I Got Interviewed!

Stacy Kingsley is a talented author in her own right, specializing in zombies. If you dig on zombies–and who doesn’t these days–check her out. And while you’re at it, check out the interview she did with me, regarding my new novel, THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF, which is available to purchase for chump change here.

I won’t rely solely on my article-writing to convince you that I actually know what I’m doing where it comes to storytelling, though. Howzabout I give you a little sample here and now? This is from the section where my titular werewolf throws down with a vampire:

‘The setting sun, unseen, cast a bloody illumination through the forest, the final light of the day scattered by the twisting boles of the trees, darkness drawing near.

“Chain me,” I told the men. “If the vrykolakas comes tonight…”

“It will come,” one of the men answered. “It is never far away. It can smell fresh blood.”

I could smell it too. Blood, though not fresh. The tiny crypt stank of it, blood and decay, a place of death if ever I had seen one. I thought of the abandoned temple of Lycanon, high atop its mountain in Arcadia, where primitive men had offered up their own blood sacrifices to ancient and cruel gods. Now in ruins, Lycanon’s temple had been far grander, far larger than this squat little building. Though I had never seen it with my own eyes, had never dared climb to that haunted peak, I had heard stories. It was said that no man cast a shadow there on that unhallowed spot. I could well believe it. The shadow, the reflection of a man’s soul, swallowed up by the malignancy in the soil, in the very air.
The shrine to the vrykolakas carried the same taint. Though the woods in all their fecundity grew to within a few feet of the structure—tall trees with their heads high above; younger ones on their skinny trunks; curling, crawling vines; moss on the exposed rocks and the bark of the old trees, alive and green; thorny, leafy undergrowth—nothing grew upon the shrine itself, or on the black dirt surrounding it. The buzzing gnats in the air, I noticed, avoided it as well.

“If you can do this thing,” one of my escorts said, “you will be counted a hero to our people. Your place among us will be assured.”

“I am no one’s hero,” I said. “Now chain me up.”

I went inside and sat down on the little bench. The Marmorcan soldiers fastened a shackle to my ankle. This they did at my instruction. I knew, should the transformation come upon me before the vrykolakas found me, there would be nothing to keep me, in my beast form, from simply leaving. I did not know if the chain would hold the beast. I hoped it would hold it for long enough.

Should the chain handicap me in the coming struggle—and that there would a struggle ensue I had no doubt, should the vampire and the Doghead encounter one another, for it is a peculiarity of the creatures spawned of darkness that they cannot get along. I and I alone had managed to get the Dogheads of my village to cooperate, and this I had accomplished one time out of hundreds, thousands of nights. At all other times were we snarling and snapping at one another, fighting outright on occasion. We creatures of Lucifer’s thrall are all too consumed with aggression to coexist in peace. Also, the vrykolakas would be expecting a nubile female victim and would of a surety be disappointed, and cross because of it, whereas I, the beast, would be enraged at being chained.

And should that chain handicap me in the coming fight, I did not care. I wanted to die, you must remember.

I sat there in the crypt as darkness filled it. I waited. I could do nothing else.

The vampire came before the change had overtaken me.

I had never seen one before. I have read, in the years since, that the vrykolakas has control over its physical form, a control the Doghead does not possess. Scholars attest that this fiend can become as insubstantial as smoke, can enter a room through a keyhole or a crack in the masonry; can appear handsome, beautiful, can assume the forms of certain animals. If these statements are fact, then this particular revenant felt no need to disguise its true form. It entered the crypt through the doorway, a desiccated corpse bound in the cerements of the grave, its face fallen away to a skull and its breastbone and several of its ribs showing through its mottled skin. In truth I smelled its carrion stench before I saw it, and I felt it also, before I ever caught sight of it in the dim illumination of the moonlight through the empty doorway. I say felt it, because the thing radiated a sense of uncleanness, of evil, I had never before experienced, even from other Dogheads.

It had no eyes, and yet it had eyes; the two black sockets where its eyes should have been were darker than the shadows surrounding the thing. Its eyes seemed, in truth, to glow with darkness, if such a phrase is at all sensible. I expect such a thing cannot be described, only experienced.

It had eyes. And it saw me.

“You are not the tribute I demanded!” it hissed. Its voice—again, descriptions fail to convey what I experienced. Inhuman is the sole word I can offer. As inhuman a sound as could ever be, yet the thing did speak. A sound to drive men to madness. But for one already half-mad to begin with, a man no longer human, himself? I did not cringe.
“I know!” I answered. “You prefer women, and helpless, chained women at that. You are a coward!”

The thing shrieked in rage and rushed at me. It moved without its feet ever touching the ground, save for its toes dragging along the floor. It reached for me with its dead hands. The tips of its fingers had fallen away, and the bones protruded as claws. I felt the claws touch my throat.

But I also felt Lycanon’s curse overtaking me…’

If you want to read any more, you’re gonna have to buy the book. I’m not gonna tell you who wins the fight. I’m evil that way.

By TheCheezman

WAYNE MILLER is the owner and creative director of EVIL CHEEZ PRODUCTIONS, specializing in theatrical performances and haunted attractions. He has written, produced, and directed (and occasionally acted in) over two dozen plays, most of them in the Horror and True Crime genres. He obtained a doctorate in Occult Studies from Miskatonic University and is an active paranormal investigator. Is frequently told he resembles Anton Lavey. And Ming the Merciless. Denn die totden reiten schnell!

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