Grotto, a short story.

Violet looked up from her knitting. ‘Did you hear that?’ she said turning to her young companion. But Mary was gone; her book lay abandoned on the ground. Already she was halfway across the park hurrying towards the grotto at the other side of the lake.

Violet called out asking her to wait, but she did not seem to hear. She sighed, picked up the book, placed it and the knitting into her bag. A quick look around to see if she had left anything then she set off after her niece.

‘I’ll give her what for when I catch up with her, running away like that,’ she muttered. The strange whisper that had disturbed her knitting was gone forever and Violet was half way around the lake when Mary walk into the grotto never to return.

‘And you say your niece, miss Soames, just disappeared, in broad daylight.’ The police sergeant asked for the third or was it the forth time.

‘No, sergeant, what I said was, she went into the grotto and I never saw her come out.’ Violet replied.

‘No, sergeant, I had the entrance clearly in sight from the moment she entered right up until the moment I arrived there myself and found the place empty.’

Over the course of the following weeks Violet Tate was asked these questions and gave the same answers again and again. The trouble was despite the park being busy the police could not find anyone apart from Violet who remembered Mary entering the grotto.

It was not as if the police were not trying; they were trying exceptional hard. Over the last year, eleven other young women had gone missing in the vicinity of the park. Was Mary Soames, victim number twelve? That was the question and the police fought hard to find the answer. The others had gone in the night and their unmarked bodies were found within days. Mary missing now for a fortnight had disappeared in broad daylight and despite an extensive investigation, no trace of her had been found.

The words, without words, as soft as silk, enfolded and drew Mary to the grotto. They promised, without promising, everything, every dream, every wish, all she that desired. She hurried into the grotto, stepped through the door at the back and found herself in a book-lined study. Behind her, in the grotto, the door closed and faded from view.

Her surroundings were of no interest, her eyes, her heart and whole being dwelt on the man that stood before her. This dark haired silver-eyed apparition held out his arms and she floated into his embrace. She raised her face, his hungry lips crushed down, all inhibitions fled and they made love as if making a storm. Later when the tempest had passed, he nuzzled her neck and in that exchange, Mary became as one with the Vampireii.