Silver Banned: Book 2 of the Saddleworth Vampire Series

by Angela Blythe

  25 – Message

  It was their way now, especially once it got dark, that whenever one of them got up to walk around, they took a glance through the window. Several of them were in the kitchen filling the dishwasher and washing the pots and pans. Andy took a glance through the curtain and saw that Anne, her wolves and five of her children were calmly walking up the cul-de-sac, looking as if they were coming to visit Our Doris's house. Andy closed the gap in the curtains quickly and turned around to the others.

  ‘I don't know for sure, but we might be in for a bit of trouble.’ Freddie’s stomach lurched. He thought that’s typical. After an enormous amount of mashed potato and sausage at dinner, he was probably going to fight for his life. What were the chances?

  Freddie had been hoping to not move off the sofa all night, in the hopes he could digest it. Gary took a glance out and said they were standing at the bottom of Our Doris's drive in a congregation, definitely looking towards their house.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ asked Brenda. ‘I am certainly not inviting them in, for a cream tea.’

  ‘We are safe in here, as long as no one asks them in.’ Sue said with a tone of certainty.

  ‘Don't count on that.’ said Wee Renee. ‘I don't know what kind of creatures these are. The wolves definitely could wander in. They are just animals.’ Pat walked to the front window and flung open the curtains as hard as she could.

  ‘Bloody sod it,’ she said, ‘let the dog see the rabbit, so to speak and the rabbit can see the wolves.’ Most of the group stood looking outwards through Our Doris's bay window.

  Anne and her monsters were sniffing out the air. The wolves pawed the ground and some of them licked their lips and glowered as they now saw the humans safely indoors.

  ‘I wonder how long this is going to go on?’ Bob asked.

  ‘I don't know,’ said Freddie, ‘it is getting very interesting. We seem to be in some kind of a stand-off position.’

  The wolves and Anne continued to look through the window at the people and the people looked back. It seemed to go on for a long time and neither group was budging. Anne looked at Our Doris and beckoned with her finger.

  ‘Don’t do anything!’ Gary said. Both groups still stared at one another. Our Doris got the idea that Anne could do this all night. She couldn’t. She thought this had only lasted a few minutes and the stress was already taking its toll on her.

  ‘I am not going to stand for this!’ Our Doris said abruptly. ‘I am going to open the front door and see what the hell is going on.’ Everyone secretly wanted to stop her but no one said a word. They realised they couldn’t take the stress of it all night either. Playing Anne’s mind games? No thank you. Wee Renee, Pat, Gary, Danny and Bob, holding Haggis’s collar, walked behind Our Doris automatically. They went as a party into the hall.

  ‘Don't open it fully, Our Doris.’ said Freddie from the window, ‘so that you can ram it shut, if they start.’

  ‘I know what I am doing Freddie, don’t worry,’ Our Doris said. She braced herself, straightened her shoulders, then fluffed up her Easter Egg. She opened the door halfway. The people who were at the window, saw the predator’s gaze move from the window to the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ Our Doris shouted.

  ‘I have important things to tell you.’ Anne said loudly. Anne wore a plain black long gown with a high neck and no jewellery. On her feet she had black lace up shoes. She could have worn it in any century. Anne was one of the ugliest women they had ever seen, beady eyes and a hooked large nose. She had a small wet mouth with protruding teeth. Her crowning glory was a thin bit of short grey hair. Haggis growled at the wolves, as he just managed to catch a glimpse of them between the humans standing in front of him.

  ‘Why should we be interested in anything you have to tell us, you old witch.’ said Wee Renee ‘What have you got to say to us? You are evil incarnate, I can tell that. Be gone.’ Wee Renee made the sign of the cross on her chest.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that you feel that way; I hoped you would see me as a new friend. Especially you,’ she said, focusing her gaze on Our Doris. ‘I have been told to pass on a message. I don't really want to shout it from the bottom of this drive,’ said Anne.

  ‘You can come up to the end of the garden, but no further than my holly bush,’ said Our Doris. ‘And just you alone. I don't want your dirty wolves or your monsters coming up my drive, right?’ Anne put her hand up in the air to say that she understood this. She slowly walked up the drive, her gaze constantly on Our Doris. She got close to the bottom of the holly bush.

