by Ken Preston
Tom couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Steffanie’s tongue, as it flicked in and out, from between her full, sensuous lips. Had her tongue grown longer? And her teeth, were they growing into points? Every time he saw her, she seemed to have changed a little more. She was becoming more like him. Even the scar across her neck was disappearing. Tom had found her and her boy lying on the blood-drenched carpet in their house, their throats ripped wide open. The next time he’d seen her, when she was alive again, her throat had still been a mess, but the wound had closed up. Soon, there would be nothing left to see.
“Go on, take the boy. Don’t let us stop you.”
Tom turned to see Abel Mortenson standing in the living-room doorway. Tom hated the sight of him. He was thickly muscular beneath his shirt, and his long, square-jawed face was handsome, yet vile at the same time. And he was smiling. Always fucking smiling, or giggling, like he knew something you didn’t, and it really was hilarious.
Just like the other kids at school, laughing at Tom behind his back for trying to be tough, trying to keep up with them.
Tom looked back at Jacob. He hadn’t stirred; he looked so helpless, so vulnerable.
“No,” Tom said, his voice struggling out of his mouth in a croak. He cleared his throat, and spoke again, louder this time. “No, do what you want with him. Fucking kid’s nothing but a bloody nuisance, anyway.”
Abel giggled, the sound of it turning Tom’s stomach, and walked over to Steffanie. He drew her close, and she draped her arms over him, and they kissed. The kiss lingered, and Abel ran his hand down Steffanie’s back and over her buttocks. She moaned softly, and rubbed herself against him, running her fingers through his black, curly hair.
Tom looked away. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach, but also slightly aroused.
“I think we’re embarrassing him,” Abel said, looking at Tom. “Or maybe you would like to join in? A threesome would be fun.”
Tom looked back at them. Abel had pulled away. He had a spot of blood on his upper lip, and he licked it off.
Tom yelped when he felt hands tugging at his back, fingers coiling around the folds of his shirt. He yanked himself free and whipped around to face his attacker.
“Oh, fuck me,” he whispered.
Jacob’s friend, Peter, gazed up at Tom with dead eyes. His face was slack, like he was asleep, and there was a nasty wound running down his cheek, like he’d scratched and scratched at it, peeling ragged strips of flesh away. His neck was open, a raw wound of glistening red meat, just like Steffanie’s had been.
Peter moaned and staggered after Tom, his arms outstretched, clawing at the air like a B-Movie zombie. His chin was wet, like a dribbling baby’s.
Abel giggled, and grasped Peter’s shoulders, turning him around to face the opposite direction.
“Go on now,” he said. “Go and play somewhere else.”
The boy staggered on his way, seemingly oblivious to the direction he was headed, or that he was no longer chasing a meal of blood. Tom winced at the mass of blood-matted hair on the back of his head.
“Well? Are we safe?” Abel said. “Is Coffin still looking for his family’s killers, or has he found them?”
Tom swallowed. “Yeah, you’re safe. Coffin whacked the two kids this morning.”
Abel smiled, exposing his pointed fangs. “Good. So, no one is looking for vampires anymore?”
Tom nodded, watching as Peter staggered through the door and disappeared into the reception hall. “You’re just lucky that Coffin was still in prison when you killed his wife and kid.” He looked nervously at Steffanie. “If he’d been out, he’d have hunted you down, and ripped you apart. In fact, you should still lie low for a while.”
“Oh, but why?” Abel said, his grotesque smile slowly fading. “You said it was sorted, that Coffin’s not looking for us anymore.”
“Yeah, yeah he bought it all right. It’s just, those two kids? Considering the circumstances, they were the best I could find to take the rap, but they were so fucking weedy, they looked like they couldn’t fight their way out of a fucking paper bag, let alone murder anyone. Coffin’s got a lot on his mind, him being fresh out of prison, and still grieving, like. But once he gets to thinking about it proper, it might not add up for him, that two skinny douchebags like them, killed his wife and kid.”
“All right,” Abel said. “We can lie low a little longer.”
“You might not have to wait too long,” Tom said. “There was a girl in the flat, but Coffin let her go. If she goes to the police, then Coffin’s done for.”
