Hag Night, page 8
Doc shook his head, refusing to think anymore.
“I heard something,” Burt said. “Out there…I just fucking heard something.”
Lost in the tangles of his thoughts, mired in them, Doc hadn’t heard a thing, but it was obvious from the look on Reg’s face that he had heard it, too. Then it came again: a skittering sort of sound beyond the door, as if some immense and fleshy rat were scratching about out there.
Reg picked up the poker from the fire.
Burt grabbed the broadhead axe.
They were both pale and shaking as Doc rose to his feet. There were two ways to handle this. They could either ignore the sounds or face them. Facing them could be deadly, but ignoring them was only going to notch up imaginations and they were already running at a high, delusory pitch.
“Do it,” Reg said. “I can’t handle this fucking waiting…”
Doc reached for the door handle, feeling the weight of the lantern as he listened to the sounds out there, which had increased in fury. Bailey had pulled up tight in a ball and the tension was strung thickly in the air.
He opened the door.
22
Wenda kept a tight eye on Megga because she did not trust her or have any faith in her ability to resist the call of the undead outside. What had happened upstairs was devastating and terrifying. She could not get the images of the crone out of her mind, but what bothered her more than anything about it was Megga.
She did not fight.
She did not even attempt defiance.
Which made things only that much worse, because Morris was becoming increasingly withdrawn and frightened, and with Megga being weak it meant that Wenda had to stand on her own and watch over the both of them. Not good, not good.
You should’ve let that crone take her. Megga’s always wanted something like that. Why fight it? Let her become one of them. Let her be some crawling undead thing.
But Wenda knew she couldn’t do that.
When they’d gotten back with what wood they could grab and grab quickly, Morris had been huddled by the fire. Despite the sounds from upstairs, he had not moved. He obviously couldn’t deal with any of it. He was used to being in charge, used to making things happen by sheer force of will and his own dominating personality. But his talents for management were useless against what they were facing. He could not control this scenario. It was too big to grasp and too dangerous to manhandle. So, he pulled into himself and became what he’d probably always been beneath the visage of the big, tough, can-do businessman: a frightened little boy.
Wenda tried to sympathize with him, but as things stood she needed everyone to stand tall and he had shrunk to an almost infantile stage. Things were desperate and there was no room for weakness like that, simply no room.
What amazed her most was that she had stood up against that creature upstairs. Such a thing would have been unthinkable yesterday…then she supposed everything about tonight was unthinkable. Still, she was amazed. She went after that thing when the sane reaction would have been to run from the room and curl up by the fire with Morris.
But she’d fought.
She’d slashed that evil witch and sent her fleeing from the room.
At first she didn’t understand the mechanics of it, but when they got downstairs Megga said, “Good thinking, bringing that blade.”
“Why?”
“Because of the blade. It’s sterling silver. They don’t like silver.”
Even now Wenda was trying to make sense of that, applying the only logic she had which had been gleaned from the old movies she had screened for Chamber of Horrors: everything from Taste the Blood of Dracula to The Vampire Lovers and Curse of the Undead. Silver? She didn’t recall the silver thing. Silver was useful against werewolves…but vampires?
Megga, of course, would have had the answers but Wenda’s patience with her was pretty much used up. She was standing over near the curtains, peering out through a slit.
“Are they out there?” Morris said.
“No. All I see is the storm.” She sounded almost disappointed.
“Maybe they went away.”
Megga rolled her eyes at that. “I wonder how the others are doing.”
“Better than us, I imagine,” Wenda said.
Megga didn’t comment on that. “I hope…I hope Bailey’s okay.”
There. The only strand of humanity in her: Bailey. The only connection she had to the real world. They hammed it up on the show as lesbo vampires, but sometimes Wenda wondered if that didn’t carry over into the real world. She’d never seen any direct evidence of it…yet, they were both attractive girls and both were single and seemed happy staying that way.
You’re single, too.
Sure, but as she liked to tell herself, it was easier that way. Less complicated and she didn’t see where she had time to balance a relationship and the show. She figured she’d never know what the true nature of the relationship between Bailey and Megga was, but she didn’t think they were in love as such. It was almost a co-dependency. Megga provided the aggression and fearlessness that Bailey lacked; and Bailey represented the warmth and solid, steady parental background that Megga never had.
Together, they were a whole.
Wenda fed a few logs into the fire. She sat back on the sofa and waited. She still held the knife and she was pretty sure she would not let it go before daylight.
Megga was staring at her, pulling off a cigarette. “You’re not too happy with me, are you?”
Wenda said nothing.
“You think I fell apart up there.”
Wenda looked over at her. “You did fall apart up there. I always thought you were tough. I always believed that…but when it came down to it, you were weak. If I hadn’t been there, you’d be outside with them now.”
Megga looked toward the doorway. “Maybe that’s what I want. Maybe that’s what I’ve always wanted. To be them. To be like them. To be a creature of the night.”
“To what end?”
“To be different, I guess.”
