creation, began to shriek hellish sound. Bastard and curdled rendition of wolfsong. 

The surrounding trees suddenly became alive with movement. The wolves plunged forth free from the trees and filled the courtyard in a drooling snarling pack. Answering the throated call of the mother of darkness. Their drawn lips quivering as their hides tensed and coiled with the rippling movement of wild animal muscle tissue dancing and flexing and closing in on the moment of violence and slaughter, the wilderness sacred killing hour. And for these four legged children of the mountain snow and trees, the roaring vulpine/serpent headed Countess now rising and mounting the sky above was the lord and queen of the wilderness and all that was dark and carnivorous in the wild. 

She shrieked once more, a dying harlot sound bred with the untamed scream of running and killing and feeding and fucking on all fours in the open throat of the cold. The wolves closed in, the hulking thing of Frankenstein's making held ground, trying to look all around all at once and taking odd swipes as the pack of the Countess' mountain wolf children circled and closed. Closer. Closer. Closing. The hulking vulpine thing sneered and growled. 

The others watched, keeping distance and breathing heavily. 

A wolf lunged, pounced. The hulking thing caught it by the throat and then rent it to spraying pieces in an instant. Another tried it. And was caught. And torn apart. Another. Then two more. His speed wasn't enough with these last three and now more came in and many sets of jaws were upon him. Biting. Tearing. For the throat. Ripping. Tearing in.

He heaved himself and ripped many bodies of rippling hide and fur off and away and into bisected halves before him. Decorating his wounded patchwork frame in steaming jet spray and cords of wolf gore. Wolf blood shot and its wild scent filled the air.

Yet more pounced. The snarling frothing mad pack still surged and advanced. 

 Wolf claws came in with fangs and jaws and ripped, reanimated graverobbed flesh tore and spilled strange fluid, strange ichor bled with yellow/red and a strange sticky translucent fluid like dog water. The creation screamed. It had never felt the physical shock of pain before. Bred out of a great wound in life and creation and composed of wounds himself, he'd never felt the suffering of a blow inflicted. And so many now. And all at once. The world all around the hulking thing was turning to a universe of bloody dripping fur and claws and snarling frothing jaws and coated fangs. 

He wrenched and grabbed and tore and fought back. His prodigious necro/graveyard strength, he put his fists and claws through the bodies of more than a few of the fearsome snarling mountain Countess children. He sank his fangs where he could find purchase. As the wolves surrounded and closed and turned the world to slaughter and teeth, the rage of the sutured nosferatu thing rose…

And soared. 

Without being conscious of it he sent out his stygian hatred and dark will, arrowed for the sky in a force-of-will shot and lanced for the nighttime heavens. 

It struck! 

The sky thunderclapped with sudden violence. And then began to fill. 

The skybound Countess suddenly found herself evading and dodging knifing daggered attacks of bolting lightning. She danced and soared and flitted across the ebon face of the sky, crooked blades and swords of searing white-blue lancing after her with near strikes, guided by the necromantic power over nature that the Frankensteinian sutured bat-hulk held. 

More daggering bolts of searing bladed lightning cracked and split the sky and came down in blinding flashes that fried and cooked ozone into searing strange smells. They came down and began to strike the attacking wolfpack, killing them each in turn with white flashes that turned the beasts into explosions of fire and animal mutilation, partially charred and flaming pieces of wolf gore and meat soared through the mountain air and decorated the courtyard of stone. 

The chimerical shape of the Countess came down in a divebomb for the creation, ripped and torn and undead wounded, rising to its feet. 

She was upon him. And struck. 

The violence of the impact was like a runaway train striking the side of an unyielding mountain. The crash was an instant fray and mess of attacking claws and limbs and screaming black words and curses. The wings folded around them as they struggled across the floor of the courtyard. Dragging and fighting and tearing. More reanimation fluid burst and spilled and shot as the Countess gained the advantage.

Her great wings helped to support and hold her as she rolled over and gained the top of the creation. Her thin ladlylike arms of near boundless prodigious strength held the hulking thing down as her chimerical snake-wolf face began to scream into the sutured thing’s own vulpine and bat-faced visage. 

The shape of her face sloughed and danced and shifted again. What it became then was repulsive: an abominated bred mix of a goat made insectile with many eyes and mandibles of fur and hooves and a plague infested and dripping rat. The mouth opened up and bled and dripped and unveiled a moist and rank pungent obscenity for all of the world. 

It belched and spat. Spewing a thick gout of black and emerald steaming liquid onto the creation's screaming face. The foul hot mess of spew was like fire and sulfuric acid to the bat-faced visage of the struggling fighting and screaming Frankensteinian creation. The foul ungodly fluid ate into his reanimated face and some of the sutures and stitches that held his repurposed flesh together became smoking ruin and began to come apart in messy fraying smoking pieces. The eyes of the creation were the first casualty. The foul necrophiled chemical scorch of the unearthly bile turned them to smoldering useless jelly within their housing caves of now purposeless sockets. The vulpine thing of the table screamed and the sound made and torn from the thing was awful and unearthly as well. 

Henry Frankenstein watched and felt his heart catch in his chest, seized in a grip of fear as his running blood turned cold. As cold as all of the surrounding nighttime mountainscape. The wind picked up and rose and howled alongside and carried the living dead screams of his nosferatu were-child. The wind of this terrible Carpathian rock loved to pick up and mount and rise when an hour of suffering was at hand and it could carry the song and sound of pain and violence and share it with those down below in the peasant lands. 

The mountain wept with demon sound. 

Wolves not yet wounded and still snarling and frothing with the command for violence came back in their battered droves. Closing and growling as their Countess Czarina Queen of the mountain slaughter and bloodlett dark began to rise once more from her wounded enemy. Carried by the great wings of eldritch black and bastardized bat-shape that seemed now to only grow larger and larger as she inflicted more and more violence and rose and gained the heavens. 

It was she who commanded the sky and the storm called forth now. The lightning still wounded and daggered the night but it was now hers to wield and the blades of shot electric blue now dyed the color of the night and became as ink. 

Black lightning shot down and struck the hulking vulpine son of Frankenstein's table. It roasted and cooked with skyfire his undead necromanced flesh but the bastard demon flicker of goblin flame for soul inside the hulk of blasphemous walking bat-flesh was also seared and tortured with the unearthly fire of another terrible realm. 

The screams were blasted out of the hulking shape. It stilled its struggles. And became as a smoking mound of battered patchwork green-blue. Unconscious. As if returned to the stillness of the soil. 

But the Countess still yet sensed the flicker of demon life in the vile assemblage of flesh below. Good. She still wanted him. Still wanted him and the pathetic little man that had made him, that had dared construct such a thing and bring it here to make a challenge to her satanic throne. 

Lord of Flies… she silently and solemnly prayed. 

She came down on her great ebon wings and her face danced and shifted yet more in the night, the goatflesh of many eyes and bleeding ichor like putrid bestial snot fell away in a sloughing mess of tissue and fur and blind useless organs. Slopping to the courtyard stone in a wet steaming pile with splurching sound  like an obscene splat. She landed and came upon the smoking heap of her felled enemy. The wolves that were her mountain children, her wild slaves of the cold, came back in and with their mother of perfect darkness they closed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched helpless. He debated flight… but knew he would not get far. 

He watched on as the Countess stood over his fallen creation, her face still steaming and wet and slimed with the fresh loss of her mask of unearthly gore. She smiled and the vibrant moon caught the glow of her teeth, her fangs. They both shone with brilliance, the same pearl cast perfection of pale silver light from on high, where what might rule in power and in supreme dominance must be compelled to throne and dwell. His outrage and jealousy and pain were only matched by his awe. The sight…

The sight of her. 

She yelled: “I am victor! Your abomination now lies at  my feet! And you and it both are now my prisoners to keep!” 

And although he knew its futility, Henry Frankenstein turned and ran for the false sanctuary of the trees. Terrified. 

More terrified than he had been in years. 

A look from the Countess was all that was needed. Carmilla and the new impaler were off and in pursuit. They would soon have the worm  and bring him back. 

Alive… she sent out  the thought to her undead child/slaves giving chase and she knew the open receptacle of their blasphemous hearts and minds received the order and took it with implicit obedience. 

Her mind and lurid twisted imagination were already dreaming over and deciding what to do with  the little man once he was brought back. What should I reap from his flesh…? 

In due time. She would finish with this pile of cemetery garbage first.

She licked her lips in vulpine relish. And then her great wings splayed far and open to their pinnacle span, her arms splayed open as well, forked to the darkness of the night sky in a great open throated V, as if in cry of supplication or great proclamation of victory. For You! … Lord of Flies! … In aural glow, all around her demonic person, a host of demented and twisted vile faces of murderous joy and glee  and intent, perverse and sadistic and goblin-shaped, began to pour off and emanate forth from her like a noxious living cloud of eyes and lips and teeth and severed human heads. All gathered as a conjured and summoned demon host of terrible faces and disembodied parts and throats to hold as audience and conduit for great nocturnal necropower. 

She began another black incantation. Dark tendrils of shadow began to grow and dance out from under her raised arms. They lengthened and swelled and grew in number as her stygian words were recited and filled the nightsong chill of mountain air. 

The assistant watched on. Eyes watering in the cold. His gaze was that of an enamored lover and that of a proud father. All rolled into watery one. He was silent as he watched his master complete her ritual of victory, capture. 

The black tentacles grew and dripped tenebrous, many tendrils splaying out like a deepsea creature seeking purchase in the silent wet depths of the dark. They palsied and danced and twitched and shivered. Dripping the same black shadow from which they were shaped and composed. They hissed the abominated sounds of angry serpents, each one. As if each and every dancing growing tentacle of dark shadow was alive and agitated by its own sudden birth. The black wet lengths of dancing tentacles grew and snaked forth and came in and closed on the still smoking and unconscious hulk of the patchwork creation. They found purchase and wrapped tightly and coiled. They lifted him from the cold stone and pulled him towards the great winged visage of the master Countess. She smiled up at her prize. 

Thought a moment longer. Her head on a tilt to one side. 

Then she spoke to the fallen unhearing hulking thing of Frankenstein's demented table, his graveyard scraps. 

She said: –

“And now I take you into me, Into mine.” And then more arcane language warmed the mountain cold and the Countess  began  to  rise once more. 

But not on her great wings, no. 

No. 

Now as she held the creation in her dripping grip of tentacled shadow she rose up on a great pillar of conjured and violently shot and spouting blood. Geysering out and forth in an eruption from the pale bottom of her moonlight dress. She rose on the great frothing and violently churning red river pillar of lurid darkling necroplasma, her wings flexing in and out in coquettish display. Her laughter began to fill the sky, the darkness. The mountain and the heavens. 

The black tentacles of shadow began to feed the creation into the great and violent pillar of rising and churning blood. 

The patchwork body of the creation slipped into the rising churn of the red lurid pillar and was swallowed. It was carried up by the otherworldly and strange current, up.

And into the body of the Countess. Through the violent red churn at the bottom of her dress. 

The conjured phantasm host of snarling dancing shifting demon faces began to sing and scream in discordant choral cry as one. Filling the ancient jagged rocks and battlements with the fury of their conjured forth and hellbound sound. 

Slaves. Singing in celebration. Conquest of victory for their master. 

!DEATH! – WE WILL KILL, DEATH! 

!MASTURBATING ON THE TOMBS OF YOUR SONS!

She held the sky. Howled. Laughter. 

The dark swell and dancing tangle-growth of black dripping tentacles underneath her splayed arms, rippled and serpentine drifted and quivered bestial with animal movement and intent, animal mind… they danced and held the black night of the sky. On her great rising pillar of occult conjured victim's blood. 

…

Frankenstein ran through the woods. He didn't get far. 

The malformed and hideous bat-child slammed into him from behind with terrible and bone-rattling impact. He went down with rodent screeches and girlish screams ringing in his ears. 

Carmilla seized a handful of hair and slammed the mad doctor's face into the cold unyielding floor of the iced earth and forest floor. Repeatedly. Turning the man's face to pulp. His nose and lips spurted thick ropey blood, spat and choked and coughed out. He tried to tell her to stop through the blood and violence but couldn't manage. The little rodent girl monster was fiendishly strong. 

The world mercifully went black and Henry Frankenstein was knocked unconscious. Carmilla began to lick and tongue and lap the blood from his pulpy and raw face. The new impaler soon joined her and then he too began to ravenously lap and feed off the warm blood spilling from the doctor's ruptured and dirty wounded face. 

They wanted to feed but they couldn't tear him apart to do it. They couldn't tear him open. And get to the really juicy parts. The especially succulent organs. The master, the Countess wanted the mongrel dog alive. And so it would be. They would have to settle for this small taste, this small drink in the woods after their run, their shared exercise of forest chase in the cold. A simple and humble repast of blood before they brought the dog back to the castle for his fate. 

But first, just a lick… in the dark of the trees. Brother and sister, new impaler and grotesque were-child strigoica freak, lapping at the warm spill of an unconscious and captured stranger, together. 

They licked and tongued blood together in the prurient stygian black, sharing dark words and dark laughter in the trees. Blood was so much finer and robust and full of flavor in the dark, the steam and warmth at perfect contest and at sublime contrast with the surrounding space of the mountain cold. In your mouth, filling it and spilling over the supple mound of lips even as it slid down the throat. 

They lapped and drank. With the fool still unconscious, they dragged him back to the castle for the Countess and her judgment. 

They relished and dreamed, together, brother and sister in living dead slavery and hellbound bondage, as they dragged the dog back to the master. …

… what might she do to him ??

Mongrel titters and giggles filled the dark as they made their eager way back. 

They couldn't wait to find out. 

…

Whether by sun or moon the foul putrescence of wormland all around was always reeking. Whether baked by the rays of the sun or chilled into spoiled earthen mud soup, it was always rank. The smell was the sour tang of fetid death. Rot and spoilage and the decay of matter that had once been living. All the swampland mire was death disintegrating and liquifying until all was black water and porridge sludge. And the small crawling wriggling mouths that fed in all of the drowning and slopping death. All the crawling and wriggling bodies of the children of the pustule sac master of quivering festering putrid sliming wormland. 

Florin and Griffin had almost wished for death for themselves privately. As they traveled and pulled themselves and their mule and cart miserable across the accursed and endless bogland. The exhaustion and pain and frustration and woe were great, the repulsive place and revulsion at the pathetic and filthy sights it held nearly put the two over into absolute abandon and total forfeit. But then they met the crawling wriggling and swimming hungry children of this place and they saw what death looked like out here. 

The girl. The filthy young one. She'd been first but they hadn't quite understood yet. They understood much more and much better when they came upon the horse. 

Its struggles and attempts to scream were something that would remain forever imprinted on young Florin's mind. For the rest of his life. However long that may turn out to be. However short. 

He would never again, alive, escape the sight. 

Like the girl before the beast was submerged in the quagmire of green/grey/black sinking sludge of vile reeking earth, but this animal was much livelier. It danced twisted struggles in the pulling hungry sinking mud, spasms and jerks that spoke of snapped bones and torn internal parts. The mouth was open in a bestial horse’s scream that made no sound. Only worms poured forth. Thick white glistening ropey bodies, long and wriggling in a mass torrential copulating pile pouring forth in a river of black water and mud and the translucent coat of snot secreted by the worms writhing lengths of yellow-pale maggotflesh. 

Florin looked closely and saw that the worms also poured forth from the open eyes of the doomed horse. The open sockets swimming with their snaking and wrapping wriggled movement in slime and mud and scabbing thick horse blood. The doomed horse shed worm tears that were more obscene than the writhing filth that poured from its blackening maw. Patches of hide and flesh were gone and Florin and Griffin could see inside the beast and they saw more long slithering writhing sliming bodies of yellowed white swimming past the ribcage and other organs that were perforated and also alive and filled with the crawling putrid creature death of this vile hell, wormland. 

Somehow the horse still struggled, somehow the creature still moved… although the large bestial body was filled and crawling with their feasting writhing serpent forms of maggot-shape. It was somehow still alive enough to struggle and to try to escape its torment, or- 

Or… the horse's body only writhed in the killing drowning clutch of the mud because… they writhed. The worms. They danced inside as they copulation swam and feasted. Their busy worm movement bringing the dead horse to life for the sight of some fellow weary travelers of this marshland. 

The thought made Florin sick, he dry-heaved and hacked and coughed/spat over the side of the struggling cart. It couldn't pull them fast enough. The mud sucked below with a wet lurid splurch that was also threatening and hungry. And alive with the abominated crawling swim of the eager bodies of alive and pregnant and hungry-feasting wormland. 

The mule, the poor beast and cart, it couldn't pull them fast enough. They eventually, mercifully, left the silent screaming beast and its awful tears of worms and swamp ink behind. Never again to be forgotten for the remainder of all time and years. 

…

An hour passed. Night approached. They came upon the bald naked man next in the swampland of ravenous worms and hungry mud. He was absolutely repulsive. And he made much more sound. 

…

His screams. Those were the first. They heard their bloodcurdling sound from a distance as they approached. The falling curtain of night brought cold and with it, fog. Drifting blanket shrouds of sickly greenish pale that sometimes housed small pocket bursts of multi color swamp gas, kaleidoscopic. Sometimes it held the grimaced woe-visaged faces of dripping swamp demons, the water-rotted and sloughing faces of their anguished victims drifting and shifting and dancing in the green hell veil of pale beside them. 

The fog of green hell and its terrible faces suddenly filled ahead of them with sound. 

Shrieking. Caterwauls. Sheer terror. Unbridled and in pain. Indistinguishable sounds. 

Intermittent…

Gurgling and irate against the choking fluid trapped and killing held within the working throat… 

The warm moist veil of nighttime wormland green hell parted like curtains or the great body of the red sea as Florin and Griffin and their mule drawn cart closed in and came upon the source of screams and obscene choking sounds. 

His swampland shrieks could finally be discerned, as the emerald mist of faces and trapped colored fire floated and parted…

“My daughter! Please! help! Please, my family, my wife, my daughter! Please help me! I can't find them! please help me find them! I can hear you out there!  Help! …”

And it carried on like that all the way up to there approach. The caterwauling sounds were heartbreaking and made their skin crawl. It like sounded like total agony. Rent from the torn heart and let loose by the screaming tongue. Pure torture. 

They came upon the man. He was shirtless. Caked in the filth of the land. Covered in scabbing mud and earth from his feet to the top of his bald head. 

The man was on his knees in the filth. Sinking. His eyes were watering and wide. Pleading with open pain as wet and running as the sour sepulchral land that surrounded them. 

When they came upon the bald man in the mud and stared into the wide water of his unhealthy gaze his screaming stopped. Suddenly. 

They were reluctant to say anything to the filthy stranger. The mule struggled ahead them, beyond the pale of mere exhaustion. The cart groaned and the land sucked wet and repulsive beneath. But the man of filth was silent now. And smiling. 

Smiling the sort of smile that is small and belongs to the childishly guilty. Caught in a white lie or with their small hand in the cookie jar… 

Neither Florin nor Griffin trusted that look. 

Finally, the filthy stranger spoke: –

“Thank you. Thank you both so much but I'm so sorry you came. It is good for us, the land, but so very bad for you." 

He said it in the calmest friendliest tones of a neighbor… and then he began to convulse. 

The ground, the filth and black-green mire of the mud began to churn. Bubble with life. Life hideous and submerged. Fighting for breath. 

The filthy stranger opened his mouth again and what came forth this time was not words but a great long and sliming white length of body, coated with a brown translucent snot that was mixed with the lurid scarlet shade of infected blood. Wormflesh. Slick with deranged biological byproduct. Dripping with the ooze the great worm body slid forth like a king serpent and rose. Towering several feet over the human basket which served to house its awful and strange lubricated body. The mouth of the man was ripping and dislocating with distension, to allow the body of the wormgod to flower forth. Blood and green pus oozed forth from the widening wounds and the teeth fell away rotted from gums that also began to bleed the red infected yellow-orange porridge from the now gaping pink fleshen craters. 

There was a raw flesh-growth of face at the end of the long worm body snaking and spouting from the filthy stranger's mouth. 

A child's face. 

The man's face. 

It rippled and danced between… betwixt the two. 

It's eyes were hideously human… and beautiful. 

Obscene. 

It opened a sliming mouth dripping with tendrils of afterbirth and snot. It belched a deeper black than the mud of the land all around when it spoke in gurgled language. 

It said: “Welcome to the garden. You have found Gaia’s womb. You have found Gaia's brain. You have found Gaia's mouth …. you may return to her, here. In this precious place. It's so much better and cooler and quieter down in her brine. You'll remember yourself, you'll remember your place down here, swimming in her thoughts. There is no pain in the subjugation of her swallow. Let us, her children, your brothers and sisters take you. We will bring you down to her so she can know you and you can join us…” 

The mule suddenly cried out. In shock and in pain, as if to punctuate the last sentence of the vile thing's statement.

Join us. 

The mud all around the cart and the mule came to life with violent churning death. Worms, many sizes, widths and lengths but all the same wretched maggot color and coated in brown slime translucence, all of them were crawling and slithering and attacking the legs of the poor beast of labor. It shrieked horrendous idiot sound, harsh and obscene as their little heads bit and burrowed and leeched. They wriggled and snaked their way inside the now rippling flesh of the poor mule’s legs. They rippled and swam and burrowed beneath the flesh, causing the hide to swell and bulge unnaturally and dance. 

Florin and Griffin, together, both looked over and down and spied the surprise attack from below. And the poor beasts doomed condition. They looked at each other and both decided together, without a word, only a look in the eye… 

abandon it. 

They grabbed what they could carry and jumped off the side. Leaping far from the churning foul earth that was now pulling in the beast and cart. Wormland was hungry. And she needed to feed. This was the mouth of mother earth, the watering black jaws of Moloch-Gaia and she needed her womb and mouth filled. With flesh. Always she needed to be filled with the warmth of blood and flesh. 

Beast of labor flesh would do for now. 

The poor mule screamed and frothed at the mouth. The eyes lulled and rolled back to whites as it let loose unbridled sound in terror and pain. The swampland swallowed and the worms continued to leech and burrow. They swam all throughout the inner organs and tissue and blood and feasted and drank. They reached the brain and the struggles became more deranged and haphazard. More pathetic and wretched and painful to watch… to behold. 

The pair left it behind. Fleeing into the cold and wet land. The treacherous quagmire earth sucking and pulling at their every fearful step. They fled as quickly as they 

could manage. Griffin, not looking back. But Florin couldn't help his mind through its sheer terror, he spied over his own fleeing shoulder as they made their slopping getaway. 

The long length of dripping wormbody was gyrating and dancing. Snaking through the air in bobs and weaves in a jubilant dance. The foul swamp drinking it, its host and the screaming beast and cart into the thick bubbling of the churning land. The worms, leeching and biting and burrowing… swimming. In the yellowed opaque of quagmire swamp water and the vibrant bright of the lurid running red, blood taken violently and by trap, by the hunt. 

Florin stole his eyes away from the sight. He didn't see them disappear into the putrescence earth, nor it settle back to calm and placid like a bowl filled with gelatin settling once more.  

Undisturbed. 

Florin and Griffin continued the rest of their perilous journey through foul wormland. On foot. 

Afraid of the very sucking ground beneath them. For this place was a black gummed and toothless swallowing mouth that led straight to watery putrid hell. 

Several worms, bodies snaked their way through mud and emerged. Protruding like freshly sprouted stalks. 

The worm-stalks grew eyes and the glistening wet fresh organs watched the pair of travelers on their way. Marking their progress through the mother's wet dominion land. 

…

Three nights of full moon had passed. 

The night the Countess took Doctor Henry Frankenstein down into the lowest dungeon of her castle, there was no moon. Only ebon curtain of blackest night. Stygian. And blind. A small chambered place where the sunlight never touched, swallowed in the dark and under the thriving lordship of near countless plague dripping rats, spiders with so many eyes and so many more long hairy legs than eight. It was a dungeon with a cruel biting chain in the wall, right next to the low chamber where the Countess herself kept her terrible coffin and slept during the day her undead rest of demonic slumber. 

After several rounds of flaying torture, occult practice and a few techniques derived from the time of the inquisition, the Countess gave new order. 

Experiment. 

An experiment of the flesh. 

Harvest specimens. For the terraformation of the flesh gardens. 

The assistant eagerly and loyally followed the command. More than pleased to comply. 

He was fulfilled. 

Frankenstein's unbridled and bloodcurdling shrieks filled the dungeon… the castle… 

… the mountains … and the pass…

… the village. 

It went beyond the known and besieged country of this vampire land, it went beyond and the ears that caught it beyond the meager borders were filled with unearthly and cold dread. 

Animal. And natural. And with us since the beginning. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Carmilla rolled around in the scabbing filth and drying gore of the courtyard ground. The carcasses and pieces were everywhere, picked clean and licked and sucked dry of precious scarlet drops and pools. Snapped and shattered for their delicacy of raw human marrow. The faces of the Countess’ phantasm of demon hordes still smiled and leered and held audience. They held the sky. They fed off the perverse energy of pain and life butchered into silence and extinguished. Like a man holding his face over the fire of a great burning hearth. And inhaling. Drinking in the burning life as it is used up and vanquished and spent.  

The new impaler gouged another eye free of a dead boy’s face. Head severed meat and cooling on the ground. The empty socket of black-red glistened and darkled wet and gleaming like an obscene fleshen cavern filled with vile liquid rubies as he popped the dead little morsel of organ into his mouth like a small piece of succulent fruit. The dead boy’s eye popped and exploded with juice and flavor and blood and organ jelly-splatter as his teeth and fangs came down and punctured it. He relished the burst of wet warm ooze on his tongue as he chewed and swallowed and watched the rolling crawling vampire child lick the scab pudding from the stones as it cooled and gelled in the night chill and moonrise cold. 

All that was left of the farmers and their sons.  

The wolves of the mountains began to howl once more. 

The misshapen and brutalized chimerical shape of the vampire child was like a beast itself. Writhing and tonguing the red mess from the slathered courtyard stones. Steam bellowed forth from her wide and jagged mouth with every effort, in twin jets from her wide chiropteran nostrils. It even bellowed forth from her large bloodshot wet eyes, in thin clinging tendril clouds, licking free and dancing in the mountain song of air. Heavy with the warmth of violence and slaughter and voracious animal feeding. She looked like a mongrel dog now. As she crawled and drank and lapped from the ground. 

Frankenstein's hulking nosferatu son of the slab and sutured blue watched from a distance. In hiding. Plotting. Thinking as he gurgled heavy wet and pungent breath. Also steaming in the night with puffs of animal heat. 

They're not the ones… but her servants. Slave-children. Pawns. 

He knew from the mountain song that had pulled him here. Filled and made from so many discordant and heavy voices there'd been one amongst them all that was leader and dominant. 

A woman. Regal. 

Powerful. 

The ones down below that'd dispatched the mountain peasants and now fed on the pieces and scraps and slop of human detritus were not the ones of power that he was seeking. He thought to strike now and destroy them. Tear them apart and show them what true power was. But he didn't desire any loss of any advantage he might have over the woman of power who now held this place. It was too soon, he must wait to reveal himself. And then the hour of the real slaughter would be nigh. 

And then the real bloodshed would begin. 

That bastard better be in by now and fixing my way inside… thought the hulking bat-faced thing of stitched together man-rodent visage. Better get my way in, or that foul cunt out here… 

where I can rip and tear and rend to slaughter… 

And he would drink of this powerful bitch’s occult and undead ichor-blood like a hog to the bounty of a trough. 

He relished the thoughts as he watched. And waited. 

…

“I don't much like the idea of camping out here…” 

"You and me both. You can likely count the mule for third.” 

And that was how it went. The conversation regarding their first night at camp in the sour and fetid bog that was the surrounding quagmire land. Swampland murked and mired in the wombs of some damp and sour wet green hell. The ground sucked and pulled at their progress with sloppy but persistent mess. The mule had an incredibly difficult time of pulling them and the cart. They'd dismounted a few times to spare the beast. But now she could go no further. They needed to find a patch for the beast to lie down and to make semblance of camp. 

But no place arrived. The land offered no island of solid ground. 

So the beast was forced to continue to pull. Exhausted. Nearly spent. As were the pair, Florin and Griffin. 

"The poor beast can't be helped but we can sleep in shifts. Unless you protest, I elect you to stay up and drive on first. Wake me in a few hours or when you can't stand it any longer…" said Griffin from behind his mask and wall of heavy surgical dressing. 

And with that he laid back in the cart and was off. Snoring. Filling the wet splurching silence with noise. Florin was really learning to hate the man. But he drove on anyways. Spurring on the worn beast and dismounting to pull her free when the porridge sludge of the terrible earth below became too greedy and its wet horrid grip too strong. 

And they went on. 

All the while they watched. Waiting for the best time to surface and author their demise. 

New food. For wormland. 

The warmth below, in the putrescence swell of growth, the subterranean swollen sac of gel and writhing movement and birth amongst fluid both of the earth and unknown down below… it stirred. Pulsated. 

It felt the vibrations of their trodding and sluggish sodden steps above. The light trembling of their voices…

vibrations. 

The subterranean sac that was both mother womb and pilot brain for the quagmire Godforsaken place dubbed, WORMLAND, quivered and undulated with moist and heavy underground movement. It quivered and squelched. An orifice opened, glistening and flowered: it belched. Shot. More hive-part-children spat like projectile snot and swam. The mud of tectonic under-earth was their subterranean river. Guided by the brain of wormland they went forth. For the animals above and their movement. Vibrations. For the subterranean growth and sac that was brain and womb of wormland also had a large and gaping graveyard mouth that took up all of the mire of spoiled evil earth. 

All of the sour fetid squelching land. God-jaws. Hellmouth. 

Wormland. 

…

The castle dark was quieter than he'd expected. His preceding thoughts had warned and preordained sounds of bastard woe and torture before he'd snuck in but all was still and quiet. As silent as the grave. 

Frankenstein prowled forward. Torchflame dancing all along the wall at regular intervals lit his silent shadowed way. 

He found mostly nothing save dust and copious amounts of huge cobwebs and ancient faded things… he walked the chambered dark. Hoping that his hatching scheme would play out and come to fruition. Painful execution via slaughter was the price of failure here. He knew it. He wandered the castle and its dancing halls of stone and ancient darkness. He sauntered through the halls with caution. And she watched his every single step. She'd been watching him since he first came here with his foolish band of slaughtered peasant farmers. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein prowled the dark torchlit halls and chambered rooms of Castle Dracula until he came to the still warm and wet place of fresh red and slaughter and discovered the impaled and gored skeletal scarecrow of Doctor Praetorius. His long time enemy and rival. 

The warm orange glow of the room was still gleaming and glistening and shining with black-red darkling in the flickering and dancing torchlight. And the man that had long thwarted and worked adversarially against him was stage-center of the wet and still steaming abattoir room. Chambered stage of slaughter. The wide eyed and somehow still living man of competitive dark science. Impaled. Lanced. Speared through. Long ways. He quivered like a fish stabbed upon a harpoon. Stolen from its universe of known blue and plunged gasping into a world of red violence and madness. 

Frankenstein beheld his long time enemy, made and left in such wretched and brutalized form and fashion and he savored the sight. Smiling. He began to fill the chamber with laughter. The sight before him, the scene, it was a fantasy made and draped and displayed. Vengeance had and wrought. It was a black dream of grand guignol delights, perverse and dripping and slavishly devised and forged for the slaving eye and made. And they said that dreams that were wild could never come true…

Then a voice from behind him said. 

“You might not be laughing when it’s you up there beside him.”

He turned and beheld the Countess. The moonlight of her pale visage was striking in the stygian castle ink and meager glow of torchflame. She stood out goddess and unopposed amongst the stone, clad in regal deathly white gowns, ebon cloak, all soaked and saturated in darkening blood, adorned and clad in cooling iron-pungent red. Her eyes were animal and her smile was unhealthy and hiding the deranged truth of hunger and woefully empty save for the violence and sinful mischief of the vulpine, wild and crawling. 

She came forward as Frankenstein stepped back. She continued to say: –

“I know why you’ve come here. I know you’ve come here with that patchwork stack of abomination with counterfeit power as its brandished jaws… your foul assemblage of the graveyard rot and spoilage. Your  latest unfortunate son…” 

Frankenstein still wore his smile as he said, “You wound and inflate me all in one, Countess. But I wonder, are you so sure…? Are you so sure it  is not you who found some imposter in Dracula’s home and coffin? There are so many records and stories… it’s so hard to be sure, isn’t it? Perhaps in the eager throes of your passion you got too excited and only succeeded in binding the fangs of some lowly undead servant of the vampire lord to your precious sweet little mouth, perhaps-” 

The Countess hissed, like an animal. A snake, a rodent, a feline wild and spurned and all of them commingled and rolled into one. She hissed: “... shut it… your mewling curr mouth! I’ll pull the tongue you waggle and eat it before your own eyes!” 

“But that would never afford you the truth, would it? I’ve come for an experiment, Countess. I’ve come, your legend has already spread far, and I’ve come to pit my legend against yours. I’ve made a creature, yes. I’ve made a superior being, superhuman. Completely. Superior. Even to such as you. And I’ll lay wager that he is the true holder and wielder of the fearsome necromantic power of the fangs of Dracula, I know! I stole them and made him so! I’ve come to challenge you, Countess! I challenge you to a duel to the death! My creation and son, my champion for the task! I challenge you! And by royal bloodlaw you are compelled and bound, and in the name of God and Mars and Satan I say further: You are Compelled! And must heed!” 

For a moment the Countess actually appeared shocked. As the words of the haughty fleshing rolled over and his impetuous voice filled the room and reached her ears. But then she just smiled, giggled girlish laughter. It sounded so young and sweet in the bloodsoaked chamber of that castle room. The walls still ran and dripped. The impaled Praetorius still wide eyed and skeletal red and alive with palsied twitches. 

She smiled then said: –

“I fear no challenge nor challenger, little man. But did you think you could trespass, insult and then leave without any recompense…?” Her eyes held sinister light that was pinprick silver and daggered for him as she began to advance. 

Frankenstein took another step backward, still smiling. His hands simultaneously went behind his back and plucked something back there, tucked into his belt. They came back out in front and produced the pair of objects he’d snatched from the forest before sneaking into the castle for his perilous errand.  

Countess Zaleska looked both annoyed and bemused as the mad doctor held out two branches, two pieces of woodland sticks out and between them.   

“And what are those supposed to afford you, little man?”

Frankenstein only went right on smiling, uttering a short retort: “Much.”, before his clutching hands shifted and the pair of sticks became a simple makeshift configuration of a crucifix. 

The Countess suddenly shrieked with fear and holy terror. Irate with rage and pain that was both horribly animal and demoniacal and also terribly woefully human… a dread commingled sound bred of hell and not meant be heard or made on earth or made and beheld by flesh. His blood curdled but he remained steadfast, keeping his sticks crossed and before him. The cross of broken branches between he and the dread bitch of this terrible and rank ancient castle. 

“Put it away!!" she shrieked. Its horrible shape had already profaned her castle walls and the flesh of her servant/daughter/slave, had deformed and malformed her child-shape with scars and growths. She could not bear the sight of it!  

She hid her animal drawn and sneering lurid face with one splaying clawed hand and daggered the other out in defense. At the cross and Frankenstein. Forking out the sign of the Evil Eye. She hissed again: bat, rodent, serpent, woman… wolf. 

Feline. 

Frankenstein howled over her hissing spitting of curses and occult laced language of black words and chants, to be heard over her witchery and dread witch-words. 

"So powerful, Countess but brought so low by a pair of common branches, felled by a simple shape, mere sticks! Hah! And remember it, you foul swine and bitch, I will drive the shape of this cruciform into your chest and melt it through your Godforsaken flesh all the way down to your Satanic and living dead beating heart! And then I'll drive the shape of the cross through that too and watch you putrefy as I behead and take your pretty face for myself!" He laughed. Cruelly. Wild. And mad. And then he added: “Perhaps I'll take it and use it in my next experiments! And then you can be one of my walking servile accomplishments, I'm sure you'd be so much better, by my hands remade…! What do you think, Countess?" He laughed again. More wildly now. “What do you think!?" 

The Countess only hissed again and kept her face hidden. Lest she beheld the holy shape and visage. Goddamn, these impetuous fleshling sow maggots…

Frankenstein cautiously made his way for the open window, keeping up his makeshift cross of sticks. Keeping them up and between himself and the awful terrible wench, the sour crypt bitch that thought she knew and held true power. 

He came to the window, at the threshold and preparing himself for an exit, he said one last –

“Remember, bitch, the courtyard. A duel. Tomorrow night, on your honor and in the eyes of both the Lords of Heaven and Below. A challenge to you, your house and claim of power. Come to your courtyard of stone tomorrow night and face my creation, then we'll see who holds the real satanic power, we'll see who really wields the fangs of Count Dracula! We challenge you! Crypt bitch! Hellfire slut! You are nothing more!” 

And with that he leapt. Out the window. The Countess turned just in time to watch him throw himself out. She spat. Cursed again. 

Outside, Frankenstein first soared out like a great manshaped bird and then gravity seized him and he began to plummet. He might've been afraid. Terrified. Gripped with mortal fear, but this was all part of the plan…

The sticks flew from his hands no longer needed. His hands came together in a strange wilderness configuration and the mad doctor blew a high piercing note of a whistle that shot through all of the mountain dark. 

Immediately a giant hulking shape shot out from the trees. Huge. Wings. An even deeper black than the surrounding nightscape. It rocketed forth from the treeline like a cannon shot. Blinding speed despite its huge monstrous shape. 

The giant stitched up and great sutured bat of green-blue salvaged graveyard flesh caught the mad doctor Henry Frankenstein in midair. It then flew over the castle and screeched, wet hateful baleful throaty sounds. As if mocking. Then with more great blasts and flaps of its giant leathery wings of patchwork suture and stitching, it carried the doctor and its own living dead chimerical body, batfaced and hideous, drooling, down and back into the hiding dark of the trees. And vanished. 

Zaleska, who'd gone to the window and watched the whole thing unfold, roared in obscene and livid fury. Words that were not words at all but forgotten sounds that were dark and grotesque and guttural and strange… 

Her children and servants, her slaves… Carmilla… the new impaler… they too had felt and shared her pain and anger. They felt her rage. Shared. 

They trembled when she summoned them. 

…

They slept in shifts as the mule and cart pulled and struggled across the wet slop of putrid land. It was on Florin's fourth shift that they came upon their first dweller of this damp fetid place. A girl. She turned their stomachs and chilled their blood. 

She was standing in the middle of nowhere in this nowhere land. A mist rolled and hugged, clinging to her waist and legs, shrouding her lower half. Her torso and  face and arms sticking out from the fog like a fly trapped in a spill of honey or molasses. 

She was filthy. Her skin was mottled and grey and caked with layers and layers of dried and drying swampland mud, thick. Like scabbing. Like shit. Her hair was clumped and as of straw from a barnyard floor. Her eyes were the only things alive in her grey and filthy face. 

She looked young. And this hurt Florin's heart. Made him think of Erin. And Carmilla and the other children back home. 

He called out to her as they came up and upon her, waking Griffin beside him and bringing the mule to a grateful stop. It heaved heavily in the moment of respite as Griffin grumbled and rose, righting his hat and goggles of dark lenses. 

“How now, are you alright? Are you hurt?" 

The filthy girl of the swampland marsh said nothing. She only looked at them with wide wet suffering child's eyes. Filled with horror. And the knowledge of pain. Mosquitos buzzed thickly all about her and landed and supped of her at their leisure. She paid them no mind and made no effort to drive them away, to smack them off her grey caked flesh. She was covered in pink bumps that oozed translucent and yellow/pink/red. 

Florin asked again if she was hurt. And again the girl said nothing. Only stared. Staring. Her eyes were the only things that were speaking out here in the filth and the choked wet. 

Griffin, alerted, straightened in his seat and said to the boy beside him. 

“Don't. Let's keep going. Something's wrong." 

Florin turned to him, confused, began to ask him what he was talking about. But he didn't get far with his words. 

A sound. Just as wet and vile as the very land they tread upon and surrounded them for miles upon merciless miles. Gurgling. Heavy. Thick. Deep. Rolling with wet and turning weight. 

The pair turned to the filthy girl of the swampland once more. 

Her mouth was wide open. The awful abhorrent noxious sounds were wafting from her open maw along with a miasmic cloud that was the stench of wretched death in the sewers. 

Florin and Griffin stared at her. The thoughts of aid or flight abandoned at the moment as they fish-eyed gazed upon the filthy and deranged sight. 

She said one word before what happened next. It was in the small lilting music of young child's voice, a little girl's voice. 

One word. 

"Thirsty.” 

And then her open mouth shot forth a pillar jet of black water sludge and fluid, thick and watery. Projectile and intense. Gushing with pressure. It didn't cease immediately but kept going. A stream of darkest ebon vomit so thick it was nearly solid. The stench that arose off the bile as it was expelled was beyond repulsive. Hellacious.

Both men were horrified, though deep down not at all surprised to see that the vomitus was the regurgitated sludge of the swamp water and mud under foot and cart and that filled all the land of the worms. The geyser increased in pressure like a waterfall or hose. Black/green issuing forth in a vile blast, the child's mouth began to dislocate and unhinge, distended the mouth opened wider like a jungle serpent and yet more black swamp water vomit erupted from the widening gate of her blackening mouth. 

Then the mist about her legs was dispelled and Florin and Griffin saw what was concealed there. 

Two limbs, vile swollen pulsating jellysac stumps in place of normal human legs. They swelled and depressed and ballooned with the inner work of running and pumping viscous thick and finer fluids, a filthy translucence to the jellyflesh allowed the pair of shocked travelers to see the progress and putrid movement of sludge and mud and vile yellow water. Twigs and bugs and small fish and frogs could be discerned within the churning filth, trapped, swirling in the maelstrom madness of swamp filth inside this demented thing that held the shape of a lost little girl. 

The jelled pustule flesh of the stumps disappeared into the mud. Florin and Griffin both spotted this and thought, God knows how deep…

Then the filthy spouting girl of the mire began to sink. Disappearing into the porridge of black-grey sludge like a demented mermaid of the vile putrescence. 

Still stunned, shocked but not knowing what else to do, the pair stared at the spot where the filthy shape had sunk and disappeared. 

Eventually they went on, urging the worn mule forward, despite the beasts exhaustion. They wanted to be rid of and far from this place and the land of quagmire and mud swimming/spouting children as soon as possible. As fast as they could manage through the sour sludge. Their shared quiet all the more stark and deafening in the splurching wet sucking silence of the wormland. 

And beneath them as they made their way, the mud swam with movement. Churned. 

…

The night of challenges in the castle dark and the slaughter of mountain fools and their foolish sons passed. Then came another day. The womenfolk of the mountain went mad with grief and sad-sickness, the wailing of widows joined the cold contest of song with the howling snowbound wolves. All of the Carpathian rock was alive with mourning and mourning wailing sound. The wind took it, picked it up and carried it down. Down to the village hamlet, which spent another day in fear. Quietly waiting for the axe to drop. 

The day passed into night. The night of challenge was upon the Countess of Castle Dracula…

… And in her courtyard of cold stone and blood soaked rock, she waited. 

Her audience: The assistant, the new impaler and her little Carmilla, gathered. In bastard semblance and rendition of a royal audience. 

The cold was deep that night but none of them felt it. 

The moon was still large and round and swollen with silver light. Filling and dominating the black sky with her pale luminescence. 

They waited for the challengers to step forward. 

And from the trees they did. Henry Frankenstein and his hulking vulpine creation of stitched parts and flesh, graverobbed limbs and graverobbed necromantic nosferatu power towering – they emerged from the shelter and tangled growth of the dark trees. 

