They Came Unbidden

By Carl B. Yoke

They Came Unbidden and Other Stories provides a look into the extraordinary with its themes of futuristic technology and the supernatural. It balances the mundane trials of romance, family, intimacy, and lost love against the fantastic. Each story is strikingly different, but each is connected by its wildly imaginative explorations of the fantastical.

In “They Came Unbidden,” Ben must reckon with the forces of vampires who have chosen to feed upon him when his lost lover is thrust back into his life. In “Sea Change,” Harry makes a supernatural deal for his life, and is left to wonder if this pact was worth it. In “City of Ghosts,” the young artist Broderick finds himself in a mysterious and magical fight for his life against an inexplicably powerful young woman. This collection explores magic, faraway planets, monsters, and otherworldly realms, all contrasted against the pervasive triumph of love and humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781515453277

Book preview

They Came Unbidden

by Carl B. Yoke

© 2022 Positronic Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or transmitted in any form or manner by any means: electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the express, prior written permission of the author and/or publisher, except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

Hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-5326-0

E-book ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-5327-7

Table of Contents

Dedication

THEY CAME UNBIDDEN

SEA CHANGE

VARISHNIKOV IS DEAD

THE SORCERESS OF SAURIA

THE WITCHES AND THE MOLY

HYDE AND MARIA

CITY OF GHOSTS

THE POET OF THE CATAFALKS

To Roger Zelazny, Tom Auld, Linda Ellis; Mary Turzillo, and all my teachers and friends, who encouraged my writing through the years.

THEY CAME UNBIDDEN

Through the frosted window of Hailey’s appliance store, he watched Harker wander naively through the grotto below the castle, stop when he came upon the three, young women, and stare in fascination as they writhed seductively towards him.

The picture on the flat screened Phillips was terrific. Long live liquid crystals! And those clever Japanese innovators who figured out a commercial use for them.

The women were beautiful, Harker of necessity an idiot, and James Whale a genius. He knew sex would sell, even in 1931.

Ben pulled his worn top coat closed around his neck, tugged the collar back up, and watched his breath vanish in the night air as it cooled. Too bad the real ones don’t look like that, he sighed wearily. In the movies they kill you or convert you. In real life that’s impractical. It’s much better just to feed on you.

The ones that fed on him were not beautiful; they looked like the crones in Macbeth. And one of those who sometimes visited was extremely ugly—reed-thin, boney, and dry-skinned, with a long, crooked nose and wispy gray hair. He called her Myrtle; somehow the name just seemed to fit. After she fed there was some sort of rejuvenation, but nothing that could be considered beautiful. He thought it might be a return to her original state. When she came to feed, she looked like something that had shriveled up but didn’t know how to die. That was the pattern for all of them.

He shivered.

Maybe it was from the cold wind blowing in from the bay. Or maybe it was from that awful image frozen in his mind? She really could have subbed for Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz.

*

He walked a long time, debating himself. Once he had been bitter, once angry, once defiant. Now he just felt tired—and old. He had never believed in such creatures, until one actually showed up at his door one evening. She was nothing like the fiction stories about them. There was nothing romantic about her, nor was she simply misunderstood. To the contrary, the things were bloody, dirty, and ugly. They were nosferatu, not Bram Stoker or Hollywood sexy. They were smart, cunning in an animal way, and single-minded. They kept him like a farmer keeps stock. They took just enough so that he neither converted nor died. He was the cow that supplied their milk—much more valuable alive.

Since he was young and healthy, others joined the first, until there were three regulars. As the years slid by, he grew angry, then frustrated, then complacent and finally just weary of it all. He hated them. And it became clear to him that the only way to get rid of them was to remove himself. He realized that if he did, they would just recruit some other poor soul, but at least he would be free.

So, the decision to kill himself was an intellectual one, not one made in despair, not one that came not from some sort of guilt, but from simple fatigue. He had tried everything else he could think of—even killing them by various means through the years. But they always knew what he was going to do and so his attempts failed. A few years back he read Erich Fromm’s Sane Society, about Jews in Nazi concentration camps who rationally chose suicide over torture, and he knew it was also his only sane answer. But killing yourself takes a kind of courage you have to build up to.

His path through the night and cold led inevitably through the fog to the bridge. He was one of Dickens’ chance people, no longer in control of his own destiny. One step followed the other with the same laminated deadness that he had felt for a very long time.

So, now he stood there about to step off the rail, listening to the muffled thump-thump of a barge engine below, watching the constant breeze tear the fog into tattered sheets of gray, and hearing an occasional foghorn from somewhere in the mournful night. He looked right, towards Oakland, then left towards San Francisco as if asking for permission. When a gust of wind let the city lights form fuzzy stars through a sheet of gauze, he granted himself a last act of defiance. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, tapped one out, plopped it into his mouth, lit it with his BIC, and drew in a lungful of smoke. His girlfriends didn’t like for him to smoke; it filled his blood with toxins that made it taste bad. At first he thought maybe it would kill or sicken them, but over time they had learned to tolerate it.

