Lucy Vickery

Monster mash-up

In Competition No. 3010, a nod to the late, great George Romero, you were invited to provide an extract from a mash-up of a literary classic of your choice and horror fiction.
 
Nathan Weston’s Werewolf Hall, Brian Murdoch’s The Gruffalo in Transylvania, Bill Greenwell’s Three Men and a Zombie and Nicholas MacKinnon’s The Nightmare of Casterbridge were all in with a shout for a place on the winners’ podium. But in a hotly contested week they were squeezed out by the entries below, whose authors earn £25 each. Adrian Fry nabs the extra fiver.
 


Mr Septimus Harding, warden of Hiram’s hospital, plunged his crucifix into the burning flesh of the ghoul, reflecting upon John Bold’s contention that this role was excessively remunerative. Mr Harding conceded it might appear so to one unaware that the 12 bedsmen of the hospital were immortal demons whose fleshly manifestations must be battled nightly lest they escape, ravaging the innocents of Barchester. Nightly, with the regularity of nightmare, Mr Harding battled these monsters who, black of ichor and incontinent of entrails, regenerated and renewed their attack no matter into how many segments he bloodily diced them. However, such evidence being inadmissible by reason of obscenity, Mr Harding resolved to keep his counsel on what, in any case, was a spiritual matter. Besides, he would need all his power to combat the thing — all flapping grey skin, fangs and emptied eye sockets — lurching up at him from an adjacent bed.
Adrian Fry 
 
Dixon pulled his Errol Flynn face, but no courage resulted. It was normal that Welch should ask to ‘pick his brains’ in the history library, and horrifyingly appropriate that he should prove to be a zombie. Dixon selected a heavy slab of sententiousness by ghastly Macaulay and lobbed it at Welch, knocking away one side of the medievalist’s head.


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