The Freakish Family: Part 1

The Freakish Family as they came to be known by some of the locals (which they eventually embraced) were the greatest heroes of the 19th century. Whilst history beyond a few who knew about the supernatural largely forgot them. It's safe to say that were it not for this band of unconventional champions, we would not be here.

Aside from Carlene and Lam of course, the Freakish family included three other very different heroes from different times, and in some cases worlds.

The first to join after Carlene and Lam, was the very original of several monsters created by Professor Frankenstein.

Victor Frankenstein was one of the greatest scientists of his generation. I'm sure most of you reading will know his story, of how a young, gifted scientists created a man, from the remains of several other men fused together in an effort to show that he could create life. Sadly however the unnatural strength and initially unstable personality of the man Victor created, caused him to attack his creator, seriously wound his servant Karl and flee into the countryside.

Victors creation soon stabilised mentally, and soon ironically proved to be an intelligent, articulate individual. (The brain that had been used was actually one of Victors mentors, which had sadly been damaged in the process, but memories of its former life nevertheless crept their way back in slowly.)

Sadly however due to the creature's deformed face and unnatural strength it was deemed a monster and chased by the population. After barely surviving against the baying mob, the so called monster sought Victor for help, but he turned his back on it. The creature then desired vengeance against the man who brought it into this world. Rather than simply kill Victor however, instead the monster wanted to make its father into an outcast like him. It left a trail of evidence for the authorities that allowed them to piece together that Victor had created it. Unfortunately this led to the same angry mob that had tortured and nearly killed the monster to attack Victors house, destroying decades worth of research and murdering his wife and son when they burned his house down. The monster was horrified by the mobs reaction, having not dreamed that they would go that far. It even tried to rescue Victors son in the middle of the carnage, but sadly just as they had almost escaped the burning wreckage, the monster and the young Frankenstein were both buried under a flaming piece of debris, and the boy was killed instantly. The monster tried to kill himself afterwards in grief by drowning, but found that it was not enough to kill him. The only thing that could kill the monster thanks to his inhuman physique was complete dismemberment. Forced to live with what he had done, the monster, which was all it referred to itself now as, resolved to travel the world battling evil in an attempt to make up for its past mistakes.

It's story was passed down into folklore and eventually adapted as a novel by Mary Shelley. She met the real monster many years later however and ironically it became one of her best friends, with the two even hunting vampires and vandals together.

Victor meanwhile now on the run also continued with his experiments, creating other similar undead creatures, all of which were failures for one reason or another. Over the years his constant failures, bitterness at his first creation and torture over the death of his family, drove Victor to madness.

The Professor later started to deliberately create monsters to make humanity suffer and devoted himself to hunting down his first creation, with the two becoming the bitterest enemies.

By the time the monster met Carlene and Lam however he had seemingly given up. He had been forced to kill his creator in a final showdown in Antarctica. The monster had not wanted to kill his creator. Not just out of guilt over what had happened, but he genuinely came to believe that Professor Frankenstein's experiments could be used to help humanity and tried to redeem his creator many times. Sadly however their last confrontation left the monster with no choice and he was broken by it to the point where he no longer even cared about fighting evil.

In fact the monster was working as a circus freak just before joining the Zeta and the vampire. Lam was the one to bring him out of his slump after finding the monster drinking at The Rose and Crown one night. Though Frakenstein's creation had also attempted to cover up his appearance, even at this bar, Lam wasn't fooled. The monster never became a part of the official agency and still earned a living through the circus, but he nevertheless accompanied Carlene and Lam on most of their missions developing close friendships with the alien and the time displaced vampire in the process.

The three later became a four, after a visit from one of the few other remorseful vampires aside from Carlene, Varney. 

Varney in life was originally an English King during the 4th century. He was at least by the standards of his time a fair and just leader, but sadly his son and successor, Varsces was cruel, vicious and power hungry.

Varsces tried to murder his own father when he was just 17, forcing Varney to go on the run. The guards were more sympathetic to Varsces. Unlike Varney who was more sympathetic to the people, and would never allow lethal force to be used in dealing with them. Varsces happily let the men punish the poor villagers in any way they saw fit. He himself even took part in it just for his own amusement. Varsces cruel nature came from his mother. She had married Varney, simply because he had proven himself to be a great warrior, and she hoped that he could help protect her. (Uprisings and riots were common, given how poor the kingdom was.) Varney meanwhile had been seduced by her beauty and status, but their marriage was not a happy one.

Her entire family were corrupt and only tolerated Varney at best. Furthermore she spoiled Varsces terribly from when he was a child. After she was killed by an angry villager, Varsces blamed Varney for being soft on them, leading to their already hostile relationship becoming even colder. This also began the boy's heinous treatment of the lower classes and peasants in his kingdom too, even by the standards of his degenerate family.

