Wamphyri! Brian Lumley

Darling –

Yulian and Helen are out walking Vlad. I think I’ll drive Georgina into town and buy her something. We’ll be back for lunch –

Anne

George sighed his frustration, chewed his bottom lip angrily. This morning he’d meant to have a quick look at the cellars, just out of curiosity. Yulian could have perhaps shown him around down there. As for the rest of the day: he’d planned on driving the girls to the beach at Salcombe; a day by the sea might fetch Georgina out of herself. The salty air would be good for Helen, too, who’d been looking a bit peaky. Just like Anne to get cab-happy with the car the minute they were out of London!

Ah, well – maybe there’d still be time for the beach this afternoon. But what to do with himself this morning? A walk into Old Paignton, to the harbour, perhaps? It would be a fair bit of a walk, but he could always drop in somewhere for a pint along the way. And later, if he was tired or pushed for time, he’d simply come back by taxi.

George did exactly that. He took his binoculars with him and spent a little time gazing at near-distant Brixham across the bay, returned to Harkley by taxi at about 12.30 and paid the driver off at the gate. He’d enjoyed both the long walk and his glass of cold beer enormously, and it seemed he’d timed the entire expedition just perfectly for lunch.

Then, wandering up the drive where the curving gravel path came closest to the copse – a densely grown stand of beech, birch and alder, with one mighty cedar towering slightly apart – there he came across his car, its front doors standing open and the keys still in the ignition. George stared at the car in mild surprise, turned in a slow circle and glanced all about.

The copse had an overgrown crazy-paving path winding through its heart, and a once-elegant white three-bar fence running round it – like a wood in a book of fairy tales. The fence was leaning now and very much off-white, with rank growth sprung up on both sides. George looked in that direction but could see no one. Tall grasses and brambles, the tops of fenceposts, trees. And . . .

maybe something big and black moving furtively in the undergrowth? Vlad?

It could well be that Anne, Helen, Georgina and Yulian were all walking together in the copse; certainly it would be leafy and cool under the canopy of the trees. But if it was only Yulian and the dog in there, or the bloody dog on his own . . .

Suddenly it came to George that he feared one as much as the other. Yes, feared them. Yulian wasn’t like any other person he knew, and Vlad wasn’t like any other dog. There was something wrong with both of them. And in the middle of a quiet, hot summer day George shivered.

Then he got a grip of himself. Frightened? Of a queer, freakish youth and a three-quarters grown dog? Ridiculous!

He gave a loud ‘Hallooo!’ – and got no answer.

Irritated now, his previously pleasant mood rapidly waning, he hurried to the house. Inside … no one! He went through the old place slamming doors, finally climbed the stairs to his and Anne’s bedroom. Where the hell was everyone? And why had Anne left his car there like that? Was he to spend the entire day on his bloody own?

From his bedroom window he could see most of the grounds at the front of the house right to the gate. The barn and huddled stables interfered with the view of the copse, but –

George’s attention was suddenly riveted by a splash of colour showing in the tall grass this side of the fence where it circled the copse. It caught his attention and held it. He moved a fraction, tried to see beyond the projecting gables of the old barn. It wouldn’t come into focus. Then he remembered his binoculars, still hanging round his neck. He quickly put them to his eyes, adjusted them.

Still the gables intervened, and he’d got the range

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