by Simon Clark
‘Any will do, they all contain the same medicine. Then bring me a jug of cold water from the kitchen – it’s through that door there. Quickly! I might be able to catch it in time.’
Again, those mystifying references to . . . what precisely? Catch it in time? Contagion? Beth wiped blood from the table, only it kept flowing from the punctures in her friend’s flesh. She tore another strip from the sheet then folded it into a pad.
Eleanor guessed what she planned, ‘Don’t touch the wound yet, Beth. Blood loss is the least of our worries. Thank you.’ She took the jar from Alec, unstoppered it, then shook a generous dusting of white crystals on to the bloody wrist. Sally lay there in a daze; she hardly noticed all the activity around her. ‘Beth, pass me the scissors from the top of the sewing box. Thank you.’
Alarmingly, in what seemed a shocking act of sadism, Eleanor dipped the point of a scissor blade into the powder then pushed the tip of the blade into one of the open wounds.
Sally screamed.
Beth couldn’t take any more. ‘Stop it!’
Eleanor repeated the procedure. The white-coated point of the blade penetrated the wound, just the tip, true, yet the pain of cold metal being forced into the injury made Sally convulse upwards from the table with a heart-rending shriek.
‘I’m sorry,’ Eleanor cried. ‘You’ve got to trust me. This is for your own good.’
Beth had to steel herself from punching Eleanor. This procedure of driving the white powder into the bite wounds seemed utter madness, yet instinct told her to allow Eleanor to work. That same instinct told Beth, loud and clear, that a battle for life and death was being fought in this little room tonight.
‘There.’ Eleanor set the bloody scissors down. That done, she dusted the bite area with the white stuff again. As it mixed with the blood it formed a lurid orange. ‘Beth, on the shelf beneath the glass jars are packs of sterile bandages.’
Alec returned with the jug of water. ‘Quite a first-aid kit you’ve got there.’
‘It looks more like a stock cupboard for an alchemist,’ Beth commented as she handed over the bandages.
‘It looks strange to you,’ Eleanor said. ‘Nevertheless, it saves lives. And it should, God willing, save your friend, too.’
Alec frowned. ‘Does this mean Whitby is plagued by diseased animals? And that they are in the habit of biting people?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Shouldn’t you be informing the police, Eleanor?’ He watched her bandage Sally’s wrist. ‘After all, there are procedures for dealing with rabid dogs.’
‘A dog – rabid or otherwise – never made that wound,’ Beth told him, angrily. ‘Sally put her hand out of a window that was more than twenty feet from the ground.’
‘Now isn’t the time for discussions.’ Eleanor carefully measured a quantity of the same powder into a glass; that done, she added water to produce a liquid that sparkled. ‘Help her to drink this. She has to take all of it.’
‘What then?’
‘Say a prayer; it might help. If I’ve done my work correctly then Sally will be back to her ebullient self in the morning.’
Sally appeared much calmer now. Though blood loss might have left her with that languor. However, she managed to sit up on the table in order to drink Eleanor’s medicine. Although Beth found herself thinking of it as a ‘witch potion’. The crystals sparkled with extraordinary brightness in the water. It appeared as if Sally were drinking a glass full of twinkling stars.
‘Help me get Sally back to bed. That’s where she needs to be right now.’
Alec gently supported Sally while she eased herself from the table. The woman appeared half asleep. Beth realized that the wound didn’t seem to hurt her now.
‘So what did bite her, Eleanor?’ Alec asked.
‘We need sleep, too, Alec. We’re all exhausted. It’s long past midnight.’
Beth, realizing that Eleanor wouldn’t answer questions relating to the bite, fired an unrelated question. ‘That’s an unusual garment on the tailor’s dummy. A coat made out of rubber?’ In the white-heat of activity, when they were treating Sally, Beth hadn’t noticed the strange garment, consisting of sections of heavy-duty black rubber fixed together with brass rivets. It was only now that it became strikingly obvious.
Eleanor simply pressed her lips together. No answers would get through that blockade of pink flesh.
Alec lacked subtlety. He simply fired off a salvo of direct questions: ‘What bit the girl, Eleanor? Are we safe in the hotel? Shouldn’t you describe the animal, in case we see it? What is the powder you used in the wound? Why do you need a coat made from industrial-grade rubber? Aren’t you going to answer me, woman?’
