蜜芽传媒

蜜芽传媒 Cult Vampires - Printer Friendly Version
Half-Sick of Shadows by Graham Masterton

It was raining so hard that Mark stayed in the Range Rover, drinking cold espresso straight from the flask and listening to a play on the radio about a widow who compulsively knitted cardigans for her recently-dead husband.

"It took me ages to find this shade of grey. Shale, they call it. It matches his eyes."

"He's dead, Maureen. He's never going to wear it."

"Don't be silly. Nobody dies, so long as you remember what they looked like."

He was thinking about calling it a day when he saw Katie trudging across the field toward him, in her bright red raincoat, with the pointy hood. He let down the window, and the rain spattered icy-cold against his cheek.

"You look drowned!" he called out. "Why don't you pack it in?"

"We've found something really exciting, that's why."

She pulled back her hood. Her curly blonde hair was stuck to her forehead and there was a drip on the end of her nose.

"Where's Nigel?" he asked her.

"He's still there, digging."

"I told him to survey the ditches. What the hell's he digging for?"

"Mark, we think we might have found Shalott."

"What? What are you talking about?"

Katie wiped the rain from her face. "Those ditches aren't ditches, they used to be a stream, and there's an island in the middle. And those lumps we thought were Iron Age sheep-pens, they're stones, all cut and dressed, like the stones for building a wall."

"Oh, I see," said Mark. "And you and Nigel you immediately thought, 'Shalott!'"

"Why not? It's in the right location, isn't it, upstream from Cadbury? And everybody knows that Cadbury was Camelot."

Mark shook his head. "You're hopeless romantics, you and Nigel."

"It's not just the stones, Mark. We've found some kind of metal frame. It's big, and it's very tarnished. Nigel thinks it could be a mirror."

"I get it... island, Camelot, mirror. Must be Shalott!"

"Come and have a look anyway."

Mark checked his watch. "Let's leave it till tomorrow. We can't do anything sensible in this weather.

Katie said, "Please, Mark."

Mark was the boss, and Katie was only a second-year history student, hired for the Easter holidays, but he had already discovered how persistent she could be. "Okay," he said. "If I must."

The widow in the radio-play was still fretting about her latest sweater. "He's not so very keen on raglan sleeves... he thinks they make him look round-shouldered."

"He's dead, Maureen. He probably doesn't have any shoulders."

Katie started back up the hill. Mark climbed down from the Range Rover and trudged through the long grass behind her. He wouldn't have come out here at all, not today, but he was eleven days behind schedule, and the county council were beginning to nag him for his final report.

"Think of it!" Katie called out. "Shalott!"

Mark caught up with her. "Forget it, Katie. It's all stories - especially the Lady of Shalott. A curs猫d woman in a castle, dying of unrequited love. Sounds like my ex, come to think of it."

They topped the ridge. Below them lay a misty, waterlogged meadow, crossed diagonally by an ancient ditch. They could see Nigel about a quarter of a mile away, in his fluorescent yellow jacket and his white plastic helmet, digging.

"You see?" Katie persisted. "The island, the river... it's just as Tennyson described it."

"It isn't Shalott, Katie. Even if it were, it's situated slap bang in the middle of the proposed route for the Woolston relief road, which is already three years late and six million pounds over budget. Which means that the county council will have to rethink their entire highways-building plan, and we won't get paid until the whole mess has gone through a full-scale public enquiry, which probably means in fifteen years' time."

"But think of it!" said Katie. "There - where Nigel's digging - that could be island where the castle used to stand, where the Lady of Shalott weaved her tapestries. And that ditch was the river, where she floated down to Camelot in her boat, singing her last sad lament before she died!"

"If any of that is true, sweetheart, then this is the hill where Historic Site Assessment Plc went instantly bankrupt."

"But we'd be famous, wouldn't we?"

"No, we wouldn't. You don't think for one moment that we'd be allowed to dig it up, do you? You and Nigel are still students and I wouldn't recognize a barrow if I tripped over one. Besides, we don't get paid to find sites of outstanding archeological significance, we get paid not to find them. Bronze Age buckle? Shove it in your pocket and rediscover it five miles away, well away from the proposed new supermarket site. An Iron Age sheep pen, fine. We can call in a JCB and have it shifted to the Ancient Britain display at Frome. But not Shalott, Katie. Shalott would sink us."

