'Look', she said, 'Isn't it wonderful?'

It was very early morning. The sun was just coming up over the hills of Argyll, spreading a pink glow across the wispy clouds.

The sea was being slightly ruffled by a small breeze; there in the foreground, in front of the house, at the edge of the small lawn, sat three ottersaaobviously a mother and two smaller young. They trotted along the sh.o.r.e then slipped into the water.

We crept out, still naked, and watched them cavorting among the huge fronds of seaweed until I slipped on the wet gra.s.s. My sudden movement caused them to dive, resurfacing again much farther out.

Sandra came over and squeezed me, her full belly pressing its heat against my flesh.

"Thanks for bringing us here John. I love it." We kissed and I marveled at how hot and alive and heavy with life she had become. It was only as we turned back to the house that I noticed the mound.

It had been too dark the night before to see any details of the surrounding area, but now I could see that the cottage was built on a small raised piece of land between two arms of a river. We had come across a small bridge but in the dark I had failed to notice it.

Behind the cottage where the rivers split there was a huge stone cairn, standing eight to ten feet high, topped off with a cross which looked to be the same height as the cairn and made of solid iron. Around the cairn there was a wrought iron fence with spiked railings jutting up towards the sky.

"Why would they put something like that out here?" she asked me. "I thought cairns were usually built on top of hills?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe it's for someone who died either here or at sea near here. We can ask in town if you like?" I turned towards her, noticing the goose pimples on her arms. "Get yourself inside and put some clothes on; we don't want you to catch a chill. Anyway, by the time we get going and get to town the shop will be open."

When we eventually got to the shop it was ten o'clock; there had been many things to see on the drive down.

The shop held only basic foods: eggs, bacon, cheeseaanothing too fancy, but Sandra had gotten over her cravings for exotica and we would be able to stock up with most of our needs for the week. Sandra was the focus of much talk and was in danger of excessive mothering from some of the women we met. We turned down several offers of a warm room closer to town, and the shop owner took our list from us, promising that she would make it up and we could collect it later.

Luckily the hotel served a late breakfast. The pace of life on the island moved slowly and you could run breakfast into lunch into supper without leaving the hotel grounds. We managed to escape at one in the afternoon, weighed down by bacon and sausages and swilling with coffee.

It was only when we stopped by the shop to pick up our supplies that I remembered the cairn.

The shopkeeper tried to hide her movement but I caught itaathe sign against the evil eye, two p.r.o.nged fingers stabbing at me as she spoke. "You don't have to worry about that sir. It's only an old memorial. Some say there used to be a plaque fixed to it but no one can remember what it' was there for."

I noticed that the rest of the customers in the shop had fallen silent. I supposed that the cairn was the focus for some old superst.i.tion. That didn't bother me, but I wasn't about to tell Sandra. Unlike me, she held a fascination for the supernatural. Anything that went b.u.mp in the night or was out of the ordinary, she fell for it. I could never understand the fascination with scaring yourself half to death, but I knew if she found out there was something weird about the cairn she would not stop until she had wrinkled out the story. In the car on the way to the cottage I told her it was a war memorial and let the subject drop. She didn't ask any questions.

We got back in the late afternoon, having made numerous stops to marvel at the stunning variety of life around us. Sandra made a big show of hand-washing our traveling clothes and hanging them from a clothesline at the back of the house.

The rest of the day pa.s.sed lazily as we sat on the lawn, drinking long drinks, watching the scenery and making happy plans for our future. We took our food onto the gra.s.sy area, sitting on an old rug and throwing occasional morsels to an inquisitive squirrel. I think that evening was the closest to heaven I had ever been.

We were finally forced indoors by a chill, which brought the clouds down the hills just as the sun disappeared and a fine grey mist spread over the sea. It wasn't long before we adjourned to the bedroom and made tender careful love as the darkness closed in around us. Later, as I was falling asleep, I could hear the wind rising, whistling through the chimneyb.r.e.a.s.t.s, causing the trees to rustle and crack.

