Category Archives: Baobhan Sith

Scottish Vampires

Ring of Roses

Posted on by

A heavy sleet was being vomited from above when I got out the taxi a couple of streets from Crowe’s house. I walked towards it, a Victorian stone villa set in grounds too big to be called a mere garden, ploughing my way through drifts of freshly fallen snow. The gate was open as though someone had recently passed through and not bothered to close it behind them. But I knew that it had been left that way by the Baobhan Sith as an ironic invitation to me, as though I was the vampire. I decided to accept and trod the path, unsullied by human footprints.

The front garden faced the main road but the back was secluded, protected as it was by a thickly planted line of mature trees, skeletal sentinels whose branches pierced a bruised sky. A blur of movement exploded to my right, brief but unmistakable. I hurried to the huge beech hedge where it had been, certain I’d find the perpetrator, but found nothing and no one.

Then, from a ground floor window the pale oval of a face appeared.

I retreated to the summerhouse and the face tracked my progress, or at least it did until something far more interesting caught its attention. I followed the trajectory of its gaze and there, as though appearing out of nowhere, were the three Baobhan Sith, naked and dancing sinuously in the snow to music only they could hear.

But I knew something the voyeur did not, that this was no cheap peep show, but the prelude to a far meatier entertainment. One of the Sith tossed an armful of blond hair over her right shoulder raising her breast in the process as though inviting the watcher behind glass to come play. In reality it was a signal to her blood sisters and I knew the real games were about to commence.

Something Old, Something New

Posted on by

Edinburgh’s birth and the land upon which it was built was nothing more than a volcanic plug spewed out of the belly of a bilious god; destined to become a precarious high point where people felt safe from invasion, but unfortunately were not. They built a wall, a stone girdle as though that would protect them from what was within. And when the girdle became too tight, they built up and up giving the world its first plague ridden high rises. But that of course was so Old Town darling, and the New was supposed to be the antidote to all that nasty disease and poverty. And maybe it was, but it was also sterile, without the bloated, infarcted beauty of the old where most of the supernaturals made their home.

But there was a newer, tougher breed of supernatural that had no need of such sentimental aesthetics and I was going to its lair. As I turned left into Dean Terrace past the carefully preserved des res from another era, I tried to focus on the non-existent plan which appeared to be: rooting around in the monster’s lair while it was absent hoping to find The Mask which of course would just be lying at the end of a trial of arrows along with some clues about the identity of two murderers who may or may not have known its owner twenty odd years ago.

Walking along Ann Street I wondered how a flying lizard centuries old had managed to infest one of its mansions. Number 28 was next, the lights were not on but that did not mean no one was home. I walked up the short rubbish strewn, weed filled path and rang the bell which I could hear clanging around the house. No one came. On impulse I pushed at the door and it opened. It wasn’t really that surprising that she didn’t think to lock the door, it wasn’t as though she needed to be security conscious and if random council workers or posties went missing more plausible explanations could be found, palms greased, influence exercised. The beauty of this type of predator was that it lay in wait amongst its prey perfectly camouflaged until it was too late. In the more exclusive areas of the city where ‘neighbour’ was a dirty word, they were practically invisible.

And even if you saw past the beguiling disguise, if you dared to try telling the police that the little old lady next door was a vampire, you’d be buying your own personal one-way ticket to the nut-house…

All You Can Eat

Posted on by

A morning mist hung low over frost slimed grass. A weak, diffused light fought to prise the grip of night from the landscape, resulting in a grey gloom from which the twisted trunks of trees reared like petrified beasts long dead.

The Meadows, slap bang in the middle of the city, felt torn from it as though committed to forming a little world of its own for some slight real or imagined. And in a way that was true enough, because the red-eyed creature I was hunting had padded this way on taloned feet stirring up some of the old presences that haunted this sacred grove.

In the bad old days the Meadows had been submerged under a body of water that stretched from Hope Park Terrace to Brougham Street. Nameless ancient things had lurked in its depths and even when the loch had been drained, they’d refused to take the hint and hung around just for the sheer hell of it.

Unfortunately for me it looked like some of that hell had decided to drag me down with it.

