by Simon Clark
She was outside the lift. She’d not been conscious of taking those three steps.
Nor conscious of her tightly booted feet touching the brick floor with tender little kissing sounds.
Nor the sound of her breathing.
Nor the pressure of the lacy material against the tips of her breasts.
But here I am, she thought, dazed, the walls of the basement seeming an immense distance away; as if she was viewing the world from another dimension.
She walked slowly forward — another three light steps, long skirts scraping against the brick floor.
She glanced back at the lift with its ornate cut-glass light covers and mirror, and plush piece of burgundy carpet that covered its floor.
Right now, the little lift seemed miles and miles away.
Her lips felt papery-dry when she licked them.
Her body had grown numb; that same feeling you get in your feet when you’ve knelt on the floor for too long.
She had no real compulsion to do so, but she found herself walking slowly forwards. As if she was walking in a dream. After just a few paces she entered the main body of the basement. It was brightly lit. There were the shelves she’d seen before, bearing the weight of bundles of old sheets, boxes of nails, old wine bottles, a toilet seat.
She walked on.
To her left was the locked door of the basement storeroom.
Inside there she’d seen that corpse-like thing with the ruined breasts.
Now she sensed it in there, dragging its bare feet across the floor.
Bernice walked slowly on — a beautiful princess from a fairy tale walking in a marvellous land of make-believe, her blood-red lips slightly parted, her eyes, lined with black, bright in her face. She glanced to the left and to the right, as if expecting the amazing to present itself for her amusement.
She smiled. Her mind was distant and dreamy and happy: this was what she was born to do.
Then she turned a corner and looked along the basement as it narrowed down to the steel doorway.
Only it was different now.
The doorway was open.
She shivered.
The cold air suddenly had teeth to bite her with. It was so cold it was painful.
She drew in a stuttering breath; her teeth clicked together; her hands gave an involuntary clench as if a sadist had forced her to lick a dead man’s open eye.
At that instant she came fully awake, snapping sharply from her trance.
She looked round the basement in horror; it was as if the walls had plunged at her in a rush. Where before they had seemed soft and warm and far away, now they were hard, brutally cold, and looked as if they’d clap together their brick palms and crush her, smashing her pulverized ribcage against her mangled heart.
Jesus Christ, why did I come down here, why did I come down here? Why did —
But the cold-hearted truth was that she was down here. They had lured her down here; as easily as her old boyfriend had got her drunk all those years ago, then sweet-talked her to his flat where the men had pawed the clothes from her back.
Only now there was the open steel door, the door that had once separated this basement from the passageway to — to hell, for all she knew.
She took two rapid steps forward. As if she needed to confirm that this was no illusion.
No.
The heavy steel door that had been padlocked for decades now gaped open.
The padlocks lay on the floor. They were, she saw, still locked. Someone, however, had done a thorough job of patiently sawing through the hasps.
She shivered. It was a long, painfully cold shiver. If she translated the ghastly feeling into a visual image that shiver would have been caused by a great thick-bodied slug, sliding across the bare skin of her stomach up towards her throat, leaving a slick trail of cold milky pus all across her breasts.
Get out of here, Bernice, get out!
As she turned to run, she glimpsed from the corner of her eye something pale moving from the shadows to stand in the opening left by the absence of the steel door.
She ran along the vaulted basement, past the door of the locked room that contained the creature.
Then she was inside the lift. It still contained the smell of the upper floors of the hotel. A clean dry smell, not like the cold stale air of the basement.
She hammered the buttons on the control panel.
In a second the doors would shut, the lift motor would hum, then she’d be riding back up to the safety of the upper floors (it didn’t matter which upper floor, any would do).
With her lace-clad fist she pounded the buttons.
Any second…any second…
Then terrible things happened.
The lights went out in the basement.
With a cry she looked out from the illuminated box that was the lift.
Beyond the lift doorway stretched the brick floor, softly illuminated by the lift light.
Beyond that: the darkness of the basement, an intense darkness that seemed to bloom with violet blossom the more she stared into it.
As she stared, those violet blossoms became veined with dark red as her mind frantically tried to make sense of the random pattern of shadows and darkness.
Then came a slithering sound.
The sound of feet shuffling slowly across the floor.
Then, bobbing whitely from the darkness, came white balls.
Or so it seemed at first.
Then she saw those white balls were naked heads, devoid of hair. Eyes blazed from beneath dark, bristling eyebrows.
Noses were cruelly hooked. The mouths parted, exposing teeth that were as sharp as knives.
‘Come on…come on!’ she yelled as she pounded at the lift buttons.
Come on, please.
Any second now the lift doors would close. She’d be safe. The confined space of the lift, brightly lit, would seem wonderfully cosy and warm.
I promise I won’t come down here again. I promise to be good. I promise to —
They fell on her from out of the darkness, a surge of white gleaming heads. Hands reached out; they were elongated, ghastly, pale.
Long fingers curled round her arms.
They pulled her from the lift.
She screamed.
