Vampyrrhic

by Simon Clark

  He shook his head. ‘They don’t like it when it gets daylight. They stay where it’s dark.’

  Electra felt a buzz of astonishment. ‘Don’t tell me you can read their minds?’

  ‘Not read. I feel what they feel.’

  ‘You mean you can empathize with the vampires?’

  ‘Empathize?

  ‘You can tune into their emotions — know instinctively if they’re unhappy, hungry, restless?’

  ‘Sometimes. It comes and goes.’

  ‘What are they feeling now?’

  ‘They don’t like the light. So they’ll find somewhere dark.’

  ‘Where?’

  He shrugged. ‘Anywhere gloomy.’

  Electra slipped out the clutch and the van bumped off the grass verge and away down the hillside road towards town.

  She shot Black a glance. His tattooed face was as inscrutable as ever. ‘Can you tell what I’m thinking now?’

  He shrugged that enigmatic shrug. ‘Not really. It comes and goes.’

  ‘Jack, what’s it like to read minds?’

  ‘It’s not a trick.’ He sounded defensive.

  ‘I know. I just wondered what it feels like to be able to tune in to other people’s thoughts.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ He shot her a glance with his mean-looking eyes. ‘It’s like this.’ He reached forward, switched on the van’s radio and prodded the pre-sets at random. In a quick succession there were bursts of music, a DJ’s voice, then a snatch of news, then a weather report, an advertisement for car insurance; it added up to a series of meaningless fragments of voices and music and static.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s the nearest I can show you what it’s like.’

  ‘But sometimes you hear more?’

  ‘Sometimes, not much. All I can get from you is a word here, a word there; then the thoughts come into my head of a guy down the road and he’s thinking what he’s going to eat for his dinner, or he’s got an itch on the end of his cock and he’s wondering if he’s got the clap; then another voice comes just jolting in, you know, like interference on a radio, and you hear a girl thinking that her boyfriend’s cheating on her, then I get your voice wishing you were in London working on that television programme, then that’s all mixed up with my mother’s voice when I was a few hours old and she’s thinking “the little bastard, why didn’t I have you pulled out when I got the chance; I could have fucking aborted you myself with a fucking knitting needle,” and she’s looking down at this baby in this cot in the hospital, and I know that baby’s me, and I can hear my mother’s voice going round and around in her head, “I gotta have a fix, I gotta do smack, I’m cracking up inside and all that fucking little bastard wants is to suck on my tit” and that’s when she takes me out of the cot and throws me at the wall.’ He suddenly stopped talking and ran his finger along the scar that ran like a spectacle arm

  from the corner of his eye to his ear. ‘They believed her when she said she dropped me by accident. But I can see it all through her eyes and I can remember her thoughts and I can remember the way her stomach and her arms and her legs were going into cramps because she needed another shot of heroin. And then I see her boiling up a kettle of water and pouring it all over me.’ He gave a sudden grin that was savagely inappropriate. Only his eyes stayed icily cold. ‘The nurses saw that one, though. So that was the end of my loving mother — as far as I was concerned, anyway.’

  ‘So you’ve been a telepath ever since you were born?’

  He nodded.

  She shook her head wonderingly. ‘It’s a wonder you haven’t gone crazy!’

  ‘I have.’ He shot her that huge, wild grin again. ‘Why do you think I look like this? Why do you think I’ve tattooed my face and my neck and my eyelids over and over and over…’

  He broke off to stare out of the window as they drove along Main Street. His eyes glittered strangely. Electra reached out and rested the palm of her hand on his knee.

  She thought he’d flinch away but he didn’t move. She felt the heat of his body through the material of the jeans and the hard muscle above the knee. ‘Jack,’ she said softly, ‘I think we’re both strangers in a strange land. Why don’t we look after each other?’

  She glanced at him as he gave a small nod, his head still turned so he stared out through the passenger window.

  ‘And maybe,’ she continued in a small voice, ‘when this is all over we can stay friends. And perhaps you can stay on at the hotel?’

  He said nothing, but she saw his Adam’s apple bob slightly in his throat. That was his only concession to a display of emotion.

  Ahead, she saw the brick bulk of the Station Hotel. Already people were on the streets — postmen, delivery personnel, a couple of train drivers ambling across the market square in the direction of the station, knapsacks on their shoulders containing Thermos flasks and packs of sandwiches.

  It was six o’clock on a Monday morning.

  Most people were waking now from their dreams — some from nightmares — but Electra knew her and her friends’ nightmare was far from over.

  Today, they would have to spend their daylight hours preparing for the next night when they would do battle with the vampire hordes that swarmed through their lair beneath the town.

  She parked the van at the side of the road. After Jack Black’s torrent of words he’d reverted to his usual stony silence.

  The wind gusted round her as she climbed out of the van. She heard its drone as it rushed around the towers of the hotel. Again she could imagine she was listening to the groan of lost souls in the wind: the sound bleak, mournful, shot through and through with despair.

