by Ken Preston
“Hey!” he yelled. “Wakey, wakey, the fucking cavalry’s on the way!”
Nothing, not a sound. Where would they keep Jacob? Tom ran down the stone-flagged passage, into the gloomy reception hall.
Oh shit! What about the old guy, looks like something out of a fucking horror movie? How are we going to get him out?
Tom looked in the large living-room, his eyes slowly adjusting to the poor light. No one, not even Boris Karloff sitting in the corner, waiting for his next feed.
Tom took the stairs two at a time.
At the top, Abel appeared out of the shadows, bringing Tom up short, with a little squeal of fright.
“Fucking hell!” he hissed. “Do you have to do that? I think I just lost another year of my life right then.”
“Why are you here?” Abel said.
“It’s Coffin, he’s on his way.” Tom cocked his head, sure he’d heard footsteps crunching on the gravel drive. “If he finds you here, you’re fucking dead meat.”
Abel put a hand to his mouth and giggled. The sound had a voluptuous, filthy quality to it, which made Tom nauseous for a moment.
“But I’m already dead,” Abel said.
“Yeah, whatever,” Tom said, backing up. “But if Coffin finds you, you’ll be deader than fucking dead. Look, I haven’t got time for this shit. Where’s the kid?”
Abel advanced upon Tom, who was backing up to the stairs. “If our secret comes out, you will pay. You must hide Steffanie, and the Father.”
“Hey no way, you’re on your own now. I’ve been telling you to lie low, but because you couldn’t keep your cock in your pants, everything’s fucked up.”
Tom stopped walking, his heels on the edge of the top step.
“You will take them, and you will hide them,” Abel said. “I will deal with Coffin.”
“Right, great. Just where exactly am I going to hide them, a fucking Travelodge on the motorway? I got news for you, Count Duckula, but the nearest you’re going to get to a meal of blood in one of those places is if they serve black pudding for breakfast.”
Abel grabbed Tom by the throat and pushed. Tom’s arms windmilled as the vampire forced him out over the stairs, his feet struggling to keep contact with the top step.
“You will do as I say, Tom Mills. We have a bargain. I will deal with Coffin, you will get Steffanie and the Father to safety.”
“Okay!” Tom said, his voice a strangled whisper.
Abel pulled Tom back to safety and let go of his throat. Tom sucked in a hoarse breath and took a moment to straighten his clothes. He walked backwards down the stairs a couple of steps, keeping his eyes on Abel the whole time.
“Fucking maniac,” he muttered.
Tom found Steffanie in the kitchen. She had her head tipped back, and was holding one of the empty blood bags over her open mouth, squeezing out the last drips of blood. She looked at Tom and smiled, blood dripping down her chin and neck.
The decrepit, old man sat at the table, blood smeared around his thin, cracked lips. He still looked dead to Tom.
“We’ve got to go, your husband’s on his way, and as much as I’d like to say he’ll be delighted to see you up and about, I don’t think it would last.”
“Do we really have to go right now?” Steffanie pouted. “I was having so much fun here.”
“Yeah, well, the party’s over for now. We’ve got to move, and Ebenezer Scrooge needs to come with us.” Tom looked doubtfully at the old man. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a wheelchair, have you?”
Steffanie folded her arms and stared at Tom. “I’m not going. We’re safe here, this place is ours.”
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” Tom shouted. “Are you listening to me? Coffin might not bring the filth with him, as they’re not exactly on the best of terms with each other, but sooner or later, this place is going to be crawling with coppers, paramedics, reporters, who knows, maybe the fucking girl guides will have a look in too.”
“He’s right,” Abel said, entering the kitchen. “You have to go.”
Tom ran his hands through his short hair. He felt like his eyes must be bugging out of their sockets, on stalks like in the old Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Abel was naked.
“What the fuck, man!” he yelled. “Put some fucking clothes on, this isn’t the time for playing hide the fucking sausage!”
