by Simon Clark
Mary smoothed the white cotton of her nightdress. At forty years of age she had an enviable figure. More than once, it had occurred to her if Harry’s dart obsession grew too much she’d be able to find another husband.
Mary moved around the tiny yard, which was enclosed by high walls. The moon had emerged once more. It revealed the bulbous swellings in the rock face. She blew into her numbed hands. This is insanity, she told herself. I can’t let Harry drive me outside. Even yard dogs have kennels. Here I am, freezing in a nightdress. Probing fingers of air slid around her bare legs. Her skin went bumpy across her chest. Shivers darted down her backbone. The cold grew just too intense. She couldn’t stand it any more. When she exhaled, a gust of white blossomed round her head.
As she crossed the yard towards the cottage door, she happened to glance upwards. Moonlight had emphasized those raised bumps in the cliff face. The rocky protrusion seemed to hang directly above her head.
Then the rocky outcrops did something they’d never done before. They moved.
Mary Tinskell stepped into the centre of the yard, staring upwards; only, the harder she stared, trying to identify what those shadowy bumps were, the more the cold made her eyes water. Was the cliff falling? Images flashed through her head of boulders crashing down on to her cottage.
Yet the moving objects made no sound. She blinked until her eyes were clear. Her vision snapped into sharp focus. Those objects clung to the cliff face as they swiftly climbed downwards.
And they descended towards Mary in the yard.
She moved backwards, keeping her gaze locked on the four figures climbing down the cliff. But they climbed head first. And with such speed. Twenty feet above her one of the climbers paused. It raised its head to look at her. She saw a man, wearing pilot’s goggles. His face was smeared with a dark liquid. Moonlight made the goggle lenses shine silver. Yet she knew with absolute certainty that he stared at her.
Mary spun round, then raced for the door. Only to find it blocked by a figure. This one she recognized. Dressed in a white shirt, and wearing a striped tie round his waist like it was a belt, was a man she’d seen often in her youth.
‘Gustav Kirk?’ Her heart raced. ‘But you went missing twenty years ago.’
He took a single step forwards. Behind her came soft concussions as the cliff climbers dropped the last few feet into the yard.
‘Don’t you dare touch me.’ Mary had detected the predatory menace in their postures. ‘Don’t you dare!’
The figures approached, eyes ablaze with ferocity, their faces smeared with a rich, dark liquid that could be nothing else but blood. In the moonlight, there seemed precious little colour to their irises. If anything, each eye simply contained a fierce black pupil.
Gustav reached out to touch the side of her neck. The cold-as-ice sensation of his fingers on her bare skin did it. In an explosion of movement, she raced through the alleyway to Henrietta Street beyond. If the back door was blocked, she could beat on the front door to alert her husband.
Yet the creatures anticipated her move. And yes they were creatures . . . They were inhuman . . . No living humans possessed eyes like that. When she dashed towards the front door Gustav smoothly sped by her to block the way. He smiled. His teeth were tiny yet perfectly shaped. The other creatures possessed the same kind of teeth, as if God in a moment of reckless abandon had snatched up different animals, then moulded them into something that, at least outwardly, resembled a man.
Running became her mission. Nothing less. If her feet pounded the cobbled street, then it proved she hadn’t been caught yet. Because that was her intention. She knew they wanted to lay hands on her. To bundle her roughly away. But what then? What would they do with her? Creatures like that? What brought them pleasure?
Mary raced long Henrietta Street. At this time of night, bathed in moonlight, not a soul graced it. Houses to her left lay in darkness. To her right the hillside flowed down to the vast expanse of harbour waters. And behind her, softly padding feet. Gustav and his monstrous companions were in full-blooded pursuit. Maybe they enjoyed the chase? Did they savour her fear as they closed in?
Mary sped down towards town. Ancient cottages grew more tightly clustered. The incline added to her speed so she kept running downwards. Instead of joining the level ground of Church Street, she sped down Tate Hill. Only, this led to the beach. The tide had rolled in, flooding the sands. So Mary dashed out along the stone pier. Little more than eight feet wide, it jutted out into the waters of the harbour. A bridge to nowhere.
