Vampyrrhic

by Simon Clark

  ‘But surely modern health regulations prohibit dumping blood and offal into the sewers? The rats would —’

  ‘Ah! The blood doesn’t feed directly into the sewer system. And, besides, there are no rats in Leppington. Not a single one.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. But I still find it hard to believe there isn’t at least one rat somewhere round here.’

  ‘Take my word for it, David. Here, let me top up your mug.’ George swung out a long arm and plucked the big teapot from the workbench, then poured more of the amber liquid into David’s cup. David steeled himself against the taste of the strong tea and took a sip.

  George refilled his own mug. ‘So, David. They told you nothing about the family? And nothing about the town?’

  David shook his head, wondering why it should be so important to know anything about the family history. Most people bump along perfectly well, thank you, with only the sketchiest idea of what grandma and grandad got up to in the dim and distant past.

  ‘What do you think to Leppington — the town?’ asked his uncle. ‘Seems pleasant enough. Quiet. But I imagine it’s seen better days?’

  ‘True. The town’s dying. The only employer of any size is the slaughterhouse. But that employs no more than a couple of hundred. Fifty years ago it employed more than a thousand.’

  ‘But we — the Leppingtons — have no interest in it now?’

  ‘No financial interest. The family sold out in 1972. Sold it to the biggest shyster they could.’

  ‘Oh, I heard about that,’ David nodded. ‘He raided the pension funds, then legged it to the South of France, didn’t he?’

  ‘The bastard. If I ever clapped eyes on him again, I’d take this to him.’ George picked up the sword he was making and David didn’t doubt for a moment he would. All his old uncle needed was a cloak and a helmet set with a pair of bull’s horns and he would be a Viking warrior incarnate.

  His uncle continued, occasionally stroking his fingertips along the blade of the sword as he spoke. ‘The demography of Leppington town shows clearly enough what’s happening. The population is shrinking. Young people, if they can, move out — usually to the cities. Soon there’ll only be a town full of retirees hobbling up and down the streets on their Zimmer frames, grumbling about the weather and the price of Horlicks.’

  ‘It’s not that bad, surely?’

  ‘Believe me, David, the place’s dying on its feet.’

  ‘Local government aren’t running any initiatives to encourage new businesses?’

  ‘Nothing to speak of. We fall under the protective wing of Scarborough Borough Council which is way down the coast. Their initiatives and financial support don’t filter this far north. No. Leppington’s always had its back to the wall, fighting for its survival ever since the ancient Romans packed their bags and left 1500 years ago.’

  ‘As a community it’s pretty much off the beaten track anyway. Small towns dependent on a single industry like coal mining or a single factory can easily go belly-up if the coal runs out or the factory goes bust.’

  ‘Nevertheless, the outside world has always done its best to shaft us. We’ve always had to fight to keep this town together by the skin of its teeth. Without us the town would have vanished a thousand years or more ago.’

  The realization clicked. Us, David thought. The old man was referring to the Leppington family — or should that be dynasty? His uncle clearly believed the Leppingtons were responsible for the town’s survival.

  ‘One thing I did mean to ask,’ David said. ‘Did the Leppingtons get their name from the town or was it the other way round?’

  The old man gave a dry smile. ‘So you are curious about family history? Ah, there’s a tale to tell. See the stream in the garden when you came through the gate?’

  David nodded.

  ‘That’s the source of the River Lepping. A dozen or more streams feed into it down the hillside. But that stream out there is where the Lepping starts. Our ancestors came across in longships from Germany in the fifth century. They gave the river their name, the town too. Only then it was known as Leppingsvalt.’

  ‘So we can claim royal blood?’ David spoke lightly.

  The old man looked at him levelly. ‘No. Not royal blood. The Leppingsvalt family claimed divine blood.’

  David, despite himself, felt a buzz of surprise. ‘Divine blood? That’s quite a claim!’

