N I K O L A U S

It began with the goulash during Winter's moons. 

The cooked beef made me gag and heave at the dinner table. 

I had to spit it into my napkin.

My parents were appalled.

What on earth's the matter Karl?

My father was up out of his chair on the verge of Heimliching me, when he realized I wasn't choking. 

Is my cooking really that bad dear?

My mother was concerned but couldn't hide her hurt.

Not being able to afford a cook, she had always set a beautiful table and made excellent meals.

Everything up till that point, that evening, that year.

Can I be excused Mother? Father? I don't feel well. 

The grimacing and churn continued as some of the spiced beef was stuck between my teeth. The taste of it was abhorrent to me and I vowed never to eat goulash again.

Still a Blood Moon, alas, the same happened the following night when Mother served pork cutlets and dumplings, traditional wholesome fayre for a November dinner.

My stomach leapt when the hot pig entered my mouth, it's sow's juices dribbling down my throat and damming in front of a trapped dumpling lodged in my gullet. 

This time I was sick. Violently sick. 

My excesses splattered onto my plate, my napkin, the tray of condiments and the terrine of vegetables I had yet to attempt. 

I wouldn't be attempting them now.

The cooked pork was as alien to my digestion as potatoes to a shark.

My parents were deeply worried about me and after tucking me up in the 'poorly' bed, they rang for the village physician.

He's suffering from anemia. The boy's simply not got any strength. I suggest a strict diet of hot meaty broths and nutritious soups to build up his appetite and stamina. Light meals will most likely stay down. A month off school is essential for his recovery.

As I expected the soups were spewed everywhere and my bedclothes had to be changed every day for a week.

I got weaker and weaker and the physician admitted to my parents that he was at a loss to explain the rejection of food and the hospital in the city was the best place for me before I wasted away to nothing.

It was nearly Nikolaus and hospital seemed a dreadful idea. Smelly temples of disinfectants and death, I really really didn't want to go but my parents were adamant and preparations were made for my admittance the following afternoon.

That evening our neighbours visited my parents and their young daughter, the lovely Marta, quickly came upstairs to see me before I went away the next day.

She looked as if she'd been crying and I noticed the bruise on her wrist, as her sleeve rose whilst leaning in to kiss my forehead. 

I had seen Marta's bruises many times before, always hidden, but politeness had prevented me from enquiring about them, as it did now, although I knew in my gut that she was being beaten. It must be dreadful for her. 

Secretly I loved Marta. I always had.

I've brought something to cheer you up Karl. 

What, what is it Marta?

I was only really half-awake and in my stupor brought on by malnutrition I wasn't paying as much attention as I normally would.

Marta placed a covered basket next to me on my bed. I expected a large bunch of grapes or perhaps a pineapple from the village grocer, but it was neither of those things.

It was a rabbit.

A live rabbit.

This is Hopfer my pet cottontail.

Say hello to Karl Hopfer. He's sick and going to the infirmary far away.

Say hello Karl.

I couldn't.

Speak.

My mouth opened but only the merest of croaks came out. My eyes widened. My nostrils flared. 

Marta thought I was perhaps allergic to fur and commenced to put Hopfer away but I motioned with my hands that I would dearly like to hold him.

As the pet was placed on my lap my pulse quickened like a major's drum and my heart punched the bars of my ribcage. 

Saliva whirled in my mouth and my teeth tightened in their sockets as if ready to bite.

I had never felt so alive and I was consumed by an overwhelming urge to eat Hopfer just as it was, alive and whole, sat twitching on my bedclothes.

Can your pet stay tonight Marta? To keep me company before I leave in the morning?

Hopfer?

Yes.

I suppose so. You will look after him won't you Karl?

Yes, of course.

Are you alright dear Marta? Is everything alright at home?

If course it is silly!

I knew she was lying and hiding the truth. Her father had always been harsh with his daughter and he appeared to have grown into a true brute.

With that and a peck on the cheek, Marta left her pet with me in bed.

I leapt up and looked through the window to check that she'd gone. 

Her father, a small but heavy man, was dragging Marta to the car and obviously yelling at her. 

I heard the words rabbit and stupid runt.

I did feel very sorry for Marta and it fanned my hatred of her oafish father that little bit more.

Yet despite my concern for her, my own urgency now came to the fore. 

I was ravenous. Drooling like a dog.

I turned to face Hopfer.

The creature stared at me wriggling it's damp little nose. 

I approached slowly and pounced.

The rabbit squirmed as I gripped it tightly. 

I took one of its ears in my mouth and began to suck.

At first it tasted splendid, like a silk lollipop, but then I could feel fur and other bits sticking to my palette and again I gagged. 

Once I'd recovered I persevered and bit gently on a paw. I could sense the pad beneath the pelt and one of Hopfer's claws caught the inside of my lip, which smarted and bled.

My mouth filled with iron.

Damn!

Eating Hopfer was proving anything but easy and I concluded that my starvation was not going to be resolved this way. 

Something else was required but I didn't know what.

Yet.

My parents left me a carrot for my soft guest and with a kiss each bade me goodnight.

They both looked worried. 

I bedded down for the night with my munching visitor, now safely off the menu, with a view to rise early before my parents did and return Hopfer to Marta during breakfast. 

I would so dearly love to see her one last time before my hospitalisation. 

Perhaps a cycle ride in the fresh crisp air might give me an appetite for the traditional cold meats and pastries on that most special of mornings. It would be Nikolaus, the 6th December, the day the gift bringer visits us all. I felt sure on such a saint's day her father would be kind and allow me in. 

On waking I felt weak. 

Perhaps too weak to cycle, but then, I thought of sweet Marta and the rabbit she so dearly loved.

Outside my bedroom door my parents, ever caring, had placed the feast's traditional platter of fruit, sweets and nuts on the floor by my shoes.

I smiled but I couldn't eat these treats. I could never eat them again.

Steeling myself and ignoring the twisting in my empty stomach, I stowed Hopfer in a basket and rode the mile down the lane to  Marta's parents' house. 

It was larger than ours, a towering pearl-white villa overlooking the tranquil Danube. Marta's father was a soap baron, the riches of his sterile industry clear to see in the opulence of their home, which he ruled with with an iron and immaculately clean fist.

I pulled up and leant my bicycle against the huge delta of steps seemingly flowing out of the grand front door. 

With Hopfer in hand, before I knocked I could hear shouting in the hallway. More than that, I could hear glass smashing and furniture toppling over.

But above all that I could hear Marta's pleas to her maniacal Father to stop. To please stop hitting her.

For all my torpor over the past month my thin blood suddenly roused and raced around my firing veins.

I was furious and enraged!

How dare the ogre lay his hands on my sweet Marta again! 

I opened the door to witness a scene of complete domestic carnage. 

The butler lay on the floor, most assuredly dead, with a long serving fork protruding from his temple, blood pooling around his bald head.

Similarly still, their household cook, the linchpin of the feast of Nicholas in a wealthy house, was lying on her back in the entrance fountain, the spray of water spouting directly from her fluttering mouth, mixed with the grue of her open skull. She had been impaled on the fountainhead with unimaginable force.

A platter was cast aside by a tall vase and sweet treats were scattered across the floor, the assaulted symbols of this day of giving.

Marta's mother was sat crumpled by the staircase finial, her face in her hands, whimpering loudly and rocking to and fro. Her dress was torn and her hair terribly matted with crimson. She was clearly somewhere dark and never coming back.