“She’ll be able to identify him?”
“Unless she’s fucking blind, yeah.”
“And what about you, did she see you?”
Tom wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes kept flitting back to Jacob, lying in the chair, so frail, so vulnerable. “Yeah, she saw me, but that doesn’t matter. Put me and Joe Coffin in the same room, you look at Coffin. Nobody notices me.”
Steffanie sighed. “Oh God, I’m so bored of hiding in this house. I thought we would be free now. I want to party!”
Abel raised an eyebrow. “And here I was thinking I was keeping you entertained.”
Steffanie giggled, and the sound of it sent another wave of nausea through Tom.
She leaned into Abel, and nuzzled her mouth into his neck, and then sucked on his earlobe. Her hand, those long, sinuous fingers, ran down his chest and over his abdomen. She slipped her hand inside his trousers and began caressing him.
Abel pulled her hand away. “Not now, we’ll embarrass Mr Mills again. Why don’t you go and feed the Father?”
Tom closed his eyes. He’d forgotten about that decrepit old creature.
“Everything all right?” Abel said. “You’re looking a little pale.”
Tom opened his eyes. “No, I’m fine. Absolutely fucking peachy, that’s me.” He dropped the holdall on the floor. “There, I brought it for you.”
Abel approached Tom, but instead of picking up the holdall, he grabbed Tom’s arm, his fingers like a vice around his bicep.
“Come and say hello to the Father,” he said, exposing his teeth in that repulsive smile once more. “He gets so lonely here, starved of visitors and stimulating conversation, and he so looks forward to your little visits.”
Tom resisted, holding back. “No, I should go now, before anyone notices I’m gone.”
“You have a few moments, I’m sure,” Abel said, and pulled him into the depths of the gloomy drawing-room.
Steffanie followed them, carrying the bowl of blood.
Hidden in a shadowy corner, lost in the depths of a large, dusty wing backed armchair, sat a skeletal, wizened old man. His grey flesh was drawn tight against his skull, thin lips stretched over long, hooked teeth. A few wispy hairs clung to the skull, bony cheeks standing out against the sunken hollows beneath them. His forearms lay on the armrests, long bony fingers clutching the ends, filthy fingernails curving down, almost as long as the fingers.
He’s dead, Tom thought. He’s got to be dead. Please let him be dead.
Abel slackened his grip, and Tom yanked his arm free.
“Okay, this is lovely and all,” Tom said, taking a step back and pointing at the corpse-like creature in the chair. “But it looks to me like the last thing Rumple-fucking-stiltskin needs is stimulating conversation, so I’m out of here.”
Before Tom could move, Abel grabbed his wrist and produced a knife. Abel slid the knife over Tom’s thumb, opening up the flesh. A round, fat globule of blood swelled up on the end of his thumb.
“Hey, what the—?”
Abel held the knife to Tom’s neck. “Just do as I say, Mr Mills, and then you won’t get hurt. Now, on your knees.”
Tom dropped to his knees in front of the seated cadaver. For an instant he felt like that little kid again, sitting with his friends in the old house, crying as he listened to the ghost story.
Abel pulled Tom’s hand closer to the old man’s face. Gently, he
pressed his bleeding thumb against the cadaverous lips, smearing the blood over the dry flesh. The corpse’s papery, sunken eyelids snapped open, and Tom flinched. The eyes were red, like the worst case ever of conjunctivitis. The corpse’s lips opened enough to accept Tom’s bloody thumb.
Tom closed his eyes as bile rose in his throat. But he could still hear revolting sucking noises, and feel the old man’s withered tongue sliding over his thumb, and probing the wound for more blood.
“How many bags of blood in the holdall?” Abel said.
“T—twenty,” Tom said, screwing his face up, trying to blot out all sounds and sensations.
“Can you get us more?”
Tom nodded, his movements jerky, like a string puppet’s.
“Good.” Abel let go of Tom’s wrist.
He snatched his thumb out of the thing’s mouth and opened his eyes. The parchment covered skeleton in the chair stared at him, hunger keen in its red eyes, and it moaned.