Keep running. That’s all that mattered. Maybe she could elude her pursuers yet. She raced along the tongue of stone. At the end, she kept running. Her heart had become this huge, pounding engine in her chest. Adrenalin filled her veins with fire. In that heightened state, the moon burnt like the torch of the gods in the sky. The ocean became a luminous silver highway all of its own. Nightdress flapping, hair rippling wildly, Mary leapt, then flew outwards, her face turned up to the stars and the moon.
The sea took her into itself. It embraced her tightly as a lover. Its cold fingers explored every inch of her body in a split second. For a moment, she tried hard to swim in the direction of the bridge. However, the tide had turned. Roughly, the current bore her back to the stone pier; there, she buffeted against its stone blocks.
Instantly, hands seized her from above. Gustav, the pilot, and the others, swiftly drew her from the water. She lay dripping in their arms, as they carried her into a secret, shadowed place, where they could do whatever they wanted to her.
But there in the night a strange thing happened. Yes, horror engulfed her. No doubting that. But there was something else, too. A thrill she’d never felt before. Excitement snapped through her veins; an electricity of forbidden desires burst through her English reserve.
She moaned as they fought to be first to clamp their mouths on to her body. The bites were a sweet pain of release. Memories of her life with her husband roared through her head. The confinement in the cottage to cook and clean. The dull monotony. The loss of hope that things would change for the better one day. The never-ending thud . . . thud . . . thud of darts in the board, which could have been nails being slowly hammered into the coffin of a loveless marriage.
When those small, razor-sharp teeth released blood from her veins, she roared with a vicious pleasure. Then, as consciousness began to fade, she pictured Harry’s face as he admired his beloved darts . . . and the final words that slipped through her soon-to-be inhuman lips were:
‘I’m free . . .’
Five
Unable to sleep, Eleanor Charnwood descended into the hotel’s basement. A clock in reception chimed four in the morning as she gritted her teeth against the icy flow of air within the underground vault. She passed the huddle of chairs, where she’d sheltered from the air raid earlier with her new guests. In the corner of the cellar, she tugged back an old rug she’d used to hide a line of gallon jars in thick glass. Pasted on each one, a label that bore a skull and cross bones sign. Beneath that the word: DANGER! Because of the war, everything (but fear and want) was in short supply. It had become increasingly difficult to acquire more stocks of the chemical, but she knew she must. So far she’d bought a dozen gallons on the black market. However, she reckoned on needing at least another dozen more, if she were to stand any chance of success.
Donning thick protective gloves, she tugged the jars deeper into the basement, where she could lock them in the wine cellar. Until a couple of weeks ago, she’d not anticipated that the hotel would be opened up again to paying guests. At first she’d resisted; an official from the Ministry of Information, however, made it absolutely clear to her that if she didn’t make the hotel available to the film people it would be requisitioned anyway. That would spell disaster for Eleanor’s plans. In a matter of days, the place would be bustling with actors. She couldn’t even keep them out of the basement, because it served as the air-raid shelter. So, no time like the present to move her precious hoard.
‘Eleanor . . . Eleanor . . . It’s me.’
She paused only for a second. Then, taking a deep breath to steady her resolve, she continued her work. There was barely enough time to make the preparations as it was. Many a time, she’d find herself becoming increasingly moody, as she worried about all the jobs she needed to do in order to carry out her plan. The enormity of the task left her anxious, flustered, in fact so on edge that she wanted to yell at anyone who called at the hotel.
Now that voice . . . She’d heard it at least once every twelve months for the last twenty years. It started just weeks after she visited Hag’s Lung Cave with that shy, dreamy youth. The one who loved nothing more than to find some sheltered corner of the beach to read his treasured books.
‘Eleanor?’
She continued working. Go away, she thought. I’m busy. I’ll never get this done.
‘Eleanor. I know you’re there. Why have you never spoken to me? For twenty years I’ve come back here in the hope you’ll discuss what happened.’
She dragged more of the hefty jars full of that fiercely toxic brew to the storeroom.
