Blood Lust review 

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The Croglin Nightmare

Written by Glynn Barrass : Illustrated by Leon Atkinson

The girl in the tie dyed top had had quite a night, and had only just escaped with her life and chastity intact. Rebecca knew the risks of hitching lifts from strangers, but having hitchhiked for over 8 months, she would have liked to have believed that she’d formed a kind of ‘sixth-sense’ about whom to trust and who to avoid on her adventures, and failing that, she always carried a sharpened screwdriver in her coat pocket. Crouched in the corner of a small, damp room, her erstwhile kidnapper lay dead before her, his pants pulled down to his ankles, the yellow and black striped screwdriver protruding from his right eye socket.

After he’d dragged her into this room, she’d plucked up the courage to stop the pasty-faced bastard in his tracks, and stopped he was, bloody and still, but now she was trapped here with his corpse, and she was too scared to move again.

‘Thump’, the door to her prison shook on its hinges, another ‘thump’ and the door flew apart in thick brown splinters. Rebecca looked up from her shielding hands and to her surprise saw a dark angel silhouetted in the doorway. All pale flesh and red satin, the angel stalked into the room, she grinned down at the corpse and then noticed Rebecca.

Of all the things Rebecca had expected to happen, this woman’s entry was not one of them. The raven-haired beauty held out her hand, “Come with me if you want to live”

‘Tap, tap, tap’, Pendragon drummed his fingers on the van’s chipped plastic dashboard, ‘Waiting whilst sober is the most terrible thing’ Pendragon mused despondently. Vampirella had entered the house only ten minutes earlier (being a gentleman and a firm believer in women’s lib, Pendragon had let her go into the dangerous, gloomy house alone) but could walking to the door and shouting her name really damage his reputation as a consummate coward? Perhaps not, and of course, being quite a ‘stately’ (though dilapidated) home, Croglin Grange was bound to have a well stocked bar, and placing the nearest empty bottle (sob!) in his pocket, more for comfort than for use as a weapon, Pendragon left the van and tottered towards the house.

.. her erstwhile kidnapper lay dead before her, his pants pulled down to his ankles ..

“Hullo? You there Vampi?” Pendragon stood at the front door, staring at its cracked green panels, and silence answered his call. He made a slight move to enter, thought better of it, and called her name again; the reply came from an unexpected source. ‘Can you hear me Pen?’ the voice was inside his head! ‘Pen, I’m trapped, help me!’ “Err, where are you dear?” His voice stung the silence. ‘I’m trapped in a shed, behind the house, I need your help now!’

* * *

The stair carpets were worn and frayed beneath her feet, and like the rest of the sparse furniture in the rooms she had cut through getting to the staircase, the banister lay thick with dust.  She reached the end of the staircase at the third floor, and a corridor lay before her from left to right. She sniffed the air and turned left, stalking the darkness till she reached rusty iron steps leading to a gaping hole in the ceiling.

* * *

“Telepathy?” mused Pendragon, “why hasn’t she mentioned she could do that before?” Walking round the exterior of the building, Pendragon discovered a row of dark wooden outhouses, ‘the middle one Pendragon, they’ve trapped me in a crate!’ Pendragon hurried his steps to the second building “My dear, this new trick of yours will go wonderfully with my card reading routine, just as soon as we get out of this situation alive!”

* * *

The attic was close and stank of mildew and mold, a dirty skylight in the center of the cobwebbed ceiling providing only minimal light, and in that light, Vampirella discovered the source of the emanation of evil, sat facing her in a varnished wooden rocking chair.

... Pendragon surveyed the mass of rotten and desiccated bodies covering the earthen floor ...

* * *

The overpowering stench of death and decay filled Pendragons nostrils as thickly as the angry buzzing of myriad flies filled his ears as he stepped into the shed. ‘Fee, fie, foe, fum’ he mused, fumbling in his pocket for a book of matches. Lighting the match revealed the source of the stink, through the clouds of hovering flies. With a yellow handkerchief over his nose and mouth, Pendragon surveyed the mass of rotten and desiccated bodies covering the earthen floor. The corpses lay between him and his goal, a dusty wooden crate near the back of the room, so summoning a sober man's courage, Pendragon stepped into the carrion littered gloom.

* * *

The monster rocked in the chair before her, dressed in a dirty green suit, and from its shrunken face its eyes gleamed like polished tin. 

