Why HR had signed off on a Halloween party, nobody knew, but they cared less; a party was a party; free drinks and food and the chance to let your hair down a bit. They probably justified it as corporate team building.
When the staff arrived at the mansion that was the party's venue, they were in three large rooms; a room with music to dance to and a floor to dance on, a room with a buffet and a bar, and a room with seating and quieter music. In the room where the seating and quieter music was, there was also a magician performing small tricks for small groups.
Later the staff were herded into an auditorium where a few were awarded small trophies that related to how well they had helped the company make its record profits. After that they were told there would be some entertainment. The entertainment turned out to be the magician that had been performing in the quieter room. He collected a small group of volunteers and performed an entertaining hypnotism act. After the volunteers had been returned to the audience, he suggested that everyone get a snack and return in about ten minutes for a magic show.
Many people did not return after the interval, but that meant those in the audience were there to see the magic.
“Some of you will have gleaned that my name is Simon, but I have a secret that I am willing to share with you; this being Halloween night. I am in truth a vampire and my true name is Sergei, but being immortal, I need to change my name and identity every few decades, to avoid arousing suspicion of my vampiric nature. I also have a second secret; this evening I had taken one of you to be my child vampire. Please come forward, Pamela!”
Many of the audience recognised the woman that stood and made her way towards the stage; she was the receptionist from the office on the southern edge of town. There was something odd about they way she moved; she seemed to wander with no thought of a destination, but headed in the general direction of the stage, climbing the few steps before encountering Simon, when she looked round as if she had not realised that she was on stage until that moment.
“Welcome Pamela. Please be lucid and pay attention as you will be helping me in a few demonstrations of the abilities and vulnerabilities of the vampire I am and the vampire that you have become.” He reached to her collar and pulled it down enough that a pair of red dots were visible on her neck.
“If you say so,” was Pamela's reply.
“Vampires have been credited with many powers over the years, the first of which you have seen amply demonstrated before the break; I used my vampiric hypnotism to get your colleagues to act in the silly and creative ways that I demonstrated. Many say that we vampires are repelled by garlic, but we are like many humans in that matter, and I enjoy garlic bread; it is a matter of personal taste.”
“I have yet to discover a convincing proof that a vampire may not enter a home uninvited, because on the occasions when I perform these demonstrations, I am invited by the fact I have been booked as an entertainer.”
“We shall move onto my first demonstration with Pamela.” He steps to the back of the stage where a variety of equipment now stands; evidently moved there during the intermission. He drags forward a cage on legs to the front of the stage. The cage is made of two sheets of wood about five feet square held apart by a series of four foot metal rods spaced about six inches apart all round, except for a two foot section in the middle at the front, where they are held together by a pair of metal sections to form a gate.
“Before I ask Pamela to climb into this cage, we need to adorn her in a way that will be easily identified, but, for the sake of the sceptical, less easily duplicated.” From nowhere he produced a frisbee and a beach ball (already inflated). He tossed these into the audience, asking those who caught either item to throw it again until he told everyone to stop randomising the locations of the ball and the disc.
After a short while during which it seemed the majority of the audience had touched the ball or the frisbee, Simon called a halt. He asked the holder of the disc to come forward, while he showed the person with the ball a selection of necklaces, each being a particular colour and having a prominent piece that was a metal plate with an obvious shape. He asked the ball holder to choose a necklace by either choosing the colour or the shape of the plate. The spectator chose the necklace that sparkled white with a diagonally mounted square plate.
The vampire magician took the necklace and fastened it around Pamela's neck. Then he sent Pamela to meet the disc holder with a box of markers. He instructed the random guest to choose a colour of marker and draw a random thing on the diamond pendant of the necklace. He thanked the audience member and asked Pamela to return to him. Moments later he has taken a picture of the volunteer's marker-work and displayed it on the screen at the back of the stage, which had been previously use to show a short presentation, during the awards ceremony. The image was of a house with a stick figure drawn in green, it was on a diamond piece of metal and set against the collar of Pamela's black dress.