After his banishment, Varney led an uprising against his vile son, but when that failed and he barely escaped with his life. Varney became more desperate and eventually turned to the black arts. A vampire who had also been run out of the kingdom, after feuding with Varsces grandfather. Offered to turn Varney, promising him that with his skills as a warrior and the supernatural strength of a vampire, he could easily slay the king. With no other choice, Varney accepted, and aided by his new vampiric powers. He managed to infiltrate the kings castle, catching him unaware and butchered his own son.

In spite of how much of a monster Varsces was. Varney was horrified by what he had done. It wasn't even just that he had been willing to murder his son, which to be fair he had always been after the horrors Varsces had carried out. The fact that he actually relished in it disturbed him, and Varney subsequently did his best to try and control his blood lust from this point on.

Over the centuries however Varney went back and forth between attempting to control his blood lust and giving into it. He never killed indiscriminately however. Whenever his blood lust became too great. He was always very selective in who he fed on, and even when he did return to feeding on humans again. The vampire still always used his powers to help people.

Varney became a notorious figure throughout Europe. Wanted and hated by vampires, vandals, demons and even many powerful and influential human figures. It's perhaps not surprising to learn that he was actually killed many times, though his breed had advanced restorative powers much like Carlene, which allowed him to be resurrected. Prior to joining the Freakish Family, his last resurrection had occurred during the time of Oliver Cromwell. Varney's restorative powers were also always greater on the night of the full moon.

By the 19th century, the vampire had come into wealth and influence from the Bannerworths. This family were haunted by a demon that one member had attempted to bring into this world as his slave. The demon however rebelled and killed its proposed new master, but in the process with the spell having not been completed. The demon was left trapped between worlds. Able to influence both to some extent, but not truly existing in either.

The demon vowed to kill the remainder of the Bannerworth family as only then would the spell be broken and it could return to its own world.

Whilst not able to kill them directly it could still influence other demons in our world to do so, and in rare cases even people too. The Bannerworths, having no real magical knowledge of their own (as the renegade member of their family who summoned the demons' notes had been foolishly destroyed by the others before they realised they were being haunted.) The family approached Varney to protect them.

During his time with the family. The vampire developed a friendship with two of the Bannerworth siblings, George and Flora. Indeed Varney actually suspected that the Bannerworth's may have very well been his descendants, as during his time as king he and his wife had many affairs, her with noblemen, he with the peasants, which led to many illegitimate children on his part. Most of these "bastard" children were put to death by Varsces, but a few escaped and may very well have led to the Bannerworth dynasty.

Varney took on a fatherly role to the two children, taking the place of their actual father who died many years prior.

Unfortunately however one of the children, Henry was in fact poisoning the mother, wanting to frame the demon for her murder, so that he could then forge her will to get all her money and finally cast out his siblings (who he had always despised.)

The vampire however discovered what Henry was planning when he tried to kill Varney, and Henry in response actually formed an alliance with the demon. He promised to help the demon fully enter our world by completing the spell, which it preferred as back home it was a low level demon where as here it could be a wolf among the sheep.

Sadly in the ensuing fight Henry, George and the mother were killed, and though Varney believed he had slain the demon. It survived and returned five years later to finally kill Flora.

By that point Varney had left Flora. Though he had helped her through the death of her family, and she wanted him to stay. He felt that as long as he was in her life she would never be safe. Ironically this meant that he wasn't able to help her when she most needed him. Nevertheless she still left her entire fortune to the vampire she loved like a father, and after her death Varney was so overcome with guilt he vowed to use her money and mansion to do good in the world.

Varney first met his new family meanwhile when he came into conflict with Ronald Callaghan, the leader of a group of vampire worshippers known as the eternal followers. They had been been founded in the 17th century by a land owner who had lost everything to the demonic enemies of the vampires, the vandals and genuinely believed that the blood suckers would be the next power base.

Even after that evidently didn't happen, the eternal followers were kept alive over the centuries through black magic, though they gradually faded in number. Callaghan however was a truly sick, twisted and perverted individual who genuinely loved the vampires, unlike many of the others who were there because they thought it could benefit them (Including the cults founder.)

Ronnie as his followers knew him, particularly despised Varney. Unlike the other members of the cult, he genuinely knew about vampires, and viewed Varney as the supreme traitor. This was part of why he selected him for his greatest experiment.

Ronnie wanted to try and use Varney's restorative powers as a conduit to bring back the greatest vampires from throughout history from Khastran's dimension. He had never been willing to try this before, as doing so could harm the vampire that was used. Of course in Varney's case, Ronnie had no concerns.