Marta's father, the devil of the feast, was stooped over something crying, pounding it with his white knuckles until it cried no more.

He rose slowly, gritted his teeth and with clenched fists, stared at me standing in the doorway with Hopfer.

I saw that the something below him was Marta, bloodied and bruised beyond comprehension. Her father meant to kill her and I was an unwelcome interruption in the beating.

A taut sinew inside me, a frail connection clinging to sanity, snapped at that moment and my circulation flamed like a furnace of loathing, my blood exploding in its vessels and my mind darkening like the blackest dead of night.

I shrieked and screamed and leapt onto the man, my fingers now rigid talons and my teeth the pillars of tombs. 

Shocked by my frenzy the Father was momentarily thrown off guard. I bit hard and deep into his neck and in one swirl of blood and gristle I tore out his throat, revealing a pulsing wet trachea struggling to sound.

The ferrous taste of the brute's tissues caught me unawares. It was delicious. Really truly delicious! 

I had not tasted anything as delightful in months, perhaps in my whole life. This was the food I had been searching for. 

Living bloody flesh!

Holding on like a demon, I bit down further and removed an ear and some scalp skin, all the while the awful man floundering round the vestibule holding his open voice box and attempting to push back in his Adam's apple. 

I saw this and snatched the slippery morsel from his grasp and popped it in my mouth, it's syrupy succulence sending me into an even greater blood lust.

The man stumbled and we crashed to the floor. 

I crawled over him like a house spider and devoured his nose and lips, all the while his bubbling screams echoing round the splendour of his soap-king's villa.

I ate more. 

And more.

His just-living body gave me the best Nikolaus feast I had ever had and keen to keep his flesh alive, I stripped him of his skin and muscles, consuming everything with gusto. 

My face and hands were smeared with blood and only when I was truly sated did I afford the time to arrange his offal on the discarded platter in the spirit of the season, treats from the gift bringer. 

I knelt beside Marta and tenderly kissed her hair. 

She raised her puffed face and despite her pain, she managed a thin smile.

I offered her a sweat meat and she took an eyeball, biting through her father's final view of her.

We noisily finished off the whole tray; kidneys, liver, sinuses, manhood and finally the toughened heart. 

I'd also saved the warm brains for later. I preferred them living but dead would do.

Hopfer hopped over and began to lick Marta's sticky fingers. 

We smiled at each other. It was the morning of Nikolaus the giver and the sun shone red, blood splashed across it's orange glow.

As we sat, Marta got hold of my stained hand and looked earnestly into my eyes.

What are we Karl? What have we become?

I don't know Marta. I honestly don't know.

 Perhaps it is our gift from Nikolaus.

KRONUNG

 Amorphous fist,

it grew in the dark,

a master worm.

Godless crobe,

it bludges its way

through the breaths.

Cosmic leech,

monster coronated,

It will be done on Earth.

The Wolf's Loathing

I was the first and last one on the base that Christmas. Everyone else had left.

The arctic winter was closing in and I had two days to complete my experiment and wrap everything up before the plane came back to get me. 

I was in no rush to get home. My work was basically my life and Christmas was to be a lonely holiday, as it always was. A bleak orphan season. An unwanted gift from no-one. No tree, no dinner, no family. Best not to even think about it.

Only my work gave me meaning.

My notes were written up save for the last phase. That November I had successfully tracked, caught and sedated an incredibly rare ice wolf, a female cub, which would be in itself enough to secure me a further grant - these fabled polar wolves were largely legends and to catch one was unheard of - but the real prize was to bring one back to the States for study and maybe even cross-breed it with an American timber wolf.

This final two days was to get the cub ready for transport, take a flight to Quadead and then by truck finally to New York.

The animal was remarkably well. I gave it another shot for the journey and after a few hours I had the special cage finished for stowage in the cargo hold on the Cessna. 

The residual tasks were purely domestic. 

I was good at leaving. 

To switch the base power to sleep mode. To seal off the water supply. To check that the labs and sample fridges were locked and finally, to secure all the doors on the inside, bar the side entrance to the airstrip, where I would leave.

It was during that last night that I began to have nightmares. 

I'd had bad dreams before, especially after my younger sister died, lost in her fatal lunacy, pining for the mother we never knew. 

It was the harshness of the moonlit snows which stirred it all up again - that dreadful hollowness - but these terrors were different, so much more realistic and truly truly frightening.

I'd had my appendix removed just a month before joining the team on the Base. It was mandatory. 

In my nightmare something re-opened my surgery. 

Something with talons.

In that frozen dark, with its razor-sharp claw it slowly re-cut my appendix incision. 

It was when the entity nuzzled the blood pouring from the suture and then reached deep into my abdomen, pulling out my hugely swollen appendix and inserting something else that I began to scream.

I could feel it. Inside me. The wolf's jumping heart.

My dreams ran wild, the thumping blood pump driving my feverish leaps and several times during the small hours I woke up screaming in a cold sweat. 

The third time I felt it's presence, the animal, I was so shaken that I had to get up, check all the doors and once happy they were sealed and nothing had got in, I made a cup of tea and got back into bed checking my surgery was still intact.

It was.

I was used to the abyssal nature of nights alone and, as is the case with all dreams, even hideous nightmares, only tatters of what I had experienced remained, but I still felt the aura of whatever had violated my wound.

It was true that my operation back in New York had been a problem. I had been late pulling together all the paperwork and permissions for the Base and I'd forgotten the rule about the damnable organ.

Operated on in September under a full moon, the doctor had told me that it had been touch and go. My appendix was in fact septic and it had been my rabbit's foot charm hanging on my bag that had probably saved my life. He smiled.

Had it burst, well, I'm glad it didn't. As a result of the infection, my laceration, although clean and tidy, was still red and prominent when I got to the arctic in October.

That had been two months ago and it still felt tight and uncomfortable now I was going, especially after my awful night terrors.

I promised to have the surgeon take another look at it once I was home for the Christmas break. I'd felt an awkward chill about my arctic assignment from the start and I certainly didn't want to add phantom night sutures to my anxieties, as I faced the top of the year alone again.

Besides, I had other older cuts of my own that needn't get any neighbours.

It was time to leave. 

The plane landed and the pilot met me at the side entrance.

We placed the wolf casket safely on the trolley and pushed it gently over the chicken wire track to the cargo bay, where we stowed the young canine in the hold. I gave it one last shot for the journey. It moaned and stared at me, confused, almost longing, before closing it's wild eyes again.

I sat down and buckled myself in. The pilot undertook his system checks and I stared out of the window into the frozen polar mist in the direction of the base. 

I was sure I saw a corridor light come on and then go off, before the door opened and something loped out, heading towards the plane. 

The arctic fog was too strong to make out what it was, but it revealed itself completely a moment later, once it had walked along the wing and glared at me through the window.

It was a wolf!

An ice wolf, an adult female and the very essence of innuit myth and legends about the moon dog.

No human had ever seen an adult before. This was first contact.

I could see in its feral eyes a mixture of both sorrow and loathing. An unfathomable loathing burning in its pupils and aimed squarely at me. 

I knew then that this creature on the wing was the cub's mother and I was taking away it's last daughter.

It bared it's huge teeth and I could feel the terrible hatred it bore me seeping like vapour through the glass. 

