Count Backwards Pulls it Off!

This is a short story concerning Count Udo von Egerhazi. It really has no bearing on any subsequent stories concerning the Count as he seems at once a rather generic blood-sucking sort of chap and, by the end of the tale, off on a rather different journey to the hypnotist fella who latterly used the name. But...I rather like it as a stand-alone story. An earlier version of the story named "Careful, Dracula!" was submitted for inclusion in "The First Book of BHF Horror Stories" where it failed to impress. Annoyingly my then flat-mate, the poet Sarah F Stewart, also submitted a short story (about a haunted inn!)and was accepted. What made this particularly galling was that she wrote the story over night and it made not one jot of sense. No matter, here is an extensively re-written version of that early, despised short-story:



Udo von Egerhazi, Count Bachwurst, was shaving and he was making a pretty good fist of it too. Exploring his chin with his finger-tips, the blade trailing closely behind, he could probably get a better shave than someone who wasn’t “differently-reflective”. But there, ouch, in that hard to reach area beneath the jaw-bone, he had nicked himself; a black tear exiting the gash like a fat man from a small car. The look of his blood was horrible. It had been dead for centuries and circulated his system like a listless soup, settling, dark and heavy, in his buttocks each time he sat down.

The count dried his hair and combed it back from his widow’s peak. He brushed his fangs gently, rinsing with an anti-bacterial mouthwash and flossing. He looked after teeth since leaving a filling in a particularly chewy software analyst in the 90s. He dressed quickly and turned on the television to see what was happening in the world outside. He loathed the summer; those endless, balmy days spent shifting restlessly in his coffin while sun dragged its heels toward the horizon.

As the television babbled he slumped on his sofa feeling wretched. He had been sleeping badly for decades; these days he spent more time in front of the box than in it. He flicked idly through the channels. An American man with white hair and a brick-dust tan was very angry about some orphans at the city hospital. Click. An Irishman with a nervous sniff was presenting a retired post-office worker with a mug-tree. They both smiled generously. Click. Melissa Gilbert was reconciling with the sister she never knew. He turned off the T.V.

It was still only half five. It would be another four hours before he dared brave the world outside. Twilight was a grey area for vampires; when was it safe to go out? Nobody told you, there were no rule-books; you had to play it by ear. The entire conversion from mortal to immortal was akin to a nasty mugging that left you with a penchant for black clothes and white, heaving bosoms. Nobody stuck around to tell you what to do. That was once of the reasons that the vampire community, a very loose term, was so fractious and partisan: when some bastard rips out your gullet and leaves you for dead on the street you’re going to want to find out who it was. Grudges and vendettas went on for centuries, aided by the fact that while it was not particularly difficult to kill a vampire it was also a piece of piss to bring one back to life again. A couple of disciples, a headless chicken and a busty blonde and there you are springing forth fully formed and ready to wreak revenge. A pentagram and a desecrated church were just set dressing.

The Count turned the computer on. He logged onto a chat-room he visited for grooming purposes: www.bloodonthetrackmarks.com. It was a site dedicated to the interests of teenage existentialists and contained poorly spelt rants on everything from body-modification to body image, from animal rights to vegetarian cooking; the sliver-like spectrum of adolescent concerns. Of course there was a lot of interest in vampires. Thank heavens for little Goths; there’s a blood-sucker born every minute!

He had been e-mailed by a girl named “Hlathguth”. “It means “necklace-adorned-warrior-maiden” she had informed during an earlier conversation. It had sounded to him like a particularly ugly sneeze. This new message was to confirm that she would meet him for a drink that evening. She also confessed to being slightly apprehensive because the photo she had posted on the website was two years old and she had recently put on some weight. She finished the sentence with a colon and a left bracket to indicate that this made her sad. Udo was possibly sadder. The girls he liked were strong, healthy frauleins, with cantilevered bosoms and long tanned necks ripe for sucking. The ones he got were bespectacled frumps, with poor body image and poorer skin. Still a meal is a meal. He was hungry now. The pangs had started. He approached the window, pressing gingerly on the blind. It was dark enough finally, the puddles on the North London pavements were rainbow coloured in the car headlights. The night was bathed in the street-lamps soft glow; London was a chocolate orange. He was very hungry.

