Cthulhu Comes to the Vampire Kingdom Read online

  Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island

  Abortion Arcade

  The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island

  Lost in Cat Brain Land

  Ass Goblins of Auschwitz

  Shark Hunting in Paradise Garden

  For Kirsten

  “Wake up, the baby is dead.”

  Franz blinked the frost from his eyes. His young wife was crying, leaning over the cradle beside their coffin.

  “Come back to bed. You must be dreaming,” he said.

  “The baby is dead. The baby is dead.”

  Franz climbed out of the coffin. His malnourished, blood-starving muscles creaked like icebergs.

  He sidled up beside Lola and peered down into the cradle, where their newborn baby lay.

  Franz put a hand on the sunken cheek of Lion Man, anticipating the familiar coldness. He recoiled from the hot flesh of his dead son.

  “I told you he’s dead,” Lola said, sobbing into Franz’s shoulder.

  He took Lola in his arms and sat down with her on the edge of the coffin. They cried together until blood leaked from their eyes and Franz said, “We must bury him.”

  Franz put on his most depressing suit, a black two-piece he had inherited from his father. The buttons on the jacket were spiders that wept tiny tears when you touched them. The cufflinks were the eyeballs of a fish, relics from the epoch when vampires hunted and gathered and felt one with nature.

  He combed his black hair out of his eyes and donned his coffin-shaped hat.

  “Can you zip me up?” Lola said.

  Franz stepped behind her and zipped up the crimson bat suit.

  Lola spun around, flapping her velvet bat wings. “How do I look?” she said, wiggling her triangular ears.

  “You haven’t worn your bat costume since our wedding,” Franz said.

  Lola frowned. “Does it look okay? Is it inappropriate?”

  “It’s perfect. You look beautiful. I’ll arrange Lion Man in his stroller if you pack two pints of blood.”

  “Take an extra blanket for him,” Lola said.

  “I’ll grab a shovel too. We can build an ice castle by the seashore.”

  Franz smiled, recalling the family picnics they used to go on.

  He lifted his dead boy out of the crib. A cloud of evaporated blood slipped from Lion Man’s puckered mouth, destroying any fantasy of picnics.

  He laid his son in the stroller and tucked a gray blanket over him. He touched the buttons of his suit jacket, nodding as the spiders of depression wept into the black designer fabric.

  “What do you think killed him?” Lola asked.

  Franz looked down at the stroller he was pushing. The stroller had spiked wheels that prevented it from slipping on the ice. “Could’ve choked,” he said.

  “I think he saw into the future and realized there’s nothing more to life, so he stopped breathing and danced into the blackness of his own mind.”

  “Smart fellow.”

  “Our Lion Man was a genius.”

  “If only we had the courage to follow his way.”

  “To stop breathing once and for all.”

  Franz knew they were only saying these things to console themselves. There was no good reason for a child to die. A child’s death was the worst thing of all.

  “Let’s bury him by the sea,” Franz said.

  “Remember how he would dip a hand into the water? He would pull his hand up so carefully, cupping water in his palm. His fingers frozen, his palm a shallow lake of ice.”

  Franz laughed in fond remembrance of his child. “He licked his hand like a popsicle.”

  “He taught us that a hand is a popsicle waiting to happen.”

  “Smart fellow.”

  “Our Lion Man was a genius.”

  They continued their stroller march toward the frozen seashore.

  It was a beautiful day to bury someone.

  Dark clouds broiled like fat devils. Invisible sky beasts screeched and growled, lashing the clouds with lightning tongues. A storm was coming.

  The planet had been storm-deprived for seven months. It was an environmental crisis.

  Thousands of years ago, a group of scientists promised to invent a machine that could produce blood out of nothing. Even though the scientists were still trying, they were no closer to making the necessary breakthroughs in blood technology. Most vampires believed that technology would solve the crisis. They placed all their hope for the future in science. Most vampires had given up trying to be better vampires.