He opened the gate and asked Pamela to enter the cage. She did, which was a simple matter of sitting on the floor of the cage in the doorway, then scooting back. The magician then applied a padlock to the entrance and collected a large sheet of dark red cloth. “It is rumoured that we vampires can transform into other creatures, such as bats or wolves. This is true, although I cannot turn into a bat myself, and can imagine that it would feel a little vulnerable to be something so small. But, I, and Pamela, because she is my child, can change into wolves.”
With a mighty swing the cloth was lofted into the air and settled over the cage, covering all sides but not reaching the floor. There is a yipping sound from inside the cage, which moments later, when the magician drags the cloth from being draped over the cage, is revealed to be a young wolf. There is no sign of Pamela. Around the neck of the wolf is a band that sparkles white. The camera that the magician used to take a picture of the necklace around Pamela's neck reappears and is used to snap a picture of the pendant section, which is quickly displayed on the screen, showing the volunteer's drawing on the diamond-shaped pendant against the grey neck fur of the wolf in the cage.
Simon reached into the cage and pulled a dress that matched the short black dress that Pamela had been wearing. Some of the more knowledgeable were looking about, in expectation of Pamela's return to the small theatre from somewhere unexpected in nothing but her underwear; they were out of luck. When the vampire magician reached into the cage once more and drew forth a bra and panties, those that had hoped to see Pamela re-enter the theatre in her underwear, got more excited.
Simon addressed the wolf that was pacing round the cage. “Pamela, please lie down with your back to the audience.”
The wolf in the cage soon settled facing the screen where the two pictures of the pendant were displayed. The magician picked up the red cloth that he had discarded and with an effortless swing used it to re-cover the cage. “Of course, the ability to change into the form of an animal would be useless without the ability to change back.” He lifted the part of the cloth covering the front of the cage, to show that the wolf was no longer there and instead there was a naked woman, who proved she was Pamela, by looking over her shoulder when invited to do so.
“Now, as Pamela is a colleague of yours, it would be inappropriate to let you see her more naked than you can see her at the moment. So we shall be demonstrating another form of transformation, while getting her into more suitable garb. Please toss the ball about for a minute; we will be choosing a volunteer to choose Pamela's costume for the remainder of this demonstration.
“For this demonstration we have three costumes to choose from.” The magician went to the back of the stage and brought forward three mannequins, while describing each costume he brought forward. “First, we have a classic tight fitting full length black crushed velvet dress with flowing lace sleeves, similar to what the matriarch of the Addam's Family would wear.” Once this costume was in position it became clear that full length meant to the floor and some more fabric spreading across the floor. “Second, there is this one, with its off the shoulder design, elbow-length gloves.” The black satin dress he brought forward had a scarlet panel in the front, which went down from the centre of the neckline, under the bust of the dress and continued down to knee level, the section down to waist level was criss-crossed with white ribbons; another feature was a bat-wing styled cape attached to the back and to the wrists of the gloves. “And finally. This.” 'This' was a red mid-thigh-length sleeveless latex dress with a scoop neck that would show the upper slopes of the wearer's chest. As the magician turned it to put it into position it became clear that there was no zips or other fastenings visible and no obvious seams or flaps to conceal them.
With the costumed mannequins positioned across the stage, the vampire magician called a halt to the ball's erratic progress around the audience, and asked the holder to passed it to someone near her and come up to the stage. While the final ball catcher, who turned out to be Marion, the CEO's personal assistant, headed to the stage, the magician manoeuvred three frames, one around each mannequin, each frame had curtains draped on top.
“Welcome, and your name is?”
“Marion,” Marion answered.
“On the table at the back you will find a stack of three cards and a section of plastic pipe, please go and collect them, but go via the dresses I have put on display. Check them for hidden assistants, trap doors and other accessories of the magician's art and artifice, then tug on the cord on the back of the frame to release the curtain that will conceal Pamela's dressing in the chosen dress.”