I nearly walked into the vast trunk of an old elm and cursed my clumsiness aloud. A bad move as it turned out because it drew the attention of another predator out on the prowl this fine Sunday morning. A low, throaty laugh, a caress of light breath on the back of my neck and I knew I had much more to worry about than the minor demon I’d been trying to trap.

“Well,” it said stepping out in front of me. “looks like breakfast is served.”

Love Bites

Posted on by

There was something about the three blonde, black-eyed women that was not quite right. At least that’s what Colin thought as he finished one pint and thought about starting another. His thoughts turned as they always did to his bitch ex Jackie who was giving him grief, not letting him see the wee man until he paid up what she said he owed. Fat chance of that when he’d just lost his job in the off-licence where he’d worked for ten years. Who’d have thought offies in Scotland could ever go out of business? You had to get through the cold and smothering dark of the Scottish winter somehow and it was a time honoured national tradition that a vast quantity of booze was just the way to do it.

He decided on a another pint and whisky chaser and lumbered unsteadily to the bar to get them in. The Bingo Wings was a run down shabby sort of place, but you could sit in the gloom and nurse drink and grievances in equal measure with no interference from anyone who knew what was good for them. And from the hot glances thrown his way from the blond bints, he was positive he could show them a thing or two on that front. Talent-spotting wasn’t a usual pastime in the Bingo Wings: there were other more likely venues for that sort of nonsense. No, this was where silent, angry men sat and drank themselves into a well earned oblivion before picking a fight outside to round the evening off.

Christ they were fit though: lush, full figured and from the long legs, not much shy of his six feet frame. He thought maybe they’d been to a fancy dress party because they were all dressed in white see-through dress things that rode right up when they sat down on the bar stools, so you could pretty much see everything. Little tarts.

The nearest one turned her head to look at him, a sinuous, twisting motion accompanied by a fall of white-blond hair that was so long she could have sat on it. Well, if the little slag played her cards right, she’d be sitting on something else before the end of the night.

“Are you sisters then?” he said controlling the slurring with a mighty effort.

The other two turned to stare at him with that same curiously serpentine motion and three pairs of black eyes fixed on his face with a disconcerting intensity. They must have been sisters because their features were almost identical. There was a sharpness about the nose and cheek-bones that he hadn’t noticed at first, but they were still stunners, no doubt about it.

“In a way,” the nearest one answered in a soft voice. He knew it, she was definitely up for it. Wait until Jackie found out that he still had the old one two magic.

“What’s your name?” she continued.

“Eh, Colin. Colin McQuarrie. And what’s yours?” he asked, finally remembering the finer points of leg-over etiquette.

“Margo. And this is Morgan and Marjorie.”

The blond in the middle, Morgan, slid gracefully off her stool and came to stand next to him. Maybe he’d be in the three-way before the night was out if he minded his p’s and q’s. He hurriedly calculated just how much he’d had to drink because it really wouldn’t do to disappoint the ladeez seeing as how they were so up for it. Not if the abuse Jackie had regularly showered him with was anything to go by.

Morgan put a hand on his arm and was so close he could smell her: an intoxicating scent that reminded him of the green promise of spring woods. He was just about to press his mouth to hers when she ruined it by speaking.

That was women for you.

“Did you know you have an elemental attached to you?”

“An elephant? Are you pissed hen?”

The third blond, Marjorie had joined them and stood on his other side. He felt hemmed in for some reason and started to wonder where Rab the barman was; quelling a sudden surge of adrenalin as though some part of his brain was telling him to make a run for it. Why would he run from three lassies?

“An elemental,”

“It’s a lower form of spirit-”

“That attaches itself to people who have done bad things in their lives. It feeds off the energy that creates-”

“What she means is the suffering of the victim. For every bad deed there must be a victim-”

“And for every bad deed, the elemental gets bigger-”

“And bigger and-”

“Yours is the size of a tenement. And it’s still growing.”

He’d lost track of who was saying what but it didn’t matter because it melded into a seamless whole as though the conversation was taking place entirely inside his own head. The three hadn’t taken their eyes from him, tracking his progress like a deer or some other prey that didn’t have a hope in hell. Being hopeless had never felt so good.

