Organization: Penn State University
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 13:45:17 EDT
From: <JMH131@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.horror
Subject: The Last of the Vampyrics (cont.)

     Stephanie shook John, but to no avail.   He would not wake up.  She had no
 idea what to do.
     Officer McKray said, "Well, you had better bring him along.  We need him."
 Officer McKray brought out his police walkie-talkie.
     "This is Officer McKray here.  Suspected double homicide.  Need further
 information.  Will report later.  Send reinforcements to the fairgrounds."
 McKray cut communications.
     McKray spoke to Stephanie, "Bring your friend here.  It looks like he
 needs some medical attention.  We had better get him to the hospital."
     John's face was taking on a bluish pallor as if he was stone dead, but he
 was still breathing.  Blood trickled from multiple lacerations on his face.
 McKray thought he was in critical condition.
     McKray reached forward and touched John's forehead.  It was burning hot.
 McKray pulled his hand away quickly.
     "I'm gonna call an ambulance," McKray stated and hurried toward a phone.
 Stephanie looked to the night sky.  What if there were more of those things?
     She turned back to John, who was breathing more harshly.  "Oh, John," she
 murmured, "What are we going to do?"
     John spoke in his own voice, though it sounded weak.  "Stephanie, help
 me."
     "How?" she asked.
     "Make me stand," he said, eyes still closed.  He still looked as if he
 were asleep.
     Stephanie struggled to pull John to his feet.  It was hard to do.  He
 wouldn't even budge.  It was almost as if he were frozen in position.
     "See if you can lift my hands," John stated.
     Stephanie strained at his arm.  His hand was stuck fast to the table.  The
 area around his hand was icy blue.
     McKray came back.  "Why are you trying to move him?  Just wait until the
 ambulance arrives."
     Stephanie looked at him in desperation.  "It'll be too late when they
 come.  Look!"  She pointed to John.  Frost was creeping over the front of
 John's clothing.
     "What on earth is happening to him?" McKray asked.
     "Not on earth," John whispered, "somewhere else."
     McKray sat down on the other side of John. "Listen, uh," he searched for
 the kid's name.
     "John," Stephanie said.
     "John," McKray repeated.  "What is happening to you?  Please explain."
     "I'm stuck fast to an icy cold road by the ruins of some old houses."
     "What?" McKray asked in incredulity.
     "Just trust me," John said.  Mist emanated from the air before him, as if
 the air surrounding him was cold.  It was.  "You'll have to pull me free from
 the picnic table because I think frostbie is setting in."
     "Alright," the officer said.  "We'll chop him free."  McKray heard the
 distant wail of an ambulance.  They would have equipment to pull people free
 from crushed cars, break through locked doors, and to get to people who need
 help from various other emergencies.  Surely they would be able to help John.
 "I'll lead the ambulance crew here."
     Stephanie was relieved that the ambulance had arrived so quickly.  "Hold
 on, John," she said.
     "That's all I can do, babe," John replied weakly and smiled.  It was a
 thin smile which quickly turned into a grimace.
     The officer came running back with three men from the ambulance.  They
 were all carrying fireaxes.  They set to work hewing John free from the picnic
 table.
     The chunks of wood were still attached to his hands after they had cut him
 free, but almost immediately the blocks came free from his hands, as if the
 spell were broken.
     John flexed his hands in the air before him.  The signs of frostbite were
 there, but at least the color was returning to them.  "Now see if you can get
 the rest of me free."
     In the dreamworld, John's hands and arms were free of the ice.  Chunks of
 ragged ice clung to his hands, but they quickly dropped off.  He tried to
 pull the rest of his body free from the ice, but nothing would happen.  He
 needed help from the Outside.
     In the real world, John spoke.  "Pull me free of this bench and make me
 stand."  The paramedics set to work at chopping up the bench.
     McKray had gone to find some blankets in the back of the ambulance to wrap
 around John.  Stephanie waited for his impending arrival.  McKray rushed in
 with some ice packs and a thick, wooly blanket.
     Stephanie took the ice packs and wrapped them around John's hands.
 "There.  How does that feel?" she asked.
     "It feels nice, Steph," John said happily.
     Suddenly, the bench he was sitting on was only held up by air.  It fell to
 the ground with a thud.  The paramedics rushed over to where John was lying.
 They lifted him from the bench unattached.
     In the dreamworld, John found that he was finally free to stand.  He knew
 that the creature would be waiting to confront him.  He set off to face the
 creature.