Tom scrabbled away, backwards, until he bumped into a piece of furniture. He sucked in a deep breath of stagnant, damp air, willing himself not to throw up.
“What the fuck?”
Abel smiled. “He needs blood to survive.”
Tom wiped sweat off his brow. “There’s a fucking holdall full of bags of blood over there, why didn’t you give him one of those?”
“He needs warm blood to bring him back fully to life, not the cold slop you provide for us.”
“Is that right? Next time, I’ll bring you a fucking microwave to heat it up with, okay?”
Tom pulled himself to his feet, not entirely sure at first if his legs would support him. He watched as Steffanie, kneeling before the skeletal creature in the chair, held the silver bowl of blood to its lips. All the way across the room, Tom could hear the thing slurping at Jacob’s blood.
He looked back at Abel. “Just lie low, all right. Just stay out of fucking sight for a few days, while I think about what we do next.”
Tom didn’t wait for an answer. He left the room, didn’t look back, couldn’t bear to see Jacob again, slumped in that chair like he was already dead.
Outside, standing by his car in the wet grass, Tom started shaking. He gazed at his ghostly reflection in the rain-dappled glass of the passenger door.
Fuck it! I’m like their fucking lap dog, jumping through hoops every time they tell me to. I should have asked her, I should have fucking asked her.
He looked up at a noise.
Peter was staggering aimlessly around the large garden, his feet trailing sluggishly through the long grass. And he was digging into the wound on his cheek with filthy, clawed fingers, moaning constantly.
Tom closed his eyes, trying to control his shakes.
What have I got myself into? Just what the fuck have I got myself into?
chinese whispers
After talking with Laura, Joe Coffin headed back to the flat above the Blockade. He showered, turning the water up as hot as he could bear it, and scrubbed at his body, trying to rid his flesh of prison stink.
He dried himself off with a rough, threadbare towel. Naked, he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a Jack Daniels. His head was throbbing from all the whisky he had drunk earlier in the afternoon. This was a small one, just to keep the edge off.
Coffin roamed around the flat, exploring the rooms. The living-room was furnished with a settee, a sideboard with three decorative plates on stands, and an old, CRT television. He tried switching it on, but the screen stayed dead.
The kitchen was just large enough to swing a small kitten in. There was a fridge with a box freezer in the top. There was an old gas ring oven, a sink and a single unit with cupboards above it. In relation to Coffin’s size, the kitchen resembled a child’s toy.
Just like the toy kitchen Steffanie had bought for Michael that one time. The boy had been eighteen months old, just a couple of months before Coffin was arrested. He’d argued with Steffanie about that toy kitchen, told her toy kitchens were for girls, not boys.
She went ballistic, told him he was a sexist, ignorant dinosaur. Told him this was the 21st century, not the 19th, and her boy wasn’t going to grow up like all those other big, dumb brutes that Coffin called his friends.
A flicker of a smile passed over Coffin’s face as he remembered the argument. He loved it when she stood up to him, gave as good as she got. Not like the others, all dolled up like their men wanted them to look, staying indoors cooking and cleaning and ironing and, on the rare occasions when they were allowed out of the house, not daring to look at another man for fear of a slap.
No, Steffanie was independent.
The grief gnawed keenly at him. He drained the glass of whisky and walked into the bedroom.
A single bed took up most of the room, with a flimsy, flat pack wardrobe jammed into a corner, with just enough space to open the doors. The bed was too small for Coffin. He pulled the mattress off the base and upended it, shoving it against the wall. He lay the mattress on the floor and threw the duvet over it.
Not ideal, but at least his feet could rest on the floor instead of hanging off the end of the bed.
He dragged a holdall off the top of the wardrobe and opened it up. After the murder, once the police had finished at the house, somebody collected his clothes so he didn’t have to go back there.
Coffin hadn’t ever wanted to go back inside that house.
But he knew he had to, at some point. There were memories there, of his life with Steffanie, and Michael. Mementos, photographs, Michael’s childish scrawls and finger paintings. His clothes, his toys and teddy bears. That blanket he carried everywhere with him, blue with a spotty cartoon dog on it, and its feathered edges which Michael loved brushing against his face.