“You know those angry, frustrated feelings you get where you want to burn the world and everybody in it?”

He was pretty sure that was Marjorie who was stroking his arm snaking a trail up to the back of his neck. Dumbly he nodded.

“That’s from the elemental. Sort of like waste products if you see what I mean. You’ll have noticed how it’s getting worse no doubt? That’s the elemental getting stronger. Soon it’ll be powerful enough to consume you and then you’ll be part of it forever. Isn’t that something?” Margo smiled showing small, perfectly formed white teeth.

He was really confused now, unsure if it was the drink or if the women had drugged him. He wasn’t sure he cared, as long as they stayed with him.

“Can’t I get rid of it? I mean, couldn’t you help me?” he said, like a little boy pleading not to be sent to bed. He didn’t question the truth of what he was being told: it was as if he’d always known. Ever since that hit and run that he’d been responsible for as a teenager and then all the other stuff since then…

“Ah, now. We were just getting to that,” said Morgan. “But there’s something you need to do for us first.”

Monday, Monday

Posted on by

I woke up after seven to darkness and the dead, so closely packed it was impossible to tell how many there were. They stood silently, their milky eyes though blind, still able to track me wherever I went, like a field of grey translucent sun flowers.

Had my live visitors wrecked my wards earlier today? I’d rip their limbs off and feed them to them if they had, but somehow I didn’t think it was their style. Besides the wards were so powerful, I didn’t see how anyone could disable them but me.

The Deadlights woke, excited by the promise of all that dark energy and the room thrummed with them, making my head hurt worse than it already did. I waded effortfully through the frozen press of the dead, as though miles down underwater, with a million tonnes of water bearing down on my unprotected head.

I remembered I had a job on tonight and as if to confirm I got a full on visual from one of the Boabhan Sith showing the unmistakable shape of Salisbury Crags and the whispered message:

“The Guardian is awake. You must come.”

I also remembered that it was probably a bad idea given the Hand-of-Glory some kind soul had sent me last night.

It would be madness, mayhem, murder and worse if I accepted such a rash invitation. But then again, it was either that or spend a cheerless Monday night in the cold bosom of the dearly departed.

Of course I went.

Porcupine Tears

Posted on by

I woke up just as dawn broke and tried to get up from the mess of glass, blood and worse on the cream carpet. I was going to need all the shake and vac I could get my hands on. I must have lost more blood than I thought because I was dizzy and woozy and managed to pass out again. When I woke for the second time it was to a grey depressing light with snow falling at the window.

I managed to get myself on all fours and from there crawled to the couch where I reached up and put my hands on the arm rest to try to lever myself up. The shards of glass in my back were firmly embedded in the muscle and hurt like hell. At least I could move my limbs, if a shard had penetrated my spine in just the right place it could have paralysed me. But I was getting no where fast trying to stand up and my inability to do so was making me start to panic.

A noise behind me said I wasn’t alone and not in a good way.

Diabolus Ex Machina

Posted on by

Midnight Falls had been a haven for all those who sought refuge from the human world; an increasingly precious commodity. Morgana had established a nest in the hills and Tobias’s predecessors had built the town. Occasional skirmishes meant that there were casualties on both sides, but nothing dramatic enough to risk all out war about. Midnight Fall’s real attraction was the spell of forgetting strong enough to compel most of the humans who came here to leave none the wiser. Those impervious few who stayed were tolerated as long as they didn’t poke their noses, or anything else for that matter, where they were most decidedly not wanted. That may have accounted for the ostensibly human Harper-Hodges. But more importantly for the creatures of Midnight Falls, a compromise of sorts had been attained. Not perfect and certainly not amicable, but it worked.

Everything in the garden was, if not rosy, rare steak bloody. That changed when Morgana was challenged for her throne by a younger, stronger contender called Lilith. Morgana, fuelled by the carelessness of passing millennia had, like many of the old ones, become distracted from the more Machiavellian machinations of the slaughter house that was the nest. But she wasn’t down and out yet.

