Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

Georgina, reclining in the back of the car, eyes almost closed in her suddenly pale face, gave a start and sat upright. She had been on the verge of remembering something about the place where Ilya died, something she hadn’t wanted to remember. Now she gulped air grate-fully, forced a smile. ‘There already?’ She managed to get the words out. ‘I … I must have been miles away!’

Anne pulled the big car into the car park behind the church, braking to a gentle halt. Then she turned to look at her passenger. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

Georgina nodded. ‘Yes, I’m fine. Maybe a little tired, that’s all. Come on, help me with the carry-cot.’

The church was of old stone, all stained glass and Gothic arches, with a cemetery to one side where the headstones were leaning and crusted with grey-green lichens. Georgina couldn’t bear lichens, especially when they covered old legends gouged in leaning slabs. She looked the other way as she hurried by the graveyard and turned left around the buttressed corner of the church towards its entrance. Anne, almost dragged along on the other handle of the carry-cot, had to break into a trot to keep up.

‘Goodness!’ she protested. ‘You’d think we were late or something!’ And in fact they were, almost.

Waiting on the steps in front of the church, there stood Anne’s fianc6, George Lake. They had lived together for three years and only just set a date; and they were to be Yulian’s godparents. There had been several christenings this morning; the most recent party of beaming parents, godparents and relatives was just leaving, the mother radiant as she held her child in its christening-gown. George skipped by them, came hurrying down the steps, took the carry-cot and said, ‘I sat through the entire service, four christenings, all that mumbling and muttering and splashing – and screaming! But I thought it was only right that one of us be here from start to finish. But the old vicar – Lord, he’s a boring old fart! God forgive me!’

George and Anne might well have been brother and sister, even twins. Toss opposites attracting out the window, thought Georgina. They were both five-ninish, a bit plump if not actually fat; both blondes, grey eyed, soft-spoken. A few weeks separated their birth-dates: George was a Sagittarius and Anne a Capricorn. Typically, he would sometimes put his foot in it; she had sufficient of her sign’s stability to pull him out of it. That was Anne’s interpretation of their relationship, she being a lifelong advocate of astrology.

Leaving Georgina’s hands free to tidy herself up a little, they now took the carry-cot between them and made to enter the church. The twin doors were of oak under a Gothic arch, one standing half open outwards on to the landing at the head of the steps. A wind came up from nowhere, blew yesterday’s confetti up in mad swirls and slammed the door resoundingly in their faces. Earlier there had been the odd ray of sunshine filtering through wispy grey clouds, but now the clouds seemed to mass, the sun was switched off like a light and it grew noticeably darker.

‘Not cold enough for snow,’ said George, turning his eyes apprehensively up to the sky. ‘My guess is it’s going to chuck it down!’

‘Chuck it or bucket?’ Anne was still reeling from the door’s slamming, her expression puzzled.

‘Fuck it!’ said George, irreverently. ‘Let’s get in!’

A moment more and the door was shoved open from inside by the vicar. He was lean, getting on a bit in years, close to bald. His one advantage was of great height, so that he could look down on them all. He had little eyes made huge by thick-lensed spectacles, and a veined beak of a nose that seemed to turn his head as if it were a weathercock. His thinness gave the impression of a mantis, but at the same time he managed to look owlish.

A bird of pray! thought George, and grinned to himself. But at the same time he noted that the old vicar’s handshake was warm and full of comfort, however trembly, and that his smile was a beam of pure goodness. Nor was he lacking in his own brand of dry wit.

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