Dead Funny: Encore E-Book

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

What happens when mirth turns to murder? When the screams are not from joy, but flesh-ripping pain? Dead Funny: Encore is the second helping of monstrous tales from the brightest lights in UK comedy. Award winners Robin Ince and Johnny Mains team up for this second exploration of the relationship between comedy and horror, the dark follow up to 2014's smash hit debut, Dead Funny. Featuring stories by: James Acaster, Clare Ferguson Walker, Toby Hadoke, Natalie Haynes, Rufus Hound, Robin Ince, Elis James, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Alice Lowe, Jason Manford, Alan Moore, Andrew O'Neill, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, John Robertson and Isy Suttie.

Leseprobe

What happens when mirth turns to murder? When the screams are not from joy, but flesh-ripping pain?Dead Funny: Encoreis the second helping of monstrous tales from the brightest lights in UK comedy.

Award winners Robin Ince and Johnny Mains team up for this second exploration of the relationship between comedy and horror, the dark follow up to 2014’s smash hit debut,Dead Funny.

Featuring stories by: James Acaster, Clare Ferguson Walker, Toby Hadoke, Natalie Haynes, Rufus Hound, Robin Ince, Elis James, Stewart Lee, Josie Long, Alice Lowe, Jason Manford, Alan Moore, Andrew O’Neill, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, John Robertson and Isy Suttie.

PRAISE FOR DEAD FUNNY

‘Johnny Mains is one of these people, his encyclopaedic knowledge and private collection of books and memorabilia is stunning. Seriously Johnny should lay on some catering and provide guided tours round his house. I get excited when I get a personalised book, this guy probably has the authors soul locked up in a mason jar in his cellar.’ —Jim McLeod,Ginger Nuts of Horror

‘Johnny Mains not only carries a flame for the old horrors, but wants to cause a bit of a conflagration of his own.’ —Stephen Volk

‘It seems like a lifetime ago since I first heard about this book. I was lucky enough to be one of the first people in the know, and ever since then I have been intrigued, and excited. I loved the premise of the book, a load of comedians and stand up comics tackling my most beloved of genres. A brilliant concept, when you consider that in my opinion both horror and comedy come from the same dark pit in our minds and soul.’ —Ginger Nuts of Horror

‘Most of the tales explore damaged minds, whether it’s Reece Shearsmith’s dog-murdering boy, Mitch Benn’s vengeful doctor or Matthew Holness’s deranged puppeteer. On the whole, the better stories embrace the supernatural, such as the future-predicting diary in Katy Brand’s “For Roger” and the siren-like women who lead a vulgar banker astray in Phill Jupitus’s tale.

The most experienced author here, Charlie Higson, fares best with his cheerily macabre story about an ageing horror-movie actor. Throughout, the book revels in the unsettling overlap between laughter and dread.’ —James Lovegrove, Financial Times

‘The short, punchy tales each have their own distinctively scary flavour, kicking off with Reece Shearsmith’s beautifully vicious-with-a-twist Dog, featuring some gory canine-based retribution.

Other contributors include Mitch Benn, Neil Edmond, Matthew Holness, Rufus Hound, Tim Key, Phill Jupitus, Michael Legge and Al Murray. There is pretty much something for everyone here. I always suspected comedians were a pretty sick and twisted fraternity. Dead Funny confirms it and the book is all the better for it.’ —Bruce Dessau, Beyond the Joke

‘This is not the result of some job-swapping reality TV show, this is the real thing, with veritable authors pulling many of the stops (and viscera) out to show their worth writing horror. And it’s just as nasty as it could be – but in all the right ways.’ —The Bookbag

‘Dead Funny is hopefully the book that has the best chance of propelling horror fiction back into the face of the general public. It is a good thing that this book is of such high quality.’ —Ginger Nuts of Horror

‘This book is a treat to read as there are some fantastic tales from writers who are (mostly) new to the genre. If you want some smart, well written horror with a hint of mirth, I strongly encourage you to invest in a copy. Or else.’ —Snakebite Reviews

‘As I have said before humour and horror are not always the perfect bedfellows, but each of the contributors toDead Funnyclearly show great affection for the genre that comes through in the writing. Don’t expect all the stories to be a laugh a minute, some of them are pretty gruesome, though there are some tasty little gags to be found. I give Dead Funny a 666/666.’ —The Horror Hothouse

Dead Funny: Encore

Robin Ince is a multi-award winning comedian and author. His book, Robin Ince’s Bad BookClub was based on his tour Bad Book Club. More recently he has toured Happiness Through Science, The Importance of Being Interested,Robin Ince Is In And Out Of His Mind and Blooming Buzzing Confusion. Robin is currently hosting Book Shambles with Josie Long.

