The Vampire of Downing Street and Other Stories

by Amy Cross

  “I don't live in that house,” I reply, “I live in the house on the corner, on the little hill, with the tall roof.”

  “That is the house, dumbass,” she replies, causing the other girls – who can apparently hear every word she says – to start laughing. “My brother knew Mary Madison. He said she was really weird.” She pauses again. “Just like you.”

  “I'm not weird.”

  “Whatever. Apparently Mary was crazy. My brother says she told people there was something hiding in the house.”

  I pause for a moment, feeling a faint shiver running down my spine. “Like what?”

  She shrugs.

  “What exactly did she tell him?” I ask.

  “That something was hiding in there.”

  “Yes, but what?”

  “I don't know. She disappeared before she could tell him more about it.” Turning, she starts to walk away.

  “Hey!” I shout, getting to my feet and hurrying after her. Grabbing her arm, I step past her. “This is important! What did she say was hiding in there?”

  “I don't know, dumbass!”

  Again, the other girls start laughing.

  “Whatever it was,” Chloe continues, “it's probably what killed her parents and made her disappear. I mean, that's the most obvious thing, and the most obvious thing is usually what's actually true.”

  “You're stupid,” I tell her. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Maybe you can ask your Mummy,” she replies, with a grin, before turning to the other girls. “She calls her parents Mummy and Daddy, like a little baby!”

  “Shut up!” I tell her.

  “Most people call them Mum and Dad,” she continues, turning back to me. “Calling them Mummy and Daddy is, like, retarded and babyish. I guess that makes you the retarded girl living in the weird house.”

  “Shut up!” I tell her again, stepping forward and pushing her hard in the chest.

  ***

  “Jesus Christ, Cally,” Mummy – no, Mum – says as she pulls the door shut on her side of the car, “your first day?”

  “I'm sorry,” I tell her, close to tears, “it was only -”

  “Your first day at a new school,” she continues, “and when I come to pick you up, I'm asked to speak to the headmaster because you've already got into a fight during lunch!”

  “It wasn't a fight! I just pushed her!”

  “I saw that other girl's elbow, Cally. All the skin was scraped off!”

  “It was an accident!”

  “You just admitted you pushed her deliberately!”

  “What does deliberately mean?”

  “On purpose.”

  “I didn't mean to hurt her!” Looking down at my lunchbox, I realize that I barely even got to finish any of it. I'm desperately trying not to cry again, after crying while I was in the headmaster's office, but I feel like there are more tears just waiting to flow down my cheeks. “She was saying stupid things all the time and she wouldn't stop.”

  “That doesn't matter, Cally. No matter what anyone says to you, it's never a justification for violence!” She mutters something under her breath as she checks herself in the rear-view mirror for a moment. “You've never done anything like this before, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was strictly a one-off. Let's try to make that true, okay?”

  “I didn't mean to hurt her!”

  “You're lucky you didn't get into more trouble,” she continues, starting the engine. “This is completely unacceptable!”

  “She said I'm stupid,” I reply, wiping away a fresh tear, “and that we live in a house where someone went missing and her parents died!”

  “Well -” She pauses, seemingly a little concerned. “Well, you don't need to listen to people who say things like that,” she adds, reaching up and rubbing the back of her neck yet again. “You're not stupid and we live in a lovely, happy house that's going to be even lovelier and happier once we've finished redecorating it. Okay?”

  “So no-one died there?”

  “Cally -”

  “And someone named Mary Madison didn't disappear there?”

  She sighs.

  “And Mary didn't say there was -”

  “Enough!” she shouts, turning to me with real anger in her eyes. “I want you to just sit quietly all the way home and think about what you did! Okay?”

  Sniffing back tears, I realize that she's angrier than I've ever seen her.

  “I'm sorry,” she adds, “I shouldn't have raised my voice, but...” As she starts to drive the car out of the parking lot, she seems lost for words for a moment. “This is the last thing we need right now,” she says finally, keeping her eyes on the road as she reaches up with one hand and rubs the back of her neck. “There's nothing wrong with our new house, Cally. You're just going to have to grow up a little bit, okay. Just...?”

  I wait for her to finish, but she seems lost in thought. As she continues to rub her neck, I think I can see a faint lump under her skin.

  Chapter Five

  “Yellow,” Dad says as he pushes the door open. “See? Say hello to yellow!”

  Stepping forward, I look around my bedroom and see that while I was at school, they painted the walls bright yellow. I'm not totally sure that I like it, but it's better than the bare, stained blues and grays of before.

  “What about the carpet?” I ask, looking down at the floorboards.

  “Mummy and I were talking about that,” he replies, “and we were thinking we might not buy carpets for this house. We'll just get the boards treated, since they look so nice.”

  I turn and look up at him. “It's not Mummy,” I tell him, “it's Mum. That's what I want to call her from now on.”

  “Oh,” he replies, clearly a little surprised. “So am I not Daddy anymore?”

  I shake my head.

  “I'm Dad?”

  “I'm not a baby,” I point out.

  “No, you're not,” he continues, patting me on the back before turning and heading back out to the landing. “Well, we did your room first so that you'd feel more at home. The paint's dry, so you can start making it your own now. How does that sound?”

  “What's wrong with Mummy's neck?” I ask, before correcting myself: “I mean, what's wrong with Mum's neck.”