He arrived at the pub somewhat fraught. It had started to rain and he had come out without an umbrella. Ducking beneath a newsagent’s awning a few drops of rain had caught the back of his hand and burned him. It was ridiculous! That wasn’t moving water; that was water moving! He began to wonder just exactly how much of this vampire lore was psychosomatic. He was certain he’s been lashed to a mast under a tumult of sea-spray in the past. It must have looked magnificent! But he could no longer remember whether he’d been dead or alive at the time. He assumed that he must have been dead as nobody would have dared lash him to anything while he had been alive. But he had lived and died so many times it was impossible to remember. He’d been deliciously absent for centuries at a time, alone and at peace in the soft, quiet earth. Then some West London poseur in a black fedora sprinkles a bit of blood on his ashes, declaiming obscenities from a desecrated pulpit, and there he was, back in the land of the living. He had been reborn twenty times in the last five hundred years and his first view each time had been the same; some hapless decadent scurrying for cover. He sighed at the memory .The bouncer looked him up and down and gave him the nod.

Udo entered the pub and saw immediately that Hlathguth was there; she was the only goth in the room. She looked exactly as he had expected: she was short and round-shouldered, with henna-red hair and a pint of Guinness. She was wearing wire-framed glasses and he guessed she was in her early thirties, though he could never be sure of people’s ages. He ducked out of sight and into the path of a woman with orange skin and a tumbler vodka and tonic, which she spilled over his jacket.

“Watch yourself!” she exclaimed, “Fuck sake!”

He acted as if nothing had happened, a cat righting itself after a fall. It was too late: all eyes were on him.

“I do apologise,” he said, “my fault entirely. Can I possibly buy you another drink?” He held her with a glittering eye. Her boyfriend appeared.

“You alright, Soph,” he asked, a hand snaking around her hip.

“Yeah, fine,” she replied, unruffled, “he just walked into me,”

“You wanna look where you’re goin’, mate,” the boy grunted. Udo looked him in the eye; there wasn’t much going on. He was tall and appeared to be wearing about three different hair-cuts, stacked on top of one another like pancakes. His pants were showing and his collars were popped.

“I apologised to the lady and offered to buy her a drink,” said Udo, “I believe that it was I who came off worse in the fracas. Now if you’ll let me go to the bar I will replace the spilled beverage.”

The youth rounded on him, noticed something terrible about his eyes, and relented. Udo went to the bar, bought a vodka and tonic for the girl, a glass of house red for himself and a pint of pissy lager for the boy.

“There,” he said, “no hard feelings. I trust we are all friends again.” The girl looked momentarily anxious, took the drink with a half smile and scuttled off. The boy accepted the lager, stared bullishly at Udo for a moment and swaggered off.

“Fuckin’ fracas!” he added, as a parting shot. Udo imagined sucking the boy’s brains out through his nostrils and spitting them over his still living face. Then he turned to Hlathguth who was now very aware that this was her date.

“Hello, sorry about that,” he said, “you must be “Hlathguth” He shook her hand with his left one, surprised to find that it had his glass of wine in it.

She looked him up and down. He was tall and thin; immaculately thin. She suddenly felt her weight and folded her arms in front of her. His white skin was dazzling and his large black eyes were unavoidable. She found herself making an effort to avoid them.

Udo made small talk, pushing his drink around the table in a figure of eight. Hlathguth drank nervously from her Guinness and when she had finished one pint he bought her another.

“Why aren’t you drinking?” she asked as his untouched glass looped the loop in front of her. Udo raised an eyebrow and intoned with the merest trace of his original accent:

“I do not drink…wine!”

The line settled like a snowflake. Hlathguth burst out laughing, Guinness frothing from her nostrils and she erupted into a five minute coughing jag, emerging damp eyed a flushed, the vampire helplessly patting her back and grinning at concerned onlookers.

“Are you alright?” he asked proffering a monogrammed handkerchief.

“Karen,” she spluttered, “my name is Karen.”

“Ian,” said Udo. Her cheeks were flushed a hot pink and the vampire’s audibly.

“Have you eaten,” said Karen, “or do you not eat…food?”

“It’s a school of thought, Karen,” said Udo “I’m a vegan,”
The goth looked impressed.