I woke early and squeezed myself away from Sandra, taking care not to wake her. After boiling some water in the kettle I ventured out to see what the weather was like. The first thing I noticed was the effect of the wind. The washing was gone from the line, torn off the rope during the night. I found a shirt in the left hand stream, a pair of underpants halfway up a tree, and Sandra's blouse hanging from one arm of the cross on the cairn.

I retrieved everything I could find before moving to the mound of stones. I stepped over the railing, nearly injuring myself on the spikes as I clambered up the rocks, dislodging a few in the process, and gaining several bruises on my knees.

The blouse was wrapped around the rusted spar. Straining and stretching I could just about reach it. Catching hold of the blouse I pulled. My footing gave way and I fell, pulling the blouse with me. I felt the material tear before something solid and heavy hit me on the head, forcing me onto the rolling, dislodged rocks until I was brought up against the railings.

I heard a loud creaking and looked up to see the cross, now with a spar missing, swaying from side to side in the breeze. When I looked down I found the missing piece lying by my side with Sandra's blouse wrapped around it. I left it there as I hauled myself over the railings and hobbled back to the house.

That was it for the rest of the day. I was dazed, bleeding from a head wound with bruises over much of my body. Sandra wanted to fetch the doctor but I talked her out of it. I didn't want anybody to know that I had defaced the memorialaanot yet anyway, not until I had the chance to repair the damage. I spent the day in bed, most of the time with Sandra beside me, nursing my wounds and wondering what the islanders' reaction would be. As darkness filled the room Sandra fell asleep but I laid awake, listening to the creaking of the cross and the rasping of iron against stone as it swayed back and forth in the wind.

At some point I must have fallen asleep. I was awakened by a cold draft hitting me on the back of the neck. I rolled over, hoping to snuggle against my wife's warm body, but I met only more empty s.p.a.ce. It took several seconds for me to realize that she wasn't in the bed.

Moonlight was streaming in through the window enough for me to make out her pale figure and the cross that bobbed and swayed hypnotically in front of her. I was out of the room and onto the gra.s.s before I realized we were both naked.

I went back to fetch some clothes; I pulled on a long jumper and picked up an overcoat for her. When I returned to the door I could see she was not alone.

He stood inside the railing, thin and white, tall and naked, beckoning to her with one long white finger, saliva dripping from his mouth. My mind screamed vampireaaI wasn't stupid. I'd seen the films; I knew what the long teeth meant.

I was twenty yards away when she reached out to take his hand, ten yards away when he bent his head to her neck. His long hand stroked across the swell of her belly. I was close enough to see his eyes sparkle once he realized she was pregnant. I could see the blood oozing across her shoulders as he gulped noisily against her neck; the dark liquid glowed black in the moonlight.

He still hadn't noticed me, until I gripped his head and pulled it away from its feed. I realized at once it had been a mistake. He lifted me off the ground, causing the muscles of my back, which were already tender from their earlier bruising, to scream out in white-hot agony.

The beast stared at me from the deep silver pools of his eyes. My feet were flailing as I tried to wriggle from his grasp. He pulled me close to his faceaaso close I could feel the cold dampness of his breath and see my wife's blood glistening on the curved fangs. Suddenly I was lifted higher, above his head, and thrown, dumped to the ground, forgotten.

I knew what he wanted; I had seen the l.u.s.t in his eyes.

Once more he reached for her, long white arms pulsing red with the blood he had taken, white hair spreading behind him like a cape as he lunged forward. He took her in his arms and crushed her body to him. She moaned a deep groan of pleasure as I writhed on the ground. I tried to get on my feet and block the sucking and moaning sounds from my brain.

I tripped over the broken spar of the cross. I lifted it, hoping to smash it across his skull before an image from the films came into my head: the image of the beast impaled.

He was still oblivious to me as I struck, forcing the heavy rusty metal into his back, putting all my weight behind it.

The screaming started immediately. Sandra was dropped to the ground; black blood pulsed from her throat as the beast raged. It turned towards me, pulling the spar from my hands and taking several layers of skin with it.

I moved back, stumbling over the fallen stones.

The vampire's eyes pierced meaasilver turning to gold and then black as its face opened in a shriek and the first wisps of smoke appeared at its chest. It looked down at the six inches of iron protruding from its breastbone just as the first flame exploded into life, taking away the lower face and much of the head of hair.

