Vampyrrhic

by Simon Clark

  ‘Shut up, and follow me.’

  He moved through the house, feeling calm, serene, like he was gliding through the rooms on golden wings. Lightly he laid a finger on a painting of a horse on one wall, ignored another, touched a green jug on the mantelpiece while he didn’t even give a pair of brass candlesticks a second glance. He’d got an instinct for this. He selected the valuable; ignored the rubbish.

  This haul would convert into cash — heaps of cash. After the share-out he’d do what he always did. Keep back a couple of notes for expenses, then pay the rest into his account through the cashpoint. His maggots, he knew, would blow it all on birds, booze and drugs within twenty-four hours.

  But not me, he thought, gliding through the room, tattooed fingers lightly touching a chair here, a china figurine there. Money is power. His accounts — under half a dozen different aliases — now totalled over seventy thousand pounds.

  Now that is power — real power. And that’s what he needed. More than anything else.

  2

  Bernice Mochardi was hot on the trail of the man in the video.

  In her hotel room she carefully unpacked the suitcase belonging to Mike Stroud that she’d found in the Dead Box, laying out the contents on her bed. There were shoes (good-quality Italian black loafers, size tens); two pairs of Levis, underwear, a black T-shirt, a couple of white cotton shirts, then a toilet bag containing razors, shaving foam, aftershave (she smelled it: once, twice, three times; then dabbed a little on the back of her wrist so the scent would stay with her).

  The wind gusted outside, sometimes bringing a rattle of rain drops against her window.

  I’ll find what happened to him, she thought. There has to be a clue here.

  There were no address tags on the suitcase, and no documentation of any kind inside. She picked up the three reporter’s spiral-bound notebooks. They were all new; the pages blank. As she flicked through them a small snapshot-type photograph fell from the back of a pad.

  She smiled, pleased with the discovery. It showed Mike — blondhaired, bespectacled and smiling — standing outside a Whitby hotel. Written in pencil on the back were the words: ‘Me outside the Royal, Whitby. The hotel where Bram Stoker conceived Dracula.’

  This is a find, she told herself, glowing with pleasure. A real find. She thought she might show it to some people she knew in the town; it was possible they might remember him. The person to ask would be Electra. Only if she did ask her she knew the woman would tease her about having a crush on a stranger.

  No, it’s more than that, she thought, gazing at the man’s smiling face in the photograph. I will meet him one day. I know it.

  A shiver ran up her spine.

  Then, before she could even stop herself, she’d taken the video cassette from its case. She had to watch the tape again. And this time she would make notes in the reporter’s notepad. There must be clues that would tell her more.

  3

  David Leppington left his uncle’s home that afternoon. The old man had insisted he stayed for lunch — and that was after a huge pile of toast made over the forge fire. In the kitchen the two of them had sat down to a huge fry-up of mashed potato mixed with cabbage and bacon. Conversation had been of the kind anyone might have had after not seeing a close relative for a number of years. There was no return to the family saga involving Norse gods and new empires — to David’s relief: he had begun to wonder if his uncle was harbouring some deep brooding obsession about the Leppingsvalt — now Leppington — divine mission to overthrow Christendom. But the old man now seemed quite lighthearted and delighted in showing off bottles of home-made elderberry wine, or asking David about his work and life.

  David found his liking for his uncle deepening. Glimmers of old memories were surfacing. He remembered his uncle taking him fishing, or driving into Whitby to the museum at Pannett Park, or simply pumping pennies into the amusement arcade slot machines before going for ice creams down by Whitby harbour and watching the fishing boats chugging out to sea.

  After promising to visit again, David had shaken the man by his powerful right hand, then walked down the lane to town. He felt good, as if he was walking inside a warm envelope. He decided to call on the man again in a couple of days; he’d take along a bottle of whiskey and they could chew the fat.

  The wind was still blowing hard, but David didn’t feel it. He carried a bag containing a privately-printed family history that one of the female Leppingtons had produced thirty years ago. There was also a bottle of the elderberry wine. His uncle had promised the wine was good and David believed him.