In fact Ronnie believed that this was a sign from Khastran himself that the supreme traitor should be used as a way to bring his more worthy children back.

Ronnie successfully performed the ritual after luring Varney into a trap. The vampire however managed to escape and struggling to contain the dark power of several previous vampire souls that were now trapped within him as a result of Ronnie's spell. He visited Carlene and Lam's agency.

Varney had heard of Carlene and Lam and he didn't much care for them. He preferred to work quietly, though granted this was a more recent development. Prior he had been something of a braggard, far more than Lam and Carlene had ever been, but it had only ever caused him pain from being hunted. As we will see later however he had other reasons for wanting to remain hidden.

Varney had actually tried to approach Carlene, Lam and the monster in the Rose and Crown at some point before his battle with Ronnie, to tell them to shut down their agency for their own sake. Naturally they didn't listen to him.

Thankfully the three didn't hold it against Varney later and using Carlene's knowledge of more advanced exorcism spells from the future. They extracted the demonic energy from Varney before it killed him. The energy, needing a home then transplanted itself into Ronnie, who had brought it into this world. As his body was not able to hold it however, it tore him to pieces and itself in the process. Worse than that for Ronnie however, the destruction of the energy in his body drew Ronnie's soul to Khastran's dimension, where the very vampires he worshipped tortured him in the most horrific way for their own amusement seemingly forvever.

Following this Varney later helped Carlene, Lam and the monster on another mission to repay his debt. During both of these missions however, he came to view them in a different light and slowly began to value them both, along with the monster. He continued to help the trio, always coming up with a different excuse each time to cover up for the fact that he enjoyed working with them. Thankfully they felt the same way and he soon without even realising it became part of their team. Varney once again took on a fatherly role to the rest of the group. He obviously had greater experience than they did, but even then he could be somewhat condescending to the others at times. Overall he came to view the trio as the children he never had in some respects.

The final member of the Freakish Family was brought to them when one of Lam's experiments went wrong. The primitive saucer he had fled to earth in, had burnt itself out on the journey here. Wanting to try and make it fly again. Lam tried to power the old relic with magic in the hopes of exploring the universe with his two best friends.(Varney was busy with something else at this point.)

Lam's dabbling with magic however catapulted his ship, along with his two companions into an alternate version of the earth. In this reality history had followed a similar path up to a point. Just as in our reality the first Martians to visit our planet during the time of the Roman empire had been attacked by a vampire and one of them was infected who after returning to Mars, went onto infect others, leading to the Martians being wiped out by the vampire horde.

The vampires then set their sights on the earth after the Martians were slaughtered. Unlike in our reality however, where the invasion of the Martian vampires was foiled by the combined forces of the emperor Trajan, the last of the Martians who had escaped, Keptis and the time travellers known as the Circus Family. Instead Keptis never escaped, and Trajan was butchered, Rome fell and humanity was herded in a similar fashion to the Martians, whilst other supernatural creatures, especially the vandals were hunted and slaughtered. Most of our world was stripped clean, the human population dwindled to just a few thousand and the majority of demonic creatures on earth were driven to extinction.

Before they completely slaughtered humanity however, the vampires left our planet to conquer other worlds, just like they did in our reality when their empire fell.

The earth remained largely a no man's land with the few demons, and humans left behind struggling to survive in isolated communities for centuries afterwards.

By the time Lam, Carlene and the monster arrived. The demon and human populations had begun to recover somewhat, though not to the extent that either had rebuilt their society. Instead they still lived in groups scattered all over the world.

Lam, Carlene and the monster meanwhile's journey into this reality did not go smoothly. They actually became caught in the nothing between realities, (a truly terrifying experience for all involved.) However their ship was pulled through by some unknown to them force, in reality one of the worst creatures on the planet.

Hyrak, the very original Martian to be infected on our planet with vampirism. Just as in our reality he had since set himself up as the emperor of the vampire Martians, and personally led their invasion of earth.

However, though he ruled our planet for many years afterwards in this universe the vampire was eventually dethroned by one of his equally vile subordinates. Hyrak still managed to escape his planned execution however and fled into the wilderness of the planet he had bled dry.

Rather than waste any time hunting him. The new vampire emperor thought it would be much better to leave Hyrak in the ruins of his former kingdom, to condemn him to a slow lingering death. At that point the vampires weren't even aware that there were any humans left outside of their chambers.

Still Hyrak survived and salvaging the left over technology from the Martian invaders, he built a large fortress both to protect himself and where he could carry on with his experiments.

