by Simon Clark
OK, here goes. He pressed the button. He listened, anticipating the sound of a distant bell to come ringing down the shaft — the ‘Hey, everyone, listen to this, there’s a stupid prat stuck in the lift’ alarm.
Nothing.
He listened.
Total silence.
He hit the button again. Once, twice, three times.
Bingo!
Suddenly the light came on. Immediately the lift juddered; somewhere above him the electric motor of the winding gear hummed into life.
Only the lift was descending. Not going up.
He shrugged. Oh well, might as well enjoy the ride.
The lift whirred down floor after floor. Yawning, he leaned back against the pine wall of the lift, waiting for it to stop. Then he could press button number four and try to get back to his floor. He was ready to crash out on his bed where he could stare at the ceiling and lazily plan what to do with the rest of the day.
The lift bumped to a halt. The doors slid open.
David stared.
He’d expected the hotel lobby and a view of reception with Electra sitting behind the desk.
Instead there was only darkness.
He blinked. Then checked the button he’d pressed. It was marked with a ‘B’.
Oh, you’ve got the basement, you idiot.
He pressed button four.
Then he stood waiting for the doors to slide shut, the carrier bag dangling in his hand.
The ancient lift mechanism was in no hurry.
He found himself looking into the darkened basement, seeing a stack of black plastic crates alongside one whitewashed wall. Beyond that there were only indefinable shapes in the gloom. These were humped, suggestive of figures standing there watching him.
‘Come on, lift.’
He spoke lightly enough.
Even so, there was something not too pleasant about that solid wodge of darkness beyond the little radiance spilled by the light in the lift. The darkness looked near-solid. The air seeping in had an icy bite to it. It didn’t smell pleasant: a wet organic smell that hinted at rot.
That uneasiness came back. The same sense of unease he’d experienced when he’d looked down the grate in the street that morning and recalled seeing the white footballs bobbing by as a six-year-old. That sense of unease that had been reinforced by the walk into the cave behind his uncle’s house.
‘Come on, I’ve had enough of dark underground places.’ He spoke flippantly to himself, but the truth of the matter was that he didn’t like the basement. All too easily something could run out of the darkness and into the lift.
Just what, for crying out loud? he asked himself, irritated by his stupid flight of fancy. This is a hotel basement, not Castle Frankenstein. Out there are empty crates, beer barrels, junky pieces of furniture, not razor-toothed monsters or gore-hungry ghouls.
He tried to shrug the creep of cold fear off his shoulders; but even so he found himself pumping the lift button with his finger.
‘Come on. Time to take daddy home, baby.’
At last the doors slid shut.
But not before the conviction gripped him that something small and verminous would scuttle out of the dark and into the lift.
The doors shut.
The relief he felt seemed absurdly large. A second later the lift was rattling its way back to the fourth floor.
Suckers, you didn’t get me that time.
He smiled to himself. And tried to ignore the shiver running up his spine.
2
In the back of the van the maggots were complaining — they wanted to go to York, they wanted their share of the money, they wanted to get pissed, they wanted to get laid, they — blah, blah, blah: same old story.
Jack Black switched off. Now he didn’t hear their voices coming from their mouths, but he did still catch the buzz of dissatisfaction humming inside their heads. He’d been able to hear what people said with their minds as well as their mouths all his life.
And it was all shit.
Humanity. He hated it all.
As much as it hated him. He expected tomorrow to be like yesterday. And next year to be the same as last year. He didn’t expect his life to get better or worse. Once, when he had realized he was the only one he’d ever met who could hear the voices in other people’s heads — mindreading, they called it — he had wondered if it was something he could exploit, but the psychiatrists who visited the care homes didn’t believe him. And when he freaked kids out at the foster homes he was booted out to another foster home, or shunted back to the Council care home. Now he kept his trap shut.
The road rolled out in front of him across heather-backed hills. Storm clouds stained the sky with blacks, purples and greens, like someone had given God Himself a damn’ good kicking.