A few puffs later, he pitched the butt over the railing, watched for an instant as it winged away like a firefly, then climbed over the rail and followed it into the fog.

He had always believed that when a person was falling to his inevitable end, he would black out, or that his consciousness would shift to some other reality where not only the physical pain of the landing but the fear of dying would drown in some dark pool of oblivion.

But that did not seem to be the case. Apparently, God did not make things easy. If a person were fool enough to kill himself then God wanted him to feel the pain. God really was the teacher of the Old Testament after all, not the New. And in any case Ben had never found God to be particularly kind. So in those desperate seconds while he hurtled through the foggy darkness to the water below, he was well-aware of the icy cold around him, the smell of sea water, the scalpels of fear that lanced his consciousness.

As the wind tore at him, his heart pounded, he gasped, and something curled itself into a ball in his stomach. Then he heard it, a dull flap-flap, felt a sharp pain across his shoulders as bony fingers dug in their iron-hard claws, and an instant later warm blood oozing down his back, that brought stinging pain, and—he could hardly believe it himself—relief.

The next several minutes were a virtual-reality ride at a theme park, a symphony of dipping, diving, and swerving through shifting fog-scapes. And then, as the seconds slid by a dark blob came into focus ahead of and below him. It shaped itself into something more specific as they neared it. Finally, he recognized it—Alcatraz.

They made two revolutions over the roof of the main building and then, the one carrying him, evidently tiring of his weight, crashed down roughly. He tried to get his feet under him as they approached, but she dipped and swerved so much that it was impossible. He fell as they hit and was dragged across the cement. Her claws tore from his shoulder, and he felt more warm blood and searing pain. It was joined by pain in his knees and along his right hip.

He cried. Dread, relief, and pain fought for control of his brain. He realized that he really did not want to die. He knew that now. No matter how bad it seemed, life was worth what it brought you. Dead, there was no hope. He thought he should thank her but knew he would not. He could see her black, winged shape against the charcoal gray of the night. And he cringed.

It would take a few more minutes for her to recover, but he knew the drill. She would start to hack, then chuff and wheeze, and, stretching her wings for balance, she would waddle awkwardly like a pterosaur across the roof to reach him. And, with her strange, deformed little hands, she would hold his head down and pierce the nape of his neck and she would feed until she was full. Mercifully, he would lapse into unconsciousness.

He woke at first light and winced in pain. She sat a few yards away preening. He was exhausted and his thinking muddled. Reality and nightmare mixed. It was always this way. The day after the feeding was hangover time. She licked herself like a cat and seemed uninterested in him. He squinted. She was the one he had named Myrtle. He did not know why except that the ugly name seemed to fit. She didn’t feed on him as often as the others, so she must have had other sources. She was more wrinkled, craggier, uglier. Her greenish-gray skin was dry and leathery, and she had a sharp, beaked face with sling down fangs like a snake. There seemed something more dead about her, something older than the others.

As he lay there shivering from the morning cold, listening to foghorns all about him, he hoped she would keep ignoring him. Then suddenly he was aware that she was talking at him. She had always clucked and clicked when she was around, but in the past it seemed random. Now it seemed to have a pattern.

He sighed, wiped sweat from his brow with his left hand, shivered, and listened. Other thoughts tried to force their way into his consciousness: he needed coffee, a cigarette, maybe some eggs and toast, a slab of ham or some sausages. Then a wave of depression swept over him. This was a national park.

There was nothing to eat here. He’d have to catch the ferry back to the mainland. It would be a long time before he could eat, even though he had money. He always kept a fifty-dollar bill in his shoe because not long after they began to feed on him, one of them, he couldn’t remember which, had left him several miles off the trail in Needles Park above Paso Robles. He had walked a long time in freezing rain before he got a ride. He closed both eyes, felt the warmth of an arbitrary sun on his face, and waited. Then he heard the dull flap of wings that faded gradually, and he knew she was gone. It was always like that.

He listened to her chirping and clucking as she distanced herself. He thought he heard rhythm in her sounds, a pattern that he’d heard before, one buried deep in his subconscious. Was she singing a song that he knew in some language that he didn’t know? Were the chirps and clucks and the pauses in between phonemes of some kind?

He took the first ferry from the park and made his way to Albert’s all-night diner, a way-stop for the dock workers. There he poked distractedly at two easy-over eggs, sipped coffee, and tried to make sense of Myrtle’s music.

Whether she was really singing or whether it was something else, the rhythms reminded him of an old song by Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust, and that of Edie June. The first time he saw her, he was in love.

It was in the Cleveland Art Museum. He was in the Oriental Gallery when she came around the corner by herself and stood next to him examining a gigantic metal statue of Black Kali.

Wonderful, isn’t it? she murmured.

He nodded, and then realizing that she was looking at the statue and not at him said, I’m sorry, were you talking to me, hoping of course that she was.

She turned and blushed. I...I didn’t mean to disturb you, she stammered. I was kind of talking to myself.