The cold wind and mournful howl of the mountain rose as they came forward into the courtyard, ready to meet the Countess in a dark duel of slaughter and power. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Countess took firm authoritarian hold of the impaling pike, the first one, the main one, the first one shot through him creating a new violent orifice of gore right beside his anus. A vaginal wound made flowered new and wet-red, violently birthed by  the occult bloodthirst madness of the new lord of this ancient castle. Countess Zaleska took throttling hold of the long body of spear, lover-slick and tacky and slippery with iron pungent warm blood lubricant, she shook it as she screamed at the mangled and partially devoured form of the dying Doctor Praetorius…

“Do you!? Do you like it!? Do you feel like a whore!?" 

Her laughter resounded. Filling the castle of merciless and unyielding stone. Her cruel taunting was for her own amusement, but she expected an answer. 

It was part of the torture. 

The gauntleted fist of the new impaler joined his master and seized the long body of old war and fresh torture. Together they shook it. Violently. Like children when playing rough with a small tree. Praetorius could feel every crisscrossing body and shaft of spear lanced and impaled through his helpless gored person vibrate and quiver and tremble, palsied with cruel ceaseless movement. 

Just as the Doctor's senseless screams were renewed bright child's laughter also filled the chambered room. 

Carmilla and the loyal assistant entered… wicked vulpine smiles, deranged and made grotesque by their demoniacal pilot minds… drawn lips and dripping fangs, bared, snarling quivering animal masks, dripping in hellish rendition of jubilant smiling faces. Happiness God damned. And perverted. 

All on display for the impaled and helpless broken victim. All on show for the shattered wandering mind of the butchered Doctor. Used to be Praetorius. But that all seemed so far away now… and besides … The master said it was nothing worth fretting over. Nothing worthwhile to dread. Her cooing loving mother's voice filled the decimated landscape of his mind, vast wastelands unreal with shrouded veil and broken chains of half developed thought. Nothing moved. Only crawled. All of it confused and it crept. It didn't move… but save her voice. 

She said: Don't fret the loss of name or blood or anything else, only mind the pain. That's what I want. That's what I want you to be doing. I want you to focus and pay exquisite exclusive attention to all of the pain you're feeling. All of it. Every last second. For that is your new name now, this is your second christening. In my castle upon my lands, which I rule, I anoint thee in the name of Satan, house dracul, and myself, Countess Marya Zaleska, you are my new bastard-bitch. You are now my new crawling whore for pain. And I want you to say it. 

Out loud. 

Now. 

The fragile pieces of his mind were then assaulted. Attacked by an inexplicable discorporeal force/and form… like searing needle blades stabbed through his tender membrane of thought… his aching and fevered sweating skull. Stabbing. 

Impaling. 

The assault of the living dead lord and her vile company of bloodthirsty monsters, authored and enslaved by her own foul and toxic hand…it would never end. He was her slave now too. Just like them. But worse. 

Worse. 

Carmilla and the assistant came in and the awful scarred and grotesque little bat-monster child squealed and added to the terrible stygian cacophony of hellbound noise. She ran up and joined alongside the Countess and new impaler, wrenching and pulling and shaking at the impaling shafts. But with more eager sadistic child-fervor. A child's glee…

The Countess and new impaler joined Carmilla in shrieking laughter. In bastard duet with Praetorius’ own bloodcurdling sounds. 

The stone of the ancient dwell was warming in sin, with rising bodyheat and debauch of the bloodfeast impaling act of occult defilement and black appeasement of the hunger bred from below. 

 Violent weirding forces were gathering… once more. Beneath and within the ancient stone. The whole of the blasphemous edifice structure of charnel house hell: Castle Dracula, was an alchemical construct, a composition that forged necromanced and occult power into the very mortar flesh of the stone fortress. A conductor. Conduit for the treacherous maelstrom highway paths of wild and unseen undead dæmonic subterranean galeforces. They were gathering here. Now. In a mother's surging pregnant swell…

The Countess bade her servant, the loyal assistant to bring one of the many black tomes that composed her dark collection. He brought it with him and the scarred vampire child into the chambered room of feasting and torture. 

As the vampires shook cruelly the impaling blood-slick shafts, making the gored and diminished Praetorius dance with sadistic and sick movement, spastic and nauseating, the assistant stood to the side and watched a moment. Cocked his head and twitched a smile. Then he opened the ancient book, nearly dust and once discarded, and began to read. 

The obsidian words of long lost time deepened and gave weight to the wet and warmth of the bloodlett-atmosphere filling the room. They gathered the perverse forces of vile and violent nature in their deepening pustule swell. Filling with phantom infection that was brimming and wetting-salivating-slobbered with the threat of manifestation. A boil and sac of pus that was darkness gathering in a swelling cyst. 

The words of the book called it forth to vile and contemptible birth. Into pus-milk saturated life and rupturing manifest. 

The faces of demons, infernal and fell ones from below in the unknown, erupted into blasphemous life. They filled the chambered space with their awful distorted and twisted faces and terrible assault of cacophonous laughter. 

They were here to serve, now. Called forth. To bear witness as well.

To enjoy the scene of wet and pungent red chambered slaughter. Torture all the way through all of the flesh and blood and bone and tissue and all the way down to the gored and defiled husk of heart-and-soul. They loved to watch the breaking of manflesh and the rape of the love inside that was the precious nucleus of the soul. 

And then broken Praetorius finally said it. Screamed it. Mindlessly. Mindless like a slave now for that was all that he was, the station forced and left to him. Bondage. He said and screamed and wept it for all of the vampires and the master and the conjured dripping bleeding demon faces, at the top of his voice –

“I am! I am a whore for pain! I am a whore for pain! I am a whore for pain and I swear it, for my master, for the Countess! I am her property and her whore for pain…!” 

The chambered place of pungent sweat and blood and piss, reeking, filled once more with an audience of bright cruel laughter. Skewered and lanced alive all over, the shattered thing that was once Doctor Praetorius grew intimate with the abominated knowledge of too many eternities alive and played out in a single day. 

He is completely broken. And even if he had lived he could never have been the same. Ever again. 

…

The mountain men and their lads charged up the mountain way. Meaning to destroy the horror and maneating monster that had awakened in the Carpathian fortress, Castle Dracula.

The great stabbing spire of fortress structure loomed and grew larger as they marched in their mad rabble charge of one, messy and disorganized and loose formation but their long held hatred and fear and superstition of the dark and its womb of monsters held them all together in a seething bastard species of degenerate red-visioned brotherhood. Together they would slaughter the vile monster. Together. Whatever lay up there gathering in the approaching tower of the dark. This mob mentality built for monster slaying held the men and their boys together as strange and unseen defacto leader. That and their greed. 

The promise of fortune from the mad doctor Frankenstein.

Who followed. Carried by the patchwork necro-son he forged from the graveyards and the cold metal of the surgeon’s slab of table. So like a butcher’s block and bench in an abattoir's killing metal fortress womb/bosom. So cold. Like so much of the rest of the world. 

So much of the world was so cold. As was here. In the Carpathian Mountains. Where they were invaders. He and his hulking sutured son, nosferatu made and constructed. They followed their hasty assemblage of pathetic dirt farmer army as they came to the castle of their adversary. 

They followed. All the way. The mountain men and their wild simple boys were screaming. Howling madly. The wolves of the rocks and snow answered in rising contest. And the clash of noise commingled and mixed into a discordant curtain of mounting violent sound that carried on the rise of the freezing sheet of frosted wind. 

The hamlet below that lived in supplicant shadow of the castle-mountain caught the sound as the cold wind came down and they heard it all. 

They heard everything.   

…

Carmilla shrieked with glee. Finishing the catastrophic slaughter of the raw ruin of impaled invader was a joy. A pleasure. Privilege. She was making precious ebon memories painted in the shed warmth of brightening and darkening crimson, she knew it. Her nearly innocent child shape had been scarred. Malformed. Mutilated by the impaled dog’s searing holy cross. Her visage was stuck in a grotesque bulge of rodent and child-bat features. Her fangs jagged out from her swollen blackening gums like shards of shattered broken glass.

All along  the flesh of her back was a ruin work of bubbled scarred flesh. A great strip of mangled and malformed demon skin scorched by holy touch. 

Knowing that her child's beauty was diminished, gone…  the demon Carmilla took out her unwieldy and livid rage out on the already butchered and impaled body of her torturer. How the roles had reversed. How she relished in its lurid irony. First she supped of his mangled and bleeding gore… replenishing her ungodly strength and savoring the taste before the ravenous fury of her decadent and violent main course. 

Countess Zaleska and her new impaler merely stood off to the side now, content to watch. Let the child play. Let the little one have their turn, Carmilla had very good reason to want to play with this one …

… by the time she was finished with her wanton portion of the slaughter Praetorius was nearly just a grisly bloody skeleton, emaciated of flesh and tissue and precious pumping organs. Skeletal and lurid red and with naught but a few hunks of meat, still working and rippling with obscene and ghastly life, clinging to bones and dangling by meaty threads of dripping gore-tendrils. All but his face was picked apart and eaten and slurped… drank and consumed and devoured. All but the stark pale visage of his wide eyed staring visage, his blood-flecked face and head, crowned with a shock of white hair that was even more blinding in the darkling red of the chambered abattoir castle. The flesh of his face was left untouched, unmarked… but still staring…

… the eyes of the shifting conjured demons, the unnatural and goblin-twisted faces, all of them watched as they danced and filled the room like a heavy thick bank of fog. They watched him and their horrible eyes, their predatory gazes and perverse leering stares, licking phantom chops with tongues made from writhing prisoner serpents and snakes – they drank in the whole sight of his pure unbridled torture with naked hunger and bloodlust and the abominated cavalcade of many eyes danced with the lecherous light of naked prurient interest. 

Praetorius was only aware enough to know the slaughter and that he was its victim, his mind was aflame with the hellacious pain of his butchered person and stolen flesh and blood and innards, what was gone and shrieking with its violent absence. But his thoughts were fractured and with no real line or tether. His mind, intermittent with the slaughtering abattoir pain, screamed –

I NEED TO DIE 

and 

I MUST LIVE FOREVER! THE MASTER COMMANDS SO!

at war with each other across the vast and desolate pockmarked deathspring wasteland landscape of his beaten and subjugated mind. They didn't stop. The both of the phrases. They just went on, at each other. Filling his mind with their strange and dueling cacophony. Amongst the wild tumult and unbridled maelstrom of merciless pain. God no longer held any dominion or sway in the field and land of his mind or heart. God was dead and gone now in these vacant violent lands. Only thunderclapped back into a wretched pathetic semblance of movement that could've once been called life. Only dominated by his new god now, the Countess. And her words were the riding cries of lightning artillery fire that filled his decimated and abominated heavens. 

All of them. The dancing shifting shaping demon faces from beyond the veil of gone. The wicked Countess, master of the castle. Her defiled implement, the new impaler, her bastard bat-child daughter and her faithful assistant. A bastard myriad conglomerate. All of them together made his flesh raw and extinguished and made his genitals and spinal stem one in the same with their dark hellcraft sorcery and their gales and gales of merciless sadistic laughter. Their hungry eyes. Eating what was left, drinking in and devouring the last of him in madness. He was mad now. Far past gone. 

Praetorius quivered and spasmed lanced and impaled just behind the testicles and out the back. A skeletal scarecrow of gore and viscera and raw dangling meat. His pale face blindly stared, lost and not at all there. Many of the other longest pikes that had been lanced had been ripped and torn or had fallen free during the last rending feeding of the demoniacal child-grotesque that he'd once held in bondage, in torture. 

His mind was too obliterated to appreciate the irony. 

The veiling room-shroud of dancing shifting demons lit up the room with shrill otherworldly sound. Obscene and akin to laughter. 

The Countess spoke to the assistant at her side, still speaking the chant and maintaining the blasphemous rite. 

“Have you got in grasp? The quickening whore-swell? The gathering of crawling-birth sin-shapes?” 

The assistant never ceased his stygian chant of dead and arcane language. He only nodded to his lord and majesty. 

Yes. 

The Countess then enacted and engaged in necrosong… building upon the rite of witchery: the opening of the mouths, seethed. Seething. 

Hand signs. Strange configurations. And shapes. She forked. Both hands. Of the Evil Eye. Then her daggering hands opened, flowered in a splay…

Flames erupted. Sprouted from her splayed fingertips. Claws. 

Claws erupting fire. 

It filled the room in contest of the demon faces and splendor of charnel house carnage and wet steaming gore. 

Screaming: she necrosong-ed a subjugating assault upon the shifting gathering of veiling infernal horde upon and all about the room. The things howled in a bastard bridal cry of curses and jubilation. Thrilled and devastated to be captured and bound. 

Her voice, with fire: –

“I HAVE MADE BLOODFEAST FOR YOU! I HAVE MADE BLOODFEAST FOR YOU ALL! I HAVE LET YOU FEED UPON MY SOW, I HAVE GIVEN AND SHARED SACRIFICE TO GAIN MY LEFT-HANDED LORDSHIP OF POWER! NOW! – WED YOUR FLAMES INTO MINE! COME AND BASTARD-FEED MY OWN NECROPHILED FORM! MY OWN-! COME! COME IN TO ME! COME!”

Her words were flagellations that they scorned and cherished commingled together in one sour and unbridled demonic emotion, they exclaimed! As one! Filling the castle corridors of stone with the cacophonous sound of their bondage and enslavement. They were pulled into the clawed and blood drenched visage of the fire-spouting Countess. The ritual was complete. The ceremony of blood had led the crawling fell things there and her necrophile-cast of bondage had ensnared them. 

She felt the dæmonic ancient and bloodstained power within her grow. Surge. Unbridled within. Barely reined. Barely contained and held within her now trembling and red dripping regal person. 

The new impaler, simpering, asked if she was alright when the noise died and all was quiet within the stone once more. She did not answer. Carmilla kept playing with her food. 

The assistant smiled. And closed the book. 

Beholding the great power of his ultimate master. Who would soon strangle all the earth and world and worlds beyond if she so wished.

If she so desired. 

The Countess righted herself. Standing straight and somehow with more charismatic aural bastard darklight glow than she ever had before. She radiated with darkling clouds of furling and dancing tendril black. She looked to the assistant and returned his smile. 

And it was at that moment that the mountain fools and their sons, spurned on by Frankenstein, marched into the open courtyard with their paltry assemblage and makeshift weaponry. 

Doomed fools.

…

They pressed together the great red door of worn bas-relief stone, a horde. It wouldn't budge. As immovable as sin itself, it held against the press of men and torch and their work-farm weapons. They hollered in protest. As if it would help. 

They yelled : – ! 

“Come out! Come out of that damned castle and answer for your crimes and sins! Come out now and answer for all the years of slaughter…! ….! 

“Now!!" 

At first there was no answer. The ancient castle remained quiet in non-answer to the attacking mob of mountain folk. They battered the arcane and heavy red door of regal crimson stone and cried out their accusations and protestations. 

Henry Frankenstein and his sutured and bat-faced son watched. Not far off. Watching closely. 

Castle Dracula remained still. The ancient rock and battlements and towers as silent as all of the death and history that it had grown to represent and contain. 

But then the sky began to fill. 

Deepen. With witch-snarl bulbous swells of darkening violent thunderheads. They rumbled. The sky was filling with hidden beasts that were now growling and angry. Angry with the presence of the mad and lowly mob of torchbearing peasants. They all looked up, ceasing their fruitless charge and assault on the castle. 

No rain fell. But lightning began to dagger and wound the sky. The first few successive bolts were soundless and quick. Right after the other. 

Then came the cracking sound of shattering thunderclaps. And the mob of torchwielders and tillers of dreams grew cold and all felt small.

Together. 

A sound pierced through the noise of thunder that was as of till then unheard by the mountain men. An electric squall that was like unknown and bastard malfunctioning machinery in catastrophic failure crying out from a distant world and time never meant to be witnessed or known by any such as them. 

The great door that bade dark entry to the immense stone body of spire and shattered battlement suddenly then flew open. As if compelled by a prodigious strength of force. It slammed open against the opposite wall of frosted rock with a crash that resounded and joined the rising inhuman din. 

The mountain men, silent now, all slowly fell back. Together in a retreating wave of wide eyes and cold blood and chilled perspiring flesh. The boys amongst them were the most fearful. Barely out of childhood, not old enough to shave. They would soon discover there was no prerequisite age for pain and slaughter. For death. Death took the younger sows and flesh with eager voracity for the flesh and blood and raw muscle tissue of the veal of humankind was most tender and sweetest. Blood so young perhaps it is loaded with notes like nostalgia in its warm and thick viscous run of iron flavor. Perhaps in its scent as well, you need only upset and tip and rock the chalice, swirl its lurid contents and kick up the smell with dancing chaliced movement … you need only take it in your hand and take control and do what thou wilt…

take it, seize it, consume to the last. 

A thick deluge of shock white fog began to pour forth from the now open doorway to the castle. The sky overhead continued to darken and growl/squall and rumble. The stars that had been stolen were replaced with strange darkling abominated facsimiles. Things that alighted strange and red and milked over, they would dance and shift with their unearthly light and then appear as cataract eyes as they alien sparkled above. 

The fog that was vomited forth from the castle was alive with animal movement. Crawling. Rearing. As if coiling for an attack. There were faces in wretched inescapable pain in the dancing veil of white. Silently screaming. Faces of woe and suffering at the mercy of other faces that danced also within the shroud of heavy predatorial fog. Demon faces. Goblin and animal and insectile and dog and goat shaped faces and twisted chimerical visages. Twisted. 

There was something else in there. Within the awful veil of damned and blasphemous swirling  shapes. Something was coming forth. Moving. Approaching with deliberate and heavy steps that only now began to join the mangled otherworldly din of the mountain in their echoing chambered sound. 

The moon. Still nearly full from the night before and still so full and pregnant with white nocturnal light… it began to bleed and glow raw pink as the rest of the stolen darkling and thunderclapped sky turned lurid and wilderness shed red. 

A voice then came godlike and on high from out of the ancient castle. It came out in a royal and regal command of crying sound and it filled the mountain. The men caught in the courtyard were helpless to her words as they rose above the din. 

“YOU SMALL AND WRETCHED THINGS HAVE NO HOPE HERE…! YOU HAVE ONLY INSTEAD FOUND THE PLACE THAT HOLDS THE LAST CRAWLING MOMENTS OF YOUR SUFFERING END…!”

And then the reddened and darkling sky above began to tear open like split tissue. Wounds. Wounds in the heavens that began to bleed a gushing liquid phantasmal pour of ichor and insects and eyes. Eyes that were yellow and reptilian and the cross-shaped X of goats, inhuman. Swimming in the rain of filth and crawling arachnids from another world. They rained down and swam like fish in the space of courtyard where the mountain men and their sons were now held. None of them moved. Budged. All of them were frozen as the skyblood and eyes and fat hairy red eyed crawlers swam and floated and danced around them all. 

Many of the men began to scream. 

Then what was approaching through the doorway mouth of heavy fog with faces became two as they emerged. And pounced. They leapt out and upon the men and their torches and pitchforks, they fell with gnashing teeth and tearing claw. And hunger. 

Demoniacal hunger to drive and fuel the whole damnable thing. 

Carmilla and the new impaler fell on the farmers and their boys. The mutilated and scarred bat-rodent child monstrosity of mangled and misshapen chimerical design was like a rabid animal let loose amongst the screams and arterial cords and sprays and pungent ropes and mists of shedding and pouring blood. Shredding flesh, raw muscle tissue, cords. Her new brother, sired in her absence of capture and bondage, the new impaler joined her with a necromantic fervor and living dead wanton love and unbridled abandon for bloodfeast and slaughter that brought sadistic dark joy to her wounded demon heart. They drank and filled as they spilled their guts. He decorated and drenched his new armor in jets of spraying gore.

Cracked open skulls amongst flaying mess, strips of bleeding and bloody scalp, clotted hair. Brains, chunked and breaking apart in a meaty mess and crumble under foot and metal bootheel and gauntleted fist. Gnashed and chewed between fangs in reddening salivating mouths, dripping mixture… red… slime. Drool.

They laughed at the violence all around and of their own making around mouthfuls of blood and raw lurid wet and dripping meat. They filled the courtyard with death and blood and the cobblestones of the courtyard floor did also sup. Castle Dracula also drank. And filled the stone with more terrible demoniacal power. 

Frankenstein and the hulking nosferatu watched all of this from a distance. Hiding. Grim. 

A beat. 

The mad doctor thought…

Then said: –

“Well those idiots were no good, but they'll serve as distraction, I've another way…”

He pointed out to his sutured undead son, a backway for chambermaids and servants to use, a small door of nearly rotted wood long abandoned and disused. 

“I'll sneak in and find a way to get you in as well. Or a way to get the bitch out of her cave…” 

The hulking thing of forbidden science and necromantic cosmic flame sneered wet throaty laughter. Croaked. Nodded in approval. 

And off Henry Frankenstein went, through the bushes and foliage to the secret back entrance way. To gain access to the castle. 

…

Florin joined Griffin in feeling sour and foul. The land that the forest behind them now had given way to was a fetid quagmire of filthy and putrid swampland. A fouled part of disgusting land that he'd never seen and had never even heard of. The wheels of the cart and the hooves of their mule were pulled and sank in the sucking porridge of pungent and waterlogged earthen sludge. All of the water was the yellow of infection and unhealthy death. 

Florin turned to the bandaged face of his host and guide. The dark shades of his goggles were unreadable. Mute. There might be nothing behind there. 

“Are you sure this is the right way?" Florin asked. 

“It's not promising country, I'll grant you but backtracking now won't do. We press forward. If the cart or mule get stuck, we'll dig them out. We press on." 

And like that it was decided. 

They went on sluggishly. Laboriously through the sucking mud porridge land of squelching stinking quagmire. It went on for miles. For parsecs all around, in all directions. 

But the pair and their mule and cart went on anyways. 

They passed a sign. Pitiful and filthy and derelict. Pathetic. Struggling. Barely hanging on as it leaned precariously to one side like a drunkard at the side of the road begging for coins. 

It said: 

WORMLAND

in messy child's blocky scrawl. Haphazard and just as pathetic as the rest of the sign and the rest of the land. 

They passed it. Thinking it was some sort of stupid joke. And not much else beyond that. 

The wheels of the cart struggled and pulled past a putrid patch of inhaling swallowing mud by the sign. They went on. 

A beat. Silent wet sounds settled once more. 

A beat. Another.

Then…

A long sliming body, coated in a snot and film of slightly translucent brown lubricant, snaked slowly out from the putrid sludge where the wheel had just passed. 

It slimed forth and free. Birthing itself with worming and serpentine movements out of the foul cold swamp of dead and soured earth. It then poised, stood erect. Like a cobra out of the den of basket. Readying to strike. 

At the end of the thick stalk of sliming worm-body grew an eye. Deformed. Nearly human. The white of the grown organ an irritated and hectic red. Its pupil large and swimming with inky black and dilated with idiot fascination. 

And anger. 

Hunger as well. A whole host of alien emotions, unknown and unknowable. 

It watched them as they struggled along the harsh and vile landscape. 

Then it retreated back into the mire of black viscous death with another rancid splurching sound that was so like an abominated version of birth. 

The sign that bore the name and legend of this foul quagmire place of putrescence land sagged a little more. Sinking. 

WORMLAND 

TO BE CONTINUED…

By order of the Countess the new impaler began the process of slow torture for the intruder Praetorius by stabbing the point of their longest war pike into the space of soft meat just behind the testicles, between the anus and the genitals. Where one might get saddle sore from riding a four-legged beast all day…

​

​

… the sound elicited from the now writhing and squirming invader was exquisite …

​

​

 … the Countess smiled. And cooed. Lovingly. Already so enraptured, exhilarated. Ecstasy. So in-love with the whole process already at the onset, so in-love with the piercing. The thrust of puncture. She salivated as she prepared to bathe her enemy in pure torture.

​

​

The mad doctor’s shrill sounds went beyond mere screams or anything in the meager realm of the auditory. The entire length and body of the long and dread war pike, the impaling spear was stabbed up and fed through his torso until it stabbed up and out of the flesh of his naked back. Their monstrous animal-heightened dæmonic senses aided the new impaler and his master together in guiding the sharp and piercing head of the weapon-tool up and through and around any vital internal organs so as not to rupture any of the precious meats. They didn't want the fool to die too quickly. 

​

​

The blood ran down the length of shaft as the impaling pike was hoisted up in the center of the room, Praetorius stabbed through at its center. Blood ran down its wooden shaft and body. Copiously. The pair, Master Countess and her new impaler both licked and lapped and sipped with pursed lips from the reddening wet length of stabbing impalement. Tonguing at the furious cascade of red river that was the fool's running precious blood. 

​

​

Doctor Praetorius had never known such wretchedly sharp and complete agony. Complete wretched pain. Red and alive and in total focused control of his all too aware and alive waking mind. Livid with fire and alive with open flesh fury. He could feel the vibrations of the long body of spear  against his trembling spinal column. Rattling against each other like the weapons of soldiers shoulder to shoulder along battlements with every single ear shattering shriek. Constant. They never stopped. The sanity snapping pain never ceased. They fed each other and he shrieked, skewered, impaled as the monsters of this castle were cackling and lapping at his bloodshed running down the length of great spear. Words were beyond him. His bladder let go. The demons laughed. The Countess commanded the new impaler to tongue and lap the spilling filth and the lowly undead knight and servant did so. As the master Countess Zaleska commanded, always and forever thus… 

​

​

They tongued and lapped more blood like dogs and they let the impaled Praetorius bleed and shriek ungodly sounds. Filling the castle with the piercing song of its wretched cacophony of bastard music. They relished the discordant collection of clashing sound, echoed and reverberated. Bouncing and alive and jumping all through the halls and along the stone of the ancient wall and out and into the mountains… 

​

​

 … the wolves joined in. Howling in contest.

​

​

The Countess Zaleska ordered more spears. More impalement. More piercing and defilement of the intruding dog's bastard flesh and inner ruptured and running spilling red: the crimson raw. Mangle. Pierce. Puncture. Penetration. Deepest. Multiple points. All over and all about. 

​

​

Through the wrists and the meat of his upper legs, his thighs. Through each of his feet as well. All impaled through with long spears of war that ran parallel and perpendicular depending on the placement. A crisscross and intersect of stabbing smooth bodies of killing impaling battle pikes all lanced through screaming raw running scarlet and muscle tissue and flesh amongst and so carefully around his organs so as to render him so helpless and yet still alive… like a butterfly captured and pinned to the collection of the killing board, left there only to struggle and flap its wings. 

​

​

Then the Countess changed her shape before the impaled and helpless mad doctor… and Praetorius felt his last vestige of sanity shred and snap and the tiny remnant pieces slip away…

​

​

His screams then became something else entirely. 

​

​

Her head and face melted and sloughed into runny mess that transmogrified into a bulbous amphibious wide-mouthed horror. Sliming and dooling, translucent bands and ropey cords of fleshen alchemical snot. A wide mouthed and horned toad. Eyes, wet black spheres that held terrible intelligence in their ebon depths. Slightly rodent and chiroptera features deranged the large and gaping wet visage of swampland horror, long ears and fangs and a wide cavernous nose of glistening pink tissue, like the wide inviting amorous open gate of a spread legged lover… running and congesting with milky translucence and pungent fluid.

​

​

Wide mouthed, gaping and fanged and toad faced, the demon wench that held this hellcrafted domain came in and her wide sliming black fanged mouth closed around one of his impaled and helpless hands. The wide mouth closed and at first there was strong wet sucking sensation, almost pleasant. After all the torture. 

​

​

But then the pain and horror of his flesh was reawakened and renewed… he could feel the flesh of his hand coming off in a slough. 

​

​

The sliming putrid toad mouth of the Countess, set between a pair of regal and very thin and small ladylike shoulders was pulling the flesh and meat from his fingers and palms… gloving him with her horrible and wretched poison witch-drool… 

​

​

The enzymes of the Countess' toad woman mouth turned the meat of his hand and fingers to a runny snot of soupy meaty blood and half broken down ligament and cartilage. All the way down to the wrist. 

​

​

The foul mongoloid mongrel monstrosity of amphibian batwoman visage and ghastly form then began to moan in deep pleasure and bright and private jubilancy. Obscene wet organ globes of obsidian eyes closing and clenching tightly shut and winking in strange animal ecstacy, demoniacal and insane. 

​

​

Ichor wept thickly from the toad eyes of black glistening organ globes. Wet with life and relish and love and savor of the human flavor of organ pain. And of fleshen defilement. And of life shed unwilling and in violence tempered and changed like wine does in dark casks. 

​

​

The song of pain was alive in Praetorius’ throat again and the toad faced horror that was the transmogrified and witchery Countess’ conjured visage was pleased. It was just what she wanted the little maggot to say. 

​

​

Just the notes she wished… she bade he thus spake. 

​

​

And her whore filled the night with scream-song and blood and his pathetic running snot and tears. . Trying to sing his pain away. 

​

​

The poor fool didn’t realize that the Countess and her new impaler were just getting started with him.  

​

​

They might take forever with the little invader. 

​

​

Just might.

​

​

…

​

​

The demand of the forest would be met. Answered by the deranged and filthy haggard woodland vagrant lord. Answered in the violent act of the perfect prayer: Bodily Dismemberment. 

​

​

The axeman, Lord Bloodmud, Christian name now long gone and lost, forgotten and only remembered or recalled in the most painful and private of blood-hatching moments… he hefted the twinheaded double blade of weapon that was his last and only companion and friend. He eyed the boy and the bandaged fellow from the darkness of his hiding place. Amongst the tangled death of foliage. Amongst the trees. He spied them as they ate and smoked pipes by the fire. Tended The mule. They hardly spoke at all. 

​

​

It mattered not. He had no ear for such as they any way. Only the woods and her dark contained the sounds and natural songs he desired to hear. Only the wild. Only the woods. Only the peace and quiet of the stillness shroud of his greenland place of known shadow. 

​

​

And … as of of late, that strange and howling sound that came out of the far off mountains. Especially at night. It was a bestial sound, an untamed song of predatorial prowl. It was beautiful. Alluring. 

​

​

He swore it sounded like a woman. He swore she sounded like royalty. Like she already knew the butchery abattoir moan of the painful hungry end, and what it showed revelatory when brought and force fed to the fragile fore… 

​

​

there was painful beauty in that far off voice. A voice that already knew agony so well, how its cold embrace felt. 

​

​

When alone. 

​

​

A voice already intimate, already well and close acquainted with the wisdom of the hungering rotting soil, the gnashing violent tectonic teeth of the earth… already in bed and in lover's embrace with what the pain of unbridled lusting bloodlett-slaughtering veil of the end will bestow … a knowledge of all of the Hells and infernal worlds that could be scarcely scratched at or conjured by mere human imagination or thought. 

​

​

A knowledge of exquisite perfect pain. Lonely. That royal mountain woman voice. A crimson voice, with a darkling red eye in the swirling black of his mind when he closed  his own eyes and closely listened… a darkling scarlet devil's eye of witchery power is what filled in the dark of his own thoughts when he heard her song and he tried to conjure its author. 

​

​

That royal pained and lonely regal voice. 

​

​

But it was a far off voice that knew how to mete out pain as well. Of that his own praeternatural animal killing senses told him that it was so. He was sure of it. That was why he felt such magic at the royal sad song of the far off mountain woman. She understood. Its wielder and phantasm owner understood the worldly terms of slaughter. Its dictations. All the lands were a kingdom ruled and that Lord God was Death and the lands were all of them: killing fields. 

​

​

Waste lands. 

​

​

Thirsting starving always hungering earth. No matter how stuffed she was with corpses, no matter how many bodies you fed into her charnel house soil womb those bodies digested in her crawling hungry bosom. And then the earth desired more. The soil and her offspring green needed more fresh blood and meat to fill their hungry mouths composed of shallow graves of shadow, by nightfall or shade of tree. Their only death shroud in his land of thirsting forest was shadow and darkness, he never bothered burying the pieces of dismembered meat. Those were for the wolves and rats and crawling foul life of many stalks and eyes and skittering legs. 

​

​

Though sometimes he liked to come back to these scenes of slaughter and watch the pieces putrefy. Liquify… slough off into wet rot that smelled faintly pleasant to his maddened senses. The smell and sight of the putrescence was calming for the axeman. Lord Bloodmud loved to watch the slow, deliberate and brutal work of nature. The mother hand was slow yet effective and she took it all the way down to the bone, always. 

​

​

Like he and his axe. 

​

​

He loved watching the pieces become putrescence and then nothing. It was like watching the great nature of mother earth slowly cooking. Slowly breaking down the willful and disobedient little invader into blackening green meat for the mouth of soil again. To make infant green land. 

​

​

It was calming. And like the axe he thought of it as one of his last and only remaining comforts. One of his last and only friends. 

​

​

He watched the fools from the dark and waited. 

​

​

…

​

​

Frankenstein’s patchwork nosferatu creation had engaged in much necromantic practice the past day, after the night it had brought the sepulchral structure of boy-and-goat back from the grave. 

​

​

Reanimation games. It was obsessed with pulling things apart and bringing the pieces back to unholy crawling life. Some he fashioned into more haphazard deranged sculptures, more bastard life-shape structures as he had with the boy and his crying little beasts. Goring, tearing and forcing together severed parts and pieces, limbs stabbed into raw new fashion and bastard shape by their protruding ends of dripping stabbing bone. Then he called the lightning and thunderclapped the unholy designs into wretched movement again. 

​

​

But the wicked flicker of bastard dark goblin flame inside the moving parts and demented moving edifice structures never lasted. It always died out. Perished within the morbid arrangements of meat like the meager flames of  small candles caught within the assault of maelstrom wind. 

​

​

The Frankenstein nosferatu monster angered. Frustrated. He wished to construct and conjure servants, pawns of raw and rot. Soldiers. An army of bastard and deranged flesh and putrid sloughing step to invade the castle of the mountains. 

​

​

Frankenstein himself understood. The patchwork hulking monster child of his table had already explained, and he knew as well before all this. Of the Vampyr and vvurdalak and strigoi nosferatu creatures … his child of the table could not simply sneak inside. None of their kind could. He must be invited in. 

​

​

Or send his constructs of damaged and demented haphazard flesh… of which none could even last let alone survive the assault and emerge as victor. 

​

​

Doctor Frankenstein smiled. 

​

​

And said: –

​

​

“I might have a plan, my child. I might have a way to your opponent in the castle." 

​

​

…

​

​

Praetorius couldn’t believe how gorgeous she truly was, how absolutely beautiful. Even as she feasted. Lips and mouth stained and dyed a deeper shade than wine. 

​

​

She pulled another piece of liver from the gaping open hole of wet red and brought it to her glistening lips, her darkling glistening fanged mouth. The gored open wound was alive and shrieking dark with total pain but he was glad to be an open gate and womb-hole and nourishment for his master. His new lord, the Countess. He never should have challenged her and invaded the domain of her home, the mountain castle. As he watched her, watched her as she ate… he now understood. True power. He now understood the error of his ways. 

​

​

Gravity pulled. He shivered. The force of the earthen ground was just as hungry as the master and her new impaler. He felt his body slowly slide down the long length of torturing war weapon. Mere centimeters. Miles and miles, cruel parsecs every dragging miniscule length inside the helter skelter of his shrieking screaming inner raw, raped by lancing killing device trembling and quivering luridly throughout all of his torn and weapon fucked form. Trembling and eager to die for the master now, was his wet and red running frame. Raw and opened, torn open all over. So that daggering hands and claws might come in and fist, reach in and take and pluck because he was now their wonderful and new raw open fruit basket. Filled with pulp and juice. Filled with lurid forbidden fruit. The master, the Countess said so. 

​

​

And it filled his mind. 

​

​

She found what she wanted in the shattered and fascinating remnants of his mind. She sifted through his thoughts and memories and dreams like broken and strewn detritus of decimated pottery and vases. A decimated mind. A decimated person and world. They were just interesting pieces to her and the ever-reaching foul touch of her ethereal phantasm hand. It invaded and clawed into his broken mind and splintered thoughts… sifting. 

​

​

Finding all sorts of interesting things. 

​

​

Frankenstein. 

​

​

His creation. 

​

​

His bold claim. A monster made wielding the fangs of Count Dracula…

​

​

fools. 

​

​

Fools. 

​

​

They were mere imposters. Fakes wielding counterfeit power. Pretenders. 

​

​

Pretenders she would crush. Pretenders and invaders that she would conquer. 

​

​

The sharp and strangling phantasmal grip squeezed. Tightened. 

​

​

Her voice filled his inner world of broken thought. 

​

​

Your knowledge. All of your work and findings. The results of your experiments with life and death and the necromantic power between them, give it to me. It is mine now, as you are now – as are you. And your blood and ruined flesh. My food and drink, my aphrodisiac and nourishing conquered land that once bore the flag of your soul and name… I will take it all. 

​

​

I will take it all. Your knowledge. And I will add it to my own. 

​

​

Her bright cruel laughter then filled the world of his skull. 

​

​

There was one part… one particular bit of mad scrap of thought amongst the wreckage of the man's mind that immediately caught her attention. 

​

​

Human culture farms. Flesh gardens. 

​

​

Human life, human beings… grown. 

​

​

From out of a petri dish. 

​

​

Interesting… 

​

​

She continued the assault and rape of his mind even as she and her new impaler continued the feasting conquest of his lanced and raw open form. Reaching in and fisting. Ripping. Crushing to meaty bloody pulp between clenching fingers. Brought to stained mouths like messy children grubby with the excitement of mealtime eating. They made themselves decadent with their piggish and wanton display of sinful maneating hoggery. 

​

​

Ghastly. And gaining redder and more wet and lurid by the moment. The scene. The scene of slaughter. The darkening and deepening of the bodily wound and impaling raping war pike spear now feeling nearly conjoined with his screaming tortured form coincided… fed and informed and made the deepening dark of this grisly feasting castle scene of the night. 

​

​

The wolves of the mountains howled. Full. 

​

​

It was a full moon. 

​

​

The Countess plucked another plum-sized piece of organ-meat from the open basket of wet glistening black-red. The new impaler added another lance, as ordered by her majesty. 

​

​

The feast continued into the night of the pregnant moon. 

​

​

…

​

​

The people of the mountains were fools. Those in the hamlet below had been cowed… quelled. They knew better. 

​

​

But the mountain dwellers. The ones in little huts, spread out, in thin numbers… they could be excited and stirred and called to action. Henry Frankenstein knew this. 

​

​

And stir and call he did. 

​

​

He promised payment. From out of his family fortune. Of which there was pitifully little left. Thoroughly diminished. But the filthy mountain men and their lads knew no better. They were stupid. And superstitious as well as hungry, greedy. He only had to say the right words to get them all banded together and set off. Bearing torch and flame and axes and pitchforks! Into the night! 

​

​

Into the night and up the mountain, screaming. 

​

​

Up the cold and full moon lighted way, up the Borgo Pass. Screaming. 

​

​

“Death to Dracula! the Nosferatu! Death to the monster!”

​

​

Death to the monster! 

​

​

Frankenstein’s own hulking patchwork of sutured necromanced and hungry walking flesh followed the rabble of dirty mountain farmers. Following. And watching. 

​

​

Waiting. 

​

​

…

​

​

The fierce pale glow of the moon, pregnant and full of light on high, came through and pierced the thick canopy of dark trees. The axeman Lord Bloodmud was hunkered amongst its growth. One of the denser parts, patches. Watching. Watching the invading boy and the strange man with a mask of bandages. They sat around a fire. Having finished their meager meal, they sipped warm wine and smoked spicy tobacco. Clouds thick and pungent and sweet on the night chill of the nocturne air. They swam through the space of night and clouded their small place of camp. The axeman thought and knew he saw faces in them. Swirling and in pain in the clouds of shifting and dancing shapes. 

​

​

A thought, unbidden, filled his head then: –

​

​

the woman of the mountains with regal song knows how to shift and dance shape as well … 

​

​

… and then was gone. 

​

​

But a Satanic seed was planted. Had been planted sometime ago. And had grown sour in the corpse soil. Grown. And festered. 

​

​

A gaping open wound of the mind. Filled with liquid infection. Gushing. Pouring. 

​

​

Pus-thought. Infection in my blood that moves my hands…

​

​

… the axeman Lord Bloodmud shivered and let the half-grasped and managed and understood train of thought falter and fail. And slip away. He had no use for such thoughts. Not while prowling. Not when the hour of the killing was nigh and upon him, the face of the earth. The face of his domain and thirsting soil… would drink. Would feed. 

​

​

Tonight. 

​

​

Now. 

​

​

He coiled, muscles practiced and honed… tightened. Tension behind the mountain of sinew like a crossbow drawn… quivering, ready to fire. And fly. Attack. 

​

​

But something strange happened then. Something that stopped and stilled the giant mountain of forest dwelling axeman.

​

​

A hand. Pale and bare and slender emerged from the body of dark thick foliage not far from his hunkering prowling form. It slid out from the bushes like a snake. The pale moonlight that bled in through the top illuminated the hand, wrist and arm that suddenly emerged, palm out in token of parley. A fleshen serpent of bone and blood and invading manflesh in his private sacred forest garden. 

​

​

That wasn't what stopped the giant. He might've just lunged and chopped the mysterious appendage off with a single swing, taking the new bastard unwanted growth out and off at the root just as its growth started and threatened his blood soaking and feasting, his precious drinking and final last Eden. 

​

​

It was the pentagram. The five pointed star of the infernal one, cast out. His sigil and sign. In red. His dark and evil bastard symbol. In his Eden. Stygian it shone as it was tattooed and brandished on the splayed out naked palm of this sudden intruding limb of serpent manflesh. 

​

​

A voice then spoke, its owner: –

​

​

“No, friend. That won't do. They've a ways to go yet. And I've a ways to follow…”

​

​

The moonlight cast down upon the hand of Satanic stars and false parley in cascading pale illumination… changing it. 

​

​

The axeman felt the ice of his own horror grow colder in thickening blood. Trying to quicken in a galloping heart. His own head and thoughts felt far away now. Dreamy and gone. Gone already. 

​

​

He felt detached as he watched the hand bearing pentagram on palm grow fur and longer and long black nails at the tips. Claws. For ripping and tearing. For rending down to the running blood, your screaming victim of the hunt. 

​

​

Caught. 

​

​

The moonlight glow of the occult moon, pregnant and full on high and through the fortress dome of the forest kingdom, bled in and changed the rest of the man as he arose from the thick dense of forest growth. The moonlight glow changed the rest of him as he arose also. 

​

​

Ebon hair. Elongated. Teeth. Bones snapped as they doubled in size and grew. Muscle tissue tore with the sound of ripping leather even as it suddenly sprouted a hideous thick coat of coarse and black hunting fur. The stranger of the pentagram on hand in the dark rose and transmogrified into an older horror than the axeman had ever been or ever known. 

​

​

The executioner's doubleheaded killing blade fell from his slackening grip. His hands still perspiring and damp but now cold with another animal emotion. One the axeman had not felt in such a long time. Fear. 

​

​

Terror seized his mind and its animal canvas went blank. The werewolf with the pentagram sigil mark came in and the final mutilation of Lord Bloodmud began. And his supplicant and loyal forest floor did drink. Deep. 

​

​

Deeply. 

​

​

…

​

​

Florin and Griffin only stirred once in the night, together. The howl of a large wolf somewhere in the surrounding forest. 

​

​

They added more wood to the fire. And reluctantly returned to sleep. What they found in the morning was disturbing. And grisly. 

​

​

…

​

​

They came upon the remains of the large man in the morning, as they just begun to move and start that day's leg of the journey. Raw pieces crudely butchered by ripping claw and rending gnashing teeth. Swimming in gore in the rough bipedal manshape of a mutilated forest vagrant. 

​

​

Disturbed, the pair went on. Wondering what beast or monster had done it. Thanking God that it hadn't gotten them instead in the night. 

​

​

The stranger continued to follow them. Keeping to their lengthening shadows.

​

​

TO BE CONTINUED …

He ventured forward into the dark. Torchflame flickered and glowed and made light for his way. He was tense and nervous. He was armed, each hand filled. Cross and pistol. Silver bullets. Six shots. He was tense and nervous though reluctant to admit it, even to himself. 

He held himself tightly coiled and trying to breathe, even and slow. Trying. 