Yet there was something else too, a deeper, heartfelt connection. Was it affection I sensed buried in those eyes?

It then snarled loudly and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

You ready?

What? What? Do you not see what's on the wing? 

Huh! 

The pilot turned to look and it was obvious he could see nothing, except the thick icy fret closing in.

We've got to go now. OK?

Yes. Yes. OK.

I stuttered and the pilot checked that I was alright one final time before starting the engine and taking off.

I peered back as we rose and there, despite the mist, I saw a old naked woman standing on the ice as clear as day.

Have you got anything to drink?

There's coffee in the flask.

Anything stronger?

Try the small cupboard. There's a bottle of Scotch.

Thanks.

I guzzled the glass of malt in the hope it would steady my nerves. It didn't but another shot numbed me enough to drift off for the rest of the flight.

We've landed. Quadead.

Oh! Right. Thank you. How was it?

Uneventful. We flew through the snow sprays fine. I was more worried about you. You were dreaming and talking or something in your sleep.

What was I saying?

It was hard to make out really but it sounded like you were speaking. No, not speaking, snarling. Like a wolf. It gave me quite a turn!

I got off the plane feeling shaken by my own apparition in the arctic and the news that the pilot had just given me.

I tried desperately to remain calm and threw myself into organising the next leg of the transportation for the cub in the cage.

The sedative was still active and the casket securely housed in the faculty's truck, the driver and I set off downstate for New York City.

Fortunately the Department Head, my boss, had provided some packed food and coffee in the cab and by the time we got going I was hungry. Actually I felt ravenous, as if I hadn't eaten in days and I devoured the meat sandwiches in minutes. 

Whoah! Steady on! Save some for me!

The driver stared as I loudly munched.

Conscious that I was acting strange I apologised and re-packed the rest of the food for him.

Thanks.

No problem.

The trouble was I was still hungry. Insatiably so. 

I told the driver that I needed a pee, so we stopped at a secluded layby by a forest, close to upper New York.

It was then that I jumped on the man and bit down deeply into his soft neck.

I threw my head backwards, snarling and gnashing and ripped out his throat, which I consumed on the spot, hot blood pouring down my chin. 

The wolf cub thrashed and threw itself around within the cage. 

I let it out and pointed to the dead driver's carcass steaming at the side of the truck.

Over the next half hour the cub and I devoured every last scrap of the man, tearing, ripping, chewing. At the end there were only bigger bones left like the skull, pelvis and the femur, which we scattered around the forest.

We returned to the vehicle and I locked up the cub once more.

It was clear to me that I had changed. 

The nightmare had taken shape. 

I was lupine, although I remained in my human form throughout the kill.

We reached my apartment near Central Park and I drove the truck to the basement garage. 

Dispensing with the cage, I carried the cub to the lift and then to my door. It licked my face and I truly enjoyed it's attention.

The nightmare quality of the previous day faded quickly and a more dream-like ecstasy took me over. 

For the first time in years I felt that I wasn't alone. 

That night I curled up by the fire next to the young creature. It was Christmas Eve in the city and outside we could hear carol singers belting out God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on the street corner. 

Subtle fairy colours flashed in the windows opposite painting up the night like mini northern lights and a feeling of complete peace swept over me, as the canine cub nuzzled in search of milk.

It was at midnight, the breaking of Christmas Day, when it happened.

A sudden and excruciating pain ripped through my abdomen and I felt a dreadful pressure on my appendix suture from within. 

It swelled and I began to scream in agony.

I rolled around on the carpet, all the while the cub nosing my face and hands. It was excited.

With a terrible screech my stomach bloated massively and offering no resistance, my weak incision split wide open, bright gore spewing out everywhere.

At first there was stillness, but then I screamed and screamed as an object began to emerge from my wound. 

It was covered in fur matted with grue. 

First a snout. Then a neck, a back, fore and hind legs and finally a long tale stepped out.

The enormous white, blood-spattered wolf stood erect before my desecrated body, lying limp on the floor. 

It panted and turned to face the cub. 

The animals licked each other's faces and yelped, their tales wagging and ears pricked up. 

I could feel the soft wet tongue of the cub's caresses.

But how? I was there, on the carpet, torn apart and quite dead.

But then the truth dawned on me. 

I was the enormous she-wolf!

The transformation was obviously complete and my old self was lying in a pile by my paws.

The urge to leave and feel the night's wild air on my hide overcame me.

I was always good at leaving and, signalling for the cub to follow, we both entered the freedom of the December darkness and bounded to the moonlit canopy of Central Park.

The journey North would take weeks, but changing from human to wolf and back, when we needed, allowed us to feed on a variety of flesh, although it was the growing scent of seal meat and innuit that drew us ever northward to the distant frozen planes of the vast arctic ice sheet.

Here, on the endless unspoilt snows at the top of the world, our lives would finally be fulfilled, alongside our ancient mother, who was waiting for us, her cubs, whom she howled and howled for that cold Christmas under a heart-blood moon.

We were her children.

My Sister and I.

For Those That Fly

 We wait on webbing for those that fly,

Sat day after night in the whim they'll try

To zoom and scitter across the silk,

Dodging our forelegs that lunge and heave,

Our bellies complaining as they flutter and  leave,

Only to see them alter their path, 

suffer our wrath, 

be patiently milked

 and endlessly 

die.

Veronika! The Kanker of Kalkar

 To be unloved by your progeny is to dampen life’s full glow, as she, a performing husk, plied her everyday with the ennui of the misbegotten.

Her two children had simply left her, whole and nothing.

Vanished both.

Her herbs, pastries, pies and salves no longer ushered welfare to her consumers. The flint of her baked concoctions had grown blunt and her heart wasn’t in it, this new dim existence without her kin.

She was broken and obsolete.

Complaints were new to her, harsh unjust  admonishments for the failing of fields crops and distempered stock far and wide. 

 Things went wrong, so many dreadful things and they wanted their money back and more, blaming her for all their ills, past and present, the baying folk of Kalkar that yelled her name in anger as she hid behind her door.

Veronika!

You've hexed us! You will regret it! 

But it is true. A loveless mother may as well remain cursed in bed, a cancer of faith and allow the sinews of anatomy to wain and wither and waste.

In time the baying stilled and in the sad bankruptcy of her inertia a truce of sorts is born. As long as she herself vanishes too, the mob will forget. Forget her and her erroneous magik. Forget she ever was and let her leave this world.

Forget she ever was,

As her beloved children had!

She prays. Beseeches that she wilts and joins her fading shadow in the oblivion of darkness that sits atop her house like a crow. A house of tears, her grief her new religion, weeping without end now that she is simply dead of spirit, eking out her hours towards an abyss of numbness.

And thus she subsisted like an insect for twelve long months, barely human, eating weeds and drinking rain, a wraith in her own days, haunting herself within the graveyard of her regrets.

Without her offspring she was but a worm nosing dead earth.

It was September when the knock on the door rang through the rooms like a foreign tongue. What could that sound incur? What was its purpose?

It came again, two knocks.

Could it be my lost beloveds? Could it?

The old crone's heart sprang back to life.

Two pies.

What's this? A charity from the folk at last? Some mercy for old Veronika?

She bit into them and grimaced. A gritty taste of soot, of cinders.

Two burnt hearts and black boiled eggs inside. 

Ech!

Ravenous pigs and scrawny hens no doubt.

Veronika returned to bed, sick to her stomach, mouthing.

