Vampyrrhic

by Simon Clark

  Saltpetre clung like white feathers onto raw brick. The air was cold, so cold that David saw his breath turn vaporous. He shivered, then turned to look back at Bernice. He liked her. He didn’t like to see her as frightened as this. Why had Electra filled her head with this horror story?

  ‘There.’ Electra shone the torch on the end of the vault. ‘See that?’

  The vault didn’t end in a wall. Instead, David saw with some surprise, there was what appeared to be a door made from a solid sheet of iron. Hinged down one side, it was locked in place by four stout padlocks — two old-looking ones, brown with rust, and two new shiny ones that glittered silver in the light of Electra’s torch.

  ‘It’s solid,’ she said, rapping the metal door lightly with her knuckles. It made the sound of a glockenspiel being struck by a hand; a nearmusical chime that became slowly attenuated until David could no longer hear the vibration. Electra struck it lightly again, then stopped. He saw her shiver that someone-just-walked-over-my-grave shiver. After a moment’s pause she spoke again, as if to reassure herself as much as anything; once more she sounded like a professional tour guide. ‘This door was made a hundred years ago in a foundry in Whitby where they made ships’ anchors. That door could stop an armour-piercing shell.’

  David nodded, ‘So, it’s quite a door.’ His voice echoed back at him eerily; even the metal door vibrated in sympathy, humming like a tuning fork. ‘Where does it lead?’

  ‘Do I have to tell you, David?’

  ‘I guess you’re going to tell me it leads into a tunnel that runs up to the cave at the back of my uncle’s house. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re absolutely right. In fact, there’s more to it than that. There’s a whole complex of tunnels running under the town. The rock under here’s nothing more than a big Swiss cheese full of holes running for miles.’

  ‘And that’s where our vamps hang out?’

  ‘Your denial is sounding a tad hollow now, David.’

  ‘Are you going to open that door for me?’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a very clever idea. We don’t know what’s squatting on the other side of the door, waiting for us to do just that.’ She looked at the door and gave a little shiver. ‘It’s probably listening to what we’re saying at this very minute.’

  ‘Well. You’ve shown me no evidence that there are legions of undead, biding their time under the town. If undead is the right name — what else can we call them? Nosferatu? Children of the night?’

  ‘Believe me, they’re down here. At least, they were until your uncle blew one of the fences to smithereens with dynamite. Where they might be now is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘I know where they are. Do you know where they are, Electra?’

  ‘Tell me, doctor.’

  ‘Where they always have been. Inside your head, Electra.’

  ‘Doubting Thomas.’ She said the words lightly, but there was a coldness to them. Certainly no humour.

  ‘Can I go now? Or do you want to hold me down here in leg irons until the day my toes curl up and I die?’

  ‘Your flippant remarks are sounding more like whistling in the dark, David.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Electra continued speaking, almost breezily now as if she wanted to close the discussion once and for all. ‘After you left for the hospital last night with Bernice I moved the chair from the lift. You recall? Jack had very wisely prevented the lift from operating simply by wedging the chair across the door. Unwisely, as I’ve told you, I moved the chair. Instantly the door closed. The lift descended to the basement. Clearly, someone had summoned the lift. I heard the doors open down in the basement. Someone, I conjectured, got in and pressed the ground-floor button. The lift ascended. With me standing there like silly Nelly’s aunt waiting for whatever was inside to step out right in front of me. Fortunately, what I could do was switch off the lift mechanism with my key.’

  ‘Handy you’d got it with you.’

  ‘Still flippant, aren’t we, doctor?’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘I switched off the lift motor and isolated the lift between floors, trapping whoever — whatever — was in the lift until daylight hours.’

  David stopped and looked at her, his skin prickling. For all the world a great cold slug of a thing could have just slid across his body. ‘Electra. Tell me you’re joking.’

  ‘No joke, David.’ Electra paused by the door of a lock-up store. The door was stout and there were a couple of equally stout padlocks holding the thing firmly shut against a hefty baulk of timber that served as the frame.

