by Simon Clark
The shadows were playing games with her. No matter how quickly she shone the torch they always slipped away to lurk in some corner waiting to dart out at her face and —
Shut up, she told herself; your imagination is running away with you.
Taking a deep breath she began to pace the barrel vault of raw brick.
As she neared the end of the vault, the torch light shining ahead, lighting piles of junk, the old lavatory seats on the shelf, the rusty parts of a bed leaning against a wall, she noticed the metal door again.
Noticed it? No, it drew my eyes there.
Gingerly she edged towards it, feet grating on the brick floor. The two new padlocks gleamed in the light of the torch.
She imagined that the steel door was glass.
What would she see there?
Did something have its ear pressed to the metal, listening?
And beyond the listener, what then?
Perhaps a tunnel ran deep under the town, under the river, then wormed deeply under the hill to where George Leppington’s house stood like a fortress, awaiting the return of its lord and master?
She moved forward, drawn to the metal door.
Lightly, she rapped on the door. It shimmered with that chiming sound, reminding her of a tuning fork.
She tilted her head to one side.
What lay beyond the door?
A mystery.
A deep, unfathomable mystery full of purpling darkness. Pregnant with old magic.
Again, she raised her hand and lightly, oh so lightly, rapped on the door.
It was answered by a torrent of bangs. It sounded like a battering ram slammed against the door from the other side.
Clang…clang…clang…clang…
The thing could have been a monster bell that shook and boomed beneath a gigantic clapper.
She stared at the door, her eyes wide, painfully wide, the torchlight
blazing on the quivering surface as something at the other side of the door pounded to be let in.
She turned and ran from the door, torchlight flashing madly from floor, roof, wall, bed springs, sacks, old newspapers…
A figure emerged from the wall.
‘David?’ she gasped.
He nodded. His eyes were as grim as hell. ‘Upstairs. Quickly.’
She felt his hand grab her tightly just above the elbow. Seconds later both were clattering up the stairs.
4
Ninety seconds after that the four of them stood in the lobby just outside the basement door. Jack Black locked the door, his face expressionless as ever.
Now the silence was as palpable as the noise had been. Bernice’s ears hummed; she felt incredibly cold; her chest was tight as if her ribs were closing in, imprisoning her lungs like one of those rooms from an old film, a room that gets smaller and smaller as the walls creep together to crush the occupants. She took a deep breath.
David looked at her. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ She inhaled deeply trying to get air into her lungs. ‘Yes, I think so. Are you?’
He nodded, face grim, but she noticed the navy sweater was smeared white with saltpetre and he had a dirty mark on one cheek.
Electra rubbed her face as if trying to restore the circulation. Her eyes glittered with sheer fright. ‘Showtime, folks.’ She gave a little laugh that bordered on the hysterical. ‘Now was that showtime or was that showtime?’ She pulled a tissue from a box under the counter and dabbed the corner of her eyes. ‘Now…listen. I’m not going to open the bar this evening. There’s no other guests, so…so, the hotel will be closed for tonight. Would you help me put up notices on the doors, Bernice?’
Bernice nodded, her teeth clicking as shivers rippled through her body.
After a moment David said, ‘Once you’ve done that we need to hold a council of war. We have to discuss what we’re going to do next.’
Black gave a grunt. ‘You’re the boss.’
David nodded. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’
He looked at the three faces as they watched him. They were depending on him now. Come what may, he had to come up with an answer to all this.
CHAPTER 28
1
The late afternoon sun shone down on the town of Leppington.
It turned the brick flanks of the slaughterhouse the same colour as the skin of an orange. A huge crow circled in the sky high above the town like some ancient omen of impending disaster. It glided with outstretched wings that were somehow crooked and when it turned its head to one side it resembled a black feathered swastika hanging there, borne up by cold airstreams.
The train that David and Bernice were supposed to board for an evening in Whitby pulled out of the station. It left without them, the wheels clacking hard against steel tracks that reflected the light of the sun. The train picked up speed quickly as if it knew that events as extraordinary as they were terrible would soon erupt in the town. Now it was eager to get out of the place before nightfall.
Maximilian, the Down’s syndrome son of Sad Sam, the man who organized the poker parties in his house, walked slowly down Main Street, the Burger King crown hanging from his hand. A gang of youths had thrown stones at him as he’d crossed the park to buy beer for his dad’s poker party tonight. Then they’d touched his ears with lighted cigarettes. After that they’d taken the beer money from him and walked away, calling him names.
He was used to all that now.
At the special school kids used to come to the railings and call him. ‘Come on, mate,’ they’d shout. ‘We want to be your friend. Come over here, we’ve got some chocolate for you.’ When he got close enough they’d spit at him.
Then they ran away, laughing.
Maximilian’d walk back to the classroom, his face, hair and clothes glistening with beads of gob that hung there like white pearls.
Outside the Station Hotel he paused. Beneath his feet was the heavy-duty iron grating of a storm-water drain. He looked down.
