Vampire Alley

Vampire Alley

By Gary L Morton

Copyright 2010 by Gary Morton

Published at Smashwords by Gary Morton

Edited 2013

Gary Morton's talent as a writer shines in this collection … He supplies the reader with well-written lyrical prose and vivid imagery. Each tale makes for a macabre read ... I marveled at his ability to write so many different vignettes about vampires. It's a tribute to his creative genius … With graphic violence, blood and gore; it's not for the squeamish but for those who love a world filled with vampires, zombies, cannibals, and other creatures that haunt the night. L.W. Samuelson at Amazon.com

Contents of Vampire Alley

Vampire Dream

Grave Walker

Dust Devil

Blind Vision

Star

Vampire Alley

Heart of the Sun

Running the Tiger

Castle of Fangs

Hungry Visions

A Short Vampire Christmas

All I want is Santa

Werebaby

Cannibal Run

Vampire Dream

© By Gary L Morton

Nod yourself asleep with a cotton-candy dream in your headspace, and the rushes shoot you high to a realm of orchestral music. Here you're strolling beside a jade-blue pond in a land of tall palms, watching a wealth of sunbeams in ice-crystals -- fast on their way from the heavens, glowing gold in the crowns of rolling clouds.

It all drifts slowly away from your open palm and into the blue face of twilight, so you race through these moments you've stolen, trying to tag the golden fleece of fortune before it slips away.

Beautiful feelings are ephemeral in every land, and here the night spirals down in a carousel of colors . . . so you keep on running, reaching for the heavens as an inner voice shouts, 'What freedom it is to dream alone on my own!'

Now you're on your own in cold and lonely corners, many melting forms mix aimlessly in a play of lantern light. The night has stuffed its magic deep in bleak pockets, so you turn and take a sidelong glance down an alleyway, wondering what evil will take shape.

We all have enemies, they're at large in the secrecy of the world, and if there isn't a blade flashing at your back there's a bundle of cash with your name on it, or maybe a face of blue death at your door. So you let the shapeless take form, let the hidden become visible . . . you set your dark forces free.

Now your dreams scatter from you with the lizards and the bats and your broken teeth chatter by towering stones. Forms are hideous scarecrows spattered with crimson, moving against a blur of grey-streaked ebony walls. You know how it always is on these late starless evenings, and you shuffle wearily to the Blue house hoping to work for some White. If you could put your finger on what's changed your chances would be better, but the sweat and nightmares, the bones and the cobbles, make answers a blur. Time is short when you're a lone wolf scavenging among the tombstone towers, but the shadow gangs are the first step down to the ravening mob. It's better to gamble on a vamp or the shakes, better to turn down a familiar gloom row and go for the sane.

Feet in the gutter by a sconce light flickering on a grim grease-scarred wall, you look up at a purple bruise that once was the moon. When the vamp strides up his cape is trailing ashen fog; his face is stern, having the strength of a statue among men made of rot. Yet something's not quite right - you think it is in his eyes, they've yellowed when once they shone with distinction like his pearl clasp.

He shows you the White and of course he has an elegant manner; it makes you ashamed of your stoop and your drool. He steadies you with a firm hand on the shoulder, in his eyes he says you're still human enough for use, and then he asks for a Red name.

You give him her name and say she's fresh, definitely no disease or face of blue death, one of the rare untainted ones - no withering, a princess.

As vampires always do, he smiles confidently and pulls you to him with a rough hand. A name is not enough, take me to her!

She lives in a small ivy-covered keep in one of the uphill circles, and sentry stones stand like cracked fists there. Poison dew is the only guard left to hinder you as you steal through the deep grass with your customer, the vampire. He's going by sense of smell now and he really has no use for you, but a deal is a deal - the Red for the White.

Phosphor-bright windows. His eyes smolder low. A sweep of dark hair, a slim gliding figure and he visibly chokes at the sight. He looks to you fiercely, and at your open palm, then he charges the oak-and-iron door and boots it down. He steps back as the thundering crash resounds in the structure's ancient hallways.

Silence comes with her, her shadows and a hint of fire. Flames lick from the end of her silver weapon. Her black dress and hair flow liquidly like silk as she poses and directs the gun's molten stream.

A fountain of fire devours the vampire. He flings his arms up, his cape lifts sending a tongue of flame over the gnarled oaks, painting the soot-fogged sky red. He's a stumbling torch when her weapon is long empty, then he falls to his knees in a cloud of hissing smoke.

Her white teeth glitter and you remember the stars as she steps out confidently to view his corpse. You see her cheeks like rouge-tinted porcelain as he springs up. He surprises her and takes her by the throat to the wall. In a tangle of ivy, she's flowing with blood. White wax crumbles, his hands fall away, and you see the crooked claws ripping her flesh. He's hungrier than fire, breaking away ribs, tearing at the heart.