‘Eleanor.’ The voice shimmered from some other world, or so it seemed to her. ‘Do you remember what happened that night at the cave? You put your arm into the hole; something bit you on the wrist. When you fainted I carried you outside. Then I went back into Hag’s Lung. It was a stupid thing to do, but I wanted to know what lay beyond the hole in the cave wall. I widened it with the crowbar, then I put my eye to it to try and see inside. What a foolish boy I was, Eleanor.’ He paused. ‘Will you tell me about your wrist? What happened?’
In the shadows of the basement, she couldn’t stop herself sliding back the sleeve of her pullover. On her wrist, eight open wounds. They’d never healed since she’d been bitten there twenty years ago. The punctures resembled tiny open mouths, with delicately pink lips. The holes, arranged so – :::: – extended deep inside the flesh. Most nights they itched . . . a furious itching.
‘They bit me, Eleanor. But you were never infected. Not like me and the rest. Why do you think you’re immune, Eleanor?’ A pause. ‘Please talk to me.’ The soft, whispery voice continued until it resembled the throb of surf on the beach just yards from the hotel. ‘Please talk to me. I want to see your face. You were the only girl who didn’t make fun of me at school. Listen, I’ve told you this before. Myself, and the other ones, have tried so hard not to feed. If we ingest human blood it speeds the transformation in our bodies. We have tried to resist. But it’s getting difficult. Bodies of sailors are washed up on the beach, the blood still fresh in their veins. It’s this war. It delivers prey to us. We try not to feed on it, but it’s difficult to resist. Sometimes airmen fall out of the sky. It’s like a hungry child, standing in an orchard, with ripe apples dropping from the trees into its hands. Help us, Eleanor, we need you.’
Don’t do it, don’t do it! You’ve promised yourself you’ll never talk to him.
But those incessant pleas – ‘Talk to me. Help us.’ – and the power of the sheer sorrow in those words overwhelmed her self-restraint. She set the jar down, then marched to the iron grate. And there he was. Gustav Kirk stood beneath it. His hands clenched about the bars. His bone-white face peered up through the gaps at her. The fierce black pupils locked on hers.
‘You left me in the cave!’ Traitorous mouth. She’d tried so hard to ignore Gustav all those times before, when he’d crept along the tunnel. ‘You abandoned me to them!’ She flashed the wounds at him. ‘They’ve never healed. So how could I ever marry a man with these marks of damnation?’
‘I didn’t leave you. The candle went out so I had to go get my bag. The matches were there. Eleanor, I saved you.’
‘Saved me for a life of hell, you mean!’
She fled to the stairs.
‘Eleanor! Help us! We’re going to do something terrible – and we can’t stop ourselves. Eleanor! Don’t go!’
Six
The milk-white eyes of the Vampiric men and women had adapted well to darkness. And though not so much as a glimmer escaped the houses of Whitby town, these night creatures saw the buildings spread out beneath them perfectly.
There were six now. They stood in the cliff-top cemetery that overlooked the harbour and the chaotic scatter of tightly clustered rooftops. The pilot rested his hand on a tombstone and realized he’d cheated death once and for all. Mary gazed down at her old home eighty feet beneath her. In her heart of hearts, she knew she’d escaped the drudgery of everyday life. Changes were taking place in both her body and her mind, yet the overriding emotion was one of pleasure. She was free. And she loved that sensation. No more domestic chores. No more being tied to the house. Licks of white, glistening ice formed on the gravestones. Grass became crisp underfoot. Mary’s nightdress still dripped from her fall into the sea. Cold couldn’t reach her now. The crunch of frosted grass against her bare toes didn’t bother her one jot.
Behind them, the squat, block shape of St Mary’s Church. And behind that lay the ruins of the abbey. This monastic relic consisted of skeletal structures, bereft of a roof, yet containing vast arched openings that had once been the abbey windows. Keen Vampiric eyes glimpsed spiral staircases in the remains of the abbey’s towers, which had once taken the monks that bit closer to heaven; now the broken staircases led to nowhere. Those ferociously sharp eyes also detected subtle mounds in the earth where the ancient Viking temple stood.