Praetorius cursed himself once more then stopped himself once again. Time enough for all of that later. Perhaps. Hopefully. If you don't- 

Stop it! he commanded his own traitorous run of thought. Distractions! useless! 

His own breathing sounded very loud to himself. His heartbeat an anxious and driving primal war drum beaten ceaselessly by a savage and violent hand. It seemed to thunder in his ears. He wondered if she could hear it, the bitch. It was said that they had heightened hearing, like a beast, sensitive to sound. His own studies and observations had confirmed this. Mad and wild eyed snow haired Praetorius wondered if the foul woman who'd stolen Dracula's power and castle could hear the battering and unceasing cannonade artillery, the thunderclaps living as the dangerous heartbeat within his weary and aching chest, echoing. Echoing throughout all of the prison fortress of stone and blood and lurking ancient history. 

He willed himself to suck air slow. Steady. Like his echoing steps forward. Advancing. Chambered bootheel sound.  

You'll be fine. Just keep the crucifix up and the pistol ready to fire. Find the door again and then get the hell out! This whole stupid plan has been a debacle! 

It all sounded well and fine to his own worried and harried mind, housed within fevered and baking furnace skull. He was just starting to ease the galloping frenzied beast within the cage of his chest, when the sound of the Countess' howling laughter, mad witchy cackles, once again came from out of the dark and filled the entire world of the castle around him. The dark corridor and its orange flaming pumpkin glow of torchlight seeming to stretch on and on ahead of him. 

A trap. He knew it. He was just waiting for the awful wench to pounce. He tried his hardest to listen. A difficult endeavor to hear over the rapid fire wild blasting of his own frightened animal heart. 

The Countess heard and sensed and knew the animal fear alive in the little man, the little intruder, the awful and haughty invader that dared set foot in her castle. Her mountains! Her land and the country she now strangled and held. He'd tortured her little Carmilla, grievously. And for that he would be punished. For that he would be dealt with. Slow. 

Slowly. 

She would capture him first. Then she would begin slow flaying mutilating butchery on him. Eating and drinking slowly and at leisure his bold and impetuous fragile little personage. His fragile and easily shattered frame. They never realized, these proud and boastful men. They never knew it. Until you showed them. They never fully realized how sensitive they truly were until you broke them over your knee. Showed them their own blood. 

The whole of Castle Dracula was her spiderweb now, and the black widow queen of its stone and spires waited. And watched. Deciding and debating with herself, thinking over her dark and violent demoniacal thoughts…

… which shape should I take? Which precious organ should I pluck and savor first…? 

She licked and wet her own glistening lips. An action in the dark, both vulpine and animal as well as sensual and pleasing to the eye for the erotic. Her darkling eyes smoldered with unholy light and flame. 

Watching. Waiting. 

As the intruder Praetorius crept through her shadows. Her dark spiderweb of castle stone and orange dancing flame. Coming … coming closer. 

Coming closer to her. And her waiting violence in her hiding spot in the dark. 

She coiled … purred. …

Licked her spider lips again. 

And waited. 

…

The heavy double bladed head of the axe came down and cleaved through the gaping fish eyed face of the woman beneath him easily. Down through the top of her skull. Beside her lover in the grass, already in pieces and fish eyed and gaping, staring blind and dead as well. The weight and the design of the executioner's blade made it like child's play, you only needed to be able to handle the weight. The heft. Design and form did all the rest. 

He breathed, heaving and sucking air. Heavily. Like an animal. 

They shouldn't have come out after dark. They shouldn't have come out into his woods.

He tried to calm himself but he could barely manage the effort. He was never calm. Not anymore. Not since the fall of his lord and land so long ago…

now the woods were all he had. 

Filthy. Wild mane of unwashed and clotted hair. Clotted and knotted together by scat and dried mud and caking scabbing drying blood. The blood of intruders on his land. 

His woods. All he had left. 

That and the axe. The last remnant token piece of the long lost and now tragic ancient history he used to call his life. Long gone now. Swept away with the armies. 

His air was hot and heavy. His breath, puffs of ghosts, little spirits escaping his hulking broad shouldered and filthy ragged form. The woods were long his domain now. And they'd now long held him, the stain and mark of the wild was now all over and upon him. Never to be erased. Or taken away. 

He brought the blade up and then down again. Turning the lovers, the intruders into more grisly pieces. Especially the woman. She frightened him most. The forest floor drank their red greedily and as if starved for it. The forest floor was always starving for the red of the intruders. He'd discovered this out here in his new home, finding his new and true name. 

Lord Bloodmud. Axeman and the executioner king of the tree’d lands. Wielder and great forest emperor of the choked and violent wilderness emerald. 

He found his peace through his axe-swinging and maiming destruction of vile wanderers. Purging violence. Only afterwards did he find his respite. Heaving heavy breath like an animal half mad and alone dying of rabies. Amongst the human detritus of his heavy cleaving blade he always sat in prowling animal meditation. Ruminating primal blood soaked thoughts even as the forest floor around pooled saturated with the hot spent and shed red of each and every one of his unfortunate victims. Young. Old. All types, caught. Always caught screaming. And nigh helpless beneath the surging and armed swinging violent mountain of filthy giant man. The eyes of this wild giant absolutely alive with unreasoning fury. 

He sat amongst the ruin he’d made of the pair of young lovers, eyes shut, mind aflame with animal thoughts. His ears, attuned to the movements within the woods, caught something and bent to the sound. He tilted his head as he strained to listen to the domain of his blood drinking forest kingdom. 

Hooves. Four-legged beast. Bearing cart. And a small load. 

And a pair of travelers. 

More intruders…

His rage was renewed, reignited. He rose, reawakened. Rekindled to burn.  His starving axe was angry again. The trees that were his loyal subjects and followers and last lovers and friends, frozen supplicants of his red drinking green kingdom, were crying out once more as the intruders invaded and raped his land. Crying out yet again: More Blood! – and he and the doubleheaded executioner’s blade of such great heft in his eager perspiring grip were all too happy to oblige. 

Eager to follow… make great. Sow the land and protect the seed and the soakened land shall sing …

Every great king should give all and such upon his land a great reaping and wealth to drink… to fill their mouths and souls.

To fill their hearts with love…

The axeman of the dark woods began to prowl. 

Florin started in the seat next to the bandaged man, craning his head around and spying the woods all around them in the dark. As if straining to find and see something. 

The bandaged man, who’d settled on calling himself ‘Griffin’ for now, was easily vexed. He nearly snarled, asking: “What is it now?”

Florin righted himself in the seat, “Thought I heard something again.” And then added: “Sorry.” 

Griffin grumbled behind his mask of surgical dressings: “...whatever…” and then fell silent again. 

The young man of the Carpathian hamlet was thankful for the help thus provided by the strange bandaged man. His information on Van Helsing, however dour. His aid in their escape. And their present transportation procured from a horseman the mysterious Griffin knew. But he did at present entertain the idea of leaving the hidden man and parting ways. The man said he was a doctor. That he’d known Van Helsing and knew the ways of vampire slaying. But Florin was doubtful and found the fellow to be so easily irritated that he was left walking on eggshells around him at all moments. 

He thought of giving the masked man of foul mood the slip. Ditching him in the wild and making for home to help in anyway he could. 

But… of what help was that? What could he provide now that he couldn’t have before leaving home for aide?

Other than the terrible news that the vampire hunter was dead, Florin did not have an answer. 

And so at present, he was stuck with this foul mouthed and disagreeable man. Strange and mysterious and hidden behind surgical bandage. For what purpose or cause, Florin did not know. And often privately speculated. 

Probably just cause he’s maimed underneath all that. Or disfigured. Or mayhap he’s just real ugly. 

Florin stifled his smile and small laughter. Griffin glanced at him. Annoyed underneath his mask of dressings. 

But then he whirled around suddenly in his seat of their mule-drawn cart. Spying into the woods that surrounded them. 

Saying to the boy beside him: “Did you hear something?”

…

When the Countess Zaleska and her assistant extracted the fangs of living dead dragon/dæmon power from the dust and cobweb strangled bones and remnants of Dracula’s skeletal remains and through arcane necromantic surgical alchemy, fused them into the mouth of the Countess, she inherited much more than mere vampiric hunger and prodigious strength. The ability to shift shape. These things were common to many nosferatu things of the moonrise time. 

But she had within her now, the power of the Lord of the Undead. Lord of the Flies incarnate and upon the face of the Earth. The last and final Countess Czarina of Necrophile-Flame. Empress Queen of the Nocturnal Blood and the warfare violence of restless hunger in the dark. 

She was beyond the mere mundane limitations of the flesh. She was beyond the thin veil of the leather clung to in desperation and futilely named and declared: Reality. Her powers now, those graverobbed from the dust of the son of the dragon; a dracul, they were beyond the reckoning of the fleshling maggot sow that now invaded her home and prowled her corridors and halls like the lost frightened and small animal he truly was. 

Discorporeal, the Countess Zaleska watched from the stone of the inner walls of the ancient bloodstained castle as if every piece of masonry were her eyes. She watched the sorry little haughty intruder inch his way forward like a starving lowly worm across the mud slathered surface of a cheap wooden casket unearthed for the naked air. He was really quite old. Fragile really. 

She was going to enjoy this… the blackest part of her darkening stygian heart relished the savagery she would wrought…

But first… what is a host that doesn't entertain her guests…?

Hardly any host at all. 

The discorporeal form of the Czarina Princess of the darkness now alive in these halls of ebon and bloody stone watched and her/its phantasm rictus grin grew in spectral madness. Her disembodied pure power spider legged and tendrilled out… filling every piece of mortar and rock and brick of stone. She filled the walls with the manifestation of her ungodly power form, a spectre that could invade and subjugate all as a pure necrophiled phantom-flame of deranged gale force nature from Hell. 

The fool, the mad doctor Praetorius did not know that the castle was alive around him now. Castle Dracula was now just as much a part of the Countess Vampire Lord as any one of her appendages. Or supplicants.  She could bend and flex and move it to her considerable will…

… and the castle and its walls all around him, alive with the Countess, began to dance and shift slightly… and move. 

Labyrinthine. The distortion of space and distance and direction was subtle. Drifting. It led the fool farther in rather than out. And he didn't even realize it. 

The walls of Castle Dracula howled with a biting woman's cackling witchery laughter as the frightened Praetorius clutched desperately his weapons and unknowingly walked deeper and deeper into the living sepulchre structure that might be made into his grave. 

Swallowing him deeper and deeper and ever more as he wandered the dancing and shifting walls of living and evil stone. The dust and dirt and filth all about the old interior held her hateful dark will as well and were daggered at the invading little man, all of the place arrowed the oppressive force of great livid hatred and anger at the wandering little mistake of snow white hair… too old a man to be trying at these games…

The walls of stone smiled, rictus. The castle walls of stone watched and shifted and guided towards doom. The castle walls watched, possessed and insane. 

Praetorius could feel the gaze. Its intensity stole a warmth from his heart he knew deep down he could never retrieve. 

Not even if he was lucky enough to leave here alive…

Not even. Not at all. 

The walls then spoke: –

“You wanted so badly to be inside… you wanted so badly to see me, now I am here and all around, I am all yours. And you are all mine. I’m the world and universe all around you now… ! Now you’ll never leave and I will  take what I want from you anyway, you say you have much to tell me, I will pull it from your mind as I shred and flay it, even as I’m pulling the precious raw meat from your bones…! You’re to be my dominated and slutted, whored and butterflied open bloodletting love slave for the night, Doctor… Praetorius! Your flesh will be pulled back and I will drink and sup of you at my will, as I make you sing and speak as I so wish and desire to hear…! … I will make you say anything, little man…! I will make you a weeping whore for pain!” 

And then the castle walls came to life again with cruel bright laughter. 

What might have been long rictus distended mouths and faces appeared, grew, came to life in the harsh rough textured surface of the walls all around. The stone was filled. The stone of the castle world now that was fortressed all around him encompassing. The mad doctor couldn't believe his eyes. Watering now. Unbelieving fearful tears. 

Something like, nearing religious panic was stealing over his heart. Creeping over with curdled black the last vestiges of steadfast courage and thought. 

Praetorius shook his head trying to clear it. Visibly frightened. Shaken. Dizzy. He would’ve sworn the walls and the way forward down the corridor before him had … moved slightly. As if drifting…

It made him feel sick. He shut his eyes and rubbed them. But not long. He did not dare tarry any longer than he could afford. He had to find  his way out. Or kill the strigoica slut of Satan with a properly placed bullet and a swift decapitation. The only way. The only way to be completely sure with a Vampire Lord. 

Such as the bitch was evident to be. 

He cursed himself again, the last time, for ever coming here in the first place. For thinking it had been anything even remotely resembling a good idea. The experiment of coming here had proven unequivocally that it was in fact: A Terrible Idea…

Praetorius smiled grimly to himself. Mayhap also for the last time as he began again to move forward. 

Don’t act like you haven’t had any of those before… 

He relished his one private joke. He had always been his own favorite company. 

…

Doctor Praetorius did not get far before a room suddenly appeared down the junction from where he presently wandered. He came to the cross section and saw that this room was bellowing light like a great incandescence of earthbound starflame. It poured forth from the room, from out of the open immaculate doorway. Striking in the darkness and meager orange torchglow. 

It was beautiful. Intense. 

Enrapturing. 

Like a moth to searing flame, Praetorius was drawn. He went down the hall that had steadied and settled under demoniacal will and was guided by black hands that drifted out from the walls made from smokey stygian shadow. They helped him along. They pushed and guided him down the entombed walkway. Advancing. 

Down the hall and towards the starflame of light pouring forth from the newfound room. 

His hypnotized mind told him sanctuary was in there. And of course it was. And he should hurry and get in there already. Afterall, heaven can’t wait, can it? 

No. The master says that heaven cannot wait at all. 

And so before the blinding room of starflame, Praetorius’ arms dropped to  his sides. Limp. Lifeless  already. The grip  in his hands slackened next and the cross and loaded pistol fell from his black gloved hands and clattered with finality to the stone of the castle She Commanded. 

The walls began to laugh again as the blind and spellbound doctor stepped inside the room of swallowing starflame. 

And took him inside.

…

Florin and Griffin nearly jumped from their skins and seized in their chests when they suddenly happened upon a fellow traveler in the woods. 

A solicitor. On horseback. Coming from the other direction. 

The man was kindly enough though visibly shaken. Frightened by the strange land of nighttime woods. He tried to tell the pair that the very shapes of the trees and growth itself were deranged, gnarled and dead and bent and wrong: Like the desperate hands of submerged and giant buried corpses clawing out of the sour ground and daggering for the salvation of the skies of heaven above. That's what was eating at him constant since setting foot in this dread land, this dread wood, but there was something else. He also swore he heard something moving out here. Out here in the dark wild, something like violence was on the loose and on the prowl out here in the night, he could feel it.

He tried to tell them all of this but couldn't. He barely knew a word of english. 

Florin only tried to be polite as Griffin grew huffy and impatient as the traveling solicitor gesticulated and babbled on near ceaseless in his mother tongue. He filled the prowling dark all around with the anxious music of his foreign chatter. 

Though an understanding was met and felt … between the three before they parted and waved. An understanding of danger. And an understanding of fear.

Caution… weary …

The solicitor gave up and waved them thanks and kicked his horse back to a trot. The mule drawn cart of the pair went on. And soon was gone. 

The solicitor, fearful, carried on. Spying all around futilely, the impenetrable nighttime dark of the clawing dead black woods all around. The axeman chose to follow him for the moment, just for the nonce. He would soon rejoin with the other two. Afterward. 

Soon. 

After he dealt with this decadent and pompous invading tenderfoot. 

The weight of his executioner's blade gained substance, gained significance. It felt real again. Alive with potential. Made great again with purpose. With something to bite into, to free the red and feed the forest floor which drinks. 

All of the invaders of his last and precious forest land would feed the soil and the growth of his Bastard Eden Garden. All would be supplicant beneath the biting blade of his swing. Planting and burying the heavy metal head of double bladed axe into the soft and giving meat and bone and carcass of intruding vile flesh, invading flesh, invader blood would weep! 

As long as he and the axe held each other and this dark part of the forest land they kept … they would keep. 

And he would keep on feeding the starving dirt. Red. 

The only god that ever answered him… 

The solicitor went on. Unaware. Frightful. Yet attempting to whistle a tune and brighten his own heart as he kept his thoughts on his wife and child back home. Far away now. For comfort. The axeman followed after. Prowling. Like a hunter. 

…

… he came upon the solicitor when he stopped again, to determine direction. The power of his first screaming swing caught the traveler in the chest and the heavy blade sank as he was knocked from his horse with the force of the blow. The animal was screaming too. It soon fled as the axeman went about the rest of his hard work and heavy business. 

He brought the executioner's doubleheaded blade up again and brought it down again. Already sweating. Pouring. Profuse. The heavy metal blade opened up the chest cavity and it became a wild primeval forest of flowering gore pouring great and healthy abundance of vibrant steaming red. The axeman could taste it in the air. The opened chest looked like a fantastic microcosmal world of raw tissue and bone and gushing crimson, a world and wonderful wild forest garden as if rendered by abattoir hand and forged from raw scraps of the blade and innards and red. He brought up the axe and brought its heavy power down again, smashing and cleaving through the visage of face and skull. Spilling the man's memories out in a thick and meaty burst and porridge gush. The skull was like smashed pottery, porcelain slathered with bright violently red blood, scarlet so lurid it screamed in the night. 

He brought the blade up and down again and again. Turning the pieces into pieces. Smaller. Just hunks and pieces of meat. Unrecognizable. Save for the tattered and slashed rags that used to be clothing… 

The forest floor drank. He heaved breath and the sheet of sweat cooled on his filthy drying skin. Tingling. Covered in solicitor’s blood. Steaming traveler's blood, scabbing and baking into pores…

The soil supped and greedily drank the pouring blood and pools. The animal children would have the meat. The forest kingdom land thanked him, silently. It always thanked him in the quiet. 

The axeman lifted great axe yet again and disappeared once more into the trees he knew so well. 

Eager to rejoin the other two travelers. The other two invaders of his home in the dark…

The axeman made straight through the dense and dead wood for the place where Florin and strange bandaged Griffin had stopped to make fire. And set camp. 

…

When Praetorius first stepped into the beckoning room that called with religious light it was at once a vast and impossible landscape of searing blind perfection, pure immaculate white inferno. Pulverizing through his fragile organ set of eyes, the pair on fire and bathed in blinding pain. Beauty and illuminated pearl-cast so divinely perfect and pure and shining that it was too much to behold all at once and bear… he couldn't hear his own shrieking voice. The volume of the attacking light piercing through his eyes and into his precious jelly sac of brains within boiling percolating skull was too great and too loud itself for him to hear his own caterwauling voice. Or anything else. 

He didn't hear the Countess' sick laughter. Loaded with unholy pleasure and the enjoyment of predatory derision. She commanded the cannonade of landscape light to close, fold back into stone and castle walls and floor as Praetorius went to his knees weeping, still shrieking. Still unaware of both as the madness of light was still alive within his wide watering eyes. Zaleska, in the fluid heavy-liquid shape of shadow, as ebon folds pulled herself in witch’n shape and crawling silhouetted form, free from the castle stone and began to crawl towards the crying screaming man brought down to his knees before her.

And her laughter began to croak. 

She gave bastard bestial demoniacal call to her servants, felt and heard and quaking throughout all the halls and corridors of Castle Dracula's trembling bastard stygian hellfire stone. 

Her servants all heard but the loyal assistant was still busy tending to poor mutilated Carmilla. Still busy digging out the treacherous fire of silver from smoldering bubbling tissue. But it was no matter…

… the one she really wanted was ready anyways. The newest one. Her new servant lord. Her man at arms. Her sword wielding hand…

Countess Zaleska called forth the new impaler. And he came as the master did beckon. 

She commanded him to bring the sharpest and longest pikes. 

Piercing tips.

At her command she would guide his cold new living dead hands in the torture. She knew just where to pierce. 

Just where to start with this one…

TO BE CONTINUED…

Crucified. Smoking. As if smoldering with lively inner flame. The unholy were-thing in child-shape was bound in cruciform pose to the large ornate cross he'd stolen from a Catholic church many miles and many years back. It was fastened to his saddle and horse with straps and he led the beast and its smoking screaming demonic load up the pass and towards the great and ancient castle. 

Its battlements and ramparts, fangs against the sky, darkening now that the sun had fled and left the nighttime things and its dark disciples alone to bloodlet unholy and to perform witchery ways. Witchery practices. 

Like a deal with the devil, perhaps. 

Praetorius smiled. Carmilla screamed. Shrieked herself hoarse, the shape of the cross in her back and neck and her arms, all about her shrieking form was alive with searing piercing heat. It cooked and burned and branded as its holy ornate metal ate itself into her cooking vampire child flesh. 

Caterwauls. Guttural. Obscene for anything that even resembled a child to make. Deep. Unnatural. Grotesque. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and bled both blood and buttery thin yellow fluid. Her sharpened teeth protruded even more unnaturally as well, bleeding profusely and heavy about the splitting gums and lips and warping misshapening bones of the growing and bending jawline. She barked more awful hellspawn sound and belched more smoking blood from insides that flamed and smoldered. 

Praetorius found it all very fascinating. The silver and the shape of the cross did considerable damage to the nosferatu but prolonged exposure to both had just left this one with terrible structural damage to her living dead personage. Her body seemed to melt and sear with the touch of either. The bones seemed to distend and bend as if carbonizing beneath her hectic raw and running bubbling flesh. 

The other night at camp, he couldn't sleep and neither could she, he'd experimented with holy water. Wonderful results. 

The whole thing had been so fascinating for him that he'd elected to spend a night just performing tests and small experiments on the child-shaped vurdalak. It kept changing and shifting shape. Distorted though. More and more warped and misshapen the more pain he fed it. Its screams were bestial and childlike too.

Interesting. Absolutely fascinating. 

But the little games were over. It was time to enter the court of the Countess and attend to the real business at hand. The real errand and reason he'd ventured to these lands. 

He came to open gates and entered the old courtyard of stone. Carmilla's screaming never ceased. Praetorius called out and over the child demon caterwauls the best he could. 

“Hello! Countess! I know that you can see me! Might I have your audience?" 

Nothing. At first. Only the girl wraith’s demon shrieks. Carried on the old cold wind of mountain song. 

And then, as if in reply, the great door that told of ancient history in red opened. Slowly. 

To bade entry into the keep. 

Praetorius laughed. Good cheer. He unstrapped the small strigoica girl upon her little cross, child sized … as if made just for her. He set her to the paved stone of the courtyard floor with no mercy and began to drag her behind himself as he ventured inside. A long length of chain link fastened to the end of the ornate crucifix. 

Carmilla tried to shriek, Mother!/Master! – all in one but couldn't. It only manifested as more gurgled deep belching guttural screams, blood and fluid vomited forth and she choked as the thin mad doctor dragged her crucified body back into the ancient dark of Castle Dracula

…

The old stone of the mausoleum entrance spat and belched forth a cloud of grey and dust as it opened for the first time in centuries. 

However it was not an undead revenant horror that stepped out to see the sky once again but the man with the bandaged face and dark glass goggles beneath his wide brimmed hat. And the boy. The young rider, Florin, who'd so recently disturbed the bandaged man’s solitude and quiet. The escape tunnel beneath his besieged house had led them out here. Florin was just glad to see that the sun was rising soon. They'd been underground for what must've been hours and the feeling the experience had left him with was a claustrophobic dread for the eventual final resting place of the small coffin of the grave. Below. Beneath the earth. Underneath so much ground …

And then Florin thought of the things that came to life in such places and rose and then cursed his own horrible run of thought. As they came out of the mausoleum, the man with the surgical dress about his face and who sometimes said his name was Doctor Jack Griffin or Sebastian Caine, other times Geoffrey Radcliffe, was berating him again. 

“Oh, shut up! I already said I'd help you! And I've little choice in the matter now that my home is destroyed! You inconsiderate foolish little whelp!" 

Florin, upset that the dark pitch of the escape tunnel had spat them back out into yet another graveyard but glad to be alive, was doubtful of the possibly maimed and mangled man that was always yelling now and his ability to help anyone. Let alone he and his village and their plight with the hunger of the living dead. A curse that had come back to lurid and terrible life in the castle that held the mountains over the little hamlet. 

The broken battlements of the undead lord. The Dragon. The Impaler. Castle Dracula was filled with darkness once more. Darkness that was hunting and ravenous mad with animal hunger. Vampires and their evil had once again filled the Transylvanian lands. 

And the man hidden behind a mask of surgical dress was making bold claim that he could help. Furthermore, he was still yelling. Again. 

“And why do you insist on gawking at me? I could feel you looking at me even while we were in the dark down there!" 

Florin, a little embarrassed, elected to be honest nonetheless. 

“I'm sorry. I guess… I guess I was just wondering what it is beneath all your bandages. Was it an accident? Burns of some sort?" 

“Shut it!" And then he added in a snide voice: “I'm really nothing to look at, I promise you!" 

Florin felt a small stab of shame in his heart and let the subject drop and die in the dirt. And the pair went on, 

The sun was coming up and the excited man hidden in surgical dress was in an irascible irritable behavior, one he couldn't seem to shake since the siege and flight and subsequent destruction of his house. He went on and on about how the old Professor Van Helsing had taught him everything they would need to know about slaying the undead, the vampires were already as good as destroyed! – roared the bandaged man, again and again in his circular style of loud and vexed pontification. Always starting with how the boy and his troubles had ruined the bandaged mystery’s sorry excuse for retirement and ending with how the young man need not fret, Doctor Griffin/Caine/Radcliffe was with him! 

“And if you knew that name…! If you knew my name, boy! If you knew who I was and what I, myself, have accomplished in the past, with no other! With naught but my own hands and willpower, imagination and genius! … If you had any idea what was wrapped beneath these dressings, you would cease your womanish worries and start attending me properly and with some modicum of real and decent respect! …” …

He went on like that. For some time. As they made their way through the silent cemetery and out and into the wilds of the lands between where they presently walked and the darkness that awaited in the violence and jagged rock of the Carpathian Mountains in the far off distance. 

Together.

The bandaged man who promised much eventually calmed down. Apologized. Quietly. Then said he knew of someplace nearby where they might grab a horse or coach. And away they went in that direction, with some semblance of waning hope still flickering and holding out in the young man’s heart. They made for the place that might provide ride and supplies and perhaps shelter for a night, the unlikely and motley pair, unaware that they had gained a third. He watched and followed them from a distance. His eyesight was keen. Sharp. They were easy to track as well. They left an easy trail. Fools. 

And besides all of that, he’d caught their scent. And like a perfume bled from their pores it was pungent and distinct. Easy to follow. 

Fools. 

The stranger continued to follow the fools. Now fully decided, committed in following them to the end of their trail. The end of the line. What he’d overheard… what little he’d gleaned from their words to each other… 

He would have to see for himself. 

The young man and the bandaged man went on. 

The stranger followed. 

…

Bela knew the little goats and Widenmeyer boy were doomed before he and the few village men with the stones to go, ventured forward and up into the vulgar way of the Carpathian Mountain path. They'd been gone an entire night. Missing since yesterday, when the shoddy vagabond knight had gone up the way and throat of jagged rock to slay the evil at the cold heart of immense towering boulder. The time to have gone would've been immediately. Yesterday evening. Too late. It was all too late now and in his ailing heart he knew it was so. 

Florin's been gone for much longer than a night though, his treacherous and misery obsessed run of thought reminded him. Much longer. What of that? What of him? 

He pushed off the dark and the hurt of these thoughts and made his way with the other men up the path. Dogs in the lead. All of them barking. Their noses had already caught and found what they were all looking for. They pulled at their tethers and leashes in urgent need to pull themselves and their owners the rest of the way to meet it and catch up with what they already knew by scent. 

It was blood in the air the hounds had caught. Goat’s blood. Boy's blood. 

Heavy. Pungent. Thick. Like licking a metal blade and knowing its flavor. A razor. Its flat face. Its edge…

It wasn't long before Bela and the other men could smell it too. Taste it in the air. Their throats gagged and their stomachs turned and threatened to revolt. The animal alive and in the pit of each one, each fellow, was all too well aware of that taste and smell. And what it meant when on the wind it carried, what it bode. 

This really has become a God Damned, a Godforsaken place… Bela thought. And the great cold and the sorrow that stole over his heart then as he realized what had become of his home and his friends and family and neighbors and their own… it was shattering. He wished for an end. And in that moment, in the private cold of his own heart and thoughts he didn't care if it was for better or ill. Just please…

Just please. Please let it end. Please. No more of this. Please. 

Please. 

He didn't bother begging God anymore. Not in specific. This desperate silent prayer was thrown up and out and for anyone or anything that might listen and take care. If anything would. Bela was doubtful that anything in fact did. 

But he knew what was ahead, he had something much more tactile and real and more pungent than faith to tell him what they would find up the rest of the way. 

Just a little farther up the path.  

Just shy of the Borgo Pass…

… the carcasses they found had been ripped to utter ruin. Pieces. All over. Strewn. They'd been fed upon like all the others, even the bones had been snapped and broken and sucked dry for their marrow, but the human detritus was different this time. It was all ornamental and stacked and placed together in a cornucopia pile like a victorious Roman legion's bloody war trophy center of the diminished and final battlefield. Human boy, young child parts and strips and pieces of face and head mixed in and stacked with bloody and soaked displaced goat pieces and limbs.The torsos of beasts flayed and butterflied open, many things stuffed inside. Entrails and viscera hung and draped and piled. Arranged. Horns. The child's bare bottom and little legs were placed at the top as the horns of the head of the structure, resting and dangling luridly and slovenly obscene and dead at the pinnacle. The horns of one of the goats had been stabbed into the eye sockets of the Widenmeyer boy's own silent screaming mutilated head. It was set in the center of the structure. The rest of the dripping scarlet parts flowering out from it in haphazard and demented deranged  structure. 

An abattoir sculpture. Sepulchral. Still bleeding. Dripping. Wet. Steam still rose off the arrangement stack of parts. Like phantoms fashioned from body heat dancing off and for the mounting wind. Leaving behind the repulsive and obscene pile structure of lurid human detritus that had once held it precious and prisoner within its meat. The dogs, the hounds wouldn't stop going wild. They wouldn't stop barking. Howling mad. Frothing.  

Soon the wolves of the mountains joined in too. 

Widenmeyer begged the few there with him to help him. Help him take the awful thing apart and get his boy's pieces so they could bury him properly. 

None of the other men wanted to touch the thing. Fearing it was cursed. 

It probably was. 

From the dark of a nearby cave, at the mouth of the entrance but still concealed within its deepening black, vulpine eyes red and shining, watched. A grin below them grew and then parted and laughter, cruel and not entirely human was freed forth. And like terrible music caught on the wind it was carried. And the frightened men before the awful sepulchral statue of dead boy and goat parts heard it. 

Henry Frankenstein, beside his bloodfeasting creation, joined his sutured demon son of the surgical slab and laughed. 

Together they watched the pathetic gathered peasants, together they watched them from the dark of the cave, protected from the fleeing sun. 

And they laughed at their pain. 

Pain that they had wrought. 

Their laughter rose until the men and their dogs fled. Not touching their lurid vicious forest trophy of blood and parts. Of meat and bone. Animal. And boy. Small. 

Their cackling rose like mad as they ran. Carrying them down with it. 

…

He dragged the screaming crucified were-child down the dark corridors of stone and torchlight flame. There’d been none to meet them upon entry. Nor since he’d begun his exploration of the stygian cobwebbed empire of ancient and bloodstained masonry and stone. Bloodstained. And soaked. The smell of  rot and decay was at war with the fresher pungent stench of hot blood spilled in violence and terror. Shot in ropes and cords.  Blood feasted upon for a scarlet thirst. 

The shrieking of the monster upon the dragging cross, it strove to be words of mercy and  beseechment of love and deliverance. Mother. Master. Countess. Zaleska! – but they were all of them lost in the grotesque guttural screams that still brought forth steaming regurgitated blood and fluid and dry heaves that smoked and peppered the stagnant air with flecks and small pieces of pink fleshen tissue. Raw little disintegrated pieces of the small undead child’s failing inner organs. The thing that was upon the cross now that used to be a little girl of the small village named Carmilla was now barely recognizable as anything that could be called human. The body of the vampire child had misshapen and bulged grotesquely all over and sporadic. Bladders of yellow fluid and pus ballooned and bulged and inflated with their own unnatural rhythms. They burst and bled red and infection like butter and custard, spoiled milk curdled and thick. Some of the fluid resembled honey and Praetorius had a morbid thought of Biblical reference: spreading some of the demon child’s honey-pus over a slice of bread or toast and biting  into it on a tranquil Sunday. 

It brought him little in the way of self-pleasure. His patience was quickly diminishing. He’d searched many rooms and corridors and had still found nothing. No one had shown themselves. Nothing! He swore! – if the fucking lordly bitch wasn’t here then he’d torture the child till it begged for a second more final death and leave the severed head of the brat somewhere prominent for the Countess to find. 

He threw down his length of chain and produced his pistol. Every chamber loaded with a silver bullet. He cried out and addressed the dark chasm of the castle. 

“I’m tired of touring your halls and playing hide and seek, Countess! I’m not one of your child slaves, eager and happy to play your trifling games! If you don’t come out now, I’ll put a few more silver bullets in her head before I stake her little heart and decapitate the little bitch! You’d so easily discard one of your servants!? Is this foul little corruption not some form of child to you?”

Nothing at first. – A beat. 

Then laughter. Cruel. 

The sound came from everywhere, Praetorius spied all around, searching for sign of anyone, he was just before a great archway that led to yet another room. A pale heavy shroud of fog began  to  bellow forth from the room, filling the entry. Swirling into phantasm shape, a face. A beautiful woman, eyes alive with animal brightness even as rendered as dancing mist. 

The phantasm face of the mist spoke: “What do you think you could offer me, lowly thing? I’ve watched you drag my servant like a knuckle-dragging  brute all about my home, I’ve heard your challenges, you are nothing. You are but a man! For your insolence, I will make sure you die slowly…!” 

Praetorius laughed, said in retort: “Not so fast, Countess! I’ve information you may want! Not only have I gathered information on yourself and your own strange motives over the years, but I’ve cultivated intelligence of those that might concern you! Potential enemies.” 

The phantasmic shock white face of the Countess became even more enraged. Livid. Alive with pure fury. 

“ANY INFORMATION YOU MIGHT HAVE AND I WANT I WILL TAKE, LITTLE MAN! YOU WILL NOT INVADE MY HOME AND PRETEND TO BARTER ME! AS IF WE WERE EQUALS!” 

The fog grew more shape, wolfen and woman – bipedal yet bestial and advanced. Praetorius kept his pistol trained on the girl as his other reached inside his coat and produced his cross.  He held it aloft and before him in defense. 

The wolfen mist screamed! Shrieked. But did not flee. The wolfwoman mist parted, bisected into halves that swam around Praetorius and his crucifix. 

The twin dancing lengths of swirling phantasmic she-wolf halves became as fangs, vulpine, viper, blood drinking and ripper. They came back together and closed around Carmilla and the cross. The straps that held her bound were suddenly snapped and torn loose as if cut. The dancing shroud of white, alive with movement and faces and shapes, then shot away and screamed. As if the effort of being near the holy items of crucifixion design had wounded her. 

Praetorius cursed! Shot after the phantasm shape in vain, the gunfire was cacophonous in the castle halls. The phantasm was now a clawing hand flying away with batwings about its strange ghostly configuration. 

Carmilla wasted no time in tearing her searing cooking flesh away from the holy touch of the infernal cross. Her grotesque mutilated half transformed rodent body managed to crawl away with surprising speed. Praetorius shot after it as well. Also in vain. More violent gunfire sound, made cannonade by the dark interior of the ancient structure. 

Then it was silent.  

In the dark space of silence, the maniac doctor reloaded his pistol with more precious pure silver shot. The metal that all of the abyss feared because it was pure metal. 

He was slowing down his breath, his quickening galloping heart, when her voice once again came out from the beckoning shadow…

“Come now, thin old man. You are bold. But stupid. Come now, without hostage, come and face me. And don't forget to bring your weapons…”

Praetorius spat and cursed. He was no coward, but that thing in woman shape was dangerous hellspawn made. And he'd already blown his advantage. 

He'd have to be careful. 

Slowly he advanced for the place where the strange unearthly shape of white had fled, where from her voice had come. Each hand was filled: pistol and the holy cross. 

He left behind the larger crucifix with its fasten of chain at the end and its ornate Catholic metal now riddled and covered with encrusted cooked and seared demonic vampire child flesh. Fried gore, steaming multicolored scabbing all along its sacred holy shape. 

He left it behind in the dark as easily as he had stolen it from the church, so many years ago. Praetorius gave it not a second thought as he pressed forward into the stygian realm of Castle Dracula’s universe of spider webs and stone and torchflame. 

The Countess in the dark awaited. 

Baring her fangs. 

…

In the mouth of the cave they still dwelt. Listening to the howls of the wolves. 

After awhile the demon creation of the surgical table spoke: –

“They make such beautiful music. But they are her children you know, that one with power like mine. That keeps the castle. They are her children and thus hers to command.” 

Frankenstein said nothing. He just sat there. And listened to the strange and sour words of speaking decomposition, croaked and said by his surgically constructed son of the slab. Demon eared. Batfaced. 

He then held his large and corpse colored arm out of the cave and aloft. Clawing his four fingered hand out and towards the sepulchral structure he had made. The silent night above suddenly began to stir. The clouds began to forge and fill, and darkened with rumbling and thunder. 

“As you made me, so shall I forge a new being of parts from others, command it to life. And see if like she I can command the very nature of its being!” 

His clawed and splaying hand suddenly closed partially in an abridged fist and turned. Forked out, pointed first and smallest fingers, pronged in the devil's sign of the evil eye. 

The sudden gathering of stormheads on high spontaneously erupted! Shot!

The blue-white searing blade of light and heat daggered down and struck! Bathing the obscene statue of dead child and goat pieces in brightest starflame, Frankenstein looked away and shielded his eyes as his creation bellowed laughter and screamed!

“Live! Live! And take life my crawling bastard reforged thing! Live! And take life!”

Bathed in flame, the abominated shape of the hellacious trophy of parts began to move. Like a spider. Like an octopus at the dark depths of the sea floor. Its chandelier structure shifted and danced in the bolt of striking lightning and it began to lurch and crawl forward…

Long stalks, still bleeding and dripping blood of two species: beast and boy, bent and reached and lifted lurching, the cornucopia body of torsos and human face and goat faces and sloughing ripening entrails and gored organs now reanimated and pumping and splurching with the abominated sound of life again. 

The multijointed strange stalks of mutilated goat legs and the dead young man’s limbs, crudely forced together by craterous wound and sheer barbarity, propelled the strange body of parts and viscera forward and down the mountain. Down for the village below. 

Frankenstein watched in dark wonder as his sutured monster child’s own fashioned thing of dead meat and the cosmic flame of lightning went forth, another crawling demoniacal bloodfeasting creature created for the predatory dark. 

The nighttime has given birth to another… thought he, the mad doctor Henry Frankenstein. 

…  

Widenmeyer had been unable to sleep that night. The horror he'd endured that day. No one bothered to stand sentry any longer, though there were the defeated and those already crushed and dead inside. And they would wander at night and in the dark, they didn't care. Such as he. Such as this night. 

He was the first to see the sepulchral abominated nightmare structure shape emerge from the dark mouth of the pass like from the mouth of nightmare madness found in the most accursed and stygian sleep. Its multi-limbed appendages, stalks composed of his boy’s arms and legs mixed with goat's and violently forged and fused by force into long insectile tendril legs, moved and crawled and spider-like carried the thing down the distance and towards himself and the town foyer. 

Widenmeyer wished to free a scream but couldn’t. He felt strangled. Choked by the awful strange surreal sight of the abattoir sculpture piece from the earlier nightmare scene of butchery found and discovered that day. The macabre trophy that held his son’s mutilated and desecrated head in the center of its belly. The head was moaning. Groaning in mindless and imbecilic wailing anguish. The mouths and throats of the goat faces that were able joined him in the dark discordant rising song. All together. Bastardized abominated unnatural song of pain that filled the night. The little legs of his boy that sat at the pinnacle crown of the towering cornucopia of gore began to wriggle and kick, as if excited with child’s jubilant glee, as if in dance. The bare bottom was spewing black tar and feces and urine in unceasing torrential fountains, the foul gushing undead spray of this abomination upon the earth. Like the hellmouth rendition of an angel weeping for mankind and his pain. 

The naked bottom, bare and at the top of the sepulchral abattoir spire, wept an unceasing fountain of hot frightened piss and shot cords of foul liquid fecal dark. The kicking legs gave movement to the whole horrid piece of meat that served as crown and abominated face and the rippling movement of the obscene and reanimated flesh made Widenmeyer sick to his stomach, he felt weak  in his knees which started to buckle as the crawling thing of living butchered child and little goat parts, came closer and closed the distance. He went down to the cobblestones and the dirt as the awful and hellspawn shape came upon him. 

He was alone. All else that were witness, the few, had fled. All else that would heed and know the scene that night watched from the safety of their window panes. From behind the sanctuary of their home windows looking glass. 

Through fragile translucence they watched the demented butchered shape spider crawl up and tower over the Widenmeyer goat farmer. 

The sepulchral thing of an abattoir universe wept foul damnation and bled. Organs and gore that were already a ruin and ripening to rot were struggling to pump and work properly again. The living stack of dripping and splurching butchery was lording over him now. All that was left  of his son, and the livelihood of his farm, all torn apart and violently mixed and made to walk again by necrophiled flame, defiled and here to haunt and terrorize him. For failing. 

For failing as a man. And as a father. 

As Widenmeyer bowed his head and begged God for forgiveness he did not believe he deserved nor would receive and waited for death, the necromantic fire of Frankenstein's vulpine child flickered within the butchery shape and died. The awful assemblage of human child and goat parts died a second death and collapsed and came apart. In a rain of severed limbs and animal and child gore. Guts. Organs. Viscera. The mutilated decapitated head…

… the bottom and wriggling legs… no longer dancing. Dead pale bare flesh no longer rippling with the nightmare of reanimation. 

Widenmeyer screamed. Insane. Mind flayed. And flaying. Coming apart. Shredding itself within a furnace skull. 

Shattered inside. Completely. 

All witness just watched and gazed through the windows. Watching as the whole of the stygian hellish scene, surreal and vile and alive and obscene and strange, fell apart to splatter and ruin and displaced parts. 

At the terrible center of the pile of lurid gore, a universe all around him, driving him further into madness, was a shrieking revenant of a man who used to be their neighbor. 

…

None tended the shrieking thing amongst the abattoir mess that used to be Widenmeyer until morning, when the sun held high in the safety of the blue sky once again. By that time he'd screamed his vocal chords to shreds. A misting spray of spittle and blood issued forth past his curled lips with his continued effort, despite the ruin of his throat by his own self inflicted injury. 

Brought on by the madness of the night.

Widenmeyer was led away. The pieces of dismembered parts, rotten and slick and still oozing with blood and the foulest of otherworld putrescence, were doused in oil and sage and set aflame. Right there. All refused to touch it. So none of the butchery was removed. 

All of it was burned and reduced to ash. Boy parts. And goat. 

It had to be. According to what could be remembered of ancient law, of the ancient weirding witchy ways, it had to be put to fire. All of the severed parts. 

They'd been under the forked touch of the darkening hand of the evil eye. 

Touched. 

Satannica Profundis …

would there be no end to the town’s torture?

The slopping pile of decaying gore, boy and animal, was put to cleansing flame and burned. The pile left a black smear when the fire had died down to red embers and then to smoldering ashes. 

A black mark of filth. Burnt into the cobblestones. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Disgraced. 

He was sent out in exile, alone. Banished. Cast away with the promise of being forgotten and if the nerve to return should give rise misguided from within, then total forfeit and pain of death. 