They struggled down the hill and across the meadow. As they came panting up the side of the ditch, Nigel stood up and took off his helmet. Nigel had tight curly hair, bright red cheeks, and a fresh, simple face like a Hobbit. But Mark hadn't employed him for his Middle Earth looks. He had employed him because he was reading Archeology & Landscape at Essex University, and Mark could boast that Historic Site Assessment plc was "fully staffed by leading experts in their field."

"Nigel! How's it going? Katie tells me you've found Shalott."

"Well - no - Mark! I don't like to jump to hasty conclusions! But these stones, look!

Nigel was circling around the grassy tussocks, flapping his hands. "I've cut back some of the turf, d'you see - and - underneath - well, see?" He had exposed six or seven rectangular stones, the color of well-matured Cheddar cheese. "Bath stone, and look at that jadding... late thirteenth century, I'd say."

"And you think that this is Shalott?"

Nigel looked around the meadow, blinking. "The location suggests it, more than anything else. There was certainly a tower here. You don't use stones five feet thick to build a single-story pigsty, do you? But why would anyone build a tower here, in the middle of a valley?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

"You would only build a tower here as a folly, or to keep somebody imprisoned."

"Like the Lady of Shalott?"

"Well, exactly."

"So, if there was a tower here, where's the rest of it?"

"Oh, robbed out, most likely, over the years. At a very rough estimate it was built just before 1275, and most likely abandoned during the Black Death, around 1340."

"Oh, yes?" Mark was already trying to work out what equipment they were going to need to shift these stones and where they could discreetly dump them.

Nigel pointed to a stone that was still half-buried in grass. There were some deep marks chiselled into it. "Look - you can just make out a cross, and part of a skull, and the letters DSPM. That's an acronym for medieval Latin, meaning 'God save us from the pestilence within these walls.'"

"So whoever lived in this tower... they could have been infected with the Black Death?"

"That's the most obvious assumption, yes. Isn't it exciting?"

Mark looked around. He couldn't decide which he hated more, archeology or rain. "Katie said that you'd found some metal thing."

"Well! Hah! Yes! That's the clincher!"

Nigel strode back to the place where he had been digging. Barely visible in the mud was a length of blackened metal, about a metre-and-a-half long and curved at both ends.

"It's a fireguard, isn't it?" said Mark. Nigel had cleaned a part of it, and he could see that there were flowers embossed on it, and bunches of grapes, and vine-tendrils. In the center of it was a lump that looked like a human face, although it was so encrusted with mud that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.

Mark peered at it closely. "An old Victorian fireguard, that's all."

"I don't think so," said Nigel. "I think it's the top edge of a mirror. And a thirteenth century mirror, at that."

"Nigel... a mirror, as big as that, in 1275? They didn't have glass mirrors in those days, remember. This would have to be solid silver, or silver-plated, at least."

"Exactly!" said Nigel. "A solid silver mirror - five feet across. And the Lady of Shalott had a mirror, didn't she? Not for looking at herself, but for looking at the world outside, so that she could weave a tapestry of life in Camelot, without having to look at it directly!

"There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
"But moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear... "

Katie joined in.

"And in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights."

"Top of the class," said Mark. "Now, how long do you think it's going to take to dig this out?"

"Oh... several weeks," said Nigel. "Months, even. We don't want to damage it, do we? We need to fence this area off, don't we, and inform the police, and the British Museum?"

Mark said, "No, Nigel, we don't."

Nigel slowly stood up, blinking. "Mark - we have to! This tower, this mirror - they could change the entire concept of Arthurian legend! They're archeological proof that the Lady of Shalott wasn't just a story, and that Camelot was really here!"

"Nigel, that's a wonderful notion, but it's not going to pay off our overdraft, is it?"

Katie said, "I don't understand. If this is the Lady of Shalott's mirror, and it's genuine, it could be worth millions!"

"It could, yes. But not to us. Treasure trove belongs to HM Government. Not only that, this isn't our land, and we're working under contract for the county council. So our chances of getting a share of it are just about zero."

Nigel stared at him. "You want us to bury it again, and forget we ever found it? We can't do that!"

"Oh, no," Mark told him. He pointed to the perforated vines in the top of the frame. "We could run a couple of chains through here, though, couldn't we, and use the Range Rover to pull it out?"