She conjured and made a pact with the demon Baphomet. Many were sacrificed: human; vampire; all to satisfy her demon lover and he was as good as his word. Better. In celebration, Morgana unleashed unparalleled carnage the chief attraction of which was Lilith’s torture which consisted of a piece by piece live dismemberment lasting months. When Morgana got bored with Lilith’s screams, she gave her to the tender mercies of Baphomet who gained more power than he had in centuries. That’s demons for you: whatever the bargain, they always came out on top while you whined on like an impotent idiot about how that’s not what you meant at around the same time they scooped your intestines out and used them as draft excluders.

The demon’s presence poisoned Midnight Falls drip by drop and the were folk withered under its influence. Nothing too alarming at first: their beast forms became subtly distorted. Then the deformities became more gross, less easily dismissed. The more powerful were better equipped to preserve the shape they once had, but in truth they all suffered. And it wasn’t just their beast form that was altering, their sense of identity was too. Meanwhile Morgana had decided to make the subjugation of the weres a sign of her new power not to mention a permanent source of live food for her growing brood.

Tobias, when he became leader had a brilliant, awful idea. The were-folk would take their own power source and gain the necessary strength to seal Morgana and her kind up for good in her mountain fortress. That power source was a captive spirit, to be kept in a state somewhere between life and oblivion enabling the were folk to feed from its life force for all time to come. The entity had to be powerful enough to perform this role but at the same time quiescent enough to control. And, in their desperation, that’s what the fools did. I didn’t bother asking what rituals were involved because I had an idea and it wasn’t a jolly old tea party. But it was Tobias who did the incantations and made the sacrifices, because as leader that was his cross to bear.

But he hadn’t done it very well because the force of nature that was the black dog was wakening. Tobias had hoped it would have been a slower process and then I turned up, hastening the inevitable. In any case, their prisoner didn’t yield the power for which they had hoped. Their beast selves were still increasingly degenerating and now so were the human. One half couldn’t live without the other. Now they were quadruply screwed: no leader; no power source; Morgana on the warpath; and a vengeful demonic spirit on their tails.

Talk about Diabolic intervention. Unfortunately for all of us, it had gone beyond mere words.

Black Dog Rising

Posted on by

Out of nowhere a black whirlwind came hurtling from the corner of my vision, vast slavering jaws agape briefly and then buried in the neck of my erstwhile tormentor with a meaty crunching sound as though bone had been pulverised. Jean screamed, a thin, ragged all too human sound which mercifully meant she released me before she was propelled by the beast’s momentum off of me and over the other side of the room. Something must have been broken in the beast’s attack, because Jean just lay there claws slashing ineffectually through the air monstrous head feebly moving from side to side, quite unable to ward off the snarling, frenzied black beast as it sought her throat and life blood. It had to have taken a massive amount of power to have done that and at first I groggily wondered if it was Jack come to save the damsel in distress.

With the benefit of surprise and the sheer size of the beast, it was able simultaneously to avoid Jean’s still lethal teeth and bite down savagely into the flesh of her throat, growling for a moment before shaking its head and ripping it out completely. A geyser of blood and gobbets of flesh and oesophagus rained over the room, the remnants of which could be clearly seen in the ruin of her throat. With a blood-curdling, rapid growl through the meat in its mouth, the beast shook its strangely familiar head as though reliving the moment it had been torn out and Jean’s life blood was sprayed around the walls for a second time. The enormous teeth bared in a snarl still gripping the flesh which had so recently belonged to Jean. The massive head tipped back and it ate the still quivering jellied mass, blood running down its jaws onto the carpet along with some pieces of muscle and tendon that had fallen out.

And as suddenly as it had begun, it was all over. I wasn’t naïve enough to think Jean would die, but it might give her something to think about for a while at least. The room swam with black spots which threatened to engulf the room and I felt myself losing consciousness, but before I did the black beast turned its huge head toward me and the huge red eyes seared themselves into my retina. Then I knew no more as a yawning black chasm began to draw me towards it. I remember wondering if this is what death was like.

Then, nothing.

