Vault of Ungodly Horror #48

“Deadly is the Night”

Columbia County, Pennsylvania. Earth-Tsan.

The storm hit just after seven in the morning as the sun began to rise. Its soft orange glow abruptly gave way to violent red painted along the breadth of the clouds, and then those once-fluffy puffs looked hard and dark as jet as the wind blew hellfire steam south across the dead zones and into the struggling small towns that shared the southernmost edge of the county line. It cut power lines and crashed old trees to the ground as it passed, like a giant striding through an unnatural night. Newscasters spoke into dead air as storm alarms thrummed through the black, but the people knew to get low and get safe without them.

Twenty-seven minutes of whirlwind nature, screaming its fury out to anyone that would listen. Windows slammed shut to defend the occupants within, autumnal flowers hammered down outside even while a few brave and frantic tenders tried to care for them in dirty shorts meant for last month and the month before. Plastic skeletons peeled from front doors and fluttered against the relentless onslaught while carved pumpkins shook and rolled, and almost forgotten radios sparked into life to tell hunkering, hopeful kids that they were not going to school today after all.

By eight, the sun had begun to poke out from behind the withering veil of grey again, almost apologetically beating the heat back down hard enough to bring mist up from the asphalt in winding trails that looked, to the excited kids now spilling outside, like ghosts. One good week of fall weather laid in the recent past; cool and gloomy light rains and softer winds that carried the almost subliminal scents of spice and pine. Now it was gone again in favor of summer’s already too-long stay full of muggy discomfort, and the towns shrugged and got on with their morning anyway, waiting for the electric buzz to come back to the air.

At nine, a few generators popped into life to cool the older folks that lived in the ivy-covered homes set far back from the roads along Ashland’s Center Drive. Neighbors popped out into the streets, sweating and grumpy, to look for the PPL service trucks that were stolidly not appearing. A few delayed workers got onto the roads to find backups everywhere they went, the trees they’d heard distantly crashing becoming something annoying real in the background noise of their daily lives. They honked at the trees, they honked at each other, and most eventually turned their way back home, pissed off and unable to do anything about it.

And as nine o clock became the misty heat of ten without the relief of air conditioning or cool water yet in sight for most, the puffs of white mist on the roads blew away, and what followed in its wake was a coal-miner’s gloom as dead and filthy black as the storm before.

In one residence, some numerous hours later, Sylvia Tenant-Van Helsing looked herself over in the mirror and smiled. She looked positively ravishing tonight. She had a hot date with Cynthia Conner, and wanted to look her best. It had been a long time since she took time out to just be herself, instead of being the monster hunter she usually was. She was almost unsure of how to conduct the date, it had been so long, so she was anxious, to say the least.

“Knock ’em dead, luv,” Sylvia muttered to herself, giving her reflection a wink.

Grabbing her purse, Sylvia left her apartment and headed down the street to the quaint little Italian restaurant where Cynthia was waiting. She really hoped this date would go well, but she was still uncertain whether or not to have a girlfriend in her life, considering what she did during the nighttime hours.

Just before she went inside the restaurant, Sylvia paused. And it wasn’t because of the jitters. She got the feeling that she was being watched, but she saw no one when she scanned the area around her. She even looked upward. Nothing. She just chalked it up to jitters after all.

But down the street lay a deterrent that would soon affect the life of the shapely vampire slayer. Hidden in an alleyway stood a tall, erect being made of flesh and metal. A union oh human and machine not meant to walk this earth. But it wasn’t just any being. Atop its head, hidden underneath a protective dome, was the mind of a man gone mad. The living cortex of a man who was once a brilliant scientist, but was not trapped in a monstrous metal form. Power pulsated from the brain’s inner lobes.

Power! Three blocks away the lights black out. The stores that lined the street turned dark as the night. Beacon street and Louisburg Square virtually vanished from sight.

Power! The lights grew dim on the outskirts of Boston. Televisions flickered for a brief moment, then faded.

Power! The android screamed, as the poli-plastic shell swelled with unbearable heat.

Power! And the mind of Dr. William Bastion was pushed outward forcefully through the shell and out.

Power! Power that continued to grow unchecked as it was drained fro the city with relative ease. Resistance was useless, this Dr. Bastion knew by now. His power would only expand from this moment forth, and he was more than ready to accept it all.

Back in front of the restaurant, Sylvia Tenant-Van Helsing noticed the power was being drained somewhere. Lights continued to flicker, threatening to burn out, and Sylvia muttered a curse when she realized work was upon her once more, for she felt only something inhuman could be causing this trouble, and she was the bane of all things not human.

“Dammit!” Sylvia grumbled, reaching into her purse.

She took out a collapsible spear that straightened itself out until its point was ready to bare. Would that she had more of her weaponry, but this was all she dared take with her on her now defunct date that was now going to have to wait.

“Something seems to be drawing all the energy into that alleyway down there,” Sylvia noted, carefully making her way there.

“And who might this be?” Bastion queried, as he stepped out of the back of the van, his full android form revealed.

“What the hell are you?” Sylvia couldn’t help but wonder.

“You could never even hope to comprehend the full meaning of what I am, woman,” replied Bastion. He raised his metallic hands and flexed them. “I am ideas made real! I am everything I have been dreaming about! Now I am fortified against the wretched lycanthropes this world has become infested with! I will cut a swath through them all and become master of everything! Only I shall stand over this world! None but me!”

“Ah, so you’re a nutter, are you now?” Sylvia responded.

Ray beams expelled from the android’s eyes and struck Sylvia down where she stood. It was kind of attack she had never before experienced. One she could never be prepared for, even if sh had known. But she still had the grasp of her spear and she rose to her feet and slammed it into Bastion’s chest, only for it to shatter beyond repair.

“Crikey!”

The android swatted her away like a fly.

“I do not know who you are, woman, but it matters not,” Bastion said, with that robotic voice of his, as he towered over her injured form. “I am one not to be trifled with! If I must, I will teach you this!”

Sylvia was uncertain as to what to do. When it started raining, it seemed only fitting to add to the strangeness of the night. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. The storm from the morning had returned.

“This earth will be my battlefield!” Bastion proclaimed, reaching upward. “Let there be light! Let the storm be burnt in the skies! Let the light shine through the dark mist of the night and mark the beginning of me! Of Bastion!”

“You certainly like to babble,” was Sylvia’s only response.

Just as she wondered again what to do against a foe such as this, lightning from the sky shot downward and struck the android full on. There was a shriek, followed by the scent of burning hot metal and a second lightning bolt that stuck Bastion down where he stood, just out of Sylvia’s reach. She watched the android flop a bit, before it suddenly went inert.

“No, this must not be!” Bastion shouted. “I cannot move! I cannot be trapped like this! I have a word to conquer!”

He was babbling now. Sylvia rose to her feet and stared for a moment at the still form of the android that was Dr. William Bastion, before she quickly made her way out of the alley when she heard the sound of a police siren wailing. She would let them deal with what she saw here tonight. They were likely to be better equipped than she could possibly be.

She thought of Cynthia Conner. About the date that never came to be. Maybe, she wondered, it wasn’t meant to be that she have a normal life considering who she was and what she did. Perhaps that normal life would be too much of a distraction for her, one she did not need in her fight against the supernatural. Lord only knew that she didn’t need a crutch during a time like this.

Sylvia began her trek home in the rain. It was best she put this night behind her as quickly as possible. Tomorrow she would let the real world back into her life so she could begin anew her hunt for the deadly beast known as Dracula.