They still blame me for their famine, after all this time!

It was true. Downward spiralled the settlement of Kalkar, it's denizens destitute and starving. The bleakest times had ensued twelve months prior and in their emaciated state, but one name held all blame for their calamity.

Veronika and whomever she had loved.

Veronika! 

It became a byword for their hate.

 Any kindness they once proffered had long dissipated with the ill winds of hunger and thirst ravaging the homes and the countryside. 

The beets and salsifies turned black. The water ran yellow. The maggots got fat and flies became the twitching curtains of despair in those desolate days.

And so not only was Veronika bereft with the teeming void left by her loveless spawn, but also her profound and crushing isolation from her fellows. 

How had it come to this?

Once a beloved mother and respected white witch.

Now a pariah, a stain, an outcast.

And then came the messages tied to dead lambs, crashing through her windows.

Be gone Witch!

Leave us Bitch!

Take Your Leave Sorceress or we will take your Life!

Out! Out! Accursed Vixen!

These missifs of loathing weighed heavily on Veronika, now the merest thin shadow of the once proud women she was.

Gone were the days of holding her children's hands.

Gone were the nods, the greetings and the gratitude of the burgh. 

Gone. Forever.

It was Walpurgis Night when the townsfolk delivered her one last message.

An enormous rotting, stinking pile of putrid turnips and rancid tats  barrowed by each resident still able and heaped in front of Veronika's front door until it reached the very top.

As a final act each of them pissed upon the pile and left.

When Veronkia opened her door the entire mound of putrefaction spilled into her kitchen like a King's tide of utter decay. It plunged over her and she was knocked cold and buried.

Some time later she awoke and with immense effort pushed aside the detritus and stood, her ragged clothes drenched with ooze and matter.

It was then she noticed an unusual form.

Unblemished like the rest, she picked it up and stared.

Yes.

It was a mandrake root.

The basis of being.

She could entice it to grow and together they could .....

Veronika felt the first pinches of excitement in years. They scratched at her stilled heart and relit it's furnace of old. 

She would care for the Mandrake as if it were her child.

And so she did and the man root increased.

With tender care and Witch's milk from her awakened breast, the tuber was invigorated and grew into a figure just as tall as her, a gnarled being of flesh and peel as black as charcoal as if it was cast from the spitting pits of Hell itself.

My Mandrake!

Veronika spoke softly to the effigy. She embraced and caressed and loved it like a Mother and a Wife, corm and woman intertwined until they countenanced as one dreadful tattered soul.

Prying eyes could see them too. Sickened citizens. The rumours spread among them of this new sacrilege.

A further scribble from Kalkar's folk came aflame through the window.

Go now Foul Harlot! Take thy Cunt-Root! Or you will both Burn! As your two children did for those pies! 

Veronika screamed! Shrieked! Wailed till her throat bled dry.

My bairns! My babies! My little ones! Afire! Aflame! Vanquished by the mob in my name! Baked in a pie! 

They shall pay, all of them! We shall suck the very life from their veins my love root and gather their begging faces in a brace!

This was the fulcrum of all her hatred, the pivot of the malignance, as it shifted towards her rise and the kanker of Kalkar spreading.

No more threats, no more dead lambs, no more names or flames. The atrocity was enough. They had murdered her innocent children.

We shall endure no more!

Come, take my hand and walk with me through this place, for it shall be no more.

Veronika and the Mandrake entered the village, where the folk were waiting with waving fork and fire, slowly encircling them.

As the crescendo of loathing tipped into killing, the sorceress and the root leapt upon the mob, whirling creatures of teeth and talon, rending, splitting, tearing and shredding every last denizen of the village that was once Kalkar.

When the maelstrom of death had abated and the spray of blood mist settled, the victorious Veronika and her Mandrake sat amid the innards of their foes and feasted on sweetmeats and thick hot crimson, its ferrous tang hanging heavy in the air, blistering like red dew on her hair.

The Mandrake lay down and bathed in the nourishing gore, whilst the triumphant crone collected the loosened face-skins of all those that had secretly murdered her son and daughter.

Hanging them from her waist-string she beckoned to her friend to stand.

Here shall you take root my love and become a vast sprawling tree, casting deep shadow upon all that was once Kalkar, here in the slicks of its smitten.

I curse it all in the name of my children and me!

Veronika!

And so the Mandrake fixed itself to the congealing spot and from it's livid bark begot limbs and churned ever upwards until at last it was gargantuan and upon each branch Veronika hung a villager's flaccid face, so that they might forever glimpse the place of their agonized slaughter. 

The witch looked up at them and smiled at her spoils. She gathered their hearts for the oven.

With her dripping sack, she turned and whispered gently.

I will make a victory pie for you my loves, just for me and you, my beautiful son and daughter!

Unhallow

In the dying sludge of All Hallows Eve, when the unruly graveyard beyond returned to sleep,

I took the begrudging midnight air one final time and thought of her, my dead sorceress,

Whence there it appeared, bled from her tortuous hell, that eerie crimson beast I had feared so much,

It grew groaning before me, the bloody corpulence I had come to dread,

Between the rending trees it coalesced from fiery death into red and hateful eyes that,

Were testament to my dark madness, my last damnation in the yawning mouth of the feast, as she cast me within the ink-black gridlock of her fatal final spell.

🩸

One Dark Hallow's Eve

It happened in October.

The worst Halloween weather in years. It was a raging storm, blowing a gale.

You couldn't stand up.

Trick or treating was out.

No way could could kids and parents have  braved that tempest.

It was shocking and after a bigger build up in the shops than last year, it put a dampener on the first All Hallows Eve of the brand new Nineteen Seventies.

Axel cursed under his Wolfman mask and cape.

Fuckin rain, bastard wind! It's fucked it right up!

He reached for another bottle of Watneys pale ale, having already downed a good four already and it had only just gone 6pm.

Shelley, or Shell as she liked to be called, was worried. The portents were there. Temper, beer, disappointment. It could very well lead to unpleasantness. Axel had used his hands often before now to make himself feel better about his shite life. His fists were known to Shell. He'd never touched their little girl, Sailor, but given enough ale and anger there was always a first time.

For fucks sake! No-ones coming. It's a waste of time! Why did I bother buying sweets for the little twats! That could have gone on the bookies! 

Axel fumed.

Another three beers, another step closer to ignition. 

Shell and Sailor, dressed for the occasion as A Witch and a devil, cowered in the TV room, staring at the bowls of monkey nuts and Quality Street for the kids that had promised to visit this far out on the edge of town, where the streetlights stopped. 

Sailor stared at the fury outside, the rain lashing the night like a prison guard. She glanced at her Dad, now drunk and stood in the open doorway cursing the darkness, cursing the deluge and cursing his shit family.

He turned, hands clenched.

I could be at the pub but no! Fuckin stay in you said, fuckin join in you said, it'll be fuckin fun with Sailor and me you said! Well it's a fuckin disaster and after a day graftin' at the scrapyard it's not what I fuckin expected! Do you hear me Shell! Do you fuckin hear me! 

The inevitable conflagration of alcohol and self-loathing exploded and a hail of the wolfman's merciless fists sent Shelley flying over the kidney table, flinging nuts, chocolates and her pointed hat in all directions.

Shell didn't move after that.

Glaring at Sailor pressed up against the corner, the drunk roared.