Your head is spinning but there's nowhere to go, so you watch, not wanting to see him feed. He spares you now, turns and lets the Red slide down the wall. With one crooked claw, he grabs his distorted wax face and breaks the melted mask away. His scorched wig drops, there's only blood-speckled black rot . . . a nose bone, canine teeth and yellow eyes tell his story.

Now you know what has changed. With one filthy claw, he squeezes raw Red on the powdery White, and then tosses you the pouch.

Our deal, Red for White -- not diseased, he hisses. Don't you tell the others. Don’t tell it around. There are no vampires any more. I was the last. And this poisoned world has killed me too.

Now there is nothing but the twilight and the darkness, inhabited by hideous diseased scarecrows and the predators of animal night. The sounds of his feeding fade as you make for the bushes behind a sentry stone; there White powder fizzes through your skin and spots of red stain your wrist - you kneel, nod yourself asleep with a white candy dream in your headspace, and the rushes shoot you . . . . . . . .

------ The End -------

Grave Walker

© By Gary L Morton

This grim story flows out of chaos, swirling to earth with brisk winds and a rush of autumn leaves. Brush strokes of dark illusion painting reality.

Beauty is truth and invisible to mortals. We walk in dreams, failing to see that all is a graveyard - or that living beings are but the flowers of the dying day.

Brittle leaves are the scrolls in a tomb, a parchment of history unrolling, and I am a shadow walking the path, nodding at the urns and stones placed for each person.

Masks swirl, there is wickedness and joy and I have come again like Halloween, from places that are not too real.

My feet strike the wall hard and I begin to walk like the most surefooted person of all. The stone and mortar crumbles underfoot, a slate slab tumbles to the blighted foliage below and I leap to a firmer place. Drunken shouting echoes behind me in the East City and ignoring it I look to the west at the tumbled wreck of a city beyond the shivering trees.

Plague lands, the death miasma of ten thousand bodies drifts with the cold fog. A skull shatters to fire and ice in my mind. Leaping from the wall, my black robes flutter as I descend, then I am on hard earth again, walking down a road of the dead. Frozen rutted mud, hovels tilting and leaning amid the thorns and dead weeds. The taller buildings of the downtown looking like monstrous sarcophagi thrown up from the jaws of the plague demons.

Farther down the road, I see a skeleton and rags in a tree and a dry fountain full of cracked skulls and bones. The germ of the plague is the tiniest skull of all, yet it cannot pass through the eye of a needle and kill me -- I am neither mortal nor immortal. If I had kind feelings for men, I would weep forever. If I had no feelings at all I would vanish into the uncaring maw of death. So I walk and sometimes I feel for the lonely man fleeing the howling winds, wolves and war.

This time I think of the man who sent me and I have feelings of hatred for him. Lucifer, a sorcerer who cannot appreciate that God and the gods created men and then left the world for other places. Unable to appreciate the beauty of this, Lucifer must meddle with men everywhere, and I would have no party with him if I did not need some of his magic on certain occasions.

Cobweb moss hangs from dead branches, for a moment I have the feeling of being in Cajun country and not in England. But this is England and my quarry is a vampire living under bizarre circumstances. A vampire soon to die. A death forbidden by Lucifer, who wants all to live in suffering for abstract reasons I have never been able to grasp. So I am sent to save this thing that should be more than put to death. And it is a vile thought. The cold flash of my steel has always been mercy and the end of evil men who create the hordes of monsters and freakish things. Perhaps I am arrogant; perhaps this is a task that will make me humble.

Gnarled apple trees shiver behind a huge rusty gate. I can see the remains of a prison and the waves of deep brown grass lapping against it. Cold tingling touches my face, and a vision rises. The dead will speak, so I walk to the gate. A flash of silver from the dark folds of my robes and my sickle has shattered the lock. And I watch as the gate creaks open of its own accord.

Death is an end to guilt, and even the walls of prisons are stripped as clean as bones. But here something lingers, and it is faceless and black, trying to mask itself as specters and deformity. I know it is a lie as the grass swells to mounds. The shivering of the apple trees is more of the bluff. Then the bodies begin to rise and I am temporarily tricked.

Shaking off the frozen sod, these are hideous things, rags, frost, rotten flesh, bile and blood. Fangs in mouths frozen open and twisted, and eyes lit by some sick fire of vampiric disease and lust. The mist is like poison as it sheets across their faces of scabs and sores. Their bones audibly creak as they walk slowly toward me.

