The Dark Night
A tale to counter the scary stories told in the dark
He is missing!
It was a chilly October evening in Nomansfield. Amid the whistling wind, two figures circled through the air above a town of unsuspecting humans.
Supreme Leader Vladimir Pudding of the Assembly of Random Supernatural Entities (whispered as ARSE amongst the inhabitants) and his exasperated wizard assistant Peter, who was nodding along to Vladimir, seemed to be very upset about something.
“Jimmy ran away again this morning. I think it’s because I forgot to get him the blood candy I promised…” Vladimir turned to his assistant.
“Peter, I’m worried about him. He was so affectionate when he was little. He’d wait for me at the doorstep until I was home from work — and then when he saw me, his face would light up and he’d come flying towards me, jabbering about his day at school.” His gaze slipped away into the distance. “Nowadays I don’t know what has gotten into him.”
“What do you think I should do?” Vladimir’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Are you even listening?”
The wizard blinked as he snapped out of his daydream about overthrowing Vladimir and becoming the Supreme Leader one day.
“Ah, it feels…it just seems like the last century when we rescued little Jimmy from those horrible humans,” Peter stammered back. “He has grown so much! I’m sure he’ll come around. After all, Your Highness, you look after him as if he’s your son. Just give him some time.”
Vladimir sighed dismissively and looked ahead. The two figures approached their abode, a dark, sprawling manor that usually beamed with an uncanny energy outward, as if to forbid any living creature from entering the premises.
But today, something just felt — strange.
The security guards were missing and the bushes seemed to have been trampled. The magical, bat-shaped lock that used to be present on the door was missing and the door was ajar. Vladimir and Peter slowly looked towards each other in shock, their mouths falling open as they put two and two together.
Someone had broken in.
They rushed inside at once, stumbling to a stop as they took in the sight before them.
The vat that contained the sacred Supremos potion, which had been in possession of the Pudding family for aeons, was gone. The silver case that had contained it lay in a million pieces.
Stupefied, Vladimir turned into a bat, screeching loudly in his state of shock. Vampires usually weren’t creatures to be easily fooled — and yet Vladimir’s most valued possession, the potion that granted immense power to whoever drank it — was gone, probably stolen by some unworthy weakling trying to overthrow him.
Vladimir’s assistant, however, had a different problem. He gritted his teeth as he looked up at the wild Vladimir. It was all he could do to resist his temptation to snatch the screaming bat flitting above him and box it in an echo chamber as a gift to humans.
When he finally returned to his senses, Vladimir ordered the wizard to call his lawyer, file a case and demand an official investigation.
And thus the wizard proceeded to file a complaint and ordered his assistants — two disgruntled mummies, Cleo and Ptolemy — who were supposed to fly to the pyramids to visit their families for Halloween, to start an official investigation. If they failed to bring back any witness or suspect within a few hours, he would trap them in a coffin and bury them under the pyramids in the company of the Scorpion King.
Since nothing motivated the two ancient mummies to work after their Halloween plans were cancelled, they set out to investigate the members of the Council. All they needed to do was to see if there were any witnesses (or any innocent entities they could throw under the bus to save themselves from the prospect of being trapped inside a dingy pyramid and suffocating to, well, another death).
The investigation of the Council
There was a wave of unrest as the Council gathered on the eve of Halloween. The young spirits were irritated at having to abandon their Halloween preparations to attend the meeting, while the older Beards curiously gossiped over what could have triggered such a drastic response from the Council. A group of witches had even brought some eyeball popcorn and blood-o-cola to watch the show unfold.
“Silence!” barked Cleo in an eerily frightening voice.
Her command didn’t go unheard. “Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the coffin!” and “What’s got her bandages in a knot?” earned a few chuckles.
The mummies then proceeded to appraise the Council of the situation. With a few occasional interruptions (such as a witch choking on her eyeball popcorn and having to be rushed to the Witches Welfare Infirmary, and a drunken troll who happened to stumble across the gathering and was convinced that Cleo was his dead grandmother who had come back to help him prepare for the Joint Troll Examination), the session proceeded.
Finally, when they finished explaining the situation, they asked if anyone had seen something strange that day which could be linked to the theft of the Supremos potion.