  Franz and Lola were not most vampires. They adhered to the faith of the soothsayer Gaul, last surviving elder of the now-defunct Order of the Old Ones. They knew their species was to blame for the impending global collapse. If the vampires had joined together and treated their planet with kindness and respect, recognizing that it was a fragile, finite body, then the planet would have continued to produce blood for as long as it lived. There would be no scarcity of blood.

  Vampires were not immortal, but they sure acted like it. Despite living for many thousands of years, they never matured beyond teenaged brains and bodies. Gaul the soothsayer, bless his ascetic heart, was a mere little boy who wore a fake beard and bathrobes three sizes too big.

  The portent of a storm made Franz happy. A storm following a funeral was considered good luck. Also, it meant the vampires would celebrate tonight. Uncertainty over the blood supply had cast a pall of bad feelings over the vampires. Tonight, they would celebrate for the first time in seven months. They would all be friends again.

  “Here we are,” Franz said, halting the stroller by the icy sea.

  “Should we send him off to sea, or bury him beneath an ice castle?” Lola asked.

  “I think Lion Man would want to be at sea, frozen at the bottom like a popsicle.”

  “Delicious,” Lola said.

  Franz removed Lion Man’s corpse from the stroller and set the blanket-enshrouded body on the back of a snow turtle sculpted hastily, to judge from the slushy drooling of its eyes.

  “Hand me the shovel,” Franz said.

  Lola handed him the shovel.

  “Do you want to say any last words before . . .”

  “I love you, Lion Man. I will always love you. You were the best little vampire any mother could ask for. I don’t blame you for leaving this life. Without your father, I would have chosen the same for myself years ago. Sleep well, dream forever.”

  Franz leveled the sharp point of the shovel’s spade over the birdlike neck of his dead son. He drove the shovel down hard, wincing at the crunch of frozen bones breaking.

  He threw the shovel aside and wrapped Lion Man’s fist-sized head in the gray blanket while Lola kissed the neck stump of the headless baby. Her sadness was sincere, but Franz could tell by her prolonged kisses that she was also savoring their son’s blood, not even waiting for him to pitch the baby head into the sea.

  On the day of their first child’s death, Lola was the same impatient girl that she had been the day Franz met her. After they exchanged anonymous messages on Ice Chat for two months, they agreed to meet up, but Lola abandoned him on their first date after Franz excused himself to use the restroom. He thought she ran out because she disliked him in person, so he was surprised to receive a message from her on Ice Chat later that night. She apologized for ditching him and explained that she gets unbearably nervous when she’s alone in public spaces. Franz forgave her. After their second date, they were inseparable.

  He stood on the edge of the shore and threw the blanket holding Lion Man’s head into the sea. The blanket came unwrapped and the head plunged into the water only a few feet out, too close to shore to seem like a noble burial but too
far out to draw it back.

  Franz wiped a tear from his eye. He turned away from the sea.

  He walked past Lola, who was feeding shamelessly.

  He took the pint bottles from the stroller’s storage compartment and removed the bottle caps with the fanged opener of his skull-shaped belt buckle. He crept up behind Lola and pressed the cold body of a blood bottle against her neck.

  She craned her head around and stepped away from Lion Man’s body. Guiltily, she wiped the blood from her mouth.

  Accepting a bottle from Franz, she leaned back against the snow turtle and took a swig of blood.

  “You couldn’t wait,” Franz said, raising his own bottle to his lips.

  “I had a taste is all,” she said defensively. “You drink faster than me. If I waited for you, you’d drain him so fast I’d be lucky to choke down a thimbleful.”

  Franz propped an elbow on the snow turtle.

  Lola finished the rest of her bottle in two long swigs. She took his bottle and finished it off as well, challenging him to protest.

  Franz turned to face the sea. He could not fault her for her stinginess with blood. She grew up in a full house with eight vampire siblings. Blood was as scarce as the infrequent—and always begrudging—affection doled out by her overworked father and unstable mother.

