Crazy Tales of Blood and Guts Read online

  Sebastià is a fine fellow. He may not be very bright, but he’s pleasant enough and full of common sense, a quality that’s been lacking in these parts recently. He usually comes in his jeep, once a week at about 9 a.m., and eats breakfast with me. When he finishes his roll and beer (theoretically he’s on duty and can’t drink, but he knows I won’t let on), we walk round the garden shooting the breeze. While he’s gossiping or complaining that his wife spends too much on her credit card, I get him a good bag of vegetables together, which he says are very tasty because they’re so obviously organic. He insists on paying and I refuse to take his money, though I finally relent. To tell the truth, if it weren’t for Sebastià and his fondness for my vegetables, I don’t how I’d afford my tubes of suncream.

  Thanks to our conversations, I know that he usually goes to Barbes’s bar for a late-morning aperitif. Sebastià had already paid me his regulation visit, so I decided to go and see him in the bar and try out my own skills as a detective.

  They looked rather astounded when I walked in, because they know I never set foot there. It’s a place I avoid, basically because it annoys me that I can’t drink alcohol and because Barbes has a huge mirror hanging over the counter and I’m afraid someone will notice I never get a reflection. Barbes also has a few strings of garlic hanging up next to the mirror, either to spice up his cooking or to add a rustic touch, but that’s really not a problem, because all those stories they tell about vampires and garlic are pure supposition. It’s true we’re allergic to the sun, holy water and crosses, but garlic makes no odds. The only drawback is that it’s really disgusting to sink a fang into the carotid artery of someone who’s been eating aioli or a well-garlicked gazpacho. The blood of garlic aficionados tastes awful and, what’s more, it makes you belch.

  I ordered vermouth and olives as routinely as possible and sat next to Sebastià, who was also surprised to see me. I justified my presence by saying I was on my way to the chemist’s to buy painkillers because my back was hurting. We argued for a while about whether lumbago was more painful than kidney stones, and the latter finally won out. Sebastià started talking about the water restrictions locals were suffering because of the golf course, and the conversation immediately focused on the holiday crowd, their residential estate and the nuisance they caused. I easily channelled it to what was concerning me and whether my friend knew anything about the new vampire who’d set up in town.

  “Sebastià, what’s the meaning of the graffiti on the wall of the villa that’s next to the duck pond?” I asked, as deadpan as can be.

  “Ah, yes! The Sorribes family!” Sebastià sighed. “A vampire’s moved in, lad!”

  “You already knew he was a vampire?”

  “Of course! We knew who it was as soon as he bought the villa. What gets me,” Sebastià added, chewing an olive, “is that now I have to catch the idiots who painted the graffiti!”

  “But if you know he’s a vampire, why not simply kick him out?” I asked, even more perplexed.

  “I’d like to, you bet…” he chuckled. But then he suddenly got all serious and shouted, “These sons of bitches have no right to suck our blood!”

  “What’s more, you’ve found him out. You know what he is. Thanks to the graffiti, everybody does now.”

  “I tell you, forget the fucking graffiti…!”

  Sebastià leaned forward and whispered, “I’d personally string him up by his balls in the middle of the town square. That would teach him and his ilk a lesson!”

  I nodded. I understood how Sebastià was feeling, because in my heyday I used to drive people crazy and spark similar feelings. I decided not to tell him it wasn’t a good idea to string him up him by the balls because he’d simply fly off.

  “And is this fellow sucking your blood as well?” I’d heard of cases of vampires attacking sturdy, muscular men, but I’d always thought it must be a myth.

  “Mine and the blood of everyone who’s got a mortgage!” he sighed yet again. “And if only it were just him! But you’re all right with your little house and garden. You’re well sorted!”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” I insisted. “There must be a way to stop him in his tracks…”

  Sebastià shrugged his shoulders and bit on another olive.

  “The Russians had a bash with their revolution, and look what happened! And the less said about Cuba the better.”

  So, this Sorribes had wrought havoc in Russia and Cuba and I was totally oblivious. That was only to be expected. I read Cosmopolitan rather than the broadsheets.

  “Do you reckon his wife and children are vampires as well?” I asked, determined to leave the bar as well informed as possible.

