by Simon Clark
‘Nevertheless . . .’
‘I know. We don’t have an alternative, do we?’
Beth touched Sally’s arm. ‘You stay here. Keep an eye on the basement door.’
At that moment, Sally couldn’t say why the pair acted in such a way. They brought crates of bottles from a storeroom. They set them down, then returned for more. The breeze made the light bulb swing on the end of its flex. Sally watched the shadows. Ghosts, marching as if to war. She tried to catch her breath, because she’d become light-headed. Legions of tramping shadows held her gaze. While in her mind’s eye, she pictured that silent building above her; the dozens of empty quarters. Rooms as still as graves. And through the windows . . . those fragile, so easily broken windows . . . the vampires would enter. Then, fleet of foot, they’d pad down here. They’ll grab me with those ice-cold hands. They’ll enjoy the fear on my face. Then they’ll bite and keep biting . . . until I become one of those monsters, too.
Beth and Alec’s voices whispered from the storeroom. The pair were out of sight. What wasn’t out of sight were the two vampires in the pit beneath the grate. A young man in a soldier’s uniform, and a woman with thick, red hair. Both had stark, white faces that matched the whites of their eyes. Black veins wormed beneath the flesh of their necks. As they leered at Sally, they both raised their arms, then began to heave at the cast iron grate. Though it possessed an enormous weight, those creatures gloried in a formidable strength. Expressions gloating, mouths opening to reveal white teeth set in tumescent red gums, they pushed upwards.
Sally found she could do nothing but watch them. She couldn’t move her limbs. The echoing voices of Beth and Alec seemed impossibly distant. What had once been a soldier stared up at her through the bars with such intensity he already seemed to be drawing the life force from her body. Slowly, the grate began to rise. Dirt flaked from the edges, where it parted from the frame.
Sally pictured her parents grieving over the loss of their daughter. Her ambition had been to act in films. Yet it was more than that. Her parents lived a poor life in a damp house. Her father was an invalid. This film had been Sally’s big chance to change her family’s life for the better. Now the dream was being stolen from her. Suddenly, she thought: No, you’re not taking my life from me. I won’t let you! Her hatred for those life-robbing monsters powered her limbs; it gave the woman renewed strength.
Sally grabbed one of the bottles from the crate; she raised it in her clenched fist. Then, like Zeus hurling thunderbolts, she threw the bottle. The glass container struck the ironwork. Shattered. Blue liquid gleamed in the electric light, spraying downwards through the gate’s bars – and into the faces of the vampires.
Then the volcano erupted.
Or so it seemed to Sally. A column of fire spewed from the pit in the floor. It struck the brickwork of the vaulted roof with the power of a blowtorch.
And in that crucible of fire . . . in that furnace . . . two figures screamed in agony. Though they still gripped the bars above their heads, the hands were those of skeletons. Flesh ignited, muscle exploded from the bone; veins were burning fuses.
Then the blazing wreckage of the two bodies dropped into the seawater at the bottom of the pit.
Sally panted as she stood there, her eyes fixed on the dead vampires. Then she realized that Beth and Alec had entered basement. Both stared at her in astonishment.
Sally took a deep breath. ‘I enjoyed that. No, I didn’t.’ Her voice rose to a full-blooded shout. ‘I loved it! I hurt them! And it feels wonderful!’
Eight
The pace quickened. Beth found canvas satchels in the wine cellar where the X-Stock had been kept. Clearly, Eleanor intended these to carry the bottles in at least relative safety. That resourceful woman had adapted each satchel by inserting a thick, inner layer made from blue velvet. This had been stitched to form cells that would house individual bottle bombs. The velvet would at least stop the bag full of bottles clashing together. For, if one broke in the bag, the results would be too terrible to contemplate.
Six of these had been prepared. Alec claimed two. As they loaded the home-made bombs into the bags, they discovered each satchel would accommodate ten bottles.
‘The bags will be heavy,’ Alec told them. ‘Don’t make sudden movements, or the weight could topple you.’
‘We’ll be careful,’ Beth told him. ‘Are you sure you can carry two, Alec?’
‘What a big hairy Scotsman like me? It’ll be no more arduous than carrying a pair of lace handkerchiefs.’