Marion followed the instructions, inspecting the dresses, tugging the cords, to hide the dresses in curtain-sided cabinets only a few inches wider and deeper than the dresses. At the back she found the cards and the plastic tube that the magician had requested that she fetch. She returned to the front of the stage and showed the three cards to the audience, when the magician said that she should. It was clear which card represented which dress, by the clear graphic on the front; it also seemed that the backs were identical, printed to resemble a playing card.
“Marion, please turn the cards face down and shuffle them, when you are satisfied that no-one could know which design is on which card, place two of them on the floor and stand on them, one under each foot, and put the final chosen card inside the tube where nobody, not even you can get a look at it and tuck it under your arm.”
Marion followed the instructions, soon standing on two cards with the other in a pipe that was tucked between her upper arm and chest.
“Now we are ready to demonstrate an often overlooked, but very useful, talent some of us vampires possess; the ability to transform into a vaporous form. Pamela's task in this demonstration is to transform into a mist, discover the dress that has been chosen, then find the cabinet it is in and reform into a person inside the dress. For the sake of her privacy I shall completely cover the cage; there's no need to unlock the door, because she will waft between the bars.” He pulled the cloth he had raised back down the front of the cage and took a step back.
There was a few seconds of silence, before the audience first gasped at seeing something that looked like smoke drifting down from the cloth-covered cage. The cloud did not disperse when it hit the stage floor, instead seeming to flow towards Marion. As the smoky pool reached the volunteer, the magician pulled the cloth from the cage, showing it to be empty. The audience applauded, then watched as the smoky blob with turbulence curling the edge nearest the cage, seemed to flow up Marion, heading for the tube tucked under her arm.
Marion flinched at the touch of the vapours.
“I'm sorry I should have warned you in vapour form we vampires can be cold to the touch.”
The smoky mass flowed through the tube, as if drawn through by a small fan and then floated towards the top of one of the cabinets. On reaching the cabinet, changed direction and drifted to the the next, then the third. At the third curtained cabinet, it sank out of view into the confines of the curtained area.
When the smoke had disappeared from view, the magician asked Marion to reach into the tube and pull out the card. She showed it to the audience. They soon saw which card had been selected and knew it corresponded to the cabinet that Pamela's smoky form had entered. To build the suspense, and in the minds of some sceptics, to allow Pamela to get into the selected dress, the magician pulled the cords on the other two curtain cubicles, to reveal the Morticia dress and the one with the red front panel, still on their mannequins and seemingly untouched.
The magician paused, before pulling the cord on the third cubicle. As the curtain dropped, it seemed that nothing had changed within, but quickly the audience saw that while posed as the mannequin had been it was Pamela standing with perfect stillness wrapped in the latex dress. Simon allowed this to continue until the crowd was applauding and then passed a hand in front of Pamela's blank-eyed face, which seemed to allow her to move again. She looked surprised to be standing on the stage in a tight-fitting latex garment. “It can be quite disorienting to a newly embraced vampire to transform into smoke and return so soon in their new unlife.”
“I shall help Pamela stand up steadily. Marion please select a couple of men from the audience to help with the next demonstration, then you can sit down and enjoy the rest of the show.”
Marion went into the audience, while Simon brought forward a stand, consisting of a small round base and a frame with many shackles on it. He manoeuvred Pamela to stand on the base and then fastened the largest of the shackles about her waist and decorated it with a padlock. He next fitted one around her neck and another around her chest; this particular band was broader and was shaped to cover a woman's chest tightly. When the selected men arrived, introduced as Bernard and Justin, they were set to work fitting the remaining shackles at Pamela's ankles, lower thighs, Wrists and upper arms; the frame to which the shackles were attached spread the receptionist's arms away from her body.