  ‘Electra…’ he began, feeling a trickle of fear become a flow.

  ‘Bear with me,’ she said and swept her hand down across a row of light switches. There was instant darkness. He heard Bernice gasp.

  What the hell was Electra doing? He sensed Black’s ominous presence behind him in the darkness and he didn’t like it one little bit. ‘Electra,’ he said.

  The torch flashed, lighting a slab of brickwork. Electra found another

  light switch by the door, clicked it. ‘Just taking sensible precautions,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m keen to avoid putting too much strain on the ring main down here. The fuses might blow if we overload them. We need just enough to see by. Out here, in any case.’

  There was no light in the basement now except for Electra’s torch. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘unlock the padlocks for me, please.’

  ‘Electra,’ David said tensely. ‘What is this? What are you doing?’

  Black unlocked the padlocks that held the storeroom door shut, his thick, tattooed fingers moving deftly.

  ‘Come closer, David. I want you to see what we have here.’ Arm straight out, she pushed open the door. Then she switched off the torch.

  From the store room shone a hard, brilliant light. He followed Electra inside. A halogen light, of the sort you might use to illuminate a pub car park, blazed. The glare was so fierce it cruelly dazzled David’s eyes. He couldn’t look directly at the halogen lamp but he guessed it had been screwed to the ceiling of the store.

  Then he stopped. Fixed to one wall at little above waist height was a broad stone slab that served as some kind of work table. Perhaps in more unsanitary times meat might have been butchered here for the kitchens upstairs.

  On the stone table was a sheet.

  Below the sheet, David saw, was a body.

  David’s eyes were now becoming at least partly accustomed to the brilliant glare. He glanced round. Electra, Bernice and Black stood against one wall of the storeroom, hands raised to their eyes in an attempt to protect them from the fierce blue-white glare of what must be a 500- watt bulb.

  Electra said coolly, ‘Take a look under the sheet, David. We found it in the lift this morning. When the sun was shining.’

  2

  Cautiously. Slowly. As if he was lifting the covering stone from a nest of venomous snakes, David Leppington pulled back the sheet.

  The body of a woman lay flat on her back. Just as if she lay on a mortuary slab. Her eyes were closed, her hands crossed across her chest. In the mercilessly brilliant light of the halogen lamp her skin looked completely white, while the veins under the skin appeared brown rather than blue. Her lips were grey. She was, he guessed, somewhere in her twenties.

  The brilliance of the light and the bloodlessness of the corpse made it a ghastly figure — a nightmare simulacrum of a human being rather than an actual one of flesh and blood. Only the hair, which was fluffy, soft and gleaming with blonde highlights, looked human.

  ‘She’s shrunk since we brought her in here.’

  David turned to Electra, startled. ‘Shrunk?’

  ‘Yes; earlier this morning she was bloated. Her stomach was so swollen she looked eight months pregnant.’

  Black grunted. ‘Full of blood. She must’ve gorged on it. It was all round her mouth. She’s licked her lips since then.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ David said in a hushed voice; he was horrified.
Turning to Bernice, who stood with her arms folded, shivering against the doorway, he said, ‘Did you know about this?’

  Bernice shook her head, swallowing; she looked nauseous.

  ‘Electra,’ he snapped, ‘what the hell are you playing at?’

  ‘I decided this was the best place for her.’

  ‘You decided? Jesus Christ, Electra, this belongs in a morgue. You’ve got to inform the police. Didn’t that occur to you?’

  Electra shook her head. ‘This is one case where the police won’t be able to do a thing.’

  David looked back at the grisly white body on the slab. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Dianne Moberry. A local girl. A sassy thing, if the rumours are true.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘We found her in the lift, completely unconscious. Only she was, as I said, quite bloated with fluid, her stomach absolutely distended. We found the hatchway from the yard to the basement open; that must be how they’ve been coming and going.’