     In the real world, John began to walk through the picnic pavilion square
 independently, eyes still shut.
     "John, where are you going?" Stephanie cried out, and she began to run
 after him.  McKray and the others followed.
     "I am going to fight the Vampyric in his palace," John said.  "All I have
 to do is keep following this road."
     "What road?" Stephanie asked, thinking John to still be delirious.  "John,
 if you don't stop, you are going to hurt yourself."
     "I know what I'm doing," John said.  "I am heading toward--Arghhh!" he
 said walking into the side of a picnic table.  His knees buckled, and suddenly
 he was sprawled against the side of the picnic table.
     John straightened himself up to a kneeling position, and felt the face of
 the table before him.
     In the dream world, John's mental image of himself touched the air before
 him, and yes, he could feel the splintered and gummy surface of a stained,
 wooden picnic table.  He concentrated, and suddenly the picnic table was
 before him, sitting in the center of the icy, dirt road.
     In the real world, John was suddenly kneeling on air.  Stephanie, the
 paramedics, McKray, as well as any fairground passerby looking that way,
 stared at John, who seemed to be floating in mid-air.
     John's body seemed to slide off, and suddenly he was standing again.  The
 picnic table was gone from sight.
     "What happened to the picnic table?" McKray asked, knowing quite well that
 virtually anything could have happened to it, considering all that he had seen
 today.
     "You can't see it?" John asked.  "That's neat.  I could almost be a
 magician.  Matter of fact, I could knock people off their feet with this act!
 But I wonder if it's reversible?"
     John's body touched the air before him where he had been kneeling.
 Suddenly, the picnic table was back in the real world again.
     "Well, that worked," Stephanie added in relief, "but let's see you get
 your mind out."
     "I don't want my mind out," John said.  "How do you expect me to lead you
 to the Vampyric's palace, if I can't see it myself?"
     "Don't worry about that right away," McKray said firmly.  "You have to go
 to the hospital first."  He motioned to the paramedics who quickly stepped
 forward and led John toward the ambulance.
     "Hey, wait a minute," John said.  His mental body was being dragged toward
 the ruined buildings, and away from the dazzling, blood-red splendor of the
 castle.
     As he reached the edge of the hewn road, where the grassy bank continued
 up toward the houses, the ground rose at least two feet.  This time, his
 dreamworld body was sent sprawling as his knees hit the bank.
     John's real world body was awkwardly torn from the paramedics' arms and
 his body was suddenly sprawled face-down, floating two feet above the ground.
     John hastily climbed to his feet.  His mental hands felt frost-covered
 grass, which he certainly didn't want them to remain frozen in.  He scrambled
 up the bank and stood.
     His real world body was standing two feet in the air.  John looked
 perturbed.  He looked around as though he was surveilling the place, even
 though his eyes were still shut.
     "This isn't gonna work," John said testily.  "How are you going to ever
 take me anywhere?  Every time you try, you don't have any idea what I'm
 looking at and what I'm up against.  We have to do it my way."
     Suddenly, John wasn't so sure of himself.  He felt giddy and dizzy.  He
 felt a warm trickle on his face.  Blood?
     "Uh, maybe you're right," John said.  His body walked back toward the
 ground.  He was touching once again.
     "Wait a second," Stephanie said.  "John's right.  How are you going to
 take him to the hospital in the ambulance?  Suppose there is a tree in John's
 world in the path of the ambulance?  John's body carried along at the speed
 of the ambulance will smash right into it, even though it's invisible and
 intangible to us."
     "Well, if we drive slowly, John's body will just stop as it did when we
 were leading him out of the pavilion to here," stated Jim Fisher, the driver
 of the ambulance.
     "Oh, that would be real good," John said sarcastically.  "My body would
 stop, your ambulance would keep going, and I would be smushed between the
 ambulance's back door and an imaginary tree.  Whop!  Guts all over the place!"
     Stephanie winced at the sick humor.
     "Not to mention what would happen to your ambulance," McKray added.  "You
 could have anything from the back door being ripped off, to the ambulance
 turning into an exploding fireball.  Who knows?  You might even get pulled
 into the world John is talking about."
     "Hey, that's an idea," John said.  "I pull you guys all throught, and we
 won't have to worry about real-world interaction, because I'll pull you
 through body and soul."
     Stephanie shivered.  She was so far into this unrealistic nightmare now
 that there was no way back out.  And now, things were going to get worse.