Vampirella stepped from the ladder, “I’d hate to see you in daylight”

The vampire stopped the rocking of the chair; “You should meet my bride, although I do believe your alcoholic friend will be seeing her quite soon”

The master of Croglin Grange stood and took a step towards Vampirella

“You see, my ‘wife’ and I have been having a little trouble getting sustenance as of late, with my looks and her ‘lack of social skills’ we could hardly fit in at a debutante ball,” He eyed Vampirella up and down with a greasy leer, “but that’s where Wilson fitted in, he 

Pendragon stumbled back as the thing screamed and writhed in its coffin box

would pick them up and we would chew them up, its just a shame he tried to play with that last one”

Vampirella readied herself for a fight, “I would have got to him if she hadn’t, and I should have realized what you were sooner too”

Something started to crackle behind the monster and he smiled, exposing sharp brown teeth “Little girl, you flaunt your meager powers like you’re cock of the walk, but you stink of humanity and I have centuries on you”

With the sound of dry twigs snapping, his back began to split open, and brown jagged wings reached out from his spine, touching the walls of the confined attic room. “Come out and play, its time to end you” The vampire shot into the air and crashed through the skylight, broken glass showering Vampirella’s crouching form.

* * *

Trying not to focus too much on charnel things underfoot, Pendragon reached the crate after three expended matches. “Almost there my dear”, and lifting the lid Pendragon suddenly realized that if Vampirella had been trapped in there, she would have had no trouble getting free.

“Tricked the fool, tricked the fool!” a haggard, stinking crone gripped at Pendragon’s throat with a grip of iron. Choking on the grip to his throat and the stench of her grave-breath, Pendragon struggled in his pocket in an attempt to grab the empty bottle to use as a cosh. He managed to grip something else first; the chunky amulet of protection Vampirella had taken from a mad killer the day before.

“Come to mummy!” the hag drooled, opening its mouth to reveal a sharp yellow tooth. Pendragon slammed the amulet against her head just as his vision began to darken.

The effect of the impact was instantaneous, and half embedded in the she-things head, the amulet started to sizzle and smoke. Released from her flaky fingered grip, Pendragon stumbled back as the thing screamed and writhed in its coffin box. As Pendragon turned, the box spun over and the she hag toppled onto the floor, melting and hissing, it turned its head towards Pendragon and began dragging itself towards him.

* * *

Vampirella’s shoulder blades give birth to shiny black wings, they harden and are ready for flight in seconds, and then she’s in the air and following her quarry. The thing before her flaps away on tattered rag wings, and turns its brown head back at her, eyes belching green fire and hatred. Turning from human-thing to bat-thing, Vampirella’s body floods with adrenalin, and she laughs in the face of the flying scarecrow’s contempt.

* * *

‘Run, run, you old fool!’ Pendragons thoughts jumbled as he scattered from the things lair, puffing and panting as he collapsed into a heap, making good distance from the outhouse. ‘You’ll reach retirement age (and Hawaii), after all’ he mused whilst catching his breath.

* * *

Two creatures ducked and slashed in the purple night sky, the older, evil vampire fluttering higher, whipping his talon like finger nails at her whenever Vampirella tried to reach his wrinkled throat. First blood came to the Croglin vampire, as he ripped three slashes across her belly, and roaring with pain Vampirella ducked and flew away towards a distant roadway. The master vampire followed, tittering at his prey as she clutched her wounds whilst erratically flapping away.

Eyes set on his fleeing quarry, the Croglin vampire flew lower and lower to match Vampirella’s descent, but in a quick motion, a huge burst of strength seemed to hit the female vampire and she shot straight back into the air. Speedily leaping into the air, in order to try and gain an upper hand, he failed to see the electricity pylons up above.

Picking up a piece of wooden debris, Vampirella strolled towards the burning form of the Croglin vampire. The broken, charred monster leered at her from his position against the foot of the pylon, and with his body smashed and his neck broken; he still managed to utter a few words from a jagged, bloody maw. He smiled at her from cracked yellow lips, “You don’t really think you can win, do you?” Vampirella smacked the broken branch into his chest; “More than you,” she smiled down at the dying monster, and with a gasp from its clenched brown teeth, the thing expired.

* * *

They stood holding each other upright while Croglin Grange burned, exhaustion and fatigue kept them silent, until the heat from the flames became too much for either of them to bear. “Come on Pen”, Vampirella turned Pendragon towards the waiting van. “Vampi, we seem to be leaving quite a wake of destruction behind us these days!” he coughed a little and smiled, “what I wouldn’t give to find a good old country pub with a bed and an open bar!” She turned to him, grinning, “We deserve a rest Pen, and you need to take a read of that book, there’s something big here, bigger than we know.”

  All images on this site are copyright © 2004, Harris Publications, Inc.  VAMPIRELLA ® and other characters are trademarks of Harris Publications, Inc. Text and concepts © 2004 Mike Grace. All rights reserved.