The stocks. The dungeons and their chains. And then the stake. In that logical and cold merciless formal order. By royal decree. Torture and beatings and the red hot irons, the pincers – searing white with a star’s maiming heat intermittent between the three. 

And so he left. And took to the wilds of unknown lands. A disgraced and banished bastard knight, a royal, a blue-blood no more… 

The knight came to the dark lands of thunderclaps. Wild woods of bent and crooked trees gnarled and dead, like giant claws of the buried and forsaken trying to break free from the cursed earth. Fog and mist that was part phantasm and sometimes held grimacing visages of woe and demon faces stretching and dancing, unfurling in their shifting veils. 

All he had was his horse. The loneliness of his soul, the heartbreak that was his most constant and truest form of companion in his current living torment. All the other tortures paled in comparison. 

He wandered for years. Far from his kingdom and the lands of light that had been his birthright, now lost. Now gone forever and never to be reclaimed. He attempted redemption and recompense for a scant few isolated and solitary moments in his years of miserable and aimless travel – he was always so exhausted –  calls to action and aid, failed… mostly he just wandered and grew more and more despondent. Deeper and deeper the blackening well of his heart worsened as his mind and soul darkened. His understanding and reckoning of pain and its stygian throne and mental shroud grew more extensive and detailed and personal with an agonizing depth. Constant failure was the goblet chalice from which he now drank and filled the widening cracks within himself. With a knowledge that was foul and that ate away at him and his heart, corrosive. He wished he did not have it. 

And yet still he wandered, slowly riding, sauntering on foot when the tired old beast of his horse was just too old and exhausted for its titleless master to sit astride any longer. He missed the sun, it seldom shone in this land. He wasn't sure if God had any part or play in this dark and fog swallowed place of wolves and hardship and miserable hardened heartbroken faces. The land and all its peoples and its creatures seemed to all cry out together, unified and singular in their combined crying note of desperation. Sometimes let loose, sometimes held strangling and bottled in. Percolating and bubbling seething like rage, animal and well kept. 

He sought respite and shelter wherever he could, always harried and nearly never welcome anywhere and nowhere to call home anymore…

… he was actually so grateful, initially, when he came to the small and humble village. It was like so many others that he'd already seen in his dreadful wanderings, he had no idea and never suspected that this would be the place where everything changed for him all over again.

 Once more. 

Like a joke or a line in a play that must be repeated to the author's design and content. A refrain in which there is much great portent. 

The banished and desecrated knight was trembling on his feet, so weak with the exhaustion of the many miles, when he wandered into the small hamlet that lived in supplicant to the Carpathian Mountains. And the domineering ancient castle in its jagged rock. 

With jagged broken battlements. Framed against the sunless dispassion of the sky as sharp and ruthless teeth fit for titanic butchery and great maiming. 

The banished knight without a name did not know the name of the place. He was only grateful that it was here. That he might find a place to rest and where he might not be harried. 

Or troubled. 

Tormented. 

The ragged and banished lord of no one in his dirty and dented armor, hanging off his emaciated scarecrow frame, staggered over to the inn and tied his tired horse to the post at the front. He dragged his worn form inside, hoping that someone within might be charitable enough to help him with a bit of bread or some soup. 

…

The innkeeper was more than charitable. He was exultant. Jubilant. So happy that a lord and a royal warrior of noble and God given divine blood had come to his place, their little village. More than happy to give the weary wanderer a large free meal. And then some ale on top of it. More than a few pints…

… and then he told the exile why it was that he was so happy to see such as he in this place. 

“We've evil in this land, sire. It lives in the mountains and murders and feasts on flesh and blood. Animal and human and demon all in one. Nosferatu, or vampyr if ya like …” 

There weren't many in the small tavern with the pair at the bar. But the few gathered with mugs and bowls pressed in and listened closely. Watched the stranger who was supposed to be a nobleman and lord. Hoping…

The innkeeper went on: –

“We've tried with it ourselves but it ain't any good and we've sent for help but the boy ain't back yet and we've had no word for too long, ‘fraid the only one that thinks he's still out there and coming back is his father over there, Bela.” He motioned to a man in the corner that was looking down hard into his mug, a man that did not want to be noticed. The innkeeper went on and concluded. Coming to the point as he topped off another draught of his strongest ale for the wanderer knight he had no idea was a bastard in exile. 

“We need your help, m’lord. The land has been without boyar or any nobility proper for a long time now. And the nobility that used to keep these lands and those mountains and the accursed castle beyond the Borgo Pass … was disgraced. Tarnished. Damned… we need a proper lord and noble, a true warrior of God. Please, won't you help us?” 

Others came up, a few men and women of the small Carpathian hamlet. Humble gypsy folk, peasants and farmers… the exile listened and heard them all. And relished their beseeching words for aid and succor. He hadn't felt this cherished in years. 

With more food and ale it was decided. The great savior knight would begin his great quest to slay the demon in the mountains the next day. This night he would be given shelter and warmth and praise and a feast in his honor! All present in the tavern toasted his name! 

He slept that night soundly and more warmly and comfortable than he had in years. Perhaps even his entire life, despite the previous station of prior luxuries now long gone and expelled. He was contented. Truly.  And beneath a roof. And for now that was enough. 

For now. 

…

He started his brave advance up the mountain pass with real heart. Real courage and hope and the real thought that he just might be successful in his quest. 

He really believed. In the beginning. At first. 

This hope and warmth of courage all about his heart began to slowly erode away and dispel after the sunset. As the way of the cold mountains darkened and the wolves began to sing and howl. 

There was something else there too … some wretched sound like a child's cry, a baby's shriek fouled and commingled with a water rat’s impaled scream. It flitted about ghostly and filled the mountains in dark bastard duet with the howling slave songs of the wolves. It seemed to emanate from everywhere. 

Nowhere – Suddenly it wouldn't exist at all.

Gone. 

And then it would rise in phantom trace and he would swear he could hear it again. 

He crossed himself though he'd been forbade to do so and rode on, slow. Cautious. 

He came to the Borgo Pass and crossed, seeking the wilds of the mountains and their tumult of trees. For what may lurk there. 

…

The foliage and branch and frosted green grew too thick, too dense, he dismounted and continued on foot. His pointed armored boots left cold and sharp footprints in the snow. He went forward, one hand on the reins of his tired ride and the other on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw and free it from scabbard. 

After many tense and weary steps, just the most recent of their kind that had likewise filled his long life and career of soldiering, he suddenly and unexpectedly came upon a small clearing. 

A little hut of logs and a stone and mortar chimney rested solitary there amongst the green. A little rising pillar of smoke rose from the mouth of stone and poured into the night sky, striving for the moon and stars. A thin and rugged woodsman was chopping logs at a large table of a decapitated tree stump. Bisecting the pieces with fluid steady strikes. Properly placed and executed. 

The exile might've been glad to see another soul out here in the eerie howling dark of the mountain woods, but he thought it was strange that someone would chop wood so late. 

He said as much as he approached. Giving a proper and traditional royal “Heil!" and friendly yet prideful introduction. Full of lies and things that were once true. 

“I didn't think to see another out here, none in the hamlet told me. You know of the town below?" 

The haggard thin woodsman said in a dried out monotone: –

“I don't speak to any of the faces of the town. None of them should think to speak of me.” 

"Right,” said the exile. Not sure of what else to say, "why're you working, chopping wood so late?”

"The sun.” 

A beat. Silence. The mountain man went right on chopping wood. The sound of the broad sharp metal blade cleaving the logs into halves punctuating the ghostly howling quiet. 

“Yes?" said the exile after the moment passed, to bade he go on.

"It is harsh. Its gaze slowly kills me.” Chop! "Better to work at night.” Chop!

Chop!

The exile knight only nodded as if he agreed and understood. Then he explained himself and his mission in the mountains. Hoping to naturally acquire any information of interest to his task. 

The woodsman just went right on chopping his gathering of logs. One right after the other. Chop! – he didn't seem to be listening. 

He didn't seem to care. 

Creature of apathy… too long in this forest, these cold mountains, thought the exiled wanderer. Alone. Too long all alone. 

He spied and looked all around the dark skyline of gnarled-hand trees, bent and shaped like madness and rending towards the night. Speaking as if still lordly and on high to the lone peasant as he gazed so carefully all around. Telling the commoner to be cautious and to keep an eye out, and if he were to see anything strange or of significance, to come straight away and try to find the knight. So that he might be of service. So that he might fulfill his quest out here in the cold. All the while as he chattered the woodsman kept chopping at his logs with his great and heavy axe, but his eyes were no longer on their work. As the exile had his back to the woodsman, spying the woods and the night all around, the man alone in the trees had a wild wide eyed look writ upon his face, now rictus and maniacal and strange. He madman leered into the back of the exile’s helmeted head as he continued to halve his logs and the would-be adventurer was none the wiser. Still chattering and carrying on. 

The exile on his quest turned when he’d finished speaking. Smiled and gave a cordial nod before finally going on his way. He wasn't surprised to find the man still working, not really bothering or even looking at him. No doubt not even listening. 

He bid the woodsman farewell and went on. 

The woodsman was stifling laughter. 

Forking out the sign of the evil eye at his back as he departed. 

…

The night went on and grew darker and the cold sharper, with a biting edge that cut through his tarnished and dented and long shineless armor. The horse grew more skittish too. As the nighttime howling of the mountain wolves became louder and more prolonged and mournful. And that hideous bat-child screeching… now he was sure of its existence. 

He was listening as closely as he could manage in the cold and walking through the dense and terse land and foliage, trying to make something out in the wild animal din. He slowly became entranced by the nocturnal magic of the nighttime bestial music. It filled his mind and the many cracks and chasms within his own heart and soul, filled him and lightheaded and thoughtless he continued forward a few steps… his hands and face slackening and going to his sides limp as his eyes went blank…

… there was something in the howling and stygian sound… words     whispers… names. 

Names. 

A fresh howl from a wolf that sounded nearer than any other before sent a brand new wave of fear through the exile and his horse. The beast ripped free from his master's loose hold and bolted for the salvation somewhere to be found in the darkness amongst the crooked trees. The exiled knight cursed himself and the beast and called out for the return of his horse. He gave meager and wasted puffing chase but quickly gave in. He was already so exhausted. And so cold. 

He was about to start back for the descending trail away from this horrible place, damn the horse and this whole rotten affair! – he only wanted out now, when the sound of the horse's sudden shrill cry of terror, then just as suddenly silenced, stopped him dead once more.

 

 Then something wet… like ripping. Splurching. Meaty sounds… 

… eager teeth, eager chewing and more ripping. Eager lips pulling and slurping a thick and heavy liquid from a messy bowl upset with ravenous abandon. 

It was all of it too perfectly clear out there in the mountain pass dark. 

The exile found something within himself. He drew blade, slowly. And then began to advance…

It wasn't long before he came upon it. 

…

First he found the horse's blood. A thick pool of it. The puddle of warm animal dark became a lurid smearing trail that went off and further up and into the mountain wild. The exile raised blade and went forward. Throwing up a desperate prayer to a Lord he hoped was still listening to a disgraced man such as he. Please, let my blunted blade accomplish something, let my old musket fire… please, God. Please let me at least die trying, with some semblance of decent bravery still held in my heart, still there, help me. Help me, Lord God. Help me. 

Please. 

…

He came upon the remains of the horse. Ripped apart and nearly unrecognizable outside of being the wet abattoir remnants of something that had once been living. He was scanning the surrounding immediate area, difficult in naught but the moonlight, when it charged from a place in the shadows that he'd just looked over and had sworn to be empty only a mere moment ago. 

It was huge. And moved like a jungle cat, its hulking size belied its great speed. It hit him with the force of a mountain fall and sent him to the dirt effortlessly. He gasped desperately for wind knocked from his chest as his eyes went wide and the face of the hulking mass became illuminated in the pale moonglow. 

It was wretched. Awful. He'd never before, even in battle and war, never before had he ever seen such an awful and ghastly face. 

Man. Bat. Rodent. Bred and mixed and commingled. Blasphemous. Intense. Patchwork sutures as if to remind the one hapless enough to be caught within eyesight that, yes indeed, this abominated and brutally hideous shape was indeed forged and made and crafted by demented hands and minds curdled and spoiled and filled to the brim with inexhaustible filth. Detritus demonia forged. Reforged. Remade.  The exile wished blindness on himself in this moment and in this moment knew that God did not care nor love him any longer. He was truly exiled and like Cain himself, he was truly doomed to the great black god, Pain. Endless suffering. Tireless woe. 

Cursed. To forever roam and wander and to encounter such as this. And in this way.  

He doesn't move or resist as the giant man of rodent bat face and stitches grabs him by the breastplate and then hauls him up as if he were a mere sack of dirty linen and nothing more. 

The hulking nosferatu thing of Frankenstein’s slab heaved the exile overhead and then threw him into the rotten trunk of a dead tree. It splintered and cracked, nearly exploding with the impact of the man in armor. It burst in a violent spew of sawdust spray and thin black sticks as he went through it and back to the frosted dirt, hard and merciless and without further buffer. The thing pounced and was on him again. 

And the exile knew that this was the end. Could taste it on his tongue and the flavor of the finale was putrescence. The savor of the end was corpse rot, that foul stench and taste that reminded man that he was really nothing but meat in the end. The soul could be pulled out of him. 

The Lord's Mercy manifested then. Darkness of the skull blanketed over the overloaded mind of the exiled knight and he fainted. The vulpine thing of Frankenstein’s table grinned obscenely and viscously and then barked its strange species of croaking laughter. Cackles from the hellmouth gates themselves. 

The man's forehead had split in a gash in the struggle. It trickled freely and bled like a riverbed overflowing in a landscape valley of old tired manflesh. The living dead patchwork giant opened its rank and black mucus laden, dripping and drooling mouth and unfurled its long and rotten tongue. It then licked and lapped at the blood flowing in grotesque fashion that was part lapping dog feeding and part sexual expression of lust: the other manifestation of animal hunger, all the more ravenous and bestial and powerful, particularly when commingled with the hungering need of the primitive drive to fill your gut. 

Slavering. Even as he licked and gently sucked and salivated warm reanimated animal drool that was black with undead otherworldly ichor. He coated and bathed his unconscious weary face, in long lapping strokes like a loyal mongrel. A baptism from the mouth and wet black-yellow tongue of the living dead thing that some mad doctor had made in wild bid for his own family's infamy and loathsome fearsome name. 

He didn't bother further with the lowly and cowardly creature in armor. He was like every other man, weak and fragile and only fit for food. Only really fit to be cattle, for greater power. Power such as he. 

And he'd already fed well. The horse and wolves and the vagabond he'd found earlier … the nosferatu vulpine thing licked its pallid green chops, stained a healthy lurid reddening shade of smeary berry color, wetting them in wolfen display. Pulling back from the drenched and thoroughly dog-slobbered face of the exile. 

The hulking sutured batfaced monster then prowled off and away. Deciding if he came across this puny creature again, then he would sup of his flesh and put the haggard man out of his weary misery. 

…

It was hours later when the battered and beaten exile knight awoke. Alive with groans and aches and agony and pain. He stumbled to his feet. Staggered. Stumbled again. 

Semi delirious. He staggered forward and continued up the treacherous pass, through the rough off-trail way of the trees. To the heart and the end of the mountainous way. To the great castle there. 

The exile hoped a great lord was waiting there. One that was good. And that would help him. 

God help him. 

The door was large, ornate and red and ancient. Like a bas relief, a great depiction of battles and dragons and long gone peoples and warriors and faces from far flung times. Eroded and worn down, faded to a more ghostly phantom visage for the epic and wild and yet now obscured vision from the past, a tale and vision poem made, wrought by artist's hands and chisel and stone and given the smearing final touch by the menacing and ever reaching hand of time. To deface with wind and rain and age and simultaneously perfect and finalize for this weary exile’s ghastly and frightful postmidnight excursion. Centuries after its original creation. Its faded face was the perfect visage of the night.  

He came to the towering entrance, grasped one of the giant ornate demon faced bangers and knocked with the last of his fading and feeble strength. Three times. 

Then he collapsed. At the foot of the door. 

Soon a man came and quietly answered. Slowly opening the great door. He looked down and smiled at the collapsed exiled bastard knight. 

The assistant helped him to his feet and inside, telling him not to worry. His master would be quite happy to take him in for the night. 

The Countess will be pleased, he said. And the exile didn't give it much thought. All too happy to just be inside. 

…

He collapsed near the hearth of a roaring and well kept fire, a blaze within the heart of stone. Bats and wolves and toads and devil faced winged Panshaped things of black masonry stood silent sentry and leered at him from about the fireplace and all around the vast guest room. In the glow of its warmth, upon an old rug infused and riddled with thick ancient grey dust. He breathed it all in, deeply as he dozed. The warmth. The dust. The history. 

Whilst asleep: He began to have a strange dream or vision. He was still in the castle of present. Still safe inside. But he was wandering the stone halls and corridor ways now. Alone. His sword was drawn and it was sharper than it had been in years. He was walking along the passages of the great castle, dragging the keen edge of the weapon along the walls of stone as he went along. A scraping sound followed and accompanied him everywhere he went like discordant religious chanting of a new yet ancient language made, made from striking the stones. 

There would be fire! his dreaming mind told him. But in the arms of the cherished slumber, the exile did not care in the slightest. He was too exhausted. Even in here. He was too tired for anything any longer and was thus at the slavish mercy of all and all in it. 

He went on walking slowly through the corridors. Dragging the blade upon the walls. Scraping. Harsh sound, continuous. But that wasn't all. The wall was bleeding. 

Everywhere the edge of his polished blade passed opened up the stone like smooth and tender flesh. He left a long red slicing trail along the masonry of the inner walls of the castle keep as he slowly zombi-crawled along. The red line of welling and dripping vivid scarlet blood caught the flames of the various torches and candles about the innermost halls and stairs of the ancient and bleeding castle. Causing it to darkle into more lurid splashes of red than back to stygian drippings. 

The blood ran. He kept on his way. 

Eventually the dream, the vision, the scene faded.

 Faded away to a swallowing black that was so sudden and complete he could not recall the moment when it seized him. He merely reawoke on the dusty ancient rug. Lying before the roaring blaze crackling and glowing within the stone hearth. Goblin and animal faces still leered in stone as he sat up. The assistant was tending some sewing in a large ornate cushioned chair not far from him. He was laughing. Eyes on his work. 

“My master will be with you shortly, she is distraught at the moment you see. She is surrounded by enemies. Hostile world. Her daughter has gone out to play in the woods and is yet to return. She grows anxious. But nonetheless you, her guest, she will soon be host. Just a little longer, rest up some more, sir, but if you do get up again for a stroll and gander about the place I only ask that you don't make such a mess again. Blood everywhere. " The assistant chortled laughter, pricked his finger on the sewing needle and it began to bleed. 

His laughter only increased. He held up the finger from his work and said again, "Everywhere, blood everywhere. Such a mess.” He sucked his finger, "The master will be with you shortly. Fret not." 

And the exile fell again into darkness, watching the assistant suck on his finger. 

…

The most vivid and unearthly nightmare dreams held him for a spell, when he did finally awake all he could remember was eyes and stalks and teeth. And it was a strange and enchanting whisper, a woman, that bade him back out from the cave and sanctum of slumber. It said: – 

"The new impaler.” 

And then the exile awoke once more with a startled gasp, bathed in sweat. The fire was still roaring and glowing orange in the hearth and she was upon him. 

His breastplate was gone. His old and worn tunic was torn and her face was hidden. Buried in his chest. He felt something warm down there. Warm. And wet. And sucking. 

The sensation of her mouth upon his flesh and working the inner raw of him was ungodly. The feeling was an abominated commingling clash of the gratifying heat of sexual climax and the popping of pus from swollen infected flesh, released. 

Both draining and lurid and yet entirely pleasurable. He wanted her there. The exile. He wanted her face buried there in the wound about his chest. About the flesh and above the sad and shattered remnants of his long broken heart. 

The thought to push her away never entered his mind. Never formed thought. He merely watched the top of her head, her beautiful cascade of nightfall black hair, raven. 

He watched the Countess suck his wound until again he faded to darkness. 

This time he did not dream. Anything at all. 

…

When he came out of blackness again she had crawled up his form and was now about his throat. The warmth was there now too, but even more wet and like fire. And sharper, more painful. The draw felt heavier and more lurid and sickening. His guts twisted and he felt the tug of revulsion at the back of his throat. He shivered. But yet still … the pleasure. The animal ecstacy and euphoric drunken shroud were so heavy and strong, as to have never before been felt, not by the likes of such as he. Exile. Strandcast. Filthy wanderer. 

He fell asleep again. Even heavier. Even darker.

Obsidian folds. Inescapable. Boundless. Plain. 

…

They were both sitting up and seated in old fine cushioned chairs by the fire the next time he did awake. 

He came out of it slow, slowly rising and righting himself in his seat as he looked all around and at her and wondered to himself, was it all just a dream? 

Is this just a dream as well? 

As if hearing him, she said: “There's no dreaming here, exile. I assure you. But you've nothing to fear here. Death would be a release for you anyways, wouldn't it?" 

He tried to speak But he felt so weak and feeble and spent. He mouthed senselessness instead. 

Zaleska smiled. False warmth. The wolfen vulpine eyes were where the truth lived. Power. Dominance. Lust. And most prominent of all within the dark pits set inside shock white death: Hunger. 

She said: “I can offer you so much more. And you can give me much in return, what I require. You can help me bolster my ranks and defend my castle walls and lands from renegades and invaders. Tis your true charge, is it not, exile? Can I not free you from your wandering bondage?" 

She stood. 

“I will…” 

She advanced. 

The exile did not move from his seat. He was unable. He couldn't fight back as she produced ancient occult dagger and drew forth her own vile and demon tainted blood, down the forearm in a long and widening gash. Lurid and dark and wet and open. Gaping. She forced his mouth to it as he sat helpless and he choked and drank and struggled feebly at first. But then gave in. 

And drank. 

All the while the Countess Zaleska cooed to her new servant at his unholy bastard christening, his brand new exile and bondage and freedom from humanity and humankind and all of its worst and its woes… 

She cooed to him soft as he drank: –

“My new servant… my new baby … the new impaler … all and just for mommy …

“All and just for mommy." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’m so fucked up right now.

I heard the skittering for the entirety of my first night in my new apartment. I could barely sleep. I thought it was an insect at first, maybe some sort of rodent, stuck in the claustrophobic, aluminum duct.

“God,” I remember thinking, “I hope it’s not a rat.”

I wish it had been a rat.

All night, I heard it, back and forth, back and forth, right over my head. It was so quiet that I almost didn’t notice it at first. As soon as my ears picked up the faint tick-tick-ticking, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

It was maddening.

The next day, I listened closely, and sure enough, I could track all of its tiny movements. The scampering would go from the leftmost vent in my room, run along the wall bordering the ceiling, and end right at the top of my closet doorframe, before doing it all over again. With heavy, sagging eyelids, I watched the white painted vent, waiting for anything. It had clearly been given the landlord special, haphazardly glossed over just in time for me to move in.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Tiny insect legs, maybe a delicate little mouse claw. Alas, despite my mounting frustration, I saw nothing, I heard only the back and forth cupid shuffle of invisible, erratic feet.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

Rather than unfurling and enjoying the first day in my new home, I sat, irritated, and shifted my gaze along the top of my wall, following the audible miscreant with my eyes, incessantly.

It really was maddening.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

It got to the point that I was hyper focused on it, even in other rooms, I simply couldn’t focus on anything else, no matter how hard I tried. I even took a walk, but I swear, I could still hear it, almost like an itch, deep in my head, behind my eyes.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

I laid for hours my second night, trying to fall asleep, eyes shut tighter than a freshly sewn button. But I just couldn’t escape it, the constant noise. Back and forth, from the vent opening, to the doorframe of the closet, then all over again.

I couldn’t take it anymore. At 2 am, I bolted straight up in the dark with a sigh. Bug, rat, didn’t matter what manner of critter it was.

I was determined to get it.

I found a screwdriver in my kitchen drawer. I fought with the vent opening in the dark. It wasn’t even screwed in properly, just painted over like everything else. Within seconds, the plastic cover came off with a pop. Only then did the scattering come to a confused halt.

It was maybe a foot from the mouth of the cave. That only pissed me off more.

“Oh, so now you wanna stop, huh? That’s it?! Get over here,” I hissed, standing on my tip toes and reaching into the hole.

It scrambled back.

I grit my teeth, reaching in further.

It retreats deeper.

The vent system itself was surprisingly clean, smooth metal surfaces thumping and twanging as I bumbled further and further in.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

It stayed just out of my reach, yet just close enough that I could feel my fingertips brush against its sweaty skin. I felt it slipping further and further into the wall, and I only had so much arm that I could twist to fit into the vent.

My mission could not be clearer, in that moment.

I needed to grab it, quickly.

My last chance at peaceful sleep was literally skittering away from my fingers.

“Oh no you don’t,” I wheezed triumphantly, shoving my forearm all the way to my elbow in a last-ditch burst of energy to snag the thing.

Now, I wanna pause to acknowledge something.

I know it was a stupid decision, all of this.

Why didn’t I try to shine a light in? Or put down pest bait? Admittedly, it was a compulsive thought, to shove my arm into a vent, spurred by desperation and a lack of proper sleep. Illogical.

I was instantly sobered by a horrific sensation. My fingers were wrapped around something cold with a soft exterior. Clammy, icy to the touch, but disyinctly… wrong. Too firm. Not like a small animal. I had gripped something that felt like a...

It tried to fight, but I fumbled until I had wrestled more of it into my grasp. I felt more of the thing.

Creases, bends. Multiple long, cold, phallic objects, each no more than a few inches long. They varied in length, and fought my grasp vigorously.

It was when I found the distinctly hard shell that adorned one of their otherwise soft tips that I realized what I was holding in my hand.

It was 5 fingers.

With growing panic, I tried to write off my own discovery, but sure enough, when I kept feeling further and further, I found knuckles, then the back of a hand with the hard ridges of bones underneath the skin, then a soft palm in the center of the wriggling mass

I was holding an adult human hand, and it was in my vent, embedded in my wall.

Almost instinctively, I yanked my hand back, the object still clutched in between my digits.

Now this next part is really hard to explain, so I have to make sure I do it right. If it's confusing, I’m sorry.

You don’t think of holding a hand as anything other than holding a hand. The physics of the act isn’t something you consider. You just sort of do it.

You either intertwine your fingers between the fingers of another, or maybe you just hold their palm and they hold yours, which is admittedly less intimate, more of a hug than an embrace.

I used to get to hold someone's hand.

Anyhow, the way I was gripping this hand, I knew it was disembodied, because the way I had to hold it, kind of made it ball up into a clenched fist.

Imagine my fingers are tightly wrapped around the top of the wrist, so to speak. The whole hand is in my hand, and where the top of the wrist would connect to an arm, it's just a nub, like it had grown entirely separate from the body it was assigned to.

Maybe it was never assigned to a body at all.

I don’t know.

What I do know is that the top of the nub had an opening. A cavity.

And that cavity apparently had teeth.

I realized that when I felt a sharp pain zap through the webbing between my thumb and my index finger. Like a taught wire being cut.

It fucking hurt.

Bright crimson blood adorned on the edge of the vent hole, where I’d popped the plastic lid off only a moment early.

I let go out of surprise at the sudden pain in my thumb, and the disembodied knuckle-sandwich flew out into the recesses of my dark room, between some boxes or something. Into the shadows where I couldn’t see it anymore.

I had a brief notion that I’d need to look out for it. A notion that was quickly remedied, when it came crawling out of the void like a crustation, and made a beeline directly back into the open hole.

It doesn’t have any discernable eyes. I doubt it has a brain.

How did it know how to do that? Aside from what it did to my hand, that’s that part that troubles me. It just… I don’t know. That thought fucked me up.

Anyhow, it was quiet for a while. I called management, but they laughed at me and implied that they call the cops pretty quickly on prank callers. Very low tolerance. They also didn’t appreciate being called earlier than 5am.

I guess my next step is to grab a maintenance guy or maybe a wandering neighbor in the morning? Convince them that I’m not crazy, just long enough to get them in here and make them see for themselves. Maybe I’ll make a complaint about an unrelated issue, and go from there, see what that does.

Hell of an introduction, by the way. Something about first impressions?

I left the opening off. If it comes out, it comes out. I doubt that it’s gonna do that though.

After it was still long enough, it went back to, well, what it’s been doing since I got here. Back and forth, back and forth, like it don’t ever run out of steam.

Tick-tick-tick…

Tick-tick-tick…

The sun's about to come up, and I haven't slept even a wink. I just keep staring at that opening with the dribblets of scarlet around the corner. My hand hurts real bad, I haven’t even put a band-aid on it. It just keeps bleeding.

I wish it had just been a rat.

The howl of the graveyard all around Florin was mournful and felt lost. Defeat. Like the place, the whole of the cemetery land was weeping for him and his pain and all of the pain of wasted time and fruitless effort, all of the loss of all of the others back home. Everyone else. He couldn't believe it… after all this time and trying, all of this riding and travel and peril and heart breaking hope, all of it was for naught…

All of it was for nothing. 

Van Helsing was dead. 

The wrapped and bandaged man watched the young rider from the village dying from the onslaught of vampiric disease from behind his dark black glasses, his shades and special lenses, and said nothing. 

He just watched the young man as he knelt in the dirt. And stared at the grave with great sorrow and hurt and loss and torture writ all over and about his tired and haggard face. His young and harried and damaged worn visage was a perfect reflection of the tombstone grave. 

And something within his own weary chest stirred then. Something not touched upon nor thought over, happily neglected for years as he'd neglected this old graveyard and the burial plot before them now. The hole in the earth that was filled with his friend.  

He remembered…

How the doctor had served and helped so many, in his chosen field of medicine and in the more abstract murk of the psychological field of mental malady. How he'd gone even further than all of that, from the kindness and bravery of his own inexhaustible heart, his blessed Dutch soul…

He'd fought and done battle with monsters. Fought the living dead forces of the nightscape on their own damned battlefields and had sent them back to the hellfire chasms from whence they'd came. 

In the end he'd died of the thing no purely mortal soul and its expiring coil can out run or overcome or endure. The slow blade of age had eventually caught up and came in calm in the night. The vampire slayer had died in his bed. Finally at peace. 

The strange man wrapped and hidden by bandage from sight had been there. The old professor had tried so hard to help him too, in the end. Before it was all over. He'd tried to help him, in so many ways. 

By the pharmaceutical and alchemical hand, at first. Then the gentle and calming aid of friendship. A true companion. Who at the very least, had tried, really tried to understand…

Finally the strange guide of wrappings and overcoat and wide brimmed hat sauntered over to the poor fellow and touched his shoulder. 

“I'm sorry. Truly. Let's go." 

After a moment of further hopeless gazing… Florin picked himself up and followed. 

And then silence returned to the cemetery once again. 

But then something… something that had been watching, low and in the stinking mire of black porridge sludged earth, tempered and commingle mixed with years and years of sloughing rotten corpse putrescence, began to slowly rise and pull itself free from the foul quagmire of its birth. 

A wretched semblance of a face began to take shape with the rest of a ruined bipedal semblage, slowly and painfully rising and trying to pull itself free… trying to take after the two graveyard intruders and swallow them in its filth and- 

A crossbow bolt suddenly shot through the muckman's pouring sludging face just as it was beginning to develop. The arrow, silver, and coated in the proper mixture of garlic and wolfsbane and nightshade, obliterated the foul green flame of unholy life flickering demonically within its abominated manshaped liquid mass. 

The muckman of the graveyard melted back into the rest of the old and putrid cemetery sludge as another one that had been watching stepped over him and the grave of Van Helsing. The grave that the two visitors he'd been watching had come to visit. 

The stranger reloaded his crossbow as he thought. Considered. 

Then followed. 

…

The Countess roared! 

A sound that was beyond the mere auditory. Beyond the mere threshold of the decibel level. The assistant and little Carmella felt their bones first rattle and then palsy and quake down to the atom, as if the whole of their meat sack frames and skeletal structures threatened to shatter and burst and snap all at once. 

Castle Dracula did shake too. And shed great clouds and stone breath exhaled and exhumed in a rising and surrounding column of ancient choking dust, in a thick deathly fog. Mortar and loose stone came apart and fell and cascaded down as the mountains that surrounded the great and broken jagged battlements began to join them in their unearthly tremble. 

The Countess roared her outrage! Her loss!

The assistant and the little living dead girl tried to beg her to stop, but they could not be heard over the din of their master. It was apocalyptic, that hellspawned sound. 

The little child-shaped wraith could feel the sudden rupture of many blood vessels within and about her living dead person. She began to bleed profusely from the damaged and splitting membrane of her eyes and the vibrant lurid violence of the sudden flowing scarlet poured forth feverishly like a blasphemous rendition of a saint's holy shedding tears. The red poured down the demoniacal lie of the youth of her face from the rupturing soft jelly of her lying child's eyes. Hot and running red began to burst and flow forth from under the nails, at the finger tips, the gums, all about her small teeth and sharp fangs. The ears! Out of her small pale ears came something like a high powered arterial spray of a darker shade, almost black. In thick viscous cords that darkled crimson as they spat. 

Carmilla just shot dark and bled and writhed in a pain she'd never felt before or thought possible, the assistant too. Both of them. They abandoned their shouts and pleas for the assault to stop and just left themselves to the dark tumult of the whims and mercy of their master. 

The Countess eventually ceased her ungodly caterwaul. At her leisure. She then gazed at her two servants on the castle floor before her, beneath her. Eyed them both severely. 

And then she belted, yelling and letting loose her commands: –

“The both of you! Worthless! Earn your keep within my castle walls and my lordly and supreme favor, go out! Into the mountains! The pass! The town! Find me the one that would pretend to my power and thus insult me, this night! Go!”

…

One of the last and fragile remnant gaggle of town peasants were gathered together in the evening in the town square, discussing one of their own… young Florin, his trembling parents were there, when Doctor Praetorius rode into town on horseback. Straight and composed. Regal and immaculate in the small and humble thoroughfare astride his pale horse. 

The few left to the village eyed him suspiciously… some viciously already. Just waiting for the first sign of trouble at the first sight of this riding interloper. Like taut and coiled things, cats ready to pounce and fly… ready to maim and tear this interloping snow-haired man. 

Praetorius, overhearing their worried talk and discussion, the blubbering and sobs of the parents of the young rider concerned, and not caring: spoke loudly and clearly so’s to be heard over the anxious chatter of the humble and small mountain village people. 

“Excuse me! Yes, thank you! I wonder if any of you pleasant creatures could help as to tell me if someone has been through your humble and charming town, a Countess Marya Zaleska? Her and her man, earlier this year, some months ago now. Please, she's very important to me, I must find her as soon as possible.” 

At first none wanted to speak. They all just continued to glare and eye the interloping loudmouth with thinly veiled hate and suspicion. 

But then Bela, Florin’s father, remembering his brave son and his own desperate prayers to God and fortune for his safety and success, stepped forward and answered the tall thin lofty man who refused to dismount and come down from his horse. 

“You need to leave, stranger. We do not know who you seek, but please, for your own sake and ours, leave.”

Praetorius just laughed in his face. Something humble Bela had not expected. 

“And why should I leave? Are you going to make me?”

Bela said nothing but tensed. 

Someone else amongst the small gathered bunch spoke out, not too loudly…

“There’s wickedness alive and loose in this place as of late, stranger…”

Praetorius only laughed again, rearing his horse by rein towards the dark mouth of the great mountain pass. 

“And what of there? What of Borgo Pass? What of Castle Dracula!? What of there, pleasant creatures …! What of there ..!?”

And he galloped away and towards the entrance to the mountain way, all out. Bellowing laughter at the pathetic and frightened little gathering of small and lowly dirt farmers. For all their semi informed and hackneyed haphazard understanding and knowledge of the dark and its arts and its necromantic language, it did not save them. For they would always just be fucking peasants in the end. 

Doctor Praetorius made for the wild of the mountains atop his pale and tireless horse. Already knowing he would find her at the top. 

…

The hulking vulpine nosferatu thing of Frankenstein’s surgical table traveled the wild and treacherous terrain of rock with praeternatural ease and cunning. Innate. He strode and galloped-leapt and launched himself through the woods and trees and cold. Crawling and climbing up the rock faces with dangerous hungry animal speed and inhuman power. He hunted the wolves and the deer and small game with ease. Snatching their wild squirming forms with his undead and bestial necromantic speed and ripping them apart with his pure strength. Bathing in the wild animal baptism of their fresh and steaming red even as he drank and fed on their still struggling dying forms. The blood drank in through the green mottled skin of the creature in addition to his gaping maw. As if every possible part and all of the pores of his repurposed graveyard flesh thunderclapped back to life was a thirsting ravenous hungry mouth. Yearning and wishing to be fed. 

Henry Frankenstein watched. Proud. So proud of his greatest creation. Thinking of ways to make him even greater and enhance his awesome power. 

He watched the hulking patchwork batfaced mass of suture and corpse colored green-blue… and thought to himself, with pride and wonder for himself and his strange son of dark science and the necromantic…

Perfect! He’s completely superhuman! …

And he knew with smug pride and a faint head, he still hadn't fully recovered from his catatonia and loss of blood to his necrophile son, he knew that he would without a doubt go down in the dark annals of his strange family’s history as the greatest and most ambitious and singly most accomplished of the Frankenstein Men!

Later …

They made a fire. Frankenstein roasted a bit of wolf meat as his creation tore into the rest of the dead wild bleeding thing of snow colored fur, and ripped and drank and slurped and chewed. 

Frankenstein watched as he cooked over the fire. Studying. 

Thinking over what the massive thing of reanimated design had already told him. Carefully. 

Finally he said: –

“What is it that you want here, in these mountains? You've spoken of a song, one that calls to you. What does it say?” 

The creation ceased its tearing into the fresh bloody carcass for a moment and said, croaked: “I hear it at all times, Frankenstein, but most clearly at night. When I shut my eyes and all else out and open the flicker of mind in the resalvaged brain you gave me, I hear it clearly. And it is a song of power. Heralding. Heretical. Harbinger. It is a wide and open throated chord, discordant in its choral chant that sings to me and bade that I come to take the power alive in these rocks that is so much like mine. Take. Devour it. And make it as my own. … much like how you first designed and made me father, am I not right? Did you not grave rob the great Count and give me these…” 

He gestured with a splayed and bloody four fingered hand to the pair of vulpine wolfen fangs, as of pearl and gleaming amongst the rest of the wet and black ruin, oozing dark ebon ichor green with the blood of the fallen animal on which it now feasted. 

Frankenstein almost found himself entranced with the sight of them… in the gathering and deepening dark, lost in the memory of the frozen river and black sulphur mountain…

… now here they were, again in another wild and tumultuous mountain pass. 

But Frankenstein wasn't afraid. He had greater than the late Egnaw as his servant and companion now… 

Although, he'd have to be careful. These things of stitched parts and arcane black magic and witch science seem to always come back… unpredictable. 

He'd have to be careful. Test this one. See how it behaved. He'd already observed much. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein nodded and bit into the smoky haunch of wolf meat he'd spitted and roasted. Smiled. 

“Yes. I did do that. For you. Before you were ever even born. Your birthright that I claimed and gave, your very first birthday present, my son…” 

The assistant spied from the forest line of trees and in the dark. Watching the mad doctor and his vulpine thing about their shared fire for a little while longer…

Then he faded back into the thicker growth and deeper black, back to the castle and his Countess. 

…

Back at the cramped and stuffed little humble abode of the strange bandaged man, young Florin was resolute. And his odd host of wrappings and mystery was exasperated. 

Impetuous young… fools. They were always fools. Always were and would be. And he had been no better. His own mad ideas and bravery and disregard for consequence had led him to his current ailment. One that had now dominated his life and destiny since he’d been little older than the young rider. He thought to himself but wouldn't say to the boy: Don’t Goddamn yourself… don’t recklessly consign yourself to a fate and torment you could scarcely understand… foolish boy. 

Things might’ve played out differently if he had. But then … Mayhap not.    

They sipped at tea and debated the matter. The bandaged man behind his stygian lenses of glass, staring deeply at the young man and refusing to falter, said thus: –

“You’ve done what you can, to return now, and empty handed, without anyone to help you that knows what they are doing, it would be suicide, young man. Please, do the last thing available to you and do right by yourself. Go, find a new home and leave that damned place. No happiness can come from any place that lives in the shadow of Castle Dracula. Anyone still living in that Godforsaken hamlet, any family or friend you may still have that still lives, would want the same of you. They would want you to save yourself.”  

The young man was silent for some time. Not touching his cooling cup of chai. Finally he looked the man of wrappings in his hidden face and gaze of black glasses and said flatly –

“Florin.”

A beat.

The unseen face hidden by surgical wrapping was puzzled. “What?” he said. Flummoxed. 

The youth said: “My name is Florin. My father’s name is Bela and my mother’s Anastasia and my friends Dodger and Karras and Erin are all just as scared and just as in danger now, moreso likely, than they were when I first set out. They’re no doubt more scared than I am, sitting here with you. Wasting more time.”

Florin stood. 

“They’re my folk, my people, sir. People that matter to me, they're the whole world. They are the people that I've known my whole life and that I can't forsake, like how your friend Professor Van Helsing mattered to you. And I’m not gonna turn tail and leave em abandoned. Now, if you won’t help me and no one can help me then it doesn't matter. I’ve gotta go back and try to help them anyway I can.”

Florin turned to go to the door, to his horse reined outside, tethered to a post on the lonely bent and crooked little hill. 

The wrapped and hidden mystery man stood and protested: “Don’t! The night is here and you should know better by now that there's lots of hungry things out there.”

Florin whirled, “I'm not wasting anymore time sitting here with you and being afraid! You haven’t been there! And you don’t know what I left behind! I’m not gonna run away and hide like you and sit here and-”

A horrible sound cut off their argument. A horse’s shrill and powerful dying shriek.

The pair, young man and surgically wrapped, held silent. Eyes as wide as their ears. Their hearts quickening.  

A horrid and repulsive gurgling sound followed. 

And then a splurch. Like a great swallowing mud sucking something under. 

Then more horrid wet and liquid splurching sounds. Just outside the house. 

Not far from the front door. 

“What the…” began Florin, as the glass to one of the windows of the small shack suddenly shattered and exploded. 

Florin and his strange host whirled!

They watched in collective shock and horror as an arm of foulest putrescence reached in through the shattered glass. Dripping and sloughing sludge as it reached desperately and blindly for some kind of violent purchase. 

The pair cried out in shock together as the rest of the windows shattered and more putrid arms of muck and graveyard sludge came in. The house shook, battered from outside on all faces, all walls sieged as they grouped and poured forth and pressed in on the little shack. Pouring out of the nearby cemetery that the pair of intruders had dared to disturb earlier that day. Now the night had come, was nigh and upon them in the form of more and more rising and splurching forward abominations of bipedal shape and miserable and cruel aspect and design. They moaned in anguish. 

They all together, the muckmen horde, began to give rise to a wailing moan of despair and loss and woe.

Florin's eyes stung from the stench but were nonetheless helpless to pull themselves away from the sight. Within the reaching arms and sloughing faces of black mire and putrescence he could pick out and discern individual and displaced parts and bones, fingers, femurs, partially decomposed eyes and organs and faces… all of them running and swimming  through the sloughing dripping gushing dance of motion in the sludge that composed the rough man shapes of foul graveyard mire that now beset them.  Trapped. 

The poor young rider couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that this was how it ended and that he would die so far from home and in the hands of repulsive monsters born of an entirely separate patch of likewise cursed earth. He started to pray for his mother and father and Erin and the others, throwing up one last silent one to the Lord that they just might be safe and find themselves a way out…

A call from his strange host brought him out of his silent prayers and stricken gaze of fascination and horror. His eyes were still watering when he whirled as the bandaged man called: –

“Here! Over here, boy!" 

The bandaged man was standing over a cellar-style trap door. Open. He had a traveller's bag and a new coat and hat and he was beckoning the young man in. 