Hunting this vampire for Lucifer truly makes me humble, but not so humble that I can stand the insult of these wretches thinking me to be food. It is questionable as to whether they should feed or not. They are not alive and they are not dead. Neither are they ghosts or specters. They are a mistake created by Lucifer's chosen vampire, Jason Burch.

They encircle me and the knowledge comes clear. Jason Burch has found a way to feed off plague victims. Perhaps drinking their blood when they are close to death, and the abominations before me are the result. Some of them lacking even teeth, and threatening me like bloodsuckers with useless open mouths like frozen pits.

My anger is enough, my gloved hand sweeps the folds of my cloak left and a wave of liquid darkness is born. The creatures fly rag doll into the air, the trees and grass. Black smoke and loud sparks spit from their burning rags and flesh and their mouths open and howl, though they can't emit much sound. The effect is that the roar of wind seems to be born of them.

Pacing over the uneven sod and mounds, I reach the prison and a heavy metal door. It is locked and my eyes flash red, heating the metal to a temperature that cracks the stone at the hinges. A whirl of my cloak sends in a frozen fist of wind that rings the door like a church bell as it knocks it down. Then I am inside and pacing down a corridor strewn with implements of torture and the bones of the dead.

There is nothing on the ground floor and above, just empty cells, and my senses tell me that like Hades, the evil is below. The stairs are blocked, the elevator winch broken. As I force the door, I hear bats flutter up the shaft. Dropping down, I kick the bottom door loose. A screech of hinges then it falls with a huge crash.

A long stone corridor drips with stalactites of ice and slime; corpses mummified with dust and cobwebs are crumpled against the walls. My heels ring as I walk to the end, and at an arch to a larger room, I pause and raise a hand. Candles and torches ignite at the motion and I have a clearer vision of the room. It is wide, with a second level balcony, almost like a small theatre. Tokens of witchcraft and of Christ decorate it - this is an unholy temple, with an altar of dual abomination that even Lucifer would hate. A bright pentagram burns with phosphor in a mosaic floor and from higher up, a cross casts its shadow. The marble slab of sacrifice has both a Satanist's dagger and holy objects. Remains of the last victim rest on the altar, mummified in ash and cobwebs. Chest and heart have been torn open, almost as if Aztec priests had done the work. Jason Burch would be the priest.

In his absence, I decide to rule his church unholy and deserving of destruction -- my judgment final. A last look around, a row of skulls in the balcony seeming to be my audience, then my scythe becomes the stroke of midnight and an eclipse over both cross and pentagram. The air grows warped, a twisted mirror, stone and metal begin to melt and burn. Silver and gold filaments rise and crackle like fire as the floor softens to clay and shifts. It sinks slowly as the mouth of a pit swirls open.

Dashing down a shaking corridor, flames and gases igniting me like a flare, tumbling slabs engulfing me - I feel invigorated. I reach a blocked door as part of an explosive force shooting up the tunnel and get blown out as the earth splits.

The grounds are in a storm of smoke. Hot steel and stone pounds like evil bells as flames, dust and sparks roar from the prison windows. An apple tree crashes beside me and another is falling. A powerful leap and I get over the grounds to the top of the wall and there I wait for the quaking earth to settle.

The jail heaves like a slab in quicksand, then its centre roof collapses and huge smoke signals rise to a sky as flecked and scarred as the diseased city below. I have visions of a corpse coughing up soot.

The plague zombies appear again, walking in the rain of ash on the grounds. A ruling on their fate is required - heaven or seven shades of a rainbow of fire. Running along the wall, I throw a sickle blade up in the smoke. Thunder booms high above, and the soot becomes rain. Golden drops falling only on the grounds of the jail. Water that burns the unholy stone like powerful acid, but as it hits the unholy skeleton crew, the rot on their bones froths and the golden bubbles smooth to flesh.

Thunder booms a second time and I find myself staring down from the wall at a crowd of naked humans. Saying nothing, I raise my hand and point in the direction of the gate and the road. Then I grin as they begin to run. The grin because of the fear in the eyes of people who should be shouting for joy.

The vampire Jason Burch's mansion stands near the centre of town. The setting sun and winter cirrus clouds create a shell of red-gold behind it. I see the skeletons of birds matted into the high turret roofs -- as if the flocks had gone mad and blind and attacked. Many of the sooty windows are cracked and boarded and the south side is heavily damaged from the fire and stones launched in some military assault on the place. No doubt the vampire had been blamed for the plague itself and the hordes of the diseased had tried to end it by killing him.

A new arched bridge spans the gully and the front entrance looks heavily fortified with huge timbers barring a solid oak door. I look at black water trickling at the bottom of the gully and then up at the ashes blowing over from the remains