Love Bites

Posted on by

There was something about the three blonde, black-eyed women that was not quite right. At least that was Colin’s opinion as he finished one pint and considered starting another. His thoughts turned as they always did to his bitch ex Jackie who was giving him grief, not letting him see the wee man until he paid up what she said he owed. Fat chance of that when he’d just lost his job in the off-licence where he’d worked for ten years. Who’d have thought offies in Scotland could ever go out of business? You had to get through the cold and smothering dark of the Scottish winter somehow and it was a time honoured national tradition that a vast quantity of booze was just the way to do it.

He decided on a another pint and whisky chaser and lumbered unsteadily to the bar to get them in. The Bingo Wings was a run down shabby sort of place, but you could sit in the gloom and nurse drink and grievances in equal measure with no interference from anyone who knew what was good for them. And from the hot glances thrown his way from the blond bints, he was positive he could show them a thing or two on that front. Talent-spotting wasn’t a usual pastime in the Bingo Wings: there were other more likely venues for that sort of nonsense. No, this was where silent, angry men sat and drank themselves into a well earned oblivion before picking a fight outside to round the evening off.

Christ they were fit though: lush, full figured and from the long legs, not much shy of his six feet frame. He thought maybe they’d been to a fancy dress party because they were all dressed in white see-through dress things that rode right up when they sat down on the bar stools, so you could pretty much see everything. Little tarts.

The nearest one turned her head to look at him, a sinuous, twisting motion accompanied by a fall of white-blond hair that was so long she could have sat on it. Well, if the little slag played her cards right, she’d be sitting on something else before the end of the night.

“Are you sisters then?” he said controlling the slurring with a mighty effort.

The other two turned to stare at him with that same curiously serpentine motion and three pairs of black eyes fixed on his face with a disconcerting intensity. They must have been sisters because their features were almost identical. There was a sharpness about the nose and cheek-bones that he hadn’t noticed at first, but they were still stunners, no doubt about it.

“In a way,” the nearest one answered in a soft voice. He knew it, she was definitely up for it. Wait until Jackie found out that he still had the old one two magic.

“What’s your name?” she continued.

“Eh, Colin. Colin McQuarrie. And what’s yours?” he asked, finally remembering the finer points of leg-over etiquette.

“Margo. And this is Morgan and Marjorie.”

The blond in the middle, Morgan, slid gracefully off her stool and came to stand next to him. Maybe he’d be in the three-way before the night was out if he minded his p’s and q’s. He hurriedly calculated just how much he’d had to drink because it really wouldn’t do to disappoint the ladies seeing as how they were so up for it. Not if the abuse Jackie had regularly showered him with was anything to go by.

Morgan put a hand on his arm and was so close he could smell her: an intoxicating scent that reminded him of blue skies and the green promise of spring woods. He was just about to press his mouth to hers when she ruined it by speaking. That was women for you.

“Did you know you have an elemental attached to you?”

“An elephant? Are you pissed hen?”

The third blond, Marjorie had joined them and stood on his other side. He felt hemmed in for some reason and started to wonder where Rab the barman was; quelling a sudden surge of adrenalin as though some part of his brain was telling him to make a run for it. Why would he run from three lassies?

“An elemental,” said Marjorie.

“It’s a lower form of spirit-”

“That attaches itself to people who have done bad things in their lives. It feeds off the energy that creates-”

“What she means is the suffering of the victim. For every bad deed there must be a victim-”

“And for every bad deed, the elemental gets bigger-”

“And bigger and-”

“Yours is the size of a tenement. And it’s still growing.”

He’d lost track of who was saying what but it didn’t matter because it melded into a seamless whole as though the conversation was taking place entirely inside his own head. The three hadn’t taken their eyes from him, tracking his progress like a deer or some other prey that didn’t have a hope in hell. Being hopeless had never felt so good.

“You know those angry, frustrated feelings you get where you want to burn the world and everybody in it?”

He was pretty sure that was Marjorie who was stroking his arm snaking a trail up to the back of his neck. Dumbly he nodded.