Jack Black shifted down a gear as the van started to chug up the incline.
A sign said: LEPPINGTON — 6 MILES.
He drove faster. It was as if the town was calling his name.
3
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘It’ll be the couple in Room 101, they were so hot for each other they were practically disrobing in reception.’
‘No, it sounded like a scream.’
‘Then it probably was the couple in 101.’
‘You don’t take anything seriously, do you, Electra?’
‘Just what is there to take seriously, honey?’
‘Life?’
‘Life is cheap.’
‘You’re the most cynical person I’ve ever met.’
‘Cynical?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nope, dear. Realistic.’
‘Realistic, my foot.’
‘When you get to my age, dear.’
‘What, all of thirty-five, Electra?’
‘When you reach the grand old age of thirty-five, Bernice, you will realize that you are an unimportant cog in this universe. No, you’re not even a cog. A cog is a serrated wheel that drives another serrated wheel; that suggests you are a vital component in this windy great star-spangled cosmos. Therefore, no, we are not even cogs. We are dust motes blowing in the wind. We are sludge particles oozing along a river bed. Did you know that this entire universe was created by a simple fluctuation from the norm? Ask an astrophysicist. We are a blip on the screen, a bubble in water, a random event. We —’
‘How’s that? Too tight?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll slacken them, wait.’
‘No, they feel better laced tight like this. There, Bernice, what do you think?’
Electra stood in the middle of the hotel kitchen and raised her skirt to above the knee to show off her new boots that laced from the toes to just below the knee.
‘Don’t you just love black leather?’ Electra gave a sudden wicked grin. ‘Kinky, or what?’ She sighed impatiently. ‘Bernice, I said kinky, or what? What do you think?’
‘Mmm…sorry. I thought I heard it again.’
‘What, dear?’
‘It sounded like someone crying out in the back.’
Electra looked through the window into the courtyard. ‘All deserted.’
‘I’m sure I heard crying. You know, sort of high, like they were being hurt?’
‘Kids,’ Electra said carelessly and topped up the wine glasses.
‘Oh, Electra. I said I’d only have one.’
‘Live a little, honey, for tomorrow we die.’
‘I’ll be fit for nothing but bed.’
Electra gave a licentious wink.
‘Now don’t start that again.’
‘Don’t you find him attractive?’
‘Who?’
‘Why, the old man who collects the empties. OK, so he’s got a boil on his forehead and cotton wool in his ears but I hear he goes like a train.’
‘Electra.’
‘No, silly. I’m talking about Dr David Leppington, of course.’
‘The purple’s better than the white,’ Bernice said, holding up the two silk
scarves.
‘I kept the receipt, I’ll change it next week. Now, stop changing the subject. The good doctor. Are you interested?’
As Saturday afternoon slid into Saturday evening the two made girl-talk in the kitchen. Over the last month or so it had become a tradition. Saturday afternoons Bernice would share a bottle of wine with Electra and they’d show each other clothes they’d bought that morning or simply chew the fat. At first Bernice had been easily embarrassed by Electra’s teasing. Now she realized it was all in fun. They got on well together, enjoying each other’s company.
Electra tried on earrings she’d bought from that craft fair in Whitby’s Church Lane, pushing back her long blue-black hair with her fingers.
Bernice tilted her head slightly to one side, listening. She was sure she’d heard a thin cry coming from the direction of the river that flowed behind the high brick wall of the courtyard. It could have been children, she supposed. Even a bird. And yet the sound of it had been strangely shocking. Like someone experiencing incredible pain.
As Electra tried to prise out what she, Bernice, thought of Dr Leppington she gazed out of the window. Dark clouds were bubbling up over the mountain tops. There was a storm coming.
‘Maybe he will invite you out to dinner one night,’ Electra was saying. ‘Would you accept?’
Bernice had intended to say nothing about this to Electra, but she couldn’t resist seeing the look on her face. ‘Oh, he already has,’ she said, quite casually.