  ‘Here. I have stopped. Is this fine for you?’ She said in a slow condescending voice to Our Doris.

  ‘Not really, but it will have to do.’

  ‘You know, tiny one,’ she spoke directly to Our Doris now, her eyes opened, attempting to hypnotise her, ‘you are nearly one of my children too. Come with us tonight, we can have such fun.’ Wee Renee put her forearm across Our Doris and in case she felt that the compulsion to move forward and would be trapped outside. Spirited away by Anne. Even if she did not know anything about her, she would have taken an instant dislike to Anne. When she talked, she looked down her nose at them, as if she thought she was better than them. She was also, putting on a fake posh accent, as she would start in the Queen’s English and then all of sudden forget and she would fall back into her plain accent again. She twisted her shoulders this way and that, throwing them back as she spoke. Wee Renee had only seen that before on teenagers with attitude! Who did she think she was?

  ‘Say what you have to say, daughter of Beelzebub!’ shrieked Wee Renee. ‘Love and light protects us all here, and you cannot get us. Say what you want filth, then be gone with your many beasts, to eat your carrion. I can smell the blood on your breath, you dirty devil. Now speak, or bugger off.’ Wee Renee reached into her turtle-neck sweater and fished out her large gold cross necklace. She held it at the base and waggled it at Anne. Whilst Anne didn’t back off, or run for the hills, it was clear that she didn’t like looking at it and averted her eyes.

  ‘Yes, sling your hook, we’ve got better things to do, like watching paint dry,’ Pat shouted, echoing Wee Renee's sentiment.

  ‘Well if that is how you feel, I will have to come back for you won't I, when you are more amenable,’ she said directly to Our Doris. ‘But what I have to say tonight, is that I have a message for the people of Friarmere, from your good friend Norman.’

  The group at the door were in silence. Everyone who was standing in the bay window could hear everything too.

  ‘What does that swine want? And what’s he to you?’ Pat asked.

  ‘He is my little brother.’

  ‘I take it he got all the good looks of the family.’ Pat scoffed. Anne scowled at her. Maybe it was the wrong thing for Pat to say.

  ‘Shut up cattle, and listen. He says he has all the children of Friarmere. But best of all he has a special prize, in your friend Adam,’ Anne said and looked directly at Bob. Bob felt his shoulders drop and his grip lessened on Haggis’s collar. He felt Danny's hand take the collar and put his other hand on Bob's shoulder. ‘Norman says time is running out for them, as well as food. You have a couple of days to come back and exchange yourself for the children of Friarmere. When your time runs out he will gobble them up, one by one. Him and his children. They are all very hungry you know.’

  ‘Tell him and his henchmen that we won't fall so easily, into that kind of trap.’ Wee Renee shouted. ‘So you can all sod off now. You've given your message, get off the drive.’

  ‘You have two days,’ Anne said. She turned and walked away.

  ‘Shut the door, Our Doris.’ Freddie said. She immediately shut the door. All the occupants of Our Doris’s house stood looking desperately at each other. Our Doris’s shoulders dropped and Gary closed his eyes. What were they to do now?

  26 – Trap

  The group from the hall, walked into the living room. Freddie still stood watching out of the window, Brend
a stood beside him.

  ‘They are going,’ she said, ‘they've done what they came to do it seems, for tonight anyway. Who knows what will happen another night. I didn't hear all of it? What did she say about Norman?’

  ‘He has got some kids and Bobs friend, Adam. He is going to kill them if we don't come back,’ Danny said.

  ‘It sounds like a massive trap to me,’ said Sue, ‘I don't like it at all. In fact all my knees have gone to jelly just thinking about it.’ She promptly sat down.

  ‘Of course it's a trap!’ Gary exclaimed. ‘A blind man on a galloping horse can see that.’

  ‘What is he getting out of it? I don't understand. Apparently he has got plenty of kids to eat. Why does he need us then?’ Our Doris asked.

  ‘He doesn't want us to tell anyone, Our Doris,’ said Freddie. ‘It is obvious, dead man don't tell tales. If he can kill us all off, we won't be able to go and warn anyone.’