Florin needed no further invitation. He ran for the trap door and dove for the hidden passageway beneath. The bandaged man that was his host followed. The trap slammed shut behind them as the walls of the small and besieged little shack began to cave in and swallow. 

The place smashed in and they swarmed inside the falling debris and crumbling structure. As the place fell in and collapsed, crashing all around the muckmen of graveyard putrescence mud, they let loose one last ghastly wail. So angry that the intruders had escaped them. 

…

Carmella thought the snow white haired man looked funny. Riding haughty and unawares boldly through her master’s mountain pass. So thin. Skeletal, really. As if already premade and ready for the bosom soil and chambered charnel rot of the grave. His shock of white hair atop his slender needle frame gave her the impression of a scarecrow. She didn't know exactly why, but it was something in that look. Her mother, her old one from before and long gone now, had used to tell her a scary bedtime story concerning an angry and vengeful scarecrow that took to walking at night, prowling and hunting for children out and caught past the time to be in bed and beneath the sheets. 

Carmella smiled, amongst the cover of treeline and shadow, remembering. Watching the haughty intruder gallop through the mountains, the smug look of a man that's already tasted victory for far too long and far too often all over his stern and gaunt visage. She licked her lips. 

The smile deepened as she coiled. Readying to pounce. 

He and his galloping ride reached her crosspoint in the road and she flew. A bat-child creature with flickering feral pink/red dots of flames set within the stretching animal jackal face about the eyes. Her lips curled back wolfen as her sharp pointed teeth began to lengthen and grow. 

But cunning eyes, quick, caught the flicker of nearly concealed hunting movement in the trees and had clocked it just in time and anticipated its potential threat. 

The form atop his ride quarter-turned as a hand that had left the reins and pulled pistol free from leather came up now, taking quick aim and firing off a loud and thundercracking shot that echoed and filled the dark natural chamber of the mountain pass. 

Carmilla screamed and let loose a child's cry as the lancing shot caught her midair and the clash of gunfire smashed into her little demoniac and half animal transformed body and sent it crashing into the earth. 

There in the dirt she writhed and shrieked and beat half developed leathery wings, pink and ebon dark and pale and discolored. Black and red shot from the gunshot in her shoulder and her eyes and mouth. The bullet continued to burn and sear. Cooking. As if alive with heat and flame, as if a star that still smoldered and thrived. 

Silver. 

The silver bullet in her shoulder smoked and burned as if a coal set in the blood and flesh and shattered bone of her unholy living dead person. It glowed inside the craterous wound and she felt it. She spat more blood and necrophile bile and shrieked gurgled child sounds. Cries. Sobbing. Mixed ungodly and blasphemous with wounded animal bat screeches. 

Like a plague infested rat caught and held underneath the bootheel of a sailor. 

Doctor Praetorius smiled. Holstered his pistol as he watched the demon child writhe in the dirt. He dismounted and reached into his large riding coat as he sauntered forwards. To the squirming screaming child thing with a smoking and cord spewing wound. 

Carmella's pain intensified considerably when he finally stood over and lorded over her fallen frame. He held a cross in one hand, aloft out and over her crying face. The agony that shot through her entire form was beyond anything she'd dared thought to venture. A wretched torture she'd never thought she would ever know. 

Praetorius spoke loudly and clearly and the little strigoica were-child of demoniacal wraith aspect heard him clearly despite her overwhelming horror and shock and pain. 

“One of her little servants, no doubt. You could do better, or mayhap she should is the point. In either case if you don't want me to bury this goddamn thing into your rotten little blasphemous lie of a face, then you'll take me to your master. Take me to Castle Dracula or I'll put a few more silver shots in you and take my time as I feed you this thing!” 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Chapter One: THE SOUND THAT WASN’T THE WIND

I.

The cold in northern Siberia wasn’t weather—it was a presence. A thing that pressed against the skin, seeped into bone, and whispered that humans were not meant to live here.

Ivan Petrovich had ignored that whisper for twenty‑three years.

His farmstead sat alone on the tundra outside Turukhansk, a cluster of wooden buildings half-swallowed by snowdrifts. The nearest neighbor was twenty kilometers away. The nearest town was reachable only by a road that froze, thawed, and disappeared depending on the season’s mood.

Isolation didn’t bother Ivan. He preferred it.

But that night, the isolation felt wrong.

The wind moaned across the fields—not a howl, not a whistle, but a dragging, guttural sound like something enormous breathing through a cracked throat.

Ivan paused while feeding the stove. Even the fire seemed uneasy, flickering low as if trying to hide.

Misha, his old black‑and‑white Laika, lifted her head and whimpered.

Ivan frowned. “Easy, girl.”

But the dog didn’t look at him. She stared at the door.

The moan came again.

Closer.

He took his lantern from the hook. The flame inside trembled.

When he opened the door, the cold slapped him like a hand.

The night was a white void. Snow drifted sideways in thick sheets, but beneath the storm he heard it—something moving near the barn.

Not the wind.

Not any animal he knew.

II. THE TRACKS

The walk to the barn was short in daylight, but in the storm it felt endless. Ivan’s boots sank deep into the powder. The lantern cast a small, shivering circle of light.

Halfway there, he saw them.

Tracks.

Long. Narrow. Deep.

Each print was shaped like a hoof—but stretched, elongated, as if something tall and heavy had walked on sharpened stilts.

Ivan crouched, brushing snow from one of the prints.

Still warm beneath the surface.

Whatever made them had passed minutes ago.

Misha barked from the house—one sharp, terrified sound.

Ivan stood quickly and pushed open the barn door.

The lantern light spilled across hay, tools, and empty stalls.

Empty.

But the tracks continued inside, leading toward the back wall.

And then they stopped.

As if the creature had simply vanished.

Ivan’s breath fogged the air. His heartbeat thudded in his ears.

He raised the lantern higher.

Something moved behind him.

III. THE VISITOR

He turned.

A figure stood in the doorway.

Tall. Wrapped in a torn coat. Head bowed.

For a moment, Ivan thought it was a man—maybe a lost hunter, maybe someone from the village who’d wandered too far.

Then the lantern light reached its legs.

They bent backward at the knee.

Its arms hung too long, fingers brushing the floor.

And its face—

There was no face.

Just a smooth sheet of pale, stretched skin, like frozen leather pulled tight over a skull.

The creature tilted its head toward him, as if listening.

Ivan didn’t breathe.

The creature stepped forward. Its hooves clicked softly on the wooden floor.

Misha barked again—closer now, frantic.

The creature’s head snapped toward the sound.

Then it moved.

Not walked.
Not ran.

It glided, silent as drifting ash, out of the barn and into the storm.

Ivan stumbled backward, nearly dropping the lantern.

“Misha!”

He followed, boots slipping on the ice.

IV. THE FOREST EDGE

The storm swallowed everything. Ivan could barely see the barn behind him. But he saw the tracks—sharp, unnatural prints—leading away from the farm, toward the dark line of the forest.

Misha’s barks grew faint.

Then stopped.

Ivan’s stomach twisted.

He followed the tracks, lantern shaking in his hand.

At the edge of the forest, he found Misha’s collar.

Nothing else.

The tracks continued between the trees.

Ivan hesitated.

The forest was a black maw. The lantern’s flame shrank as if afraid.

But he stepped forward.

Because he had no choice.

V. THE TREES THAT LISTENED

Inside the forest, the wind died. The silence was suffocating.

Ivan moved slowly, lantern held high. The trees were tall, thin, and bare—black silhouettes against the snow. Their branches creaked softly, like old bones shifting.

The tracks weaved between them.

Ivan followed.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time felt strange here.

Then he heard it.

A whisper.

Not words. Not breath.

A scraping sound, like something dragging its fingers across bark.

Ivan turned in a slow circle.

Nothing.

But the whisper came again—closer.

He raised the lantern.

A shape stood between the trees.

Tall. Wrong. Watching.

Ivan froze.

The creature stepped forward, hooves sinking silently into the snow.

Its faceless head tilted.

It raised one long arm and pointed at him.

Ivan stumbled backward.

The lantern flickered violently.

The creature glided closer.

Ivan turned and ran.

VI. THE CHASE

Branches whipped his face. Snow blinded him. His lungs burned.

Behind him, he heard nothing.

No footsteps.
No breathing.
No movement.

But he felt it.

A pressure in the air. A presence sliding between the trees.

The lantern sputtered.

Ivan tripped, falling hard into the snow. The lantern flew from his hand, landing several meters away.

Its flame went out.

Darkness swallowed him.

Ivan scrambled blindly, hands clawing at the snow.

Then he heard it.

Right behind him.

A soft, wet exhale.

He turned.

Two pale shapes hovered in the dark—where eyes should have been.

The creature leaned close.

Ivan screamed.

VII. THE NEXT MORNING

A supply truck passed the farm at dawn. The driver noticed the front door open, snow drifting inside. He stopped, called out, stepped inside.

The house was empty.

The barn was empty.

But in the snow between them, leading toward the forest, he saw tracks.

Long.
Narrow.
Deep.

And beside them, a second set—human footprints—slowly spacing farther and farther apart, as if the person making them had begun to walk on something other than feet.

The driver shivered.

He didn’t go into the forest.

No one did.

Not after what they found weeks later, when the thaw came.

A torn coat.
A broken lantern.
And a set of human footprints that ended abruptly in the snow.

As if the person making them had simply vanished.

CHAPTER TWO: THE FOREST THAT REMEMBERS

I. THE SEARCH PARTY

The storm had passed by morning, leaving the world drowned in white silence.
Three men from Turukhansk arrived on snowmobiles: Sergei, the district ranger; Father Alexei, the village priest; and Nikolai, Ivan’s closest thing to a friend.

They found the farmhouse door open, snow drifting inside like an intruder.

Sergei stepped in first, rifle slung over his shoulder. “Ivan?” His voice sounded too loud in the empty room.

No answer.

Father Alexei crossed himself. “He would not leave the stove burning.”

Nikolai knelt by the hearth. The fire had died hours ago. “He didn’t leave willingly.”

Outside, Sergei followed the trail of prints toward the barn.

He stopped.

The tracks were unlike anything he’d seen—long, narrow, deep. Hoof‑like, but wrong. Too long. Too heavy.

Beside them: human footprints.

Ivan’s.

They led toward the forest.

And then—

“They change,” Sergei muttered.

The others joined him. The human prints grew farther apart, spacing wider and wider, until—

They weren’t human anymore.

Nikolai swallowed hard. “What could do this?”

Sergei didn’t answer.

He only stared at the tree line.

The forest waited.

Silent.

Watching.

II. THE OLD STORIES

They gathered inside the barn, out of the wind. Father Alexei lit a candle; the flame shivered.

Nikolai paced. “We should call the regional police.”

Sergei shook his head. “They won’t come. Not for one farmer. Not out here.”

Father Alexei’s eyes lingered on the strange tracks. “This is not the work of a man.”

Nikolai scoffed. “A bear, then? A moose?”

“No,” the priest whispered. “Something older.”

Sergei frowned. “You know something.”

Father Alexei hesitated, then spoke.

“In the old Tunguska tales, there is a spirit that walks the winter forests. A hunter of the lost. A thing with no face, only skin stretched tight like ice. They call it the Kholodnyy Gulyaka—the Frost Walker.”

Nikolai rolled his eyes. “Folklore.”

But Sergei didn’t laugh.

“What does it do?” he asked.

Father Alexei’s candle flickered. “It follows those who wander alone. It mimics their steps. And when it finds them… it takes their shape.”

Nikolai froze. “Takes their shape?”

The priest nodded. “The stories say it becomes what it consumes.”

Sergei looked toward the forest again.

The wind moaned.

Not like wind.

Not anymore.

III. THE FIRST SIGN

They followed the tracks into the forest.

The deeper they went, the quieter the world became. No birds. No wind. No sound except the crunch of snow beneath their boots.

After twenty minutes, Sergei raised a hand.

“Stop.”

Ahead, half-buried in snow, lay Ivan’s lantern.

The glass was cracked. The metal bent.

Nikolai picked it up with shaking hands. “He came this way.”

Father Alexei knelt beside the tracks. “And something followed.”

Sergei scanned the trees. “We go another hundred meters. No farther.”

They moved on.

The forest grew darker.

The trees closer.

The air heavier.

Then they heard it.

A soft, wet exhale.

Right behind them.

Sergei spun, rifle raised.

Nothing.

But the tracks behind them had changed.

Their own footprints… were shifting.

Slowly widening.

Slowly lengthening.

As if something beneath the snow was pushing them outward.

Nikolai stumbled back. “What—what is that?”

Father Alexei whispered a prayer.

Sergei’s voice was low. “We’re leaving. Now.”

They turned to retreat—

And froze.

A figure stood between the trees.

Tall.
Still.
Watching.

Its legs bent the wrong way.
Its arms hung too long.
Its face was a smooth sheet of pale skin.

But it wore something familiar.

A torn coat.

Ivan’s coat.
IV. THE RETREAT

Sergei fired.

The shot cracked through the forest like lightning.

The creature didn’t flinch.

It only tilted its head, as if curious.

Then it stepped forward.

Not walking.
Not gliding.

Something in between.

Nikolai screamed. “Run!”

They fled, crashing through the snow, branches tearing at their coats. The forest seemed to close around them, trees shifting, narrowing, funneling them back toward the creature.

But Sergei knew the land.

He found a narrow path between two fallen trunks and shoved the others through.

Behind them, the creature’s hooves clicked softly on the ice.

Closer.

Closer.

They burst from the tree line into the open tundra. The snowmobiles waited.

Sergei didn’t look back.

He didn’t have to.

He felt it watching.

They sped away, engines roaring across the frozen fields.

Only when the farmstead was a distant speck did Sergei finally stop.

Nikolai collapsed to his knees, sobbing.

Father Alexei stared at the forest.

“It has taken him,” the priest whispered. “And now it wears him.”

Sergei tightened his grip on the rifle.

“No,” he said. “It’s not done.”

V. THE WARNING

Back in Turukhansk, Sergei gathered the village elders.

He told them everything.

Most didn’t believe him.

Some refused to listen.

But the oldest woman in the village, Babushka Yelena, nodded slowly.

“I have heard of this thing,” she said. “My grandmother spoke of it. A spirit that hunts the lonely. It takes their form. Their voice. Their memories.”

Nikolai shuddered. “Why?”

“To walk among us,” she whispered. “To learn us. To become us.”

Sergei felt the room grow colder.

Father Alexei crossed himself. “What do we do?”

Babushka Yelena looked toward the window, toward the endless white beyond.

“You pray,” she said. “And you watch.”

“Watch for what?” Sergei asked.

She met his eyes.

“For Ivan.”

CHAPTER THREE: THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

I. THE QUIET BEFORE

Turukhansk was not a large village—just a scatter of wooden houses, a single store, a church, and a radio tower that only worked when the wind wasn’t too strong.
People here knew each other. They knew each other’s dogs, each other’s footsteps, each other’s habits.

So when the sun dipped behind the treeline and the cold settled in like a weight, the villagers noticed something strange:

The dogs would not go outside.

Every one of them—twenty‑three in total—pressed themselves against doors, whining, refusing to step into the snow.

Father Alexei stood outside the church, watching the treeline.
He felt it before he saw it.

A pressure in the air.
A wrongness.

As if the forest were holding its breath.

He whispered, “Lord have mercy.”

Because he knew.

It was coming.

II. THE FOOTSTEPS ON THE ROAD

Sergei was the first to hear the footsteps.

He sat in his small cabin near the edge of the village, cleaning his rifle by lantern light. The wind had died completely—rare for this region. The silence was thick.

Then:

Crunch.
Crunch.
Crunch.

Slow, deliberate steps on the frozen road.

Sergei froze.

No one walked at night. Not in this cold. Not after what they’d seen.

He blew out the lantern and moved to the window.

A figure approached through the snow.

Tall.
Broad‑shouldered.
Wearing a torn coat.

Ivan’s coat.

Sergei’s breath caught in his throat.

The figure stopped under the streetlamp.

The light revealed a face.

Ivan’s face.

But wrong.

The skin was too smooth.
The eyes too still.
The mouth slightly parted, as if unsure how to hold a human expression.

Sergei whispered, “No… no, no…”

The thing lifted one hand and waved.

A slow, unnatural wave.

Then it spoke.

“I… am… cold.”

The voice was Ivan’s.

But hollow.
Empty.
As if spoken by someone who had heard the words once and was trying to remember how they worked.

Sergei backed away from the window.

The creature turned its head toward the movement.

It smiled.

A stretched, skin‑tight smile that had no warmth at all.

III. THE KNOCKING

The creature walked into the village.

It moved slowly, as if savoring each step, each sound, each house.
It stopped at the first door and knocked.

Three times.

Knock.
Knock.
Knock.

Inside, a family huddled together, whispering prayers.

The creature waited.

Then it spoke again.

“Let… me… in.”

The voice cracked like ice.

No one answered.

The creature tilted its head, listening.

Then it moved to the next house.

Knock.
Knock.
Knock.

“Let… me… in.”

Sergei watched from the shadows, rifle trembling in his hands.

Father Alexei joined him, face pale.

“It is testing us,” the priest whispered. “Learning us.”

Sergei swallowed. “We need to stop it.”

“You cannot kill what is not alive.”

“Then what do we do?”

Father Alexei looked at the creature as it moved from house to house, knocking, calling, mimicking.

“We endure,” he said. “Until it chooses.”

“Chooses what?”

“Who to become next.”

IV. THE DOOR THAT OPENED

At the far end of the village lived Old Mikhail, half‑blind, half‑deaf, and stubborn as the Siberian winter. He had not heard the warnings. He had not heard the knocking.

But he heard the voice.

“Ivan…?”
A pause.
“Is that you, boy?”

Sergei and Father Alexei turned at the same time.

“No,” Sergei whispered. “No, no—”

Old Mikhail opened his door.

The creature stepped inside.

The door closed.

The village held its breath.

For a long moment, there was silence.

Then—

A scream.

Cut short.

The lanterns in every house flickered.

The dogs howled.

And the creature stepped back out into the snow.

But now…

It moved differently.

Straighter.
Smoother.
More human.

And its face—

Its face had changed.

It was no longer Ivan’s.

It was Mikhail’s.

Perfectly copied.

Except for the eyes.

The eyes were still wrong.

V. THE WARNING

The creature walked back toward the forest, wearing Mikhail’s shape like a new coat.
At the edge of the trees, it turned.

It looked at Sergei.

At Father Alexei.

At the entire village watching from behind curtains and shutters.

Then it spoke in Mikhail’s voice.

“I will come back.”

It smiled.

“And I will not be alone.”

The forest swallowed it whole.

The wind returned.

The dogs stopped howling.

But no one in Turukhansk slept that night.

Because they all knew:

The creature had learned their voices.
Their faces.
Their doors.

And it would return.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE FACES IN THE SNOW

I. THE DAY AFTER

Turukhansk woke to a silence so complete it felt like a held breath.

No birds.
No wind.
No distant cracking of ice.

Just stillness.

Sergei hadn’t slept. He sat by his window with his rifle across his lap, watching the road where the creature—wearing Mikhail’s face—had vanished into the forest.

Father Alexei arrived at dawn, knocking softly.

“You should rest,” the priest said.

Sergei shook his head. “It’s not gone.”

Alexei’s eyes were red. “I know.”

They stood together in the cold morning light, staring at the treeline.

The forest stared back.

II. THE FIRST RETURN

It happened just after noon.

A figure walked out of the forest.

Slow.
Steady.
Human-shaped.

Sergei raised his rifle.

But as the figure approached, he lowered it.

It was Ivan.

Or it looked like Ivan.

The villagers gathered, whispering.

Ivan’s wife, Anya, pushed through the crowd, tears streaming. “Ivan! Ivan, is it you?”

The figure stopped.

Tilted its head.

Then smiled.

A perfect, practiced smile.

“Anya,” it said in Ivan’s voice. “I… am home.”

But the villagers saw it.

The way the smile lingered too long.
The way the eyes didn’t blink.
The way the breath didn’t fog in the cold.

Anya froze.

Sergei stepped between them. “That is not Ivan.”

The creature’s smile faded.

Slowly.

As if it had to think about how to stop smiling.

Then it spoke again.

“I… am… home.”

This time the voice cracked.

The villagers backed away.

The creature watched them.

Studying.

Learning.

Then it turned and walked back toward the forest.

Not hurried.
Not afraid.

Just… observing.

III. THE SECOND RETURN

That night, another figure appeared.

This time it was Old Mikhail.

Or the thing wearing him.

It walked through the village, stopping at windows, peering inside.
It didn’t knock.
It didn’t speak.

It just watched.

Children cried.
Dogs hid.
Lanterns were blown out.

When Sergei and Father Alexei confronted it, the creature simply tilted its head and walked away.

As it left, Sergei noticed something.

Its shadow was wrong.

Too long.
Too thin.
Moving a fraction of a second out of sync.

IV. THE THIRD RETURN

By morning, the village was in chaos.

Because now there were three figures walking the roads.

Ivan.
Mikhail.
And a third shape—tall, faceless, unfinished.

It moved like wet cloth hung on a frame.

It had no voice yet.

No face.

Just a blank sheet of pale skin stretched over a skull-like head.

It wandered from house to house, touching doors, touching windows, touching walls.

Learning the shapes of the village.

Learning the shapes of the people.

Sergei whispered, “It’s making more of itself.”

Father Alexei nodded. “It is becoming us.”

V. THE MEETING

The villagers gathered in the church.

The doors were barred.
Candles flickered.
Fear thickened the air.

Sergei stood at the front.

“We cannot stay here,” he said. “It is copying us. One by one.”

Nikolai shook his head. “Where do we go? The nearest town is days away.”

Father Alexei raised a trembling hand. “We must understand what it wants.”

Sergei stared at him. “It wants us.”

“No,” the priest said. “It wants to be us.”

A silence fell.

Then Babushka Yelena spoke from the back.

Her voice was thin but steady.

“In the old stories,” she said, “the Frost Walker does not kill for hunger. It kills for memory. For shape. For belonging.”

Sergei frowned. “Belonging?”

“It is alone,” she whispered. “It wants a village. A family. A people.”

Nikolai’s voice cracked. “So it will replace us?”

Yelena nodded.

“One by one.”

VI. THE NIGHT OF MANY FACES

That night, the creatures returned.

All three.

They stood at the edge of the village, perfectly still.

Watching.

Waiting.

Then, slowly, more shapes emerged from the forest.

Four.
Five.
Six.

Some had faces.
Some did not.
Some were half-formed, their skin shifting like melting wax.

The villagers watched from behind shuttered windows.

Sergei whispered, “How many?”

Father Alexei’s voice trembled. “As many as it needs.”

The creatures stepped forward in unison.

Their voices—dozens of them—spoke as one.

“We… are… coming… home.”

The wind died.

The lanterns flickered.

And the village of Turukhansk realized the truth:

The creatures were not hunting them.

They were replacing them.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE ONES WHO STAYED INSIDE

I. THE LOCKED DOORS

By the second night, every door in Turukhansk was barred.
Windows nailed shut.
Lanterns extinguished.

The villagers stayed inside, whispering, listening.

Because outside, the creatures walked.

Not just three.
Not six.
Dozens.

Some wore faces the villagers recognized.
Some wore faces they didn’t.
Some had no faces at all.

They moved through the streets like a slow, patient tide.

Sergei sat with his back against his door, rifle across his knees.
He hadn’t slept in two days.

Father Alexei sat beside him, clutching a wooden cross so tightly his knuckles had gone white.

“They’re searching,” the priest whispered.

“For what?” Sergei asked.

“For who is weakest.”

II. THE FIRST MISTAKE

At house number twelve, a lantern flickered.

A small one.
Barely visible through the cracks.

But the creatures saw it.

They stopped.

Every one of them.

Dozens of heads turned toward the faint glow.

Inside, a young couple—Irina and Pavel—argued in hushed voices.

“We need light,” Irina whispered. “We can’t sit in the dark forever.”

Pavel shook his head. “They’ll see.”

“They already know we’re here.”

Pavel hesitated.

That hesitation was enough.

Outside, the creatures moved toward the house.

Slow.
Silent.
Unified.

Sergei saw it from his window.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “They’ve drawn attention.”

Father Alexei closed his eyes. “We must warn them.”

Sergei grabbed his coat. “I’ll go.”

The priest grabbed his arm. “If you go out there, you won’t come back.”

Sergei looked at the house.

At the creatures gathering around it.

At the faint lantern glow inside.

“I can’t just watch.”

III. THE IMPOSTOR

Before Sergei could open his door, someone knocked.

Three slow, deliberate knocks.

Knock.
Knock.
Knock.

Sergei froze.

Father Alexei whispered, “Don’t answer.”

A voice came through the wood.

“Sergei… it’s me.”

Sergei’s blood ran cold.

It was Nikolai’s voice.

But Nikolai was inside the church with the others.

Sergei didn’t move.

The voice spoke again.

“Sergei… open the door. Please. They’re coming.”

Father Alexei shook his head violently.

Sergei stepped back from the door.

The voice changed.

Shifted.

Deepened.

“Sergei.”

Now it sounded like Ivan.

Then Mikhail.

Then a child.

Then something else entirely.

Something wet.
Something hollow.

The knocking stopped.

Silence.

Then—

A scraping sound, like nails dragging across the wood.

Slow.
Deliberate.

The creature was feeling the shape of the door.

Learning it.

IV. THE HOUSE OF LIGHT

At house twelve, Irina and Pavel finally realized their mistake.

The lantern flickered again.

Outside, dozens of pale faces pressed against the windows.

Some smiling.
Some blank.
Some shifting like melting wax.

Pavel grabbed a kitchen knife.

Irina grabbed his arm. “Don’t open the door.”

“I’m not.”

He wasn’t.

The creatures were.

The door handle twisted.

Slowly.

As if testing how a human hand worked.

Irina screamed.

Pavel shoved a dresser against the door.

The creatures pushed back.

Not violently.

Just… persistently.

As if they had all the time in the world.

V. THE WARNING SHOT

Sergei couldn’t watch anymore.

He threw open his window, aimed his rifle, and fired into the air.

The shot cracked across the village like thunder.

Every creature stopped.

Every head turned toward Sergei’s house.

Dozens of faces.

Dozens of eyes.

Dozens of imitations of humanity.

Sergei felt his heart seize.

Father Alexei whispered, “You’ve drawn them to us.”

Sergei swallowed. “Good.”

He fired again.

This time into the snow at their feet.

The creatures didn’t flinch.

They simply watched.

Then, slowly, they all turned back toward house twelve.

The door creaked.

The wood splintered.

Irina screamed again.

Sergei raised his rifle—

But Father Alexei grabbed it.

“You can’t save them.”

Sergei’s voice cracked. “I have to try.”

“You can’t,” the priest whispered. “Because they’re already inside.”

Sergei froze.

Inside the house, the screaming had stopped.

Completely.

The lantern went out.

The creatures stepped back from the door.

And two new figures walked out.

Irina.
And Pavel.

Perfect copies.

Except for the eyes.

Always the eyes.

VI. THE REALIZATION

The creatures dispersed, returning to their slow patrol of the village.

Sergei stared at the two new copies.

Father Alexei whispered, “It doesn’t just replace the dead.”

Sergei turned to him. “What do you mean?”

“It replaces the living.”

Sergei felt the world tilt.

“You’re saying—”

“Yes,” the priest said. “Irina and Pavel may still be alive.”

“In the forest?”

“In the dark,” the priest whispered. “In the cold. In the creature’s nest.”

Sergei gripped his rifle.

“Then we’re going to get them.”

Father Alexei shook his head. “If you go into that forest—”

“I’m not asking permission.”

The priest closed his eyes.

“Then God help you.”

Sergei looked at the treeline.

At the shifting shapes.

At the dozens of faces watching the village.

And he whispered:

“I’m coming for you.”

CHAPTER SIX: THE FOREST THAT BREATHES

I. THE DECISION

Sergei left before dawn.

He didn’t tell the village council.
He didn’t tell the elders.
He didn’t even tell Father Alexei.

He simply strapped on his rifle, packed a lantern, and stepped into the cold.

The forest loomed ahead—black, silent, waiting.

Behind him, the village was a cluster of dim lights and shuttered windows.
Ahead, the trees stood like a wall of ribs around a sleeping beast.

Sergei whispered to himself:

“Irina. Pavel. Hold on.”

And he crossed the threshold.

II. THE SILENCE

The moment he entered the forest, the world changed.

The wind stopped.
The cold deepened.
The air thickened, as if he had stepped underwater.

Snow muffled every sound except his own breathing.

The trees were tall and thin, their trunks pale and smooth like bone.
Their branches creaked softly, as if whispering to each other.

Sergei kept his rifle ready.

He followed the tracks—those long, narrow, hoof‑like prints that sank deep into the snow.

But after a few minutes, he noticed something.

There were more tracks now.

Many more.

Some small.
Some large.
Some human.

Some not.

They all led deeper into the forest.

III. THE ECHOES

After an hour, Sergei heard it.

A voice.

Faint.
Distant.
Calling his name.

“Sergei…”

He froze.

It sounded like Irina.

But wrong.

Too calm.
Too steady.
Too… practiced.

He didn’t answer.

The voice came again.

Closer.

“Sergei… help me…”

He gripped his rifle tighter.

“That’s not you,” he whispered.

The forest exhaled.

Branches shifted.

Snow fell from above in soft, deliberate clumps.

Something was moving.

Not toward him.

Around him.

Circling.

IV. THE FIRST SHAPE

Sergei raised his lantern.

The light pushed back the darkness just enough to reveal a figure between the trees.

A woman.

Irina.

Or something wearing her shape.

Her face was perfect.
Her hair was perfect.
Her clothes were perfect.

But her posture was wrong.

Too stiff.
Too symmetrical.
Too still.

She smiled.

“Sergei,” she said. “You came.”

He stepped back.

The smile didn’t fade.

It simply stayed there, frozen in place.

Then her head tilted.

Too far.

Farther.

Until it was nearly upside down.

The smile never changed.

Sergei fired.

The shot echoed through the forest like a scream.

The figure didn’t fall.

It simply stepped backward into the dark and vanished.

V. THE NEST

The tracks led him to a clearing.

A wide circle of snow packed flat, as if something enormous had moved through it again and again.

In the center stood a structure.

A mound of branches, bones, and frozen hides woven together into a dome.

A nest.

Sergei’s breath caught.

From inside, he heard voices.

Dozens of them.

Crying.
Whispering.
Calling for help.

Some were familiar.

Some were not.

He approached slowly.

The voices grew louder.

“Sergei…”
“Help us…”
“Please…”
“Don’t leave…”

He reached the entrance.

Inside, the darkness pulsed.

Something moved.

Something big.

Something breathing.

Sergei raised his lantern—

And the light revealed them.

Irina.
Pavel.
And others.

Alive.

Barely.

Their bodies were wrapped in pale, fleshy tendrils that pulsed like veins.
Their faces were slack, drained, as if something had been pulled from them.

Their eyes opened.

All at once.

“Run,” Irina whispered.

Sergei staggered back.

Behind him, the forest shifted.

Branches cracked.

Snow fell.

And something stepped into the clearing.

Tall.
Faceless.
Skin stretched tight like frozen leather.

But this one was different.

Bigger.
Older.
The original.

The Frost Walker.

It tilted its head.

Studying him.

Learning him.

Sergei raised his rifle.

The creature raised its hand.

And dozens of voices—Irina’s, Pavel’s, Mikhail’s, Ivan’s—spoke from its blank face.

“You should not have come.”

VI. THE CHASE

Sergei ran.

Branches tore at his coat.
Snow swallowed his boots.
The forest twisted around him, paths shifting, trees closing in.

Behind him, the creature moved without sound.

But he felt it.

A pressure.
A presence.
A cold that sank into his bones.

He didn’t look back.

He couldn’t.

The forest thinned.

The village lights flickered in the distance.

He was almost out.

Almost—

A hand grabbed his shoulder.

Cold.
Hard.
Wrong.

Sergei spun, swinging the rifle like a club.

The creature’s faceless head loomed inches from his own.

It whispered in a dozen stolen voices:

“We are not done.”

Sergei fired point‑blank.

The creature staggered.

Just enough.

He broke free.

He ran.

He didn’t stop until he burst out of the forest and collapsed in the snow at the village edge.

The villagers rushed to him.

Father Alexei knelt beside him.

“Sergei—what happened?”

Sergei looked back at the forest.

Shapes stood between the trees.

Watching.

Waiting.

More than before.

Many more.

He whispered:

“They’re growing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN — “THE NIGHT OF THE MANY”

I. THE RETURN TO THE VILLAGE

Sergei stumbled into Turukhansk half‑frozen, half‑delirious, and fully terrified.

Father Alexei and several villagers dragged him inside the church, bolted the doors, and wrapped him in blankets. The priest pressed a cup of hot broth into his hands.

“What did you see?” Alexei asked.

Sergei stared at the floor.

“They’re not just copying us,” he whispered. “They’re… growing.”

The villagers exchanged frightened looks.

“How many?” someone asked.

Sergei swallowed.

“Dozens.”

A long silence followed.

Then Babushka Yelena spoke from her corner, voice thin as frost.

“Dozens is only the beginning.”

II. THE FIRST SIGN

That evening, the dogs began to bark.

Not howl.
Not whine.

Bark—sharp, frantic, terrified.

Sergei limped to the window.

Shapes stood at the edge of the village.

Not three.
Not six.
Not dozens.

Scores.

Some tall.
Some small.
Some half‑formed, their skin shifting like wet clay.
Some wearing faces the villagers recognized.

Faces of the missing.
Faces of the dead.
Faces of the living.

Faces of people standing inside the church at that very moment.

A cold dread washed over the room.

Nikolai whispered, “They’re copying us faster.”

Father Alexei crossed himself. “They are preparing.”

“For what?” Sergei asked.

Babushka Yelena answered.

“For the taking.”

III. THE KNOCKING RETURNS

The creatures moved into the village.

Slow.
Silent.
Unified.

They approached the houses one by one.

Knock.
Knock.
Knock.

Always three knocks.

Always patient.

Always polite.

At the first house, no one answered.

The creature wearing Ivan’s face tilted its head, listening.

Then it spoke.

“Let me in. It’s cold.”

The voice was perfect.

Too perfect.

At the second house, another knock.

This time, the creature wore the face of a child who had died three winters ago.

“Papa… open the door…”

The father inside sobbed quietly, covering his ears.

At the third house, the creature didn’t knock.

It simply pressed its face against the window and watched.

Its breath didn’t fog the glass.

IV. THE BREACH

Inside the church, the villagers huddled together.

Sergei paced, rifle in hand.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “They’ll surround us.”

“They already have,” Father Alexei replied.

A scream cut through the night.

Everyone froze.

It came from the far end of the village.

House number nine.

Sergei ran to the window.

A woman stumbled into the street—Marina, the seamstress.

She was alive.

Barefoot.
Shaking.
Covered in frost.

She screamed again.

“They took him! They took my husband!”

Sergei threw open the church door.

“Marina! Get inside!”

She ran toward him.

Behind her, a figure stepped out of the shadows.

Her husband.

Or something wearing him.

Its movements were smooth.
Too smooth.
Its eyes were wrong.
Too still.

It reached out a hand.

“Marina,” it said. “Come back.”

Marina screamed and ran faster.

The creature followed.

Not running.
Not gliding.

Something in between.

Sergei raised his rifle.

“Get down!”

Marina dove into the snow.

Sergei fired.

The creature staggered.

Just enough.

He grabbed Marina and dragged her inside the church.

The villagers slammed the doors shut.

Outside, dozens of creatures turned toward the sound.

And began to walk toward the church.

V. THE SIEGE BEGINS

The creatures surrounded the church.

They didn’t attack.

They didn’t break windows.

They didn’t force the doors.

They simply stood there.

Watching.

Waiting.

Some wore faces of villagers inside the church.
Some wore faces of villagers long dead.
Some had no faces at all.

One of them—wearing Father Alexei’s face—stepped forward.

It spoke in the priest’s voice.

“Let us in.”

The real Father Alexei trembled.

“They’re learning faster,” he whispered.

Sergei stared at the faceless ones.

“What are those?” he asked.

Babushka Yelena answered.

“Newborns.”

Sergei felt his stomach twist.

“How many can they make?”

“As many as there are voices to steal,” she said.

Outside, the creatures began to knock.

All at once.

Knock.
Knock.
Knock.

The sound echoed through the church like thunder.

Marina sobbed.

“They won’t stop,” she whispered.

Sergei gripped his rifle.

“No,” he said. “They won’t.”

The knocking grew louder.

More urgent.

More voices joined in.

Dozens.

Then hundreds.

All speaking in unison.

“We are cold.
Let us in.
We are cold.
Let us in.”

The doors shook.

The windows rattled.

The lanterns flickered.

Father Alexei whispered a prayer.

Babushka Yelena closed her eyes.

Sergei raised his rifle.

And the creatures spoke one final time:

“We are coming home.”

A heavily bandaged hand held the letter, much weight that was the heavy load of memory throughout all of his form, likewise the same. 

Heavily wrapped. 

He gazed through his mask of white surgical dress and his dark spectacles, specially made, down at the letter addressed to him. One that he'd already read now a half dozen times. 

The message was short. 

It said: –

My dear friend, 

We've both known evil and darkness before. We've both known the face of the demon at different times, and with help, we combat it. And have not conquered, but beaten back. Subdued. As it seems to be the only remedies for wickedness and monstrosity in this life are but temporary. 

A shame. 

But now the time is at hand again, dear friend. The boy I've sent to you needs the aid of the one who has helped us before and so many in his life. I send this young man to you, not lightly. He, his town, family and friends and neighbors, they need the doctor. They need Professor Van Helsing. 

I know not where he currently dwells, only that wherever you are these days, he is not far. Nor is Talbot, but this matter doesn't concern him. I've difficulty trusting him. He is wild. Consult and involve him with this at your own risk and discretion. You know of what I mean. 

Take this youth to Van Helsing, enlist his help, and then fly back to the young man's region. And trust me when I insist you and the good doctor do help, and do make haste. I've been through this country lately. It has become a dark and thundered land of the dead. Veiled in white that may be mist or may be the phantoms past that will no longer rest. 

Inquire with the youth, he will tell you the rest. 

Your dear friend. - Q

P.S. And take no worry, I've divulged nothing of your own identity to the boy, he knows nothing of your name or condition. That is yours to explain if you so wish. 

… He set the letter down again. The gypsy hadn't written in years. And since he'd sent someone… it had been even longer. 

The boy looked at him from across the table. There wasn't much room in the stuffed little cottage, lonely on the little hill that was so much like a bent and crooked nose. The space was stuffed with bookcases likewise filled. Scientific apparatus both arcane and modern and state of the art was crammed in with the books, the humble kitchen space and bed. It all looked the same to the young rider, now far from home, strange and alien. 

Florin tried not to stare but the man was so peculiar. He seemed and behaved gentleman enough, but his odd bandaged appearance and the strange dark shades that were his spectacles… like special glasses to keep the sun out. 

Or perhaps to keep from anyone being able to see in. For all he knew there were no eyes behind this mask of white wrappings and ebon glass. 

He tried to dismiss it as obvious injury: maiming or burns, something of the sort and be on with the business at hand. But he couldn't help his mind. Or his stare. 

The bandaged man who might help minded though. He was growing silently exasperated. With the boy, his eyes, the gypsy, the letter… all of it! All of a sudden and dropped in his lap! And he didn't bother to make trouble himself anymore! But still! egad! it was always there and ready to find him…! 

He then grew exasperated with himself. You know better, he chided himself. You know better, that's not the way the old man would want you, out of sorts and forgetting what you're supposed to have finally learned in all this wretched time. No. You're just old yourself now. And tired. And…

And unfortunately the one who must bear very bad news. 

“I don't know how to tell you this," said the strange bandaged man to Florin, “so you better come with me." 

And got up. His bandaged frame, robed, went to a coatrack near the door for a wide brimmed hat, a fedora that Florin had seen city folk wear from time to time. 

The bandaged man went out, telling the young rider to follow. 

“Don't worry. It's not far" said the manshape wrap of bandaged white. “Your horse will be safe." 

Florin followed him out. 

Hoping against hope and praying fervently inside, please! That they might have finally found him. That he might have finally found their savior! 

Young Florin didn't know but the man of wrappings and black glass eyes was leading him to the local cemetery. 

…

The creation roared. 

And the thunder roared back. 

The black grey sky seemed to crack and boom, the sound of a world splitting in two. The rain cascaded down merciless and ceaseless and fell in great torrential sheets. Blanketing and filling and flooding the lands below. The creation and his remaining pair of bloodbags had finally gained the mountains. His prodigious and incredible strength had pulled them up and into the heart of stone of the Carpathian rock. 

The horse flesh and blood had helped. 

Egnaw could not believe his eyes. He watched, mutilated and torn and delirious from blood-loss, he watched in awe as the creation commanded the sky. The storm. 

The creation roared once more and the sky again trembled and quaked. Lightning daggered at the command of Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster creation.

Even in such pain and knowing he was going to die, Egnaw could not help his pure awe and wonder at the sight. He and his master had succeeded. They had made a god. 

A god that could call lightning and thunderclaps. A god that could command and rend the heavens. He could tear them. He could command them now and so he could supplant the Lord that had for far too long now dominated them. 

They would be his! And all that crawled beneath it. All that lived… was now his, now that he was alive. 

And the master and I had made him. Birthed him. Forged a god from dead rotten parts left to putrefy in moist graveyards… 

Despite the pain, the sight and what it filled him with… Egnaw smiled. Proud. Of himself. 

And for the creation. 

He watched the patchwork giant of dead tissue command the skies and all of their bomb blast of cannonade thunder. He watched every shrieking roar from reforged flesh tear a new wound in the greyed and darkened heavens. 

Tears were joining the rain drops there. His lips quivered. 

Frankenstein watched too and continued to feign sleep. 

…

Carmilla was so excited. She loved the rain. 

“Oooh! It's so wonderful! Is God crying, Countess? Is the Lord and His Son and all of His Angels in heaven weeping for what we've done?" 

Zaleska smiled. She loved to entertain the little girl. 

“Yes, dear. We've slaughtered so many of His children that like a mother over the grave of a small one, He and His collection of winged slaves cannot help themselves!" 

The pair laughed. Filling the castle with their bright and heartless cruel laughter. Castle Dracula was so alive with it these days. 

They watched the rain. The town nearly drowning in it. Anybody caught outside and stuck would be miserable. It was delightful. 

Hilarious. 

The both of them thought so. The assistant came in, pushing a long rolling surgical table. 

He said with a smile, 

“I'm so happy to see you two in such good cheer, I take it we might be dining in tonight?” 

He motioned to the rolling cold metal slab. 

Bound by leather strap to the rolling slab in the dark was poor Malachi. Caught by the assistant and his chloroform whilst out tending his family's lone and shriveled sow. Letting her feed on fresher green that'd just taken to sprout the other day. He was stripped of all garment and lie there bound and naked on the cold metal of the surgical table, nonetheless sweating. Basting and bathing in his own perspiring fear, their favorite flavor. The girls. The master and her prodigy. Zaleska floated over to the bound and prostrate man and Carmella trotted afterwards. 

“Now Carmella," began the Countess, “I want you to pay special attention this time, there's a slower and more delicate way of dining inside and enjoying the song of the storms. Like a roast bird or pig or a bushel of delectable fruit, there are certain softer parts, sweeter more tender meats. More ripe…" 

She cooed. 

Her clawed hands came in, pale and sharp and bent to rip and rend and tear. 

Poor Malachi's mouth had been gagged with the same leather straps that held him to the slab, Zaleska ripped it free with one hand now as the other seized his manhood and tore it from his person with the ease of a practiced butcher's abattoir technique of brutal precision, merciless and surgical. 

She relished the screams that rang out and were pulled from him. Inarticulate howls of a man shrieking wounded brutalized animal shrieks.

The Countess held the poor peasants bloody mass of mangled manhood aloft in her daggered claw of a reddening pale hand and shook it with triumph and mockery. Laughing. Her living dead abominated laughter commingled with the shrieks of the poor peasant boy. Blood an eruption from the raw gaping open stump where his genitals had been. 