‘No!’ Electra’s look of astonishment was immensely satisfying. ‘You said yes — you did, didn’t you?’
Smiling, Bernice nodded.
‘Oh, child.’ Electra beamed. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow evening. We’re going to the Magpie in Whitby.’
‘Oh, good choice. My, I’ll get my tool kit out tomorrow afternoon and we’ll put so much work into you that he’ll swoon with desire.’
Chatting happily, they planned what Bernice would wear for the dinner. Outside, the dark clouds slid over the town. For all the world they looked like the wings of a vast bat, stretching out as if they could obliterate the whole of humanity.
CHAPTER 17
1
SEX. SEX. SEX!
Oh God, I love it. I love him doing this to me. I love the words he uses. Dirty words. But it s so exciting. I wonder if I dare go down on him?
There has to be a first time for everything, doesn’t there? she asked herself. Yes, go on: do it.
Fiona Hill stretched luxuriously in the bed, allowing herself to be kissed from her forehead to the soles of her feet. Room 101 of the Station Hotel was warm — they’d warmed it, steaming the windows.
‘Now I’m going to kiss your breasts,’ her lover was murmuring. ‘Then I’m going to kiss your stomach, then I’m going to kiss your hips, then I’m going to…yum, yummm-mer…’
Fiona Hill squirmed her legs against the sheets, loving every sex-soaked moment of it. She was twenty-nine years old.
Believe me, she thought, this is way, WAY overdue. She weighed just over seven stone. She was slim, small-boned, brown-eyed. Hair? A mousy brown. Not unpleasant, she thought. Normally she wore thick, blue-framed glasses — not today though, you won’t. You’ve earned this. You’ve earned being the centre of attention for once. You’ve earned being the object of desire: a hot, sexual — yes, yes, say it — animal desire.
You’ve earned being…being…go on, she told herself. Don’t hold back. Say that naughty word.
Fucked.
You’ve earned being fucked.
Now she breathed the naughty word out loud. ‘Fuck me, Matt…fuck me, please.’
Fuck.
The word seemed peculiar in her mouth — exciting and strange and dirty all at the same time.
Fuck.
In all her twenty-nine years she hadn’t even been able to think of the word without blushing hotly. Then she would rush into confession as if Lucifer himself was chasing her. She’d tell Father O’Connell everything. About these wicked feelings in the pit of her stomach, the magazines the girls at work would leave open on her desk, and how — and where — she’d soap herself in the bath, when she’d known that her skin was already clean; but she loved the slippery feel of soapy fingers on her skin.
Sex.
But now the floodgates had opened. She’d bumped into Matt at a friend’s engagement party. He’d driven her home — well, part-way home. Suddenly he’d stopped the car and kissed her — Heavens, she’d been nervous; she’d felt as if a balloon had expanded inside of her: growing bigger, bigger, bigger until it almost burst.
Then something had burst.
It had all been mad — just completely mad.
Within two minutes he was on top of her, filling her with himself until she thought she’d split wide open — was I in ecstasy? Was I in agony? Did I go mad?
I loved it, she’d thought later. Twenty-nine years old, still a virgin.
But not any longer.
Sex.
She opened her eyes, a smile playing on her lips. The setting sun had broken through the cloud; now a shaft of red light came through the window to flood the hotel room wall. It glinted off the glass on the framed picture of naked boys swimming in a lake. The scent of the single red rose in the champagne glass reached her. Ineffably sweet, it seemed to flow through her skin to warm her blood. Her heart sang with pure happiness.
Love.
Here I am in Room 101, she thought, relaxing, feeling incredibly delicious, and wanted. I want to stay in Room 101 forever. I want him to fuck me until I melt and flow into the carpet and furniture and walls. I want time to freeze the next time I orgasm and for that orgasm to last for eternity.
Perhaps this is what heaven feels like?