"What? That could cause irreparable damage!"

"Nigel - everything that happens in this world causes irreparable damage. That's the whole definition of history."

Katie came up to them. "I hate to say it, Mark, but I think you're right. We found this tower, we found this mirror. If we report it, we'll get nothing at all. No money, no credit. Not even a mention in the papers."

Nigel stood over the metal frame for a long time, frowning.

"Well?" Mark asked him, at last. It was already growing dark, and a chilly mist was creeping across the rhynes.

"All right, then, bugger it," said Nigel. "Let's pull the bugger out."

Mark drove the Range Rover across the meadow until he reached the island of Shalott. He switched on all the floodlights, front and rear, and then he and Nigel fastened towing-chains to the metal frame, wrapping them in torn T-shirts to protect the mouldings as much as they could. Mark slowly revved the Range Rover forward, its tires spinning in the fibrous brown mud. Nigel screamed, "Steady! Steady!" like a panicky hockey-mistress.

It was dark by the time they had managed to pull the mirror out. They hunkered down beside it and shone their flashlights on it. The decorative vine-tendrils had been badly bent by the towing-chains, but there was no other obvious damage. The surface of the mirror was black and mottled, like a serious bruise, but otherwise it seemed to have survived its seven hundred years with very little corrosion. It was 22cm wide and 57cm high, and it was over 3cm thick. It was so heavy that they could barely lift it.

"What do we do now?" asked Katie.

"We clean it up. Then we talk to one or two dealers, and see how much we can get for it."

"But what about Shalott?" asked Nigel. "This island - it's all going to be lost."

"That's the story of Britain, Nigel. Nothing you can do can change it."

They heaved the mirror into the back of the Range Rover and drove back into Wincanton. Mark had rented a small end-of-terrace house on the outskirts, because it was much cheaper than staying in a hotel for seven weeks. The house was plain, flat-fronted, and painted a dirty pink. In the back garden stood a single naked cherry-tree.

Between them, grunting, they maneuvered the mirror into the living-room and propped it against the wall.

"I feel like a criminal," said Nigel.

Mark lit the gas fire and briskly chafed his hands. "You shouldn't. You should feel like an Englishman, protecting his heritage."

That evening, Mark ordered a takeaway curry from the Wincanton Tandoori in the High Street, and they ate chicken Madras and mushroom bhaji while they took it in turns to clean away seven centuries of tarnish.

Neil played The Best of Matt Monroe on his CD player. "I'm sorry... I didn't bring any of my madrigals."

"Don't apologize. This is almost medieval."

First of all, they washed down the mirror with warm soapy water. Then Katie stood on a kitchen chair and cleaned all of the decorative detail at the top of the frame with a toothbrush and cotton-buds. As she worried the mud out of the human head in the center of the mirror, it gradually emerged as a woman, with high cheekbones and slanted eyes and her hair looped up in elaborate braids. Underneath her chin there was a scroll with the single word "Lamia".

"Lamia!" said Nigel. "That's the Greek name for Lilith, who was Adam's first companion, before Eve. She demanded the same rights as Adam and so God banished her Eden. She married a demon and became the queen of demons.

He touched the woman's faintly-smiling lips. "Lamia was supposed to be the most incredibly irresistible woman you could imagine. Just one night with Lamia and pfff! - you would never look at a human woman again."

"What was the catch?"

"She sucked all of the blood out of you, that's all."

"You're talking about my ex again."

Katie said, "John Keats wrote a poem called Lamia, didn't he?"

"That's right," said Nigel. "A chap called Lycius met Lamia and fell madly in love with her. The trouble is, he didn't realize she was cursed by God. 'Some penanced lady-elf... some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.'"

"Cursed," said Katie. "Like the Lady of Shalott. Perhaps they were one and the same person."

There was no question that the woman's face on the mirror was beautiful; but it had a slyness about it, too.

"Lamia was a bit of a mystery, really," said Nigel. "She was a blood-sucking enchantress, but she was capable of deep and genuine love. Lycius said she gave him 'a hundred thirsts.'"

"Just like this chicken Madras," said Mark. "Is there any more beer in the fridge?"

Katie carried on cleaning the mirror long after Mark and Nigel had grown tired of it. They sat in two reproduction armchairs drinking lager and eating cheese-and-onion crisps, watching while Katie gradually exposed a circle of shining silver, large enough to see her own face.