Wenda suppressed a peal of sarcastic laughter. “Oh, you’re different, all right.”
Megga just sneered. “You don’t understand.”
“Maybe you’re the one that doesn’t understand. Maybe your head’s all fucked-up from reading Anne Rice and watching silly vampire romances on TV. Well, let me clue you into something: that’s all fantasy. There’s nothing sexy or uber-cool about those things. You saw that crone up there. You saw what she was. Did she look happy to you? She was nothing but a walking pestilence. I don’t think those things are anything more than hunger. But if they feel anything at all, it sure as hell isn’t contentment. That woman looked like she was in agony, she looked…defiled. Is that what you want?”
“Maybe it is,” Megga said. “Maybe I want the despair and the self-loathing.”
“You’ve already got that, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Megga shook her head. “I’ve always wanted death.”
Wenda just sighed. “What you need is a good psychiatrist.”
“Fuck you.”
“Whatever. All I know is that I’ve got enough problems without your morbid fantasies.”
“Oh yeah? And who put you in charge?”
Wenda sat forward. “I’m in charge because Morris is absolutely useless—”
“What?” Morris said.
“—and you’re not much better. I’ve got the only clear head in this room. We’re not going to survive unless we stand strong against what’s out there and stand together. Don’t you understand that? Can’t you let go of your teenage Goth fantasies long enough to see that?”
Megga laughed at her. In fact, her whole face and body laughed at her. Everything got in the act as if to show Wenda the absurdity of what she had just said like it was some naïve, childlike notion that you could possibly fight against them or stand strong against what they represented.
“Okay, Megga. If you don’t want to be a normal living, breathing human being, then get out of here. You’re no good to us,” Wenda told her. “Pack up your plastic fangs and your Wal-Mart Dracula cape and get the fuck out of here. Go outside. Let them have you. Go see just how content they are.”
When Megga made to open her mouth, Wenda said, “But understand one thing and understand it good: if you go out there and you come back trying to spread that plague to us, I’ll kill you. I’ll ram a fucking stake right through you.”
Megga just glared at her.
Wenda glared back. She picked up a length of oak from the woodpile. It was about sixteen or seventeen inches long, thick around as a bedpost. It would do nicely. So as she watched Megga watching her, she took the knife and began to sharpen it into a stake.
23
The bitch is serious. She’s absolutely fucking serious.
Little Miss Perfect, wouldn’t-swat-a fucking-fly Wenda who only came to life when she was Vultura had now morphed into the primo queen bitch, the cock-of-the-fucking-walk. She was large and in charge and even threatening…something Megga did not care for because she was the threatening one. It was the way it was supposed to work.
But…damn, look at her over there sharpening that stake. It wasn’t just threat posturing or some simple defensive mechanism, no, old Wenda was making a stake and she looked determined enough to use it. That gleam in her eye was steely, resolute, and bold. She’d already attacked one vampire tonight and Megga got the unpleasant feeling she was just warming up. That harmless Wenda Keegan was coming into her own, that at heart she was a fucking alpha warrior maiden that would kill vampires without hesitation and maybe even Van Helsing could learn a trick or two from her.
Interesting.
Megga felt threatened by her and feeling so, she wanted to yell at her, to tear her house down, to go up one side of Miss Wenda Keegan and down the other, screaming obscenities at her until she crawled back into the pretty pink box she’d come out of.
But part of her didn’t dare.
Wenda was beginning to look positively…predatory.
“You better make sure I’m one of those things before you go using that,” Megga said to her.
Wenda kept sharpening the stake. “I’m not a killer. I don’t get off on death and pain. I leave that to people like you and the rest of the McVampire groupies of the wet-panty brigade. Unlike you and the rest of those deluded idiots, I know badness when I see it. I know what evil looks like and how it smells. I won’t be killing anyone. But I will destroy those things. If you want to give yourself up to them, go ahead, but I’ll get you and when I ram this through your chest, it won’t be out of hate, Megga, it’ll be because it’s the right thing to do. That crone might have blinded you to her true nature, but I saw it just fine. Do what you want. But before you find a coffin to sleep in, think about Bailey. Think about how she needs you. Think about what a disappointment you’ll be to her when she learns how weak you really are.”
“Fuck you,” Megga snarled.
But that didn’t even move Wenda. Christ, the way she was it was like trying to insult a rattlesnake that was going to bite you.
Megga turned away from her, pissed off and hating. Why in the hell did she mention Bailey? She did it because it has power over you and she knows it. You can expect her to rub it into your face again and again if you don’t step off the train to the graveyard here and reassess you’re thinking. She’s simply trying to goad you into realism.
Megga wondered if Wenda was still pissed because she’d tried to kiss her…well, she had kissed her. Funny, that. She’d never had any feelings for her. A co-worker. That was about it. She was friendly with her, cooperative, but she harbored no romantic impulses. Yet…after Wenda had slashed the crone upstairs, she had wanted her like she’d never wanted anyone, male or female, before. She told herself it was just some weird hypnotic aftereffect.
But was it?