Something like white footballs bobbed through the darkness beneath his feet. They flowed from the direction of the slaughterhouse towards the hotel. He watched for a moment, almond-shaped eyes impassively taking in the white balls veined with purple lines. One ball stopped, then swivelled.
Maximilian gently swung his arm that held the cardboard Burger King crown. The white football had two eyes — they were dark and sunken. It had a thin nose; and a mouth that looked like it had been made by the wild slash of an axe. The teeth in the mouth were large.
And sharp.
Maximilian stepped forward, placing his feet on the iron grille two metres above the bobbing heads. The face was lowered beneath his feet. He saw only the top of the head as it moved with the others.
The wind blew. Papers and pop cartons skidded along the street. A beer can rolled by, reminding Maximilian he had to go home and face his father’s rage.
‘You’ve lost the money? You’ve lost the money! I don’t believe you could be so careless, you useless blood-sucking bastard
For Maximilian Hart life was an unremitting waterfall of mysteries. He understood little of what people said to him, or why they did things: why the trains clanked and rumbled out of the station, or why they rolled in again, or why people came and went and spat at him and stole his money. He knew none of the devious strategies employed by those people with that all-important one less chromosome.
That one less chromosome that, to him, endowed them with dog-like faces with their prominent noses and thin-lidded eyes.
In a few short hours, in the dark watches of the night, Maximilian Hart would face the greatest challenge of his short life. In the face of that coming danger the only weapon he would have at his disposal was that same plodding stoicism with which he’d faced past mysteries and endured past dangers.
With the cardboard crown swinging limply from his fingers he plodded on down the street.
Sunday afternoon. The time was a little after five.
2
While Electra locked t
he revolving door at the main entrance, Bernice taped up notices on the side doors that led into the public bars. Written in black marker-pen on sheets of Station Hotel letter-headed paper they read simply: SUNDAY. HOTEL AND BARS REGRETFULLY CLOSED TONIGHT DUE TO TECHNICAL FAULT
Technical fault? Wasn’t that an excuse-all?
A second cousin to a drunk excusing his actions by saying he was tired and emotional.
The wind blew, flapping the paper in Bernice’s hand as she taped it to the door. Her hands were still shaking. The tape preferred to stick to her fingers rather than to the paper.
Hell.
The thing lying down there in the cellar: she couldn’t get it out of her mind; it’d looked like a corpse; that white and ghastly face; for heaven’s sake, its nipples had been torn off. The sight of the dead girl had scared her more than she could adequately describe.
Then Bernice had heard the thunderous pounding on the metal door.
Something had been on the other side of the door. One of those vampire creatures.
It had wanted to come inside, all right.
It wanted you, Bernice, she told herself. And right now I’m just supposed to walk calmly back into the hotel, am I?
Fear oozed through her; a cold fear that stained her soul blue with dread.
As she pressed pieces of tape to the corners of the notice she glanced out into the street. A Downs-syndrome man stood on the pavement gazing down into the drain. What looked like a cardboard crown dangled from his fingers.
She knew him by sight. If he looked up at her she’d nod and smile.
My God, so brain-washed are we by society that we still continue the social niceties. What she really wanted to do was scream and beat
her forehead against that brick wall over there.
The man didn’t look her way and continued to walk slowly away from the hotel.
Lucky man, she thought. Maybe I should do the same. Just walk away from it all. This isn’t my battle.
But deep down she knew it was. Invisible threads bound her to this town, to this building, to these people. They could only be broken when…
She shivered, her arms goose bumping.
Those threads that bind me here will only be broken when all this madness has run its course.
With the poster taped in place she walked quickly back into the yard behind the hotel. Cloud scudded across the sky overhead, with little rents in it that sometimes allowed a beam of sunlight to come shafting through. It was so late in the afternoon that, by now, those rare shafts of sunlight shone at such an oblique angle they were almost horizontal, looking like golden pathways in the sky.
She liked the brightness of the light and the freshness of the air.
The hotel in comparison seemed like a prison holding the air captive until it became stale and, lately, almost unbreathable.
As she walked across the back yard she saw the gateway through to the river bank. The water gushing over the rocks sounded pleasantly soothing to her ears.
She crossed the yard to the gateway and stepped through onto the soft earth of the banking. A path led down to the water’s edge just a dozen paces away. Overhanging the waters that foamed white around the rocks was a fringe of weeping-willow trees.
The idea of just sitting there for a while seemed so enticing. She could spend a moment or two just to refresh her scorched nerves, couldn’t she? Heaven knew she’d earned it.
3
She stepped through the gateway. The path turned sandy as she followed it down to the water’s edge. Rain had swollen the river and it swept along its channel like a living thing.
A beam of sunlight struck the river where it slipped across the water to play across her feet.
‘Bernice, why did it take you so long to find me?’
With a startled gasp she looked up.
Before her eyes even locked onto the figure she knew who it would be.
She whispered, ‘You’re Mike.’
‘I knew you’d remember me.’ The voice was pleasantly charming. Also, there was an intimacy there that conjured a thrilling tingle across the skin of her stomach.