“That’s from the elemental. Sort of like waste products if you see what I mean. You’ll have noticed how it’s getting worse no doubt? That’s the elemental getting stronger. Soon it’ll be powerful enough to consume you and then you’ll be part of it forever. Isn’t that something?” Margo smiled showing small, perfectly formed white teeth.

He was really confused now, unsure if it was the drink or if the women had drugged him. He wasn’t sure he cared, as long as they stayed with him.

“Can’t I get rid of it? I mean, couldn’t you help me?” he said, like a little boy pleading not to be sent to bed. He didn’t question the truth of what he was being told: it was as if he’d always known. Ever since that hit and run that he’d been responsible for as a teenager and then all the other stuff since then…

“Ah, now. We were just getting to that,” said Morgan. “But there’s something you need to do for us first.”

Love Bites

Posted on by

Lucille and Henry Harper-Hodge’s marriage was, contrary to appearances, in free-fall. She had persuaded him to buy the blood red house in Midnight Falls because by that time she had already planned to kill him.

As a witch she was well aware that Midnight Falls was a haven not just for those practising the dark arts but more importantly for those way past the practising stage. The spell of forgetting would turn most mere humans away and discourage the authorities from asking awkward questions. Black magic involved a small and very select breed of creep willing to go quite that far and Lucille was a girl who would go all the way.

It also explained why the Harper-Hodges lived here. Humans occasionally did and of those that did, most were completely insensitive to the aura of the place. These folk wouldn’t have known they were in a village of weres if one gnawed their leg off and started hitting them over the head with the bloody stump. The others were like Lucille: not only in love with the gothic horror of the place but actively seeking to harness it.

Touching the doll I saw her face; lips moving silently as she pierced the surrogate Henry’s heart with her sewing pin. The after shock of her rage was a flash fire that roared around my skull taking all before it. She had spent a long time out there in the garden under a full moon; casting the spell with infinite care, setting up her unloved one’s death with more malice aforethought than if she’d just taken a gun and shot him in the head. She knew that Midnight Falls of all places gave its inhabitants a free get out of jail card. She had wanted to get away with murder and now she had.

And what I saw through my little glass darkly was not just the why of it, but the how.

It had been the oldest and most obvious reason in the book: good old Henry was fooling around with another woman. You could never really predict how someone would react when you screwed them over (or in this case, someone else) no matter how well you thought you knew them. Spurned wives ran the gamut between cutting out the crotches of their husband’s trousers and cutting off the offending body part itself. You couldn’t even know for sure how you were going to react yourself, until it actually happened. You may think you are a mild mannered sort of girl but then find when push comes to shove that for sheer blood lust, you made Sweeny Todd look like a lily-livered vegetarian powder-puff.

Yes, two-timing a common or garden woman was risky enough, but doing it to a practising black witch was just off the scale.

Poor old Henry. Maybe he hadn’t known his wife was a witch. If he’d been a witch himself that might have given him some protection, even so that was a big maybe. The glass showed me the sad sequence of events and my psychic connection provided the Technicolor and surround sound. The only thing missing had been the pop corn.

The unhappy couple had had another row and he was sitting downstairs in the living room while she was sulking in the kitchen. The telephone rang and he cut across the caller’s shrill tones:

“Yes, I’ve told her. But she already knew about us. I’ve no idea how. Look Tamsin, I’ve done what you wanted me to do and now I’m handling it my way.”

A short silence ensued while he listened to the piercing voice on the other end and then a quickly muttered:

“Yes, yes, me too. I’ve got to go.”

Clearly not very happy with any of the women in his life, he made himself a drink unaware it was to be his last and wondered mindlessly to the window to look out through the French windows to the garden beyond. It was early afternoon, but a hint of the day’s demise was foretold by the darkening grey clouds massing on the horizon. He was tall, blond and a little overweight, trousers fighting a losing battle with the onslaught of his gut. A blond fringe flopped over a florid complexion that was only in part due to the drink he’d already consumed.

He stared, unseeing, out into the garden, until a small movement caught his eye. Attention caught he focussed this time, but nothing untoward materialised. He made to turn away from the window and that was when he heard it: faint, but steadily growing louder the unmistakable sound of an accordion playing a jig. There was something about the music that commanded his attention because he opened the French Windows so he could hear it better. A smile hovered round his lips giving a glimpse of the handsome young man he’d been and that maybe Lucille had even loved; until the rot set in. And then he sealed his own fate: he stepped outside.