Hyrak operated on numerous demons, cutting into their brains, making them docile servants and warriors. His main aim was to not only leave the planet, but wage war against the vampires who had abandoned him and take control of more worlds. For that he needed a new army.

Sadly for the former vampire emperor, he was not able to construct space ships capable of travelling beyond the solar system. He had foolishly bought into his own propaganda that he had single handedly destroyed both the earth and mars. In actual fact it was the Martian scientists who had constructed the interstellar vehicles, a process he knew nothing about. He was the original Martian ship to earth's doctor in life, not its captain or engineer. That same medical knowledge is what allowed him to perform such vile experiments later on.

The more and more failures to leave our solar system he endured. The more the vampire lost hope and eventually became content to exist in his fortress, taking his frustrations out on the surviving humans and demons around him.

The magical anomalies created by Lam's craft attempting to pierce this world however gave the former emperor hope for the first time in centuries. Believing it to be visitors, he used the little magics that he had built up from the ravaged planet to help bring Lam's craft into his world completely.

Lam's craft subsequently arrived in an area populated by demons. The saucer did not have the power to travel back to our universe, but it did at least have the power to still fly. After barely surviving against the demons who briefly stole their ship. Lam, Carlene and the monster explored this new world, until they were captured by a particularly dangerous tribe of humans who had also been drawn here by the anomalies. This tribe were among the few on earth besides the vampire emperor that had been able to harness the left over magics and were in fact the only humans in the area. They were Hyrak's greatest enemies, or so they believed.

The tribe took Carlene, Lam and the monster for enemies, simply due to the fact that Carlene was a vampire alone. The three however were soon rescued by Hyrak, though the humans were at least able to make off with Lam;s craft. As neither, Lam, nor Carlene or the monster were aware of the Martians being taken over by vampires, they took Hyrak to be a harmless, even somewhat charming alien as he played the perfect host. After learning how Lam had come here from the grey alien himself. The vampire became fascinated at the idea of another earth. One he could conquer and utilise in a more useful way than he had done with this world. He was sure the combination of his age, alien technology and ability to dissect demons and humans and make them loyal to him would allow the Martian vampire to claim our world and make it the centre of an empire in no time.

Lam and the others were soon restrained, after the monster discovered his true intentions, with Hyrak planning on making all three his slaves. They were ultimately rescued by one of the humans that had followed them here by latching onto Hyraks own primitive craft. A savage woman named Sycina Lawless. (The Lawless part was a nickname from Lam that she later took as a surname in England.)

Carlene, Lam and the monster fled with Sycina back to her people. Along the way they repaid her by saving Sycina from one of Hyrak's monsters. This earned them the debt of her tribe who agreed to help the three strangers get back to their home reality. Even with the debt however it was still not completely out of altruism. It was more so that Hyrak couldn't get his hands on their craft and doom any more worlds like he had done to both his own and the earth. They couldn't simply destroy the craft meanwhile as the alien magics inside of it would be released, which could have a worse effect. It was better to get it away from this world.

Hyrak however came down hard on Sycina's tribe. He could have killed them any time he wanted before, but he simply allowed them to live so that there would always be some humans he could hunt, torture and kill.

It was a bloodbath, and all of Sycina's tribe were killed, except for Sycina herself who escaped with Lam, Carlene and the monster back to our world.

Unfortunately Hyrak was able to hitch a ride to our earth by grabbing onto the side of Lam's craft just as it took off. Now loose in our world, the Martian vampire quickly began to build up his new and vast criminal empire.

Sycina meanwhile not surprisingly found it the hardest to adapt to life in England, never mind the loss of her people. In spite of how harsh and difficult it was back on her earth, it was still her home. The others felt tremendous guilt as had they not arrived in her world, then Hyrak would never have wiped out her people. This proved a turning point for Lam. Before there had always been people to bail him out of his reckless actions, from his fellow Zetas to Carlene, Varney and the monster. Now however he was forced to face the consequences not just with Sycina, but Hyrak being loose in London. From this point on the alien adopted a more measured and thoughtful approach to his actions and plans. This evidently stuck, later leading to the more level headed and austere mentor to a younger Carlene in the 70s. Ironically Lam even earned a reputation for having a cold, machine like intelligence later in life. A far cry from the hedonistic, fun loving person he once was. Still his compassion and moral code always remained just as strong. This experience also taught him to really learn and be more careful with his use of magic, which also led to the Zeta eventually becoming the skilled sorcerer later in life.

In spite of her anger towards Lam, Sycina nevertheless came to depend on this strange foursome. They were after all the only people in London who could relate to her feeling of loneliness to some extent and in time, she came to regard them as her new family. Her strongest bond however was with the monster.

In the next chapter we shall explore their history together.