It’s okay. He stared at her. She was stunning—slender with large, green eyes, high cheekbones, a heart shaped face, small white teeth, and a superb though not spectacular figure. Not large breasted, but well-shaped and firm. Then a bit befuddled and definitely stricken, he stammered, Do you come here a lot? I mean...I’ve never seen you here. His face was flushed, his heart beating rapidly, his palms sweating.

She turned to him again. That’s the worst pick-up line I’ve ever heard...and I have heard a lot of them.

I didn’t mean to... he said, backpedaling.

I know, she said softly, trying to ease his sudden embarrassment.

I don’t usually butt into peoples’ privacy.

It’s okay, she said. You don’t have to apologize.

I really wasn’t trying to pick you up. He watched as she feigned a pout. Then in a move uncharacteristic of him, he said, Though, you really are very beautiful.

She smiled then, Want to go over and look at the Impressionists?

He nodded and followed her into the next gallery, half a step behind, like an obedient dog, like he would do for many months ahead.

Later that evening as he sat in the gathering summer twilight under the pin oaks at his parents’ house in Willoughby Hills, he wrote a poem for her, one he had been trying to finish for at least six weeks, but for which he had no real inspiration. He mailed it to her.

Edie June, she said when she picked up the phone. And before he could even say hello, she added. Well, you’re not Robert Frost, but by God you’ve got potential.

You liked it?

I loved it. A little too idealistic, but...it’ll do.

Thanks. If I say something, you won’t hold it against me, will you?

Depends, she said, and he could visualize her feigned frown at the other end of the phone in Mayfield.

Edie June, he said.

She laughed. A really old joke, she said, but I love the idea.

*

He was romantic and needy and in love. So, he showered her with roses, cyclamen, poems, hot fudge sundaes, tickets to events at Cain Park and the Play House, Geauga Lake, Cedar Point, and Euclid Beach. He was at his best -- funny, positive, and intelligent. But their real bond came in their mutual curiosity. He wanted to know about everything—and so did she. He bought her a ring and proposed to her on a hot, Lake Erie afternoon standing outside the fence to the giraffe compound at the Cleveland Zoo. And so, they passed the summer.

Their honeyed days drifted on the slow stream of time to autumn—a sunshine and shadow time of bright hot days and cool, starry nights. They got an apartment in Little Italy, an unofficial neighborhood near University Circle. His doctoral classes started at Case Western Reserve, and she continued her bachelor’s degree at The Cleveland Institute of Art where she began to focus on cartooning. November came in astride a horse of winter, and it rode on to spring, to a lazy summer and to another fall. Another year followed.

Then one of those events that we blunder through without drama, without fanfare, without notable significance, but in retrospect prove to be life-defining, occurred. Ben walked into the student union with a classmate, Tom Kistner, after their eleven o’clock Renaissance Drama class and saw Edie huddled in a dark corner booth with one of his professors, Doctor Meredith Marsh. They seemed to be arguing.

Isn’t that Edie over there? asked Kistner when he also noticed them.

Ben nodded, Looks like her.

Are they arguing? he asked.

Ben shrugged. I don’t know.

Didn’t know she knew Marsh, said Kistner. Edie had invited him to their apartment a few times for dinner since he had recently broken up with his longtime girlfriend, and she and Ben felt sorry for him.

You know the rub on her, don’t you? said Kistner almost in a whisper.

Ben shook his head that he didn’t know.

She’s a lesbian, and a man hater. She recruits young under- graduates.

No, said Ben disbelievingly.

I’ve heard too many rumors not to believe there’s some truth to it. Besides an older friend of mine, a Nam vet named Bruce Johnson, got shot down by her in his orals. He had the audacity to drop her ‘Keats, Byron, and Shelly’class.

Nah, poo-pooed Ben. University faculty don’t do things like that.

I’m telling you; I think it’s true. He stared at Ben for awhile and knew that he wasn’t buying the story. Well, anyway, let’s pretend we didn’t see ‘em and we can tease Edie about it later.

That evening, he mentioned it to her. Appropriately, it was the evening before Halloween. The weather was warm but wet. They had matched their own sexual rhythms to the beating of rain on their roof and fallen asleep naked. It was still drizzling when he awoke. She was beautiful there on the bed in the glow of a red neon sign from the pizza shop across Mayfield Road. He put on shorts, went to the efficiency kitchen, and heated up the coffee. Then he poured two cups and went back to the bedroom where he set hers on a small, cherry nightstand. He laid down a packet of Splenda he had freed from a local coffee shop and woke her with a gentle pat on the shoulder.

Sorry to wake you...but I need you to help me review for my big linguistics test tomorrow. She yawned and stretched. He sat down on the bed beside her. Brought you a cup. She smiled. Her right breast was showing from under a light blue blanket. He slowly began to run his forefinger around her nipple. She smiled, closed her eyes.

Again? she giggled.

Can’t, he replied with a frown. Really got to study, got to pass this exam to graduate.

There was a time, she