An eternal sensation of coming? A billion-year orgasm?
Mmm…I hope so.
Thoughts like that would have sent her running to Father O’ Connell with his ears bristling with white hairs and dour Scots voice. Not any longer, Fiona, not any longer. I have my true love now. I’m warm. I’m safe.
Yes. There were problems. The twenty-year age gap didn’t worry her. But Matt was married. Fie was a director of the civil engineering group that employed her.
But the future didn’t matter.
This weekend would last forever, wouldn’t it?
Fiona gazed fondly down at the head of steel-grey hair as it moved from side to side, licking her flat stomach. She moaned with pleasure when he kissed the curl of downy hair between her legs. One of his big hands moved up to gently knead her breasts. His big gold wedding ring glinted in the red sunlight.
Matt moved up her body until his eyes — as bright as chips of ice shining in sunlight — looked into hers. His body lay on hers. It felt warm and firm and oh-so-comforting.
‘Fiona,’ he whispered. ‘Do you trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you believe me when I tell you I love you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
He kissed her on the lips. She smelt champagne and cigar on his breath. ‘Now,’ he breathed. ‘I’m going to make love to you. Ready?’
‘Ready.’ She slid her hands round his wide back, her knees raised.
Oh, she wanted this to last forever.
As she felt him slide magnificently into her, the sun crept below the horizon and night began its stealthy entry into the room.
2
Three storeys above the lovers in Room 101 David Leppington sat in his room. He’d pulled the armchair across so he could sit with his feet casually on the bed. A coffee steamed near his elbow. In his hands was the book his uncle had given him, The Leppington Family: Fact and Legend. As a family history went it was incredibly thorough with family trees, photographs of his Leppington forefathers — stern patriarchal Victorians with moustaches bushy enough to sweep a carpenter’s floor — and Leppington matriarchs in bustles and dresses that touched the ground. They all glowered sternly from the photographs as if lives depended on them not breaking into a s
mile.
The exceptions came later, with photographs of his father and his uncle George — his father would have been in his teens, his uncle perhaps thirty-something — both sitting in a rowing boat wearing easygoing grins and straw boaters.
The legend of the Leppingtons being the proud possessors of divine blood was recounted as matter-of-factly as the marriages and deaths. Then came Uncle George’s potted biography, telling how he built up a successful business in Whitby, importing cheap shoes from the then Soviet Bloc countries. Running parallel to the business of importing shoes was a chain of shoe shops stretching from Bridlington to Saltburn.
On page fourteen there was even an engraving of some ancient Leppington of a thousand years before kneeling before the Thunder God Thor, complete with Mjolnir, the hammer. Thor was handing the man what appeared to be a rolled-up newspaper (although obviously it couldn’t have been). In copperplate print beneath ran the words: Great Thor Bestows The Word Upon Tristan Leppingsvalt AD 967. David examined the reproduction in the book. It looked Victorian and had the appearance of a Christian church’s stained-glass window rather than blood-and-guts Nordic art.
He turned over a page and, at random, chose a paragraph.
My gift to you is an army undying, feasted on the blood of bulls, obedient to the word of Leppingsvalt, and eager for the new Kingdom that kneels before Thor, not Christ.
David scanned the page, reading a sentence here and there. It was obviously an account of the vampire army Thor had given to his ancestors with the intention of conquering the Christian kingdoms of
AD 1000. No doubt Thor, enraged by Chieftain Leppingsvalt’s refusal to begin the invasion, had obviously decided to take his proverbial bat and ball back to Valhalla with him.
Bummer, David thought smiling. He remembered when one of the students at university had sauntered into the lecture room and announced he’d just inherited a cool million from some distant auntie. Smug bugger. Just think if, after this holiday, I can saunter back into the clinic in Liverpool and just as smugly say, ‘Guess what I inherited, guys?’Then, with a theatrical gesture towards the window, show them his vampire army standing obediently out in the car park, their rusty swords and axes at the ready.