Johnny Mains is an award-winning editor, author and film historian. He has written three collections of horror stories, the introduction to Stephen King’s 30th anniversary edition of Thinner, and manages to fit all that in around his job as a Homelessness Officer.

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Concept of Dead Funny © Johnny Mains & Clare-Louise Mains 2011 & 2016

The selection and order of this anthology is © Johnny Mains & Robin Ince 2016

Individual contributions © the contributors, 2016

The right ofRobin Ince and Johnny Mainsto be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2016

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-052-2 electronic

Robin dedicatesDead Funnyto Pamela Ince who pretended not to notice when he kept stealing money from her purse to surreptitiously buy theMayflower Book of Black Magic StoriesandPan Horrors.

Johnny dedicatesDead Funnyto Michael Brooke for helping to add another string to the bow. A dear friend, indeed.

Inhalt

Robin Ince

Introduction

Johnny Mains

Another Introduction

Rufus Hound

Date Night

Isy Suttie

Under My Skin

Alice Lowe

Carnival

Andrew O’Neill

The Vault

Kiri Pritchard-McLean

The Man Made of Worms

James Acaster

To Do

Robin Ince

Hide and Seek

Toby Hadoke

Cunning

Josie Long

A Ghost Story

Jason Manford

Jessica’s Friend

Clare Ferguson Walker

Daddy’s Girl

John Robertson

Harry

Natalie Haynes

The Basement Conversion

Elis James

Above and Beyond

Stewart Lee

Test Pressing

Alan Moore

Cold Reading

Alice Lowe

Paedo

Who’s Who

Acknowledgements

Robin Ince

Introduction

Standup comedycan be an act of trepanning without the use of a drill bit. The furious demons that build up throughout the day are cast out in front of an audience with the aid of wild gesticulation and stupid voices. The easy day is not always the best one for the comic, a few spikes of antagonism at least can generate the necessary frustration and umbrage to sharpen a performance. It is cathartic and addictive.

The greatest frustration is when an annoyance can’t seemed to be turned into jokes or routines. Once, the basement flat I lived in flooded with sewage, destroying many of my possessions, soaking 1000 vinyl LPs, turning my horror poster collection to a stinking mush. That night, I went on stage and performed an impassioned set about why you should never try attain anything beautiful as in the end, someone will shit all over it. I attempted a similar routine a few nights later, but it wasn’t as effective. Even as the effects of the deluge were still being felt, the routine was becoming flimsier. The greatest annoyance of the destruction of my flat wasn’t merely the loss of possessions, it was its failure to generate a routine with longevity. However the horrible the incident, the stand-up looks at the destruction or horror and wonders, “is there some good material in this?”

In June 2015, I started a stand up sabbatical. After ten years of touring, I began to see hints of madness, and not the useful kind. I wondered how the loss of this nightly release would affect me. Would I sink into a world of absurd images, rail at the sky, and gibber and shake between eight and ten PM every night, or would I just sink into a chair and enjoy a silence, turning down my inner monologue because I didn’t need to feed off it so much.

Within 48 hours of my (almost) farewell gig, I decided I would spend the next six months working like a 1940s pulp writer. I don’t mean creating a religion that will take Hollywood by storm; that is further down my to-do list, I would just attempt to write a short story every day or two. I would learn about writing by banging my head against walls until stories fell out. What I have found intriguing is that my stand-up brain is now dormant. Where once each delightful or hideous experience would be processed into some rant or pun, now they were stretched and warped into elements of a story. Many of the stories will be deleted or placed on a pyre, but for now, I am just typing until blistered. My story in this volume was the first product of this process. In a moment of playing with my son in a park, I imagined the worst, and then pounced on it, hoping that my fear was not a solitary one but would tap into the paranoia of parents and child minders.