Pick that crap up you little cunt! Do it fuckin now!

His daughter, sensing a new and dreadful rise in her father's violence, did what she was told and putting down her plastic devil fork, placed the strewn confectionary back in the bowls.

At least someone fuckin does what I say in this piss-poor shithole of a house. 

Axel swayed and headed to the outside loo, belching as he went. The heavens crashed around him.

With any luck he'd break his neck slipping down the soaking steps or drink the Izal in the bog.

Sailor went to her Mum and kissed her head.

Oh Mum, Mum, he's got worse.

Shelley opened her puffed eyes and nodded.

I know honey pie. I know. Did he touch you?

No. But I think he will next time.

Mum and daughter sat together on the settee, comforting each other with tears and cuddles that dreadful night, Shelley's green eye-shadow mixing with the blood on her lips like a cauldron's broth. 

We've got to do something Mum. He's going to kill you at this rate!

Sailor was visibly fearful for her Mum's safety and clutched her bruised hands.

Shelley pecked her on the nose, smiled, her black-sticked lips pulped and pained. She got up for a rolly at the back door.

She stared out into the angry sky, roaring and tearing like a black bear, the trees flailing in the gusts like hungry ghosts.

It felt good on her tender face, the wild air, fresh and cold, blown in from beyond their world. From Heaven hopefully she mused.

Shell took one last drag and tip-toed down the stone steps into the wind-swept open rear. More of a long yard than a garden, it backed onto woodland owned by the Coal Board, where pines planted for Christmas stood shaking like widows eyeing the pit a half-mile away. 

Against the tumult, she carefully peered into the outdoor loo and saw wolfman slumped on the thing asleep, his cloak draped round the seat. He would be there all night with any luck, Armitage Shanked and her and Sailor might just get a glimpse of what it's like to feel safe again for a few wee hours.

Grabbing a bunch of kindling from the shed, she slowly made her way back through the howling air to the house, blew a kiss at Sailor and with a scrunched up Daily Express lit the open grate.

Damn, there's no coal. Can you get us a shovel full Sail but do it quietly and watch the weather. It's dreadful out there. 

Sure Mum.

Sailor eventually got to the coal store and gently nudged a bundle together.  The nuggets formed a dark peak on the hand shovel like an ancient pyramid. 

As the youngster stood up she heard a groan coming from the woodland edge. A sort of moan like a cow lowing in pain beneath the Christmas trees.

But there weren't any cows in the yard. 

It was sort of human noise.

A trick or treater maybe, messing with her?

The girl decided it wasn't. There was something real about it.

Sailor quickly and stealthily peeked into the privvy, but her Dad was still fast on, a slumbering beast among the spiders, thank God.

So who was it at the bottom, where the darkness thickened?

Another groan. Then another.

Sailor put the coal down, braced herself against the ferocious wind and slowly approached the sound.

Suddenly a withered hand reached out from the pitch-black shadow.

This was followed by a wild mass of thrashing grey hair straddling a face so weathered and uncanny that it made Sailor gasp.

It was joined by the rest of the body, a wiry, soil-splattered figure painfully crawling along the ground like a dying newt, it's bony fingers grasping the grey grate-ash chucked everywhere by her impatient Dad. 

It was a man before her.

A very old man. 

Naked save for drying leaves stuck to his face and various nooks of his leathery form.

Who are you?

Sailor whispered the question, obliterated by the storm, and considered just running off and yelling Mum all the way.

Something made her stay. 

She gawped at this secret being emerging from the Christmas trees. 

Are you Santa Claus. You're much too early if you are!

The old leafy man grunted and pointed to his mouth.

You're hungry! Is that it?

The figure nodded.

Sailor, being a kindly child, decided there and then, that he must be a local winter tramp down on his luck. 

Feeling sorry for him, she helped the elderly oddball gent up the yard through the tempestuous blasts towards the beckoning glow of the back window. 

As they stumbled past the outdoor loo she held her finger to her lips.

Shhhhhh!

The tramp figure mouthed the sound, as if it was his first ever encounter with the word.

Reaching the house, Sailor sat the man down at the kitchen table and went to fetch Mum. They were both drenched. 

The bare light bulb sputtered above, as if failing in the rage.

Oh my God! What the fudge Sail? Who the hell is he?

Shelley gawped at the emaciated character in front of her. He looked to be a hundred years old and was encrusted with wet earth and pine needles. His cheeks and hair seemed to have leaves and moss adhered to them, but they appeared to be actually sprouting from his flesh, as they did on other parts.

It must be a trick of the dodgy light. That's it. It our damn dumb bulb.

Shell comforted herself with this thought and heeded Sailor's efforts to put some food in front of the stranger.

Maybe it was a Halloween prank, a joke at their expense. Rent-a-ghost. 

Still, whatever it was, they fed him at least.

A pork pie, an apple, a handful of Quality Street, some bonfire toffee and a boiled egg.

He ate voraciously, devouring everything, including the eggshell. 

He downed the half-bottle of milk in noisy slurps and the white liquid ran from the mossy corners of his mouth into the foliage clinging to his chin. 

Tasty?

Tasty! he parroted. 

Then he emitted a loud burp and stared at the two females in the room before him, the bonny witch and the devil girl.

They thought they saw gratitude settling in his eyes but it may have been something else. 

Something greener.

At that moment and to the two girls' complete terror, Axel, rain-soaked and livid, lurched through the doorway, grasping the frame to steady himself. He was still wearing the Wolfman mask and cape, now dripping wet.

The stranger instinctively gripped the table.

Wolf-Axel glared with malice at the old man.

Who the fuck are you?

The loamy one twitched.

The semi-drunk husband took several unsteady steps towards his wife, pointing at the newcomer.

Who, who is that ancient old fucker?

I dunno love, we're just giving him something to eat! 

You fuckin what! It's Halloween, not fuckin' Christmas you dozy slag! That's my fuckin food you're giving him!

With uncanny aim and speed, Axel lunged and slapped Shelley hard across the face.

She winced, clutching her head and then guarded Sailor from anything that might follow.

Leave Mum alone Dad! Please!

Axel kicked Sailor squarely in the chest, knocking her and Shelley flying into the full maiden. 

Tangled up in clean clothes, they accidentally nudged the mirror, which fell off the wall and cracked, but not before they caught a glimpse of the woodland stranger's reflection, no longer the innocuous green man before them, but a smoking, seething, malevolent woodland goblin.

The girls gasped. They looked at Axel and then at the visitor, doubt fermenting in their eyes all the while.

Axel growled at them. 

Halloween Bitches!

The raging wolf then turned to face the unwelcome oddity, who had now risen and leapt up onto the table, standing fully in the remaining food.

What you looking at you fuckin maingy cunt, coming into my house, scoffin' my grub, stark bollock naked! I've seen more muscle in a pan o' piss! I'm going to fuckin kill ya!

The stranger leapt towards him.

Jumping too, Axel grabbed hold of the face of leaves, trying to rip them off, but they were stuck fast and confusingly part of the man's body. Momentarily flustered, the furious husband then hooked his fingers into the stranger's mouth and prized it wide open with all his beer-addled strength.

The strange man looked into Axel's burning eyes and then bit down hard, severing three of Axel's fingers at the knuckle from both hands. 

He began to chew.

And swallowed.

Tasty!

Axel held his devastated hands up to his face, blood spurting from the fresh stumps, spattering his werewolf mask. 

