The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

"When I got so I could go out, I went over there one morning. Mrs Babbit had just come in to say she hadn't seen any smoke and she didn't know but what it was somebody's duty to go in, but she couldn't help thinkin' of her children, and I got right up, though I hadn't been out of the house for two weeks, and I went in there, and Luella she was layin' on the bed, and she was dyin'.

"She lasted all that day and into the night. But I sat there after the new doctor had gone away. Nobody else dared to go there. It was about midnight that I left her for a minute to run home and get some medicine I had been takin', for I begun to feel rather bad.

"It was a full moon that night, and just as I started out of my door to cross the street back to Luella's, I stopped short, for I saw something."

Lydia Anderson at this juncture always said with a certain defiance that she did not expect to be believed, and then proceeded in a hushed voice.

"I saw what I saw, and I know I saw it, and I will swear on my deathbed that I saw it. I saw Luella Miller and Erastus Miller, and Lily, and Aunt Abby, and Maria, and the doctor, and Sarah, all goin' out of her door, and all but Luella shone white in the moonlight, and they were all helpin' her along till she seemed to fairly fly in the midst of them. Then it all disappeared. I stood a minute with my heart poundin', then I went over there. I thought of goin' for Mrs Babbit, but I thought she'd be afraid. So I went alone, though I knew what had happened. Luella was layin' real peaceful, dead on her bed."

This was the story that the old woman, Lydia Anderson, told, but the sequel was told by the people who survived her, and this is the tale that has become folklore in the village.

Lydia Anderson died when she was eighty-seven. She had continued wonderfully hale and hearty for one of her years until about two weeks before her death.

One bright moonlight evening she was sitting beside a window in her parlour when she made a sudden exclamation, and was out of the house and across the street before the neighbour who was taking care of her could stop her. She followed as fast as possible and found Lydia Anderson stretched on the ground before the door of Luella Miller's deserted house, and she was quite dead.

The next night there was a red gleam of fire athwart the moonlight and the old house of Luella Miller was burned to the ground. Nothing is now left of it except a few old cellar stones and a lilac bush, and in summer a helpless trail of morning glories among the weeds, which might be considered emblematic of Luella herself.

Sangre

Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle was born in Texas, but has lived in the United Kingdom since 1980. She presently resides in Scotland with her husband and daughter. Her novels include the John W. Campbell Award-winning Windhaven (1981, with George R.R. Martin) , Familiar Spirit, Gabriel: A Novel of Reincarnation, Lost Futures, The Pillow Friend and The Changelings along with several titles aimed at young adult readers. Her short fiction has been collected in A Spaceship Built of Stone and Other Stories, A Nest of Nightmares, Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation and My Pathology, and she has edited the anthologies Skin of the Soul and Crossing the Border: Tales of Erotic Ambiguity. Her how-to volume , Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction was recently published in A&C Black's "Writing Handbooks" series .

" Although I've often used the vampire theme metaphorically," says the author, "I think 'Sangre' is the only time I've written about a traditional, blood-drinking vampire "

Glenda stepped out of the shower and stopped before the mirror. Her hair looped up and confined beneath a shower cap left her long neck bare and made her eyes look larger and darker.

"You look Spanish," Steve said.

She didn't turn, but continued staring at herself in the mirror, her beautiful face impassive.

He put his hands on her wet shoulders, bent his head to kiss her neck.

"Dry me," she said.

He picked up a towel and patted her reverently, tenderly dry. She reached up and pulled off the cap and let her hair tumble, a flow of honey and brown, to her waist. He caught his breath.

"When is checkout?" she asked.

"Noon."

Now she turned to face him. "And then what? After we leave an hour from now, then what?"

"Anything you want. I'll take you to lunch anywhere you say, and then we'll have time to do a little shopping before you have to be at the airport. Anything you want." His eyes pleaded with her.

"Anything you want," she mimicked. Her face contorted in anger; she gave the towel he still held a jerk and wrapped it around herself. "How can you?"

"Glenda"

"I'm not talking about today! I'm talking about what after today? When I come back, do we just pretend it never happened? Do we just forget about us? How can you take me out and screw me, and then go tripping home to my mother? And what is this trip to Spain thing? Can't you handle it any more? Mother getting suspicious?"