“You may be wracking your brains to think of addition powers we vampires are reputed to possess. This is, in fact, a demonstration of how specific our best known weakness is. You will have heard that you can kill a vampire by driving a stake through their heart; this is half true, because it only disables us and sends into a torpid state. I, myself, have been stabbed through the chest and would quite possibly still be there, unless someone, a century later, had not pulled it out; the biggest and final mistake of their life. The point of this demonstration is that stabbing a vampire anywhere other than the heart is ineffective and is also likely to make the vampire angry if you get it wrong and thus shorten your life expectancy to mere seconds. Because I do not wish Pamela to descend in to torpor the band around her chest is to protect her heart, but all the remaining shackles have slots in that will accept swords from the rack beside the table at the back.” He turned Justin towards the swords he had mentioned and asked him to bring them forward.
The magician pulls a sword from the display stand, and inserts it in a slot in the side of the band around Pamela's waist. The expression on Pamela's face moved from impassive to apprehensive as the vampire magician located the tip of the sword in the slot. As the point was moved into the inside of the metal waist band, she let out a horrifying squeal. Thankfully this did not last long. When the sword-tip appeared on the other side of the band, Pamela went from pain to anger and her struggles to free herself from her shackles to get at the source of her torment shaking the frame to which she was attached.
The magician stepped in front of the struggling vampire fledgling and made a gesture that resulted in Pamela taking on an expression of serenity; she closed her eyes and smiled slightly.
“Now that she is quiet and under my control, gentlemen, I would like you to take a side each and insert a sword through each of Pamela's shackles.” The magician supervised as Bernard and Justin each took a sword each and warily pushed them into a shackle. Bernard chose the band around Pamela's upper arm, while Justin decided that the shackle at the lower thigh would be less dangerous if the newly taken vampiress were to wake and escape her bonds; a possibility given the demonstration of transforming into smoke.
It took a few minutes, to push swords into each of Pamela's bindings, then the magician added another to the metal band around her neck. “Now for the most dangerous of all,” the magician said flourishing the final sword from the stand. “I shall pass this sword through Pamela's chest, taking care not to touch her heart.”
He set the tip of the blade into a previously unnoticed slot in the middle of the restraining chest band, and invited the two male helpers to check that the sword was real, before sliding the sword into the slot. Pamela's eye's opened and she stared at the magician with a glare of pure malevolence. He spoke calmly to her as he pushed the sword through her breast bone. He had the two men step to where they could see the sword emerge for the rear of the chest band, a little below her shoulder blades. The rest of the audience knew exactly when the tip of the sword became visible to the men by the awed expressions on their faces.
With the help of the volunteers, the magician rotated the stand holding the skewered Pamela in place, thus showing the rest of the audience that each sword had gone through the receptionist and not collapsed into the sword hilt or whatever explanations the sceptics might put forward. He thanked the men and sent them back to the audience, saying that the next bit was particularly dangerous, adding, “Particularly for me.”
Once the stage was cleared of audience volunteers, he lowered a metal band over Pamela and attached it to the round base on which stood and her restraints were attached. He then constructed a clear glass box around Pamela.
“This a demonstration will show another weakness we vampires suffer, while also allowing me to free my fledgling from her bonds without the chance that she might fly into a rage that would likely result in my death and that of at least half of the audience. The weakness of which I speak is that we are extremely flammable.” From the equipment table at the back of the stage he picks up a gas-lighter, of the kind that might be used to light a gas stove. He clicked the button on the handle, causing a small flame to appear at the far end; he seemed to be restraining the urge to shy away from the fire. At the glass box he pushed the lit end of the gas-wand through a small hole and played the flame briefly over the tips of Pamela's fingers, then retreated hastily and allowed the flame to die, but not before shoving a bung into the hole.
For a moment nothing seemed to happen. Then a flame appeared on Pamela's hand where the flame from the lighter had been played. Unlike the lighters blue flame this was a brighter yellow and seemed to produce smoke. This flame licked up her arm passing the sword pierced shackles, and the smoke became thick accumulating in the top of the box. As the flame seemed to establish itself, it grew brighter and whiter, but the smoke became thicker as the flame leapt from the top of the bare arm to Pamela's head; her face show horror at the circumstance and anger at the cause. The audience were spared further details as smoke filled the box and was lit from within by an actinic glare that made the box painful to look at directly.