"There," she said. "It's amazing, isn't it, to think that the last person to look into this mirror could have been the Lady of Shalott?"

They didn't go to bed until well past one am. Mark had the main bedroom because he was the boss, while Katie had the child's bedroom at the back, with teddy-bear wallpaper, and Nigel had to doss down on the sofa in the living-room.

Mark slept badly that night. He dreamed that he was walking at the rear of a long funeral procession, with a horse-drawn hearse. A woman's voice was calling him from very far away, and he stopped, while the funeral procession carried on. "Mark!" she kept calling him. "Mark!"

"Mark!" she screamed. It was Katie, calling him from downstairs, and her voice was filled with panic.

He rolled out of bed, still stunned from sleeping. and stumbled down the narrow staircase. In the living-room the curtains were drawn back, although the grey November day was still dark, and it was raining. Katie was standing in the middle of the room in her pink cotton nightshirt, her hair standing up like a fright wig.

"Katie! What the hell's going on?"

"It's Nigel! I called him but he didn't answer! Mark, he's all wet! Something's happened to him!"

Mark switched on the overhead light. At first he couldn't understand what he was looking at. But then Katie made an extraordinary mewling noise, and he realized that he was looking at Nigel.

Nigel was lying on his back on the couch, wearing nothing but green woollen socks and a faded blue underpants. He was staring up at the ceiling, wide-eyed, his mouth stretched wide open, as if he were shouting at somebody. There was no doubt that he was dead. His throat had been torn open, in a stringy red mess of tendons and cartilage, and the cushion beneath his head was soaked black with blood.

"Jesus," said Mark. He leaned against the door-jamb to steady himself, and took three or four very deep breaths. "Jesus."

Katie was hysterical. "What's happened to him? Mark - what's happened to him?"

"I don't know. I just don't know." He took hold of her, awkwardly, and tried to hold her close, but she couldn't stop twitching and trembling; and she kept twisting her head around to stare at Nigel, as if she had to look at his mutilated body, to convince herself that he was really dead. Katie stared at Mark wild-eyed. "What if it's a dog - it must be still in here, somewhere!"

Mark led her through to the kitchen and rattled the back door handle, to show her that it was still secure. "I locked it myself, last night. Whatever it was, it isn't here any more. Wait there. I'll have to call the police."

He had left his phone on the blood-spattered coffee table next to Nigel's body. He stepped cautiously around the couch and picked it up. He couldn't take his eyes off Nigel's face. The strange thing was, Nigel didn't look terrified. In fact, he looked almost exultant, as if having his throat ripped out had been the most thrilling experience of his whole life.

Katie came through from the kitchen and stood in the doorway. She looked calmer now, although she was still trembling, and her face was as white as wax.

"Have you called them?" she asked him.

"I'm just about to."

"Mark... what do you really think it was?"

Mark's finger was poised over his phone, but he hesitated. "I can't imagine. But there's nobody else in the house, is there, apart from us? I hope the police won't think - "

And he suddenly thought about something else, too. The questions that the police would ask them, about the mirror. Technically, they had stolen it. An ancient relic, worth millions. So what would Nigel's death look like, at first sight, but a falling-out amongst thieves? He lifted his hands, and there was blood on them, from his phone.

"Look," said Katie, very quietly.

Mark frowned down at the worn beige carpet. There was a trail of blotchy bloodstains leading from the side of the couch to the center of the room. At first sight he had taken them for random spatters, but now he could see that they were footprints. Not Nigel's footprints, though. They were far too small, and there was no blood on Nigel's socks. Close to the coffee-table the footprints formed a pattern like a huge, petal-shedding rose , and then, much fainter, they made their toward the mirror. Where they stopped.

Katie looked all around the room, frowning. Then she approached the mirror and peered into the shiny circle that she had cleaned yesterday evening. "It's... no."

"No what?"

"It's almost as if somebody killed Nigel and then they walked across the room and into the mirror."

"That's insane. People can't walk into mirrors."

"But these footprints... they don't go anywhere else, do they?"

They both looked up at the face of Lamia. She looked back at them, secret and serene. Her smile seemed to say wouldn't you like to know?

"They built a tower, didn't they?" said Katie. "They built a to keep the Lady of Shalott locked up. If she was Lamia, then they locked her up because she seduced men and drank their blood."