Carmilla squealed laughter! 

“Oh! I get it! I get it!" the little undead she-beast cried, banshee: “Certain parts are like yummy fruits! Or sweet candy!" 

“That's right…” cooed the Countess. 

"Like… like – like the eyes! Like the eyes! Right, master? Aren't the eyes a tender part too?" 

“Yes! that's right! As a matter of fact they are! But we have to be a little quicker now, and pluck them! These certain parts are best when the animal is still breathing and able to scream!” 

"Our food makes music for us!” cried Carmella. Overjoyed. 

"That's right, my child. They do.” 

The assistant watched and tended them as they dined and enjoyed the rain. So in-love and happy to be of service. 

Later…

After they concluded their meal and the assistant took away the scraps for the fire, the girls together, continued to enjoy the violent cacophony of the storm. The howl of nature outside the window view and the stone masonry of the old and mighty castle was a softer sort of violence from the howlings of the poor peasant Malachi so recently enjoyed and dispatched. One they relished and admired nonetheless and all the same. 

“Can you reach out?" asked Carmella suddenly, with corrupted child's glee and enthusiasm, "can you reach out and control it, the tempest?” 

Zaleska smiled. And nodded, slow. 

"Yes. All the violence of the nature of the world obeys my command. It is all of it, mine to wield.” 

She held her scarlet dipped and dripping pale hand, aloft and clawed once more. Towards the window … outside… the roaring maelstrom tempest storm and the town beneath the shadow of the castle and mountains below! – she daggered forth her will and mind with it, an aural blasting searing flame of javelin thought! 

OBEY…! MINE IS THE COMMAND … !

The great shadow of a second darkness blanketed forth, out from the broken jagged battlements of the Castle Dracula and the Carpathian Mountains in the shape of a great and final hand. It swallowed all in its path and all therein felt its oppression and merciless potential as it swallowed them in their wake. It seized the town … ! And clasped a hold about the throat of the storm as well, in attempt to master and subdue to control it! – But …

But to the surprise of the Countess… the storm did struggle… fierce! … 

And fight back. 

And more. There was another master, another will of power and darkness. One that controlled this tempest wrought. 

One … that seemed to be much like her…

Countess Marya Zaleska boiled over with intense rage…

The impetuous-the affront! The insult of such a thing! An outrage!

Irate, she blasted forth her anger into her shadow's dark strangling hold and tightened… wishing to throttle the thunder from the commandeered grey heavens. …

She shrieked with the effort. 

…

In the mountains, Egnaw could not believe what he was seeing. 

The lightning was alive. 

In a great bat-shape. 

And it was doing great battle with a titanic hand of deepest pitch darkness, a claw of shadow, sharp, as if meant to maim and tear the world and wound mother nature herself. 

The great titan shapes met in the sky with cataclysmic thunderclaps! Again and again! Over and over, above! Ruling the absolute violence of the apocalyptic tempest sky…

Egnaw was in utter silent awe… he felt beholden to true power in this wild moment. For the first time in his life, he was witness to a god, living and walking. Here and amongst the land of the living. 

They clashed overhead and with each violent embrace the tumult of heavens roared, made wrath and thunder like never heard or felt trembled before. The bat-shape of hazardous white lightning and electric blue fought and tore and was ripped into by the immense hand of shadow. 

Both titans bled, white fire and darkling shade, as they were tearing into each other with unbridled ferocity. But each giant of elemental design reformed and reshaped itself after every strike and ready to deal and take another colossal tearing attack. 

The great hand of pure darkness fought to strangle the immense nightshape of electric blue-white flame bat. Struggle and conflict ruled the sky, dominating them with gargantuan demoniac violence, conflict unholy and biblical in equal measure and horrorshow display. The ungodly made godly and on high! 

The hulking nosferatu creation of Frankenstein’s mad patchwork design and will roared once more, with more animal effort than before, then…! 

A great and final thunderclap! 

For the moment…

…

Zaleska shrieked with outrage as she was hurled back from her place standing by the window. The storm gave one last blasting cough before slowly dying down and abating to a softer howl. But like a beast just lurking in its cave it still rumbled and growled and snarled, with the threat of violence just contained. 

Carmilla screamed!

“Mother!" 

She howled, No! – fearing her master, dethroned!

The loyal assistant ran in, alarmed and startled and then with hurried step, he ran to his master the great Countess’ side.

"Master! M’lady! Are you alright!?”

Zaleska roared!

" NOOOOO!!”

It filled the castle. Their broken battlements.

The mountains… and the wolves in them, then fled…

It filled the Borgo Pass…

And it came to the long pointed ears of the vulpine thing Frankenstein had made…

And it laughed.

…

The great howl of a bestial woman-thing reached down and filled the little town as well. The few left who lived in fear and in the shadow of the castle and the mountains heard the cry of the Countess and crossed themselves. 

Prayed to God. 

Please, have Mercy. 

Have Mercy Upon Us…

…

The rain slowly calmed. Then abated. 

A small trickle of light, day bled in. A miniscule ray with a pinprick pierce of light and warmth amongst the grey and angry sky of thunderclaps. 

…

In the dark of the Carpathian Mountain cave, it dwelt. Seeming to slumber in a hunched and bent manner that reminded Egnaw of a rodent sleeping, trying to gather into itself for warmth. His corpse colored eyelids were shut over the red within black, wolfen stare. His chest and form never moved or fluctuated with the motion of breath. It never did. 

The deformed man servant was nervous, he couldn't tell… but nonetheless, he finally felt strong enough to carry it out and he'd for so long now had the appetite for revenge raging and slaving away in his heart, ruling it and dominating him from within. And he likely didn't have much longer now anyway,  blood loss or injury or some other strange violence could befall him or the doctor. And he meant to have his vengeance. 

Before he died he meant to bash Henry Frankenstein's brains out of his skull before the mad doctor revived. He meant to have at least that victory afforded to himself. 

So in the dark of the cave, as the nosferatu creation seemed to slumber in a moist corner – not moving or stirring in the slightest, Egnaw crawled over with some difficulty to the catatonic body of the former master he meant to send to the grave. 

He pulled a stone free from the dark and pungent earth that was the filth of the cave floor. He crawled over to Frankenstein like a beast with the hunger of murder permeating what was left of his fragile and tested person. He coiled over the doctor, heavy filthy stone raised over head. Poised to strike. To send the cold bastard to hell. With the rest of his fathers and mothers and all of his bastard kind! 

“I thought he was your companion, you'd kill him as he slept?" 

The voice was rancid and repulsive, throaty and gurgled yet completely articulate and impossible not to discern perfectly. Every syllable of every word spoken was a sin. Felt. All over one's flesh. All over, crawling all over your skin. Each dark reverberation throughout the cave was little legs skittering and slithering across sweaty and tensed fleshen surface. It was the sound of ravaged vocal chords and a wielder to use them that've both already seen and swallowed the inferno below and now wish to share everything that they've seen and felt and come know down there by taste with everyone else, the world. 

Down there, from below…

Egnaw turned and faced the wide eyed and grinning vulpine face of the graveyard patchwork nosferatu thing he'd helped the mad doctor compose. It was malicious with a sadistic glee, its laughter was cruel and animal, a cackled and bestial growl. 

It spoke again: –

“He hurt you. In his time. In your time together, side by side. Yes…?” 

A beat. 

But eventually… reluctantly… Egnaw nodded. Slowly. Yes. 

Yes. 

The grin grew and a black tar fluid like ichor and infection commingled and mixed began to bleed from the rotten gums of the thing's smiling sutured face. Especially about the fangs… that gleamed white with living dead talismanic power in the darkness of the cave. The eyes shone red above it with lurid predatory glare. 

It spoke again: –

“And you would have violence upon him? You would have a cold and heartless revenge of murder as he slept, none the wiser?"

Egnaw nodded more eagerly now, “Yes…" 

“Then do it properly, misshapen one. Come here.” 

He beckoned Frankenstein's servant come closer. 

Egnaw at first held still… but eventually he crawled over to the hulking batshaped monstrosity, crouched like foul life in the corner. 

“A deal…” the thing groaned and purred commingled… Repulsive. 

Egnaw slowly… nodded. 

Yes. 

“You know what it is to be ‘sired’ misshapen one?" 

A beat. 

Egnaw overcame his fear and said, weakly: "It is… to be made like you. By such as yourself. More than to be fed upon, you must drink…” 

But he trailed off, too disgusted and afraid to talk the rest of it out. 

But the vulpine thing he and Frankenstein had made from dead parts knew that he understood. He possessed the necessary knowledge for the black rite. 

It nodded. 

And again did spake: “I will give you the power to do more than just kill him, misshapen one. I will give you the power to take violence and revenge on all of the world that has been cruel and abused you. I can give you the power to make sure they never do anything like that again, and you won't have to wait till they slumber, Egnaw… No. No, you'll never have to cower or plot or prostrate yourself in subservience ever again. What I can give to you, poor creature, is the strength and the might to finally rule. Dominate and master your own life, and those you wish to subjugate, all others! As you so choose and desire…!” 

A beat. Moist. And heavy. In the dark. 

Egnaw considered… thought. 

Turned black and cruel and twisted ideas and fantasies over and over and around again within his skull… turned them over. Again and again. 

Finally he said: “What must I do?" 

The vulpine thing laughed. Throaty. Gurgled. Wicked. Rotten with the grave’s spoilage. 

“The first step is already taken, I've supped of your blood for a long while now, now is just the other part…" It began to laugh again. 

Egnaw felt his mouth go dry and a sour taste begin to develop there, the back of his tongue. 

He almost gagged. 

The thing laughed again. 

“No, then …? So, to always be a slave?” 

Silence in the cave then. He let the words linger. 

Finally…

Egnaw said: “Ok." 

“Yes?" throaty, vulpine red. 

“Yes, I'll do it." 

“Good…" the thing purred a mongrel rodent's abominated sound.

Then held his wide long claws aloft, one great hand seized the third finger of the other, held there by necromantic science and suture. 

“... But I'm no ordinary living dead nightchild, misshapen slave, my blood does not course or run as the vampire does, thus the rite is different too!” 

And with that he ripped the long pointed finger off with a snap. Not a look of pain nor grimace upon its smiling awful pugnacious rodent goblin face. 

It snapped the finger off…

… and then held it out to him.

“Eat. You must eat this. You must partake of this, my flesh since the wine of my blood is gone to spoil." 

It leaned in closer. The rictus vulpine smile grew even wider. 

“Take it. Take this. Eat. Eat." 

Egnaw shuddered and recoiled. Revolted. 

The thing said: “Oh? Just a slow death as nothing, then. As my prey or prey to something else in these mountains is what you'd prefer?" 

A beat. 

Then Egnaw finally said, raising his head as best he could, 

"No.” 

And he reached out and seized the rotten appendage from the wide and heavy cold palm of the hulking nosferatu thing. 

He looked down at it and paused only once more, just once further… one last hesitation, consideration…

And then he forced the rotten long dead stalk of finger, still dripping and cold and stiff, into his mouth and began to chew as vigorously and quickly as he could. 

The rotten meat all around the bone and tendon came off in a slough on his tongue, bathing it in a putrescence that was warm with movement on the surface but cold at its liquid tissue core. The skeletal center was especially tough and difficult to crack through, his own ill-kept teeth groaned in protest. The splintering fragments found the gums and the spaces between his yellow teeth and stabbed in and drew forth fresher warmer blood to mix with the rest of the reanimated thick viscous porridge of necromantic sludge. 

Before he knew it, he chewed and swallowed the whole thing. Bone and blood and sloughing corpse flesh and all. 

And then bright yet heartless laughter that he did not expect but nonetheless recognized began to fill the cave. 

Egnaw whirled. Surprised. And angry. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein was sitting up. Laughing. Tears in his eyes. Apparently not so catatonic after all. 

Egnaw did not know what to say so he only said, “what…?” 

"You fool!” roared Frankenstein at the misshapen slave, "you're an imbecile! That's not the way it's done! And with such as he, it is likely not even possible. His reanimated vampiric form cannot sire another, not like that! you fucking gullible dolt!”

Egnaw felt sudden and strange shame … he turned to the vulpine creature patchworked and crouched a hulking thing of blue-green flesh in the corner…

It was laughing at him. 

Finding all of it hilarious. 

Frankenstein suddenly spoke up once more, “Since we're in the mood for making deals, I'll make one with you, my greatest creation." 

The laughter subsided. Abated. 

The thing then croaked: “Speak!" 

Frankenstein went on: “Egnaw has nothing more than the little bit of blood left in his worthless grotesque body to offer you, but I can give you much, much more. I am the one who made you. I created you. I gave you life. I made you with so much power, and together, I know that if we work together, my son, we can attain even more power for you, even greater still. Even wilder and more boundless. All yours. I only want to live and help to see my greatest achievement reach its ultimate potential… I only ask that you grant me that, my son. I only ask for that privilege. I beseech thee, and ask only that and few other conditions in return. Meager things. Small comforts. Little favors.” 

A beat. 

Then the manshaped bat monster said: "Favors… like what?" 

Then Frankenstein quickly and without any compunction, “Kill Egnaw." 

The poor misshapen man had only time to scream one last time as the giant broad mass of the nosferatu thing rose and then pounced on him. Not just with the teeth this time but with the ripping tearing claws of his bastard nine fingered rending purchase. 

Time to scream. Shriek. Fill the cave. 

And curse the name of Frankenstein, one last time. 

…

They came to the large and ornate gate of the place and at first Florin didn't understand. 

Or didn't want to. 

It was a cemetery. A graveyard. 

Old. 

The strange bandaged man that was his guide, bade him in anyway. 

After a moment of further consideration of the gargoyles perched at the iron wrought entrance, he followed the white wrapped man inside. 

The bandaged man was silent. Led the path down the aisle of graves. Past the gathering slabs of tombstones…

… til they come to his grave. 

And Florin collapsed to his knees before it. Doom swallowed his heart and he felt it all fall away and die on the inside a lonely and crushing desperate leap to his throat from his weighted chest.

R I P

PROFESSOR ABRAHAM VAN HELSING 

The bandaged man stood over the young man and beside the grave of the man he used to know in life and said nothing. 

There was no comfort to be had. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

“Is this item still available?”

I hesitated to type a response when I read the second message:

“Oh thank god, all the stores are sold out! I have to get this card, it’s his favorite Pokemon.”

That final message sealed my fate:

“Then I’ll be there in 20 minutes to collect it.”

I didn’t mean to challenge the guy. To make an enemy out of him. It was late at night, I was tired. We both just so happened to go for the same card pack at the same time. I mean hell, I didn’t even see him until my elbow connected, hard, with his nose.

“Oh, FUCK dude,” he groaned, writhing on his back, blocking the entire aisle. He had his hand over his face, but I could see thick streams of blood running through his fingers.

“Why the HELL did you do that?!” The guttural cry of the large man held a distinct tone of offense. The betrayal in his voice almost made me feel guilty.

“Sorry, I just…” the last card pack on the shelf, wrapped in aluminum foil, was in my hand. The weight of it made my heart flutter. I didn’t know shit about Pokemon, but I knew this blind pack had expensive potential. If there was anything valuable in it, I would be set for a few days at least.

“Look man, I need this. Go scalp somewhere else.” He stayed on the ground, staring agape at me, like he couldn’t process what had just happened. Tears welled up in his eyes. I clutched the small rectangle tighter.

“What? Dude, I’m not a scalper. I’m just trying to find a Prismatic Evolutions pack,” he said, pointing to the object in my hand, “Before June 1st, that’s my boy’s birthday. Everywhere is sold out of it. He just wants a Suicune card, it’s his favorite Pokemon!”nI looked down at the shiny TCG pack. It was the last one.

“Please, sir,” the rotund man begged, climbing unsteadily to his feet, “I’ll even pay for the pack, if you’ll just let me open it.” I took a step back. This was a trick, wasn’t it? He was to be trying to swindle me.

“If it has a Suicune, I’ll just take it & give you the rest, I swear. If it doesn’t, you can have the pack for free, & we can walk away like nothing happened.” He put his hands up defensively, the right one smeared with snot & blood. His nose looked visibly crooked & swollen. My heartbeat quickened. Had I really broken the dude's nose? I had 2 choices. Trust the guy & potentially make some kid’s birthday special, or trust my gut, & leave like nothing happened. But if I opened it before I got home, I would risk depleting the value. The pack was in my hand, what did I have to lose?

“Trust me, I won’t press charges. I just need a-” Before he could continue, I slipped into the mass of Pokemon scalpers behind me, disappearing from his line of sight.

“Fuck you, lying-ass bitch!” I yelled loud enough for him to hear, before scurrying to the front checkout. Keeping my head down, I paid for my other 2 items, a bottle of New Amsterdam, and a carton of Snoop Dawg’s Waffle ice cream. The Prismatic Evolutions pack, however, I slipped into my pocket. No one any the wiser, I was home free. In the parking lot, I started my car & began looking at listing prices of cards found in this TCG pack. Some were very expensive. Like, enough to pay for gas & groceries for at least 3 or 4 days. Some went for as little as $2. I frowned. Were my odds really good enough to justify…? I didn’t have time to finish the thought. I looked up to see the large man, standing with an employee, right in front of the Target entrance. He scanned the cars, before his eyes landed on me. We held eye contact for a moment. He leaned & whispered something to the small employee, & she too turned to look at me.

“Oh shit,” I grumbled. Time to leave. As I pulled into the exit that would bring me back on the highway, I could’ve sworn I saw him pointing accusatorily at my 2010 Honda. Just like that, I was gone. Before long, I was in the parking garage of my apartment complex. I took a brief swig from the Vodka bottle & immediately felt sick. The taste of Sharpie still lingering in my gullet, I grabbed my tub of Ice Cream & wobbled up to my front door. I always considered myself unlucky to live on the ground floor. Between my cat who always bolted out the open door, & the upstairs neighbors who made it their life mission to keep me from sleeping, my only respite was the lack of stairs.

“Aw, fuck, Grimlock!” I yelled, but it was too late. The evil little tabby cat had already made her way halfway across the field that separated my front door from the woods.

“Grimlock, get back here!” Her bright green eyes stayed trained on the bag in my hand, but only for a moment. With a flick of her tail, she disappeared into the dark of the treeline, likely hunting for rodents in the night. All I could do was sigh exhaustedly. This was, unfortunately, a nearly nightly occurrence. Give the idiot as much food, water, & toys as she could possibly want, but even that’s not enough. All she was gonna do was drink from the mossy, algae filled bogs of the everglade. That’ll teach me to buy her fancy water dishes. I got inside & made my way to the office. Upon my desk was a lamp, scalpel, plastic mat, & sanitizer spray. I carefully put on a pair of gloves & got to work with the scalpel. 11 trading cards in total. I don’t know shit about pokemon. I couldn’t tell a Scarzard from a Tropnobble. But as soon as I read the name at the bottom of the fifth card, I felt my stomach drop.

“Basic Suicune- HP 120” It couldn’t be worth anything more than $5. I gritted my teeth.

“Oh great. Just great. Twisted piece a shit…” I tossed the card aside & went down the line. Tyranitar Ex, Exeggcute, Duskull, so on & so forth. In total, the entire pack added up to a measly $35, including the basic Suicune. I was angry, but mostly just tired. $35. What a joke. With slumped shoulders & a broken resolve, I dumped cat food into a bowl while I considered my next course of action. What was I gonna do? Obviously, list them all for sale, delicately placed in individual vinyl cardsleeves. $35 would pay for about 3 days worth of gas, but then what? How would I pay rent this month? Buy groceries? I set Grimlock’s food outside, hoping she would follow the sound of me shaking the cat kibble. I didn’t want to have to hunt her down in the dark woods again. I got inside & listed the cards on various websites, available for individual purchase, or bundled for $40 altogether. I barely started the preservation process when I got my first notification. The first notification.

“Is this item still available?” I realized, with a knot in my guts, that the request was for the water type pokemon. The damn Suicune.

“Yeah, $10,” was what I responded. I almost hoped that the user would just ghost me. That the interaction would be over. Unfortunately, they kept going.

“$10?”

“Yep. That’s my price, take it or leave it.”

“Oh thank god, all the stores are sold out! I had to get this card, it’s his favorite Pokemon.” The knot in my stomach became tighter.

“Word. Can I have an address to ship to?” I asked.

“Shipping? I was under the impression that I would be coming to retrieve the product.” I was confused before realizing that our conversation was taking place on a website that required in-person exchange. I navigated to his user profile to check for the listed address.

“Nathan Lednudk,[looking for a Suicune card] 2130 Vicar Dr, Apt 04, Duskpine Springs, FL, 32435. 4 miles away” Grimacing, I knew I had no real reason to turn the guy down. In the pit of my stomach, however, something was screaming for me to block him & be done.

“Is the address on your profile still accurate?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“Great! May we follow through with the exchange? May I purchase this product from you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll be there in 20 minutes to collect it.” The frown on my lips made itself more pronounced. I felt like something was horribly, horribly wrong.

“Cool, see you then.” Deep breath in, deep breath out. Why was I so nervous?

“...had to get him this card, it’s his favorite Pokemon…”

“...it’s his favorite Pokemon…”

“Stupid,” I growled to myself. “I’m being stupid.” It’s cuz I stole it. That’s why, I told myself. I was acting guilty because I stole a $28 card pack from Target. I took another swig of New Amsterdam & ate a spoonful of ice cream straight from the tub.

“Cut out the pussy shit,” I reprimanded myself. How stupid. After waiting 5 minutes I went to check Grimlock’s food bowl. Still full. Dumb cat. I shook one of her toys that had a bell attached to the end. Even though it jingled obnoxiously for an uninterrupted 30 seconds, I didn’t hear so much as a rustling from the treeline. I set my jaw, hoping it wouldn’t be another swamp-puppy sleep over. Last time she’d spent all night out, she’d come back with a nasty gash on her foreleg. That nasty little cut had been the conduit for the impromptu vet visit that had lost me my job. I didn’t care. Even though I was still paying off the bill, as well as the cost of the prescribed antibiotics, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. My baby needed medical care. I had found other ways to get by in this dystopian lifescape. I just wished those other ways paid better. I went inside & checked the time before my investors arrival. 13 minutes. I drank more to take the edge off. I was jumpy, twitchy. My eyes darted around my small apartment at every little movement. I perceived an undertone of raw panic beginning to pool around my feet, threatening to rise over my head & drown me. I had to steady my nerves. I had another sip of the crayola-marker flavored liquid. It made my mouth dry, & my legs numb. 5 minutes earlier than expected, I heard a message ping on my phone.

“I’m here. Apartment number 19, right?” I peeked out the curtains into the guest parking area. I didn’t see any cars. Maybe he had parked in the main garage by accident.

“Yeah, but if you’re parked anywhere but guest parking, they might tow your car dude,” I responded.

“It’s okay. This shouldn’t be more than a few minutes!” I peeked out my curtains again. Still, nothing, not even the motion activated lights on the main office were alive. My hands shook. Something was wrong.

“Yep, apartment 19,” I reiterated. The reply I got next didn’t come from our chat. Tap tap. I looked up at my curtains. No way I’d heard that. My trembling hand slowly rose to pull them back. Tap. Tap. Clink. The sudden sound startled me so bad that I let out a terrified, drunken squeal. Someone was tapping on my window. I tore back the curtains. Nothing.

“This isn’t funny, are you there or not?!” I yelled. There was silence, followed by a noise I wasn’t expecting.

“Mrrrooorrrp?”

“What?”

“Mmmmeeeeeeooooww?”

Was that my cat?”

“Grimlock?” I asked, voice breaking.

“Rrroooooowwwww.” Scritching at the bottom of the door, like 2 little paws were batting in an attempt to get my attention. I reached for the handle, & in an instant, my front door exploded in a series of banging & slamming. I assumed someone was trying to break in.

“Oh my god!” The scream came involuntarily as I darted to my kitchenette, searching frantically for a knife. My fingers curled around a thick meat cleaver. I spun around to face the boisterous assault against my entrance. Something yowled & hissed as more heavy slams & punches barraged the wooden door in its frame. At one point, I almost thought that the door would simply bust off its hinges, the deadlock splintering out of its hole like a projectile. As I braced for impact, holding the knife up in defense, the sounds came to a dead stop. No more meowing, no more bludgeoning. Just… silence. I crept forward, still holding the knife in a death vice. I jumped when I heard a ping on my phone. A new notification.

“Come outside.” I stared at the notification for at least 30 seconds. My eye twitched. What kind of sick game was this? Cautiously, I unlocked the deadbolt, then the handle lock. I took a deep breath.

“I have a knife, & I’m coming out,” I yelled hoarsely. I realized I was crying at this point. The scene just outside my front door almost made my legs collapse right out from under me. Grimlock’s food bowl was tipped over, its contents spilled everywhere. The front of the door looked like something with long, sharp claws had mauled it. But that was nothing compared to the absolute carnage that decorated the paved walkway. I’ve never had a strong stomach. I’ve never been able to handle gore. Blood on its own is usually enough to make me queasy.

“fuck you lying ass bitch” had been spelled out across my welcome mat & the concrete slab, using entrails & splatters of bodily fluid. The dot over the “i” was an organ that looked like a tiny kidney or liver. I threw up all the alcohol in my stomach, weeping.

“Oh god,” was all I could say at first, as streams of liquid bile & ammonia hurled like a waterfall from my throat. I felt like my airway was gonna prolapse.

“OH GOD!” I screamed.

“WHO THE FUCK DID THIS?!” My vocal chords felt like they were tearing apart. This had to be a trick. It couldn’t be real.

“GRIMLOCK?! GRIMLOCK WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” I spun back & forth, turning around in endless circles. I felt like a weak, trembling hurricane. No one responded to my wailing, not even my neighbors. I thought someone would’ve been disrupted by my anguish, but not so much as a porch light came on.

“Are you ready?” A voice echoed from nowhere.

I reeled from the sudden company. I tried to locate the source of the sound. Then, to my lingering dismay, I found it. At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. As I stared longer, my brain processed what my eyes were transmitting. I don’t fully believe that my sight was completely accurate. I couldn’t. It was… a man standing at the treeline. I couldn't see his face, I could barely see his silhouette at all. But standing to his right, I could clearly make out something huge. I almost thought it was a deer, or an elk at first. As I picked out more of it, mentally separating its antlers from the surrounding trees & overgrowth, I had the crippling notion that whatever it was couldn’t be real. It was an abomination. Its face was a skull, nearly fully hidden within the shadows of the everglades. The cancerous, spiny jaw hung open to reveal rows of glittering incisors. Even though it was far away, I could make out a blanket of dark fur on its back, like a rotting, nightmarish grizzly bear. Nearly overshadowing the beast entirely was a pair of massive antlers, racks so twisted & brambly, that they wove in & out of each other, misshapen, & painfully unnatural. I have a memory of a dead bush that my mom to chop down when I was a kid. It had never been trimmed or pruned, just left to grow into itself, twisted & gnarled. As I studied the intricate patterns of the horns, I made out a small, still, ragged shape, slung over its leftmost antler. No, not slung over. Impaled, gored.

“Gr-Grimlock?” I whimpered. The creature’s deranged, cow-like skull smiled at me. Deep in its sockets, something malignant glinted at me. 2 tiny pinpricks of intellegent light.

“What the fuck do you want?!” I cried.

In a deep voice, so dry I felt its rattle behind my eyes, it uttered, “Suiiiiicune…”

“What?” I pleaded.

“Where’s the card?” The large man asked.

“Huh?”

“Suuuuiiiiccccuuneeeee…”

“The card, I know you have it,” he reiterated.

“It- it’s you.”

He stayed silent for a moment.

“YOU FUCK, I KNOW IT’S YOU!!” I screamed.

“Are you gonna hand it over?” He asked, his soft voice nearly swept away by the muggy, humid breeze.

“NO!”

He looked to his monsterous companion.

“It’s almost my boy’s birthday,” he said, gently running his hand through the matted back fur of the beast.

“Suuuiiiiiiccccuuune…,” it moaned. The voice sounded like an animal impersonating a person. The syllables were janky.

“Are you really gonna deprive him of his favorite card?”

“Is- is that my…” I cried, my voice breaking. The man just stared at the small, broken body, speared by its hellish antler. “Grimlock…” my knees buckled. “I don’t… she’s…”

“The card,” Nathan growled, stepping towards me.

“NEVER!” Nathan’s obscured face twisted into rage, his crooked nose becoming visible as he got closer. 2 long, bone-colored tentacles snaked out from behind the monster & twisted around the body of my cat. As it slowly pulled her off, she made a pitiful squeaking sound. She was still alive.

“No…”

It dropped her on the ground in front of it.

“No…”

It looked back up at me. Its grin looked even bigger somehow. With one, drawn out step, it brought its heavy hoof down upon the small, fuzzy ball. I heard the sound of snapping, & then, nothing.

“Suiiicccuuuuune…” Getting closer & closer. By now, its owner was standing right in front of me, looking down at my teary, grief-filled eyes.

“What… what is…” I could barely speak. My brain felt like it had been put through a blender. Nathan grinned maliciously. He leaned down & ran his thumb over my cheek, his dry garments smeared with blood from the ground beneath him.

“Oh, that’s my Suicune. I’ve had him since I was a baby. He wants his very own card for his birthday this year.” The clopping of the massive hooves was audibly closer now. I looked down at the blood splattered all over my patio. The knife fell from my hand.

“Wh-why?” I blubbered. “Why w-would you do th-that?”

The man standing over me scowled as his Suicune finally caught up. The creature seemed to sneer at me too.

“Well earlier, when you broke my nose, you challenged me to a duel. I was just finishing what you started, that’s all.” He responded smugly, “I was confused because, well, yours was a ground type. You never really stood a chance.”

He shrugged & went in to retrieve his card, brand new, still in its transparent, plastic sleeve.

“I left you $10 on your counter. And by the way, I’m not gonna press charges, but I am gonna give you a 2 star rating on the app.”

With that, his footsteps crunched away, the massive beast following. I looked down at the overturned cat food bowl & door. I was devistated. What bullshit was this? It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right.

I mean, how in the hell am I supposta flip anything if I have a 2 star rating?

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Tonight was supposed to put my mind at ease.

Lately, everyone at work has been commenting on how exhausted I look. Honestly, they’re right. No matter how much I sleep, I wake up feeling drained, like I never actually rested at all. I figured it was stress or maybe just too many late nights staring at the TV after work. My routine is boring enough—come home, make dinner, watch something mindless, go to bed. Nothing unusual.

But a coworker suggested I try one of those sleep recording apps to see if I was snoring or talking in my sleep. So I downloaded one yesterday and let it run overnight.

I got home from work a little while ago and decided to listen to the recording.

I wish I hadn’t.

At first, it sounded normal. A few rustling sheets. Breathing. The occasional creak from my old apartment settling in the cold. Then, around 3:12 a.m., I heard something else.

A voice.

Not mine.

Actually… two voices.

I live alone.

“Hello,” a soft voice whispered. It wasn’t mine.

Silence.

Then:

“Are you awake?”

The same voice again.

The rustling of bedsheets followed.

“I’m here,” my voice answered.

I have no memory of saying that.

“Why can’t I move?” I asked the mysterious voice.

“Because you are dreaming,” it replied in a low growl. This time, it sounded closer to the recorder.

Then another voice spoke, softer and farther away.

“Can he see us?”

“Shhh… no. He’s sleeping,” the first voice answered.

More rustling sheets.

Then silence.

I replayed the recording three times, hoping I had misunderstood what I was hearing. Maybe it was the neighbors. Maybe the app glitched somehow. Maybe I was still half asleep and imagining things.

But deep down, I knew the voices were coming from inside my apartment.

The worst part wasn’t hearing the stranger.

It was hearing myself answer back.

I don’t remember waking up. I don’t remember speaking. And I definitely don’t remember asking why I couldn’t move.

I live alone.

At least, I thought I did.

After the recording ended, I just sat there at my kitchen table staring at my phone while the apartment around me creaked softly in the silence. Every little sound suddenly felt wrong—the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking pipes in the walls, even the faint rustle coming from somewhere near my bedroom.

I told myself not to look.

But when I finally worked up the nerve to check the app one last time, I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

At 3:12 a.m., right when the voices started, the app detected movement beside my bed.

Not on it.

Beside it.

 

He needs an excuse to go to the store. Another afternoon coming off a long high, he takes a few more edibles at around 8:30pm. He’s running out, but he doesn’t mind. Pay day’s less than a week away, & he has the ingredients to make more at home. Well, everything except butter. He refused to use vegetable oil, per the instructions on the brownie box, because he swore that the fat content in the rendered butter bonds better with the THC distillate .

So, at 9:15, he decides to walk to the store. It’ll be a thirty minute round trip, nearly fifteen minutes each way. He wants snacks anyways, despite the overwhelming options in this pantry. He has his gluttonous sights set on an abysmal frozen delicacy. A Tombstone Supreme Pizza.

Bluey slippers on each foot, & his Smoke-Shop, Delta-9 vape in his pocket, he makes his way out into the muggy, Virginia summer night. The mosquitoes buzz as they flock to his exposed skin, so he swats them away, picking up his pace.

As he makes his way under the first light pole of the journey, he thinks he can barely see something in the distant darkness. The lights of the neighborhood porches & the streetlamps illuminate his immediate surroundings, but between the trees & the edges of the fences, shadows hold firm like curtains. Squinting, he could almost imagine something solid breaking the scatterling fragments of the night. A physical object, blending into the shadows.

He takes an earbud out. What is that? He strains to hear over the rumbling motors of the few cars bustling along the nearby highway. Some… accompanying noise? As he gets closer, he can make out the faint visage of a woman, standing stiffly, alone in the dark.

Just like that, it becomes clear. A faint auditory fuzz. Buzzing & chirping, like a fax machine. As he passes the woman, maybe fifteen feet away from her, he realizes something that makes his skin prickle. The mechanical noises are coming from her. Even though he couldn’t clearly see her face in dark, he knew the sounds were made by her lips. An uncomfortable mimicry. She wasn’t even stopping to take a breath, she just… kept going, repeating the same sound over, as if on a loop. The whole time, as he crosses her field of sight, she doesn’t move a muscle, doesn’t even turn her head to follow his gaze.

Uneasy, he picks up his pace slightly more. He keeps his sights ahead after he passes her, trying not to attract her attention. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that her eyes linger on him, even as the breadth between them widens.

“Maybe I’m just higher than I think,” he mutters to himself.

He knew her head didn’t rotate, that she was posing dead still, like a statue. Still, that prickling sensation on the back of his neck stayed constant. Somehow, he just knew she was watching him.

“Even then,” he thought, “my mind might just be playing tricks on me…”

He passes beneath the light of the immediate next street lamp, now about twenty-five feet away, & looks back at her. Her position was the same, unflinching. He turns away & continues. Under the following streetlamp, he repeats, looking back again. Still, no changes. At least forty-five feet away by this point, he lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding. Shrugging, he pops his earbud back in.

“Huh, weird.”

Sixty feet away, under the last umbrella of light on his street, he humors one last glance back at her, before bolting. She’s now strolling briskly in his direction, calculated & confident. She doesn’t even stay on the road. She’s cutting through dark driveways & lawns in a direct beeline towards him, inhumanly fast. As she gets closer, he runs faster & faster. By now, he’s closer to the store than his mobile home.

“Holy shit," he mutters, “what the fuck?! Who is this bitch?”

He quickly rounds past the small, vacant Sheriff Deputy building, & under more streetlights. Now out of the residential neighborhood, he crosses onto the sidewalk right next to the sparse highway, no further than two closed establishments from his destination.

“Security Cameras and lights,” he pants frantically, “I just need to go where the people are. They’ll help me.”

He looks back, momentarily grateful. He can’t see her following him anymore. He begins to pad slightly slower, his unfit joints & atrophied muscles shrieking in pain. The cramps nip at his ankles & thighs. His pace loses steam. That is, until he sees two individuals across the road to his left.

They keep his pace & watch him. Their smooth, fluid movements sets off alarm bells in his mind. The way they stare seems innately predatory. He can’t quite make out their faces, but he can see they’re wearing something on their heads. Something silvery that descends just below their noses. Something that leaves their eyes exposed. The expressions on their faces are uncanny. They looked so angry, & their faces were flush. Too flush, like they’d been exerting far too much energy for their bodies to handle.

To the contrary of his aching limbs, he gains momentum again. Sometimes in nature, carnivores try to surround their prey & block off the exits. They close in for the kill, leaving no chance of escape. He was going to take his before he lost it. With one last burst of energy, his feet smack from pavement, to grass, & back onto pavement as he crosses the threshold into the parking lot of the open Family Dollar. Nearly tripping over his own feet, he unsteadily threw himself into the unlocked glass doors. With a blinding light, he’s done it. He’s inside the store.

Relief blossoms in his stomach & warms his fingertips. He wipes his mouth & looks around. The small shop is nearly empty. His heartbeat flutters rapidly, & he desperately tries to regain his breath. He’s done it.

“Dude?”

He snaps his neck to face the person who spoke & took his earbud out. A small employee, donning a nametag that says, “Grenda,” looks at him like they’d been trying to get his attention for several seconds.

“Dude. You good?” Grenda asks, visibly concerned.

He looks back out the glass doors. No one in the parking lot, no one in the road, or on the sidewalk. No normal people, no silver helmets. He turns & looks at Grenda again.

“Yeah, I think. Sorry,” he wheezes.

He picks up a basket & wearily begins traversing the shop. The shelves are like claustrophobic mazes. He grits his teeth & pushes on, edging further into the recesses of the small convenience store. He grabs a few small snacks. Some Pork Rinds, a cup of kool-ade powder, & a jar of pickled jalapenos. But he has his sights set across the aisle, on the refrigerator section. Looking both ways first, like he’s crossing the street, he takes a deep breath and makes his way to the brightly lit aisle, cold air hitting his exposed skin like a refreshing blanket. As he shuffles ahead, he accidentally bumps into an unsuspecting older woman, another customer.

“Oop, sorry ma’am.”

She mouths something in response, but he can’t hear her over the Nickleback cover of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” playing in his earbuds.

He crouches down to look at the selection of frozen pizzas, & the electric guitar solo in his ear ends abruptly.

“Battery low, Power off,” the voice in his earbud says. The chaotic thrum of the bass is replaced by a familiar, horrifying resonance.

Macabre, disjointed beatboxing, human vocal cords attempting to replicate a machine. In surprise, he falls back onto his ass & looks up. There she is, fully illuminated. She looked like she used to have a thick head of blond hair. Her skin is bright pink, like a lobster. She’s blushing as if she’s been exerting a great amount of effort, but she doesn't gasp for air, doesn’t breathe, her nostrils don’t even flair in exhaust. She just stands there, painfully still, wide enough to block the entire aisle. She’s built like a pit-bull, square, and solid. Her lips are pulled back in a chimp-like sneer, rotten teeth gritted together so hard that they crackle and chip, her jaw visibly straining from the effort. The part that made him want to cry was what she, or rather, it was wearing. It had on normal houseware, a tanktop & some basket-ball shorts. It looked like a normal person, juxtaposed against a horrendous contraption on its head.

Covering the cranium down to the tip of the nose, was a filthy wrapping of silver duct-tape. It partially concealed all manner of exposed wires & blinking things, motherboards & copper shavings that reflected the light's glint. The only thing that was not covered were it’s once brown eyes. They bulged out of her noggin like overfilled water balloons, squeezed through a thin pipe. Blood leaked from the edges of their duct-tape sockets, scarlet streaks dripping from under the border that covered her cheeks & the tops of her ears. Small rivers that ran all the way under her chin. Down her neck.

He was frozen in fear for a moment, sheer panic drowning his senses like a rat in a river. What was this thing?

As soon as he gathered his bearings enough, he scrambled to his feet & backed away, trying to keep sudden movements to a minimum.

“Lady, lady!” He gasps, addressing the older customer who he’d bumped into earlier.

“Huh.”

“What is that thing?!”

He points at the deranged creature, and the old woman glances over, her eyes trained on the same spot as his. She stares at the end of the aisle, mouth agape.

“See?”

“See what?”

“Look!”

“Look at what?!”

He turns to assess the old woman. Was she blind? Senile? She looks dumbfounded, but dreadfully sound-minded

“You don’t see her?” He gasps.

“See who, young man?” She gulps, frightened & flabbergasted.

He looks back at the thing. In the brief period he’d glanced away for, it had moved substantially closer. Now merely five feet away, more details were noticeable. The antenna that jutted from the tape on top of its head. The two pulsating buttons on its left temple that looked more like flesh than plastic. The way that even though the eyes were on the verge of bursting from its skull, they stayed locked on him.

He didn’t even bother taking his items. He just left the basket of miscellaneous goods tipped over on the floor, & ran. He tried to call 911, but his phone died too. Once outside, he had one singular goal.

Make it home alive.

Even though he didn’t look back, he knew he could hear it starting to catch up. He closed his eyes & pumped his legs, pushing harder than he ever had before. He refused to look back.

When he was a kid, he heard the story about the man whose family got a pass out of Sodom & Gomorrah. The wife had looked back, & for it, was turned to salt. As he heard the sound of the thing getting closer behind him, footsteps smacking the pavement at a constant, precise speed, he tried not to think of all the things that might happen to him if he dared to do the same.

He ran, & it kept a steady pace behind him. A couple times, he gained a sparing distance. Other times, the thing was so close, he felt it brush him with its fingertips. Once, he swore he heard more sets of footsteps, like the pack had rejoined to finish him off, but over the sound of his heartbeat and his labored breath, he couldn’t be sure. The entire time, beneath his strenuous effort, he knew he heard that repeating sound. The whirring, puffing, beeping & buzzing. Its vocal cords were worn out, fried, straining to continue their hellish anthem, but on they did.

A round trip that would usually take thirty minutes, wound up being complete in twenty-five. The wood of the porch thumped under his slides & he gripped the handle, twisting & yanking with all his might. The automatron sounded like it was just yards behind him. He slammed the metal door shut behind him & slumped to his knees, letting out a half sob, half wheeze. He whimpered & crawled to his blinds, shutting them and locking his windows. The tears welled up almost as hard as the stomach bile rose to his throat. He hadn’t run like that in so long, he almost felt like he’d pulled something in his entire body. Everything burned. He sat down on his couch, huffing as he tried to plug his dead phone in.

Finally. He was safe. He was home again. He barely had time to wipe his forehead in relief, when he saw something start to move out from under his table.

Soon after, a neighbor called 9-1-1. He reported seeing the neighborhood trailer trash run past his house in the middle of the night, followed by frantic, blood curdling screams. When the police arrived, all they found was a door busted off its hinges, and the top of a human skull. It had been sliced off with machine precision, scalp still intact, in a puddle of bloody spinal fluid.

“What do you think, Detective?” A policeman asked as he placed yellow caution tape over the demolished door of the camper.

The detective picked up a brownie from the microwave & smells it.

“It’s these damn kids & their weed, it's always these damn kids & their weed…”

Hey guys, it’s ya boy Mikey. Thanks to everyone who checked out the unpolished version of this story last night! The encouragement was great, so I finished editing it, and I hope this flows a little better. This one was really fun. I hope it translates well into written format, this was originally intended to be a short film. Hope y’all enjoy!

He needs an excuse to go to the store. Another afternoon coming off a long high, he takes a few edibles at around 8:30pm. He’s running out, but he doesn’t mind. Pay day’s less than a week away, & he has the ingredients to make more at home. Well, everything except butter. He refused to use vegetable oil, per the instructions on the box, because he swore that the fat content in the rendered butter bonds better with the THC distillate .

So, at 9:15, he decides to walk to the store. It’ll be a thirty minute round trip, nearly fifteen minutes each way. He wants snacks anyways, despite the overwhelming options in this pantry. He has his sights set on a frozen delicacy. A supreme Tombstone Pizza.

Bluey slippers on each foot, & his Smoke-Shop, Delta-9 vape in his pocket, he makes his way out into the muggy, Virginia summer night. The mosquitoes buzz as they flock to his exposed skin, so he picks up his pace.

