Voyage

by E M Gale

  ‘And I don’t even know what I did to be… whatever the hell I am now. A vampire? A ghoul? Infected?’

  I also badly needed a cigarette and, as Jane wasn’t there to scrounge from, I went through my pockets and discovered that mine were missing, presumably left at his flat.

  ‘What if I’m turning into a vampire?’

  I spied a tourist lighting up a Marlboro Light. He tucked the packet back into his left jacket pocket and raised his phone to take a shot of the London Eye.

  ‘How bad is it to be a vampire? I wish he had told me something about it.’

  I scoped the crowd for police. There were some security guards investigating an old woman’s handbag at the end of the queue to the Eye.

  ‘That is, I wish I could remember if he told me anything.’

  I walked up behind the tourist and bumped into him. The cigarettes were loose in his pocket. I grabbed them with my right hand and stuffed them into the back of my trousers whilst turning towards him and apologising with a smile. The tourist smiled, had a good look at my breasts and attempted to snap a photo. I turned and followed along with a tour being conducted in Italian, lighting a ciggie once I was lost in the crowd.

  My phone went off. I pulled it out of my pocket, fumbling and nearly dropping it. Rob.

  “Clarke, where are you? You said you’d definitely be here.”

  I felt unaccountably like crying. It was hearing a friendly voice, even if he was having a go at me. It was so prosaic, so normal, so not about my impending undeath.

  “Anna said you’d bailed last night, but I didn’t think you’d miss my great experiment.”

  “Rob, chill. I’m on my way.”

  “How far away are you?”

  I shrugged, not that he could see it. “Half an hour? I’m coming, OK?”

  “I’ll wait then. See you soon.”

  * * *

  ‘Nothing to see here. I’m a normal girl going about her normal business.’

  As there was a Tube strike that everyone but me had already known about, I was sitting on a bus, my feet up on the seat opposite me, engrossed in some quickly downloaded ebooks that purported to tell me the truth about vampires. They had lurid covers and lurid writing that singularly failed to tell me anything useful. The vampire hadn’t had pointy ears, or hairy palms, or red eyes. I didn’t remember if he had been perturbed by my dangly silver earrings, but as I still had them I surmised that silver wasn’t a problem for him.

  An old lady walked past and tutted at me, so I smiled at her, unsure as to whether she was tutting at my feet. I put my phone away and stared out at the clouds that reached right down to street level.

  ‘Whatever I did, he definitely said I won’t change until I die. I’m twenty-three, so as long as I avoid fast-moving cars, I don’t have to worry for years yet. I suppose it’s like a really good life-insurance policy.’

  It was hard to believe that when suddenly everything felt more immediate. I knew how many people were on the bus, and which of them were eating burgers, even though I couldn’t see the people downstairs. I must be able to smell it. I tried to project my senses outwards. I was aware of the traffic, cars and people, outside the bus. For a moment it felt like I had a glimpse of the machinery that underlay the world. Then, moving my perception, although I wasn’t sure what was moving, I was able to project inside myself, becoming somehow aware of the machinery that underpinned myself…

  After an hour of sitting in slow-moving traffic, I got off the bus and turned in the opposite direction from Rob’s lab, crossed the road to the park and walked over to the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. I sat on a cold bench and lit another cigarette.

  ‘OK, Clarke, what do you know?’

  I took a drag on the cigarette–the nicotine didn’t seem to help my thinking process.

  ‘OK, there are two different things that are happening to me. There are the bizarre visions, or rather moments of heightened perception, which feel familiar somehow. Every sense gets stronger and slightly confused with the others and I can’t figure out what’s telling me what. There’s no particular trigger or warning of when this is going to happen. I can bring it on if I concentrate, but it happens randomly anyway.’

  I looked around at me. Blank sky, pigeons, strolling couples, some old fart glaring at me: no sense entanglement at the moment.

  ‘Then there’s the other thing: a feeling of being able to think and understand more deeply than usual; it’s like being more awake, sudden moments of clarity in a lifetime of fog. And if I have that feeling, I can try to reach out and understand something, somehow connect with something–’

  My phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket.