  George nodded and ran his fingers along the stone. ‘This is the story. Our family lived on a mountain in Germany. They were blacksmiths. One night, a long time ago, maybe two thousand, maybe five thousand years ago, Thor, the Norse god of thunder, awoke to find his hammer had gone missing. So he borrows the Goddess Frey a’s cloak of feathers so he can fly across the world and look for it. He never does find it. Instead he arrives at the house of Leppingsvalt high on the mountain. The blacksmith is an unhappy man. His wife can’t give him a son. That means the family name will die out. Which is a terrible, terrible calamity for a proud Norse man. Thor, god of thunder, tells Leppingsvalt that he has lost his fabulous hammer of the gods, and that it will take a mountain of flint to produce a new one. Leppingsvalt says he will make a better hammer. One of iron. So he sets to work and beats raw iron for a dozen days and nights until he creates a new hammer for Thor. To this hammer he gives a name: Mjolnir — which is the name it is known by today.’

  ‘An interesting story.’

  ‘Aye.’ George was no longer smiling. His eyes were far away.

  ‘And in return — as a reward — Thor lay with Leppingsvalt’s wife. Later she produced a son.’

  ‘And that’s how we come to have divine blood? We’re descended from the Viking god, Thor?’

  ‘We are indeed, great-nephew.’

  David looked at his uncle more closely, trying to decide whether the old man was taking these folk tales seriously or if it was his dry sense of humour coming to the fore again.

  ‘It was a story we Leppingtons believed in implicitly for centuries.’

  ‘That we were the descendants of a god?’

  ‘Why not? It was the religion of the time. Many people today still believe in the Christian angels or the miracles of Christ — water into wine, making the blind see by spitting on their eyes, raising a child from the dead. Six hundred million Hindus believe that when the soul is born, its first incarnation will be in something as lowly as a plant or even a mineral. Only in later incarnations does it migrate upward into animals and eventually man.’

  ‘But those religions are still alive. The Norse religion is dead.’

  ‘Well, son, perhaps it just went underground.’ He gave that dry smile. ‘Also, legend has it the old Norse gods retreated into the rivers when Christianity gained the upper hand.’

  ‘But you don’t believe we’re really descended from a mythical deity?’

  George shrugged. ‘Ask me that question in public, I’d laugh and make a joke. Ask me in private…’ He shrugged again. ‘Your grandfather — my brother — believed.’

  ‘Wasn’t he headmaster at the Church of England school in the town?’

  ‘Indeed he was. But I saw him on feast days — on the old feast days, that is — throwing a handful of new pins or coins from the bridge into the Lepping.’

  His uncle must have read David’s puzzled expression.

  ‘To throw coins or even pins into a river is a way of making a sacrifice to the old Norse gods.’

  ‘Even so,’ David said, smiling. ‘Most of us avoid walking under ladders and we’ll throw salt over out left shoulders if we spill some.’

  ‘Oh?’ George lightly ran his strong fingers the length of the sword blade. ‘A harmless eccentricity, then?’

  ‘Probably. You wouldn’t believe the number of sick people I see who wear lucky charms — four-leaf clovers, St Christophers, holy talismans.’

  ‘So the old religious beliefs aren’t completely dead?’

  David shrugged. ‘When a doctor prescribes a medicine — one manufactured in a computerized factory
in Canada, Switzerland, wherever — he knows full well that thirty per cent of that drug’s effectiveness is the patient’s belief it will cure them. If a man superstitiously believes a rabbit’s foot will cure him of a migraine, well, perhaps he’s thirty per cent on the way to recovery.’

  George smiled. ‘So you medics will allow us our little portion of magic?’

  ‘OK,’ David smiled back warmly. ‘In a scientist’s hands magic doesn’t exist. But in our minds perhaps traces of it do still linger on.’

  ‘And perhaps a little in the modern outside world, too.’ With a chuckle George slapped his huge palm down onto the anvil. ‘You arrived here yesterday?’

  ‘Friday, yes. Why?’

  ‘Friday is named after the Norse goddess Frig who was the wife of Odin.’

  ‘I remember the origins of the names of days from school. Wednesday was named after Odin, the father of the Norse gods, and Thursday is really Thor’s day. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re right, son. More tea?’