  ‘Electra, do you know what happened to her? How she was killed?’

  ‘No, I don’t think she’s dead. Not dead in the way you learnt at university, doctor.’

  David looked back at what lay on the slab. It still looked like a corpse to him — and he had seen plenty; he’d even dissected one from the crown of its head to the end of its toe as part of his anatomy training.

  Yes, he told himself, this is a corpse, a corpse, a corpse. Lying there cold and stiff.

  He reached out and lightly touched the corpse’s face.

  Damn.

  He withdrew his hand quickly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Bernice cried, frightened.

  Electra gave a tight smile. ‘Hot, isn’t it, Doctor Leppington?’

  ‘Yes…’ He spoke in wonder. ‘Yes…burning. Like a fever.’

  He pulled the sheet back down to the waist and lifted the arm. It was pliant, relaxed like that of someone asleep. No sign of rigor mortis.

  Baffled, he looked more closely at the upper torso of the woman.

  The body was bare to the waist, the skin very white, translucent even, with a marbling effect; almost the same effect you get when you pour milk into water. He looked even more closely — there were no signs of injury, nor the characteristic bruised effects from when the blood of a corpse settles in the lower parts of the body.

  He lifted both the arms — they were peppered with tiny black hairs. The bare breasts were large in proportion to the slender body. The nipples very dark.

  Hell…he hadn’t noticed that the…uh, damn.

  Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he looked at Electra. ‘Have you seen that?’

  She took a step towards the body but still kept her distance, as if afraid to get too close.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘The nipples are missing. These are scabs.’

  ‘Dear God.’

  ‘From the rough edges of the wound I’d say they weren’t removed with a knife.’ David shook his head, grimly. ‘My guess is her nipples were bitten off.’

  Bernice groaned. ‘Uh…Christ. I can’t take any more of this.’ She shook her head, with her hands over her mouth.

  Electra asked gently, ‘Would you like to go upstairs?’

  ‘Not alone.’

  ‘We’ll only be a couple more minutes, dear,’ Electra said. ‘It’s starting to get late.’

  ‘I’ll wait outside in the main part of the basement. I can’t…I can’t look at that thing any more.’ She shot a sickly glance in the direction of the corpse.

  ‘Don’t switch on the lights,’ Electra said, still managing to sound composed. ‘The fuses might blow with this halogen lamp burning…the Station Hotel’s electrics are a bit on the antique side.’

  ‘She can’t stand out there in the dark,’ David protested.

  ‘Take this,’ Electra handed Bernice the torch. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll be no more than a couple of minutes.’

  When Bernice had stepped through the doorway David looked back at the corpse — if corpse was the right word.

  But if corpse wasn’t the right word, what word did describe the thing on the slab? With its hot skin and scabs where the nipples were chewed completely away?

  The word slid into his brain as slickly as a worm:

  VAMPIRE

  That’s the word to describe it, isn’t it, David?

  VAMPIRE

  Quelling the sense of unease rising inside him, he forced himself to feel the thing’s long, swanlike neck for a pulse.

  He found it immediately; beneath his fingertips he felt the slow but strong squelching pulse of blood feeding through the artery. ‘There’s the pulse,’ he said in a flat voice. ‘But it’s slow; impossibly slow. And yet I can’t find any trace of respiration.’

  ‘Would you describe her as alive?’

  He shrugged, bewildered. ‘I don’t know. There are some vital signs that…that, well, mimic life. Pulse. But impossibly slow. A very slow heart beat. But strong — incredibly strong.’ He continued the examination with a deliberate effort to suppress a feeling of revulsion welling up inside of him and — let’s not beat about the bush here, he told himself-fear. I’m afraid of that thing on the slab. It fits with nothing I’ve ever learnt about the human body.

  ‘If anything, my first guess would be catatonia. Or some drug-induced coma.’