  ‘–it seems to be something deep inside me. I visualise it like a door, in my head or my consciousness or whatever. It seems real, rather than something imagined, and I get the feeling that I could try to open that door… But what would be on the other side and do I even want to open it?’

  ‘Is this how people go mad? Or would opening that door turn me into a vampire? If it does, would that kill me?’

  I had a message from Rob: ‘It’s been hours, where are you now? >:( We’ve gone to the pub for dinner. Hurry up!’

  I texted him back: ‘Round pond, Kensington Gardens. ETA ASAP.’

  * * *

  The postgrad bar was in a basement. For some reason the college seemed to think that postgrads belonged in the subterranean darkness. The worst thing was that they were right, postgrads did seem to prefer it. Still, I was used to the half-lit existence. The bar was a comfortable dive, with muted sports on the TV, a peanut dispenser and tiny street-level windows about a metre above the seats. The tables were low, made of dark wood that seemed to have the same resilience that the lab benches did. The coasters looked they had been chewed on and it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that they had.

  There was no Rob. Anna was sitting behind a glass trophy case chatting to Mark and Jane was at the bar.

  Anna looked up. “Ah, at last!” Anna was one of the prettiest girls I knew, although she ruined it by wearing too much makeup. She was wearing a full face of it now, including thick foundation almost the same orangey colour as her tan. Her hair was brown and chin length, perfectly straightened and cut into a neat bob. She was wearing smart grey trousers, a pink blouse and ankle boots, but I knew that she would consider herself underdressed for anything other than a quick trip to the supermarket. “I thought you were going to sleep over mine last night to save yourself travelling time?” She was looking at me with suspicion.

  “Uh… yeah. Where’s Rob?”

  She frowned.

  “Don’t change the subject. What did you get up to last night?”

  Anna was a few years younger than me, doing her second degree, yet she still took it upon herself to look out for me rather than allowing me to look out for her. I thought it was some sort of latent mothering instinct, which probably explained why I tended to react to her questions the way I reacted to my mother’s.

  “I was working,” I lied.

  “Working?” She was sceptical. Mark chuckled.

  “Yup.”

  “You called me at eleven-thirty!”

  “All-nighter.”

  “You don’t do all-nighters, you say it’s important to have your sleep. And anyway, security would have chucked you out at eleven.”

  ‘True, true and true.’

  I sighed.

  ‘Why does she have to be so nosey?’

  “What were you up to?” she asked curiously.

  ‘I had a one-night stand with a vampire,’ I thought.

  I shrugged. “I had a one-night stand with a vampire,” I said.

  Mark chuckled. “I thought barbarians were more your fantasy man.” I frowned at him. But he did know my type. He was a computer scientist from the group next door to mine and we spent far too much time gossiping over coffee.

  Anna shook her head. “Honestly, Clarke, why do you do it to yourself?” Lecturing me was one of
Anna’s most aggravating habits. She was a good friend other than that. Well, she did have a perhaps unwise habit of picking up people like some people befriended lost cats. She would chat to the loners and the shy, introduce them to her other friends and then drop them once she got bored. “You should respect yourself more, and only have sex within a committed and loving relationship.”

  “Anna… Please, leave it.”

  “OK. But really, why don’t you look for a boyfriend instead of one-night stands?”

  I glared at her.

  “We need to find Clarke a boyfriend.” Anna addressed herself to Mark at this point.

  “From what I hear, she doesn’t have too much trouble,” said Mark with a cheeky grin. He had black hair and black eyes or as near as dammit. When he did the cheeky grin thing he made me think of an anime hero.

  I glanced over towards the bar and saw Jane looking over. She was Anna’s latest ‘lost cat’. Jane had been rescued from one of the psychology classes that Anna attended as part of her postgrad masters in translation studies or linguistics or something like that. Jane was studying sociology and politics and seemed completely bored by it.

  “No, I mean a proper boyfriend,” said Anna, “someone to date.”