     The black paramedic looked a bit cynical.  "So what are we going to do?
 Join hands and chant 'Um manhe padve um'?"
     "Something like that," John laughed.
     Stephanie grabbed the ambulance driver Jim Fisher's hand and beckoned for
 the others to join hands.  Soon all were in a circle with John.  Stephanie
 stood on John's right side, and Officer McKray stood on his left.
     John concentrated to take them all through to the dreamworld, including
 himself.  Something was nagging the back of his mind though.
     "How long is this gonna take?" the black guy asked.  "It doesn't look like
 we are going anywhere."
     Curious onlookers gathered around them on the midway.  They moved closer
 together and speculated upon what the six in the circle were about to do.
     Still that nagging thought.  John concentrated harder.  Something was not
 right.  He could feel the change coming, though.
     A circuit!  THat was what was wrong.  They shouldn't have formed a perfect
 circuit, for him creating the circuit, as the power travelled through him, it
 would teleport each individual body and mind to the other side, but by him
 already being there, he would teleport both his body and mind back to the
 real world.  John struggled to stop the transferral.
     It was too late.  John found himself back in the fairground.  Only his
 friends were not there.  The midway onlookers were gasping in amazement.  One
 woman screamed.
     John looked around.  He had teleported his mind inside his body back to
 the real world.  His link with the dreamworld had been broken.  He had no way
 of getting his friends back.
     But he had more to worry about, however.  The Vampyrics were coming back.
 Who knew what awesome power they could unleash or the number that were
 coming?
     "Excuse me, sir.  Do you know how long I've been looking for a great act
 like that in my sideshow?  Tell me, how long have you been performing?"
 These questions came from a short, pudgy man in baggy, brown trousers, a
 plaid sports jacket, and a newspaper reporter's hat.
     "All my life," John lied.  "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go lie
 down for about an hour to get enough energy for the next performance."
     "But what about your friends?  Aren't you going to bring them back?"
     "You thought those were people, my friend?" John asked nervously.  "Those
 were merely illusory techniques I used to create the vanishing act.  I mean
 it isn't hard to make an illusion vanish, is it?" John was getting tired of
 the little man.  He wished he could be on his way.
     The little man was quick to comment, "Well, by Jove, those looked like
 real people.  You are truly magnificent, sir," the little man continued.  "By
 the way, the name is Tippens.  Arthur Paul Tippens."
     "Mutual, I'm sure," John said tiredly, wishing he could get away from this
 awful little man who talked too much.
     "I was wondering, if you didn't mind, that is, if you'd come over to my
 joint for a little while and we could talk about your new career while
 drinking a couple of--"
     The old man was let talking to the air, however, for John had darted into
 the milling midway crowd to look for the ambulance.

     The five Vampyrics winged their way toward the unsuspecting city.  This
 would only be their first stop in many, for the Vampyrics had returned, and
 their hunger could not be sated.
     "Split up," the Elder One spoke, only their minds hearing the voice of the
 Vampyric which remained behind in the palace of skulls.  "You must start your
 conquest quickly."
     The Vampyrics swooped in low over the town.  They each were designated
 an assigned location of the town to patrol and to clean up by daybreak.  The
 Vampyrics set to work.
     They reached the first street of houses.  The street was a sprawl-out of
 suburban, one-story homes.  The lights in these turned on quickly, however,
 considering that the inhabitants were awakened by the piercing screams of the
 creatures descending from the night sky.
     The Vampyrics landed on house roofs and began to tear them up with their
 claws.  Beneath the sturdy timbers and insulation were the living spaces of
 the warm-blooded humans.
     Screams erupted along the street as people ran forth from their houses.
 The largest Vampyric eyed the fleeing people and glided above them, its
 tongue whipping out around several people at once.
     It rose into the air, the people screaming within the wrap of its tongue.
 It constricted its tongue, crushing the people's screams from their exhaled
 lungs.  The creature drew the people into its beak.  A few minutes later, it
 regurgitated a choice number of human bones.
     One of the smaller Vampyrics, which was dwarfed in comparison to some of
 its brothers and had a wingspan of only about twenty or thirty feet, and
 whose main body was only the size of a double-decker bus, eyed a woman and
 her three children huddled in the corner of their bedroom through a window of
 one of the houses along the center of the street.
     Without further ado, the Vampyric bombarded the side of the house with a
 small bat of its wing.  The side of the house along with part of the roof
 collapsed.