The garden was easily a couple of acres at the back and he wandered down its length towards the wood, glass still in hand. He didn’t seem to notice the bitter, freezing wind, or the fact he was in his shirtsleeves. Inane grin in place, he went to his death.

“Please come out. I promise I won’t bite,” he laughed loudly as though it was funny.

The music stopped the instant he spoke:

“Please. Let me see you.”

I wondered what magical compulsion was in the spell and soon got my answer. Three scantily clad young women with rippling long, blond hair and black eyes appeared. They all had an eerie sameness about them as though they had been manufactured from the same mould that tried and failed to simulate humanity, producing instead a vaguely distressing mutation. The bodies were convincing enough: lush and slender in all the right places emphasised by the flimsy white shifts they wore. But the vacuity of the bland formless features held nothing human, nothing that could be reasoned or bargained with and I was reminded of shop mannequins come to disturbing life. Henry didn’t mind in the least, or maybe he hadn’t gotten as far as their faces.

One of the girls giggled, a high pitched, fluting sound and Henry reacted as though he’d been given a sexual charge.

“Please, play your music again. I won’t interfere – much!” he said grinning like a loon. Another giggle and then one of the girls produced an accordion out of nowhere and resumed playing while the other two danced with each other; an incongruously sensual series of movements that sat ill with the old fashioned music that nevertheless had Henry rivetted. But the faint ridiculousness of the scene: the jarring discord between dancers and music; the uncanny Stepford appearance of the women themselves; and the sense that whoever had engineered the scene had got it subtly but distinctly wrong, made it all the more disturbing. There was a nighmarish inevitability about this death dance because that’s what it was. This particular three-headed spider had felt its helpless victim tug on the web and was now moving in for the kill.

One of the women dancing glanced toward Henry and motioned gracefully for him to join them, which he did without a second’s hesitation. No, I had whispered stroking the glass as though that would have made a difference to how it had to end.

Henry threw himself into the dance with delirious abandon and was in the middle of a clumsy, lumbering jig, when the blond with the accordion abruptly stopped. She glided over to him and took hold of the front of his shirt in both hands and pulled sending a spray of buttons in motion and demolishing the last of Henry’s restraint. He began to tear off his clothes making a moaning sound deep in his throat. The women watched him impassive and silent; the mask of humanity discarded with the main event about to unfold. Finally he stood before them stark naked having strewn his clothes carelessly around without so much as a shiver of his ruddy flesh or a doubt in his mind. There was a moment where nothing moved and only the brittle susurration of the wind through the remaining leaves of the trees could be heard.

They fell upon him with claws the size of daggers and fangs the colour of old bone, great gouts of saliva soaking their shifts. They gouged and bit off hunks of his flesh, laughing at his screams and impotent thrashing. After one of the three twisted his leg out of its socket with a wet, tearing sound, he wasn’t able to do so much of that anyway. Just at that point Lucille appeared. She stood as close as she dared and called his name. He managed to turn his head, obviously hoping against hope this might mean rescue. That hope died stillborn when he caught the look on her face which was the last thing he ever saw because that’s when they took his eyes.

I looked away at the sound of sharp claws grinding bone. What I couldn’t shut out was the hysterical screaming and wet ripping sounds as though someone was tearing cloth. The three tore him apart while he lived, literally limb from limb, with a cool, dispassionate competence, careful to protract his suffering. And when he had been reduced to nothing but a slab of mutilated meat with nothing to indicate that it had once been a sentient being with hopes and dreams, whose only crime was to have had a white wedding to a black witch, they let him die.

One by one the creatures drifted off into the trees, white shifts stained black in the dusk and Lucille was left at the scene of the crime where she lingered, savouring the moment.

“You always said women would be the death of you Henry,” she said, smiling. Then she spat on the pitiful remnants, turned on her heel and left him to the infinitely tenderer mercies of the creatures that inhabited the wood at the end of the garden.