  ‘Then he obviously see’s us as a threat!’ Pat said.

  ‘Yes, that's an interesting thought.’ Andy mused. ‘You would imagine that he thinks we are just slugs he can squash under his feet. But he doesn't.’

  ‘Well actually I have been worried about Ian, anyway.’ Liz added.’

  ‘Ian? What's Ian got to do with it? I can assure you he wasn't being resurrected. There was half of him missing for a start,’ Freddie said.

  ‘No, I know he won’t become one of them. But for all of us who haven’t been turned, even if they are dead, I want to treat with respect. After all, Ian killed one of them for us and we have all managed to benefit from his butcher's knives. He was a hero. Ian deserves not to hang in his own shop and be someone's dinner. Just rotting forever and ever. I would like to take him down and put him somewhere.’

  ‘Well, the ground is too cold and frozen to dig up,’ Gary said thoughtfully.

  ‘I know, but if we put him somewhere safe where they couldn't get to him, then maybe when all this is sorted out, we could give Ian a decent send off. Make contact with his family, so at least they could bury a body.’

  ‘That image isn't out of my mind either, Liz.’ Laura muttered. ‘I do see your point in that. After all this, what if his family go into the shop, looking for him and find him like that. That would be even worse than us finding him.’ The group mulled over what Laura and Liz had said. They did want to save Ian’s gruesome, mutilated body from more dismemberment. It was a sobering thought, to think of finding one of their own family in that state. Yes. It needed sorting.

  ‘Ugly, isn’t she?’ Freddie said.

  ‘Anne? Ugly as sin,’ Our Doris agreed. ‘The clothes don’t help either.’

  ‘Aye, it’s an extreme look, there’s no denying it.’ Wee Renee commented.

  ‘What’s her brother like? We could only really see him from the side and for a moment on the CCTV.’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘He’s a right dishy bloke,’ Pat said. ‘Ooohh, if only he wasn’t a bloodsucker,’ she sighed. ‘I’d show him what a real woman could do.’ Gary thought instantly about Pat’s feet and thought Norman would probably pass on that delight, if offered.

  ‘I wonder why she’s so ugly then,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Forget her, what are we going to do about Adam? Norman will be waiting to eat us.’ Bob interjected.

  ‘We will just have to be more cunning than him then, won't we? If it's a trap we will seek it out and go to Friarmere our way. Attack him our way. Get those kids back our way.’ Sue said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bob, ‘I can't leave Adam. Just think of him, sitting there, waiting to be rescued. His mother will never do it, whether she has been turned or not. She didn't give two monkeys about him. I can't go forward knowing that Adam is still alive in Friarmere.’

  ‘No,’ said Tony, ‘As much as I don’t want us to go back, Adam has been a good friend to you. If the roles were reversed, I am sure that he would come looking for you.’

  ‘It's not just about him. It's about all the other kids and how terrified they must be, without their parents.’ Beverly said.

  ‘Remember this is a massive trap won't you, while you are distracted, thinking about all these kids and running head long into danger, we are basically sprinting down the barrel of a gun here, you know,’ said Gary. ‘What I want to know is, if we are such a problem and he knows where we are, and we know he can get here, why doesn't he kill us? Why doesn’t she kill us? They know we can’t get a message out of Melden at the moment.’

  ‘That’s right. They could just wait, get loads of vampires over here from Friarmere. Anne could get her gang of furries, and they could storm all of us. Smoke us out or something. I don't know why Norman doesn’t do it here either,’ said Danny.

  ‘That is one thing to think about. When we're thinking about this trap. Is it really about the kids? Are the kids just a way to get us away from here, and not to get us over there? Is it about being in Friarmere and not being in Melden.

  ‘Yes, maybe he doesn't trust his sister,’ Pat said.

  ‘I have an idea that he wants us over there, because he wants to turn some or all of us. Why, I don’t know, but I can’t shake the idea. Maybe we are of value, in some way. If we are held over here, the chances are that she will turn us into a wolf person and we will be working for her, so to speak. If we are over there, then we are turned through his blood line and we are his to command.’