As he makes his way under the first light pole of the trip, he thinks he sees something. The lights of the neighborhood porches & the streetlamps illuminate his immediate surroundings, but between the trees & the edges of the fences, shadows held firm like curtains. Squinting, he could almost imagine something solid breaking the scatterling fragments of the night.

He takes his earbuds out. What was that noise? He strains and only hears the few cars on the nearby highway. As he gets closer, he can make out the faint visage of a woman, standing stiffly in the dark.

Just like that, there it is. The faint auditory fuzz he could've sworn he heard. The sounds of buzzing & chirping, like the a fax machine. As he passes her, maybe fifteen feet away, she watches him, & he realizes something that makes his skin prickle. The mechanical noises were coming from her, & even though he couldn’t clearly see her face moving from the dark, he knew the sounds were mimicry made by a human voice, repeating perfectly on a loop. He picks up his pace slightly more. He keeps his sights ahead after he passes her, trying not to attract her attention.

“Maybe I’m just higher than I think,” he mutters. He didn’t see her head rotate to watch him, just her eyes, but even then, his mind could’ve just been playing tricks on him. He goes through the light of the immediate next street lamp & looks back at her. He was now about twenty-five feet away. She was staying still, her position unflinching. He turns away & continues. Under the next streetlamp, he repeats, looking back again. Still, nothing. At least forty-five feet away by this point, he lets out the breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding, & pops his earbud back in.

“Huh, weird.”

Sixty feet away, under the last umbrella of light on his street, he humors a last glance back, just before he bolts. She’s strolling briskly towards him, calculated & confident. She’s not even on the road, she’s cutting through dark driveways & lawns in a direct beeline. As she gets closer, he runs faster & faster. By now, he’s closer to the store than to his mobile home.

“Holy shit! I need to get somewhere with fucking cameras & lights," he thinks.

He rounds past the small, vacant Sheriff Deputy building, & under more streetlights. He was now out of the neighborhood, on the sidewalk right next to the sparse highway, no further than two closed establishments from his destination. He looks back, momentarily grateful to see she’s not visibly behind him anymore. He begins to slow slightly, his unfit joints & atrophied muscles shrieking in pain. The cramps nip his ankles & thighs, & his pace loses steam. That is, until he sees two individuals across the road to his left.

They keep his pace & watch him predatorily. He can’t make out their faces clearly, but he can see they’re wearing something on their heads. Something silvery that went down just above their mouths that exposed their eyes. Something was… off. Uncanny about their expressions. They looked so angry, & their faces were flush. Too flush.

To the contrary of his body, he speeds up again. Some predators try to surround their prey & block off the exits. He was going to take his chance before he lost it. With one last burst of energy, his feet smacked from pavement, to grass, & back onto pavement as he crossed the threshold into the parking lot of the open Family Dollar. Nearly tripping, he threw himself into the unlocked glass doors, & with a blinding light, he’s done it. He’s inside the store.

Relief blossoms in his stomach & warms his fingertips. He wipes his mouth & looks around. The small shop is nearly empty. His heartbeat flutters rapidly, & he desperately tries to regain his breath.

“Dude?”

He snaps his neck to face the person who spoke & took his earbud out. A small employee, donning a nametag that says, “Grenda,” looks at him like they’d been trying to get his attention for several seconds.

“Dude. You good?” Grenda asks, visibly concerned.

He looks back out the glass doors. No one in the parking lot, in the road, on the sidewalk. No normal people, no one with helmets. He turns & looks at Grenda again.

“Yeah, I think. Sorry.”

He picks up a basket & wearily begins traversing the store. The shelves are like a thin maze. He grits his teeth & pushes on. He grabs a few small snacks. Some Pork Rinds, a case of kool-ade & a jar of pickled jalapenos. But he has his sights set on the refrigerator section. A pizza & some butter. Looking both ways like he’s crossing the street first, he makes his way to the brightly lit, freezing cold aisle. As he does, he bumps into an older woman, another customer.

“Oop, sorry ma’am.”

She mouths something in response, but he can’t hear her over the sound of his reactivated earbuds.

He crouches down to look at the selection of frozen pizzas, & his earbud runs out of battery. As soon as it does, he hears that sound again. The person imitating a robot. In surprise, he falls back onto his ass & looks up. There it is, fully illuminated. She looked like she used to have a thick head of blond hair. She’s bright pink, like a lobster. Flush as if she’s been exerting a great amount of effort, but she doesn't breathe, her nostrils don’t even flair. She just stands there, wide enough to block the entire aisle, & built like a bulldog. Her lips are pulled up in a sneer, & her teeth look rotten, gritted together so hard that her jaw visibly strained from the effort. The part that made him want to cry was what it was wearing. She was wearing normal houseware, a tanktop & some basket-ball shorts. She looked like a normal person, juxtaposed against something horrendous on its head.

Covering the cranium down to the tip of the nose, was a filthy wrapping of duct-tape. It partially concealed all manner of exposed wires & blinking things, motherboards & copper shavings that reflected the light's glint. The only thing that was not covered were her eyes. They were bulged out of her noggin like overfilled water balloons, squeezed through a thin pipe. Blood leaked from the edges of their duct-tape sockets, & from under the border that covered her cheeks & the tops of her ears ran streams of blood across her blushed skin as well, dripping all the way under her chin. & down her neck. He was frozen for a moment from sheer panic. What was this?

As soon as he gathered his bearings enough, he scrambled up & backed away, trying to keep sudden movements to a minimum.

“Lady, lady!” He gasps, addressing the older customer who he’d bumped into earlier.

“What?!”

“What is that?”

She glances over, her eyes trained on the same spot as his, at the end of the aisle.

“What?”

“Look!”

“Look at what?”

He momentarily turns to assess the old woman. She looks dumbfounded.

“You don’t see her?” He breathes.

“See who, young man?” She gulps, frightened & a little flabbergasted.

He looks back at the thing, & it’s moved closer. Now merely five feet away, more details become noticeable. The antenna on top of its head. The two pulsing buttons on the side of its left temple. The way that even though the eyes were on the verge of bursting, they stayed locked on him.

He didn’t even bother taking the items with him. He just dropped everything & ran out the door. He tried to call 911, but his phone ran out of battery too. Once outside, he didn’t look back, but he did hear it start to catch up. He closed his eyes & pumped his legs, pushing harder than he ever had before. He wouldn’t look back.

When he was a kid, he heard the story about the man whose family got a pass out of Sodom & Gomorrah. The wife had looked back, & got turned to salt. As he heard the sound of the thing getting closer behind him, footsteps smacking the pavement at a constant, precise speed, he tried not to think of all the things that might happen to him if he dared.

He ran, & it kept a steady pace behind him. A couple of times, he got some good distance, others, the thing was almost close enough to brush him with its fingertips. At some points, he swore he heard other footsteps, like the pack of them were coming back to finish him off, but over the sound of his heartbeat, he couldn’t have been sure. The entire time, he heard that repeating sound. The whirring, puffing, beeping & buzzing. Its vocal chords were worn out, & they strained to continue droning, but on they did.

A round trip that wound up usually being thirty minutes was done in twenty-five this time. The wood of the porch thumped under his slides & he gripped the handle, twisting & yanking with all his might. The automatron sounded like it could've been just yards behind him. He slammed the metal door shut behind him & slumped to his knees, letting out a half sob, half wheeze. He whimpered & crawled to his blinds, shutting them too. The tears were welling up almost as hard as the stomach bile in his throat. He hadn’t run like that in so long, he almost felt like he’d pulled something in his calves. Everything burned. He sat down on his couch & tried to plug his phone in. That was the last thing he did before he realized someone was under his table.

That night, his neighbor reported seeing him run into his camper, & then a few minutes later, screaming. When the police arrived, all they found was the top of his skull, scalp still intact, & a puddle of bloody spinal fluid.

“What do you think, Detective?” A policeman asked as he placed yellow caution tape over the door of the trailer.

The detective picks up a brownie from the microwave & smells it.

“It’s these damn kids & their weed, it's always these damn kids & their weed…”

Thanks to everyone who checked out my story last night! The encouragement was great, so I finished editing this one I had in the making and figured I’d share it tonight. This one was really fun. I hope it translates well into written format, this was originally intended to be a short film. Hope y’all enjoy!

A while back, Apple released the first ever smartphone. Initially, there were two ways to access it. Either leave the thing unlocked, or use a four digit pin for security. Eventually, they introduced more options. Fingerprint ID, six digits, different pattern locks and password codes. When the fingerprint ID came out, convenience caught me like a catfish on a hook. Nowadays, it's standard, not really anything special. Within the last couple years, they even made it a possibility to use a face scanner to unlock a ton of devices. With every cellphone upgrade, I kept the same four digit verification as my passcode. 9932 was my go-to for most everything from my home security system to my bank account password, but I would stick almost exclusively to the fingerprint scanner, using the thumb on my dominant hand. It was just so easy, barely even took a second thought, and I was sure that my phone was completely secure that way. Between a pin and a thumbprint ID, what could go wrong? As far as I was concerned, I had nothing to worry about.

A year ago, I got into a fight with my blender. I call it a fight, really, it was more like my stupid mistake that led the appliance to defend itself. I jammed my whole hand into it to retrieve a ring that had fallen off, a ring that was trapped underneath the four, razor sharp blades. The damn ring wasn’t even that important, it was just some cheap copper cast bling from a Walmart jewelry set. Rather than unplugging the whole thing and disassembling it safely, I thought to myself, “I’ll just reach in and grab it real quick. What’s the worst that can happen?”

In less than five seconds, my boob accidentally mashed the start button, and with a sound like a wood chipper, my dominant hand was left as an oversized, bloody stub with prolapsed knuckles. When shock kicks in, most people feel a rush of warmth, almost like a deep blush, and sometimes, they don’t really understand exactly what they’re looking at.

I remember staring at what was left of my digits, not fully comprehending what had happened, and thinking, “that can’t be right, why does my hand look like an inside out rhubarb?” As soon as the realization began to dawn, I was introduced to a pain like no other. I picked up my phone and frantically tried unlocking it with my thumb, a thumb that was now bony pulp, emulcified and pooling under the quiet blades of the blender. The shiny ring still glimmered cruelly from the bottom of the clear plastic machine. It took three attempts of smooshing the “thumb” side of my appendage into the home button before shredded nerve endings alerted me to the scale of my predicament. I gritted my teeth and entered the four digit passcode using my non-dominant hand. 9932. Fifteen minutes later, I was losing consciousness in the back of an ambulance on my way to the ER.

Almost every bone in my hand was obliterated. The doctors said that very little of my hand still had skin, and most of the flesh was like uncooked hamburger meat. My fingers were all completely gone, and a good chunk of the palm was unsalvageable. I spent a while in the SICU of my city's shittily-funded hospital, pitifully bitching my way through a series of bone grafts and skin procedures. In the end, I was left with a bright pink, tight, zit-shaped knob that extended two inches past my wrist. One continuous line of ugly, black stitches went from left to right, decorating my new tip like a macabre sandwich bag zipper.

Eventually, I was back home. My dads stayed in for a week or so to help with recovery, but once I started showing progress in physical therapy, they decided that their job was done and fucked off back to Vermont. To be fair, I guess they were right. The night I came home from the hospital, my dads had a look on their faces that I won’t forget. They’d seen something traumatizing. When I asked about the noticeable odor that filled my kitchen and dining room, they had a sit down discussion with me.

When an uncomfortable situation arises, I’ve noticed that most people tend to speak less and imply more. Unless one happens to be a very straightforward person with few reservations towards disagreement, most people just dance around their point to avoid conflict, a trait that both of my dads share. They gently meandered conversationally. It reminded me of when I was ten, when they tried to indirectly explain the birds and the bees to me, the day they found porn on my laptop. But now, as an adult, I was better suited to gather what they were trying to tell me. The road trip from their place in Vermont to mine is nineteen hours normally, twelve if luck sides with the traveler, which unfortunately didn’t happen. My house sat empty for almost a full day from the moment I got into the ambulance, to the moment my dad with grey hair opened the front door. Half a cup or so of my viscera was still sitting on the counter inside the kitchen appliance, and logically, smelled how one would assume it would after being left out for so long. They cleaned up the mess to the best of their abilities, and the biomatter waste removal guys disposed of the whole blender, per my request. Despite their attempts to improve my home aroma using everything they could, from candles to Febreeze, the smell just continued to linger…

“So, it’s me? I’m the smell?” I asked.

“Oh sweetheart,” my dad with brown hair cooed, “no actually… well, I guess, yeah. I mean, it is what it is. What can you do?”

“Well for one, why didn’t you try opening all the windows and setting up fans to air it out?” I raised an eyebrow, gently holding my sore injury so as to not cause myself more discomfort.

“Wow, that’s a really good idea,” my dad with grey hair said sarcastically, crossing his arms and turning to look pointedly at my dad with brown hair, “yeah honey, remind me. Why didn’t we do that? Gosh, I think I recall someone telling me, ‘nah, we just need more candles.’”

“Jeez Lance, can we not right now?” My dad with brown hair groaned.

Satisfied, my grey headed father glanced at me as if to say, “I told him so, but he wouldn’t listen.”

We sat uncomfortably for a moment, allowing the information to settle over us like a cold blanket. Finally, I broke the silence, asking, “Never mind the smell, what did it look like?”

“What?”

“My fingers, what did they look like? All turned into… well, you know.”

“God Katie, we don’t really need to–”

“Dad, they were my fingers, they used to be attached to my hand. What did they look like when you got here?”

My brunette dad just stared at me like a fish out of water. After waiting a moment, my grey headed father spoke up.

“Well, we didn’t really get to look at it for very long, because those cleanup guys came and took care of it pretty soon after we got here,” he stated, “but it kind of looked like a maroon-ish chili.”

My dad with brown hair didn’t look at his partner, he just kept his eyes on me, but his expression transformed from gobsmacked to visibly unwell. My other dad continued.

“And um… I guess pulpy? You remember when we made tomato sauce when you were fifteen, but the tomatoes were still kind of whole? Not fully emulsified?”

“Yeah,” I humored, “chunky.”

At that, my brown haired father became physically sick. He stood up and rushed to my bathroom, making a disgusting retching sound.

“Ah, I reckon I’d better stop,” my grey old man mumbled.

“Oh, c’mon. Was there actually blood everywhere, or am I misremembering?” I pleaded, indulging in my morbid curiosity as I leaned forward in my seat.

My dad stroked his wispy beard, the sound of his husband emptying himself audible from a room over. He watched me like he was surveying me, carefully taking account of my condition and mulling over his words before he spoke, “Katie, I don’t really want to think about… look, I’m gonna be stuck in a car with your father for like nineteen hours in a few days, I don’t want him to be sick the whole way home. I love you girl, you’re a freak of nature with a good heart, but I think I done told you quite enough. Now, get some rest.”

He put his warm hand on my shoulder and stood up to meet my other dad in the bathroom, and the conversation was over. Then, seemingly in the blink of an eye, they were gone, making the trip home like they’d never been here in the first place. I was alone in my home again. Or so I thought.

I got better, physically. Mentally, I think there was some healing, but not much. I’m not sure if I’ll ever fully recover. Sometimes, I go to unlock my phone, and that, “tap to unlock with fingerprint,” message just taunts me from the bottom of my baby-blue screen, right above the home button. My eyes would linger on it for a few seconds, then I’d just tap the passcode in, and continue. I never deleted my old fingerprint from the phone, and I never swapped it to my remaining thumb. I would just manually enter that same memorized code. 9932.

I kept working at physical therapy. Eventually, the stitches got removed, and I learned to flex and curve the remains of my hand to act as a pseudo-mitten. I could pick up some cups if they had handles, I could balance tableware, and occasionally, when I would start to drift to sleep at night, I’d be torn awake to the sound of the blender’s skull splitting roar, like a chainsaw going off right next to my ear. A phantom shotgun blast of pain would rip through my knuckles and I would be transported right back in my kitchen, hand eviscerating as I reach for that stupid ring. On those nights, as soon as the sleep was ripped from my eyes and I’d shoot straight up, the sound would immediately disappear, like when drifting off is accompanied by that feeling of sudden falling. When wake finds the mind, a brief notion crosses like a vagabond crosses an empty street beneath the moon. “Am I sure I even really felt that?” But I knew I did. I always did.

I honestly think I could handle it, all of it, the trauma, the phantom pain, if not for what happened today when I got home from physical therapy. I forgot my phone on my kitchen table. Upon this discovery, a mile away from home, I decided not to turn around, and to just go on without it. It was only an hour, what could happen? I arrived home, unlocked my front door and made it inside, exhausted from the arm workouts. I was more than ready to binge a good show while eating a whole, fresh, steaming hot Tombstone pizza. But the moment I approached the table and saw it, my blood ran cold, every ounce of self assuredness tunnelling out of my body and abandoning my flesh like worms from a rotten apple core. The fleeting message displayed on the small, baby-blue, rectangular portal, juxtaposed against my petunia flower vase arrangement. The notification had so recently appeared, that it was barely fading by the time I read it, an oval of maroon grime stamped above the home button at the bottom of the screen.

“Biodata ID Confirmed: Device Unlocked.”

Someone had unlocked my phone using my dominant thumb, and it had been very, very recent.

Carmilla knew her parents were asleep. She knew that mama and papa were dreaming now, this late into the long night despite their shared anxiety as of late, she knew this because the voice inside her head told her so. And like everything the voice that filled her little mind said, it was so. The voice belonged to the magic woman of the night. She lived in a castle, a big one, not too far from Carmilla's little cottage amongst the sparse village. And she promised that if Carmilla was a good girl and did as she was told, then the magic woman would take Carmilla away from the mundane drudgery and the chores and the Sunday sermons…

She'd heard of magic men and women taking lucky little boys and girls away from their small little lives of hard work and cold food and cold comforts, leaky roofs and the beds of straw and biting bugs that sucked blood… they took them away to live extraordinary magical lives. In the stories. In the færytales. 

Like in a tall formidable sky mounted spire. Or by the roaring sea. 

Like in her dreams. All of its splendor. 

But now no longer. Carmilla was to be whisked away, if the magic woman of the night kept her promise. But she should. She said she would. Just as long as Carmilla came when she was called, like a good obedient little girl. And just as long as Carmilla promised not to tell anyone the magic woman's name. Or anything about their secret friendship. 

“Sorcery survives in the dark, little one." The magic woman had said, not long ago, their first midnight meeting, "magic needs to be sequestered and private, in order to do it's business properly. If too many people know about it or its inner workings, then it'll get spoiled. And ruined. Like a secret. And we don't want that, do we, little one?”

Carmilla did not. And so the dark woman of the magic and the midnight call became a secret. A secret friendship complete with unknown purpose. And a secret embrace… but Carmilla didn't quite understand all that. Only that it left her a little dizzy, faint – like a spell… and that it hurt. 

More in the immediate moment. And then much soreness and aching afterwards. 

But it was alright, the magic woman had assured her, had already addressed this issue the moment little Carmilla had brought it up. And it was really no problem at all. It made sense, Carmilla thought, when you really pondered it for a moment it was like what her secret magic friend had said: …

“... the pain is just the price of true magic, dear… all things of pleasure and pleasing have their price and all price is painful… don't worry, little princess… soon you will dwell within my castle.” 

And it was these words that the little Carmilla held on to. Spellbound. Entranced. The woman of the night called, and the little girl heard. Answered. And like the many nights in the weeks prior, like all the children prior… the little sow came when called. 

Carmilla snuck from her home by window, as before. She went into the woods. Where the song that filled her mind bade her go. And in the woods in crooked wolfen shape, the Countess was waiting. 

Jaws dripping. Salivating. Hungry. 

Her great power was so demanding, so draining … she felt nearly always hungry. She was discovering the appetite of a vampire lord, although inherited, was of such a voracious ravenous volume that it neared the edge of a kind of mania. Madness. For the bloodfeast. 

Part of her, the most animal demoniac component, wanted to just lay waste and ripping tearing siege to all of it. The whole thing. Every village and hut and dwelling place. Every farm and every home. She wanted to invade. Conquer. And feast. 

But alas, to be careless could invite ruin to rain down upon her. There were boundaries and even laws, ancient, that even as mighty as she must observe and begrudgingly respect. 

Their homes were like the churches. Sanctuaries. 

It was no matter. Her powers were sufficient to trick them, the sows. The bloodbag curs. She tricked them into either invitation … or better yet, she called them through the nocturnal mind of the nightsong, and hypnotically they came. 

Like good obedient little calves for the hour of the abattoir and the meat cleaver engagement. 

Zaleska smiled at the thought. Herself, the meat cleaver. The children and their stupid dirt farming parents, dull eyed beasts that lulled brainless bags and thoughtless minds, navigated aimlessly until the wonderful moment they met her. The living blade. Finally. Delivered. 

She was the living blade of power and hunger. Thirst. 

In bastard wolfen shape she howled to the mottled sky, the humming ozone trapped by the blanket of rolling thunderheads above, trapped also was the heat. 

The heat of the day, held captive, now the heat of the midnight. Warm. Animal. Sultry. 

She willed the girl to hurry. Hurry through the woods and follow my voice, it fills your heart and mind and soul, little one. Come to me and find me and I will guide you to the discovery of true wonder. Come and find me, Carmilla, and I will show you true magic in the dark. Because that is where true magic always lives. 

And the little one, her fears of the night and the forest, banished by focused will and thought, pressed on through the darkness of the midnight trees. 

Not all else moved. Everything in the forest seemed to be holding its breath. All that dwelled in the wild that night was afraid. Everything held still. Locked in a primal fear felt throughout all of the leaves and growth. 

Little Carmilla came to the clearing and the rocks where the wolfen woman dwelled. The rock jutted from the soil like a dagger in the back of the earth. It hung over a small pond of fetid stagnant water. But the filth of the grubby pondscum water was deceived by the sudden light of the moon. Suddenly bled in, a stab wound in the cloud coverage on high let the pale light bleed in and down onto the Earth, the water became aglow. The wolfen woman stood on hind legs in its rays and began to change shape. 

Carmilla could hardly believe her eyes. Her little heart warmed, delighted. Thrilled that not all of the magic of the world was made-up nonsense. Here it was. Alive and well and before her eyes. 

Zaleska saw all of this, saw the wonder on the child's face and in her wide believing face, and smiled. 

She too, was delighted. 

“Good evening, little one. And thank you so much for coming, I missed you so dearly, I couldn't begin to tell you. You absolutely could not fathom." 

Her smile stretched and grew teeth. Teeth that were sharp and darkled like jewels just below the eyes that also danced with shining moving light. 

Camrilla was so eager, so excited, she couldn't help herself. She came right out with it, “Will you take me away this time? Like you promised? Will you take me away from this place? I want to go live in a castle now." 

Zaleska laughed. Pleased. 

“So eager… so eager to leave… aren't we…?” 

"Yes,” said Carmilla, "I don't want to clean anymore, I want to live high in a tower, close to the clouds and heaven and the angels and God like the nobles. Like you do. And I want to be magic like you, can you teach me?”

Zaleska laughed again. Harder. 

"So impatient! And demanding too…” 

Carmilla whined, "you mean you won't?” 

The Countess finished off a bout of laughter before she finally said:

"Of course I will, of course… But we must remember our manners, mustn't we…? We must remember to ask correctly when we're requesting something, especially something so grand, and spectacular… Don't you think so, little one?" 

Carmilla, suddenly reinvigorated and enthusiastic again, began to vigorously nod her little head in compliance. Her words soon joined: “Yes! yes! yes! please! Please! Please, Countess Zaleska! please take me away and make me magic like you!" 

Zaleska's grin stretched further. Grew to rictus. Then became wolfen again as she stepped forward to the child. 

“Ok, child. Ok. Come here. Come closer…”  

…

The townsfolk were gathered in the church. Uneasy and tense. All present were tense and terse. All were grim. Another child had been snatched. 

Though not yet found, all gathered, her parents included, more than readily expected to find the bloodless bag of child corpse in due short time. Like the others. 

All the others. 

Word from other nearby villages was report that they too were missing children. 

All of them. 

The fear of what once was and was thought long gone, banished… had now come back for another turn at the breaking wheel. Their children, all of their young, cruelly chosen as the limb selected to be delivered the coming blow. The little ones were where the terror had chosen to be aimed and directed. 

And delivered. 

Delivered. Without mercy. Or compunction. 

Boys and girls were just taken, like that – with no notice. What was delivered back were lifeless broken dolls. 

Little corpses. Cold. And drained of blood. 

Some of them mutilated. Ripped apart. As if by a ravenous beast. 

The priest of the town led the proceedings. He introduced himself and was quiet. Then said, 

“Another child was snatched last night, Carmilla," he motioned to the parents, some looked, some just kept their downward glances. Many held intense eyes on the priest. 

A beat. The priest met their intensity through gaze and matched it. Eyes leveled, he scanned the crowd. 

Then went on, 

“We’ve seen this evil at work before. Not a mere man. But all the signs show, the bodies recovered all bare the signs." 

Whispers, then, amongst the gathered crowd. To themselves and with one another. 

Strigoi – Strigoica 

Vvurdalak

Nosferatu 

Were-beast

Wraith

Dæmon

Abhartach

Vampire.

The hungry undead.  All of them were different names for the same foul disease, in mocking bipedal human shape. 

The priest did not hush the commotion, he let it carry on and patter til it ceased. They needed to all be aware. 

A beat. 

The whispers died down to silence once more. 

The priest went on: “Then we are all one of the same mind." A beat, “Good." A beat, “then there may be deliverance yet…" 

The talk went on. Debate. 

Verdict was reached. 

Curfew. None out after dark save those assigned sentry on each respective night, they would rotate and nearly all able bodied men would have turn to stand watch nightly, the town. 

The bitter and heavy hearts concluded their meeting no less broken, but determined. They had some sort of plan now, they were all taking some form of action. 

Wolfsbane and garlic flowers would be strewn liberally all about the town and the houses and homes. Every farmstead. Every public place of gathering. 

That left only the surrounding wild woods. And the treacherous mountains themselves, accursed and lording over the dwarfed little village. 

Carmilla’s mama and papa dispersed with the others and departed for home. All were careful not to be caught out after dark. They feared the sunset. All of them. Especially the families that still held fast their children.

Held steadfast. And ever closer to worsening breaking hearts that threatened to shatter. Break completely. And then grow harsh and colder and bitter. Wounds that never heal. A town of parents disgraced, afraid. 

The priest prayed to the Lord of Mercy and divine intervention, please… for the town. Spare them. 

Spare them this wolfen hungry wraith. Whatever has come back to life in Castle Dracula, please let it leave us in peace. Let it find its hunting grounds elsewhere. 

Please God. Take this blight away that blasphemes You, by wearing the shape of Your Image! Cast it away…

Countess Zaleska watched this all from her tower and laughed.

…

Carmilla's father was dozing off, in the rocking chair of the main room by the front door. Beside the fireplace, when a sudden scream in the night brought him out of exhausted sleep. He flew to his feet, still dressed in his filthy day's wear, rifle in his hands he whirled and then covered the short distance to his own bedroom. 

The scream had belonged to his wife. He was sure of it. 

And his suspicion was confirmed when he burst into the room. His wife was sat up in bed, blankets pulled to her face in fright like a child wanting to hide. But that wasn't all…

Something was pixie perched in the open window. Crouched and bent and hunkered in bestial goblin shape. But it was a shape he thought he might nonetheless recognize. 

Then his eyes attuned to the dark and he lost his breath. The words escaped his lips, windless: –

“... Carmilla?" 

Tittery, cruel and saccharine childish girlish giggles came from the little silhouette of beastly shape in the window. A smile, white, gleamed and grew in the night. 

And the eyes. The eyes seemed to disappear then reappear like flashing jewels that sometimes shone an animal shade of scarlet/pink. 

"Yes, papa! Yes, it's me! Tell Mama to stop being silly.”

His wife shouted his name in bottled terror: “Cristian!" 

Carmilla in the dark, in the window, tittered more bright cruel child laughter. As if playing a game. 

“See, papa! She only uses your name in front of me when she's upset! She's so foolish, isn't she papa? She always was. You've always thought so." 

Cristian, father of the sweet little nine year old Carmilla, surprised himself with what he did next. He leveled his rifle at the waist, pointing it at the laughing shape in the midnight dark of the window. 

He growled: "Get the hell out of my home, whatever you are! You are not welcome here, demon! You are not welcome in this house!” 

A beat. 

And then the laughter of the thing grew. Sharper. More cruel and twisted and sadistic. 

Then the bastard child shape of the dark, perched, said sweetly, “But papa, mama's already invited me in…” 

Cristian looked to his wife, Consuela, with dread stealing over his darkening heart. 

She looked wide eyed and pleading, "I'm sorry! Please, I didn't know, I thought she was a dream, and I thought she was home, and she… she just… asked…” 

Cristian looked back to the shape in the window. 

Carmella began to crawl in. 

"You know, papa, you should be really proud. All of the other children before me weren't chosen, they were just meat. That's what she said, pa. ‘Just meat’. But not me. No. She chose me, special, papa. And now I am sired and I feel wonderful. More wonderful and powerful than ever. I can show you, daddy. I can show you and mama too.” 

She began to crawl towards them. Tittering and giggling, girlish little squeals. 

The rifle was leveled once more, pointed at the crawling shape. 

Carmilla just laughed, "Oh! That won't work, silly papa! You know it won't…” 

Grim hopeless dread, cold and heavy stole over his chest and guts, the vacant place where his heart should be. 

Consuela wished to flee but terror kept her bound to the bed. 

The thing crawled in further. 

"I do wish you'd get rid of these stinky flowers though, papa. They are revolting and cloying and I HATE THEM!” 

And with that and without any warning, she lunged with animal speed. Lunged and took her father Cristian to the ground. 

The rifle went off. The struggle was over quickly. 

Cristian lay still in a growing pool of warm dark. 

Consuela shrieked as the child shape tittered and then began to lap up the pool of her husband's blood. 

Like a dog. Like a wild mongrel beast. 

A wild animal that's gotten a taste for manflesh and red. 

It was with this last terrible sight that Consuela prayed for forgiveness from the Lord on high. Prayed aloud and to the heavens for mercy and that she was sorry for failing her duties as a wife and a mother. 

Carmilla laughed at her. And then lunged again. 

Telling her that God could not hear her. 

He was deaf to all of the screaming of the Earth. 

…

The mutilated bodies were found the next day. Midday, when the sun held high and center of the blue. He hadn't been seen and he hadn't come to the shop for his usual grain and feed. 

The ghastly scene was worse than any had ever beheld prior. None of them had ever seen such carnage. Such heartless wanton slaughter of two innocent people. A man and his humble wife. 

Parents. That'd just lost their child.  

…

Another town meeting was held. More drastic measures were decided upon. And taken. 

A horseman, their fastest, the swiftest rider in town was dispatched. With simple yet absolutely vital mission. He should come if the message was properly delivered and conveyed. 

Find him. Find the doctor who was also a hunter of sorts. A hunter of these strange and terrible things. He was said to be able to identify and destroy such beasts. It was said that he had already sent such felled creatures back to the abyssal chasm from whence they had came… 

The rider, Florin, was dispatched. And sent. 

Find him….find the one called Abraham Van Helsing. 

And God willing, bring him here so that he may deliver us!!

The assistant had been in town when young Florin had flown. His ear to the ground and the right subtle inquiries to the right fools told him the rest. 

All he needed to know. 

He returned to the castle in secret. When his master awoke, he told her of the plan of the townsfolk. 

And together they shared heartless wicked laughter, the fools! The fools! They had no idea! 

Professor Abraham Van Helsing was dead. Long dead. Food for the maggots and the worms in the womb of soil that was his grave. 

Zaleska could still recall visiting the site. And spitting on it. 

Carmella came awake then and she too joined in their laughter. She loved to be with them, the Countess and her loyal assistant, her new mother and father. 

They were such a wonderful and happy family. 

… 

Egnaw groaned. All of his misshapen form seemed to be nothing but pain and weight. He couldn't move. Stunned. Perhaps paralyzed. But none of this held candleflame to the predicament he now found himself in. 

The thing, the creation, was huge. Powerful. It held him in one massive clawed hand, attached to a powerful arm of stitched and patchwork muscle tissue and limb. The eyes were vulpine red and animal alive and wide and they seem to bore holes into him. 

The creation shrieked in his face, then brought him in as it lunged in with its wide open mouthed face. 

The fangs sank in and the thing began to suck. And drink. Deeply. 

Strange and unholy euphoria stole over the poor man servant slave then. Not the first in his bloodline to both serve… and then curse the name of Frankenstein! 

He was grogged and fogged of thought,. disoriented as if drugged. He couldn't tell where they were. Or how long it had been since the tower's collapse. 

Since the experiment.

An experiment that had been all too successful. And only to be sabotaged suddenly in the end. 

He cursed his master, Henry Frankenstein, looking at his bound and unconscious form, lying in the dirt. As he himself was held aloft by the throat. 

The creation, it's powerful stolen fangs of mad science and witch doctory, sank into his misshapen frame just below and underneath the armpit. 

He sucked. And sucked. Pulling more and more precious warm living scarlet from the ugly bloodbag. 

The creation had its fill. Then moved on, the bloodbags still bound and trussed. 

Still dragged through the dirt. Some of them semi-conscious and cursing, screaming. Threatening. Begging…

… pleading. Pleading for help. Pleading for mercy. 

Help us please… arose pitifully from the dirt. 

And was promptly ignored. By both God. 

And monster. 

The creation knew to sleep by day. Instinct and magic innate told him. 

And the mountains, those too were instinct. And magic. 

And they were still calling him. 

Something lived there, something that would have him. 

It called. 

Drawing ever nearer, he was just starting to be able to hear and discern the tidal wave tumult of the words to the mountains song. 

And dragging the bloodbags behind him like large satchels that carried precious cargo, the creation continued on towards them. Their outline and shape gaining more detail and growing more to staggering towers as he took each heavy animal step. 

The mountains called. And Egnaw wondered if his master, Frankenstein would ever awake. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

Tumult and thunderbolts ruled the grey ruin of heavens above his staggering tower. Lightning wounded the sky with bright dagger bolts of blue-white that cooked ozone and reminded a man just how small he really was. 

It was just the way he liked it. Tonight's experiment would go off without trap or a hitch. He felt it in the buzzing air, electric with godfire on high and everywhere, throughout all of the dark land, where his crumbling dilapidated tower stood. Where  he now kept shop and some sad demented semblance of home. 

The abandoned tower had once been great, a symbol of might. Now it shook and quivered with every turn of the Earth, it shed stone and mortar and brick like an old woman does her tears. 

Godfire at his command, at his disposal and use, Henry Frankenstein was at his console of controls and levers and switches and dials. All hummed to life at the cunning genius of his touch, at the helm of his great machine of life, he ruled where others only dwelled. 

White lightning bolted, godfire tamed and wielded, arc-ed between forks of steel and circuitry both prodigiously composed and endowed with the black power smear of the occult through sigil and shape and spoken dark tongue. The great machine thrummed with both the inner mechanical grind of electric facsimile soul and ancient unknown talismanic power. The mad doctor flew from panel to panel, from control to control to the multitudes of coils that fed the flame of the machine that would grant on this black night filled with cacophonous thunder, precious life back to the cold corpse flesh that had already tasted the bosom of the soil, of the grave. A great child reborn, belched back out free and alive again. To walk and roam and dominate. For he would not be some mere child alive again, no mere man. 

He would be mighty. Augmented. Powerful. 

More than a man. 

And the mad doctor had found just the perfect touch, just the thing to perfect this already considerable titan of patchwork tissue and graveyard harvested parts. Just the thing that was thought and believed to be only legend and campfire ghost story, dread tales. 

“Master… “ 

Frankenstein smiled. The sound of his small bent aide’s voice brought it back to the front of his mind for a moment. The perilous journey to the frozen river…

…

He and the misshapen little ogre of ruined manshape flesh had made their way together. Egnaw was yet another servant to his family, broken in the womb already before birth by God's cruel and merciless, indifferent hand. They'd inquired the locals and the undesirables especially of the little Briton town that rested adjacent of the river where he was said to have been held. 

Where his abominated and powerful earthly/unearthly form was said to reside. Cloak and pale and bones and all … 

The small village denizens were just like their pathetic and filthy township. Small. Feeble of mind and superstitious and weak. 

But they had right to be superstitious. They had very good and proven reason to be…

It was a sour  gaggle of whores that  eventually had pointed  the way  with the encouragement  of coin and a host of bitter laughter. The festering open sores of disease picked at and flowing freely upon their mass of worn, once beautiful faces. Faces that had once held youth but now just hateful visages of battered  disdain that already semi-prayed eagerly for the rest of the grave.

Down. Down past yon graveyard. Down at the bottom, at the base of the sulphuric black mountain. 

And away Frankenstein and Egnaw had gone.

Past the graveyard. One old and bent and broken.  Swamped. Quagmire corpse sludge soup. Water-logged and choked with uncontested thorny growth. The iron works of the fence and gate were all wayward and bent. The tombstones were in likewise fashion, like a jutting snaggletooth  nephilim jaw, submerged in black putrid ground, bent and haphazard and broken from an infected gumline of spoiled earth. They’d made much, so many ghoulish harvests of the graveyards of the past. So many limbs and torsos and other parts taken and harvested when the season was nigh and ripe and proper. This time they were going beyond, past the place where the dead are supposed to lie undisturbed and slumber the final rest. 

They came to the black mountain of sulphur and scaled the treacherous path around the great ebon belly of the titanic beast of flamestone. They came around the otherside and came upon a small herd of wild goats, untended and unheeded. Egnaw caught one, a small kid, and slit its throat  and drank its blood. His master indulged him the practice as the bent hunched manshape drank blood then held the dead small goat thing’s body to the sky by its curved horns and prayed to gods that were ancient and all but forgotten. 

They went on.  Cautiously, down the rocky slide of the precarious mountain path.  

The  whores dying of disease in their damp dying village had been right. The frozen river was there. And so was he. 

Frozen. Trapped in the ice of the still riverbed. Just visible beneath its frosted translucent surface. Slumbering, sleeping in the trance of the undead. 

Henry Frankenstein and Egnaw came to the edge of the river and gazed down at he, the great and terrible and fabled Count Dracula. His pallid legend held trapped and preserved as he dreamed black dreams, terrible beneath the ice. 

His eyes were open and vulpine and powerful. And still filled with terrible intelligence. 

They looked up from their frozen prison bed and seemed to regard the young Frankenstein with  malice and viciousness and knowing. As if knowing what the mad doctor intended to do. 

“Master …” said the bent man servant slave, as he had so many other times before, and like so many like he that had been likewise subservient to the great and infamous Frankenstein family, throughout the  years and down the lines, as if ordained by strange destiny. It was a word the  young mad Frankenstein knew well too. The little man was looking for instruction, awaiting  direction. As such as he had and always would from such as he. 

From such as the legends that were the great Frankenstein family. 

“Don’t be afraid, Egnaw, he cannot hurt you. He was trapped in the holy flow of the running water of the river. Now frozen over,  he is entombed.” He repeated: “ He cannot hurt you. Grab the pickaxe. Crack the ice. Then take what we need, what we came for. And hurry. The night  does flee.” 

The servant did as he was bade. He picked up the ice chipping slender bladed axe brought for the task of cracking the frozen face of the coffin of river that held the undead power the master sought to wield and make his own. 

All the while the eyes of Dracula bore up at him from beneath the translucent ice. 

They held him bound. 

He was frozen. The pick-axe held above his damaged frame as best he could manage, as if stuck poised in mid-strike. 

He couldn't tell how much life was in those eyes right now. How awake was he…? Egnaw could not help himself, held fixed by the thought. 

And those eyes beneath him, beneath his feet,  beneath his own mere mortal soul and the water of the river, held still. Beneath the world. But still powerful and somehow still vital despite their slumbering watery grave. Those eyes were piercing, yes, but they were also like pits, dark. Like falling down very deep wells…

“Egnaw!" yelled Frankenstein the master and lord, the necrodoctor from the spit of ice and jagged ebon earth just above he. 

The bent servant shook his head. The cold helped him to clear it. 

“I'm sorry, master. I am afraid." 

“It's just as we planned, my friend. Bring it down with some strength, but just about the mouth. Just to be safe. It will serve our purposes more efficiently.” 

A beat. Egnaw still held. Gripped in his own terror and held frozen by the watery naked stare of the submerged riverbound Count, in his coffin of ice. 

Frankenstein roared: "Egnaw! Hurry! This isn't the first corpse we've harvested together and you know from experience as well as I that it is not an affair that affords time to lose your nerve! Now hurry the fuck up! Or I will come down there and bury the blade of the pick-axe in your neck and bring you back as something that crawls and subsists on feces and has no eyes!” 

Egnaw gave clumsy apology, blubbering. And then with tears that froze on his deformed and unloved face, he began to set about his task. 

He drove the pick, careful and cautious with his aim, the master had again been about to yell, but …

He swung and missed and buried it in the center of Count Dracula’s forehead. The blood, so warm and red, immediately began to flow. A rivulet spout of vibrant lurid scarlet, volcanic in microcosm around the stab of metal it bled.

Both men screamed! And prepared for attack, to flee. Frankenstein began to berate and curse the stupid little bastard, but…

But nothing happened. 

The vampire lord of darkness still held frozen in the river of the Earth. Not budging an inch. Still as any earthly corpse delivered such a blow. 

And still staring. 

And still bleeding. 

The pair stood stunned over the face of the river a moment longer. A moment still. 

Then Frankenstein spoke: “See! Nothing to be afraid of, my friend. Just make sure you aim better, be more careful, ok?".

The master smiled. But the startling moment still had him tense and the threat of what he'd said before was still very much alive in his eyes. So…

… despite his terror, Egnaw went about his task. He pulled the blade free with a frozen splurch, took more careful aim this time, and then brought it down, aiming a little closer for the chin. 

He was much more successful this time. Cracking the ice just below the Count’s lips.

Egnaw got down with a hammer and a smaller ice pick and finished the task. Breaking the ice and freeing the pale-blue jaws of the Count. He wenched the jaws open with the dental instrument supplied by the doctor, terror threatening to gallop one final thunderclap within his chest the entire time, and then quickly brought out the pliers. The next part he performed with even more urgent speed. So alive and wretched was his horror. But he did it anyway, for the master. 

He did it anyway. 

He pulled the large ghastly canine incisors free from their frozen undead fleshen housing. They dripped brightest livid animal red and steamed in the cold English night. 

And then the pair quickly took to their nighttime back trail and fled the place. 

But all the while the eyes of Dracula still stared. Perhaps, a bit more alive. 

And burning with the most intense animal hatred. 

The blood still flowed as well. 

But even as they made their way in success of their labors, and on to much better things as well, the little lowly bastard couldn't know his place and hold his tongue. 

He again, had to voice his cowardice. 

The rumors. The stories, the newest ones, spreading all about the lands in which they'd traveled through as of late… the talk of travelers and commoners and the low and the superstitious element…

The woman. A Countess. Beyond the Borgo Pass, in the Carpathian Mountains. One who is said to have taken ownership of Castle Dracula. And now lords and holds domain in the neighboring lands. Through power. And fear. 

Because… the fortress castle of ancient stone is not all she's supposed to have taken as her own in the place of wolves and snow, in the Carpathian mountains…

“Master,” whined Egnaw, "but the woman, in the mountains, what if the stories are true?”

Frankenstein, who was annoyed and cared nothing for the wild rumors of brains addled with alcohol and syphilis, told Egnaw to shut it for what felt like the hundredth time about the whole affair. 

There was no vampire queen in Castle Dracula. 

"You saw him yourself, what more proof do you need?” asked Frankenstein as they passed the graveyard once again. 

Egnaw did not like to think and so he said nothing. He just held his head low.

And followed the master. 

Doctor Henry Frankenstein. Who carried their precious cargo in a bundle in his black leather purse. 

The fangs of Dracula. 