"Katie, that was seven hundred years ago. That's if it really happened at all."

Katie pointed to Nigel's body on the couch. "Nigel's dead, Mark! That really happened! But nobody could have entered this house last night, could they? Not without breaking the door down and waking us up. Nobody could have entered this room unless they stepped right out of this mirror!"

"So what do we tell the police?"

"We tell them the truth, that's all."

"And you think they're going to believe us? 'Well, officer, it was like this. We took a thirteenth-century mirror that didn't belong to us and The Lady of Shalott came out of it in the middle of the night and tore Nigel's throat out?' They'll send us to Broadmoor, Katie! They'll put us in the funny farm for life!"

"Mark, listen, this is real. And these footprints... they prove it."

"It's only a story, Katie. It's only a legend."

"But think of the poem, The Lady of Shalott. Think of what it says. 'Moving thro' a mirror clear, that hangs before her all the year, shadows of the world appear.' Don't you get it? Tennyson specifically wrote through a mirror. Not in it - through it! The Lady of Shalott wasn't looking at her mirror, she was inside it, looking out!"

"This gets better."

"But it all fits together. She was Lamia. A blood-sucker, a vampire! Like all vampires, she could only come out at night. But she didn't hide inside a coffin all day... she hid inside a mirror! Daylight can't penetrate a mirror, any more than it can penetrate a closed coffin!"

"I don't know much about vampires, Katie, but I do know that you can't see them in mirrors."

"Of course not. And this is the reason why! Lamia and her reflection are one and the same. When she steps out of the mirror, she's no longer inside it, so she doesn't appear to have a reflection. And the curse on her must be that she can only come out of the mirror at night, like all vampires."

"Katie, for God's sake ... you're getting completely carried away."

"But it's the only answer that makes any sense! Why did they lock up The Lady of Shalott on an island, in a stream? Because vampires can't cross running water. Why did they carve a crucifix and a skull on the stones outside? The words said, God save us from the pestilence within these walls. They didn't mean the Black Death... they meant her! The Lady of Shalott, Lamia, she was the pestilence!"

Mark sat down. "So?" he asked Katie, at last. "What do you think we ought to do?"

"Let's draw the curtains," she said. "Let's shut out all the daylight. If you sit here, perhaps she'll be tempted to come out again. After all, she's been seven hundred years without fresh blood, hasn't she? She must be thirsty. "

Mark stared at her. "You're having a laugh, aren't you? You want me to sit here in the dark, hoping that some mythical woman is going to step out of a dirty old mirror and try to suck all the blood out of me?"

"It will prove what happened to Nigel, won't it? It will prove that the Lady of Shallot was real! Especially if we can stop her from going back into the mirror."

"Katie, this is nonsense." But Nigel was lying on the couch, silently shouting at the ceiling. And there was so much blood, and so many footprints.

Katie raised both hands in surrender. "If you think I'm being ridiculous, let's forget it. Let's call the police and tell them exactly what happened. I'm sure that forensics will prove that we didn't kill him."

Mark stood up again and went over to the mirror. He peered into the polished circle, but all he could see was his own face, dimly haloed. Nigel's death had shaken him to the core; and he had a terrible cold suspicion that Katie might be right, and that something had emerged from the mirror. But if he didn't encourage it to come out, how was he going to explain Nigel's body, to the police? And what was he going to do with the mirror?

"Okay then," he said, still staring at his own reflection. "You're the Camelot expert. If that's what you want to do, let's do it."

Katie drew the brown velvet curtains and tucked them in at the bottom to keep out the tiniest chink of daylight. It was well past eight o'clock now, but it was still pouring with rain outside and the morning was so gloomy that she need hardly have bothered. Mark pulled one of the armchairs up in front of the mirror and sat facing it.

"I feel like one of those goats they tie up, to catch tigers."

"Well, I wouldn't worry. I'm probably wrong."

Mark took out a crumpled Kleenex and blew his nose, and then sniffed, and said, "God."

"That's the blood," said Katie. Adding, after a moment, "My uncle used to be a butcher. He always said that bad blood is the worst smell in the world."

They sat in silence for a while. The smell of blood seemed to be steadily growing thicker, and riper, so that Mark could actually taste it. His throat was dry, too, and he wished he had drunk some orange juice before starting this vigil.