They’d been working in the hotel lobby for a matter of minutes when Tommy approached the locked front door. Those white eyes of his stared at the timbers. The black dog stood alongside him and gave a faint whimper.
Alec put the strap of one satchel over his shoulder. ‘What’s the matter, son?’
‘I should be going home, sir. My mother and father will be wondering where I am.’
‘You best stay here with us.’
‘But I need to see them.’
‘Tommy—’
‘I want to go home.’ The voice of a little lost boy came from that Vampiric mouth.
‘It’s not a normal kind of night, Tommy,’ Beth told him. ‘We need to stay together.’
‘I haven’t seen my parents for a long time. Or my sister. It seems like years. Only . . . I forget how long. Sally, why is it I lie in the ground when its daylight? What’s gone wrong with me?’
‘Don’t get upset,’ Sally said gently. ‘We’re your friends. We’ll look after you.’
Beth couldn’t bring herself to look Sally in the eye. Beth had vowed to end Tommy’s suffering. She still intended to do just that.
Quickly, Beth said, ‘Tommy, play with the truck.’
‘I’m too het up. I need to go home.’ He held her gaze. ‘There’s something worrying you, Beth. What is it?’
Alec shouldered the second satchel. ‘We might as well tell him the truth.’
‘Pardon?’ Had Alec overheard her and Eleanor discussing the need to kill Tommy. That would be the humane thing to do, after all . . . nevertheless . . .
‘I’ll tell him about Eleanor,’ Alec said. ‘He isn’t a child, Beth. Not really.’
Beth nodded. When Alec went to explain that Eleanor had been kidnapped, she helped Sally slip the bottles, containing the X-Stock, into the velvet housing within the bags.
‘We’ll have forty in all,’ Sally told her. ‘Is it enough?’
‘Say a prayer that it will.’
Alec joined them at the reception counter. ‘Tommy wants to look for Eleanor.’
‘He can’t,’ Beth said.
‘Tommy knows places where they might have taken her.’
Sally rested her palm on Beth’s hand. ‘Let him go. After all, as Alec said, Tommy’s isn’t really a little boy. He can take care of himself. And those vampires won’t be after his blood, will they?’
‘They can still hurt him.’ Beth pushed the last bottle into the bag. Yes, Tommy should have his misery ended. But in a humane way. Or at least as humanely as possible. ‘Alright. Tell him to find out where Eleanor’s being held . . . if she’s still alive.’ Dear God, did that sound as cold to them as it did to me? ‘Tell him to keep himself and Sam out of harm’s way.’
From upstairs came the sound of breaking glass.
Sally’s eyes flicked in the direction of the staircase. ‘I guess we’ve got new guests.’
Alec nodded. ‘Then this is the perfect time to decamp to Theo’s cottage.’ He called across to Tommy. ‘We’ll use the back door to the yard.’ As Alec led the way through the kitchen, collecting the cottage key from its hook on route, he commented, ‘Careful, remember the curfew.’
Sally watched the boy slip through the door into darkness, sure-footed as a cat at night. ‘I imagine the soldiers won’t even notice Tommy; never mind try to catch him.’
‘Take care,’ Beth called softly after the boy and his dog. However, they’d already vanished from sight.
&
nbsp; ‘Alright,’ Alec said. ‘Stick close. Walk, don’t run. We don’t want anyone falling over in the dark. Not carrying this devil’s brew. Head directly for the cottage door. Stop at nothing.’ He pulled a bottle from one of his satchels. ‘If we encounter trouble, I’ve got just the remedy. Go.’
They went out into the night.
Nine
Tommy moved along Church Street. Beside him loped Sam. His claws clicked on the stone paving blocks. Though the blackout held Whitby in a totality of darkness, the boy saw perfectly. Right down to the black pitch that cemented the blocks into the road, and the spent match broken into a V shape, and the mouse gnawing on a grain of wheat by the baker’s door. Tommy sensed that those night creatures, which had tried to attack him before, flowed through the alleyways – fast, predatory shapes. He sensed their hunger. Sometimes he even caught a faint trace of their thoughts. It puzzled him, when he realized that they longed to sink their teeth into human skin, then suck blood from the body. Although Vampiric, Tommy had never craved that gory feast. All he ever yearned was to return home. This bloodlust seemed an utter mystery to him.