     The creature judged how it could tear through the rubble.  It shoved its
 foot under the rubble and kicked upward.  The roof and wall turned inside out
 and flew up over the house.
     The mother was screaming and the kids just sat there, petrified.  It was
 the boogeyman personified, and he had come to scare the living daylights out
 of them and eat them afterward.
     The Vampyric picked up this thought when it read the mother's mind.  The
 thought reminded it so much of primitive man and his campfire tales of demons
 of the night, which the Vampyrics used to hear just before swooping into a
 tribal village and sucking the life out of everyone in it.  Some of the
 tribes' survivors had spread the tale of the things' terror and named the
 cause of the deserted villages whose streets were filled with decaying bones
 to be the Wendigo.
     The creature reached into the ruined house and dragged forth the woman and
 her three squealing children.  Its tongue, as large as a fireman's hose and
 about as long, darted out and attached itself to the woman's neck.  In
 moments, the woman was a bloodless corpse with her head almost severed.
     The children were kicking and screaming now, bathed in the brilliant red
 light of the Vampyric's round, vulture eyes.  The Vampyric decided to have a
 little fun.
     The mother slowly climbed to her feet, her head lolling on one shoulder,
 her neck slit from ear to ear.  She spoke.
     "Come on, children," the woman said, "The Vampyric wills us to go home
 with it."  Saliva drooled from her lips.
     She gathered the children up in her arms and began walking toward the
 Vampyric's opening, cavernous beak.  Her mind thought of rebelling against the
 mind-bending force which ruled her, but it was no use.
     The Vampyric felt a slight pity for its human prey who were walking toward
 their doom.  If they had to die, it would at least make their deaths sweet and
 humane.  It laughed a guttural, blood-curdling, cawing sound, to say the
 least.

     The mother was walking through a field of flowers stretching toward the
 opening of a sun-lit bower at the edge of a stand of trees.  The children
 had stopped crying and looked around in amazement.
     They were in an open field under a bright, blue sky.  Never had they
 smelled a fragrance as wonderful as that of the poignant smell of the flowers
 surrounding them.  Locusts chirped in the shade of the leafy-green trees.  A
 cool, summer breeze caressed their faces lovingly, drawing them ever closer
 to the bower.
     They entered the bower and were stunned by the beauty of the interior.
 Flowered vines wove their way through the branches around them.  The branches
 were smooth and covered with ivory bark and almost formed a cage around them.
     The woman laughed and fell backward into the soft, velvety piles of rose
 petals which adorned the floor of the bower.  The children raced and played
 tag around the interior of the bower.  They noticed a large opening in the
 back.
     A slope led downward through a sun-filled glade for as far as they could
 see.  They slid down the slope of lilacs and called to their mom as they did
 so.  She was quick to follow them.  How, she wondered, had they gotten to
 paradise?
     The ride sped up, but it was not scary.  The edges of the slope were
 banks rising up into the distance.  The blue sky could still be seen overhead.
     Then, splash!  They were in a lake of cool, refreshing water.  Waterfalls
 cascaded downward off of mossy-green cliffs around them.  The sunlight caught
 the falling drops of water in a prismatic rainbow of colors.
     The water beckoned them to dive into its clear, blue depths to the pebble-
 strewn bed underneath, covered with rainbow-colored mosses.  They did so, and
 sleep tugged at their bodies as they sank.
     They gave into the sleep and did not wake up.  The Vampyric vomited up
 their bones a few moments later.

     A wonderful dream, I have given them, it thought.  Their last moments were
 the best of their lives.  Their dreams of sparkling, clear water made it
 shiver however.  For a moment, it felt so sick, it thought it was going to
 lose its supper.
     But the feeling passed and the creature reflected upon its thoughts.  Its
 brothers would be angry that it wasted its mental energies upon making its
 prey feel comfortable.  The Elder One who had probably visualized the whole
 thing through the Vampyric's eyes would probably scold it when it reached the
 Nest.  Its mind still thought it was a pleasant memory, however.
     The creature looked around.  The street was in shambles, all the houses
 empty and in ruins, the only remnants of humans or animals being the chalky-
 white bones.  The creature resumed its flight.  It was heading toward the
 fairground to avenge its brother's death at the hands of four humans, two of
 which were dead, one who was now in the clutches of the Elder One, and one
 still at the park who was very strong and defiant against its hunters.  On
 that human, the creature would show no pity.

 { Stay tuned for more.  John. }