Soon the intense white brightness faded and the smoke cleared, seemingly burnt out of the air in the box by a final intense flash. Inside the box the frame that had held Pamela in place, with the swords still in each shackle, was empty, but it did seem to glow with the heat in places.
After a pause to allow the shock of what had occurred to sink in, Simon came forward. “I see some people looking round, thinking that Pamela escape by transforming into smoke. She has not; that is why I put a bung in the hole in the box. Pamela has been burnt to ashes, but I shall restore her. After all, if you know you have weakness and are as long-lived as us vampires and have some access to magic, you will eventually find a cure for even the most fatal conditions.”
The vampire magician began by dismantling the box, then tapped the frame which had held Pamela in place; some specks of ash floated down to the base. The frame was lifted from the base and tapped again, resulting in a few more flakes of ash falling. He placed the frame at the back of the stage and brought forward a table with a box with Chinese characters in red on the black cube; those that read Chinese recognised the words 'live again'.
With the table parked next to the base of the previous illusion, he opened the top of the box, then, with seemingly exaggerated care, lifted the base from the floor and tipped the pile of ashes into the box. “It turns out that reviving a vampire that has been burnt to ashes, is quite simple; just add blood of another vampire. It was also discovered that the revived vampire became loyal to the vampire whose blood was used, but without another vampire I cannot demonstrate this.”
The magician pulled out a pocket-knife, knicked his wrist and squeezed his wrist to drop a single drop of blood into the box. He returned the knife and brought out a stick, resembling a magician's ebony wand with ivory ends. He used the wand to stir the contents of the box.
“Of course the space in this box in insufficient for Pamela to reform, but she needs to have her ashes absorb my blood and this is the simplest way.” After a final stir, the magician unfolded the box further until it was big enough to hold a person. He held his arm over the box and resisted being dragged into the box when an arm from within the box pulled on it. He wrestled his arm back, showing the bite marks that had appeared. Casually, he licked his arm and showed the marks had gone.
“Of course, a burnt and restored vampire is hungry, but she should be sated for now.”
He returned his arm to a position over the box and the arm from the box used it as lever to lift the rest of Pamela upright and standing in the box, from which she soon stepped. Against expectations and to the disappointment of many, Pamela was still wearing the latex dress.
“To be honest, I do not have permission from the local vampire prince to be creating childer, so I must either flee with Pamela or return her to humanity. I shall choose to make her human again.”
Some of the audience seem to mutter that they agree with this plan, until they discover the details of the plan. The vampire draws a sword and beheads Pamela where she stands. Her body collapses to the stage while her head rolls towards the audience. The audience are too stunned to move.
After returning the sword to wherever he found it, arranges Pamela's corpse so that it is face up.
The audience are coming to their senses, but also noticing the lack of blood spilling across the stage from either part of the severed neck. So wait for the magical pay-off to this sudden turn of events.
Simon collects the head and places it on Pamela's belly facing the audience. He collects a cardboard box and a pair of small tongs from the equipment table. He picks a round white disk from the box using the tongs and using the other hand to pry Pamela's lips and teeth apart, he pushes the thin biscuit into the mouth of the disembodied head. “This is a holy wafer. Putting it in her mouth will prevent her from returning as a vampire, if some fool should reunite body and head.”
Another trip to the rear of the stage equips the vampire magician with a body-bag, which he efficiently slid under Pamela and closed over her.
“I believe that one should always be respectful of the dead, because we will all join their number eventually.”
He bowed to the audience. “Goodbye!” he said, while raising the cloth that had covered the cage in front of him. Moments later, the cloth fell revealing a smoky column of vapours which soon faded.
The audience were again stunned and applauded, more from habit than genuine enthusiasm.
Someone noticed a movement on stage. The audience quieted to see what would happen next.
There was the sound of a zip then Pamela sat up from the body-bag. She looked confused. “What happened? Why am I in a … Is this a body-bag? Why am I dressed like this? Where are my clothes?” Pamela's confusion grew when the audience began applauding and cheering with enough enthusiasm that several people from nearby rooms came to investigate the ruckus.