For there, in the deep shadow, where the willow branches hung thickest, stood a man dressed in white. He seemed little more than a shadow himself. All she could make out was a pale wash of blond hair and the slivery twinkle of a pair of eyes shining from the gloom.
No more than ten paces separated them. She took a step back.
‘I think it’s time you and me had a talk, Bernice,’ came the gently accented American voice. A voice so soft and whispery it made her feel like she was falling into a gorgeously soft bed. ‘You will sit here and talk to me, won’t you, Bernice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look, I’ve made a space for you on this branch next to me. We can sit here, swinging our legs, and talking until the cows come home, can’t we?’ The voice was good-humoured, eager to be kind to her. ‘Sit down here, Bernice, where I can see you properly.’
‘How did you know my name?’
‘Ah, Bernice Mochardi. Room 406.’
‘How do you know all that?’
Something hard and silvery glittered in the man’s shadowy hand. ‘Even I haven’t learnt to walk through walls. I have a key to the hotel. Late at night when everyone’s sound, sound asleep, I tiptoe in. Sometimes I look at the visitors’ book. Sometimes I tiptoe upstairs. Do you know something, Bernice?’
‘What?’ She felt light-headed, drowsy, and so deliciously warm. ‘You’re staying in my old room. I once slept in your bed. I think that forges a bond between us, doesn’t it?’
‘I guess.’
‘And do you know something else?’
‘No. What?’
‘I’d really like to kiss you, Bernice.’
In the hotel kitchen David talked to Electra. She’d tipped pasta shells into a pan of boiling water and was commenting, ‘An army marches on its stomach; even a titchy four-man army like ours.’ She stirred briskly. ‘Will you pass me the salt, please, David?’
At that moment Jack Black walked from the hotel lobby into the kitchen. His fists were clenched. Veins stood out on his scalp and in his neck. His eyes locked forward on the back door.
Suddenly, he ran at the door, charged it, swung it open with a crash, then ran across the yard, boots pounding the ground hard.
‘Hell, what’s he seen?’ David asked. ‘Did you see the look on his face?’
‘Something’s wrong.’ Electra’s face paled. ‘Where’s Bernice?’
David ran for the door, too. In five seconds he was racing across the yard after Black. Cloud had settled low over the town, drawing down a premature dusk.
David saw Black running down a path to the edge of the river. There stood Bernice, staring trancelike into the shadows of the tree.
Black landed on the dirt shore of the river, his big feet hitting the ground hard. As David picked his way down the steep path he saw Black lunge into the shadows cast by the willow trees.
For a second David thought he’d caught hold of some huge wild cat.
There was a furious hissing snarl from the thing. It moved like oiled lightning, wrapping its limbs about Black’s shoulders.
The big tattooed man twisted, throwing the thing so it landed at David’s feet.
David took one look at the white bloodless face and knew what it was.
It bounded effortlessly to its feet again, snarling and hissing.
For an instant David thought the thing would spring at his face, its long fingernails clawing at his skin.
Instead it whirled round and launched itself at Bernice who looked as if she was just waking from a dream. The thing could rip out her throat in a second.
David dived forward like he was diving into a pool, both arms straight out.
With a bone-crunching concussion he hit the monster in the back. The momentum of his own body knocked it forward off balance.
A second later he was sprawling on the stones at the water’s edge
; with the creature. It seemed all arms and hissing face. And it moved faster than David could actually see.
Now it was on top of him, its face just centimetres from his own; the mouth hissed; its eyes blazed with a mixture of fury and exultation.
‘Leppington…LEPPINGTON!’ The hissing became a bellow.
The monster’s mouth opened wide, exposing strong white teeth.
For a second it seemed to David as if he saw through the creature’s eyes. He saw his own thick artery pulsing with blood in his throat.
The concussion that came next winded him.
He looked up to see Black stamp in the middle of the creature’s back. Black wore a grim expression on his face. He raised his boot again, then brought it down as if trying to crush some gigantic beetle.
The thing roared; its back arched; the head lifted; David felt the creature’s hot breath on his face; smelt the breath — a dirty smell suggestive of neglected dustbins in summer.
Now Black reached down and tugged the creature from David. The creature swung an arm out, catching Black across the face. He staggered under the sheer force of the blow, but didn’t fall.
With a huge effort Black pushed the creature as it spat and hissed.
Gritting his teeth and screwing shut his eyes with sheer effort, Black threw the monster backward into the river. The waters swallowed the thing with barely a splash.
Panting, David struggled up onto his knees. He stared at the foaming rapids, expecting to see a pair of white arms followed by that bloodless head breaking the surface.
Nothing did emerge.
There was only the headlong rush of water pouring down towards the sea.
‘Thank God,’ David gasped at Black. ‘You’ve killed it.’
‘No such luck,’ Black grunted. ‘Bring Mochardi back to the hotel with you.’ With that terse instruction he turned round and stomped up the banking to where Electra stood watching them, her dark hair blowing out in the breeze.
For a moment David stood there, his legs as weak as water and his stomach trembling. He knew the shock of the encounter with that vampire, or monster, or whatever the hell it was, had started to bite.