By this time, they were in the corridor that led to Sally’s room. ‘It’s too late to be debating this. Frankly, I’m too damn exhausted to give you any coherent answers.’
‘When then?’ Alec fixed her with his single good eye.
Beth nodded at the door to her own room. ‘Take Sally in there. She can spend the night with me. I’ll make up the second bed once we’ve got her settled.’
‘Eleanor? When?’ Alec’s voice resembled the warning growl of a dog. The man needed answers.
‘I’m going to Leppington in the morning to fetch more of the medicine. Meet me in the foyer tomorrow at five p.m. prompt.’
‘You’ll tell us then about all this?’ Beth asked.
‘No.’
Alec nearly erupted with anger.
Eleanor continued smoothly, ‘I’ll take you across to the cottage. You’ll find out what you need to know there. In the meantime, keep your windows locked. And Beth?’
‘Yes?’
‘Sally should sleep until morning. But if she wakes and behaves oddly, or in any way out of character, lock her in the room, then come to find me. And make it fast.’ As Eleanor withdrew, she turned to Alec. ‘And it isn’t a rubber coat, it is a protective apron. I designed it in order to save my life. Goodnight.’
After Eleanor’s departure, the pair simply looked at each other, not knowing how to even begin commenting on what she’d just told them. Sally, meanwhile, had drifted into a deep sleep. Even so, her head turned from side-to-side; what’s more, her lips moved, as if she tried to reveal some facts that frightened her.
Alec sighed. ‘That woman, Miss Eleanor Charnwood. What on earth is she planning to do?’
Beth shivered, as if she’d just dipped her toe into an open grave. ‘Whatever it is, she intends to make us part of her plans. That’s right, Alec. She’s going to use us. Whether we like it or not.’
The boy still watched the hotel from the darkness. Sam whimpered softly. Even the dog realized something was amiss. He was troubled by the sight of men and women climbing over the face of the hotel on all fours, as if scaling vertical walls was as easy as running up and down a gentle incline.
‘Don’t worry, Sam,’ murmured the boy. ‘I won’t let them hurt us.’
Cold winds sped through Whitby’s deserted streets. The hotel sign, which projected from above its door, creaked as it swung to and fro. In the distance, the soft roar of surf. The tide had, at last, turned.
For some reason, the six figures that swarmed over the hotel lost interest in the building – and its occupants. Fluidly, they descended to the ground, before speeding off into the night; they had all the predatory menace of panthers hungry for fresh prey.
Once more, the boy felt the tug of home. ‘Come on, Sam.’ He lightly touched the dog’s back to attract his attention. Then the pair of them ran into the maze of streets that led to the cottage he’d once shared with his family. That was more than half a century ago, when the boy had been still really a boy, and not the creature that loped alongside his flesh-and-blood canine friend.
Eight
In this war, the fate of just one small ship would never be headline news. On the same cold February night that Sally felt those teeth sink into her wrist, other terrible events unfolded around the globe. Before sunrise
put an end to yet another cruel night, Nazi aircraft bombed London. Tons of high explosive rained down on the houses of ordinary families. Direct hits on shelters obliterated people by the dozen. A bomb fractured the water main above a London Tube station, where three hundred sheltered. The deluge cascaded into the subterranean station: one hundred and fifty drowned. In the deserts of North Africa, armies clashed during the night. By the time Beth had settled down into bed at the Leviathan Hotel, the desert battlefield blazed with destroyed tanks. In Russia, the SS burnt an entire town. When the night retreated before the rising sun, it carried three thousand ghosts with it.
So what happened to the ship off the Whitby coast wouldn’t trouble future historians that much. Nor would the loss of the SS Banwick have much of an effect on the course of the war.
The ship steamed northwards. It hugged the coast to avoid enemy submarines, prowling the shipping lanes. But the slow steamship, with its fifteen strong crew and contingent of a hundred and twenty-one troops bound for a garrison in Iceland, made an irresistible target for the German dive-bomber. Before any of the crew even saw the machine plunge through the dark clouds, it had released its armour-piercing bomb. It pierced the deck, passed right through the galley, where Cookie fried bacon for breakfast. A second later, it exploded in the coal hoppers that fuelled the ship.