  Electra moved closer to the body. He sensed her will-power; more

  than anything she wanted to rush screaming from the basement. But that iron will of hers held her there to watch every detail; to miss nothing. ‘Now,’ she said quietly, ‘watch what happens next.’ From the pocket of her jacket she took a compass of the kind used to draw circles in geometry. She pulled a cork from the needle then, before David could react, she stabbed it down hard into the arm of the corpse. Then she withdrew it with an effort; it was as if the skin of the corpse tried to hang onto the needle and hold it there in the body. As Electra pulled, the skin raised up into a pyramid. With a tug she yanked the needle free.

  ‘Now. What do you see?’

  David looked at the puncture wound caused by the compass needle. A clear fluid dribbled slowly out. Not blood, though, definitely not blood. It was a clear yellowish liquid, reminiscent of the body fluids of a fly when you crush it against a window pane. His medical training suggested that this might be blood plasma — only with the red and white cells removed, leaving the sticky amber liquid.

  ‘There,’ Electra said in an awed hush. ‘There, we have a member of your vampire army, Dr Leppington. You heard the legends. She is yours. So what are you going to do with her?’

  Mouth dry, he bent down to look at the girl’s face. It was relaxed, the eyelids were softly closed as if she slept. The eyelashes were long and luscious-looking. Eyebrows stood out darkly against white skin. That white skin smoothed firmly across high cheek bones; in turn the face was framed by the fluffy soft hair. There was a semblance of life. No escaping that.

  He turned his attention back to the eyelids that were so lightly closed. Slowly he raised his fingers to the eyes; he’d ease back an eyelid and examine the pupil.

  The second he touched the eyelid it swept back.

  The eyelids were like great shutters shooting upward. The eyes blazed up at him: the pupils had expanded enormously, so it was as if he looked down a well. Only a well set in a white surround that glistened and shone as brightly as pearl.

  Those eyes were magnificent.

  They held his eyes with a completeness that was hypnotic.

  At that instant nothing else mattered. The rest of the world became indistinct; he had no worries; he experienced a complete and all-encompassing spiritual calm; he was a speck of dust floating, caught in a sunbeam; rose-coloured lights burst gently inside his head, filling him with warmth; at that moment he’d never felt so wanted or so loved.

  The eyes glowed up at him.

  This was complete serenity; his self was dissolving in an ocean of total love; the pulse in his neck bea
t with a low bass rhythm; he sensed his rich, red blood squeezing thickly through the arteries.

  Now the girl’s eyes turned sleepy, and loving. Come-to-bed eyes.

  ‘Oh, yes…’ The words breathed sweetly from her beautiful lips. ‘Yes…I want to go to bed with you. I want you —’

  The world exploded in a wash of hard light. Then his face smacked dully against something hard. He gasped with shock. His face was pressed to the cold, raw brick wall; the harsh light of the lamp glittered from crystals of saltpetre bleeding from the brickwork.

  ‘You believe now, don’t you?’ Electra said quietly. ‘You believe in the vampire?’

  Legs, arms, stomach shaking uncontrollably, he nodded; he was panting with shock. Now he realized Jack Black must have reached forward, grabbed hold of him, dragged him from the corpse and held him there against the wall, breaking the thing’s hypnotic hold over him.

  And behind him, there on the slab, beneath the brilliant glare of the halogen lamp, the dead thing twitched and grinned and giggled.

  ‘Now you believe,’ Electra breathed the words into his ear, ‘the question is, are you going to run away like your father? Or are you going to stay here and fight them?’

  3

  In the basement she stood alone.

  The shadows were alive; or at least it seemed that way to Bernice Mochardi. She flashed the torch from left to right, to the front of her, then behind her.

  She wished they’d hurry up and finish gawping at the damned corpse in the basement storeroom and get the hell upstairs; there she could make the most of the afternoon daylight.

  Christ, yes, she thought desperately, her heart beating fast, that’s what I want: I want to wallow in sunlight; I want to stand in the open and feel fresh air and the sun warm on my face.

  Shadows scuttled all around her feet.