Abel smiled, revealing his pointed teeth. He lifted a hand, holding out one finger, and ran the sharp fingernail across his chest, drawing a line of blood in its wake. Dipping his fingertip in the blood welling out of the cut, he drew red lines across his cheeks and over his nose.
“I’m preparing for battle,” he said.
* * *
Emma sat in her car, across the road, and watched Tom hustling from around the back of the house, guiding a woman along beside him, a sheet over her head and shoulders. He looked drawn and pale, anxious. No, not anxious, he looked terrified. He kept casting glances all around as they moved, and Emma put her head down when he looked her way, convinced he had seen her.
But when she looked back up, he had his rear car door open, and was guiding the hooded woman inside, a hand on her head, so she didn’t bump it. Emma thought he would climb in the car and reverse out of the drive, and she got ready to bow her head again, hide her face as he drove past. But he didn’t. He shut the door on the woman, who stayed under wraps beneath the sheet, and ran back round the back of the house.
Emma watched the woman in the car, as spots of rain appeared on her window. The woman sat perfectly still in the back seat. She made no movement to take the sheet off. Why was that? Either she was hideously ugly, incredibly famous, an internationally hunted murderer, or just plain eccentric. But really, why was she so scared that someone might recognise her?
Tom appeared from around the back of the house again, this time carrying a hunched figure beneath another sheet. Whoever this person was, they obviously weighed very little, as Tom had no trouble carrying them. A child maybe?
Tom opened the rear door of the car and slid the shrouded figure inside. He slammed the door shut, and this time he climbed in the car, through the passenger seat and over the handbrake into the driver’s side. Emma heard the engine start up, saw the cloud of fumes spurt from the exhaust pipe.
She slid down in her seat, head bowed. She heard the car reverse onto the road and then accelerate away. Sitting back up again, Emma caught sight of Tom’s car as it paused at a junction, and then disappeared from view.
She debated following him and decided against it. The house had piqued her curiosity, and what it might contain. Tom Mills had certainly wasted no time driving down here. Emma had found it difficult to keep a tail on him at times, knowing she would have stood out if she had driven as fast and recklessly as he had. Something had impelled Tom to rush over here, and Emma was longing to find out what.
Emma stepped out of her warm, dry car. The wind pulled at her hair, ruffled her jacket. Spots of rain fell on her face. She walked cautiously up the drive, examining the house’s eccentric frontage for any signs of a break-in. How long, she wondered, had those two people been living in there? And what did Tom have to do with them?
Some of the windows on the front had been boarded up a long time ago, whilst others still had their original Victorian windowpanes. The ivy covering the house rustled in the wind, giving the building an appearance of life and movement.
Emma shivered.
99 Forde Road had been empty for as long as everyone could remember. There was an air of mystery about it, and many people, not just the local children, were convinced it was haunted. Once, a few years back, she had attempted to look into the house’s history, and to find its current owner. But there was little to go on. The paper trail was confusing and filled with gaps, and all Emma could find out in the end was that a private individual owned it, and it had been in their family for many years.
The reporter walked slowly along the front of the house and followed the route around to the rear
she had seen Tom take. Branches rustled in the wind above her. There were tyre tracks in the long, wet grass at the back of the house. Tom hadn’t driven in this far just now. Did that mean he’d been here before?
Emma stopped walking. A door at the back was wide open. Inviting her to step inside.
This was too much temptation to resist. Emma stepped through the doorway and into a passage. The house smelt of damp. On her right was an open cellar door. Emma peered down the stone steps, disappearing into darkness. She looked for a light switch on the wall, but there wasn’t one. Perhaps the house had been empty for so long, electricity had never been installed.
There were candles and matches at the top of the cellar, but Emma decided to move on. She had no desire to explore a dark cellar alone, with nothing but a candle to light her way. Emma had seen enough horror movies to know that was a bad idea.
She continued walking down the passage, past the kitchen and into the reception hall. Heavy drapes had been hung over the windows, which weren’t boarded up. It was difficult to see anything in the poor light. Emma walked across the reception hall and into the living-room.
