The Beast Within
By Randall Stone
I tried the handle but the door was locked. I ran my hand over it, its kiss against my finger tips cold, from the steel plate. I turned and squinted into the murky depths of the airless room. A row of small windows ran about ten feet from the floor along one side. Small and rectangular, they let in little light. The ground was earthen with a stale smell and there was no furniture of any description. Apart from myself and the fourteen corpses that lay around three sides of the room, it was barren. I moved to the side of this solid door and sat down to consider my situation. My head still throbbed from the bang it had received and I rubbed it gently. My mind ran through the events that had brought me here.
Three weeks ago, under the guise of an investigative journalist, I had arrived in the picturesque village of Upper Morton. It lay nestled in one of the most beautiful, yet wildest parts of the Scottish Highlands. Purple, heather laden mountains, their tops almost permanently lost in cloud cover, rose like great, stone giants from three sides of the narrow valley, enhancing the rural beauty and seclusion of the place. As beautiful as this hamlet was however, it was the stories coming from it that had tugged at my curiosity.
For the past four years, a mysterious plague had been sweeping through the settlement. Fourteen people from all walks of life had been found dead from what the local doctors had called pernicious anaemia. But each body had been completely drained of blood. Apparently, it had all started with a young farmhand who had died when he fell from the back of a hay wagon back in September of 2005. Eight months after his burial, there were reports from his family that he had visited them in the dead of night. Three days after his initial visit, his fourteen year old sister had succumbed to the first case of the mysterious anaemia. My agency, had managed to secure the records and all relevant information pertaining to these deaths and I had studied them all before coming here to Upper Morton.
On arriving at the village and after booking a room at The White Hind Inn, I had made my presence known to the populace by asking questions about the deaths. I had held interviews with the families concerned and I had learned that all the deaths so far had centred on or around just five families. The overall atmosphere within this charming hamlet was one of fear. People openly reported that they wouldn’t venture out after dark but were reluctant to explain why. To me, it was a clear cut case of vampirism and I knew that if it wasn’t stopped soon, the infestation would spread and spill forth into the rest of the world, raging across Britain just as it had eaten its way across Eastern Europe in the mid eighteenth century.
Last night, I had ventured out again onto the silent streets, searching for my quarry but without success. As I was returning to the White Hind, just before dawn, I spied a lone figure standing in my way. It was a young man and, as my dioptre reading is practically off the scale, (I have excellent night vision) I recognised the figure as that of the young man who had fallen to his death from the hay cart four years ago. I approached him slowly. The other figure darted quickly from the shadows and hit me from behind.
I had come to moments before and had tried the door. Now, I decided to check the corpses. Rising, I turned to the first, a woman. Like the others, her skin was alabaster pale and radiated a soft luminosity. Her eyes were open but unseeing and I could not suppress the shudder at the silvery tint they held. Her smart trouser suite was marred with dirt and the stench of corruption was all about her. A quick search failed to
produce the key. Checking the photo file on my issue wrist watch, I matched her to one of the victims of anaemia.
And it was the same with each of them. All had that luminosity about them and all had the evil, silvery tint to their open, unseeing eyes, along with the reek of corrupted flesh. I found the key on the fifth body, that of the man from the hay wagon. Each body matched a victim of the so called plague. I was in the midst of their nest. Outside the light was dying and in just a few hours time they would awaken in hunger.
It is pitch black now but as I said before, my night vision is excellent so I watch with revulsion as their bodies stir. One by one, their eyes fixate on me and terrible grins light up their countenances as their eyes glow within the darkness. Unlike the Hollywood type, these creatures don’t live forever, nor do they need coffins to sleep in. Garlic is a turn off for them but a stake, wooden or otherwise, will only fix them to the ground, not kill them.
They congregate in nests for security as their powers of superhuman strength and speed are weakened during the hours of daylight, though they are quite capable of going out in the sun without harm. I am quite sure that their eyes are so good that they can literally see the blood flow in my veins and their hearing is so attuned that they can even hear my pulse, let alone my heart beat. Slowly, they approach me, savouring the fear that they believe is coursing through me but when I begin to laugh, they stop and their vile features take on a puzzled look.
In my experience of dealing with these creatures, although they are extremely difficult to exterminate and they know I carry no weapons, the one thing that can destroy their kind, utterly, is a lycanthrope. And now I see the terror in their faces as my own countenance changes. You see, unlike the Hollywood type, a lycanthrope can transform, day or night, any time he wishes, not just at full moon. I was turned two thousand years ago. My name is Lazarus Daws and I’m a werewolf. I utter my last, human words before transformation is complete.
“Heads up guys. Its way past dinner and I’m starving.”