  Humming to himself, he crossed the River Lepping and walked back into town.

  CHAPTER 15

  1

  She walked down beside the river. Her sandals slipped on the sandy path; she fell backwards and her rump hit the ground hard.

  ‘Ow…bastard.’

  The jolt wasn’t bruising, but it brought Friday night winging back firmly into her memory. Dianne Moberry got to her feet and dusted her bum. Don’t look like a slag, Di. You don’t want to scare him away, do you, honey?

  Her cunt was sore. That was from spending six hours being fucked by Joel Preston. Most boys spurt off after ten minutes but Joel Preston fucked like a machine.

  It had been fun when she’d started the affair with him six months ago but now the sex was monotonous. He’d pump solidly away between her legs for an hour and a quarter. Even after half an hour she’d be dry as a prune. Now the fucking just fucking well hurt, OK?

  Even so, she was reluctant to dump Joel just yet. Yeah, he was dull, he was mechanical, he fucked missionary style with as much finesse and passion as a sexton digging a fat man’s grave but he was affable enough; he tolerated her turning up late, or borrowing money from him for her hair restyling — like the blonde flashes she now wore, and, my God, they were expensive. She’d gone to Whitby’s finest for that one. He’d even bought her these sandals. They were cute enough to die for. Little slender criss-cross straps — they made her bottle-tanned feet look tiny and golden.

  But they were a bugger to walk in — especially when you were on a mission down by the riverside.

  Last month Di Moberry had worked in a hotel bar in Whitby. This week — after being caught by the manager’s wife giving him a blow job in the back of the car — she was kicking her heels in good old Leppington.

  Christ, my cunt’s sore, she thought again, as she threaded her way along the path. It was the kind of path that didn’t want to be a path at all. It wanted to be a roller-coaster track. There were no level parts to it. Either you went down steeply to the edge of the River Lepping that gurgled and sang over the boulders. Or the path climbed up the banking. And everywhere there were willows.

  Fucking willows. She hated them. The branches tried to catch her hair. The roots snagged her sandals. ‘If you bust a strap I’ll fucking shampoo you with weed killer,’ she snarled at a tree.

  And sometimes the clumps of willow grew so close together the path meandered away into darkness. And it’s only the middle of the afternoon, she grumbled to herself. Once you got down in a hollow with all those willows it might as well be midnight. If I tread in some dog shit…bloody stupid dogs.

  Reason for this mission, Di?

  Come on, spill your gourd.

  You’re on a mission to get laid.

  But this would be no boring missionary fuck, with old fish-faced Joel Preston.

  Christ, my cunt is sore. If I don’t end up with thrush it will be a miracle. She decided to give herself a damned good squirt of Canesten B when she got home — that’s if dear old Dad hasn’t got it muddled up with toothpaste again. She grinned, remembering how the old bugger had gagged the last time he’d mistakenly brushed his teeth with thrush cream.

  Di Moberry had turned twenty-one last month. She’d got the key of the door and a damn sight else besides. Her thick and luscious swathe of hair, widely spaced blue eyes, raunchy hips and full breasts gave her what a poor education couldn’t (but
her twagging off school two or three days a week hadn’t helped). If she smiled and flirted at interviews — providing the interviewer was a man — then her lack of qualifications was often overlooked. So, on the whole she took a better job than her plain but well-qualified cousins. Only Di Moberry hadn’t got the knack of holding on to a job. They slipped through her fingers like water.

  When she got tired of having two or three men on the go at once — in five or six years, she’d tell herself vaguely — then she’d snare a husband with a good career. Then it’s a lady-of-leisure life for me. She pictured herself driving a Range Rover down to York for a day leathering that Visa Gold card.

  But today she was hunting down some fresh blood.

  She smiled. Someone filled with spunk. Who’d be exciting; who wouldn’t dry her out so much she developed friction burns on the lips of her vagina.