It burned a deep golden fire, which consumed it entirely in less than five secondsaaa fire which stretched my skin and singed my eyebrows even as I grinned. I was left with the moonlight and the cold and the ashes and the madness echoing round in my head.

The spar was still there, lying in the midst of a heap of smoking ashes. I left it where it was and piled some of the fallen stones on top of it, giggling all the while.

Sandra was breathing heavily when I finally got to her but at least the blood had stopped. As I lifted her into my arms she let out a scream which drove through my skull.

'The baby. Oh G.o.d ... it's coming. It's coming.'

I don't remember much of the next half hour, only fragmentsaadriving like a maniac as she sobbed quietly behind me, the sudden light in the deer's eyes before the car hit it dead on, smashing the car's headlights into a million tinkling fragments, the small twinkling lights in the black distance as I managed to avoid the cliff edge, and finally, the iron gate on the path, which I almost fell over as the doctor came towards me and I collapsed into a faint.

I have a vague memory of being put in an armchair and force-fed whisky as my wife was carried upstairs and the doctor called for some help. My legs wouldn't move and my arms were heavy; sleep called me back again.

I dreamt hot lurid fantasies of violence and fire, of rape and bloodletting, of a cold, black fury that carried all before it. I woke from screams into screams.

My legs pushed me out of the chair and towards the door long before my brain was fully awake. I was halfway up the stairs before I recognized the voice behind the screaming. I reached the door just as the screams stopped.

Early morning sunlight was streaming into the room, lighting a scene which will be forever etched into my memory: The doctor standing off to one side, his left hand covering his mouth, his right clutching his chest as if to keep his heart in.

An old woman lying across the bed in a dead faint, her grey wisps of hair mingled with the blood from my wife's legs.

My wife lying on her side, throat muscles straining, mouth opened in a long soundless scream that refuses to come; her gaze is fixed on the writhing shape. She is ignoring the wisps of smoke which are beginning to rise from her legs; the charring and peeling and blackening are immaterial to her pain as she looks upon our child.

And there on the floor lies our future, burning golden in the first rays of the sun, being cleansed in the purifying light of the new day, my son. The last thing I see before darkness takes me away for a long time are the fangs, two tiny spikes sliding out of those new pink gums, the fangs which are the last things to disappear as the fire burns out and the ashes shift in the breeze.

When Barrettes Brought Justice to a Burning Heart.

JOHN EVERSON.

He staggered from the smoky heat of the bar into the chill autumn wind. The street outside was empty, the cloud-sc.u.mmed sky a leeching black. Bill Frond's stomach sloshed as he weaved to the corner, but all the liquor his wallet could afford hadn't a.s.suaged the burning in his chest. In fact, through the haze of inebriation, he actually felt more wounded now than before he had stomped into Ale's Head Tavern several hours ago. The fire in his heart had contracted to a pinpoint of heat, leaving behind a blackened void. He feared when the little acid flame that still burned was extinguished he would stop dead in his tracks, a flesh appliance whose batteries had spurted their last current.

But another fire was lighting in his guts; it surged past the dying ember in his heart to race through his throat. Bill froze a moment, staring sickly at the dark alleyway just ahead. As his binge lit to purge, he dashed for the privacy of the narrow street.

Ten minutes later, exhausted and slumped on the ground near a pool of bitter vomit, Bill pulled a tissue from his jacket, wiped the tears from his eyes, and blew the acid from his nose.

"Feel better?" a voice whispered, grating from the darkness. Bill's heart leapt at the unexpected sound. He squinted at the uneven bricks and shadows around him. The dim outline of a man began to take shape from the depths of the darkened street.

"Not really," Bill answered, wondering if, after all this, he was now going to be mugged. Or killed. Preferably the latter, a voice within him begged.

"Tell me," the voice asked, its owner settling just far enough away that Bill couldn't make out his face. A white flash as the man spoke, a glint from eyes turning down. That was all. A hint of a face.

"Tell you, what?" Bill snapped. "That I feel sick inside? That I just wasted 30 bucks trying to drink away reality? Please leave me alone; I'm not in the mood for company."