Talking to readers of the first Dead Funny at events and bars, some expressed surprise that the stories were not only lighthearted fables with a dash of cannibal offal or bloodletting. Some of the stories were really rather grotesque, others were haunting and melancholy. Some of the stand-ups had found a new drill bit of catharsis in writing stories for a horror anthology rather than gags for the immediate laughter and approval of a crowd. I hope that this is true of this volume too. Some writers return, Stewart Lee, Rufus Hound and myself, but most are new. With the exception of one comedian, everyone I asked said yes. It seems the sort of comedians I hang around with are the sort who have something ghastly lurking in their imagination, and sometimes it is stupid too. We are stupid, ghastly people, after all.

One surprise in this anthology of stand-up comedians may be the inclusion of a story by Alan Moore, the alchemist and soothsayer of Northampton. Johnny and I have made an exception as I once tried to destroy the mystery and reputation of Alan by luring him into the standup arena. I asked him to join me for a series of Christmas events mixing scientists, comedians and musicians. I even forced him to sing the theme ‘Saturday Morning Watchmen’ (a delightful parody to be found within the internet). It seemed I was on course to turn the respected writer of Lost Girls, Promethea and From Hell into a cheap turn like the rest of us. Sadly, a backstage conversation at the Hammersmith Apollo involving Hugh Grant and his imaginings of what Alan’s beard may entail curtailed our attempt to ruin Alan’s reputation by turning him into a team captain of 8 out 10 Cats. Alan has returned to Northampton where we meet once a month and record our podcast, Blooming Buzzing Confusion.

This may be the last Dead Funny for a while. I hope it is both horrible and silly and that you are surprised by what lies within. I hope we are back some day for another volume, either before or after the next apocalypse.

Finally, thank you to Johnny Mains for making this possible and to my son for the new sense of paranoia and panic that goes with unconditional love.

Johnny Mains

Another Introduction

Getting the firstDead Funnyfrom the initial concept to print took three years. As briefly mentioned in my foreword to the first book, after Robin agreed to come on as co-editor, I asked quite a number of publishers ifDFwas something they would be interested in.Horror doesn’t sell. You’ve got a good concept there, Johnny, but horror is dead.Then the stars aligned and Salt came on board, and it was a frantic race to get to the finishing line and to get the book out. There were a few mistakes along the way, but when the book was finally in my hands made the whole journey worth it. To have anutterlyunique anthology, to try something that has never been attempted and breaks new ground, is something that the horror genre should be proud of. The old dogcanlearn new tricks.

As an editor, it’s hard to be objective about a book after it’s been published, a whole different thing whilst in the middle of it, but picking it up for the first time since it was let loose, I’m happy to find that it’s a very entertaining book. Some of the stories take me back to the joyful Pan Horror era, and others slip into an urban weird territory that contemporary readers are currently enjoying. Of all of the reviews I’ve read about Dead Funny, none of them have called it a boring anthology. I am quietly relieved. I’d rather have polar extremes of feeling than a simple, meh, it was okay.

On November 2, 2014, Dead Funny was launched at the Bloomsbury Theatre, to a sell-out crowd of around 500 people. This was not your traditional book launch. My co-editor and friend, Robin Ince, brought together some of the contributors and other talents to put on a night of entertainment like no other. With Robin as Ringmaster, Charlie Higson, Josie Long, Stewart Lee, Rufus Hound, Danielle Ward, Reece Shearsmith all held court. I watched the whole show from the darkness of the wings, quite dazed that something that I had help create had somehow ended up as this.

After the show had ended, honest punters lined up to buy their copies of the book to have them signed by the talent. We sold a good number of copies, I even got to sign a few of them, and I was already thinking about the work needed for book two.

Robin agreeing to come back on board has been the icing on the cake. He is a great man and has been very tolerant of me, this fish out of water, swimming around in a comedic world I know nothing about. He’s a good friend and I thank him and all of the authors for their patience during this process, which has seen a few delays hit it. Publishing is never an easy process, but it’s what makes the end result all the more sweet.

Welcome to the Encore.

