Return of the Vampire Babies

After 82 books – Work in Progress: RETURN of the VAMPIRE BABIES - BLOODSCREAMS #10 and a sequel to SATANIPEDES by Robert W. Walker, author of the Instinct and Edge books

Bks #1 thru 9 are available as ebooks and paperback via amazon and www.boldventurepress.com and browse at www.robertwalkerbooks.com

OPENING ONLY - Chapter One:

Due entirely to the voices in his head, Dr. Abraham H. Stroud, archeologist and vampire slayer, must use a derivative of what his doctor called ‘morphine for the mind’, as it was the only way to find sleep. Stroud literally had to knock himself out just to silence the voices, just to find sleep at night.

These were not the voices of a demented mind, nor were they borne of dementia, but rather the quite real spectral voices of the vampire babies that’d invaded his cranium and brain to dwell there under the social contract that Abe had forged with the ancient supernatural forces that had, at one time, breathed air and tasted of life only to be sickened by a devastating disease, denied life before their time, and put away in graves with stones shoved into their mouths to weigh them down for eternity, to keep them from wandering the earth as vampire babies.

The bargain that Abe had forged with the dead had taken a great toll on his body and soul; the rock-bottom price the little bastards would go for Abe had accepted and had now lived with for several months. The deal brokered with these extremely young spirits had been akin to a deal with the devil, however, it did have the advantage of containing their little evil natures to one human being’s mind—Abe’s. Which had been Stroud’s design. At the time, he had no idea if he could or could not control them, and if so, for how long? Any one of them—and they were legion—could at any time venture from him and infect another human being that Abe might come into contact with. Indeed, it was the life of a disease carrier he’d been living since Malta and that cursed, damnable dig there.

They’d been repeatedly warned by the locals to not disturb that ancient cemetery built thousands of years ago for children of a pandemic. But dig they did and unearth they did, and now Abe was living with the final nasty results. Nasty Vampire Babies. Babies that lived vicariously from within Stroud’s being. Mind vampires that existed only through Abe’s eyes and brain and body, wherein the little beasties had regained some semblance of life.

Abe had believed at the time of the bargain, it’d make sense to broker the dark and dangerous deal. Best that he, and he alone, be utilized as a receptacle (a house of many rooms) for the gremlin-like cretins; better than to have all his associates each with their own vampire baby residing within like some swallowed worm. At the time, Abe could not stand by idle and continue to witness the deterioration of everyone else’s mind—which was happening with regularity by then, as these freaky vermin-like babies infiltrated and possessed and squatted and took up residence inside the human brain.

Some of the students and leaders of the dig in Malta began complaining of feelings and emotions that were not their own, while some felt a physical presence roaming within their craniums, and others ‘saw’ shadows floating back of the eyes, little annoyances of feat that their brains were so scrambled as to ultimately go mad.

Abe’d had little choice, really; one receptacle as opposed to the many. Like a damn Star Trek episode he’d sacrifice for the crew. Then he would be only the lonely one. One rather than many people who’d become infected and overwhelmed and at times evilly used, as had been the case when the babies had spread across the archeological dig in Malta, where they’d been uncovered and disturbed, their bones removed, tabled, reassembled, tagged, photographed, and the stones and bricks lifted from their mouths. Abe thought of that moment, when the stones were being examined as the moment that people in the camp were first being inhabited and possessed of the demonic seedlings or viruses or whatever one wished to call these spectral beings with loud, scrying voices that at times Abe pleaded with to just shut the fuck up!

Only the drugs could silence the voices and the tuning fork backscatter of the many souls residing within Stroud’s head now. Still, he knew the drug did not actually silence the voices, but rather shut him off and not them. While in his comatose-drug-induced comatose state, the vampire babies continued their constant wailing and warring with one another—as a contingent of them wished to leave this receptacle for their own human to possess, someone other than Stroud, who oft times was in conflict and disagreement with the other forces within himself as much as with them.

“What will you do with them? Ultimately?” asked a fellow archeologist as Abe was leaving Malta for the last time, returning to America.

“I will keep them in check as much as humanly possible.”

“But your wife, your child—suppose—”

“I will quarantine from them until I am sure that I have sure, steady-handed control of the things. Now, I must go, old friend.”

“Do you really think these things will allow you to control them? And for how long?”

The entire flight home, those words had rung in his ears below the sound of the vampire babies roiling about in the same space as the questions. On board the crowded plane. Abe worried that one, two, maybe three of the more difficult spectral creatures might leap from him to another passenger, merely to show that it was with ease, their escape and it was within their power and not his to maintain their spirit-forged social contract. But can a living man have a social contract with a being beyond man’s laws, he wondered now as the plane touched down in Boston, having been diverted from NYC, where protesters had taken control of the airport, thus threatening the lives of countless people in the air as well as on the ground.