“I saw something,” a meek voice mumbled, as the crowd parted to reveal a ghost. The mummies beckoned her forward.
“I am Satu. I work in the Department of Human Killings. We just received an anonymous tip — there was a murder on the outskirts of the territory. When five of us went to investigate, they were waiting for us…some 15 werewolves and a ghostbuster.”
She swallowed. “And by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. The details are a bit fuzzy right now…I somehow got away, they didn’t see me escape. But the others…..they all were…”
Her voice trembled towards the end and her eyes glistened with tears at the edges.
Abby the witch reassuringly offered her some of her blood-o-cola and eyeball popcorn. “Here, have some. This stuff helped me get over Grump’s death; Ronald Grump, my dear pet crow. It will taste even better with some roasted…crow. Let me see if I can find one for you…” she trailed off, drifting away in search of a crow.
Satu started crying even harder.
“Do you remember anything else?” Ptolemy inquired.
“I’m not sure if it is of any significance…but they snatched our sacred white coats before they…” her voice broke again, “and when they left they went towards His Highness’ residence.”
The mummies asked her to follow them and led her to Peter’s office. As Peter listened curiously, Satu recounted what had happened. Cleo and Ptolemy were praying to Osiris, the Lord of the Dead, that the leader would be satisfied with what they had done so far.
“So what you are saying is that a bunch of werewolves who have been banished from this entire territory somehow broke in, stole nothing but your old-hand-me-down rags and then proceeded to steal the potion from the manor by somehow making all the security personnel disappear?” the wizard asked, his tone almost condescending. The ghost stammered a yes.
Cleo narrowed her eyes. “Let’s say, for the sake of conversation, that I do believe what you just said. Why would the werewolves let you escape if they killed everyone else? Is it because you helped them plan this attack?”
“If not, how could they have possibly bypassed the security system? His Highness’ surveillance is top-notch. I don’t see how anybody could get through unless they were in on it,” Ptolemy finished.
Satu went as white as a ghost. She wanted to boo at him, for he was behaving as if a zombie had stolen and eaten his brain. She might have, too — if only Peter hadn’t been so powerful enough to banish her forever from the Underworld.
“Why aren’t you speaking? Answer the question.” Cleo bellowed.
“I…” Satu stuttered. “I-I would never betray this territory. I consider these people my f-family!” she gasped. Her diminutive speech only made matters worse. Ptolemy gritted his teeth as he tried to shake the memory of being murdered by his own siblings.
“You’d better confess now. If you are found guilty in a trial conducted in front of the entire ARSE, you could get killed, or worse… expelled into the duat and permanently banned from the human world”, Cleo threatened.
And with Satu’s lack of response even after the repeated warnings, the mummies arrested her and sent her to the cell where she would be held until her trial the next day.
The Trial
Dawn arrived quickly. Satu became more and more anxious with every passing moment leading up to the trial. She was half tempted to run away and hide inside an Ouija board where she’d answer the boring questions that humans liked to ask spirits.
The members of the ARSE started arriving one by one, including Vladimir and Peter. However, the other ghoulish entities who had arrived to partake in the proceedings of the trial left the latter alone — Peter wore a murderous look on his face and gave off an almost comically dangerous vibe. No one could escape if they messed with a werewolf on a full moon — or Peter in a bad mood.
In truth, it had been Peter who had hired the werewolves to steal the potion, although he had no idea why they attacked a bunch of stupid ghosts. After framing Satu for his crime, he had eagerly rushed to collect the potion from the werewolves, only to find that they had betrayed him and vanished.
This drove him into a jealous rage. Now, he was officially stuck serving Vladimir and catering to his every whim for all eternity (which is a really long time).
Vladimir had a strange obsession with human television and sometimes got carried away binge-watching TV shows, which often left Peter to take the burden of both their work, while also giving him no added benefits or extra pay.
There was always the chance that someone else would drink that potion and attack their clan — possibly making him their servant — but then again, what could be worse than being Vladimir’s personal assistant?
As the trial began, Satu was asked to recollect her version of the flow of events. Trembling, she slowly described the horror she had been through.