Rufus Hound

Date Night

As apartments go,it was unremarkable. An unquestionably rented, one bed, basement flat; open plan-ish, not damp but ingrained with cold. From the outside it looked lousy but had, in the last year, been smeared with paint of forrestal nomenclature (‘Canopy’, ‘New Bracken’, ‘Mossier’), welcomed a real-wood floor and expensive curtains. What little there was in the way of furniture was antique, functional and less ornate than it might have been. The modern morass of cables and incandescent plastics, hidden. The rest clean and wallowing in the pervasive aroma of essentially oiled candles. Whoever lived here had taste – or had at least met someone with taste and copied them.

Thick velvet drapes thwarted the external, urban din, lending the place an air of sanctuary. Inside, tonight, just two sounds could be heard. ‘Janus Plays Telephone’ by The Landau Orchestra, and the low whirr of a fan oven. The only soul capable of hearing either was sat in the bedroom, tying the clean laces of polished shoes on new-socked feet. Stef, dressed now, but not long from the shower, could still feel its heat on his skin, how his surface molecules jostled with recent antagonism; the stinging, surface vibration that matched the butterfly thrum of his gut. Stef was excited, inside and out. Not that he’d show it. He checked his watch. Not long now. Final inspection.

The bedroom? Check. He re-plumped the duvet and all was right in the room. Linens were fresh, woods polished, lighting muted, surfaces uncluttered. A swift glance into the bathroom confirmed it was as he’d left it: steamy, but gleaming. Check.

The hallway. Not much to inspect, save for the front door, some coat hooks, a lacquered Sheesham dresser and the black, lidded vase which sat atop it. As part of the interior design, the jar worked; its brown-black curves in harmony with the drawers’ hue and the wall behind it. Looked at directly, however, it was revolting. Not ugly, but repulsive, repellent – it had some indefinable property that quietly ordered the scrutineer to look away. In short, a thing that didn’t want to be stared at for too long; Stef knew how it felt.

The lounge-kitchen-dining room was next. The small kitchen was catalogue-tidy, the only signs of ever having been used being the two regimented bottles of red (one open) sitting on the side and the warm illumination of the oven. The table was set for two, dressed with tea lights, runner and a single poppy in a thin glass vase. With only two diners tonight, the spare chairs could, he supposed, have been moved, but to nowhere tidier than leaving them where they were. Besides, one of them was broken – the lightest nudge and the damned thing toppled forwards, legs in the air. Its inelegance irritated him, but the alternatives were either repairing it, which Stef felt had an air of manual labour and was, thus, beneath him, or throwing it out, which would skewer the visual symmetry. As he started toward the lounge, his belt loop snagged on the chair and down it went. Stef took a deep breath, slowly closed his eyes, clenched and unclenched his teeth, opened his eyes, exhaled and righted it. It was galling how often this happened but, after tonight, he doubted he’d give tinker’s cuss.

He straightened the print of Francis Bacon’s Pope Innocent XII hanging above the armchair, made a millimetric adjustment to the fall of the curtain and turned to observe his handiwork. In this flat, Stef had set a stage, and tonight’s performance was an improvised two-hander called Give Me What I Want. If all went to plan, the curtain call would be taken some hours from now with him sated and this immaculate apartment, attentively finessed, covered in blood.

The knock at the door came six minutes later than agreed. Opening it, Stef quickly ushered in his companion for the evening.

“Hello. Do come in,” the warmth considered and affected.

“Thanks.”

She was pretty. Dirty blonde, with dark roots, pale blue eyes and just enough make-up to look like she wasn’t wearing any. Slim, a little taller than average and with an ironic, weary cynicism that emanated from her as surely as her perfume. She handed him her long leather coat, and he took her in. Stiletto heels, skin-tight, oil-slick jeans and a white linen shirt under a red satin corset. He immediately thought how good she’d taste.

“Camilla,” she said, offering a cheek.

“Jacob,” said Stef, kissing the cheek and failing not to become distracted by her extended neck and the imagined-audible throb therein.

“Sooooo . . .” she said, underlining the awkwardness of two strangers standing silently in a hallway and, in doing so, breaking it.

He came to. “This way,” he said, waving her towards the lounge.

Camilla gazed about, taking in the spotlessness of her surroundings. “Wow. You’ve been busy. Trying to impress someone?” She smiled, eyes widened sarcastically.

He smiled back. “And what makes you think it’s not always like this?” he asked.