Sam suddenly paused, hackles on his back bristled upwards. From an alleyway, a pair of men in uniform chased a cat with greedy glints in their eyes. Soon they’d gone. Tommy and Sam continued along the street to the cliff-side steps. He would find Miss Charnwood. Tommy wanted Beth, and the rest, to be pleased with him.
Ten
Panting, the three bustled through the doorway into the cottage kitchen. They didn’t pant with exertion. Instead, the fear of being so vulnerable outdoors had propelled their hearts, until blood hammered through their arteries faster than any mountain rapids.
Alec made a point of checking and rechecking that the bolts were pushed home. ‘A good stout door,’ he declared. ‘Though I don’t know how long it will keep those devils out.’
Beth lifted the heavy satchel from her shoulder and placed it on the kitchen table. ‘There’s Theo’s medicine all measured out.’
‘So he hasn’t taken it yet?’ Sally picked up the glass that contained a spoonful of the white Quick Salts – the drug that, in certain cases, somehow suppressed the Vampiric infection.
‘Good,’ Alec stated. ‘Then Theo should be waking up.’
‘So he must be upstairs?’
Sally set her bag down, then headed for the staircase. ‘I’ll sit with him until he’s awake.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve done with hysterics. I’m going to be as tough as a commando.’
Beth nodded. ‘And so you are. You’re our vampire killer.’
‘And we’ll be right here, if you need us.’ Alec eyed the door. ‘That’s the weak point in our little fortress. Beth and I will guard it with our lives.’
Sally mounted the steps to the upper room. In near darkness, she found Theo lying on the bed. Just as before, when they saw him here in the cottage, he was in the thrall of coma. Then they’d had to bide their time as he emerged from that passive state. Sally perched herself on the end of the bed and waited. A clock ticked in the shadows. It had the slow beat of a man’s heart, one who waited at death’s door. She hoped it wasn’t an omen of things to come.
Beth switched off the light, so she could peek out through the blackout curtains. The iron bars appeared solid enough over the windows. Just thirty paces away, the bulk of the Leviathan Hotel soared upwards. Across the flat face of the building, dark shapes moved with the swift grace. Quickly, they slipped in and out of the windows. The vampires had made short work of breaking in. No doubt their frustration mounted as they discovered all the rooms were empty of victims. She carefully covered the window again to ensure no light escaped, then flicked the switch to flood the room with that reassuring wash of electric light.
Alec stood by the door with a bottle of X-Stock. The “crab-claw” of a right hand wasn’t at all dexterous, but he managed to hold that home-made bomb without any problem. Cocking an eye at the window, he asked, ‘I take it they wasted no time before entering the hotel?’
She nodded. ‘There’s no going back there until daybreak.’
‘Not that we’d want to. Soon we’ll be heading outdoors anyway. After all, we’ve got to find Eleanor.’
‘How do we know they didn’t kidnap her in the full knowledge that we’d try and find her?’
‘And then leave the relative safety of this wee cottage?’ He gave a grim smile. ‘I rather suspect they did, Beth, my dear. But I warrant they don’t know that Eleanor prepared these lovely hellfire bombs first.’
‘We also have to run the gauntlet of the curfew. Soldiers will shoot on sight.’
Lightly he rested his fingertip on the eyepatch. ‘Just a couple of weeks ago, I picked myself up out of the ruins of that café when the bomb struck. My colleagues lay dead. All I suffered was this nick to my eyelid. Maybe there is a divine intelligence at work, which believes I will somehow now see more clearly through one eye. After all, throughout my adult life, I saw precious little of my common sense through two.’ He rolled the bottle in his hand. ‘So maybe a higher power decided I should come here to Whitby and confront evil.’
‘You believe you were spared to fight the vampires?’
‘Beth.’ His tone was grave. ‘I don’t believe my life was spared. I rather suspect it was taken by the explosion in the café. Now I have it back on loan, until the job here is done.’
‘Alec. Are you suggesting that when you go through that door tonight it will be on a suicide mission?’