He screamed in agony, the pain unbearable.

The brutal guest grabbed hold of Axel's left hand and frenziedly sucked the open knuckles, slurping the hot grue like Blue Nun.

He smacked his lips, blood dribbling through the humus of his chin and pushed his reeling victim out of the back door and through the snicket to the front. 

Before Axel had chance to stagger into the street, the vicious woodlander found two rusting fondue forks thrown next to the bins alongside a cracked, cheese-encrusted bowl.

The sprite mercilessly rammed the forks into Axel's ears, straight through the eardrums and deep into the brain, pink cranial fluid streaming from the wounds down his cape.

Axel staggered into the street where passing monsters applauded his realistic costume. 

He fell to the ground frothing at the mouth.

The entity clicked it's tongue, swivelled, gnashed and sprinted back onto the kitchen, as the mother and daughter were just standing up. 

The thing roared before them like a possessed hedge ape, as if Hell had usurped the forest and spewed out this vile corruption. 

The creature suddenly clasped its member and pissed all over the room, hot steaming urine covering everything in a disgusting slick.

It stopped as abruptly and without any warning grabbed Shelley and Sailor, both utterly frozen with fear.

The stranger carried them off, shrieking and writhing under his long arms, out through the back door, down the yard and into the deep hopeless black of the coal pit pine forest, all the while the mad storm whirling round them like a demon that darkest of All Hallows Eves.

Nooooooooooo! Pleeeeaaaaaaase! 

They both screamed till their lungs burst.

And then they were gone.

Mother, daughter and the Green Man. 

Forever.

The Ghouls Are Coming, They're Already Here *

I watched them tear apart the girl with the posh voice in front of me on the train.

Dismembered, distributed and devoured. 

I was offered a bone, which, feigning interest, I slavvered all over.

There was no room for gentleness in this world full of ghouls. 

No room for normality, no space for what once had been.

Everything was meat.

They'd started with the dead. 

Then moved onto the living. Animals, then insects and finally people.

It had spread like a hurricane. Cannibalism. A hurricane of teeth. Insatiable. Starving. Hell-bent.

It was the collapse of nations that sparked the rot. Crops failed, livestock died, food as we knew it disappeared in the searing years that followed.

There appeared to have been no choice. Eat or be eaten. Eat your neighbour. Eat them all and move to the next house before they woke up.

That had been a decade ago and ghouls ruled the earth now. Nearly 99% saturation and meat was running out. Ghouls were starving again and in some unfortunate twist of fate they refused to feed on each other.

Once bitten you either fought or got fed on. Fighters became ghouls. The fed were dead.

It was a stark choice but living was living and ghouls were alive. 

But there was another way:

To stay human.

I, Officer Gottschalk, all normal male, had learned years ago to blend in, keep my eyes red, slobber in public and gnaw on the odd arm and hand that I was offered.

I worked for SAPIEN, the last defence against total ghouldom, protecting the only fragile human community left in Northern England.

It was hidden in the abandoned hangers of the derelict Fylingdales Radar Rocket Base, outside Whitby, in the remote North Yorkshire moors.

No-one needed moss and moor anymore. Certainly not ghouls. Mosses were useful for burning and heating the hangers in winter and when dried they made excellent bedding until the bugs moved in from the indoor mushroom fields, which provided the only diet for the humans. 

They were fungivores by necessity now. That's all they could grow and it could all collapse in a mass of blood and shite if a ghoul got in.

SAPIEN was on its knees in reality too. 

A rag-tag band of frightened operatives barely holding onto their sanity, never mind a clandestine society scattered precariously in rocket bases across the globe.

Worldwide, they lost a base to the ghouls about once a day.

Time, and people, were running out.

It was a shit-show of meat and desperation and the monsters were winning.

My own particular job in all this was off-world. Sort of.

That is, it was my role and only mine, to stop the ghouls getting near the single rocket located in the North, the Fylingdales spaceship, snug in its silo,  the so-called Bramstar in honour of Whitby's famous literary son from centuries ago.

The Bramstar was one of hundreds of rocket ships strewn around the planet in the derelict bases, where the last bastion of humanity was clinging on in the hope of passage to either the Moon or Mars, where people had colonised a hundred years earlier before the rout of the ghouls.

It was the only dream of the remnants.

The sole vision of salvation which forced them to go on each and every hopeless day in the hangars.

The hope of the stars. 

Only the MoD minefield round Fylingdales kept the monsters out. That and the remoteness of this god forsaken enclave in the desolate hills, where Dracula once roamed in the fairy tales of old.

But the fairy tale of fiends was becoming real. 

The defenses were weakening as the ghouls grew smarter. In their ravenous state they spread out from the towns and cities and the cannibals of old Whitby were sniffing at the fencing round Fylingdales.

They could smell blood. 

Excellent blood.

I knew it wouldn't be long before a few wily creatures would find a path through the mines to the hidden cache of people shivering in the engine sheds.

I rang Cape Kennedy, the Stateside co-ordinating HQ for all world launches.

They're getting closer. They're nearly here. We need to fucking launch!

I was exasperated. 

And scared.

A SAPIEN plan has been formalized Gottsshalk. We all launch Midnight tomorrow, Sunday. Just 24 hours! Get ready and for God's sake, Hang on!

Easy for you to say. I can see the bastards climbing the wires in the distance. Only the old mines will stop them. Let's hope they still work!

I signed off and spread the word. 

Take the bare minimum, get to the big silo and prepare for a night launch in 24 short hours!

Outside on the moors the screaming and gnashing of the crazed ghouls could be heard as they navigated the redundant minefield. 

Fetid bodies exploded, their mushing torsos leaving a way through the wasteland to the base in the distance.

The silo clock ticked.

Time seemed to be trapped in sludge but gradually midnight approached.

I gave the order to board. 

The pilots went first, straight to the top, the people then filed in and sat staring at the circle of stars above through the silo.

I had to wait to check the engines were safe and alight last of all.

With the coast clear I entered my security booth to guard the precious rocket fuel, where I sat, pistol in hand.

The flight of the Bramstar went smoothly and like a celestial train we made good time to the Moon Base colony, a vast settlement of around ten million souls.

As the rocket fired it's retros to land, there was a knock on my sealed door.

Thinking it was the pilot come to thank me for guarding the tanks, I opened up. 

A drooling beast fell through the hatch straight on to me, growling and snapping. 

How the fuck!

I had no idea how this ghoul had breached my security but there was no time to waste. It was determined to consume me there and then. 

I fired my gun but not before the bastard fiend bit deep into my arm.

Damn! You fucking freak!

Blood seeped from my forearm but the creature fared worse. 

I had shot it straight through its bestial brain. 

Pushing open the outer door I fell out clutching my wound. The dead beast dropped out next to me with a wet thud.

It was then I heard the screaming.

Screaming like I'd never experienced, as if an entire town was being torn apart. 

And indeed it was.

With total horror I stared within the giant dome of the lunar base and witnessed the complete carnage inside.

A band of ghouls were working there way through the crowds who had gathered at the space port. 

Relatives, friends, curious folk. Thousands of them. 

The monsters were devouring the vanguard, eating some entirely and wounding others to swell their hideous number. 

The effect of the bite was almost instantaneous, taking just a few minutes.

As I stood, my mouth agape, at the unfolding bloodbath in the dome, it's glass and steel skin blathered with hot fresh bubbling crimson, I heard a snarling sound right where I was stood.