“Oh, y’know. Single man. Flat this tidy? You’ve either got a missus or OCD. Or . . .” she struck a pose “. . . you’re trying to impress some smoking-hot chick you just met on Tinder . . .” The end of the sentence was lost to self-mocking laughter.

“Well, maybe one of those,” he replied, nodding, consciously aping her geniality – though in truth, he was irked by the teasing, gentle though it was. “Drink?”

“Sure, why not? You only live once,” she laughed. “Red?”

For someone who’d never been here before, this girl sure knew how to make herself at home. Stef fetched two tall wine glasses and the open, breathing claret.

“So, you said you work in events,” started Stef and, when that was met with a raised eyebrow, continued, “On your profile.”

“Oh, yeah. Events. Well, you know what Macmillan said about those, dear boy.”

“Sorry. Macmillan?” he asked.

“Prime Minister in the fifties. He . . . oh, look, it’s not . . . never mind. Irrelevant. Sorry. Crap joke. Let’s talk about you. What do you do?” she quizzed.

Setting down a glass of wine next to her, he replied, “Theoretical Physics,”

Camilla burst out laughing.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing! Nothing. Just . . . ‘Theoretical Physics’,” she repeated, air quotes included. “Ah, look. I’m sorry. You’ve made this huge effort and I’m ruining it. Sorry.”

“No, no. It’s fine,” he lied, taking a large pull of the claret and immediately looking back to the bottle, readying the imminent top-up.

“Let’s start again. Please,” she pleaded, eyes brimming with amused apology, head tilted. That neck again. That neck. The most bestial part of him revved, the prior prissy indignation overridden, the slate wiped clean.

“Of course,” he replied. “So, where are you from?”

And so: dating small-talk. Conversational lubricant oiling the machine that turns strangers into bedmates. Every date, at its heart, asks the question “Shall we fuck?” and now the negotiation as to whether these two would or not had begun; increasingly, it seemed they would.

He wanted her. And he wanted to wait until she was least expecting it, to sink his teeth into her lissom throat and for her to succumb.

A set of used dishes and two empty bottles later, Camilla made a move to the sofa, and the broken chair, sensing a golden opportunity to throw itself to the floor, took it. Stef silently cursed, audibly apologised for having a ‘rotten, bloody chair’, and stood it back in its place. He was trying to look slick and broken chairs weren’t slick. Yes, it was only a minor thing, but he’d wanted this evening to be faultless. It was deeply unimportant, he knew that, and yet it rankled; a hairsbreadth scratch on this new-Bentley of a night. This was what he was thinking when it happened.

Taking to the sofa, Camilla had accidentally pulled down the woollen throw that sat upon it and, not wanting to blight the neatness of her surroundings, turned to put it back. In doing so, the taut white flesh of her neck shone like daylight through stained glass. Irresistible. He travelled the distance between them in a single step, and before she knew what was happening, his teeth were pressing down into the flesh of her jugular.

“No,” said Camilla, tutting.

“No?” spluttered Stef.

“No,” she confirmed. “You’ve rushed it.”

“Rushed it?! We’ve been sat here for two hours! I’ve been ‘domineering, but not too cold or unkind’. Come on! This was exactly like you said!” Camilla stood.

“It’s meant to be a seduction, Stef. The moment you strike . . . that’s deep stuff, y’know. We’ve barely made it to the sofa! It’s a really intimate thing. I mean, you of all people . . . ! When you bite, it should be because, deep down . . .”

“. . . you want me to,” chimed Stef, his eyes rolling. He was cross now: at the situation, at her, at himself. He knew he’d charged in, but he’d honestly thought, the way she’d adjusted the throw, that she’d been telling him to go for it. Clearly not. His frustration now stripped away the role he’d been playing all night.

“Yes, Stef. Yes. Because I want you to,” she repeated, crossly. “Look, I know it’s not easy, but it’s important.”

“To you,” finished Stef, who immediately regretted it.

“Yes! To ME. Which should be enough of a fucking reason! But apparently not!” She was shouting now. “Do you know what happens when a vampire bites – not feeds – bites?”