‘We shall have to wait and see.’ He smiled. ‘But if I can fight our little war here on the coast, and win . . . then the loss of this beer-sodden, indolent life of mine, will be worth it, don’t you think?’
Sitting in the gloom, she suddenly straightened when she heard movement on the bed. Her eyes had adapted sufficiently to allow her to see Theo kneel up.
‘You’re not Eleanor.’
‘I’m Sally. We’ve met before, Theo.’
‘Beautiful Sally. Yes, I remember you.’
He swiftly climbed out of bed, then immediately swayed, dizzy. Rising to her feet, she caught hold of the slim form. Fast as a striking cobra, he encircled her with his arms.
‘You know something, Sally? This is the first time I’ve embraced a woman.’ His breath blasted into her face. ‘The poets are right. It really does make one’s heart race. Kiss me.’
Instead of pressing his lips on hers, they brushed her neck. Sally tensed, ready to fight for her life. The man’s mouth pressed hard against her shoulder. Then his entire body sagged, so she had to grab hold of him to stop him falling to the floor.
‘Help me!’ she yelled. ‘Beth, Alec! Theo’s dying!’
Eleven
For the first time they caught Tommy by surprise. He’d reached the foot of the celebrated one hundred and ninety-nine steps that ascended to the graveyard when a figure swung itself over the iron railing. It grabbed hold of Sam in both arms before racing away.
Tommy heard the dog snarling; no doubt he would be biting the vampire that had snatched him, but the vampire’s bloodlust overwhelmed any discomfort that dog bites might inflict. Immediately, Tommy pursued the creature that had stolen his dog. The figure in a soldier’s uniform glanced back at the boy. The sheer look of greed and downright pleasure in snatching this compact vessel of hot, living canine blood incensed Tommy. The boy ran full pelt along Church Street, past the Leviathan Hotel, and by those silent cottages. When Tommy charged through the marketplace, he surprised a pair of soldiers who stood by the old town hall.
‘Hey! Stop! Stop, or we’ll fire!’
The second one grunted, ‘Damn, where did he go?’
‘He was moving like lightning. I haven’t seen a kid run so fast . . .’
The voices faded as Tommy sped after the figure along Sandgate. The vampire that had stolen Sam no doubt wanted to carry him across the bridge to some quiet hideaway where he could feed in peace. However, the gates at the end of the bridge were closed, and
the swing bridge lay open, with all the seductive promise of a yawning portal to a magic realm. Shining waters flowed through it to a silver sea.
Thwarted at crossing the river to the other side, the vampire searched for somewhere else to secrete himself with his prize. Sam, meanwhile, still snarling, darted his head at his captor’s face, inflicting bite after bite. Yet the thing felt no pain; at least, he showed none. As the night-creature struggled to formulate another plan, he paused there in the deserted roadway.
Tommy knew he didn’t have the strength to fight this towering demon. Instead, he bounded up on to a wagon parked in front of the Dolphin Hotel. So quiet was he, the vampire didn’t notice the boy. From the vehicle’s roof, Tommy looked down on to the roadway that ended at the bridge gate. A gap of five yards separated the now severed road from the main body of the swing bridge. Sam yelped in pain as the vampire tightened his grip.
Senses sharp, muscles tense, Tommy judged the distance. Then he leapt. His dive ended with him smacking into the top of the vampire’s head. No way would he kill the vampire, or even hurt him – however, he did knock the giant off balance. Sam seized the chance. He wriggled free of the man’s arms.
‘Run, Sam! Go on, boy, run!’
The dog sped into the night. Enraged at losing such a sweet morsel, the vampire sought vengeance on Tommy. He seized the boy, flung him against the bridge gate, then pounced.
Tommy scrambled from beneath the figure then, using that terrific agility of his, swung himself over the gate at such speed the momentum carried him across the gap between the road and the bridge itself. Instantly, the vampire followed. Clearly, he intended to rip Tommy apart at the earliest opportunity.
Now Tommy had reached the bridge, he was effectively on a man-made island in the river. He wouldn’t be able to leap the fifty yards or so to the other side of the Esk. The only solution, to find a place to hide in the latticework of iron beneath the structure. Tommy swung himself over the high fence. River waters swirled some ten feet below.