As the blaze took hold, the captain ordered the helmsman to drive his craft aground, just half a mile from Whitby’s harbour. Even if the ship couldn’t be saved, its surviving passengers and crew would be able to scramble ashore.
Just fifty yards from the ship ramming the beach, the fire on-board reached the ammunition store. In a blossoming rose of igniting shells, the SS Banwick was torn apart. The explosion flung what was left of the men over a hundred acres of ocean.
When the sun peeked over the horizon, it had never seen an ocean as red as this. Bloody waters turned the surf pink. Waves carried what had flowed through men’s hearts, until just minutes ago, to the base of Whitby’s cliffs. There it poured through fissures in the rock. Soon, it found its way into the cavern that lay beneath Hag’s Lung Cave, where both Eleanor and Gustav had been bitten twenty years ago.
Gallons of blood swirled into the great, hidden sump cavern. One that contained dozens of pale figures that had, in the main, lain sleeping here for a thousand years. Now the blood washed over the pale, naked men and women. The second the tide painted crimson splashes on cold skin the figures’ eyes snapped open. The touch of the blood electrified them, energized them; it brought them alive again.
For now, they were contained in this prison of a cave. But as they excitedly licked the blood from each others’ bare flesh they knew they’d be free soon. What’s more, they’d woken properly for the first time in generations. And after such a long sleep? They were hungry. Relentlessly, furiously, searingly hungry. The time had come.
PART FOUR
{Caedmon’s verse, circa AD600, translated from the Anglo-Saxon}
I sang to you of heaven’s roof that protects us all
From Satan’s storm
Now I warn of these lowly dales
Where the ghosts of Whitby town
Devoured the blood of King Oswy’s soldier men . . .
One
The day began with rumours. Townsfolk were saying that a ship had been destroyed somewhere along the coast. Soldiers closed the cliff-top steps to deter sightseers. In the main, people just shrugged. ‘It’s wartime,’ they told one another in Whitby’s maze of ravine-like streets. ‘Hitler himself could have been drinking in the Duke of York pub, but the army would hush it all up. We’re told nothing.’ Plenty had heard a huge detonation, though. For a while, there’d been real anxiety in certain quarters that a Nazi invasion had begun. By lunchtime, however, the soldiers that could be glimpsed on the cliffs merely stood about bored. Life soon returned to normal.
For Whitby’s residents, that is. Beth had spent the morning with the distinct impression that a huge event was poised to happen. Something strange was in the air. Eleanor had already left for the Leppington train by the time Beth had gone downstairs. A note invited the three guests to make their own breakfast. None of them minded. They knew Eleanor didn’t have any hotel staff.
Beth repeatedly asked Sally the same question, ‘How’s the wrist?’
And got the same reply, ‘Fine. I don’t know what the fuss was about.’
‘Don’t you remember what happened?’
Sally gave one of her carefree smiles. ‘It’s all a bit fuzzy really. I must have got light-headed after losing the blood.’
‘Are you sure you’re alright?’
‘I’m fine. Really.’ To prove it Sally waved her hand in a theatrical way. The bandage bore a brown smudge; the only visible reminder of last night’s drama.
Alec took charge of making tea and toast. He strode into the dining room with a laden tray. ‘Well, we’re getting to the bottom of the biter tonight. Eleanor promised to tell all.’
Again, Beth figured that Eleanor planned to draw them into some scheme of hers. And today they would have to kill time until Eleanor revealed her secrets. This felt like waiting for a birth . . . or a death. It made her restless. I want to know now, she thought over and over. This air of mystery cranked up her nerves to screaming point. She needed a task to occupy her mind.
‘You’re going to take those establishing shots of Whitby today?’
Alec munched his toast. ‘The boys should be out of the B&B now. They’ll be loading the camera on the truck. Why?’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Beth told him.
‘And me,’ added Sally.
‘I’ll just be squirting off a few hundred feet of film to catch some pretty views. The harbour, a few boats and those old buildings on the waterfront.’
‘After what happened last night – Theo on the roof, Sally being bitten – I’m too on edge to sit still.’