9
In the hospital room the mobile telephone rang as the old man spoke in that whispery voice.
David quickly pulled the phone from his pocket and thumbed the receive button. ‘Yes?’
He heard Electra’s voice. ‘David. I think they’ve taken Bernice.’
For a moment he was unable to speak. Beyond the windows the wind blew harder; now it rose to a thin scream.
‘David?’ said Electra’s voice in his ear.
‘Yes. I’m still here.’
‘Are you coming back to the hotel?’
He realized that, absurdly, he was shaking his head as if she could see him there, sitting miserably hunched on the cheap plastic chair beside the old man. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘There isn’t enough time. I’m going up to my uncle’s house.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s where there’s an entrance to the cave.’
He sat there for a moment. At last he was aware that Electra was still calling his name on the telephone. ‘David. David?’
He hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket.
Deep down he knew he’d put off what he should have done a long, long time ago. More than a thousand years ago.
He felt the blood of his ancestors beating through his veins.
The time had come.
It was as simple and as inevitable as that.
CHAPTER 34
1
David left his uncle’s bedside before midnight. His neck felt hot and gritty; his eyes were sore from staring at the old man’s face as he hypnotically murmured out all he knew about the Leppingsvalt breed of vampire.
You can’t stake them through the heart, nephew; garlic doesn’t bother them; nor do fresh ro
se petals; holy water and crucifixes don’t matter a fig to them. But they are disturbed by bright lights — disturbed to the point of confusion, even disorientation. They shun bright daylight. Sunlight is particularly repellent to them. Hurts their dark-adapted eyes, you see. But the ill effects of light will only be temporary…
And so on and on until the words rattled around David’s brain like hot stones.
Right now he wanted to sit down with a hefty drink. Maybe vodka, or brandy mixed with port. Anything with a God-almighty kick.
But he knew he had work to do.
Oh, playing the Christ again, Dr Leppington, wheedled the voice at the back of his brain. Let the bastard town go hang itself. It’s not your concern. Leave the shitty little place to the vampires. Let them suck out whatever blood’s left in this crappy little hicksville.
He shook his head as he walked across the car park. No. You don’t walk away from this.
The wind blew hard now, screaming shrilly through the telephone wires; it rocked the trees until they groaned.
Empty crisp packets swept by him at head height. Above him ragged clouds sailed like life rafts desperately trying to escape this godforsaken piece of England.
As he unlocked the car door he was aware that eyes were watching him from the shadows; he knew whose they were. In a moment the vampires could have swept out at him, torn open his skin and sucked the blood from his flesh like a vulgar child sucking bathwater from a flannel.
He opened the car door.
No. They wouldn’t attack him yet.
They still needed him mortal. A man who could function in the daylight while leading his vampire hordes to wage war on the outside world.
It occurred to him that it might be best for everyone if he allowed them to think he would do that. That he, David Leppington, would willingly accept the role assigned to him. That he would become the leader of these undead: he, the last of the Leppingtons, would become the Vampire King.
He gave a sour smile as the words came to him:
Some men are born great; some have greatness thrust upon them…
Hell, some inheritance.
He fired up the Volvo’s two-litre engine, then swung the car out of the car park. The headlights cut a brilliant swathe through the night.
Within minutes he was pulling up outside his uncle’s house. It looked bleak and forbidding in the dark. The trees in the garden seemed to be waving him away as the wind pulled the branches this way and that. They were gesturing that it was madness to go any further; that all he would find here would be pain and, ultimately, death.
He paused for a moment, breathing deeply and looking into the darkness beyond the windscreen.
There was no going back now.
They had taken Bernice. She must be one of them now.
He gritted his teeth, angrily. How could they have lost her so easily?
Even now she might be peering at him from the bushes across the road, licking her lips; her eyes burning with hunger at the thought of his blood pulsing richly through his veins.
Steeling himself, he grabbed the flashlight by its pistol grip. Then he climbed out of the car.
2
His head still buzzed with what his uncle had told him. He knew more, a hell of a lot more, about these creatures now but that knowledge didn’t fill him with much optimism. He still didn’t know how he could destroy them.
He’d come to his uncle’s house in the vague hope that the steel fence in the cave might somehow still be miraculously intact; perhaps the dynamite his uncle had set hadn’t been powerful enough to stave in all that solid steelwork; in that case, the vampires would still be imprisoned underground. Failing that, he had the idea — again vague and undefined — that he might be able to set more dynamite to bring the roof of the cave down. Maybe that was the answer — just seal the monsters underground forever.
He pushed open the timber gate — the wind pushed it back as though the forces of nature were conspiring to keep him out of harm’s way.
But he knew this was the time of reckoning. He had to meet this danger head-on.
He walked along the path, shoulders hunched as the wind blasted down at him, screaming through the trees, howling across the roof of the house.
The house itself stood in darkness. The windows were blank as dead men’s eyes.
He shivered.
Kept on walking.
No going back, he told himself. No going back.
First he went to the old man’s workshop.
Maybe this was where the dynamite was stored.
