short story about a man who picks up a girl hitchhiker who is a werewolf or vampire

Question

I read this story back in the '70s in an anthology and it stayed with me because it creeped me out so much as a kid. The final line in the story is that he was going to look at her teeth after putting together clues that she was dangerous, but didn't get to "because her teeth were in his throat." I would love to read it again as an adult if anyone recognizes it or the author. Thanks.

Answer 1

short story

"The Human Angle" by William Tenn (pseudonym of Philip Klass); originally published in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1948, which is available at the Internet Archive.

about a man who picks up a girl hitchhiker

"Hey, kid. Want a lift?"

The child stooped slightly against the somber background of night and decaying, damp countryside. Her eyes scanned the car, came back to his face and considered it. The kid had probably not known that this chromium-plated kind of post-war auto existed. She'd certainly never dreamed of riding in one. It would give her a chance to crow over the other kids in the 'tater patch.

Evidently deciding that he wasn't the kind of stranger her mother had warned her about and that it would be less uncomfortable in the car than walking in the rain and mud, she nodded. Very slowly, she came around the front and climbed in at his right.

"Thanks, mister," she said.

who is a werewolf or vampire

She's a vampire. The man is a reporter covering a vampire story:

"Get the human angle on this vampire hunt," Randall had ordered. "All the other news services will be giving it the hill-billy twist, medieval superstition messing up the atomic world. What dumb jerks these dumb jerks are! You stay off that line. Find yourself a weepy individual slant on bloodsucking and sob me about three thousand words. And keep your expense account down—you just can't work a big swindle sheet out of that kind of agricultural slum."

I read this story back in the '70s in an anthology

Perhaps the 1977 British hardcover anthology Deadly Nightshade: Strange Tales of the Dark (Peter Haining, ed.) or its 1978 American edition Deadly Nightshade. Before that, the story appeared in a William Tenn collection called The Human Angle. Any of these covers look familiar?

The final line in the story is that he was going to look at her teeth after putting together clues that she was dangerous, but didn't get to "because her teeth were in his throat."

"What was that you remembered about the shape of her teeth?" his mind shrieked. He started to whip his head around, to get another look at her teeth. But he couldn't.

Because her teeth were in his throat.