She didn’t know.
In fact, other than feeling a mad hot-blooded desire for Wenda, she couldn’t really remember a lot of what happened up there. They’d gone into the room. There’d been someone on the bed under a sheet…then it got a little grainy and distorted like a dream recalled half way through the day. Images of Wenda. Images of a woman. A strange woman who was beautiful and alluring with crystal blue eyes and platinum hair that hung in a long braid over one shoulder in the European style. She remembered the woman had been smiling…a sweet, friendly, harmless sort of smile that made her feel at ease. In her mind, only the image of the smile remained like that of the storied cat: a huge smile of gleaming white teeth.
You saw that crone up there. You saw what she was.
Wenda’s words. And to Megga they were incomprehensible. Crone? What crone? There had been no crone, just that beautiful blonde woman holding her arms out to her, wanting to embrace her. Megga had even heard her speak. She said something about how glad she was that Megga was safe, that those awful things outside had not gotten to her. That she needed to be wary of them. And that she—the woman herself—could protect her if only she came into her arms.
She was nothing but a walking pestilence.
No, no, no, Wenda, you’re wrong. It wasn’t like that…but as Megga began to remember she was no longer seeing the beautiful European woman. She was just seeing those blue eyes, which were deep and fathomless like drowning pools. In their depths, she saw dark mountains capped by black impenetrable forests rising above little villages tucked in remote valleys. Deserted villages where the wind blew dust devils up empty avenues and winding cobblestone streets were edged by silent half-timber houses falling to ruin and doorways pooled with sinister shadows. And as darkness fell over the rooftops like oil, she could hear the strident giggling of unseen children and the sound of chattering teeth from the overgrown churchyard on the hill, and see white hungry faces peering through rotting shutters.
Megga shook her head, trying to push that awful imagery from her mind, but like a leech it clung, it held on, it fed on the darkness of her mind, bloating itself. Those villages…none were Cobton. These were in a far-away place where the crops had withered in the fields and the houses stood like leaning monoliths.
That woman looked like she was in agony, she looked…defiled.
Now it was invading Megga’s mind, the truth of what she had seen up there. The memory crowded in, filling her with unease. In that woman’s eyes she had seen the spectral darkness of alien lands laid empty by a creeping pestilence and she could hear the woman’s voice…a strange tongue, thick and guttural, Slavonic. She could not understand the words spoken, but the malevolence and spiritual decay behind them was all too evident.
Then Megga could remember herself standing there as that…that woman moved in at her and, no, she was not beautiful at all. Her face was gray and fissured like an old root, the eyes a sullen sickly yellow, and the smile was not friendly but wolfish and starving, the teeth long and sharp. And that’s when the dread had engulfed her, locking her down in an icy embrace, an ebon fear sucking into her pores and filling her with an almost hysterical panic as she saw that grinning mouth whose smile was mocking and pale and poisonous. She looked into eyes that simmered with a black anti-human hatred, a hatred of the life in her and an almost carnal need to violate her and empty her veins.
That’s what she had really seen as those withered fingers had reached for her and that mouth had puckered into a shriveled gray blowhole to be pressed against her throat.
Megga lit another cigarette and tried to tell herself it wasn’t so, but it was true and she knew it. Maybe she’d always known that’s what those things would be like.
Leeches, nothing but leeches.
And if they offered you other things or gave you a glimpse of cold beauty or eroticism or whispered graveyard poetry in your ear, it was only a means to an end so they could feed upon you.
Yet…even knowing the truth of it and feeling the fear still kicking in her belly like a grim fetus…the hypnotic allure of the woman still clouded her mind and whitewashed her brain. Its influence was powerful. It lingered and haunted her skull like a ghost. And what frightened her most was that after Wenda had driven the crone away, Megga herself had become very much aware of how turned-on she was, how she’d wanted that woman to touch her and violate her and penetrate her with those long mottled teeth…and that, more than anything else, had made her go after Wenda, kiss her, tongue her.
She wanted her.
God, how she wanted her.
Her brain rioting with lewd, profane impulses, she would have done her right there on the cold floor. The woman offered death and death was the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Nothing burns so hot as death.
Nothing.
Feeling hot inside, Megga pulled off her cigarette and tried to calm herself. She looked over at Wenda who’d apparently been watching her the entire time.
She was still sharpening the stake and doing so almost reverently like it was a religious experience for her. Megga was all too aware of the phallic shape of the thing. The heat was building up in her and she could barely contain it.
Morris poked at the fire with a stick. “I wonder when they’ll come for us,” he said.
Megga didn’t know but, God, she hoped it would be soon.
24
At first, Doc saw nothing when he opened the door. There was just the corridor leading to the foyer and nothing else. He saw shadows and a clutching darkness pushing out at him that was nearly suffocating. Then he smelled a dark and pungent odor of carrion. He heard a low moaning noise like wind blowing through a pipe. He lifted the lantern high, casting its light out into the corridor and, instantly, panic tore loose inside him with an almost audible tearing sound.