  “You bet!” Sebastià responded, apparently totally convinced. “You’ve only got to see his wife strutting around the golf club, as if she were a duchess… And their children are vile. If I told you what they get up to at night…”

  “I think I can imagine…”

  “Those kids will be worse than their parents, you mark my words,” Sebastià concluded.

  I ate an olive conspicuously and realized the whole bar was looking at us. I judged it sensible to change tack and talk about more mundane matters while on the sly pouring my vermouth into the pot with the rubber plant, which immediately perked up. When the bill came, Sebastià insisted on paying, and, as I’m always broke, I made a token protest but let him get on with it.

  When we hit the road, that damned August sun was so blistering I had to rush back into the bar to avoid disintegrating. I used the excuse that my back was hurting, and Sebastià, who is as good as they come, offered to drive me home in his jeep. Once I was home, I immediately went to the crypt to rest because I was smouldering all over. In the jeep I’d noticed my right hand had begun to smell as if it were scorched, so I took a painkiller before going to sleep. I also decided it was high time I installed air conditioning in the crypt: I’m well aware it’s most inelegant to be sleeping nude in the coffin.

  I had nightmares all day. I was out of sorts. I was upset an unknown vampire was sucking my friend’s blood and decided I must do something. Killing vampires is no easy task, but I was certain that that was what I had to do.

  The first challenge was breaking in by day and catching them all asleep. The second was finding the stake for killing vampires; I’d no idea where I’d left it. I was forced to give the crypt a thorough clean, which took a couple of days because you can’t imagine the lumber that piles up over nine centuries. Finally, the stake surfaced in a corner next to the skeleton of my great-great-grandfather, covered in fungi and cobwebs. I cleaned it up and put it in a sports bag, next to the iron sword for decapitation. After transfixing vampires through the heart with a stake, one has the option of beheading them. There’s been a lot of theoretical debate on the subject, but, as these vampires were from elsewhere and unfamiliar with our customs, I thought it better to sin on the side of excess. When in doubt, go the whole hog. The sword was rusty and weighed a ton.

  I chose a cloudy afternoon when it looked like rain to put my plan into action. I knew they had a maid, because Sebastià had told me, and also that she wasn’t a vampire because the Sorribeses were sucking her blood too. I knocked on the door politely and the maid almost fainted. Sebastià and the other locals were used to my pallor (I’d explained it away one day by claiming that I’d used an anti-acne lotion when I was a teenager and had never recovered my dark skin), but people who’ve never seen me before are sometimes frightened. As the maid didn’t seem to want to let me in, looking rather as if she’d ring the police, I decided hypnosis was the only course of action.

  I’d not hypnotized anyone for years. Initially it was an effort, because the girl was hysterical and unfocused, but I succeeded in a few seconds and was able to enter the villa. Hypnosis is supposedly one of the skills that we vampires enjoy, but some are more skilled than others. In my case, as I was born cross-eyed it’s not easy, but on this occasion my powers worked. Once I had the maid under
control, I questioned her and she revealed that everyone except she, who had to do the ironing, took an afternoon nap. That was all I needed to know.

  Stressed by the idea of killing vampires, I started to look for the cellar, where I imagined the Sorribeses asleep in their coffins; however much I searched, I couldn’t find a door down to any crypt. I questioned the maid again and was shocked by what I learned.

  The house didn’t have a cellar and the family slept in bedrooms on the top floor. O tempora! O mores! Something totally unexpected! However, stranger things have been known. I took a deep breath and headed up the stairs, determined to carry out my plan. I opened the door of a very cute bedroom papered in a Laura Ashley floral pattern, and immediately felt a shiver of pleasure run down my spine. The air conditioning was on full blast, and it was like an icebox inside despite the heat in the street. It was exactly the powerful piece of technology I needed in my crypt; I took a mental note of the brand and continued my inspection.