It was only when I started sprinting towards to  humans in the base that I realized that I too was now a gnashing, ravenous ghoul, whose only thought was to maim and devour.

It was the last human thought I ever had.

* Title inspired by Andy Milligan's film

The Plume

 Holding hands, the brother and sister, within the darkening Priory grounds, they first sensed the plume as they were dressing.

It arrived softly, it's ashen fingers spidering their still naked parts, caressing like a tender shroud, a mellifluous veil.

But then it hardened, the smoke gripped their limbs and widening welts forced open their skin, large angry pustules oozing thick red and black matter.

They both screamed but the dense woodland on the estate's edge was too remote for anyone else to hear, their illicit tryst secret from all but they.

Their time was up. No homilies. Just nothing.

Only the evil made it through the morning, immune to the toxic nimbus of the plume.

They shambled and ran towards it's source in the far plains beyond the hills, chattering like hyenas in the grass.

Thousands, millions, the wicked ones wandered across the spurs until at last the plains came clear before them, a limitless flatland of decaying flora, the cacti weeping blood as they withered.

Here the plume was gargantuan.

An endless tower of necrosis besieging the sky and defiling the sun, who's sacred beams faltered as would cherubs in Hell.

The terrible assembly gathered and looked on.

They fell to their knees and bowed without stopping, their necks fracturing in the mad devotion for their god.

Before them lay a corpse.

A carcass.

A body of such enormity on its side, as if a range of hills erupted from the earth, their dark crimson bluffs of steaming putrescence decaying before their eyes.

The scarlet giant was rotting. 

It's dereliction the plume of past malignancies burgeoning in the heavens above the massed sinners.

They too began to decompose, laughing as they readied for entry into Hades, the homeland of the twisted and the blood-soaked dream they'd longed for all their baleful lives.

For here was their deity reducing and rendered.

It's plume had brought them. 

Surely this was their passage, the glorious transit of the damned and villainous.

But it was not.

For Death itself had intervened. No End of Days, no darkest rapture.

The Earth was dying and so it's idols.

This was the last orbit, the globe full ceasing. 

This was it's final afternoon.

It's requiem. It's pall.

And thus, beneath the poisoned squall, before the giggling hordes lay prone the well-spring of lies, the killing joke, the Lord of Flies.

His left eye open,

Here was the Beast.

The Fallen One.

Here was Lucifer.

And like everyone else, he was dead. 

The Kid's Got Talent

The ad popped up on screen.

He saw it and rubbing his smiling face button he smiled.

Horrors in Your Home Inc. We Build Horror Locations in Your House! Film Sets, Props, Icons, Modern and Classic. Testimonials available. Visit our site. It's Beastly!

He was intrigued. 

Things had been really tedious for some years.

This just might liven things up a bit.

For his guests. 

If he played his cards right it could be a real hoot for horror movie buffs like they all were.

So best get organized.

It was nearly October 31st.

He sat down at his laptop and having fun, he checked everything he wanted on the 'Horrors' drop down menu from flicks old and new with a few add-ons and party food chucked in:

A pet cemetery. One grave open. Old Gravedigger needed.

An attic full of snuff videos. One running and screening with terrified projectionist.

A bedroom window teeming with flies. Optional tormented priest requested.

A steaming wall in the cellar. A half-mad actress required to repeatedly scream 'these are the Gates of Hell'.

A Bates Motel neon sign outside. Optional flickering and knife-wielding Son dressed as Mother maniac requested.

A dark office with a metal filing cabinet. Bespoke files and Panicked Snoop required.

All to happen on Halloween. 9pm.

The watershed! He smiled at that!

The full order was placed and after paying the thousand dollars he sat back feeling great and began to draw a sketch of a very hairy face. It was one of a hundred he'd already done that week.

The kids got talent! 

He kept saying it over and over in a New York accent and chuckled before cooking up a rabbit.

Next he sent out invites to his five friends.

It was going to be legendary.

Halloween came and a team from Horrors in the Home Inc. Turned up in good time to get everything ready as per the customer's specific requirements. For a relatively new business it was the biggest Halloween job they'd got so wanted to pull out all the stops for their top customer.

All was set. The actors were all in place throughout the house and garden. It was quarter to nine.

The guests could be seen walking past the house and up the drive. Five of them all wearing masks and gloves. Various other Halloween truck or treaters loped by and shouted their admiration for the costumes.

The five sort of trundled through the door and gathered in the front room.

They nodded at the house owner and all of them looked through the window.

The was a full moon.

The Horrors in Your Home supervisor came into the room and stopped dead. The guests looked so damn real with their fur and talons. Only the customer wasn't in costume.

You've done a great job pal. Are all the actors in position? 

Yes. Just as you wanted. 

Brilliant.

The customer gave each of his five guests a location card for each 'house horror' where they were to visit. Basement, attic, garden etc.

The supervisor thought that was a neat idea and made a mental note to produce cards himself.

OK.

OK.

Hey, pal. You ever see the transformation scene in the Howling?

Er, yeah, sure. It's a classic. Even on a par with the one in American Werewolf in London.

One of the guests grunted.

Well, pal. I thought you might like to see it again.

Er, what?

Yeah, here, live. Just for you.

Er, OK.

The supervisor readied himself for what he thought was going to be an epic Halloween prank and shoved his hands in his pockets.

The customer smiled and stared at the full moon outside.

Immediately he began to change. His bones started to snap and crack and his body grew thick fur all over. His face elongated into a snout and his hands and feet developed massive razor-sharp claws.

The supervisor was in shock. He'd never seen anything so damn realistic in his life and automatically began to wonder how much this guy would want to join his company.

What did you think of that pal?

The customer, on all fours, stared at the supervisor, bared his huge fangs and snarled.

Amazing! So classic! How did you do it? With squibs and rubbers?

Not really. You see it was real. I really am a werewolf!

Get away! C'mon Sir, show me how it was done.

Oh, I'll show you alright!

At this, the enormous werewolf growled and leapt onto the hapless supervisor, whereupon he ripped him to shreds and devoured all his torn limbs in several large greedy gulps.

The rest of the party were all excited now and began frothing at the mouth. 

Happy Halloween guests! Come and meet me in my special office once you're done.

The customer nodded to his five. They each loped to their set location from where terrible screams could be heard, followed by wet loud tearing and violent munching.

The customer crawled stealthily to his own set, which held a nostalgic charm for him all of its own. It was from his favourite scene in his best movie and one in which he felt he'd excelled in every way. Even the Doc had thought so too.

Arriving in the moon-lit office set up just as he's specified, he glimpsed the actress rifling through the top files in the cabinet. Just as he'd instructed. He was very impressed.

As the actress pulled out the first folder and studied it, the customer placed his huge furred paw on the cabinet top and began to tap his dreadful claws, just as he'd done in his star turn.

Recognize me young lady?

The actress was startled by just how genuine the client's wolf suit was. 

She smiled.

Look at the file.

She stared at the name. Edward Quist. It seemed familiar and then she saw it. The name of the film.

The Howling! 

Ah, I see you know who I am.

Fabulous costume Sir!

Oh but it's not. Not a costume. Read the other film names out. On the other files.

An American Werewolf in London.

A huge wolf crept forward and grimaced, it's face fur matted with gore.

Werewolf of London.