  Lola hooked her chin over his shoulder. Rejuvenated from the blood, her face radiated a healthy, pearl white paleness. She flapped her bat wings and squeaked cute bat noises.

  Franz smiled. Lola’s happiness was infectious.

  She wrapped her bat wings around him as the first red drops sprinkled down from the black sky and stained the ice, awakening the silent planet from its seven month slumber.

  Sarah’s Ice Chatter vibrated on her nightstand. She slid her right hand out from under the blankets of her coffin and groped around the nightstand without opening her eyes. She was exhausted, but the prospect of a sexy message from her new boyfriend churned her guts to butterflies. She blinked the crust of sleep out of her eyes and held the Ice Chatter close to her face.

  I luv u.

  Ditto, she responded.

  She sighed. She’d hoped it was a sexy text message from her new boy toy, Bruno. No such luck. It was only Fang Foot, her husband. Fang Foot was the leader of the Council. He was overweight and crippled, but also rich and powerful. Everyone suspected that Sarah married Fang Foot for his money, and they were right. She loathed the fat slug. She hated that his absence of a last name required her to take his second name, Foot, for her own. Sarah Foot. How dreadful.

  That was not to say she loved Bruno, for she did not love him any more than she loved Fang Foot. She would never leave Fang Foot either. He was the richest vampire of all. But Bruno was hip and fun. He knew how to show a girl a good time.

  She returned her phone to the nightstand and pulled the blankets up to her chin. She was babysitting the Lugosi kids tonight. She hoped Bruno was still up for a rendezvous after she put the little vamps to bed.

  Babysitting was the perfect gig for hooking up with Bruno. Fang Foot would never suspect that she was messing around, not in a million years.

  She could not wait to be swept up in Bruno’s muscular embrace. He was so strong and handsome.

  Anticipating his touch, she giggled to herself as she drifted off.

  Vampires can be so dumb.

  Cthulhu sat at the counter of a lonely diner, waiting for the hamburger he had ordered. He drank a pint of weak blood beer. They carried nothing else on draught. A few elder gods sat in groups, pairs, or by themselves at booths and tables. Nobody else sat at the counter. Cthulhu could feel their eyes on his cape and tentacles, not to mention the bulging gut beneath his spandex uniform. He knew their whispers were directed at him.

  The waitress emerged from the kitchen and told everyone to get out. She looked at Cthulhu and said, “Except you.”

  When the elder gods cleared out, the waitress said, “You’re supposed to be dreaming.”

  Cthulhu shrugged. “I got hungry.”

  “Nyarlathotep was in this morning. He said the ice age is ending. The vampires will try summoning you tonight.”

  “Maybe they will.”

  “You’ve slept for a long time. Are you up for destroying the planet?”

  “I have dreamed of this hamburger for eons.”

  The waitress disappeared into the kitchen.

  Cthulhu waited for his hamburger.

  The storm had kicked into high gear by the time they hung Lion Man’s headless body in the cellar outside.

  They locked the cellar door and moved up the front walkway, abandoning the stroller in the frosty yard. They would not need it anymore.

  “There’s bound to be a celebration tonight,” Franz said.

  “We’re already wearing our finest clothes. Do you want to head to the Bat Cave now?”

  Franz shrugged. “After Lion Man’s death, I think we’re due for a little unwinding. Besides, the bloodless season endured for seven months. Who knows how long the next one will last? We might not get a chance to party with everyone for another year.”

  “I should call my parents and break the news about Lion Man,” Lola said.

  “Can’t you wait? The news would spoil the celebration for them.”

  “I’d rather get it over with.”

  Lola dialed her parents on the wall-mounted telephone. After they moved in together, Franz and Lola got rid of their Ice Chatters and installed an archaic telephone they’d found in an antique store.

  “Hi, is Mom or Dad home?