  ‘That is a very plausible opinion,’ Freddie said, ‘we need to have a good think about this.’

  Anne walked through Melden. She was annoyed at how her brother had just used her as a messenger and she had just done it. Now he had gone, and helping him couldn’t be farther from her mind. She felt like a lacky, a servant. Why did she agree to all his request’s when he asked her? She hoped that he would repay her, if she had a group that one time escapes from Melden to Friarmere. The fact was that currently, she did not have enough vampire werewolf children to storm the house. When she did, she would do it.

  Currently, she was able to smell exactly what was in there. There were thirteen people in the house and one dog. One was infected with her strain and one was infected with her brother, Norman’s strain. For the moment, she was still outnumbered, but she would change that. If they had not gone tomorrow, she would solve Norman's problem for him and say that they were never going and determined to stay put. So at least the problem was going to be over one way or another. One of her female children was at the rear of the group and kept glancing back to the cul-de-sac, as they walked away.

  She halted the procession through the village and pointed to the one at the back and beckoned her over.

  ‘Tell me child, what is the problem?’

  ‘There are remnants of my life in the house. That is all Mistress.’

  ‘Ah, very interesting,’ Anne said, ‘remnants that you would like to keep, or remnants that you would like to discard. It is entirely up to you. I know what it is to want someone as a constant companion.’ The female growled at her.

  ‘Keep.’

  ‘Then it shall be so.’

  27 – Flugelhorn

  ‘So are we decided then? Are we going back?’ Gary asked.

  ‘Yes we are going to go back and rescuing those kids. He can't be lying about all of it. We are also thinking about Ian. No doubt there will be other stuff to deal with too,’ Liz replied.

  ‘I am thinking about my cats as well. Naturally,’ Sue stated.

  ‘I am worried about Friarmere, and the state that it is in at the moment. That is my village, I was born there and I want it sorted.’ Laura said. ‘We might be able to get my Uncle Terry and cousins to come and help. Maybe some others.’

  ‘A great big gang with torches, that would be great wouldn't it? We certainly need to tool up,’ Gary said. Bob sat on the floor quietly. He was stroking Haggis and was obviously going through a lot. His face looked pinched and he looked extremely worried. Pat listened to all the discussion from the other people but her eyes were on him.

  ‘He shouldn't have to hav
e all this on his shoulders,’ Pat said, ‘it is bloody tragic. If I didn’t have reasons to hate them already, I would now.’ They all took her words in. No matter how bad they felt, they knew he was feeling it the most. His best friend captured, Bob was destined to return to a terrifying situation.

  ‘Well we know he has gone back to Friarmere, from Beverly’s camera,’ Freddie said, ‘waiting for us.’

  Tony watched his son for a moment before replying.

  ‘Yes, you are right. Tonight I think it is safe to say, we won’t be under attack. I can't see him sending a message for us to go there, if he is going to come back here. And she gave us the message, so wants us to go too. Or else why tell us? I think we can relax tonight.’

  Wee Rene was not saying very much, which was not her usual way. There were a lot of things she wanted to say about the journey back and the arrival into Friarmere, but she only had one thing on your mind. She had recognised someone that was amongst the followers of Anne. She had not noticed her on the cameras before and would easily have recognised her if she had. Wee Renee had worked with this lady for thirty years and she was still a good friend.

  They met up every couple of months and sent each other Birthday and Christmas presents. She knew she would be able to count on this lady, if she was ever ill, and Pat couldn’t help. Now she was one of Anne’s undead wolf people. This was the first time that someone, who was quite close to her, had been affected by this situation. This had hit her like a ton of bricks. Yes she had known Ian, Keith and the others, but they were not personal friends, who she socialised with outside of the Band. Only finding Pat as an undead monster, could have made her feel worse.

  There was one thing Wee Renee had decided though. That she was drugging that meat. There was no question about it.

  ‘What are we going to do then? What’s the plan?’ Danny asked.

  ‘We will have a bit of time to formulate a plan, I suppose. It will take us a while to travel over. That journey we know is long and hard going. We will have to do most of that in the daylight. We can do lots of planning on the journey,’ Tony said.