"Don't worry, I'm not anybody's idea of company." The hint of a face blurred, shifted, moved closer. Bill caught the sour odor of alley trash and felt his belly kick in complaint.

"Tell me why you're here, while you still can," the voice demanded. The roughness of its tone sent a chill through Bill's neck. If this guy was going to beat him upaaor worseaawhat difference did it make why he was here?

"You want to know? I'll tell you," Bill began, slipping easily into the words, recounting events he had already relived a hundred times this night.

"Seven months ago, Lissa, my daughter, was walking home from school. We live just a few blocks away from Sanders High, and she always walked homeaain the rain, in the snow, in the summertime. She liked to walk. And she always came straight home. But on that particular afternoon, she didn't come home on time. Cheryl, that's my wife, worried a little, but figured Lissa had stopped off to talk with someone. When it got to be dinnertime, Cheryl started calling the parents of Lissa's friends. No one had seen her. After I came home from work, and she still wasn't home, we checked the hospitals. Then we called the police."

The shadowed figured nodded slowly, as if hearing a familiar story.

"They found her the next day in the woods behind the school. She was naked, her body smeared with blood. Her own. Her eyes were open. I think that hurt me the most. She was aware of every touch, every violation, I know she was. Her skull was crushedaashe'd been hit on the head with rock. Then raped. But she felt every minute of it. Her eyes were screaming.

"They caught the boys who did itaaa couple of seventeen-year-olds who thought they could just knock her out with a rock, then rape her and leave before she woke up." Bill's face wrinkled in silent agony; he coughed out a sob and shook his head clear.

"But they hit her too hard," he finally continued, tears now wetting his cheeks. "And somehow, she didn't fall unconscious. I wanted them to die like my daughter died. I watched them smirking to each other in the courtroom during the trial, and I pictured myself smashing their heads together until their brains pulped through my fingers."

He paused, unclenched his hands and laughed sadly.

"The violence I planned for them! I wanted to castrate them, bash in their brains, stab holes in their hearts. Every night during the week of the trial, I cried myself to sleep. And when it was all over ... the boys walked away free. Their lawyers managed to get every sc.r.a.p of evidence the police had found thrown out of court on technicalities. They walked away free while my daughter rotted in the ground."

A flash of white, as the stranger's face nodded once again, inched closer.

"The day after the trial was over I stepped on my front porch to get the paper. And found these."

Bill pulled two triangular shapes from his coat pocket. They glittered in the faint light filtering into the alleyway from the street. "Lissa's barrettes. I know the boys left them for me to find. A joke. It was all a joke to them. And I hated myself, because instead of going after them, instead of giving them what they gave my daughter, I tucked these in my pocket, went back in the house, and cried some more."

The pale face again shifted closer, its outline now distinct, long in the heavy shadow of the alley. "Revenge is an expensive enterprise," it whispered, near enough that Bill could see the stranger's lips move. They seemed crooked, off-kilter. The alley stench had grown stronger; its character was led by the nauseous aroma of rotting meat, but filled out with the bitter taste of old milk and neglect. Bill began to breathe through his mouth.

"Well, I wish I had paid the price now," Bill retorted. The fire in his chest had flared briefly with the retelling of his child's murder, but now flickered lower than before. He was beaten. It was over. He couldn't avenge his daughter and the remaining foundation of his life, which he'd spent years building upon, had, just today, been swept away in an instant.

"You're not here tonight because of your daughter," the voice breathed. Bill heard a pain in that tone that sounded not unlike his own. "Tell me," the stranger demanded softly.

Bill looked up in surprise at the stranger's appraisal, then nodded. It seemed right. He wanted to tell someone everything. And so he did.

"My wife looked into my eyes this morning. I thought she looked sad, and I asked her what was wrong. She just kept staring at me, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Then she kissed me. I knew something was bad. Real bad. She'd been so quiet since Lissa died. Actually, she'd been quiet before that, but I hadn't noticedaauntil I thought about it tonight.

" 'I don't love you anymore,' she said. Her eyes were blinking fast and her voice cracked.

