The Dark Side

Frank Scully began to wonder if this was such a good idea after all.
It had look that way as little as an hour ago when he had accepted the bet his friends had offered him: "Just stay in that old mill on the hill until tomorrow morning, and we will pay your bartap for this whole week". He hadn't hesitated for a second then, but that was in a warm bar with to much beer in his stomach.....

Of course he had heard the stories about the mill, it was rumored that nobody that had spend the night there had been alive to see the sun come at dawn, but he had never believed that, not he, never..

But in the cold and dark mill he started to wonder, hadn't he read somewhere that in every story there is an element of truth ?? And wasn't it true that ever since he could remember nobody had even come close to the mill ??

Now he started to remember the details of the stories his grandmother had told him and his sister: "When the last miller had gone insane with fear and had been found running through the village one night, the pastor and the mayor wend to see what had scared the poor man that bad. The never came back. A rescue party was send out the next morning. When they returned all they wanted to say was that the priest and the mayor were dead and that they had buried them where they had found them. The village doctor, who had replaced the mayor, declared the mill and the hill itself forbidden territory but did not give a reason why.

People then got really curious what the hell had happened up there. So they got the smith, who had been a member of the rescue party, drunk and and started interrogating him. After a while the smith, a man the size of a small tree, started shivering and told that when they had found the bodies they didn't have a drop of blood left in them and bitemarks in there necks..
The villagers all knew the vampire legends that were told from one generation to the next, and within a few minutes they all went silently to there homes.

Since then, only a few brave, or stupid, man dared to go to the mill and those who went at night were never seen again.........

But that had all happened at least 70 years ago and Frank, as a modern man, told himself that maybe a few people had died here in the mill but probably because of an accident and this was just an other vampire story like so many he had heard in his childhood years.

But even so he still wished that he hadn't accepted the bet and he started thinking of a way out of it without loosing face, when he heard what sounded like two stones grinding together. It seemed to come from the cellar below him but that was impossible since there was nothing and nobody in the cellar. Or was there ? Maybe one of his friends was hiding down there, thinking he could scare Frank out of the bet ? Well only one way to find to out but if it was one of his friends Frank would make sure that he would never try something like that again. Angry he picked up a piece of wood and wend down into the cellar. Since one of the conditions of bet had been that he would stay in the dark, the only light he had, was that from the full moon, shining through the holes in the ceiling.

In this pale light he had some trouble finding the trapdoor to the cellar but he found it when he tripped over what turned out to be the ring in the trapdoor. He pulled the door up and to his surprise it moved like it was being used daily. He carefully wend down the stairs and started looking around. The little light that shined through the cracks in the ceiling was just enough to see some shapes. In the center of the room was what seemed like a crate but when he got closer it turned out to be a sarcophagus and when he looked the lit moved!

Frank was suddenly paralyzed with fear and watched helplessly how a bony hand lifted the lid higher and higher until it fell off with a bang and a creature born out of a nightmare rose. The thing turned around and looked Frank right in the face and opened it’s mouth.

Seeing the fangs between the lips of the thing shook Frank back to reality and he started to move back, away from the horror in front of him. The vampire climbed out of the tomb and followed Frank. Suddenly Frank felt a wall in his back and couldn’t go back anymore. The vampire now started to move faster and all that Frank could do was wait and curse himself for being so stupid as to risk his life for a weeks worth of beer. He saw the vampire ready himself to attack and instinctively he closed his eyes. He reopened them quickly when a high pitched scream ripped at his ears and saw that the vampire had impaled himself on the sharp piece of wood he still had in his hand. The vampires body almost immediately started decomposing and Frank finally realised that he had destroyed the monster that had hunted his village for more then 70 years.

The stench coming from the dead vampire was to much to stand so he threw away the stake he still had in his hands and turned around. At that moment he realizes that he had made a big mistake, a mistake that would cost him his life. Five more vampires, the victims of the one he had just destroyed had stood behind him and, furious because of the dead of there master, they threw themselves forward at there victim who was now unarmed. Frank fought for what he was worth but didn’t have a chance against the unholy strength of the undead monsters and his last thought, before the claw’s ripped him apart, was of his sister.........................................................

Gambit 1996