  As Electra, with Black at her side, hurried towards the hotel, she felt her mind coming into focus. It was a sensation she hadn’t properly experienced since her days working on the TV programme when the minutes were ticking away to the deadline of the next broadcast: when all the material had to be pulled together into a single coherent script for the presenters. Oddly, for the first time in years, she felt fully in control of her life again. She knew what she had to do: apply her sharp analytical mind to mounds of scrappy information relating to local folklore, and then marshal those disparate facts into something they could use. David Leppington said that information would be their weapon against the monsters. He was right.

  Feeling the rush of energy singing through her veins, she swung open the hotel door and marched across the foyer. It’s time to go on the offensive, she thought, enjoying that buzz of exhilaration. No more hiding in locked rooms. This is where we fight back.

  2

  Bernice walked along the tunnel. By now daylight filtered through the grates set above her head. From time to time she heard cars pass by; then she’d glance up, seeing the undersides of their chassis, tyres, exhaust pipes, the boxy shapes of fuel tanks. She’d shout but no one seemed to hear.

  She did think about stopping and trying somehow to reach one of the grates — this would mean climbing the tunnel walls — but she was gripped by the urge to keep moving. If she stayed in one place too long she was afraid the vampires would track her down. In fact, with every few steps she took she would glance back, expecting to see the white naked heads come bobbing after her out of the shadows.

  She moved quickly, her booted feet clicking against the brick floors that were sometimes bone-dry or sometimes covered with a thin skin of water that splashed up against the hem of her long satin skirt. Her heart beat steadily, her breath showed a brilliant white in the pools of light beneath the iron grilles.

  There’s a chance I might find my way back to the hotel basement, she told herself hopefully. In a matter of seconds I’ll be through that doorway and run across the basement floor to the safety of the lift. She could almost feel that warm dry air of the hotel and David’s welcoming hug; she imagined Electra pouring a reviving brandy while excitedly asking what had happened to her.

  These thoughts helped her. Especially when the drains above her ended and
she had to plunge into the next section of tunnel in complete darkness without knowing just what might lurk there. Waiting.

  3

  With daylight creeping into the mouth of the cave David paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The three men Black had brought with him had worked without a break — they were an unsavoury looking bunch who could have been small-town crooks — which, he guessed, they were. They’d done what they’d been told to do, however. The wall was complete, blocking the cave from top to bottom. David now worked on the brick buttress that would reinforce the wall.

  The wall looked solid enough. He was confident that the creatures couldn’t force a way through. Although he decided to keep guard here for a few hours until the mortar between the stone blocks of the wall had begun to properly set.

  There, gleaming in the light of the lanterns, was the sword his uncle had made. The cutting edge was sharp now; the throbbing in the ball of his thumb from the sword’s cut was testament to that. But could the sword do any real damage to the vampires that were now probably sleeping beneath ground?

  He hoped for all their sakes it would.

  And it wouldn’t be long before he put it to the test.

  He wiped the sweat again from his eyes and returned to mixing more mortar for the bricks.

  The time was 6:30 a.m.

  4

  Electra dissolved white powder into a glass of Coca-Cola.

  I’m not doing this to get high, she told herself, just to keep awake. The effects of cocaine inhaled through the nose are almost instantaneous. Dissolved in liquid and ingested through the stomach lining the effect would be slower and less dramatic.

  Taking occasional sips of the now scummy-looking Coca-Cola she set to work. For years she’d accumulated books on local folklore; she also had David’s copy of The Leppington Family: Fact and Legend by Gertrude H. Leppington, which chronicled the family’s mythical past from when they were known as Leppingsvalt to the latter-day Leppingtons when family interests centred around the slaughterhouse and cannery.

  At the desk in her apartment, she flipped open the laptop computer and powered up. A glance at the window told her the sun had now made it above the hills that surrounded the town like the ramparts of a fortress. Shreds of cloud driven by the wind streamed across the sky. I’m already racing against the clock, she told herself; there were perhaps another dozen hours of daylight before dark. But, strangely, it was a good feeling — a very good feeling indeed.

  She took another sip of the Coca-Cola.

  ‘Need anything doing?’ Jack Black asked, watching her from the doorway.

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve posted new notices on the doors telling the staff and any potential guests we’re closed for today. Why don’t you try and get some sleep?’

  ‘No. I’m not tired. Want a coffee?’

  She held up the glass of Coke. ‘I’ve something a little more potent than caffeine. Oh, there is something you could do for me.’ She looked across as he stood there flexing his massive fists as the tension began to cramp his muscles.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You could sharpen the carving knives in the kitchen.’

  He nodded, his face stony. But she knew he’d realized this time that those knives wouldn’t be used to prepare a meal.

  She watched him go, then she returned to the books. As she twisted the swivel chair back, she caught the glass of Coke with her hand. Some slopped out onto a book.

  ‘Hell…keep a cool head, Electra, old girl.’ There was a box of tissues on the desk and she tugged a couple out and began to mop the spilt drink from the title page of spinster Leppington’s book.

  She used the tissue to absorb the drops of Coke that stood in black beads just below the words Fact and Legend. Then she wiped the page at the bottom where the drink had dripped across the name and address of the company that had printed the book.

  She read the name of the printer. It was a local firm — Archibald McClure & Sons Limited, Whitby (founded 1897).