"You couldn't fetch me a drink, could you?" he asked Katie.

"Ssh," said Katie. "I think I can see something."

"What? Where?"

"Look at the mirror, in the middle. Like a very faint light."

Mark stared toward the mirror in the darkness. At first he couldn't see anything but overwhelming blackness. But then he saw a flicker, like somebody waving a white scarf, and then another.

Very gradually, a face began to appear in the polished circle. Mark felt a slow crawling sensation down his back, and his lower jaw began to judder so much that he had to clench his teeth to stop it. The face was pale and bland but strangely beautiful, and it was staring straight at him, unblinking, and smiling. It looked more like the face of a marble statue than a human being. Mark tried to look away, but he couldn't. Every time he turned his head toward Katie he was compelled to turn back again.

The darkened living-room seemed to grow even more airless and suffocating, and when he said, "Katie... can you see her?" his voice was muffled, as if he had a pillow over his face.

Soundlessly, the pale woman took one step out of the surface of the mirror. She was naked, and her skin was the colour of the moon. The black tarnish clung to her for a moment, like oily cobwebs, but as she took another step forward they slid away from her, leaving her luminous and pristine.

Mark could do nothing but stare at her. She came closer and closer, until he could have reached up and touched her. She had a high forehead, and her hair was braided in strange, elaborate loops. She had no eyebrows, which made her face expressionless. But her eyes were extraordinary. Her eyes were like looking at death.

She raised her right hand and lightly kissed her fingertips. He could feel her aura, both electrical and freezing cold, as if somebody had left a fridge door wide open. She whispered something, but it sounded more French than English - very soft and elided - and he could only understand a few words of it.

"My sweet love," she said. "Come to me, give me your very life."

There were dried runnels of blood on her breasts and down her slightly-bulging stomach, and down her thighs. Her feet were spattered in blood, too. Mark looked up at her, and he couldn't think what to say or what to do. He felt as if all of the energy had drained out of him, and he couldn't even speak.

We all have to die one day, he thought. But to die now, today, in this naked woman's arms... what an adventure that would be.

"Mark!" shouted Katie. "Grab her, Mark! Hold on to her!"

The woman twisted around and hissed at Katie, as furiously as a snake. Mark heaved himself out of his chair and tried to seize the woman's arm, but she was cold and slippery, like half-melted ice, and her wrist slithered out of his grasp.

"Now, Katie!" he yelled at her.

Katie threw herself at the curtains, and dragged them down, the curtain-hooks popping like firecrackers. The woman went for her, and she had almost reached the window when the last curtain-hook popped and the living-room was drowned with gray, drained daylight. She whipped around again and stared at Mark, and the expression on her face almost stopped his heart.

"Of all men," she whispered. "You have been the most faithless, and you will be punished."

Katie was on her knees, struggling to free herself from the curtains. The woman seized Katie's curls, lifted her up, and bit into her neck, with an audible crunch. Katie didn't even scream. She stared at Mark in mute desperation and fell sideways onto the carpet, with blood jetting out of her neck and spraying across the furniture.

The woman came slowly toward him, and Mark took one step back, and then another, shifting the armchair so that it stood between them. But she stopped. Her skin was already shining, as if it were melting, and she closed her eyes. Mark waited, holding his breath. Katie was convulsing, one foot jerking against the leg of the coffee table, so that the empty beer-cans rattled together.

The woman opened her eyes, and gave Mark one last unreadable look. Then she turned back toward the mirror. She took three paces, and it swallowed her, like an oil-streaked pool of water.

Mark waited, and waited, not moving. Outside the window, the rain began to clear, and he heard the whine of a milk float going past.

After a while, he sat down. He thought of calling the police, but what could he tell them? Then he thought of tying the bodies to the mirror, and dropping them into a rhyne, where they would never be found. But the police would come anyway, wouldn't they, asking questions?

The day slowly went by. Just after two o'clock the clouds cleared for a moment, and the naked cherry tree in the back garden sparkled with sunlight. At half-past three a loud clatter in the hallway made him jump, but it was only an old woman with a shopping trolley pushing a copy of the Wincanton Advertiser through the letterbox.

And so the darkness gradually gathered, and Mark sat in his armchair in front of the mirror, waiting.