Again, in here, the windows were covered with heavy drapes. Emma pulled at the drapes, trying to drag them open, until she grew impatient and yanked them down. The curtain poles ripped from the plaster, and clattered to the floor, clouds of dust billowing outward, like an explosion.
Emma waved the dust away, coughing. The light was still poor, but she could see better now. More layers of dust covered the heavy furniture, but even from across the other side of the room she could see the footprints in the dust, and the partially burned candles.
Somebody had spent time here recently. The same people that Tom had driven away with?
Emma walked deeper into the room.
She stopped walking by the fireplace. The dust was disturbed around the hearth, and someone had removed the dust sheets from two of the chairs.
And there, on the floor, was a large patch of blood. Emma squatted and pressed her hand into the carpet. The carpet made a squishing noise, little pools of blood growing around her fingertips, in the hollows created by the pressure of her hand.
The blood was cold and sticky, and there had obviously been a lot.
Emma stood up and walked over to the living-room door, rubbing the blood between her thumb and fingers. Floorboards creaked beneath her shoes, and she caught sight of her reflection in the mottled mirror as she passed it.
Emma stepped back into the hallway. She looked at the stairs leading up to a landing. She could hear the traffic rumbling past at the front of the house. A thought struck her. She hadn’t considered the possibility that Tom might be returning, after he had taken his passengers wherever they were going. She needed to get a move on, get out of the house and away, before he returned.
She decided to have a quick look around on the first floor and then leave.
Emma headed for the stairs. She was halfway up the staircase when she heard the creak of a floorboard, the whoosh of air, just a moment before something slammed into her, knocking the breath from her body, and sending her tumbling down the stairs. She cracked her head against a step, and rolled over onto her shoulder, twisting her arm behind her back at an awkward, painful angle.
Stunned, she lay face down on the floor, struggling to breathe. Her lungs refused to obey her desperate need for air, as she fought for breath. Hands grabbed her by the hair and pulled her over onto her back. The pain in her scalp made her scream, and suddenly she was breathing again, her chest heaving with the effort.
The face of a demon filled her field of vision. Black eyes stared at her from a face painted with streaks of blood.
“What a surprise,” he whispered, as he leaned in close and sniffed Emma’s hair. “I wasn’t expecting this.”
Emma twisted her head away as he buried his nose in her hair, making snuffling noises. He was on top of her, had her arms pinned to the floor by her sides. She screwed her face up as she felt his tongue sliding down her neck, his cold breath on her skin.
“Get the fuck off me!” she hissed.
He looked at her, his tongue snaking out of his mouth, licking his lips, running across the edges of his sharp teeth. Emma thought he looked very pleased with himself.
She snapped her head forward, her forehead connecting with his nose. The impact of his nose on her skull sent a sharp spike of pain through her head, but the man jerked back, loosening his grip on her arms. Emma scrambled backwards like a crab from underneath his body. Her attacker straightened up, squatting on the floor, grinning at her like an imp from Hell.
Emma’s insides contracted at the sight of the man, his naked body smeared with bloody patterns of lines and circles and crosses. His swollen cock was huge and stiff, and he giggled when he saw her looking at it.
“Let’s have some fun, shall we?” he said.
* * *
As he pounded down the street, bulldozing through shoppers, Coffin made a promise to himself that, first chance he got, he would go back home and retrieve his Harley-Davidson from the garage. He was wasting valuable time going everywhere on foot. Laura knew not to tell the police what was going on, she’d been a member of the Mob long enough for that, but still, this was different. This involved her son. For all Coffin knew, she might have blabbed to the coppers as soon as he left the house.
For all he knew, there could be a cop car parked outside Number 99 right now.
When he turned onto Forde Road, Coffin slowed down, took his time looking up and down the street, checking for any signs of excitement. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just another boring, grey day.
Coffin knew the house he was looking for, remembered it from when he was a kid. Remembered breaking in there one time, and Tom squawking like a baby. Remembered thinking, it’s just a house, why are you crying?