  ‘Eh, no, thanks. I’ve still some left.’

  ‘Bit on the strong side for you, hah?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Come on, you can’t pull the wool over your old uncle’s eyes. Fancy something stronger?’

  I don’t think you’d find anything much stronger than this tea, Unc, he thought, the tannin still tingling on his tongue. It’s probably industrial strength already.

  ‘Give me your mug, son.’ He took the mug from David and flicked the contents through the open door where it fell in a heavy brown splash. He then reached up onto a shelf and brought down a bottle of Irish whiskey. ‘This will fire up your insides,’ he said with a hearty chuckle. ‘You know, I never thought I’d share a real drink with you. But I remember you coming into that kitchen —’ he nodded his grey head in the direction of the house ‘ — you’d climb up onto the stool, and I’d pour you out a glass of Coke. I even cut you a slice of lemon. You know, you used to rush down the drink just so you could eat the lemon. Gobble it down like it was chocolate, you did; skin an’ all. Never knew a kid like you for that. Most only want sweets. You’d eat anything sour — sourer the better. It was all your Auntie Kathleen — God bless her — could do to keep you from eating the apples before they were ripe.’

  Auntie Kathleen — God bless her? Which god? wondered David. One with a horned helmet and that filthy great hammer that was named Mjolnir?

  He vaguely remembered his Auntie Kathleen — a big woman, as hearty as her husband George. David thought she’d died about fifteen years ago.

  George talked enthusiastically now, eyes twinkling, fingers gliding up and down the massive blade of the sword. ‘We never had children of our own, of course, so it was a real treat for her to cook you a big roast when you used to come up here for dinner. You ate like a wolf. Then we used to go and sit by the stream in summer. You’d sit on the big rock in the middle. Sometimes I’d come out of the house and find you singing to the water.’

  ‘Singing to the water?’

  ‘You’d have been about four then. I suppose a Christian minister would claim you were singing in tongues. Anyway, we used to sit there, me on the bank with my pipe, you on the rock. You always asked me to tell you the story of how the Leppingvalt family came to this country.’ The man was away now, David thought. He’s probably seeing me as that four-year-old singing on the rock again. Now this, at last, was typical of old age. Where the distant past is more vivid than the present.

  ‘Fifteen hundred years ago one of our ancestors was working at the anvil when Thor once more appeared to him. He was told to take his family across the sea to a new land. There he’d find a cave in a hillside. Deep in the cave would be a lake in which lived a monstrous fish. Inside the fish would be a sword which he must take for himself. Then he should build a temple and a great city.’

  ‘Ah,’ David nodded. The pieces were falling into place. ‘The Leppingtons — sorry, Leppingsvalts came to this country and founded the town?’

  ‘Indeed they did,’ said the old man.

  ‘But I take it all this sword-in-the-fish business was pure folk myth?’

  ‘Well, family legend does have it that Leppingsvalt and his sons went down into the cave, battled with the fish, then cut a sword from its stomach, which also contained gold and precious stones.’

  David suspected a lot of old myths and fairy tales were muddled up with the family history. Guardedly he said, ‘The story has parallels with the story of King Arthur and the legend of Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone.’

  The sword of the Leppingsvalts, drawn from the belly of the fish, did have magic powers.’ The old man ran his finger along the blade.

  ‘What happened to the sword?’

  ‘It was handed down from father to son for centuries. But —’ He shrugged. ‘It was stolen by the Normans in the eleventh century.’

  Bummer, David thought. There goes the divine inheritance out the window.

  ‘And that’s when the town began its long slow decline.’

  ‘The city of Leppington that never was,’ David said, then regretted it, wondering if he’d sounded brutally flippant. Obviously the family stories were a source of comfort to the old man now.

  ‘Last year I dreamt about the sword,’ the old man said. ‘I dreamt I found the sword driven through the front door of the house. When I awoke I remembered the sword in every detail and decided to make a replica.’

  ‘A replica of the dream sword?’