Karen was a naturally chatty and Udo was content to interject with a knowing look or grunt at appropriate points in the monologue; usually when she drew breath or stopped to throw back more Guinness. She had done a history of art degree (“a waste of time”). She was a psychiatric nurse now and liked cats and The Cure. It was around this time that, despite the gnawing hunger in the pit of his stomach, that Udo knew that he wasn’t going to eat her. He had begun to sip his wine.

“Sorry Ian,” said Karen, “ I haven’t half been gassing on; I don’t know a single thing about you,” She leaned forward, her pink chin resting on a chubby arm, bangles resting in the fold of her elbow. Her pupils were dilated and Udo could smell that she had begun to sweat. He took another slug of the wine. It was bitter and it burned his throat but he continued to drink as he told his story. His family had moved to London from abroad in the early eighties (“Where abroad?” “Just abroad,” “Ok,”). He liked animals but he had never had a pet (“I don’t believe in them,”). He also liked Eric Satie, Marlboro reds and American T.V. movies (“You’re joking!” “No, I really like them; they have a lot of heart.”) And he was going to the bar, did she want anything?

By the time he reached the bar he was practically hyperventilating. The combination of the alcohol sloshing through his sluggish system and the heady intoxication of sustained invention made his head swim and his stomach churn. His teeth were like rubber; he legs the points of a compass spinning wildly out of his control. He grabbed at the bar like a man clutching at a life raft.

There was poke at his back; it was the boy with his pants out.

“You look munted mate,” he said, “Mind you I’m not surprised: I’ve seen who you’re with!” The boy moved in closer, breathing stickily under Udo’s nose, “Well,” he said, “its not nice is it?”

Udo turned, fangs bared, his eyes black and soulless; dark mirrors of centuries of pain and suffering, a lifeless abyss of misery and dislocation. The boy dropped his pint and then he dropped a thickening slick of urine down his inner thigh. Two muttering bouncers escorted him carelessly from the premises; “Soph” clacked uselessly after him. Udo returned to his seat where he wavered in his resolution not to eat Karen for the rest of he evening. As the alcohol seemed to soften his insides, as his head began to swim, the thought of all that untapped blood sploshing around in front of him was tantalising. There were times during her lengthy monologues that he found himself staring helplessly at her soft white neck; it shivered seductively as told him the story of her life. On her first day at work a patient named Jim had bitten her on the nose: wobble. Her last boyfriend had dumped her by text: wobble. A children’s television presenter had tried to seduce her when she was fourteen: big wobble, flesh lapping at her collar like waves over shingle. Udo licked his lips and tried to focus. He decided that he’d had enough wine. Then he bought some more.

The burning sensation from the thin, acid liquid was dying down and Udo was even deriving a modicum of pleasure from it. At least it was novel. He looked around, grinning wildly, suddenly aware that his nose was almost touching the table. A beer-mat momentarily stuck to his forehead.

“Are you okay, Ian?” asked Karen.

“I’m fine,” said Udo, “I skipped lunch. I think the wine is going to my head. I don’t normally drink…”

“Wine, yes, you mentioned it. Still you’ve only had two glasses; that’s quite spectacularly wussy!”

Karen sighed. Ah well, he couldn’t be perfect. Good looking and charming, so he couldn’t take his drink. He said he didn’t drink and he certainly wasn’t lying: it was almost a good sign.

“Come on. I think you’d better be getting home.” She stood up and put her coat on, threw her bag over her shoulder and lifted him easily out of his chair walking him to the door in careful, measured steps.

Outside the rain had stopped and the air was crisp and fresh. There was a light breeze and the trees shivered. There was nobody about and the side-streets were consumed by an inky blackness. Udo snaked an arm around Karen’s shoulders.

“Right, Ian. I’m going to have to be going now. Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”

They stumbled into a side-street next to a small urban park fringed with trees. The nearest street-lamp was out; they were partially illuminated by the living rooms of he houses opposite. A distant car stereo was briefly audible. Udo’s eyes shone in the semi-darkness.

“Listen, it was actually really nice meeting you,” said Karen, ignoring the rash goose-bumps prickling her skin, “it’s not often I meet someone that I feel I can talk to.”

A light across the street was snuffed out as somebody went to bed. Shadows seemed to swarm over Udo’s hollow face, until only the gleaming eyes remained as he was swallowed by the darkness.

“Are you okay?” said Karen.