He could see its roofline now, the ivy crawling all over it, the distinctive shape of the Victorian build. Seemed like most of the original buildings surrounding it had been torn down, when the entire city went through a massive redevelopment during the 70s and 80s. But not this house, for some reason.
Amongst its bland, identikit neighbours, Number 99 looked like a ruined relic, saved from destruction through some obscure legal protection, perhaps. Whatever the reason, it had been standing empty for longer than anyone could remember.
Coffin approached the drive, alert for any sign of police. The drive was empty, the house dark. But somebody had been here recently. Through the growth of weed on the drive ran two parallel lines.
Car tyres.
Although the car was gone, that didn’t mean to say the house was empty. Coffin ran through the options. Whoever had been holding Peter and Jacob prisoner might have made their escape, with or without Jacob.
Or somebody might still be in there, not realising that Peter had escaped. It seemed unlikely, as did the thought that a child kidnapper would hang around once they realised they had an escapee who would probably lead the police back here.
It seemed reasonable to Coffin that the house was most likely deserted.
But that didn’t mean he was going in there unprepared.
Coffin searched the overgrown borders, rooting through the weeds until he found a rock, slightly smaller than a grapefruit. He sat down between the two gargoyles and removed his shoe and sock. He put the shoe back on, and shoved the rock inside the sock, and swung it in a tight circle, smacking the rock into his open palm.
Coffin stood up and walked past the two gargoyles and up the steps to the front door. He twisted the handle and pushed and pulled at the door a few times. It stayed firmly shut.
Coffin walked back down past the sneering gargoyles and round to the rear of the house.
How had he got inside when he was a kid? There had been a gang of them. What had they done?
Now he remembered. That stocky, pimply kid, liked to think he was cock of the school, what was his name? Max, yeah, he’d smashed a windowpane in the patio windows, reached
through and unlocked the patio door.
Thought he was smart, but he wasn’t. He cut himself reaching through that small windowpane, got Tom to give him his handkerchief, wrap his hand up.
Coffin would have let him bleed to death.
Round the back of the house he found an open door. That was too easy, almost like an invitation. But an invitation to what?
Coffin approached the door slowly, gripping the improvised cosh in his fist. He walked through the back door, pausing in the stone-flagged passageway. He could hear movement, scuffling.
The sounds of a struggle?
Coffin ran. He charged into the reception hall. A naked man, his sinewy flesh painted in streaks of blood, was on top of a woman, ripping at her clothes as she kicked and struggled beneath him. With a loud, guttural roar, Coffin charged at them, swinging the cosh high. The man looked up, eyes widening as he saw it hurtling towards him.
The rock smashed into his face with a loud crunch, and the naked man toppled back off the woman. He landed face down on the floor and was still.
Coffin looked at the woman, who was straightening her shredded clothes.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m okay,” she said, getting shakily to her feet.
Her eyes widened, and Coffin turned, just as the man slammed into Coffin, and sank his teeth into his shoulder. Coffin roared, as white hot pain shot through the muscle. He tried to shrug the man off, and his stomach rolled over as he felt teeth grating against his shoulder joint. With his free hand he punched his attacker in the face, once, twice, but still he would not unlock his jaws. Coffin swung around and smashed the man into a wall. The teeth came free, and he sank to the floor.
Coffin stepped away as the man sprang into a crouch, and, snarling, leapt at Coffin, jaws wide open. Coffin smashed onto the floor, on his back, and his cosh went flying from his hand, skittering across the floorboards.
He grabbed his attacker’s head, one hand either side of his face, as he lunged for Coffin’s neck, jaws frantically snapping open and shut. Coffin had to strain to keep him from sinking his teeth into his flesh, he couldn’t believe how strong this man was. Suddenly he stopped biting, and grinned at Coffin, exposing his white, pointed teeth against his blood painted face. Some of those teeth were broken, and his nose was little more than a bloody pulp. His black pupils filled his eyes, so it seemed as though his eye sockets were empty, black orbs of infinity set above his high cheekbones dripping blood.