“No, sir, I wasn’t.”
“Not Malaysia.”
“No, sir. Aden.”
“Aden… Lucky man.”
“I would say so, sir.”
The colonel stood with his hands behind his back as the old soldier went onto explain how he had spent the best part of the conflict holed up in a Bedouin tent.
“They gave us ice tea, and we slept on carpets, sir.”
“I should hope so,” said the Colonel with conviction. “That’s certainly not the sort of place you’d meet her.”
“What, sir?”
“She usually comes up through the floorboards,” said the Colonel.
“The floorboards, sir?”
“That,” said the Colonel in hushed tones, “is her favoured means of attack.”
The old soldier, thrice decorated and dressed in pensioner red, looked at the Colonel with a puzzled expression.
At the end of the reception, the Colonel, who was rip-roaringly drunk, staggered home.
But he was in no mood for bed.
The Colonel was sitting in his study, slumped over a second tumbler of whisky, when a pair of fangs flashed at him in the dark.
There was no mistaking it. It was the Penanggalan![1] She had come up through the floorboards!
The Colonel threw the tumbler of whisky and picked up the letter knife on his desk. He lunged.
In the morning, on her way to breakfast, the Colonel’s wife entered the study to draw the curtains.
She screamed.
Nigel was lying in a furry, bloody heap on the floor. The Colonel’s moon dome lay on the desk, beside the letter knife.
*
“Old soldiers sometimes have terrible nightmares. Is there such a thing as a Penangglan?”
“Sylvia’s appended a note…She says it’s some kind of female vampire.”
“How completely terrifying. On second thoughts, I think I might’ve accidentally stabbed the dog, too.”
“Even at your worst, darling, I don’t think you drink as much as the Colonel.”
[1]In Malaysian folklore a Penangglan is a bodiless female vampire, often depicted with two fangs.