At half-past five, when the room was completely filled with shadows, he thought he saw a faint pale stirring in the surface of the mirror, like a fish in the bottom of a murky pond. He gripped the arms of his chair, his heart beating so hard that it hurt his ribs.

Then he heard a bubbling groan from the couch; and the beer-cans started to rattle. The silvery-faced woman appeared in the mirror, and as she did so, Nigel and Katie sat up to greet her.

"I am half-sick of shadows, said
The Lady of Shalott."

Author's Notes

Graham Masterton is the author of more than 40 horror novels, as well as thrillers and historical sagas. His first was The Manitou (1975) which was filmed with Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Stella Stevens and Burgess Meredith.

His latest, A Terrible Beauty (2003) is set in Cork, Ireland, where he lived for a number of years.

He has twice been honored by Mystery Writers of America for an Edgar award; and for a Bram Stoker award from the Horror Writers Association; as well as being the only non-French winner of the Prix Julia Verlanger in France; and best short story award from International Horror Guild. Three of his stories were adapted by Tony Scott for The Hunger TV series.

He lives with his wife Wiescka in Surrey, England. His website is www.grahammasterton. co.uk, and he welcomes contributors to his thriving message-board, which regularly scores as the UK's most-visited horror site.

It was Alice Through The Looking-Glass that started my fascination with mirrors - particularly Lewis Carroll's notion that if you could somehow see beyond the reflection -- through the door and along the corridor - you would find yourself in a world where the normal rules of existence were back-to-front.

When I was six years old I used to press my cheek against my grandparents' mirror as close as I could, trying in vain to see through their drawing-room windows, and into the gardens beyond, where I was sure that I would see different people walking about, and different weather. But all I ever managed to do was to leave a hot cheek-shaped oval on the glass.

Close up, mirrors are very cold and very uncompromising. They will let you see nothing that they don't want you to see.

But I still yearned to see what they were keeping hidden from me, and so I explored their fictional possibilities on several occasions - notably with my novel Mirror, in which a looking-glass is the only witness to the brutal murder of a 1930s child star. His soul lives on, trapped inside the mirror, until a modern-day fan movie fan buys the mirror and releases him from his glassy captivity. And then finds out - to his cost - why the boy was killed.

During my research, I came across dozens of stories about mirrors and their magical properties, including one of the most famous, The Lady of Shalott, by Alfred Lord Tennyson. It is difficult these days to appreciate how ragingly popular this poem was in 1860s England. It had a tower, with a beautiful maiden in it. It had the dreaming spires of Camelot. It had Sir Lancelot, with his burnished armor and his blazing plume. And it had a mirror, through which the Lady of Shalott was cursed to view the pageantry that went by her window - the mirror that was famously "crack'd from side to side."

Most of my horror novels have been based in some way on myths and legends. This is because myths and legends almost always dramatize the very core of a basic human terror - such as the glaistigs, the Scottish witches who would drink babies' blood; or Will o' the Wisp, who would lead travelers astray in dark and treacherous marshes; or the banshees, who would scream and wail outside Irish houses when somebody was due to die.

Of course, one of the greatest legends of horror is the vampire, but I have been very reluctant to write about vampires. They have, quite literally, been done to death. (Having said that, I had some blood-sucking fun with Road Kill, the story of a lonely vampire who fails to open the letters from his local council, warning him that his house has been compulsorily purchased, and whose coffin is tarred over by a new bypass.)

During my research into mirrors I came across the vampire legend again and again. Vampires are allergic to mirrors. Vampires have no reflection. And so I started to ask myself why they dislike mirrors so much, and why they don't they have a reflection. The result is this story, which explains who the Lady of Shalott really was, and why vampires and mirrors don't mix.

In fact, it renewed my enthusiasm to write about vampires, and immediately afterward I proposed to my New York publishers that I bring back my first and possibly my best-known creation, the Native American wonder-worker Misquamacus, the evil influence in my novel The Manitou, to confront a flock of vampires.

My publisher agreed, so this story is not only an entertainment in itself, but the genesis of a new vampire epic. As for mirrors, I haven't forgotten them, either. They appear as silver-backed daguerrotype plates in my new novel Darkroom, a horrific tale of early photography. Have you ever wondered why primitive tribes didn't like having their picture taken? And, come to that, have you ever seen a photograph of a vampire?

Of course you haven't. You have to meet vampires in person. At night. In the mirror.