He did know. He’d known for about two years, since they’d first talked about it. When it came to vampires, Camilla was encyclopaedic. Before he’d met her, Stef could honestly say he hadn’t given the undead much consideration, but in the twenty-six months he’d known Camilla, this had changed. Drastically.Twilight,Nosferatu, seventeen different somethings ofDracula,Nadja,Only Lovers Left Alive,Byzantium, all watched in their first three months together. The reading list was similarly themed.Salem’s Lot,The Compleat Vampyre,the complete Anne Rice,30 Days of Night,The Strain; the various lores criss-crossing and cross-referencing, the ‘lifestylers’ trying to make canon of it all. The online forums. The club nights. And then the blood. First as a donor and, after that, as a drinker; the surprisingly powerful religiosity of the ritualised letting and feeding slowly taking on real meaning for Stef, giving him power and purpose. Life was not as he had previously understood it. Now there was this. And now there was her.

Camilla had been encouraging throughout and the nirvanic reward-fucks she dispensed for each new transgression ensured that now, fourteen months since his first taste, he was a fully-fledged sanguinarian. In fact, of late, he’d started to wonder if he was more into it than she was. Thinking back, he could recall plenty of times she’d egged him on, but was struggling to remember any time she’d properly been in the thick of it. The abiding image he had of her at ‘the gatherings’ was of her on the sidelines, looking amused. Not captivated. Not intense or devoted – more like she was trying not to smirk. At home, nestled together, binge watching True Blood, there wasn’t a whiff of it, but the moment they socialised he felt her fall away, play the supportive girlfriend rather than the active protagonist. It niggled. He didn’t want to make a mountain out of a molehill – especially considering that these doubts only really jagged into him when they were with the others, performing some rite or other, and he just couldn’t bring himself to start a ‘where we’re at in our relationship’ chat with blood dripping down his chin. He loved her utterly, but if she found him silly now, could he bear it?

Then, one day, someone on fang.com uploaded The Compleat Compleat Vampyre, which purported to be the unedited transcript of Jackson’s masterwork, containing – from what Stef could tell, as he clicked swiftly through it on his lunchbreak – few differences from the published version. Indeed, the unseen material contained in the .pdf had seemingly been dropped for being either boring, badly written or bonkers. It may not have taught him anything new about vampires, but it certainly gave Stef a newfound respect for editors. And then the Cruormphora.

It wasn’t a jolt or a slap in the face. It was more like he’d been walking whilst staring intently at his phone, heard a door slam behind him, looked up and realised that he’d accidentally wandered into an industrial freezer, his brain now tasked with processing both the location and its meaning against a rising tide of bubbling what the fucks.

A Cruormphora. The most singularly valuable and powerful item in all of Blood Magick. What little was known about them had been revealed to Ottoman torturers in 1457; corroborated, two centuries later and under similar circumstances by a guest of the Spanish Inquisition. Both deponents stood accused of being in service to vampires and both, after several weeks of firm encouragement, confessed, revealing much thereafter. The hierarchy, rites and intentions. The killing, the undying and the sex. What these men revealed, two hundred years apart, formed the foundations on which every vampire story since had been built. With one crucial omission – the Cruormphora.

Both men attested that the vampires would have sacrificed themselves by the legion to protect these ‘blood urns’ – not vessels for holding blood, but rather solid, jar-shaped totems, made of pure vampire cruor; the genesis of each being Sekhmet’s black ichor. Sekhmet – “Mistress of Dread”, “Lady of Slaughter”, “She Who Mauls”, “Mother of Blood” – the Goddess of Vampires. These unholy grails, connected by deep, primitive magick, formed a network which powered a global vampiric cabal. There were thirteen legitimate courts of vampires, each had its own Cruormphora, and each court ordered nothing without first giving their urn full consultation.

This was all that was known of them. Apart from these two testimonies, not another word, picture or description of the Cruormphora existed anywhere. Stef could immediately see why the editor had chosen to remove the entry from the book. Introducing an object so central to vampire lore without being able to expound upon it looked half-arsed. Indeed, Stef would have dismissed it as the olde-worlde bullshit it so clearly was, were it not for the fact that he knew he had one sat on top of the sheesham drawers in his hallway. Some things are understood by our brains, others by our gut. How could Stef be so sure? He just was; the truth of it burst through him, alongside too many questions for any of them to take prominence or make sense, but they all pointed to her: Camilla.