  “Quit fucking around, Cyrus.

  “So they’re not home? Did they leave for the celebration?

  “Right, you don’t know.

  “I stand corrected. You don’t care.

  “Fine. Bye.”

  Lola hung up the phone.

  “My brother is such a little asshole,” she said.

  Cyrus was Lola’s younger brother. Excepting the twin toddlers, he was the youngest member of the Lugosi family.

  “Give me a few minutes to paint my fangs.” She kissed Franz on the nose. “If we see my parents tonight, don’t say anything. I can’t handle telling them face-to-face.”

  She went into the bedroom to paint her fangs.

  Franz sat down on the couch and picked up the book on the end table. The book, borrowed from Gaul, was an archaic tome of maritime adventures, written in the age when the planet was a sea of blood and vampires ruled the waves.

  Franz felt nostalgic for this time, even though he was born long after the sea wolves (as the vampires of ocean faring days were known).

  The planet’s waterways had frozen over a long time ago. Nobody had ventured out to sea for countless years. Contemporary vampires were too domesticated for true adventure.

  Franz set the book down, feeling unfocused. He stared up at the painting on the far wall. The painting, his father’s masterwork, portrayed the planet drowned in red, interrupted only by the smallest island.

  Vampires knelt side by side on the island’s shore, raising cupped palms full of ocean blood to their lips. In the background, splintered wood and tattered sails rose in a heap. When the last ship crashed on the first island, the sea wolves died and the selfish, weak, and cruel vampires of the modern age were born.

  His father was a skilled painter, perhaps the greatest the vampires had ever known. Franz’s father died shortly after he completed this painting. He drowned trying to save Franz’s mother, who also drowned. This was the fate of most men in Franz’s family. They drowned in failed attempts to save their drowning loved ones.

  Beyond the last of the sea wolves and the demise of a perennial dream, the painting depicted a sea redder than any blood found in the modern world. The sea was not made of blood anymore. The sea had been raped by vampires. No more did the planet offer up blood like a giant teat. For the past few thousand years, vampires were forced to mine deep in the earth for blood. Some were beginning to question just how deep the blood ran.

 
; “Do you like my fangs?” Lola said, flashing teeth painted green.

  Franz nodded, hardly acknowledging her. “Should we bring Lion Man as a party snack or save him for a late dinner tonight?”

  “You didn’t look at my teeth,” Lola pouted.

  “They’re beautiful, sweetheart.”

  “Let’s save Lion Man for later. No reason to share our precious baby with a bunch of jerks, but we can put aside a leg for Gaul if you’d like.”

  “Should we lay out buckets to collect blood?”

  “Let’s just buy it at the market. Blood never tastes right when we bottle it ourselves.”

  Franz loved hand-bottled blood. Lola preferred store-bought. So they left the house, shrouded beneath the umbrella of Lola’s bat wings to protect them from a storm they did not find.

  The storm ended before it began. Franz squeezed Lola’s hand and prayed to the elder gods that the celebration would not be canceled.

  They shuffled down the frozen sidewalk to the Bat Cave, which was not a cave at all. Rather, the Bat Cave was a megalithic glacial dome marking the center of the village. Whenever an important decision was made, it was made inside the Bat Cave. Whenever vampires got married, they got married in the Bat Cave. All celebrations, it stood to reason, were celebrated in the Bat Cave.

  A crowd of vampires in their finest party attire huddled together outside the Bat Cave’s crystalline doors. They stopped whispering when Franz and Lola approached.

  “Cheers to the storm, mates,” Franz said.

  The vampires shifted their nervous eyes to Bruno, the sparkling, muscular leader of their clan. Bruno rolled his head around the rim of his popped collar. “Party’s canceled,” he said. “The Council has ordered a meeting. We’re voting on the blood crisis. They want us mobilized by morning.”

  Franz turned to Lola and said, “We have to find Gaul.”