  A middle-aged vampire was asleep in the bed, naked under a sheet: she gave me a real thrill. Rather reluctantly, I opened my bag and took out the stake and the sword. As I was surprised that she was sleeping in a bed and not in a coffin, I wanted to check she was one of us, so before starting on my task I lifted the sheet and touched her breast. She was indeed ice-cold. I stuck the stake through her heart before she could wake up and then beheaded her. A deft, professional blow. Her head rolled across the floor, under the dressing table, and came to rest next to her slippers, which is where I left it spurting blood. I assumed the vampire must have had a feast before falling asleep, because the room was soon splattered in red and we vampires only bleed when digesting. The two youngsters were no problem either, but their room smelled pleasantly of strange herbs that put me on a high and made me want to laugh; while I was sticking the stake into Sorribes I did laugh and the fool woke up. The fact is his screams rather dampened my spirits. Luckily, that was that.

  The Sorribes vampires were history. Sebastià could stop worrying now. I retrieved my stake and sword and returned to my crypt feeling as pleased as Punch with a job well done. The sight of so much blood had given me an appetite, and I decided to celebrate my feats with a couple of hens and a small lamb. As I was exhausted I went off to rest in my comfortable coffin, wondering how I’d manage to slip an electricity cable in unnoticed and install air conditioning. That evening I dreamed of that vampire’s breasts and woke up at ten with a hard-on.

  The following morning Sebastià dropped by and he didn’t look too happy. I was still wearing the bloodstained shirt, but as Sebastià is colour-blind and can’t identify the colour red, I decided to let it slide.

  “What’s new, Sebastià? Anything the matter?” I asked, knowing there’d been at least one change in town.

  “For God’s sake, haven’t you heard about the disaster at the Sorribes mansion?” he replied in a stress.

  “No…”

  “Butchery, my lad! Real butchery! They’ve dispatched a contingent of police from Barcelona. The TV people are here as well! I’ve just popped by to tell you to watch out, because there’s a madman around.”

  “A madman?” I asked, taken aback.

  “A very dangerous madman. Yesterday someone broke into the Sorribes villa and stabbed the lot of them. Chopped their heads off as well. The four of them: husband, wife and two kids. This morning the postman found the maid in a state of shock and discovered the corpses.” He added in a worried voice, “This is a psychopath at work, my lad.”

  “But he was a vampire…” I replied warily.

  “Vampire or not, this was barbaric!” countered Sebastià indignantly.

  “You said he was sucking your blood…”

  “Yes… But they’ve been done in so brutally!” And he went on, thinking aloud, “I expect it’s one of those gangs from Eastern Europe…”

  “I’m at a loss for words. You’ve chilled me to the bone. If you pricked me now, you’d not get a drop of blood out of me!”

  “I know how you feel. In a case like this, you don’t know what to say. Poor family! If you’d seen them…”

  I was really confused. I thought Sebastià would be pleased I’d destroyed that colony of blood-sucking vampires, but that was clearly not the case. Something had gone wrong.

  “Keep a watch out,” he shouted as he left. “Keep your eyes skinned. And change that shirt, for Chrissake. It’s a mess!”

  It’s obvious I’m getting past it: there is no way one can understand these mortals. I’ve probably spent too long roaming this benighted world, and the time has come to bid farewell. Basically it’s only fun being immortal if, in fact, you’re not, and I’ve felt a little out of place for a couple of centuries amid so much modernity. What’s the fun in being a vampire if people aren’t frightened any more and the categorical imperative doesn’t allow one to go around champing on necks? What’s the point in being immortal if you can’t enjoy a bottle of Dom Pérignon or go to the Botafumeiro and have a proper shellfish blowout? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself of late, and I can find no answers. Perhaps the bottom line is that being a vampire isn’t such great shakes. Obviously I really got my wires crossed over the Sorribeses. I don’t mean that Savall ought to organize a homage to me or name a street after me – though I don’t see why they shouldn’t – but frankly I was expecting a different reaction. At the very least, that Sebastià would be over the moon.

  At any rate, I did what a vampire had to do and my conscience is clear, and isn’t that what it’s really all about? As my mother used to tell customers who couldn’t get it up, at the end of the day, it’s the thought that counts.