Coffin took a deep breath. Held it. Let it go.
He’d go back at some point, but maybe not just yet.
Perhaps tomorrow he’d ask one of the guys to go over to the house and get his bike, his Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. All those months in prison, unable to get out on the road. Felt like he’d been going insane some days, about ready to murder someone, anyone.
But he’d held it together, and now more than ever, he needed to climb on that bike and ride.
Maybe ride out as far as he could and not come back.
He got dressed. White T-shirt and jeans, what he always wore. The weather was turning colder now, so when he went outside he might wear his scuffed leather jacket.
Fashion had never been his thing. Not even after he met Steffanie.
When he was ready, he pounded down the stairs and strode through the pub. He drew glances from people sat at tables and the bar. One or two voices shouted, “Hey, Joe! Good to see you back,” and one voice said, “Sorry about your family, Joe.”
He nodded an acknowledgement and headed outside. A misty halo surrounded the street lights, and the air felt damp against Coffin’s face. The shops had closed up, some of them dark, some of them with their window displays illuminated. Young couples, hand in hand, or arms around each other, sauntered along the pavements, giggling and chatting, dressed up for a night out. A gang of male youths approached, all gelled, spiky hair and attitude, shouting insults and laughing. When they saw Coffin they went quiet and crossed the road.
Joe Coffin strode down the high street, and turned right onto Hagley Road, headed for the city centre.
* * *
After Terry Wu got taken care of, and Craggs bought the nightclub, he had the name changed to Angels. One of the guys had tried explaining to him that Angellicit was a play on words. Angel, denoting beauty and purity, and Illicit, meaning forbidden or naughty.
Craggs didn’t like it when people tried explaining stuff to him. He told Coffin, “The way I see it, I don’t understand first time, I ain’t interested. This piece of shit, he tried explaining it to me. I told him I wasn’t interested, but still he kept on at me, gave me a fucking headache so bad I wanted to pull a gun and shoot him in the face.”
The ‘piece of shi
t’ wound up cleaning toilets for a month.
Craggs had been unhappy with the takings at Angellicit for a long time. Terry Wu was nothing but a ‘fat, lazy, chink bastard’ according to Craggs, and if he was in charge of the club, they would be doing three or four times the business.
Craggs decided he wanted in. He would buy the club, change the name, and move himself into the suite of rooms above the nightclub. All he needed to do was get rid of Terry Wu.
The double doors had neon wings across them, lit up in blue and gold. Two big black guys stood on the steps, flexing their muscles at each other through their tight, black tees, the angel wings illustrated in white across their chests.
They stood back enough to let Coffin through, and one of them clapped him on the back as he walked past.
“Yo, Joe, sorry to hear bout the family, man.”
“Yeah, thanks, Clevon,” Coffin said, pausing long enough to grip his hand in a show of solidarity.
“Anything you need, man, anything at all, you just let me know, I’ll be there,” Clevon said.
Coffin patted him on the shoulder and walked through the entrance. Clevon was the youngest and newest member of the Slaughterhouse Mob, and Coffin had taken an instant liking to him. He also knew he was too good-hearted for a life in the Mob. Coffin had intended to sit down and have a chat with Clevon one day, maybe try to persuade him to find another vocation in life.
Coffin walked past the cloakroom and toilets, and through the double doors into the club. It was early, and most of the tables were empty. Some crappy, European electronic disco music pounded through the club’s mostly empty space, and a large-breasted girl, wearing only a thong and a forced smile, gyrated around a pole. A middle-aged man in a business suit watched her through hooded eyes, listlessly twirling a beer mat around and around with his thick fingers.
Coffin made his way to the back of the club, and the dancing girl waved at him as he passed the stage. Coffin gave her a weary wave back, and pushed through a door marked, ‘Private’. Another of Craggs’ bouncers immediately blocked his way, wearing the regulation Angels tee, all steroid enhanced muscles and tatts. Coffin could spot the steroid abusers every time, with their elongated jaws and high-pitched voices.