  Quickly, she binned the moist tissues and returned to the computer, opening a new file. As she began to type the word VAMPIRE, she suddenly stopped and looked back at the title page of the book.

  The printer’s name seemed to leap out at her in great black type:

  ARCHIBALD McCLURE & SONS LIMITED

  She frowned for a moment, unsure why it had caught her attention. The skin on her arms tingled. Something was wrong, only she didn’t know what.

  Quickly she checked the publication date of the book. It was 1957.

  Then she was on her feet, hurrying across the room to where a framed document hung on the wall. It was a menu printed specially for a Christmas dinner at the hotel in 1960. Her father had had it framed because a local girl had been guest of honour; she’d enjoyed a brief year or two of fame as a singer and Broadway actress. But she wasn’t the reason that Electra scanned the menu so avidly. She was checking the name of the printer at the bottom.

  When she found the name she read it twice, three times, then thoughtfully tapped her fingertips against her lips and whispered, ‘I’ll be damned…you devious creature, you.’

  Five seconds later she strode into the hotel kitchen where Black was sharpening knives. In one hand she held David’s book, the Leppington family history, in the other the keys to the van.

  Black looked up. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said, feeling her body blaze with excitement. ‘I’ve just smelt a rat — a big two-legged rat. Come on, we’re going down to Whitby.’

  5

  Bernice Mochardi felt her way through what seemed to be a stone archway. How deep underground she was she didn’t know. The darkness was absolute. She groped her way blindly, using her fingertips to feel her way forwards. Any second she expected to reach out and touch smooth, cold skin. A face perhaps. Or a hand.

  Then the things would fall on her, biting.

  She breathed deeply, trying to steady the mad fury of her heart that clamoured inside her chest.

  Fear heightened her sense of hearing, so that every rustle of her skirts or scrape of her heel against the stone floor sounded like thunder.

  Now she sensed she was no longer in a tunnel. This was a confined space.

  Perhaps a basement, she thought with a sudden surge of optimism. If it’s a basement I can find my way up into the house. I’ll be safe.

  Her fingertips felt the rough brick walls; a nail or peg caught the palm of her hand. Then she could feel what seemed to be a line of stone shelves.

  Breath coming in excited spurts, stomach trembling, she quickly groped her way through darkness to another wall.

  Then rough brick gave way to smooth timber panels. It had to be a door.

  She found the door handle and twisted it.

  Damn. It wouldn’t budge. Perhaps the mechanism had rusted solid.

  She began to pound on the door. She wanted to yell: Down here! I’m down here! Help! Help! But she was trembling so much she could barely breathe, never mind cry for help.

  She beat the door with her fists, sending the noise of her pounding echoing away into the darkness.

  At that moment a hand rested on her shoulder. Now she found her voice.

  She screamed.

  6

  ‘Why are we going to Whitby?’ Black asked Electra as he drove the van out of town.

  ‘We’re going to visit a Mr McClure of Archibald McClure and Sons. They’re a firm of printers the hotel’s used for years.’

  ‘So why are they important?’

  Electra smiled at the brutish profile. Jack Black didn’t waste energy on tact. ‘Archibald McClure and Sons are the same company that printed this book.’

  ‘The Leppington family history? So?’

  ‘So, back at the hotel I noticed a discrepancy at the front of the book. It was supposedly printed in 1957, and the printer’s name is given as Archibald McClure and Sons Limited.’

  ‘And that’s meant to be important?’

  ‘Enor
mously important. You see, there’s a framed menu in my study for a formal dinner given by the mayor in 1960. There the printer’s name is given as Archibald McClure and Sons — not Archibald McClure and Sons Limited. Do you see?’

  Black accelerated to overtake a tractor. ‘Sure I see. They missed off the word “Limited” on the menu — why’s that so crucial?’

  ‘It is crucial,’ she said, ‘because this printing firm only became a limited company in the last few years. Exactly when I don’t know. But when they printed the menu in 1960 they were still unincorporated, that means they didn’t use the word “Limited” in their name. But for some reason the word “Limited” has been added to their name in a book printed three years earlier than that in 1957. You follow?’

  ‘Do I hell. It’s probably just a printing cock-up.’

  ‘Believe me, Jack, that’s no cock-up.’

  ‘Then they stuck in the word “Limited” to make the name sound better?’

  ‘Nope. A company would be breaking the law to add the word

  “Limited” when they’ve not been incorporated under the incorporation acts.’

  ‘What’s that mean? In English this time?’

  She smiled and lightly touched his knee. ‘It means that this,’ she held up the copy of The Leppington Family: Fact and Legend, ‘this, my dear Jack, is a fake and a forgery.’

  7

  Bernice had screamed so loud it felt as if the lining of her throat would slough completely off like the skin of a snake.

  And when the hands had closed around her flailing wrists she had clenched her teeth, inadvertently biting her own tongue.

  She pulled back from the restraining hands, her eyes wide, but she saw nothing in the dark.

  ‘Don’t be frightened. Please don’t be frightened,’ came a gentle voice from out of the darkness.

  ‘Leave me alone, please leave me alone.’

  ‘But I want to help you.’