  The First

  (Pre) Historic Serial Killer

  A number of us woke up this morning when the storm broke, only to find another corpse in the cave. This time it was Philip. The moment I saw his smashed skull and brains seeping down his temples into a pool of black blood I almost fainted, but the others slapped me and I came round. I rushed to rouse our chief and ask him to come and look and tell us what to do, but Charles is on the deaf side and slept like a log, and though the men were shouting, we finally had to piss on him to wake him up. Grumbling and bleary-eyed, our chief examined Philip’s body, cursing our bones for dragging him out of bed at such an early hour. In the meantime, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

  While Charles and the others speculated about what had happened, I studied the bloody rock that lay a few yards from Philip’s corpse and suggested to Charles that the two might be related. Charles, a rather laconic troglodyte, looked at me sceptically and warned me not to jump to conclusions.

  “Take this an inch at a time,” he commented. “I want my breakfast first.”

  After gobbling down fried ostrich eggs and turtle-and-herb sausages, Charles calmed his men down, insisting it must have been an accident. Then he brushed his teeth on a branch and said he’d like to speak to me in private. We surreptitiously retreated to a little recess at the back of the cave so the other males wouldn’t hear our conversation, but as our cave has magnificent acoustics and you have to shout at Charles to make sure he hears you, everybody eavesdropped on our chinwag. In fact, I didn’t see the point of so much secrecy, because he soon called an assembly to inform the men, and except for Harry, who’s rather snoopy, nobody seemed particularly interested.

  Charles, who isn’t as stupid as he seems, asked me to open an investigation, because three deaths in fourteen moons are too many and the clan was beginning to feel edgy. The facts that all three were male and that we found them early in the morning with their heads smashed in by a rock was too much of a coincidence – however, prudent Harry and Charles favour the accident hypothesis. For my part, I’m pretty sure something’s up in the cave. My problem is I don’t know what.

  Harry, Charles’s right-hand man, immediately protested at the very idea I should lead the investigation, but Charles quickly landed a punch, knocking a couple of his teeth out, and that was the end of the argument. It
really makes a lot of sense he’s chosen me to handle this; I am, by a long chalk, the cleverest troglodyte ever. Of the twenty males that comprise the Hairy Bear tribe (give or take one), I’m the only one not to stumble over the same stone every morning when I leave the cave, a phenomenon that intrigues the lot of them. The other point in my favour is that I’m the troglodyte with the most free time on his hands, because Charles has banned me from going hunting, partly because I’m not very handy at it and he prefers me to stay with the females rather than upset the hunting party. Indeed, if I hadn’t discovered fire by chance one spring evening when the other males were rutting and I was bored stiff, they’d probably have put me six feet under and I’d be pushing up daisies in the necropolis or in some animal’s craw. After all, thinking with one’s head and not one’s feet (or that other appendage) has its advantages, and I trust that will get some recognition someday.

  Because of the privileged status I enjoy as the idler in the tribe, I had no choice but to follow Charles’s orders. He’s in charge and, however much we grumble, this is no democracy. As the rain had stopped, the men went mammoth-hunting and the women snail-collecting; in the meantime I slumped under a fig tree and activated my grey cells to find a lead to help me discover the murderer’s identity. Charles and Harry can say what they like, but I am convinced there’s skulduggery afoot and we’re dealing with three murders with a capital M.

  The first to cop it was Edward, whose head was also smashed in with a bloody stone that was left lying next to him. Edward was a fine fellow but as daft as a brush, so we all thought it was self-inflicted and left it at that. A few moons later on it was James’s turn, and since he received most blows to the right side of his skull, I started to think we were barking up the wrong tree. Everyone in the clan knew James was left-handed (because his right arm ended up in some beast’s belly), so it could hardly have been suicide or an accident, which was our theory in Edward’s case. My suspicions were confirmed this morning when we found Philip’s corpse. At a glance the cause of death seems similar, but as nobody knows how to carry out an autopsy comme il faut, we can’t be sure. In the absence of scientific evidence I must tread the slippery terrain of hypothesis, where it’s easy to come a cropper. Nonetheless, I think there are three facts I can establish beyond a shadow of a doubt: first, all three met a violent death; second, someone smashed their skulls in with a rock; third, it happened while they were sleeping, because we found all three on the pile of rotting leaves we call a bed.