Posts Tagged ‘vampire’

Night’s Foul Bird

PseudoPod 415: Night’s Foul Bird

Show Notes

“I’m obviously a fan of the aesthetics of early horror films, and this story was all about that, especially the portrayal of vampire lore in early films, especially silent films, though saying that in the opening might be giving the game away a bit. It’s also one of a pair of stories I wrote back-to-back dealing with early portrayals of vampires in media–its companion is a very short piece called “The White Prince” that’s in Steve Berman’s anthology of incubi stories Handsome Devil out now from Prime books, which deals more with early vampire novels and specifically Dracula, instead of film.”


Night’s Foul Bird

by Orrin Grey


Last week, a man moved into the building. He lives in the same rooms as us but on the fourth floor rather than the sixth. On the floor between is a plump-cheeked lady whose two sons both died in the War. I call her the “Widow Flowers,” because she is always drying flowers in the kitchen above her sink. She gives them out to everyone as gifts at every relevant occasion. I wonder if she loves them because they’re beautiful but already dead, unchanging, like a photograph, but Mother says I mustn’t ask people such questions.

The new man is strange, pallid and sunken, and his head seems to taper from top to bottom, as though his chin is forming like a stalactite from his face. His eyes are very pale and he has an odd way of staring at you as if he’s actually looking at whatever’s just behind you, instead. Mother says that he’s sweet and that I mustn’t judge. That many of the young men who came back from the War came back just like him. I don’t think he seems young, but Mother says that he’s not much older than me. She blames the War for that, too.

He says his name is ‘Milton,’ but in my mind, I’m already calling him “Mr. Chaney,” because there’s something about him that reminds me of Lon Chaney’s faux-vampire in London After Midnight, which I loved up ‘til the end. Maybe it’s his long coat, which he wears always draped over his shoulders, his arms not through the sleeves. Maybe it’s his shadow, which seems to cling too close to him, to hunch at his back when he stands near walls, as though it’s whispering secrets in his ears.

Mother says that I’m sensitive, but that I should keep it to myself, and that I mustn’t judge people until they’ve given me a reason to, as it says in the Bible. I don’t think that is what it says in the Bible, but I don’t contradict her.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 349: Apotropaics


Apotropaics

by Norman Partridge


‘C’mon and I’ll show you.’

Ross scooped up his cap and we walked the short distance to Palmer’s cornfield. We hopped the fence and blazed a trail between two rows of dead cornstalks. I was surprised that Mr. Palmer hadn’t plowed the field and planted another crop. Todd’s dad was usually real quick about that kind of stuff. My dad always said that Mr. Palmer was a hard man, a man who didn’t brook nonsense. That was the way Todd’s dad managed his farm, pushing its crop potential to the limit, and my dad seemed to think that was the way Mr. Palmer handled his kids, too.

But something had slowed Mr. Palmer’s clockwork pace. Maybe for once he hadn’t had enough time, or maybe he’d wanted a vacation of his own, or maybe….

Maybe anything. Who knows why things happen? I mean, really? People say things. They do things. But who ever knows? Really?

Ross pushed between two tall stalks that crackled like ancient parchment. I followed. We cut through a couple more rows and came to the center of the field.

And there it was.

A naked mound of dirt, dark clods dried gray and hard in the hot sun.

A grave, I thought, shivering. It wasn’t an ordinary grave, either, and not just because it was in the middle of a cornfield. Imbedded in this grave, punched into it like it was some weird pincushion, were dozens of stakes and knives, their hilts barely visible. Tent stakes, survey stakes. Boy Scout knives, ordinary silverware, putty knives, and fancy stuff that must have been pure silver.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 341: Immortal L.A.

Show Notes

“Immortal L.A.” was written for Pseudopod. “Because I’m a big fan. A really big fan. I was recently in a taxi driving through the Romanian country side. I asked the cab driver if he believed in vampires and he said in thickly accented broken English ‘of course, dictators, criminals, liars… these are the vampires. We see the news and we see the vampires. Vampires are not legends, vampires and legends don’t make vampires, if you look around you’ll see them. If you watch the news you’ll see them.'”


Immortal L.A.

by Eric Czuleger


I ran a hand along my softening stomach. Tomorrow I start my diet. I thought. I removed my mouth from my hand. Two neat holes. No blood.

I went to the bathroom. Before I opened the door I tried to convince myself to chew a piece of gum instead. Saliva roused in my mouth and convinced me otherwise. I placed my head on the door with a gentle thunk, and thought, Am I hungry? Then, no I’m just depressed. I opened the door to the bathroom. The girl was lying in the bathtub where I left her.

A stream of blood ran down her neck and out of her thin wrists, it formed a shallow pool at the bottom of the tub. Her legs were like pale sticks. Her platform shoes with nine inch spikes were thrown in the corner, I have to throw out that pile, it’s just getting bigger. Her eyes lazily rotated in their orbits toward me. Even below her thick red lipstick, her lips seemed blue. Her hair was cut into a short blonde bob and while I had my mouth around her neck I could pretend for a bit. Pretend she was someone else that I wanted to drain the life of.

I stood in the doorway feeling self-conscious. I didn’t think she would be awake still, and I was already coming back for a fourth helping. It was like that moment when I still ate food, where you wanted to take the last slice of pizza but no one does through mutual shame. In spite of the fact that, if left to your own devices, you would have devoured the pizza entirely. It was like that. This time the pizza was watching me. And judging me.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ She croaked, as if she were asking the time. She’d lost so much blood she was punch drunk.

‘Yes,’ I said guiltily. Conscious of my gut.