Remedios pierced it easily, quickly, naturally, like any strong animal that had learned somewhere in its life to love the taste of blood.
Remedios sat at the kitchen table, feeling refreshed. She signed her name at the bottom of the letter to her Uncle Antonio, telling him that he must use a portion of the money he took from the family as his "fee" to provide medical care to little Dolores, whose name, she reminded him, meant "pain". The pain of his failing to comply, she assured him, would not be only for Dolores, but it would become his pain as well. She would cease sending home money until he did this. And if he refused? Yes, her family would suffer. Dolores would suffer more. But he would suffer most — she would personally see to it.
She folded the letter and placed it into an envelope, sealing all their fates.
Just then, Mr Richview walked into the kitchen. "Good morning, Remedios. How are you today?" He looked tired. Bewildered.
"I am very well, Mr Richview. May I speak with you?"
"Yes, of course. About what?"
"I ask of you three things. First, I would like to visit my family for two weeks. I will need a plane ticket."
He rubbed his neck for a moment, an absent look on his face. "That can be arranged."
"Next, I must have an increase. I would like to be paid an additional hundred dollars each month."
Rather than scowling, or being even more annoyed then he had been the evening before, now Mr Richview nodded, a dreamy expression filling his face. He spoke to her respectfully, as to an equal, to Remedios, a strong person, who knew what she wanted, what was fair. "All right. I think we can find an extra hundred dollars for you each month."
"And for the last," she said, "I would like for you to deposit this new money into a bank account, like the one you told me of, that will make me a millionaire in twenty years."
She was only mildly astonished to see him nod approval. "Well, I can't promise you'll be a millionaire, but if you don't touch it, I can promise you'll have quite a bit of money. That's a wise decision, Remedios. I'll stop at the bank today and pick up the forms for you to sign so you can open an account; my accountant will make the deposits automatically, and you can go in any time and update your passbook. Once the principal increases, we can invest it in a high-yield fund. You need to be brave, take a few risks. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It's a tough world, dog eat dog. Only the strongest survive."
"The strongest and the smartest," she said, thinking how much more sense it makes to live off the strong rather than the weak.
Miss Massingberd and the Vampire
Tina Rath
Tina Rath sold her first dark fantasy story to Catholic Fireside in 1974. Since then her short fiction has appeared in both the small and mainstream press, including Ghosts & Scholars, All Hallows, Woman's Realm, Bella and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She has been anthologized in The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana Book of Horror Stories, Midnight Never Comes, Seriously Comic Fantasy and Karl Edward Wagner's The Year's Best Horror Stories: XV. With her husband Tony she has co-written stories for Mike Ashley's Royal Whodunnits and Shakespearean Detectives, and together they run Parlour Voices, a live reading performance group .
" While I was finishing my thesis on The Vampire in Popular Fiction," explains Dr Rath, who recently received her degree from the London University, "I came to the conclusion that the vampire's cloak is an extraordinarily versatile costume: it can be worn by men or women; it can conceal and disguise, but paradoxically it can also be used for display; it can suggest the cowled monk, or the sophisticated opera-goer; it can itself be concealed, rolled up and carried unobtrusively, but as soon as it is put on it transforms the wearer .
"The vampire, which is both male and female, terrifying and alluring, similarly offers the ultimate disguise, fancy dress, fantasy — a persona that we can slip on either to hide or parade; a unisex, one-size fits all masquerade. The cloak is an ink-blot test, in which we can see our obsessions, not only our fears but also our desires for sexual potency, freedom from the restraints of gender, morality and the entire material world.
"And of course, it's not real, so when we have enjoyed our fantasy we can discard the cloak and be human again. It is hardly surprising that the vampire has an immortal appeal."
About "Miss Massingberd and the Vampire", Rath reveals: "I wrote this particular story because I live near a very beautiful, ivy-covered churchyard, which actually does have a path running through it. It was crying out for a vampire, so I gave it one."
Miss Massingberd first heard about the vampire from her fifth-formers. They were quite the silliest girls in the school, and she paid very little attention to them. Of course, she delivered her little lecture about going straight home from school, and walking in a brisk and ladylike way.
"And then no one will bother you. Human or vampire," she concluded, and confiscated all the pieces of garlic, and crosses made from broken rulers and Sellotape which seemed to have found their way into most desks in the classroom.
Now Miss Massingberd's own quickest route to school and back lay through St Elphege's churchyard. In the mornings there was no problem, but sometimes, at night, when she had been kept late by a parents' meeting, or a committee, or rehearsals for the school play, she might go the long way round. However, she was a strong-minded woman, and scorned superstitious fears. You did not, she told herself, become Head of English at the biggest comprehensive school in her area of London by allowing yourself to be easily frightened. So on that luminous autumn evening when she met the vampire herself she was taking her short cut. And she was not walking briskly either, but loitering like the silliest of her fifth-formers; breathing in the scent of burning leaves from a hidden bonfire and enjoying that strange nostalgia for a past she had never actually experienced that she always felt in autumn, when she saw the dark cloaked figure standing among the headstones.
At first she naturally supposed it was the vicar and she was passing him with a polite "Good evening", when he turned to look at her. He was quite unmistakably a vampire. The points of his canine teeth were just visible on his lower lip. And he was tall, and dark, and heartbreakingly handsome. Miss Massingberd looked at him and fell helplessly in love.
She was so taken aback by the sensation (she had never even thought of such a thing before in her life) that she stood quite still, gazing into the vampire's dark and haunted eyes. And the vampire gazed back at Miss Massingberd. It is difficult to know what might have happened if the real vicar had not ridden past them on his bicycle, calling a cheerful greeting. The vampire's eyes flashed ruby red in the light of the bicycle lamp, and he vanished into the dusk. Miss Massingberd was left, shocked and shivering, and feeling as if she had suddenly awakened out of a deep sleep.
But she could not say if she had been roused from a dream or a nightmare.
The vicar, seeing her standing looking so lost in the dusk, wheeled his bicycle around with a swish of gravel and asked her to come in for a cup of tea. He was new in the parish, and unmarried, so he was always glad to see visitors, and he knew Miss Massingberd well by sight, as vicars and schoolmistresses often sit on the same committees. Miss Massingberd was too flustered by her encounter with the vampire to refuse, and she followed him into his horrible late Victorian vicarage which seemed to have been designed for a polygamist with an unusually large extended family.