  “Please, Anna, leave my love life alone.” Still looking at Jane, I held my hands up, thumbs touching, hands yawing away to make the letter ‘w’ and then followed up with a prayer hands gesture and a slight bow. Jane shook her head, then flicked the ridiculous low ponytail she wore her curly blonde hair in over her shoulder as she turned back to talk to the barman. I frowned.

  “I think you need a nice boyfriend.” Anna waggled her finger at me. “Someone to keep you out of trouble.”

  I grinned and held my index finger up. “One, I like people who get me into trouble, not out of it, and two”–I held my middle finger up as well–“I don’t need to date. I have a roof over my head.”

  She looked at Mark in confusion. “What? No one said you had to move in with them.”

  “And three, if I wanted a boyfriend I would get one–”

  ‘Not that I need one. It always ends badly and I always end up alone. So, better to be happy alone.’

  “– I don’t need you to set me up.”

  Mark chuckled. “Well, she is the matchmaker. It’s her hobby.”

  “It’s true,” said Anna, vigorously nodding as she went on to describe all the couples whose formation she credited herself with. Jane, despite her headshake, had not only received and understood my message, she had acted on it as well. She returned from the bar with a gin and tonic for herself and put a large glass of red wine in front of me. I grinned at her.

  “Do you know how much wine and cigarettes you’ve conned out of me?” she asked me.

  “I pay you back, though, right?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Jane was one of life’s difficult people.

  “There’s Jon, you could date him. I think he likes you,” suggested Anna.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Or Richard, he’s a guy I know from the drama society. He’s nice. Shall I introduce you?”

  “No, Anna. I don’t want a boyfriend. It’s not a matter of not being able to find one, but a matter of not needing or wanting one.”

  She opened her mouth, presumably to suggest more no-hopers, when Mark interrupted with: “What about Rob?”

  “No!” said Anna. After a slight pause she added, “It’d never work.”

  I grinned at her. “I thought the idea was to get me a boyfriend, any old guy, not to get me a successful relationship?”

  “Of course the idea’s a successful relationship, what’s the point otherwise?”

  “Oh, so you want me to go on more than one date then? In that case I won’t even pretend to do it to make you happy.”

  “You weren’t even planning to do that anyway,” said Jane with a grin. I smiled at her since she was correct.

  “I suppose, given the amount those two argue, it wouldn’t work,” mused Mark.

  Jane looked at Anna and oddly looked sympathetic for a moment. “They do spend a lot of time together,” she said to Anna, who frowned. I shook my head.

  ‘I’ve got to stop this speculation before it reaches Rob and he starts acting all weird with me.’

  “Look, I don’t want to date Rob, OK? Now, please stop trying to set me up with random people.”

  Anna nodded, then smiled. “OK, but I reckon you should give Rich a try. He’s perfect for you.”

  I shook my head. Anna sighed and stood up. “I’m ordering lunch.”

  “Can you get me a panini?” I asked, waving a fiver at her.

  She nodded, said, “Panino,” and wandered off.

  “She’s just trying to help you out,” said Mark.

  I grinned at him. “Yeah, when she comes back I’ll tell her that you need a girlfriend and see how you like it.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t do that! She has no taste in women.”

  I laughed. “Perhaps that’s it. I’ll tell her that I’m gay and she’ll give up in confusion.”

  “I think you might manage bi, but there’s a bit too much evidence against you being gay.”

  I stared at him. “Evidence? What evidence? There’s no evidence.”

  “She is gay as well,” said Jane. I ignored her.

  “Nah,” said Mark, glancing at her, before smiling at me. “Well, from my course I know you’ve slept with Tall Dave, Jake and Pete.”

  “Wait, I don’t think I’ve ever pulled a Pete.”

  “Very tall.” He held his hand up far above his head, but Mark was short so that didn’t mean much. “Eyebrow piercing, likes German techno.”

  “Oh, him. Bastard. He told me his name was Matt.” I shrugged.