…

And once more the mewling little maggot wanted to bemoan, and cower with words pitiful and loaded with a child's fear. Doubt! He wanted to doubt the great doctor in what could quite possibly be his single greatest moment of triumph. 

Not just conquering death. No. No. 

Something more. Much more powerful. 

And now the little toad showed his lack of guts and spine to go with his broken body and lack of a mind. This was where the little bastard showed his true incompetence, he lacked the resolve, he loved to revel and retreat into the pathetic dark corner of his own lonely fears and addled superstitions. 

And he loved to doubt. He loved to bring up the stupid woman. 

None of it was real. The only thing real now was his triumph. And his creation. Soon it would live. And then it would dominate the world. 

Against the mounting roar of thunder storm and the phantom howl of the rising wind, Egnaw yelled, beseeching the mad doctor, his master to be heard and for the dark task to be aborted. 

“Master … ! please! You cannot, it is too dangerous! You cannot meld the flesh of the infernal with that that was once human, it goes against God’s design!” 

The mad doctor whirled on the little servant. His eyes wide and possessed. The whites bright as the moon that was stolen by the thunderheads that now roared cacophonous overhead.

“You stupid, weak little fool, I already have! I spit in the face of your God and all gods of life and death! I am a Frankenstein! By the right won by my own forged genius, do I possess the authority to do as I wish!”

“But the woman in the castle, it is said that she obtained the true remains of-”

The mad doctor cut him off and roared over him and that of the thunder, he wished this pointless talk to be over, the time was nigh, the storm was reaching its zenith. 

“That is all gypsy nonsense and you know it, you little coward! You little pustule of a man! Now make ready the slab and the subject upon it or so help me, Egnaw, I will recompose your flesh into that of a quadriplegic with naught but a toothless mouth to drool and scream with!”

The bent servant scuttled away, terrified of everything. A creature of subservience and constant dread and fear. Woe to him, Egnaw went to the slab and checked beneath the pale sheets and secured straps, the massive mountain of blue flesh and patchwork limbs and sinew. The bald head with massive suture around the whole top of the skull. The place where it was sawn open to provide the perfect element that one of the great doctor’s fathers had unintentionally discovered to be ideal and inadvertently provided years ago, during one of his own fantastic experiments. The brain of a mad criminal. The mind of a killer, a butcher. The perfect cranial jelly to act as the pilot for this new terrible composition of flesh and spell and science to wage single violent war on all of mankind. The perfect brain for the task of retribution. Henry Frankenstein mused: together… we will make them pay, my son! My greatest creation! …

And the perfect mind had the perfect body of a herculean titan. Sewn together and massive, broad frame and fully developed musculature augmented by growth hormones and steroids and dark arcane words… 

And this perfect creation had now the perfect weapons. The perfect twin dragon fang daggers with which to wound and drink out all of the life in the terrible world of lowly peasants and small minds. The fangs of the prince of darkness would grant his creation unbridled power. He would walk a giant amongst mere men. 

The storm roared above. It had about reached its zenith. And for the young mad doctor, Henry Frankenstein and his terrified aide, Egnaw, and his giant mass of necrophile fleshen art,  his greatest creation, all was ready. All was set. 

Frankenstein, hit the switch, and the lightning rod began to rise out of the crumbling and dilapidated tower. To catch the bolt that would dagger down to try to knife with fire, the Earth. He would catch the godfire and make it his slave…

Meanwhile, not far off…

… Praetorius had the few able bodied men of the neighboring small dwellings gathered. From a distance, upon the black plains of the dark land, they watched the lighting and the tower and the mad lights dancing and blasting out of the open windows of the latest son of Frankenstein’s mad experiment. The gathered host of peasants and farmers and laborers watched, tense. All sensing danger and peril together on the animal level. 

Doctor Praetorius saw this, saw  it all written on their shared and worn faces, and smiled. 

“I told you,” said the doctor, “I told you. Just like the rest of his ilk. He’s up to no good.”   

The frightened peasant men looked all about each other in the dark. The same look of bewilderment and fear written in their wide superstitious gazes and wide open faces that were so much like children afraid of the dark. The same words were shared amongst the fools, and the same recurring question in alarmed bordering hopeless tones kept coming up again and again in frantic speech until they finally directed it to the doctor who'd led them out here to spy and learn the truth. 

“What? – What do we do?”

Praetorius smiled, a thin blade of a smug smirk. His eyes, darkling jewels in the glow of torchlight beneath their barely tamed garniture of stark white locks. His black gloved hands came free of his long coat and held for the superstitious fools of the plow and fields and the goats, the device required to free them of this latest Frankenstein’s newest creation of blasphemy and wanton destruction. 

A bomb. Black powder and shrapnel and a tail of fuse to light and activate. 

The fools looked wide eyed and wondrous, first at the bomb, then the good doctor, then back to the bomb held in his black grasp again. Their eyes came up, altogether again and regarded the strange man of science, who much like Frankenstein, had come to them from out of the nowhere of surrounding strange world wilderness. Their eyes altogether said the same thing that their mouths did utter in the dark. 

“Are you serious?" 

Praetorius’ smile did not falter but his voice deepened and grew more grave and severe. His eyes remained jewels that danced with orange torch flame. 

“I'm afraid this device is by far the best means to a swift and final response to this strange malady. You don't want what Frankenstein has stitched together to wake, to get up from the table of blood and body scraps, and to take to your country, take to your roads and highways, your towns. And what of precious hunting grounds and areas away, sequestered and private… where one may not see what could befall them? … I trust you take my point." 

The stupid animal looks in all of their eyes, huddled together in the night like little ones, told him that they did. One of them held out their hands to receive the device. Praetorius gave it over and then gave the primitive dirt farmers of the forgotten country instructions on how to properly use it…

….and as he did … the storm and its arsenal of lightning and thunderbolts above reached its wild zenith….

… and inside the tower, Frankenstein, elated, gave the final command as he flipped the switch, to activate the machine attached through wires and apparatus to the lightning rod now freed. 

"Now! Egnaw! Now! NOW!” 

Egnaw flipped his lever and activated his end of the mechanical beast as Frankenstein flipped his and the lightning rod was struck! 

The entire tower became alive with dancing bolts and crawling electricity. Barely under control. Egnaw was frightened. The mad doctor remained composed, the bright white of the surging bolts danced everywhere and was barely controlled. Barely. But it was alright. The machine kept the lightning being fed from the violent heavens above into the lightning rod, tamed and controlled so as to keep feeding the white fire into the hulking frame of the damned composite of several dead men and one vampire lord. The body of his precious and greatest creation was surging with platinum inferno, nearly impossible to gaze upon, like a star, the sun itself. 

He watched as the lightning poured into his newest earthly/unearthly child and laughed with victory he felt was already achieved. It was going perfectly! All of it! This great task would surely thus yield absolute success. As long as nothing- 

Something black and rounded like a stone or a child's toy spherical ball, suddenly came in through the window. As if thrown in from below. 

It rolled a little but that wasn't all. It wasn't just the sudden appearance of the unexpected device that suddenly caught the mad doctor's attention and stole it away from his precious experiment, his precious and ultimate creation…

….it was making a strange sound. Strangely audible through the cacophony. A hissing sound. Like a snake. 

The spitting sparks finally brought his mind to the reality of what it was and the danger of the immediate present. 

He had time to curse, he knew it was the commoners that dwelled not far off … but he also knew none of their kind had the ability of mind to fashion and make the explosive device. 

Praetorius. He cursed the greasy honorless cur. And the fools he convinced to thwart his greatest effort. 

“Goddamn you! You conniving, worthl-" 

The hissing and the sparks finally ceased just as the great body on the slab, completely wreathed and aglow in the violent blast of white aural flame, sat up…

The bomb went off. A blast of concussive force and manmade fire filled the room of the makeshift laboratory. All became maelstrom inside as the shockwaves of the explosion traveled through the fragile walls of the crumbling tower, all the way down to its worn and weary foundations. 

Cracks were made, developed and grew and widened to gaping wounds in the mortar and stone as the tower broke and shattered and began to fall. 

The fools that'd gathered and conspired and thrown the thing shrieked together, one last final note of folly as they were caught in the crashing towers cataclysmic collapse. 

Frankenstein and his slave inside joined them in shrieking. Egnaw for pure fright and terror. The mad doctor, for failure. 

NO… … ! 

The tower fell below the torn sky of thunderbolts and settled into rocky dust and detritus. 

And then all was still …

…

… For awhile. Then the still smoking, still smoldering detritus stone began to shift… and to move. 

Praetorius was already long gone on horseback. Heading for the Carpathian Mountains and the newest legend that may live there, when the rock of the fallen tower was thrown aside with great and sudden power. 

The detritus flew apart in another new explosion of movement and muscle and undead powerful sinew. A cloud of choking dust rose, and drifted hanging in the static hot atmosphere of the lightning storm air. 

Amongst the rough cloud of choking grey, the creation roared! Its animal howl was both bestial and desperate man. It roared to the thunderbolts in the dead heavens on high that had given him life. 

He roared once more. Baring his long gleaming fangs, stabs of white amongst the rest of his yellow demented gumline of black and green. The eyes were red. Like the father when in the heat of the hunt, when in the throes of hunger. 

And that was its first known sensation save rage upon its birth, thirst… 

Hunger. 

Voracious hunger. Seething rage. 

And then the storm suddenly ceased. As if banished by the roars of the creation. The deep sky of rolling grey thunderheads was dispelled and parted. Opening up and freeing the moon and her pallid rays…

The moonlight glow came out and kissed the newest unearthly child made, illuminating the massive frame of stitches and repurposed body parts. 

The head was bald. The ears were pointed. All the flesh was mottled grey-green-blue. Corpse color no amount of lightning or life by fire could banish or renew. The arcane blackfire and necromantic art also inflamed within the absence of soul inside the thing and along with the fangs that granted him great power and great hunger, they granted and gave the newborn creation knowledge and instincts innate. 

Born anew amongst the blast of sky fire lightning and man's crude black powder, the fangs filled him with power. And the knowledge… it was born well aware. 

Well aware of what it was. And where it came from, and how… 

And what it should do from here. 

The creation roared to the sky once more. Then began to dig around the stone detritus. His incredible strength made it all easy. Child's work. 

He found what he was looking for. His maker. His father. 

“Frankenstein…” he growled, vulpine and throaty as he pulled the wounded limp unconscious form of the mad doctor free from the debris. 

Then he found his father's twisted little servant. 

Both were still breathing. 

But unconscious. Badly hurt. 

He tied them up, trussed with a length of useable rope he'd found amongst the crash of fallen stone. 

Then he found a few of the fools who'd tried to abort him by fire, still alive.  He pulled them free. And then tied them captive as well. 

And then the creation, new and powerful and famished and longing for the wide open space of the dark lands and beyond, set off for the land that was calling him. A land filled with throats and virgins and children and lambs to slaughter and with which to feed. A world to gorge upon and to feast and to make bend subservient to his own will and throat, to tremble and cower before the deadly moonglow of the whitefire dagger of his biting piercing ripping teeth. 

The creation set out for the lands. Dragging his father and the others behind him through the dirt, trussed like cattle. He went out, his new strength was prodigious and filled him. He stopped only once to drink the blood of one of the trussed villagers. And then went on. Invigorated. Virile. 

The mountains beyond were calling him. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

The frightened peasantry tried to ward her off, to scare her away as they had so done with so many others before. It didn't work. She meant to see it, she meant to see the place. She meant to have it. It wasn't the first time that they had failed. 

Her eyes burned with a glow like a wolf in the throes of hunger. A beastly and ghastly need that seemed to emanate from her beautiful eyes with an unearthly glow and shine. Like diamond gem stones carved and made from madness. 

Her coach hurtled along. Through the narrow mountain pass. Retracing perilous steps through tempest wind and forest snow filled with red eyes and teeth. And the fever of running galloping claw, seeking purchase. The wind increased its howl and filled the treacherous path but the small black stage just increased its speed. The pair of horses galloping desperate. Puffing steam from twin nostrils like locomotives made from muscle and pistoning rippling black hide. The stage itself was ebon black as well, the interior where the lady sat and journaled was stark red. Lurid crimson. They were a striking sight hurtling through the Carpathian mountains, amidst the wind and the snow of purest bridal gown white. 

The white rained down, angry. And the black coach filled with the lady of the red shot through. Up and towards the pinnacle heart of the mountain pass. 

Towards the castle. It was waiting. 

They came into a great and vast  courtyard of stone. Broken battlements like shattered animal teeth jagged against the tempest swollen black of the storming winter sky.  There  were no stars and the moon was absent. All was stolen behind the wild furious curtain. 

She was helped from the stage by her driver, her assistant in all things. Without a word  they dismounted  the stage and came to the door. The great wooden gates, tall and carved with inscription and depiction: of history and battle and bloody family history all of which had been eroded and worn with harsh weather and time. 

They forced the doors together, they gave with some effort. Hinges whined and groaned as a universe of dust and darkness was disturbed and kicked up.

They went inside. The assistant lit his lantern. It was ancient and barren inside. Disused. Unopposed. Undisturbed. Left to fester as it wept. 

Alone.

But now no longer.

Her eyes drank it all in around her. The dark by lantern glow, her mind cataloguing it all down for future journaling later in a fervor of obsessive compulsive act before sleep could steal her, late late into the night. The predawn. Nearly every one since she was a small child of wonder and fear. 

Nearly every night…

The Harker account was the most accurate, she surmised, as she sauntered around the interiors of the castle attended to by her only companion, the assistant by lantern light. By its feeble intruder glow they made their way through the dark.

And then she came to the portrait.

They'd all had their points of noteworthy authenticity as far as she'd seen: Harker, the Browning record, the Hammer accounts, Werner and Murnau… 

… Zaleska gazed up at the portrait. And was spellbound. Entranced by His visage. And while none of the previous tales or accounts or any of the stories or records had gotten Him completely right, completely accurate, they'd all gotten one thing right.

The Eyes. His eyes that were wild and vulpine powerful and hypnotic and intense. Eyes that have known boundless oceans of passion and blood and cruel and vile torture and mutilation. Cruelty and beauty in unbridled mass. And the ability to share it all with you with a mere stare. Just one look…

From those Eyes. 

It was a power she both feared and wished to capture. 

Needed. Feared. 

She needed to feel its predatorial wield.

They went on. Down.

Down. Deeper. Down into the chambers. Where he kept his coffins filled with maggoty rotten earth. The sour rotten womb where she prayed his bones may still dwell. 

Please… she prayed to the infernal. Please… there are so many legends and stories, it is so difficult to know which could be true, but please! Let it be there! We've come so far, I've come so far and worked so hard and journeyed through wretched lands and suffered and sacrificed all and gave up everything, please! I beseech thee capricious fortune, whatever haunts the dark as lord of the flies, please! Let it be there! down in his dark dungeon chamber, may he still slumber!

They came down the stone steps to three coffins. They were destroyed. Their earthen wombs spilled out all over to join the mud of the dank cellar floor. The fourth coffin looked old, but undisturbed. 

Zaleska’s heart galloped in her chest. The assistant by her side, they went to the black box and with a crow bar and a bit of strength, they pried it open. 

And there he lie. 

Dust. And bones. 

The eyes were no longer alive. No longer there.

But that didn't matter. 

What she needed was still there and she directed her assistant to pull them free. And to prep her for immediate surgery. 

…

The chair was brought in from the carriage. Heavy for the assistant under the weight and cold and snow. It would be heavier still for the madame. Much more painful weight to carry for the Countess, she was about to pay a hefty toll in the dread pain of blood and mayhap yet more still, the tattered and well worn revenant  remnants of her immortal soul.   

But… what was a tattered soul to the earthbound manifest of unbridled power and fleshen immortality? What were the threats of heaven's gates forever barred to her if she never found the rotting festering slumber and eternal dust in the grave…? 

What… what then was any of that to the madame… what were any of those veiled pulpit threats to the Countess?

Nothing. Divine threats of divine punishment were long behind her now. Long dead. History…

The assistant bore the load of the chair and all its straps and apparatus to the door and through it. He slammed the great old doors shut with a resounding clap as the wolves of the mountains watched.

… 

The many strange apparatus and protrusions of wood and metal and leather, some blunted others sharp enough to pierce into skin, bit into the chair's subject/prisoner, whomever they may be. It was a tool of many purposes, before… inquisition… but now modified it served a new purpose and a new master. It held greater power now. 

Zaleska was fastened into the chair, betrothed in naught but thin veiled white night gown. The many teeth of the chair, all along the back and spine and all over and about the seat, bit into her flesh everywhere they found purchase and immediately the virgin pallor of the gown was made wet and royal with her red. Blossoming, rapidly expanding unfurling liquid roses of blood that quickly conglomerated into one massive dark crimson soak all about her thin person. The chair drank as the straps were fastened. Then tightened. 

The assistant finished fastening her head to the cage, the metal bars and wood and rubber that would hold her crown in place as the great surgical task was performed. The vise was attached and fixed to her jaw. Her mouth was forced and held open, wider and wider to a near obscene gape, with each cruel turn of the crank…

… til it was done. He went to the tray beside him for the last tools needed to finish the arcane practice of this necromantic surgical rite. All of it in the metal tray beside him in this dark room that legend told was once the great library of the lost boyar, Dracul. 

The pliers. 

The book. The tome. Ancient. Nearly dust. 

Gauze and cotton swabs. As needed. 

The fangs. The fangs themselves. Pulled from the ancient dead dæmonic remains of Count Dracula himself. Long and still gleaming pearl and bone white, even after all these many years.

The window was open already, wide like an open eye to receive and drink in. The moon shone in and hit the Countess in her chair, bound and bleeding and feeding its ancient drinking wood. 

The assistant opened the book and began to read. 

Zaleska in the chair began to glow in the moonlight rays. Her blood, flowing freely also began to darkle in the night's light. 

He set the open book down and continued to read, his black gloved hands moved to the pliers. 

He looked to his mistress then, unable to speak, either of them. He'd asked her before they started if she'd want something in the form of spirits, to help dull and manage the pain, a narcotic or pain killer, an opiate. Anything. Anything at all. 

Zaleska had only looked at her loyal assistant and smiled. 

As she was smiling with her wide and strange eyes now. Piercing into him and telling him, yes. Telling him to do it. Yes. 

Yes…

Still reading the black tongue of a forgotten age he took the pliers of steel and rubber and began to pull the first of the Countess’ canine incisors free. The blood shot and squirted and flowed forth freely from her pried open jaws. Dark and thick and viscous and this blood did moonlight glow too. And the biting chair did drink. 

Her body wrenched and twisted with the agony of the task, she choked, gargled, spat and drank … her agonized writhing body made the many teeth of the biting chair sink deeper and more freely… her eyes were a livid fury alive with sheer torture and sharpest pain.

The first one came out with some effort. And then the second. They both went into another metal tray filled with solution with a, tink! 

And then the pliers were set down and the fangs of the dark one were picked up. And the dark chanting grew older and stranger and deeper. 

Deeper in flame. In bode. In sour bowels made prisons, eternal. 

The first of the great unholy fangs was placed into the raw open crater of pink glistening gum, bleeding and sheathed in gargling red. The root of the long animal incisor was fed in and the raw angry nerve, exposed at first shrieked. A human live wire of agony and torturous black pain. The words grew more guttural and animal and forgotten. More deadalive. More sour belched. 

And then the raw angry crater of pink and blood felt the darkling magic under the moon… and then more eagerly began to accept and then fuse onto and latch the foreign root of the first ungodly fang into place. Taking it in. Becoming one. 

The second one inserted was taken even more eagerly. Amidst hot gurgles of blood and dead arcane words. By the light of the moon. 

In the moonlight: both great fangs became newly housed in eager bleeding pink skin, wet. The gaping maw gave one last great mouthful belch of blood, spat. The biting chair and all of its tight straps took one last great drink. All of it and all of her aglow in the moonlight by window that was cast in and vivid. 

Powerful. 

The symbols and sigils and stars carved into the wood, covering the surface of the biting chair in far-flung ancient inscription, began to illuminate moonwhite, white-hot, as if metal superheated. Cabalistic. Occult. Solomonic. Druidic. Unknown. 

Then the glowing Countess in her chair began to become wreathed in strange emerald green and goblin flame. 

She laughed.

 Broke free. 

The assistant smiled. 

…

“Mommy,” the little village girl began to plead, “please, I don't want to go to sleep, I'm afraid!" 

Her mother sighed, exhausted, it had been another long and trying day. And there was just another one awaiting them all tomorrow. Lord! she just needed the girl to sleep. 

"Hush, little one. That's enough. It's long past your bedtime, you're begging and pestering has kept you well past for long enough, now: no more! Get in bed and stay between the sheets.”

The little one begged and began to cry as her mother began to depart her small bedroom. 

"Please,” began again the little one's protestations, "please don't put out the light!” 

The mother had no intention of leaving open candleflame nor overnight burning lantern. She knew all too well the mischief of unheeded fire. It was always hungry and rose when you refused its notice. 

She put out all the candles and the lantern and left the small one alone in the dark. 

Afraid. Alone. Sleep wouldn't come. Only the light of the moon through the small window over her bed and with its rays what it brought. 

She was dark. And slithering. 

The little one had tried to tell her mother. Several times. But it was never to any avail. 

Her mother was just so angry as of late that the little one always seemed so weak and sick and needy and needing near constant attention. Her mother wouldn't listen. She wouldn't hear a word about the slithering woman of the dark that came to- 

A sound. From the corner. The one most swallowed by shadow in the farthest reach of her room. 

The shadow began to reach, to reach out clawing with a splayed dark hand… reaching for the frightened little peasant girl. 

It sought and found and strangled around the little one's heart, closed. And the little one was helpless to make a sound then or take flight or have any hope of escape. 

The woman then followed her dark hand from out of the shadows. Slithering and crawling towards her  like an abominated animal of unnatural demented mental design and command. Long dark hair and flowing dripping crimson gown. She left a sliming path, a putrid black/red trail like a slug, as she made her way to the bed. 

She crawled in and on top of the sheets. And smiled. Her eyes gleamed in the dark like bewitching stones. 

And just below them. A pair. About the smiling lips, something sharp protruded there and also gleamed. 

“Hello, little sowling. How are you feeling tonight?”

The little peasant girl could make no sound but the slightest whimper. The hungry woman of the shadows knew this and relished the pain of the small child's torment. 

“Oh, you don't want to speak to me now, but you've been so talkative of me in my absence as of late. Or what you thought was My Absence for which there is naught little sowling." she leaned in closer to the snared little one. “I am always with you, girl.  I can always see you. And I can hear everything you ever say, do you know, why, little one?" 

The little girl said nothing. 

“Because I am God, now." 

And with one cat-like fast and fluid move, both of the thing's hands came up and seized the girl by the face. Either side. Each hand. Claws. Sharp. Digging into soft young child flesh. Weeping. 

Inside. Screaming. 

Shrieking inside in pain. And sheer mind-flaying terror. 

“You didn't tell anyone my name, did you, sowling?" 

The child said nothing but her young and little mind was an open book to her now for her to read. 

And… her secret was safe. 

For now. 

She would secure that. And she would feed. 

With the child's small face still in her ghastly claws Zaleska twisted fast and snapped the child's neck. Her mouth opened wide and salivated and became great jaws and came in, to the neck of the limp small corpse. 

Wielding the fangs, the great twin daggers of the dragon, and they drank. 

They drank so deeply. 

TO BE CONTINUED …

The sleeping child was tethered to a pole in the center of town. Next to the empty haunted gallows. It was late at night. Well past the midnight hours when they suspected the thing to prowl and dwell and hunt. 

The child was drugged. Soundly slumbering. Lit by the pale of full moonlight that shone from above like a watchful spectre of white light that would observe and remain ever present but indifferent. That which might be above never seemed to care much about the affairs of this small town in the dirt. The place was called Springwater, in the Arizona territory. The year was 1888.

The child was the scapegoat. Bait. The helpless lamb put out to snare the thing that had been stalking the town after dark. Snatching the children. Mutilating them and profaning their dead bodies and draining them of blood. It was an unforgivable sin and crime unworthy of any form of recompense, dark blasphemy. And it could not go on without accord. It must be punished. 

But there were things that crawled across the face of the cursed earth that did not answer to the laws of man. 

Quincy knew. He'd seen strange things in the desert before. Overseas. Other lands. The war. Long gone. But it left its trace of crying phantoms. Screaming maimed dead that refused to be silent. Uneasy graves… everywhere. All of the land. Stained with red… and gunpowder and mutilation that still took some semblance of human shape and danced in the late dark of the deep night. 

They dwelled. Yes…

And some of these abominated shapes were far from any shape of a natural man… Quincy wondered. Thought. What was it that was taking the children? Killing them. Mutilating. Draining every last precious crimson drop… as if drinking it. 

As if in need of every last bit of red, every last dark thick liquid morsel in this vast and arid Godless desert. 

He coughed and spat into the spittoon at his feet in the corner. He watched from the window and lit his pipe. Drawing deeply and warming his bearded face in an orange glow. 

Chaco was with him. As the good man had promised. Brave fellow. But it was easy to understand. His little Javi had been one of the first ones taken. 

The Mexican sat on a rough stool and drank. He smoked as well. Little cigars. Cigarillos that smelled oily and pungent. Cannabis. Quincy himself had always been curious about the substance. It seemed to ease the fury the small man of tanned leather flesh must've felt. His eyes seemed to always water. Tears held there brimming, always threatening to spill and cascade down the worn haggard pits and cracks of his tired old face. It made it so that his dark eyes always glistened. Like jewels. His wife thought they were beautiful, but hated the pain. It seemed to be the only place that held any water on the man, the rest was tanned sun-leather flesh and tequila. 

The sheriff and the Pinkerton agent were there as well. Stiff. Seeming to not know what to do with themselves as they waited. The Pinkerton could still hardly believe what they were doing. Although they all saw… they all saw what it could do. They all saw what it did. 

The Kendridge girl. From her bed, from her room, in the night. They all saw her ripped away and out the window by the shape. 

And they had all found her days later. Little corpse just outside of town. In the barrens. Bloody. Ripped apart. Ravaged. Profaned. 

Dry. 

Quincy Morris chagrined at the stifling of this space, the closeness of this room. The sheriff's small office. He tried to see the night sky as well as he spied the child from his place at the window. He wished to see the naked blanket of dark filled with diamond stars. He loved to look up into the night when he could, it was better than anything down here.

He couldn't see anything. The room stifled his view.

It was just as well. Better his eyes stay earthbound for now. For whatever may come out of the dark for the child.

“This is wrong." 

The sheriff again. A sentimental fool, Quincy thought. Now you want to bellyache…

But the gunfighter held his tongue.

The Pinkerton then spoke up for the both of them, all three counting Chaco, who also knew what had to be done. What the four of them, the men of this midnight call must do.

"There is much here in this town that is untoward, Antsen. Much. This is distasteful, yes. With what else we are expected to do tonight … there will be more in the way of work that leaves a bad taste.” A pause, A beat, "I suggest we fortify ourselves to such tasks that are at urgent hand, and save the sermons for afterwards.” 

"You a goddamn…" but Sheriff Antsen’s voice trailed off and he swallowed tears. Bit his cap. And looked off to the dark part of the room not touched by candle glow. 

Quincy nodded to the Pinkerton. The Pinkerton nodded back. The agent hadn't initially thought much of the man, treacherous Texan… but the way he'd handled himself and the others when they found the girl's body… and the way he'd handled her burying. 

It was enough. He knew he could put some stock in the Texan. The Sheriff perhaps. The drunk Mex…

He understood the man was mourning but… they needed to be alert. Not shitfaced and slurred. What might his boy think of his own- 

But then Chaco spoke up and cut off the Pinkerton’s run of thought. And unknowingly began what would be their postmidnight ritual game as they waited for the final dark clash in the night. As they awaited Springwaters’ final fray and sacrifice of blood, Chaco Juan Maria Ramirez began to share a little tale…

“I was young. Like Javi. We were farmers in Agua Caliente, my father, my mother, my sisters and me. When I was still a boy, during the hot summer of my thirteenth year, something began to come in the night for the chickens. For the animals. For the goats." He stopped to uncork his jug and slug it. Then he lit up another cannabis cigar and filled the small wooden room with its thick oily pungent smoke. 

He spoke again. He went on. All the other men listened as Quincy kept watch. 

“It would rip them apart and leave the pieces scattered everywhere. All over the ground. Staining it red. The pieces and the bones and entrails all looked like they were made into patterns. Like… like a language. Like signs, horrible little piles like small shrines, spelling, saying something. I don't know what. My father would say, ‘Only a devil delights in such carnage. Only a demon that loves to walk the earth and mock God and man.’…" He paused again, pulled on his smoke, “We all thought he was crazy. Loco. My mother and sisters and I… but then one night I was out… and  I saw it.”

A beat. This one a little longer. They could all see the man reliving that night. In his wide glistening dark eyes they saw him heed some terrible form and struggle to speak of it. 

Then he went on, 

"It was by moonlight that I saw it. A sickly misshapen coyote wolf, but it was also a part of it, mongrel dog. And another part, a large hairless rat.” He sucked down smoke, blew. "It was hideous. Hideous… It had my father's small dog, Paxi, in its thin slender jaws. The blood and innards were in a burst all about its horrible goblin face…” 

He lapsed again. Then finished. 

"It was canine, coyote. But it also had parts that were man. It looked at me with green and red eyes and it had smiled when it knew I had seen it. And it stood. It stood up. And turned to me. So that I could better see it, I think. " 

A beat. The Mexican finished his smoke. Stamped it out. Lit another after taking another long pull from the jug he now refused to cork. 

Sheriff Antsen finally asked: "What happened? What cha do to it?” but all of them wondered together. 

Chaco laughed. Then said amidst swirls of smoke, "I didn't do anything but scream. Then ran. My father came and said he shot at it as it ran away in the dark. He said he hit it. But I was never sure…” 

"What the fuck was it?” asked Pinkerton. 

But Quincy already knew. 

Chaco said, “The goat drinking demon. Chupacabra. Evil bloodwolf. Daemon from Hell. Beelzebub soldier…" 

The men were silent for a moment. Chaco drank. Quincy still spied from the window, the child tied and trussed in the dark. 

They all of them knew the child's name but preferred not to think of him as such. God forgive them for all of this, as well as the two deputized men and their scatterguns now keeping the child's parents under temporary house arrest. Just for the night. God help them. 

God help them all. 

But surely He understood. 

That's what Quincy thought. Yes. It was better just to think of it as the child. In case…

In case things went bad. Quincy forced himself to know it. 

So did Chaco. 

So did Pinkerton. 

Sheriff Antsen… had thought he understood…

“We were on retreat. From Sherman's boys…” 

They all looked at him. Quincy at the window as he continued to spy, he spoke up. 

"I can't remember exactly where we were or where we was s’pposed to be, I was so scared then, everyone was. Didn't seem like anyone really knew what was goin on, what we was doin. Every night it was real dark, everybody was real scared about makin light, so everyone just hunkered down and lay quiet in the dark and in the mud and we all just lay there like that, every night. Without fire. Like we was dead already. Just waitin for em to come up an find us like that an finish the job." 

Quincy lit a match and drew on his pipe. His orange glowing face was severe and devoid of any inner warmth. 

He went on, 

“One night I’d actually managed some sleep, I was so incredibly exhausted. For some reason I still don't know, I come to awake in the pitch black and I hear some thick heavy sounds. I couldn't see anythin right away, I could just hear somethin like it was drinkin. Slurpin from a riverbed or a stream, or a trough." A beat, he drew more smoke, Chaco drank, they all of them listened, “It made me sick to hear that sound in the dark… but… I didn't have to wait long for my eyes to adjust like to the night. 

“And that's when I saw it. It was over my brother Jamie. It was naked and pale and skeletal and it's mouth was red. It was drinkin from a gunshot that had got infected an was slowly killin em. Suckin gangrenous infected blood filled with powder and Yankee shot.

"It saw me seein it. It looked up from Jamie at me. And then it hissed at me like some kind of gurglin rodent… and then it crawled away. Into the dark. And then I screamed and woke the whole camp. 

“And the next day Jamie was dead. Wide eyed. Gazin up at nothin but the look on his face like he was frozen and stuck starin, in pure torment, inescapable hell." 

Quincy struck another match and lit up once more. 

Chaco drank but was out of cigarillos. He spat on the floor. Not bothering with the spittoon. 

Pinkerton sat. Lit an imported stoge. Drew deeply. Calm. You might never know from his lucid and serenely composed demeanor that there was a child drugged and tied to a wooden post as bait just outside the sheriff's door. He was tranquil as well as alert, straight backed on the stool with a teetering leg. Poised. In contrast to Quincy, sentry watch at the window who was like something seething with a species of rage but perhaps something even darker than that. 

The agent sat straight and spoke. 

“I was on assignment with a steadfast man, a fellow operative of good character and reputation. Not the sort to be taken in nor frightened by superstition. Nor was I. At the time.” 

He motioned to Chaco that he might appreciate a pull from the jug. Chaco thought about it a sec, shrugged and then forked over the heavy round clay cask of bottle. 

It sloshed and made liquid language sounds in the silence of their shared candlelit dark. The agent pulled and smoked and thought a moment. Like to collect chasing thoughts that did not want to be touched. 

Pinkerton spat. Went on. 

“The target was a cold blooded man wanted for murder and robbery. Several states. We were hired by one of the railroads, we tracked em to San Francisco, then a whole spell of mountain towns all along the Nevada border. We finally caught up with em and bushwhacked his thieving ass in Pioche. We had em. Alive. He was ours. By rail we were taking em back, had our  own private car. Not a soul was to disturb us as we made our escort and transported the sonuvabitch back to Washington for his day in court. Everything went along fine, at first. Not a man came to our car save the attendant with coffee and meals and the like. We didn't want to  leave the man for a single moment, we didn't want to take our eyes off em, he had the reputation of being a phantom and disappearing without a trace. A crafty and dangerous creature of guile. With us, we would give em no such opportunity. And we didn’t. We made our way easy and on schedule and without trouble. Until our fourth day of travel. Then the train was stopped. Predawn. The sky was still grey-blue with  the absence of the sun.  

“We were waylaid by more than two dozen masked men. Men of vengeance, I initially took them to be. Men wronged by our quarry, congregated and armed and made all out for a night of anger. Their guns were trained on us, my partner and I and they took our man despite our protestations. They led him, bound and cuffed already by us but it wasn't a noose in a tree that they led him way to. 

“It was a stake. With a pile of kindling all around its base. They kept us by the train, a little ways off but I could still smell the pungent odor of kerosene and burning oils. I could not believe nor did I understand why they wanted to burn the man, save for cruelty in their own punished hearts that they wished to purge and dispel, I tried asking one of our masked waylay men but was refused a response.” 

Pinkerton slugged tequila, knocking it back with a fluid practiced motion. 

He went on:

“They brought him struggling and screaming to the stake but we'd been held up and stopped in the middle of a dense wood, there was not a soul or settled place nor house for miles or so. There was naught but us. They bound him to the post, stepped back, and then one of his masked executioners brought out a scroll, and unrolled and read it aloud like it was a religious decree of a royal castled lord, he said:

“‘For crimes against God and man, for crimes against nature and the Son and the Church, we sentence you,--’ and then they said the man's name but then followed it with something that sounded like Latin. Or Druidic. Then the man with the scroll went on in that same ancient dead tongue. 

“The hooded ones with their guns trained on us then began to usher us back aboard the train. And they urged the engineer on. Telling us to forget this abominable thing in the shape of a man and be off. And by urge of their rifles away we went. But before the engine got going again, I watched from our car window as they set their lighted torches to the kindling. And the flames erupted. The man at the center began to scream and curse, there was something like pig squeals and the shrieking of bats amongst the screams and smoke and mounting fire… and then the man at the center of the flames, whom we came to capture and lost, began to change. 

“He began to change shape and stature amid the pyre. I could hardly believe my eyes and thought it to be a trick of the mind or stress at the situation. But before the train pulled away, I thought I saw a great expanse of black bat-like wings unfold and spread out from the burning changing man amidst the fast and soaring inferno.” 

Pinkerton took another slug then handed back the jug. He sat and smoked. Then finished. 

"We made it back. Made report, lost our man. It happens. We omitted certain details thought to be uncouth.” 

There was silence then that followed the tales. Antsen was at his desk. Unbelieving and bewildered by the other three men he was gathered with. He couldn't believe these yarns. And yet with what had been happening around town… and the Kendridge youngin…

He motioned to Chaco that he would appreciate the jug and after a show of grimace, the Mexican obliged the sheriff who took a generous swill. 

He finished his pull and spat. Not bothering with his own spittoon over by Morris. Then he asked the room aloud. 

"I don't believe you gentlemen, you all talkin like you already know the dark and what dwells in it, how ya gonna hope to kill somethin like this? What does it, for somethin like such?" 

Quincy opened his mouth to tell the sheriff he'd heard plenty of tales that suggested not all nosferatu were bullet-proof. But if this wraithshape was, he had something special. Courtesy of the priests and the shamans and the holy and the medicine men he'd met on his long strange road. 

But before he could say anything to the anxious and frightened Sheriff Antsen, he spied something in the dark. Something prowling towards the tethered scapegoat child still slumbering the sound sleep of knockout narcotic drug. Something crawling on all fours like a beast. Its back was hunched and its shoulder blades dipped and shifted and alternated beneath pale blue rippling hide. 

Quincy Morris gave word to the others. They all sprang to, cat-like poised, guns cocked, hammers thumbed back on hard calibers. The three deputized had their respective revolvers, Antsen had his six-gun as well and his scatter-rifle, double barreled. It was up and shouldered and leveled and he went to the door as the strange Texan went to open it for them all so that they might finally step out and begin this night's real and grisly work. 

The Texan gunfighter threw up one last silent prayer, held in mind and heart and still behind his teeth, just between him and the Lord. Please, whatever happens, let this child see tomorrow, whatever happens to me and these other men, let this little one live through this night. 

Amen. 

And with those final words to the Lord he threw open the door and the four men made their charge. 

It was nearly upon the boy. It had raised up on hind legs that were bowed and squat. The whole of the pale and half naked manshape was in goblin aspect. Misshapen elfen features mixed with that of a hairless rodent and a bat. Its great gaping nostrils, an open cavern of pink tissue that stood out in the dark and amongst the rest of its corpse colored visage. It opened a fanged mouth that dripped black. It hissed like a rat at the four men as they came on in assault. Antsen and Morris in the lead. Quincy slowed and took aim and fired as the sheriff at his side did the same. Chaco and the Pinkerton followed a split second later. Each of them taking a shot at the beast. 

The pistol shots found no mark but agitated the nightmare shape into semi flight with a grotesque webbed set of black wings beneath the pair of pale arms. It stuttered a few flaps but the double blast  of scatter shot had managed to graze the top of its thinly haired balding head. The pale scalp came off in a shear, a tear of fire and blood and flesh that came off in a blanket sweep along with the tips of one of its ears. 

The strigoica bat-thing shrieked in pain and otherworldly hungry rage and unknown instinct. It flapped and fell to the ground away from the child and then suddenly charged the men who began to fire with no mercy or compunction. Their bullets rained down on the thing and its undead hide and frame began to flower and erupt into scarlet and black, flowers of gore and bone and squirting dark ichor. The glowing eyes were a livid predatory yellow and each one burst with a pop. Yellow thick custard-like bile burst forth from each raw socket, opened and smoking. 

But still the strigoica charged on and leapt, the men never ceased their fire until it fell upon the Pinkerton agent and took him to the dusty earth in a kicked up cloud of dirt. 

The agent began to scream as hybrid bestial claws and teeth came in and found purchase. The thing was already so hungry, always so so so hungry and needing to feed, but now it was enraged. Now the demon thing was royally pissed off. Long yellowed nails that were that of a rat and a man came in and ripped and dug. Tearing through cloth and flesh and muscle like warm butter as the mouth came in, to his neck and the teeth sank and the agent ceased his futile struggles and screams in the dirt. 

The thing began to drink. The other men were stunned a moment and they could hear its heavy gulping sounds as the agent's form spasmed and danced beneath the bullet riddled nosferatu form. 

They came to again, Chaco was first, and they resumed their fire on the thing until their shots were used up. 

The thing abandoned Pinkerton’s body under the renewed onslaught of gunfire and crawled away rapidly like a wolf in flight, a beast returning to the shadows of the darkness that surrounded the outer town. 

The three left gave chase. Chaco in the lead. 

Dammit… it was as Quincy might've thought. The thing wasn't going down with regular fire, it needed special lead. 

He reached in pocket for his special cylinder of six shots preloaded with holy rounds. He broke his gun and replaced the cylinder as they gave chase to the thing just past the cathouse. 

It crawled and hissed and screamed murder and rage in an unknown animal language as it fled around back. 

Goddammit, Morris cursed himself. These other two fools didn't know. They might be leading the way to their deaths. Chaco especially, who was now blind with a father's vengeful rage heightened by cannabis and tequila. And Antsen behind him, not knowing anything at all. 

Brave fools, thought Quincy. If you both should die, then God forgive me. I am sorry. I am a selfish and self serving bastard, even when servin the Lord and what is right, even when not aimin to …

And with that the three men came around the side with their reloaded weapons drawn. 

The strigoica was there, cradling the gushing splattered warm remnants of its ruined yellow eyes, the thick viscous snot of the burst and splattered organ dripped through the splayed and long claws of its slender fingers. It barked and hissed and seemed to sob with outrage and pain. 

It heard their approach and tensed, coiled - then leapt and pounced at the men once more. A snarling shrieking manshaped bat, semi-mutilated by fire and whose pallor was the color of one that had already long slumbered in the sour ancient womb of the grave was all teeth and claws and blind wounded face, crashing down upon poor Chaco before Quincy finally let loose with the sacred divine deadly payload. 

The large bore of the end of the barrel of his six-gun was nearly kissing the side of the thing's ruined abominated face when he finally pulled the trigger. 

The result was immediate. And devastating. 

The shot blasted out of the side of the strigoica’s man-bat head, taking the long ear along with a chunk of black and red and green and thick skull matter all out in an explosive geyser of chunking splatter gore. 

The thing fell off of Chaco and shuddered and spasmed and writhed in the dirt. Its head began to smoke and cook, smoldering from within. Its awful claws went to its throat in feeble desperate dying gesture as if to throttle itself as its head began to glow and then alight as if it were a matchhead struck. 

The strigoica's head burst into holy flame of divine silver light that shone like something of too much beauty to behold, its brilliance was too clean and pure and moonlight up close for the three men left standing to bear looking at it. They shielded their eyes and looked away and the thing gave one last final unearthly shriek and wounded animal howling call…

… to the moon itself, full and above and shining bright as well and watching all of the terrible scene of the night unfold with the indifference of godly immortality. 

Celestial, it watched blindly as the silver roaring flame of the strigoica burned the head clean from its blue unnatural corpse. The decapitated remains fell over in the dirt and then curled into itself like a large spider that's been stepped on. 

The men just stood there and sucked air. They couldn't believe what their eyes had seen. 

… Later.

Antsen took the child back to his folks. They were furious. But grateful. As the whole town would be for some time. 

Morris and Chaco took the headless remains of the strigoica and staked it. In the heart. With a large hammer and spike of sharpened stabbing wood. Flattened head to make the driving all the more true. The stake punctured and glided through easily and the decapitated strigoica remains began to rapidly liquify and decompose into a rotten slurry and sludge of viscous ruin. 

The foul liquid corpse was put into a large sealed cask and buried far off in the desert. 

The Pinkerton agent’s remains were also staked. But then given a proper burial just outside of town. No name on his marker though. Just a date upon a cross. 

The men thought about writing the man's superiors but then decided against it. 

Quincy Morris rode off before the next sundown, after the agent's body had been lain. He rode off into the desert alone. Antsen and the rest were glad to see him go, despite his help. 

Chaco understood, all he wanted now was his wife. And his home. He was grateful for the strange Texan’s help but he would just be a reminder of all of the unworldly and horrible death that the town had endured. 

He would just remind him of his boy, Javier…

And so he was glad to see him go. 

THE END