Alec appraised them. ‘Alright. But wrap up warm, it’s going to be Arctic out there.’
It became one of those days when everyone strove in a very deliberate way to be ordinary, and to do ordinary things. So they ate breakfast, washed the dishes, brushed their hair, put on thick overcoats, chose scarves. They talked about the weather. Alec pondered aloud, wondering whether to get footage of waves breaking over the harbour wall. From a hotel window, they could see boys larking about, trying to dodge cascades of water after they burst over the quay.
Beth knew that they were all trying hard to avoid imagining what mysteries would be revealed by Eleanor at five o’clock. The purpose of the rubber apron? The cause of the bites? The nature of the white crystals in the jars? Stop it! she fumed. We’ll be told everything tonight.
She shared a mirror with Sally to apply lipstick.
‘I can’t wait until I’m in make-up for the filming,’ Sally bubbled. ‘Then someone will do this for me. And I’ve learnt my lines. Do you want to hear them?’
‘Tell me on the way. I can already hear Alec’s big boots clomping downstairs. He’ll sulk if we’re late.’
Ordinary, so ordinary . . .
Beth could almost believe that the dominating factor of their lives for the next two weeks would be the film shoot. Not the fact that something deeply and profoundly strange had occurred in this little coastal town. And that just hours from now the lives of Beth Layne, Sally Wainwright and Alec Reed would change forever.
Two
Beth, Sally and Alec gathered in the foyer of the Leviathan Hotel at five minutes to five. They’d spent the day working with the camera team to film Whitby’s picturesque streets, its port crammed with boats, and views of the river winding down from the hills. By this time, the winter afternoon had surrendered to the night. Shadows flowed from alleyways. The harbour waters were the colour of dull iron.
Every so often, Sally scratched at the bandage around her wrist. Beth saw, to her relief, that the wound didn’t unduly bother her friend; if anything, it seemed to be a little itchy, nothing more. Alec stared out of the win
dow, as a naval gunboat glided out through the harbour mouth. No doubt it was departing on a night-time patrol, hunting for enemy U-boats. Because one eye still remained covered by the black patch, it seemed to imbue the other eye with a burning intensity. Perhaps he imagined what it would be like to be a member of the gunboat’s crew. Out there, in cold waters, death might be waiting for the sailors. This might be their last glimpse of dry land.
The clock struck five. As the final chime shimmered on the still air a figure swept downstairs. Eleanor Charnwood, dressed in a calf-length black skirt and a black sweater. She’d plaited her long, black hair. It hung over one shoulder in a darkly glossy rope.
Instead of a greeting, she announced, ‘I’m warning you all. What you’ll encounter in my brother’s cottage is going to disturb your peace of mind. I daresay it will frighten you. So, if you decide not to come, I shan’t blame you.’
Alec boomed, ‘You’ve got us hooked, Eleanor. We crave answers. After all, what on earth attacked Sally last night?’
Beth added, ‘And was it the same thing that hurt you?’
‘I could tell you –’ Eleanor opened a door – ‘but it’s better to show you living proof. Although “living” is debatable.’ She led the way. ‘Follow me. Stay close; it’s too dark for comfort.’
They followed Eleanor through the hotel kitchen to a rear door. This opened on to the walled yard. In one corner, her brother’s cottage. The deepening gloom made it hard to see where they were stepping in the yard. And the hotel behind them had turned into a forbidding silhouette that loomed over their heads like a raised fist.
‘Stay close,’ Eleanor repeated. ‘If I yell “run” don’t question me. Just follow.’
Alec began with, ‘Eleanor, what will be running from? If there’s—’
She hushed him, then covered the remaining few yards to the door of the cottage. Made from heavy, black timbers, studded with iron, it possessed the disquieting appearance of the entrance to an ancient tomb. Eleanor produced a key; unlocked it. Quickly, she ushered them inside before closing and locking that grim door. That done, she switched on the light to reveal that the entire ground floor of the cottage consisted of an archaic kitchen, complete with a table and chairs that might have been roughly hewn from driftwood. Human comforts were in short supply. The floor was starkly bare – no carpet, not even a hearth rug. A biting cold filled the place. When they exhaled it manifested ghosts of white vapour.