  Ow…my cunt is sore. Itchy, too.

  The river bank path now took her into Leppington town behind the Bath House, the library and — wait for it, wait for it — the Station Hotel. This morning she’d spotted the sexiest piece of meat she’d seen in months — he was all brawn and tattoo and scars. And his eyes were so fierce and penetrating she’d felt herself go immediately moist. Her intelligence network — the girl who cooked the hotel breakfasts — had revealed that this stud was the new cellarman. That he was probably screwing Electra Charnwood, haughty proprietress of the hotel.

  But who cares, thought Di, providing I get my share of that meat.

  She imagined him looking down at her with those eyes full of ice and menace. She shivered with delight. Now she could almost feel his tough fingers cupping her breasts, then sliding up and down her bare stomach before tweaking her nipples.

  God, he can tweak them hard, she thought, heart thumping. Hard as he damn well likes.

  I like my nipples to be touched, then pinched. Then nipped between a good set of teeth, while fingers slide down between my legs.

  Oh…shit. Oh, shit. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.

  There’d be no messing around. Get in there, girl.

  The plan?

  That’s easy, Di.

  ‘Just like you, honey,’ she told herself in a louche, have-me-any-which-way-boys kind of voice.

  She giggled.

  No, Di. The plan. Just turn up at the back door of the hotel. Tattooed lustboy will probably be humping crates of beer from the cellar ready for Saturday night which was the big piss night in Leppington. Well, soon you’ll be humping me, lustboy. She imagined the rounded mounds of his buttocks; she could almost feel herself gripping them as he pumped into her.

  The soreness between her legs gave way to a mad tingling.

  Oh, God yes, like a thousand pinpricks ding-dinging away down there in her crotch.

  Her feet moved faster. Up one stretch of banking, brick wall of the back yards to her left, river gurgling to her right. Then…down to the water again. Down under the dark, dark willows…

  Where boys and girls play doctors and nurses.

  Mmm…she remembered that. Being fucked under the willow trees by what’s-his-name…the boy who worked the potato waggon.

  Excited now, she moved faster, little sandals slipping on the sandy banking. The banks of the river were deserted. Only commercial buildings backed onto the river. The residential waterside developments of the upwardly mobile hadn’t touched Leppington yet.

  Here there was only silence — apart from the giggling whisper of the river; that silence mated with a sense of isolation even though the main street with the market square would only be a stone’s throw away at the other side of the line of buildings that included the Station Hotel.

  Ahead, she could see the gap in the three-metre-high brick wall that led into the rear yard of the Station Hotel.

  She was breathing heavily now.

  My God, Di, are you gagging for a shag or what, girl?

  The soreness of her cunt had now most definitely been replaced by an itch. That old, old itch she knew so well.

  Like a cow with an itchy hide she wanted to rub against something hard. Something damn hard…oh, yes.

  Another twenty paces and she’d reach that gateway. She didn’t doubt she could charm the pants off Mr Jack Black in ten minutes flat. There was just one dip down into a clump of willows. Then another ten steps in her dainty sandals would take her up to the entrance of the hotel’s back yard.

  Christ, that itch. It needed scratching — scratching hard; fucking HARD.

  She slithered down the sandy path into the gloom of the willow trees. Again she slipped.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  She stood up in the half-darkness and rubbed the muck from the skirt stretched drumskin-tight across her backside.

  ‘Have you hurt yourself?’

  Oh-Shit-God-Almighty!

  She looked round, gasping with shock.

  A man stood there in the gloom. He wasn’t even on the path but standing on the edge of the water. Willow branches formed a frame around him. For all the world he could have been a portrait hanging on a wall.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Her surprise was double-barrelled. The man’s voice was so polite, considerate. It was also American.

  ‘Are you OK?’ The voice was silk to her ears.

  ‘Fine…phew…’ She fanned her face — a deliberately pretty action. ‘I’m fine, thank you. You took me by surprise, that’s all.’ She peered hard at the man. Why was it so dark down here at the water’s edge?