An older wolf came out of the shadows and grinned, whilst still chewing sinews.

The Curse of the Werewolf.

A muscular beast stood up growling, a human arm in its paw.

The Legend of the Werewolf.

A young werewolf snarled, wiping the grue from it's mouth. 

The Wolf Man.

Slowly an enormous creature stepped out from behind the door and bared his formidable and dripping red teeth.

The rest of the wolves bowed.

You go first Lowrence.

No, please Eddie. It's your show. I Insist.

Well, thank you.

The client reared up in front of the now petrified actress and clawed her to pieces.

When he'd finished eating he offered the leftovers to his applauding guests.

David Kessler raised his talons.

The kids got talent!

They all laughed heartily and from the house could be heard a pack of wolves howling excitedly as the moon drifted in and out of crimson clouds.

It was Halloween.

No-one batted an eyelid.

The Doctor of Tears

Avenham Harris was a doctor of the eye.

An eminent oculist of the highest standing, a giant among the ophthalmologists peering into the pupils of the Capital.

A specialist of nasolacrinal systems and their hydrology, he was the foremost expert in diagnosing and treating conditions and predicaments of what the layman would call 

.... the tear ducts.

To his patients he was a god, a nimble-fingered olympian who could rid them of every conceivable agonising blockage and excruciating encrustation. 

His waiting list was legendary and King Edward himself had sought the doctor's solace with a regular royal drain.

This regal approval and his general aloofness made Harris's peers both respectful and resentful in equal measure.

Professionally Harris was a known quantity, known somewhat cruelly as the Ductor, but his private life was another matter entirely.

It was just that, entirely private and his colleagues along that most prestigious of medical postcodes had no idea as to what he did behind those sumptuous mahogany doors of his enviable address of No.1 Harley Street.

What they did know was that tragedy had struck Avenham Harris some years earlier. 1898 to be exact when, taking the air together, his own beloved wife Florentine had died suddenly and terribly one dreadful Autumn Sunday, when a brewer's drey ran amok in Knightsbridge brutally robbing her of her tender life and Avenham Harris's one true love. She had died in his arms, her skull crushed and her vision gone. Her final bleeding tears seering his mind shut as they fell down his cheek into his tortured mouth.

Since the accident Dr. Harris had withdrawn completely from the soirees and balls of  London Society Florentine had enjoyed so much and was never seen again outside of the walls of his pre-eminent practise. He chose to work industriously and grieve alone becoming a mere misted shadow of his former self.

His patients respectfully kept quiet about his deceased wife, their English reserve protecting them from any embarrassing discourse with the good doctor. Besides, he was far too diligent an oculist to veer from medical matters, so much so that he focused ever more on the hydrological cycle of the eye. The grainy sleep, the sludgy rheum, the crystalline discharge, the subtle fluids. 

But above all of these issues he coveted a singular secretion more than any other, namely, hemolacria, the uniquely rare tears of blood, the tears his darling wife Florentine had wept as she lay fatally wounded in his hands.

To Avenham Harris these were sacred tears, the very essence of grief and a beautiful life cut profoundly short. They were the red veils of Heaven and the iron footsteps of his Wife's path and the very waymarks to her grieving soul.

His too. 

His and her salvation lay in those crimson waters and he would do anything in his power to re-capture that terrible euphoria of tasting Florentine's tears of blood.

As he assiduously collected the watery deposits of his many patients in meticulously labelled glass phials, a rumour spread among them and eventually the medical circle too, that the esteemed Avenham Harris was displaying signs of odd behaviour and in the vernacular of the time, losing his marbles. 

Little did they know that the eye specialist had indeed developed strange occupations and the strangest of all was the body in his cellar.

The body of his dead wife Florentine.

Having duped the funeral director with a sack of sand in the coffin, Harris had secretly procured her corpse from the morgue almost immediately after the accident and hidden it deep below his practice in the Victorian basements. 

In God's name to what end his curious peers might enquire should they have known, but the answer would not have been pleasant for them to hear or indeed envisage, for Dr. Harris had been collecting Florentine's red tears ever since she had passed in his arms that fateful day in Knightsbridge. After tasting this holiest of waters, his compulsion began at the scene itself and taking a small empty bottle he had in his jacket he decanted his first divine volume from Florentine's tear ducts, which he consumed that evening sat by the fireside in her favourite seat and recited her most beloved prayer.

Inevitably as decomposition set in, the Doctor's clandestine milking began to suffer as the pipes and runnels of his Wife's broken skull started to harden and dessicate. Since he drank the fluid the same day, in the evening by the hearth, his supply was empty and he felt the first pangs of a new sorrow and the physical strictures of withdrawal from his necessary libation.

His lachryphagia was unquenchable.

Harris was beside himself with anguish and torment, his soul aching for continued reunion with his darling Florentine and his palette screaming for its ferrous rheumy nightcap.

With no expense spared the once-esteemed medic commissioned the services of restoration men to drain the tears of the mortuary's fresh incumbents, the more violent the end the better.

Chatter abounded about the wild look in the Doctor's eyes these days, his awkward siphoning of his patients' weeping as he explained, cruelly, that there was nothing he could do save store a sample for some future research.

When the red vineyard of the district's dead did nothing for his compulsion, Avenham Harris turned to a more select and altogether more dangerous source, those shadowy figures who for a price procure rare and nefarious relics for the curiously wealthy of the Capital, the rich collectors of the arcane who ponder the Pit behind varnished desks.

Bring me the tears of a Stigmata.

Harris handed over the bag of cash and the bargain was set late one night in the darkness of his porch.

He waited and waited until at last the nocturnal purveyor knocked and gave the twitching Doctor a clear receptacle containing purportedly the devout grue from a believer's pious puncta.

Avenham Harris waved the man away and shambled into his unkempt parlour, the glass phial quivering in his hand. 

He devoured it's contents.

And felt nothing.

In pain, both physical and of the spiritual mind, he retreated to the cellars and begged his decaying love for some comfort, some sacrifice, some tears.

In that darkness, the gut of the building's reeking foundation, the assailed medic gave in to his distemper and fierce slaps of hopelessness punished his flailing mind.

I am indeed in Hell's dominion and I fear I am losing you Florentine my darling.

He wept and as his own sorrowful drops mixed with the entropy of his beloved his thoughts turned to darker regions still.

Yes.

If not there in Heaven then here.

But we will need a harbinger, a confluence, a carrier of souls.

That's it.

Once more the now maddening Doctor reached out to the dealer of relics and made a request of such enormity, such danger that the sum of a thousand pounds was required forthwith.

The following night the familiar knock and another decanter transfered.

I do not wish to see you again my good man.

Nor I Doctor. I shall be leaving London this very night. It's not safe here anymore after getting you .... That!

The manic Harris staggered to his wife, unwittingly knocking over an oil lamp, which set the ancient timbers alight. 

Oblivious to anything else, Harris tipped some of the dark bubbling liquid onto Florentine's still lips and then frantically into his own.

He slumped down by the gurney, where his spirit finally collapsed and he thought he glimpsed the rising flames of their dreadful destination.

Look Florentine, look, the fires! It's worked!

Together! 

We shall be in Hell together forever!

It's marvellous! Look! 

I gave him everything I owned, everything so we could drink the rarest of all the world's wept issues my darling, yes, the damnably bloody tears of .... 

Satan himself!

Ha ha ha ha ha!