Gustav, even in the days when he was still human, sensed that the old gods had returned to the temple site in the hope that humanity hadn’t forgotten them. But now Odin and his clan were shunned. They hadn’t lingered long, and they’d soon returned to wherever spurned gods dwell. But a yet more ancient deity, the one known as Tiw, was as mysterious and unknowable to the Vikings as it was to modern Man. And Tiw was psychotically tenacious.
Often Gustav had stood up here in the cliff-top cemetery. In his mind’s eye, both as a human and the vampire-like creature he’d become, he imagined Tiw pacing between this high point above Whitby and the abandoned, and very much neglected, pagan temple.
Tiw’s rage poisoned the soil. It made even the worms bite like vipers. Fury blazed itself into the very rock. The profile of his brooding face could be glimpsed in the cliffs. Tiw – bitter from neglect, insane from anger – nurtured plans of revenge against the human race. They were fools to scorn this primeval Viking god. They ignored him at their peril.
The creatures were still hungry. Tiw now ensured that never again would they be satisfied with a mouthful of crimson from a sheep’s vein. Tiw inflamed their appetites.
Driven by hunger, the six moved by instinct. The path took them through the graveyard to an anti-aircraft gun in a meadow beyond the abbey precinct.
Something would happen soon. The six Vampiric minds could sense it. Gustav had felt this tension in the air before. As if electricity had begun to spark across its very atoms. Did it herald Tiw reaching from his world into this one? Soon . . . It’s coming . . . Hurry . . . The six moved swiftly now. They could almost smell the approaching event, just as wolves catch the scent of an injured deer in the wood. Their mouths became wet. They would feed again soon. They were sure of it. But where exactly?
Two hundred yards away, the crew that manned the anti-aircraft gun began to move ammunition back to the bunker some thirty yards from the emplacement. Sunrise lay just an hour away. It was unlikely that the Nazi bombers would attack now, as it would require a daytime return journey to their bases in Germany. Daylight would leave them vulnerable to attack from allied fighters. Therefore, by day, only a minimal amount of ammunition would be kept near the gun itself.
The corporal picked up the heavy shell. At over a foot long these brass cylinders, full of explosives, could only be moved one at a time. You carried them just as you would a newborn baby, cradling it gently in your arms. The corporal had followed this route
dozens of time. The pathway had been marked out by white posts on to which had been painted spots of luminous green paint. The green dots resembled little gleaming eyes in the darkness. Yet they would guide the soldier safely to the ammo store. One of the men behind him hummed a song that was irritatingly tuneless.
The corporal’s stomach rumbled as hunger pangs set in. Dear God in heaven, he could almost taste his morning plateful of bacon, fried eggs and mushrooms. To that, he’d add hunks of bread, a mug of tea. Then the first glorious cigarette of the day. He longed for that dizzying rush to the head as he inhaled deeply, gratefully, blissfully . . .
The corporal stopped dead, the shell lying heavy in his arms. Strange. That had never happened before. He’d been so engrossed in such an enticing image of breakfast that he’d wandered off the path marked by the white posts. He blinked in the darkness. The green, luminous spots on the posts all lay off to his left. Nearby, a soldier still hummed the odd-sounding ditty.
‘Hey, is that you, Sparky?’ he called.
The soldier continued to hum without answering.
‘Who is it, then? Yes, you, laddie. The one who’s grunting the God-awful noise.’ Wrapped in darkness, the humming figure consisted of shadow, nothing else. ‘Well, whoever you are, go back to the gun and tell them to bring the torch. I’m off the pathway in rough ground. I’m not risking carrying this thing back.’ He hugged the shell to his chest. ‘It’s about as flat as a flaming mountain range here.’
The figure stopped humming. Then, as if his presence was no longer required, he retreated into the night. A smooth withdrawal, like the man, if indeed he was a mortal man, didn’t need to use his legs.
The rest of the gun crew had returned to pull a canvas sheet over the weapon. Like bats and nightwatchmen, the anti-aircraft guns usually slept by day.