" 'I've been trying to find it for a long time, but I'm sorry, I just don't. It's gone,' she said. I looked at her then, and maybe saw her for the first time in years. It's funny, after awhile, you start to see your wife as part of the furniture. She's there, you know? But in that instant I saw her, Cheryl, the woman I met at a beach party 20 years ago. And in her eyes I saw an unknown womanaastill with all the mystery of a first date. I thought I knew her inside and out, but quite suddenly I realized that all I really knew about Cheryl was her skin. That I knew by heart. And her routines. But her? The woman staring at me with tears and pity in her eyes, I didn't know. And the man who cried, and begged, and finally fled to the Ale's Head Tavern ... I'm ashamed to know."

A hand patted him on the shoulder and Bill looked up into the startling eyes of the stranger. They were milky white, shot through with veins. They had no pupils. They rested in a face that seemed to move and shift in a manner no muscles could control. The rest of the man was cloaked in a long grey coat which didn't hide his gauntness. His bony fingers were also covered in half-gloves, hobo-style.

"And what are you going to do about it?" the stranger asked, his breath crossing Bill's nose in a putrid wave which made him realize the alley stench was not of the alley, but of the b.u.m.

"Nothing," Bill whispered. "I just want to die."

"That wish, I will grant," the stranger answered, and with a leap, pinned Bill to the ground. He didn't struggle.

"Go ahead," Bill said, all resistance leaving him. "I don't really care."

At close range, the stranger's oddly twitching face appeared mottled with sores, violent explosions of purple standing in grotesque relief against bone-white skin. The hands, which pinned him to the gravelly asphalt, were cold, sticky.

"I can give you the tool for revenge," the lips offered, mucousy spit dripping from them to moisten Bill's face. "Or I can simply kill you. I give you the choice because it wasn't offered to me. I would have chosen death. The cost of revenge, as I said, is great."

Deep in the burnt-out sh.e.l.l of Bill's heart, a tiny flame guttered higher. An insane thought crossed his mind. This was not your ordinary alley b.u.m. Looking into the b.l.o.o.d.y whites which pa.s.sed for the stranger's eyes, seeing the pus oozing from the cracks in his neck, smelling the decay which was not garbage, not bad breath, but trench-coated the b.u.m's rotting flesh, Bill concluded that this was the devil himself. And suddenly that long unslaked thirst for revenge poured gasoline into his heart.

"I'll pay the price, whatever it is," he gasped through gritted teeth. "If it's my soul you want, take it, I don't care." Anger flooded his mind like the bile still lodged in his throat. "I just want to make them pay. All of them."

The being hesitated a moment, and a word of warning gurgled in his throat. His eyes lowered to stare into Bill's own. The stench was overpowering. Bill's stomach threatened to lose whatever acid remained trapped within when the eyes suddenly pulled away and then with a watery cry, the man buried his mouth in Bill's neck. He only got out one yelp of surprise and pain, and then the night sky blurred. His body went rigid and a stream of cool ice froze in his head. He could hear the stranger slurping, hear the beat of his own heart: thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud ... thud ... thud ... thud. Thud.

Thud.

The stench. G.o.d, it was bad! Bill lifted his head from the cushion of a plastic sack and stirred a hive of flies from somewhere below. They swarmed across his face and landed on his lips. He shook them away and realized in doing so that, amazingly, he had no hangover. But where was he?

Rolling off the bag, he felt the surface shift beneath him with a metallic heave as bags slid away and his feet scrambled to find purchase on solid ground. Reaching above him, his fingers met cool metal that lifted with a push. He rose to full height, his back and legs creaking at the unaccustomed stretch. A garbage dumpster. He was standing in a garbage dumpster! In a dark, stinking alley.

And then the events of the night returned to him: the drinking, the stranger, his story, and thenaaan attack? He reached up to feel his neck. Sure enough, there were two big sores where the b.u.m had bitten him. Bracing his hands on the side of the dumpster, he vaulted himself to the ground and brushed off his clothes. Something moved in the dark and he froze.

It was the expectation of hearing his heart pound wildly in his chest from fright that tipped him off.

His heart wasn't beating fast.

Odd.