Consumption of the Hampires



  Consumption of the Hampires

  A Short Story (by Granny Which Witch and plagiarized shamelessly) by

  PS Wright

  Copyright 2012 PS Wright

  Consumption of the Hampires

  Once upon a time in a Kingdom far away . . . well it weren’t so far away, just through the Terrific Trees and by the Flat Mountain the other side of the Authority’s Demesne . . . but it was a while ago, at least a few years. I’m getting side tracked. Where was I? Oh yes, there were a Duke and a Dame and they lived with a passel of their royal relatives in a castle they built right up to the side of the mountain so it was as strong as anything built by the Authority. Truth be told, they’d got that land through a swap with the Authority and it were him that named them Duke and Dame.

  I’m the groomsman. That’s been my role for long as I been knee high. My dad was a groom before, and his dad before that. It’s an easy job really. Caring for the horses aint too demanding and the muckety-mucks don’t ride near as much as the horses like. So we ride them on the days they need to be stretched and no royals are looking to go fox hunting or such.

  She were the most beautiful lady they ever invited up there. They had a dance, the Royals did, for all the muckety-mucks. She rode up in a carriage, proper with a footman and all. Was her horses that drew my eye of a once. They was foaming at the mouth and their eyes all rolled back and I recognized a poor beast what’s been rode too hard for too long. I took them back and gave them a proper rub down and made them drink in small doses and they recovered readily. But they was skittish animals they were. When she come out from her dancing and making with the fancy talk with the rest of the muckety-mucks, she were right pleased with my diligence and told me so. “How would you like to be my man?” she asked, like that were the sort of thing a lad would love if he knew what was good for him.

  But I told her, “No Miss, and thank you, but my family been with them for generations and it wouldn’t do. Folks would think the less of our family honor and my dad would die of a broken heart.”

  But that weren’t the end of it. No. She laughed with the sound of tinkling bells and I were smitten, though I was already beholden to another young lass in the village. “You do know what people say about them, don’t you?” she said. “People are unhappy, I hear.” she said. “Common folk are rising up all over.” she said. Oh yeah, she said a lot, did that one. Filled my fool head up, young as I was. Of course I knew them was from the old line of vampires. They was vampires when my great, great, great grandfather come to this village. They didn’t never bother us. They followed the customs. If you hung a cross on your outhouse, they wouldn’t bother you in there. Fact, if you was on the way to or from, and they happened to meet you there, after a bit of Lovely night, isn’t it? and such, off they’d go. Courteous about such things, they was. They passed an ordinance against planting garlic so we had to learn to eat our noodles without. But that weren’t no great problem. Vampires is people too, so gram’s always said. I never had no problem with them. They had sense enough not to dine on the help, not too often anyways. There was always a line of willing young lassies and laddies with a ken to be one of the pale skinned pretties kept up there. Occasionally, a lass would run off and the family would say it was them what did her in. But most the time, that were just to cover for the fact she’d got herself in a family way or taken up with a traveling man or such. They didn’t seem to mind the rumors. But she made me reconsider a bit.

  Now it were late and she was intoxicating. Lovely ladies from muckety-muck families didn’t waste their time on lads like myself. So my head was turned right around by the attention. “Go to the village,” she said. “Tell them what is gathered in the church that they don’t have to stand for it. Tell them about the uprisings and all. Tell them that it’s wrong for folks to live in tyranny and fear of vampires.” Then she kissed her hanky, and slipped it into my hand. “Show them this, and they will know I support your cause.”

  So down to the village and right up to the church doors went I. Oh the preacher, he had them in a mood that night. Sin and drinking had got up in the village and he were lighting into the sinners but good. Weren’t a man in the village didn’t go occasionally to the pubhouse. And even the ladies were known to put a dollop of something medicinal in the tea or, in the winter, to serve spiced cocoa or eggnog. But the preacher wasn’t hearing it. He were lighting into them good. Folks was fanning themselves and casting their eyes about the room so he couldn’t catch them in a staredown. When I banged those doors open and stepped into the light, every head swiveled to me. I admit a trace of fear. But I looked down at that hanky and I let them have it. “Right up there dwell the darkest sinners in our midst, preacher man.” said I. “They drink the blood of the young and frighten the old. They make pacts with evil spirits and fly around in the guise of bats and all sorts of mischief is got up over at the castle ways. Why, just this evening past there was a party till all hours with drinking and cavorting and heavens knows what all.”

  It was relief I seen in the eyes of the brothers and sisters of my village, relief and a cunning knowing. I heard someone shout an amen from the congregation. I said some of those other things the lady had told me to remind them of. Weren’t long before the whole mass of them was up in arms. The preacherman weren’t letting this go without his being the top of the heap. So he puts in that we should all go marching on that castle as a rabble in arms. Yes sir, we was head up for sure and ready to burn the place down. So off we go to the castle where they were settling in, as proper vampires do when the sun is blazing high in the morning sky.

  Mrs. Peabody said, “What about my kitty? Tootles can’t stay in the house all day alone. He’ll tear up the drapes.”

  “Bring him with.” old Snotjohnson, the teacher, said.

  Mrs. Peabody didn’t think highly of that idea. But the gardener, Tuck, he knew things about the supernatural and he told us all about how cats can see ghosts and what and Tootles might be helpful. So we all waited down by the corner while she went to fetch her fat cat.

  Mr. Hankerschlaub complained it was supposed to be chicken for lunch this Sunday so he’d skipped his breakfast.

  “Me too.” Mr. Bogley agreed. Me, I thought he could have skipped a lunch or two as well, but I wasn’t asked.

  “Now brothers, we have a holy mission to accomplish today. Let us not be steered aside by earthly desires.” The preacherman reminded them.

  “It’s Bee’s turn to do the potato salad. My missus did it last. Bee said we should bring the pie.” Mr. Bogley glummed.

  I held my hands up to Heaven, that being the best way to get attention when trying to raise up a rabble in arms. “We must throw off the shackles of vampiric tyranny.” I said, trying hard to use the fancy phrases she had used with the proper amount of righteousness. Somehow, it sounded better the way she said it.

  Mr. Bogley mopped at his brow for the hundredth time. “It’s lemon chiffon. We coulda brought sweet potato, that’s what I told her. But she said lemon chiffon was more Godly. She said meringue was like the clouds of Heaven.”

  “Brothers and Sisters, stand firm in your holy crusade!” The preacher shouted, as one or two of the faithful started to drift in the direction of the ale house.

  “It’ll melt. It’ll melt and the potato salad will grow salmon. I read how that salmon can kill you. You put the eggs and mayonnaise in the potato salad and they turn the potatoes into salmon. I read it in a pamphlet Uncle Whatchamacallit sent round.”

  Luck were on our side and Mrs. Peabody returned with her cat. There was a rousing shout of hurrahs and we was off to the castle. But it weren’t a moment before Hankerschlaub brought up how we didn’t have pitchforks and what. “
We can’t be a rabble in arms without pitchforks and what.” He whined through his nose. It was quite a trick he had, speaking so you couldn’t see his mouth move. It were like his nose were a flute, the way I saw it.

  “Right. We gotta round up some pitchforks.” I had to agree, he had a point.

  “I aint got a pitchfork.” Mr. Bogley complained. “I’m a baker, not a farmer.”

  “Well, a rolling pin ought to do. That’s a fine weapon.” And Shanksley got some laughs for that one because everyone knew how fat old Bogley’s skinny wife had chased