  ‘A replica of Helvetes, which is Norse slang for “bloody” or “blood-soaked.” Helvetes. A sword that could slay an army with a single cut or bring down a hail of burning stones on our enemies.’ The man looked along the blade of the sword with a deep satisfaction. ‘Or so the old stories ran.’ He smiled up at David. ‘Quite a sword, mm?’

  ‘Quite a sword,’ David agreed, feeling more than a little drowsy — a mixture of the fire and the whiskey. Then he remembered something long ago. He remembered sitting on a rock, dangling his feet in the numbingly cold water of the stream. ‘But there was another part of the story you haven’t mentioned,’ he told George. ‘What was it now?’ He sipped the whiskey from his mug. ‘That’s it. Weren’t the Leppingtons given some divine mission or quest?’

  The old man smiled warmly. ‘I told you you’d begin to remember.’

  ‘Something about a new kingdom?’

  The old man, still smiling, shook his head. ‘Not a kingdom: an empire.’ He stood and tipped the remains of the Irish whiskey in his cup into the fire. Purple flames blossomed and rose into the chimney.

  And don’t you bet that gesture, pouring whiskey onto a fire, is a sacrifice to the old gods, thought David, easily; the whiskey buzzing in his veins.

  George said: ‘The head of the Leppingsvalts was ordered by Thor to conquer the world, build a great new empire. And the little town there in the valley would become a city to rival Rome or Athens. It would become capital of the world.’

  ‘Quite some undertaking.’

  ‘Yes, quite an undertaking. And for that, the Leppingsvalt clan needed a vast army.’

  ‘Or an army of supermen.’

  The old man looked at David. ‘You are remembering.’

  David smiled, expansive after the whiskey. ‘Remembering what?’

  ‘Remembering what you were told. About what happened in the past.’ He took a key that hung from a nail above the work bench. ‘And you’ll remember what will happen in the future.’

  ‘You mean the Leppingtons still have a God-given appointment with destiny?’

  ‘If you like. Come on. You can stretch your legs. I’ll show you something now that might jog your memory.’

  CHAPTER 13

  David Leppington followed his uncle out of the workshop. The rain had almost stopped by now, although the wind still surged up the valley in powerful gusts, shaking the trees and making a droning sound as it swirled round the roofs of the outbuildings.

  George — all of eighty-four with a bushy head o
f snow-white hair — strode energetically across a yard to what David at first took to be an old stone-built garage that backed onto the hill-side. At the front were twin timber doors painted in a dull green colour.

  David watched as George unlocked one door then held it firmly back so the wind wouldn’t catch it and smash it against the hinges.

  ‘Inside,’ his uncle said in that bluff no-nonsense way. ‘I’ll close the door behind us, otherwise this wind’ll have it over York by this time tomorrow.’

  The garage was empty. Then David saw to his surprise that it was impossibly empty. The place seemed to defy physics. The garage stretched onward perhaps for thirty metres before becoming lost in darkness. Then he realized what he was seeing.

  ‘It’s the mouth of a cave?’ he asked George who was lighting a Calor gas lamp.

  ‘The very same cave that led to the subterranean lake where the fish lived. Follow me. Keep to the concrete path in the middle. The floor of the cave gets soaked this time of year.’

  David followed, seeing the back of his uncle in silhouette. The lamp filled the cave ahead with a brilliant white light while hissing loudly.

  The walls of the cave were of a black rock, possibly granite. Delicate

  veins of white ran from ceiling to floor. Unlike most caverns where you had to keep ducking your head when the roof dropped low, this was big enough to drive a van through. David guessed it had been enlarged by hand at some time in the past.

  After they’d been walking for no more than three minutes, George stopped. This is as far as we go, son.’

  David immediately saw why. An iron railing formed a barrier. It ran from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. It looked like the bars of a cage. A substantial cage at that. You could have safely kept a pride of lions on the other side of the bars.

  The light from the lamp illuminated another twenty metres or so of cave before the shadows finally got the upper hand.

  David found himself straining his eyes into the darkness beyond those bars, half expecting to see a hideous figure shambling towards him.