But when she got to the part where the werewolves snatched their sacred white coats, Vladimir lost his cool and burst into flames, effectively frying his stenographer, a zombie, who was sitting nearby.
Commotion ensued as all the other zombies started fighting over who could eat the fried zombie’s brain. Cleo and Ptolemy tried to restore order but ended up getting their bandages entangled, and Peter started pulverizing random spirits, whether they were fighting or not.
Fearing that she would be pulverized next, Satu seized the opportunity when a troll stumbled over Peter and knocked him down momentarily and escaped. When Peter managed to get up, he blasted the troll apart in anger, making it rain with pieces of troll, showering every member of ARSE with troll blood.
Just a typical Tuesday in Nomansfield.
Vladimir rolled his eyes, snarling as he flew away from the racket with pieces of troll stuck in his hair. He was perplexed by Satu’s tale. The ghost didn’t appear to be lying, but what she said didn’t make sense either. Only he knew the importance of the ghosts’ sacred white coats. Having been in their possession and passed down from ghost to ghost since the beginning of time, the coats captured the fear of each and every creature the ghost had scared while wearing it.
And if a vampire wore one of these and drank the Supremos potion on the day of Halloween, it would transform him into the Vampiro Supremo — a Pharaoh in his own rite. Vladimir had no interest in becoming the Vampiro Supremo (he learned from a movie that with great power, there came great responsibility and he didn’t want any more that what he already had).
This instant road to power had been a closely guarded secret which he hadn’t told anyone. It made no sense as to why some werewolves would be interested in stealing the potion — they had nothing to gain. He began to doubt whether some rival vampire had hired the werewolves as henchmen to steal the potion. If that was the case, there was a very high chance that the potion had already been drunk. Afraid that the next move may be a direct attack on him, he rushed to his abode to tighten securities and add new charms over the boundary.
His Home
When he finally reached his residence, he was pleasantly surprised to find that Jimmy had returned home. But his undead heart almost started thumping when he saw a bunch of werewolves chilling in his (un)living room. A few were watching Twilight on TV, gobbling up the blood pudding they had raided from his refrigerator. Some others were drawing mustaches and beards on the portraits of his ancestors. He was rendered speechless, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish as a piece of the troll unluckily fell into his mouth.
Only when his adopted son, Jimmy, came close to him did Vladimir realize that he looked different…bigger and stronger with fully grown fangs that were not the features of a typical teen vampire attending high school. Seeing his reaction, the werewolves barked with laughter. Wiping the tears of laughter from his own eyes, Jimmy spilled the details to his father. He told him that while he was searching the manor for money to buy candy, he found Vladimir’s personal records, The Vampire Diaries (titled after his favourite show) under a loose tile.
Curious, he had started reading the entries and found that Vladimir didn’t really care for him. He had just rescued him from the humans as he wanted a vampire heir to lead the ARSE since he didn’t have a son of his own. Jimmy realised that Vladimir wanted to raise him as a meek weakling on whom he could impose his will to make sure that when he was gone, Jimmy would lead the ARSE according to the rules and traditions that Vladimir had set.
Enraged upon learning the harsh truth about his father, Jimmy decided to confront him but an intriguing entry in the diary stopped him. It spoke of how one can become the Vampiro Supremo by consuming the Supremos potion while wearing the sacred white coat on the day of Halloween.
Seeking revenge against his controlling father, he had run away and formed an alliance with the very creatures Vladimir detested — werewolves. It was just a lucky coincidence that Peter had hired the same group of werewolves to steal the potion for himself and it only worked to Jimmy’s favour. The theft was easier for them as Peter had given them the instructions on how to pass the security and steal the vat without any hindrance. Now that Jimmy had become more powerful than him, Vladimir had no choice but to bow down to him and give up his position in the ARSE.
Jimmy was instated as the Supreme Leader the very next day, and as his first order as the Vampiro Supremo, ordered Vladimir to buy him a pack of blood candy under the condition that if he didn’t return within 10 minutes, his werewolf henchmen would hunt him down and break his bones.
As he flew around searching for a candy shop, all Vladimir could think of was that everything could have been avoided if only he had bought his son a pack of goddamn blood candy when he had asked for them.
This spooky story was sketched in cahoots with Rohinee Phatak.