“I’m very, very good,” said Udo. His voice sounded strange; stilted. Karen shivered.

“Well if you’re sure. Anyway I thought we had a good time and I’d like to see you again; if you want. I promise to let you get a word in edge-wise next time. If you promise to stick to one glass of wine,” she gave an involuntary yip of laughter. “What do you think?”

Udo turned into the half-light and Karen could see the sickly pallor of his skin, the terrible blackness of his eyes as if the night were shining through him. His hands grasped her shoulders: he suddenly seemed very strong.
“Karen,” he said, “do you know why I asked you out tonight? Why I wouldn’t meet you with your friends? Why I had to meet you alone?”

“Social inadequacy?” she squeaked, realising finally that her body had been telling her she was scared for the past five minutes.

“No,” said Udo. His voice was lower now and she could no longer see his eyes but was aware of their blackness penetrating her, rooting her to the spot. The hands on her shoulders seemed to be holding her up.

“The reason I had to get you on your own was so I could find an isolated spot, like this, away from witnesses and rip open the soft flesh of your throat and drink your blood until I was satisfied,”

“I …er…” said Karen.

“All evening I have sat there, listening to you talk, waiting for the moment when I could plunge my teeth into you. Then I would walk away as fat and bloated as a tick feeling changed, however briefly, from the cold, dead thing I have become.”

“Oh…oh” said Karen.

“But a strange thing happened, Karen. As I listened to you waffling on, all the humdrum mediocrities of your little life, I felt something I hadn’t felt in centuries. I had a window into what it was like to be human again. And I started to remember my own life as a man and how it was so small and cramped and crammed with feeling. And I thought I wouldn’t kill you, Karen. You seem kind and funny and you do such little harm; I want to keep you in the world, Karen. Because I learned something from you tonight, Karen; I’m going listen in future: I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt. And if they prove to be good and decent people I’m going to let them live. And maybe in the long term I’ll starve and put an end to my miserable existence. But I doubt it: I live in North London.”

A bedroom light across the road snapped on. A man at he window stared down and saw a small figure dressed in black standing alone in the street outside. Then he drew the curtains and went off to brush his teeth.

Udo attempted to cling to the shadows while pin-balling between walls and lamp-posts. The chill evening air had exacerbated the effects of the alcohol and his head was still swimming from his epiphany. He had let her go. He had given her the gift of life. She was free and so was he; he had denied his imperative. He had made a choice. He had redefined his raison d’être. He was no longer a killer, a monster, a taker of lives. He was a moral animal. As he wheeled around the pavement on his journey home, the wind murmuring in the trees over his head, the soft milky moon smoothing the edges of the shadows. He felt good.

He vomited, the wine hitting the pavement with a slap. He bucked with the ferocity of the action, his body racked with convulsions as wine and bile poured out of him. He sank to his knees over the widening pool, drooling long strings of saliva as fingers of puke explored the uneven surface of the pavement.
Udo looked up, his chin wet with spittle. A single malnourished pigeon had alighted from nearby guttering and bobbed toward him. Then, ignoring the vampire completely, it set about jabbing at the steaming slick. Udo stared vacantly at the bird for a moment and then, in one impossibly quick, impossibly clean movement he snatched it up and buried his face in it, his long fangs ripping through feathers and flesh and releasing an arc of warm, gushing blood. The pigeon made no sound.



* * * * *


It was late the next evening when Udo von Egerhazi finally emerged from his coffin. His mouth was dry, his vision blurred and his head throbbed. What was in that pigeon? He staggered toward the fridge for a restorative type A. Jumbled images of the previous night tumbled into sequence like fat acrobats. There was the girl, the wine, the skewed moral stance; the huge gap where his memory of returning home should have been. He resolved not to hunt that night; he needed a bath and Five had a Shannon Whirry film on. He soaked in the tub, occasionally massaging his mottled buttocks, luxuriating in the warmth of the water. He felt as if he had sloughed off a dense and ugly skin. He was changed; he knew it. Things would be different now; he would rid the world of evil by eating it. He would be a maggot on the festering sore of humanity, feasting on the corrupt and allowing the innocent to heal and become strong. He smiled and sank under the water.

Later he checked his e-mails. There was a new message from Karen in his in-box. “Fancy a drink?” it said. He sighed and turned the computer off.