A Coven of Vampires

A Coven of Vampires Read Free Page A

Book: A Coven of Vampires Read Free
Author: Brian Lumley
Tags: Fiction, Horror, Occult & Supernatural
Ads: Link
been….
    The train ground to a shuddering halt with a wheeze of steam and a squeal of brakes. Outside in the night the station-master was yelling instructions to a porter on the unseen platform. As the train stopped, Funny-Mouth was jerked momentarily back, away from me, and before he could bring his face close to mine again Moustache was speaking to him.
    “There’s no time, Master—this is our stop….” Funny-Mouth hovered over me a moment longer, seemingly undecided, then he pulled away. The others filed past him out into the corridor while he stood, tall and eerie, just within the doorway. Then he lifted his right hand and snapped his fingers.
    I could move. I blinked my eyes rapidly and shook myself, sitting up straight, feeling the pain of the cramp between my shoulder-blades.
    “I say….” I began.
    “Quiet!” ordered that echoing voice from unknown spaces—and of course, his painted, false mouth never moved. I was right; I had been hypnotized, not dreaming at all. That false mouth—Walker in Darkness—Monarch of Night—Lord of Hell—the Liturgy to Summanus….
    I opened my mouth in amazement and horror, but before I could utter more than one word —“Summanus”—something happened!
    His waistcoat slid to one side near the bottom and a long, white, tapering tentacle with a blood-red tip slid into view. That tip hovered, snake-like, for a moment over my petrified face—and then struck. As if someone had taken a razor to it, my face opened up and the blood began to gush. I fell to my knees in shock, too terrified even to yell out, automatically reaching for my handkerchief; and when next I coweringly looked up, Funny-Mouth had gone.
    Instead of seeing him— It —I found myself staring, from where I kneeled dabbing uselessly at my face, into the slack features of the sleeping Jock.
    Sleeping?
    I began to scream. Even as the train started to pull out of the station I was screaming. When no one answered my cries, I managed to pull the communication-cord. Then, until they came to find out what was wrong, I went right on screaming. Not because of my face— because of Jock…..
    A jagged, bloody, two-inch hole led clean through his jacket and shirt and into his left side—the side which had been closest to…to that thing— and there was not a drop of blood in his whole, limp body. He simply lay there—half on, half off the seat—victim of “a bleddy heathen ceremony”—substituted for the bread-cakes simply because the train had chosen an inopportune moment to lurch—a sacrifice to Summanus….

BACK ROW

    I'll tell it exactly the way it happened.
    They were showing a love story at the Odeon, a classic from years dead and all but forgotten. The first time I’d seen this picture had been with my wife—would you believe, thirty years ago? The picture had outlasted her, if not our love. Maybe that’s why I wanted to see it again.
    I picked a rainy Wednesday afternoon. No kids hooting and gibbering in the back rows, maybe a pair or two of lovers in the double seats back there, snuggling up to each other and blissfully, deliciously secure and secretive in the dark. I’d been young myself, once. But what with this ancient film and the middle of the week, and the miserable weather, the old Odeon should be just about empty; maybe a few dodderers like myself, down at the front where their eyes wouldn’t feel the strain.
    But not me, I’d be up in the gods, in the next-but-back row. Along with my memories, my eyes seemed to be the only things that hadn’t faded on me.
    I was there waiting for the doors to open, my collar turned up, a fifty-pence piece ready in my hand. That’s one mercy: we oldies can get in cheap. Cheap? Hah! I remember when it was thruppence! And these two kids in front of me, why, they’d be paying maybe two pounds each ! For a bit of privacy, if you can call it that, in a mouldy old flea-trap like the Odeon.
    Behind me a handful of people had gathered: Darby and Joans, some

Similar Books

A Bad Night's Sleep

Michael Wiley

The Detachment

Barry Eisler

At Fear's Altar

Richard Gavin

Dangerous Games

Victor Milan, Clayton Emery

Four Dukes and a Devil

Jeaniene Frost, Cathy Maxwell, Tracy Anne Warren, Sophia Nash, Elaine Fox

Fenzy

Robert Liparulo