But how the hell do you use dynamite? All he knew about dynamite was what he’d seen on television — probably from children’s cartoons as much as anything. Tom was always shoving sticks of dynamite into Jerry’s mousehole, lighting the fuse; then clever old Jerry the mouse would turn the tables, slotting the dynamite stick between the stupid cat’s toes and — BOOM!
Hey presto. The cat was left blackened and furless, a look of pained surprise on his feline face.
But to actually use the real stuff. To plant the dynamite in the right place so it would bring down a cave roof. Then to judge how much fuse to use. And what about detonators? He realized he could easily end up blowing himself to kingdom come.
He switched on the electric light in the workshop.
The place was pretty much as he’d seen it before. Just two days ago. Christ, that seemed like half a lifetime ago, when he’d stood here drinking his uncle’s industrial-strength tea.
The fires in the forge were long since out; there was now only a mound of brownish ash in the fire place. Every so often the wind caught the chimney and throo-ooomed; a strangely resonant sound.
As he looked around the place the wind-generated sound came like the call of some mournful spirit…throom-throom; the metal chimney canopy that came down like an inverted cone over the forge vibrated in sympathy.
He looked round the steel racks. Methylated spirits, iron-working tools, coils of rope, coils of electric cable, tin of Swarfega (that his uncle no doubt rubbed into his powerful hands to shift the dirt at the end of the day), steam iron that the old man must have been in the middle of repairing, boxes of nails, screws, washers, bolts (methodically sorted by size); a radio that he must have listened to while hammering to the rhythm of the music.
The place was meticulously tidy. It reflected his uncle’s orderly mind.
Lying on a metal shelf above the work bench, by itself and almost reverently laid upon a piece of folded cloth, was the broadsword the old man had been working on.
Since David’s first visit he must have put a good few more manhours into it. It still wasn’t finished but now the shape of the sword’s blade was complete, long and tapering to a point. The handle was still bare metal, but the sword’s pommel, a brass ball the size of a hen’s egg, had been welded in place; also the sword guard had been fitted. The whole thing was reminiscent of King Arthur’s Excalibur.
This was the Leppington version. What had his uncle called it? Helvetes. Yes, that was the name. Helvetes, meaning ‘bloody’ or ‘blood-drenched’.
Legend had it that it had been drawn from the belly of a fish that lived in a subterranean lake.
He touched the blade. The metal was still dull; the cutting edge hadn’t been sharpened.
David ran his thumb along his fingertips the way people do when they’re checking if a shelf or ornament is dusty. Only now David experienced a slight tingling in the ends of his fingers.
He touched the blade again. This time the tingle ran from the tip of his fingers to his wrist, then crackled up his forearm as if he’d touched the terminals of a heavy-duty battery.
Before he knew it he’d picked up the sword by its handle and was testing its weight and balance in his hands.
It felt right to be there. As if he’d owned the sword once before and only temporarily lost it.
He ran his fingers along its cutting edge. Too blunt. Much too blunt. It wouldn’t even cut a cucumber.
&
nbsp; Quickly he looked round the workshop. At the far side sat the electric bench grinder his uncle would use to resharpen tools.
His skin still tingled; he felt in gear now. Within moments he’d switched on the bench grinder; the abrasive grinding wheel began to spin.
He looked at it for a moment, frowning. He’d not touched one of these machines since he was fourteen, in metalwork classes at school.
Gingerly, he rested the blade against the white aluminium oxide wheel that was already spinning at over 3,000 r.p.m. Sparks flew in a brilliant shower.
He nodded and smiled to himself. Those metalwork lessons were coming back to him. He applied the blade again. Sparks cascaded down to the floor; he carefully angled the blade so the abrasive edge of the wheel would grind the metal down to a thin cutting edge that would be scalpel-sharp.
With the wind vrooming across the forge chimney, he screwed his eyelids almost shut — an expression of sheer concentration as much as partially closing his eyes against the dazzling shower of sparks. Then he worked.
3
Within seconds of being dragged from the lift in the hotel basement, Bernice was hauled through the now gaping doorway into the tunnel beyond.
Shock strangled any attempts at more screams beyond her first terrified shriek. She could hardly breathe with fright, never mind yell the roof down.
Her feet were whisked from under her; she felt wiry arms around her body and legs as she was carried horizontally in the way men might carry a long roll of carpet.
The darkness was absolute.
She heard the rasp of their heavy breathing. How many there were of them she didn’t know. Eight? Ten? Twenty?
The cold air of the tunnel chilled her face; fingers pressed tightly through the satin fabric of her dress to clamp against her legs.
Her mind spun; sparks shot behind her eyes; she struggled to gasp air down into her lungs; her heart drummed against her ribs.
As a child she’d watch those old adventure films where there was a car chase. What always preoccupied her was the part where the car crashes through the fence and plunges over the edge of the cliff. For a few seconds the driver of the car is there behind the steering wheel, staring out through the windscreen, as the car flies outward then downward in a long curving arc.