  ‘Why bother lying? Does he think he was that amazing that I would waste my time hunting him?’

  Anna returned and put a hot cheese panini in front of me. I took a bite and then tried to head Anna off by asking, “So, where is Rob?”

  “Looking for you,” said Jane.

  “What? Why? I said I was on my way.” I put the sandwich down.

  “Well, you took your time,” said Jane. She held up a large bag. “I was going to go to the gym after this, I could have gone twice in your ‘half an hour’.” Jane was slender, with an athletic figure, but this was the first evidence that she worked at it.

  “What do you think Rob’s going to show us?” Anna asked.

  We were sitting in an alcove next to the trophies, which partially blocked our view of the door and other people’s view of us. I sipped my red wine and left my half-eaten toasted panini to cool and congeal on the polystyrene substitute for a plate. I was feeling odd again: questions and thoughts were racing around my head.

  “Do you think he’s got something this time?” she continued.

  Suddenly, I was aware of the noise the cooling cheese made on the polystyrene as the gas in the plastic expanded and the sound of the barman washing glasses under the bar. I knew that Rob was walking down the stairs to the bar, but I couldn’t see or hear him. The intensity went away again.

  “Well,” said Mark, as Rob entered the bar, “he’s always making wild claims, so who knows.”

  Rob rounded the corner behind the trophies. “I never make wild claims!” he bellowed before throwing himself into a bow. He was more exuberant than usual, his brown hair extra spiky. I could picture him as he must have been earlier, bouncing on his heels, mussing up his hair whilst staring at results on a computer screen. Mark frowned, seemingly perturbed at Anna’s delighted giggle.

  Abruptly, everything fell into colour again and I could sense and experience more than usual. Rob asked everyone if they wanted a drink. I swirled my goldfish-bowl glass containing most of a large measure of red wine. The light overhead sparkled on the surface of the liquid that seemed far too thin to be drinkable. The legs of alcohol that ran down the sides of the glass seemed far too colourless to be appetising.

  ‘What the
hell was I just thinking about?’

  The enhanced senses vanished abruptly, scared off by shock.

  “Nah, I’m fine,” I muttered to Rob. He grinned at me and turned back to the bar. I stared suspiciously at my glass of red wine.

  ‘Why did I expect it to be thicker?’

  I didn’t really want the answer to that question.

  Rob returned with a round of drinks, a disgusting hot cheese, chicken and mayo panini, several packets of crisps and far too much enthusiasm to be healthy. “Eat up, people, and I’ll take you to the lab!”

  “So… what have you found then?” I asked. As the only other physicist of the group, I was given room to ask questions the others wouldn’t care about the answers to.

  Unlike a theoretician like myself, Rob did experiments. He had access to the big research lab in the basement which held a giant Tesla coil that could not be allowed to discharge. It was an open secret, or perhaps an urban myth, that if the coil discharged then it would take the whole building with it. Somehow, I just couldn’t believe that magnetic force could collapse a building, but I could have been wrong.

  “I’ve had a great idea!” said Rob, his eyes shining.

  “What’s your idea then?” Anna asked.

  I would like to say that I felt the cold touch of trepidation or that I knew this would be a precipitous event, but I didn’t. I was used to Rob’s crazy ideas. I did not know that this one would actually do something.

  “You know what I’m working on, right?” he asked us all.

  “Do you mean what you’re supposed to be working on, what you are working on or what you think you are working on?” Mark asked with a grin.

  “Shhhhh, keep your voice down!” whispered Rob as he leant in closer, and, sheep-like, we all did too. Just picture the scene–divey bar, primary colours on the wall, pretty much empty, as it was Saturday, and in the middle of this, the four of us, leaning in over our sandwiches, trying to be secretive. “What I’m really working on. You know, the cold fusion stuff.”

  Ah, yes, cold fusion, Rob’s favourite topic of conversation at that time. The thing was, since it hadn’t worked well for anyone else, he couldn’t get funding to pursue it. Instead he was supposed to be working on testing materials to see how they broke down under high electrical discharge.