  ‘Are you fishing?’ she asked prettily.

  ‘You might say so.’

  ‘Well…either you are or you aren’t.’

  The words could easily have come out harshly, but Di liked the man’s voice — that American purr set her skin a-tingling. Instead, her voice acquired a sassy huskiness.

  ‘Oh,’ the man said lightly. ‘I was just waiting for a pretty little girl to come by.’

  ‘Perhaps if you’re patient she’ll come.’

  ‘Perhaps she already has.’

  ‘And she might come sooner than you think.’ Hell, Di, that’s racy even for you.

  But there was something about the voice that melted even the hard core of her cynical heart.

  My God, I feel like I’m fifteen again. When the lad from the potato truck humped me on the dirt over there. I’m all breathless and hot, and my heart is positively purring.

  She screwed up her pretty eyes in an attempt to see him better.

  There stood a slender figure (willowy, she thought, pleased with an adjective that was so poetic and apt, considering they stood in a copse of willow).

  Jack Black up there in the hotel was already shunted onto the back burner. A bird in the hand, she thought. Yeah, a bird in the hand, right?

  Anyway, Jack Black won’t blow away in a breeze, will he? He’ll be around tomorrow night.

  Now she felt good in the presence of this stranger with his polished American accent. She sensed his smile rather than saw it; imagined his soul music.

  Now that is poetic. Soul music. She’d never heard that before. But this man had it; he was playing it for her.

  And she felt good in his presence.

  She walked down towards the water’s edge beneath the dense ceiling of willow branches.

  Now she saw his softly curling blond hair. His face was strong as if the muscle beneath the skin was superbly toned. A pair of ever-so-faint marks at either side of the bridge of his nose suggested he might, on occasion, wear glasses.

  When he reads music at the piano, she thought. And he’s so tall. The image of a Victorian artist. Romance streamed from him like water from a spring.

  I‘m in love. For the first time ever, I’m really in love. I love this man. I want to dissolve in his heart blood.

  ‘You’ve wonderful hair,’ he said. ‘It looks as if it has golden lights burning inside the strands.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said prettily, allowing herself to be flattered. ‘Aren’t you cold without a
coat?’ She noticed now that he wore just a shirt and light-coloured chinos. For a moment she thought they looked stained but no, perhaps it was merely the shadows.

  She would have looked again, but he was gazing at her with the most intense pair of eyes she’d ever seen. The eyebrows were surprisingly dark for someone with blond hair. And it was the eyes…she’d never seen eyes like them. They’re fixed on me so…so…say it, Di, say it! she thought with a thrill…they’re fixed on me so passionately.

  ‘You live here?’ he asked smoothly, beaming a beautiful smile at her. ‘In the town, that is, not the river?’

  She giggled the ever-so-pretty-little-girl-am-I giggle. ‘Yes. For my sins. Do you?’

  ‘For your sins? You’re never a girl who knows anything about sin, are you?’

  ‘Well…I didn’t fall off the back of the cabbage truck yesterday.’

  ‘You do have wonderful eyes, don’t you?’

  ‘Thank you.’ And yours are, too, she thought, feeling a kind of dreamy warmth rise over her. His eyes were so wide; so vast.

  She couldn’t take her own eyes off them.

  He did not blink. Not once. The eyes were bright, wide-awake looking.

  Wonderful, wonderful eyes, she thought. Her heart purred; her blood ran warm and thick in her veins; she felt such…such tranquillity; such a sense of well-being.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Dianne.’

  Her voice was a whisper now. Nothing else existed but his eyes. She marvelled at them. They were brighter than any diamonds she’d ever seen. And he does not blink, she thought. My love does not blink. Not ever.

  ‘Dianne. It suits you.’

  The muscles around his eyes altered their shape from second to second. Now the eyes seemed to pulsate. One second they were huge white discs, centred with blue. The next the white of the eye vanished and all she could see were the pupils. They became black holes; deep, ineffably mysterious.

  She found herself leaving the path.