'But why didn't you come out before?'
'I didn't dare. He could have tackled me easily if he had known what he was tackling. He kept moving about. It had to be done suddenly. I counted on just that moment of weakness when he really thought a dead body had come to life to defend you. Now I'm going to harness the horse and drive you to the police station at Crittenden. And they'll send and lock him up. Everyone knew he was as mad as a hatter, but somebody had to be nearly killed before anyone would lock him up. The law's like that, you know.'
'But you — the police — won't they'
'It's quite safe,' said Verney, dully. 'Nobody knows but the old man, and now nobody will believe anything he says. No, he never posted your letters, of course, and he never wrote to your friend, and he put off the Psychical man. No, I can't find Lopez; he must know that something's up. He's bolted.'
But he had not. They found him, stubbornly dumb, but moaning a little, crouched against the locked grating of the vault when they came, a prudent half-dozen of them, to take the old man away from the Haunted House. The master was dumb as the man. He would not speak. He has never spoken since.
Turkish Delight
Roberta Lannes
Roberta Lannes and her husband recently moved house to the idyllic suburban countryside of Santa Clarita, California, where she teaches high school fine and digital art, and advises the art, origami and underground writers' clubs. Somewhere in there, she also finds time to write, produce CD covers, and work in the garden.
Her recent appearances as a writer have included the anthologies Dark Terrors 5 , White of the Moon and Presence du Fantastique., while she also collaborated on a round-robin story with Elizabeth Massie, J.S. Russell and Brian Hodge on Ellen Datlow's Event Horizon web site. She was interviewed in the French magazine Tenebres and contributed an essay about Stephen King, while her first collection of horror stories , The Mirror of Nighty has been published by Silver Salamander Press .
' Traditional vampire stories only intrigue me in one way,' reveals the author, 'that being the seduction. Nowadays, even that has been superseded by the impulsive, compulsive vampire of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dracula 2000 who attack, drink and run. I wanted to write something more subtle, more about the vampires we meet in our everyday lives. Those that take something vital to ourselves against our will, yet by seduction or manipulation are far more real and frightening than the bloodsuckers.
' In the following tale, Andrew has something of value to himself and to those whose lives are empty of that which keeps us delighted and full of wonder. I liken Andrew to a Turkish Delight — merely a chocolate sweet without its prized aromatic, succulent rose jelly inside. And so a vampire story was born '
The walk home from school took Andrew up Long Row to Green Street where he lived with his mother and Aunt Molly. Two doors down from Andrew's house was an old nailer's cottage. Tourists sometimes stopped to look into its dusty windows and see the old tools and furnishings of the eighteenth-century nail maker's shop. It had little historical interest to tourists, what with the famous mill in the same town, but once in a while someone other than the schoolchildren who'd learned of it in school stopped by.
Today, as Andrew trudged up the cobbled road, he saw an unfamiliar old man and a boy about his own age staring into the cottage window. They had the look of tourists with cameras slung around their necks, small clean backpacks and hiking boots that still looked new, stiff and uncomfortable. When they heard Andrew's footsteps, they turned.
The boy was pretty, Andrew thought, almost like a girl. His dark hair was cut scraggily so that it fell over his eyes and ears in a fashionable way. His eyes were large, round and luminous on his pale face. He didn't smile. The man had small eyes, very light in colour, almost like pale aquamarine quartz, and large fuzzy eyebrows just like Andrew's granddad. He was tall and thin, with a long flat nose and around very thin lips, the skin wrinkled in vertical ravines, reminding Andrew of a cartoon skull.
'Do you live around here, son?' The man spoke as the boy turned his stare back into the cottage. He had an accent. German or Danish. Andrew wasn't good at telling one accent from another unless it was American, Spanish or French.
Andrew frowned at the man and continued walking. It didn't occur to Andrew to walk past his house that day and turn onto another street, but later he would think about how different things would have been if he had. He walked right up to the door, eyes still on the tourists, turned the doorknob, and went in.
'That must be Andy. Guess what your Aunt Molly made?' The air was full of the aroma of butter, flour and currants.
'You made scones, Auntie, I could smell them outside.' Andrew set down his book bag and took off his blazer and cap.
'Go up and change your clothes, Andy, then come down and have one before they cool down.'
There wasn't much better than warm Molly scones and a cup of cocoa. He hurried upstairs and changed into a sweatshirt and jeans. As he put his school shoes on the chair by the window, he looked down at the nailer's cottage. The old man had stepped away from the building into the street and was staring right up at Andrew's window. At Andrew. He thought of the scones, the hot cocoa, of his aunt waiting downstairs, but somehow he found the stranger's curious stare compelling. Then the man smiled. His teeth were very straight, large and white. Like Chiclets, Andrew thought, like dice without the dots.
'What's taking you, Andy? The scones are cooling!'
His aunt was at his door, her greying yellow apron smeared with the by-products of baking. He spun around, startled.
'Oh, Auntie, I didn't hear you coming up the stairs.'
'What's out there so interesting you reckon it's worth more than a warm scone or two?' She came up beside him and looked out the window. Andrew looked as well. Nothing. No one was there, the street was deserted.
'I saw some tourists looking in the cottage and the old one tried to talk to me.'
'You didn't speak with him, did you? You know what your mum says. One doesn't speak to strangers, look what happened to Wally Burdock and Gwen Shafford . They talked to strangers and both of them ended up d-e-a-d,