When they’d moved in together, the place was unfurnished. Interior design had never really interested him, but she’d approached the task with gusto. Seven days from signing the lease, their ugly duckling of a flat was a swan. He had never asked where any of it had come from, accepting her murmured ‘eBay’, ‘storage’ and ‘charity shop’ as true. So, was it possible she had just chanced upon one of the most important objects in all of magickal history? Yes. Probably. Were the odds overwhelmingly against it? They certainly were.

His plan to play it cool evaporated the moment he arrived home. Pushing open the front door, it was the only thing he could see. However hard it urged him to look away, knowing now what it was, its power seemed obvious and irresistible. How could he not have known? And in that moment, he realised that he’d never touched it; the thought of doing so now made his heart race. Holding his breath, he slowly reached out a hand, felt something foreign inside his head tell him not to, ignored it, pushed on and . . .

“Shit!”

Camilla, stood next to the sofa, was watching him through the doorway, had seen the gap between his fingers and the jar all but disappear. Now it was her turn to have too many questions. “How are you . . . why have . . . what have you . . .” the tumult of disbelief tumbling out of her. “Shit!” she repeated.

Silence, and in it, a look between them: “How?”

Camilla moved first, pushing past Stef, grabbing her coat and making for the front door. “Wait!” he started.

“Shut the fuck up,” she snarled. “Not one. Fucking. Word. Come on.”

They got in her car and drove, the atmosphere between them reminding Stef of the day his mum had caught him smoking outside WHSmith’s. Camilla’s fury was so strong that even though he’d done nothing wrong per se, he knew the diplomatic thing to do was keep schtum. Forty silent minutes later, they parked in, what a townie like Stef would describe as, ‘the countryside’. Not that he could see much of it, the night’s slender moon and low cloud conspiring to cloak anything beyond the immediate. Camilla’s door was open before the handbrake had fully locked, and she had a foot on the ground before the headlights had lit their last. There was a decent distance between them before she called for him, the tone identical to one taken with an unruly pet. Five minutes of wordless marching later, she turned, a minute after that, up ambled Stef. They stood in a clearing, her glaring, him wary. When she spoke, it was weighted and deliberate. She’d had an hour to cool off, but every syllable burnt with fresh intensity.

“How do you know about the Cruormphora?” she asked in such a way that he began to wonder whether she’d brought him here to kill him.

“PDF,” he replied and, from the look she shot back, realised that this had utterly failed to satisfy her. “Fang.com. Someone uploaded an unedited . . .” but that was as far as he got before she interrupted.

“Fucking, internet fucking . . . fucks,” she stammered. “Fuck!” This eruption coming as a scream. “Can’t leave well a-fucking-lone!” She pulled out her phone and started angrily tapping, the eerie screenlight turning her face B-movie monstrous. “Have you shown it to anyone? Flagged it up?” she asked as she typed.

“What? At work? Who would I tell? Jesus, Mills . . .”

“What about online? Or any of the Blood Magick lot?” She looked up from the screen. “Have you uttered one word of this to anyone, Stef? And don’t fucking lie to me.” She held his gaze.

“No. I swear.”

She exhaled, her relief palpable. “Well, okay. We’re not out of the woods yet, but . . .” The typing continued.

“Well, no. The exact opposite, in fact,” said Stef, gesturing to the trees.

Distracted by her typing, the joke nearly missed her – “Wha . . . ?” then landed, the utter silliness of it (coupled with the relief that he hadn’t told anyone about the Cruormphora) blowing much of the tension between them away. If she could have laughed she would have done, but instead settled for muttering “You dick” as her phone whooshed its email-sent whoosh. She looked at him. “Right,” she exhaled again, “so.”

“So,” repeated Stef.

The cloud lifted a little and the moonlight crept through. They looked at each other. The panic dissipated and breaths were taken. Scores of questions answered in the other’s face. But not all. It was Stef who spoke first.

“How do you have it?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” she sighed. “Too long.” She knew she was going to have to tell it or lose him. Hell, she may well lose him anyway. Either way, it’d change things between them and the realisation tore her heart a little. A tear fought its way from her chest, out through her left eye and zigzagged down her cheek. “You remember, when we met, you asked me about when I was younger?” Stef nodded.