  “Nothing,” he replies, frowning. “Not as far as I know, anyway. Why do you ask?”

  “She's always doing this,” I tell him, reaching up and rubbing the back of my neck. “Haven't you noticed? And there's a little lump.”

  “Well, I...” He pauses. “I'm sure it's nothing, but I'll ask her. Now get on with sorting out your new room, Cally. Dinner'll be ready in an hour, and you want to have everything done by bedtime, don't you?”

  Once he's gone downstairs, I head over to one of the boxes with my stuff in it, and I start pulling off the tape. A moment later, however, I realize that there's something else I want to check first. Heading out onto the landing, I look up at the spot above my bedroom door and see that although they've painted over the carved letters, they haven't filled them in, so the word is still up there.

  “Tenderling,” I whisper, glancing both ways along the landing.

  ***

  “There won't be a repeat tomorrow, will there?” Mum says as she scoops some sauce from the bowl and drops it onto my plate, and then slides the plate across the dining table toward me. “No more fights?”

  “It wasn't a fight,” I whisper, feeling as if she won't ever stop telling me off. “I just pushed her.”

  “You should've seen the other girl's elbow,” she continues, turning to Dad. “It was a really nasty scrape.”

  “She probably just fell awkwardly,” he suggests.

  “Don't make excuses for her!”

  “I'm not,” he replies, turning to me. “You understand that what you did was wrong, don't you?”

  I nod.

  “Then I think it's sorted,” he continues, glancing at Mum as she rubs the back of her neck.
“Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill.” He watches her for a moment, as if he's worried. “Are you okay, Julie?”

  “Me? I'm fine, why?”

  “You just keep doing this,” he adds, rubbing the back of his neck to show her. “Cally noticed it earlier, and she's right.”

  “It's nothing,” she mutters, picking up her knife and fork and starting to cut up her food. “Now who's making a big deal out of little things?”

  “You do it all the time since we moved in here,” I tell her.

  “We all do lots of things all the time,” she replies, sounding annoyed.

  “As long as nothing's wrong,” Dad continues. “You mustn't -”

  “Can we drop it?” she snaps, before sighing. “Please, we're supposed to be having a nice family dinner, not scrutinizing one another's mannerisms in excruciating detail. Or do you want me to start asking why you two do things?”

  I glance at Dad, and I can see that he's surprised by her tone.

  “It was just something we noticed,” he says finally, “but you're right, there's no need to keep on about it. Sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up.”

  No-one says much for the rest of dinner.

  ***

  She spends a long time in the bathroom later in the evening. After dinner, she goes in there for a while and then comes out, but she only watches TV for a few minutes before going back in again. I start counting, and she goes to the bathroom seven times in two hours, and eventually even Dad starts to notice.

  “You okay?” he asks one time when she comes back.

  “Fine,” she mutters. “You don't need to keep asking.”

  And so on, all evening, until she tells me that it's time for me to go to bed. At that point, I start putting away my Lego, but by the time I'm finished she's already gone back to the bathroom, and this time she stays in there for longer than usual.

  “What's she doing in there?” I whisper to Dad.

  “Nothing,” he replies, glancing over to the door. “Why don't you go and brush your teeth?”

  “Because Mum's in there.”

  “I'm sure she won't mind you going in,” he continues. “Just make sure to knock first.”

  A minute later, once I'm up on the landing, I reach the bathroom door and find that it's partway open. I can hear Mum in there, doing something at the sink, and I think she's muttering quietly under her breath. I reach out to knock on the door, but at the last moment I decide to wait a little longer. I lean closer, hoping to work out what she's saying, but all I can tell is that she sounds really annoyed about something, and it sounds like she's very busy. Leaning closer to the crack in the door, I try to peer through, but although I can just about make her out at the sink, I still can't work out what she's doing.

  Suddenly she looks up, and her reflection makes eye-contact with me.

  I step back.

  She pulls the door open.

  “Cally, what the hell are you doing?”

  “I came to brush my teeth!”

  “You were spying on me!”

  “No, I was just -”

  “I sent her up!” Dad calls from the bottom of the stairs. “She just needs to brush her teeth, Julie!”

  “She was spying on me through the crack in the door!”

  “Cally, is that true?”

  “I just wanted to know what she was doing,” I reply, close to tears again.

  “Sounds like the definition of spying to me,” she says, heading back into the bathroom. She seems so different today, as if suddenly it's much easier to annoy her. “Come on, then. Brush your teeth.”

  Following her, I see that she's cleaning up some cotton wool balls and tissue paper from next to the sink. She drops them into the bin, but I'm sure I saw a flash of blood for a moment.

  “Teeth,” she says, turning to me. “Now. Go on, it was so goddamn important a moment ago.”

  “Sorry,” I tell her, heading over to the sink. As I grab my toothbrush, I look down at the plughole and see that there's a hint of blood on the metal.

  “I'm exhausted,” Mum says, heading out of the room. “I'm going to bed, Daddy can tuck you in tonight, Cally, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper, staring down at the sinkhole before turning and watching as Mum heads along the landing. She's touching the back of her neck again. Heading to the bin, I open the top and see the tissue paper and cotton wool balls, with a hint of blood smeared on them. Picking them up, I find that the tissue paper is wrapped around something hard, which turns out to be a small, shiny black pebble.

  Later, when I tell Dad, he says it's nothing. He says the pebble probably just came out of her shoe.

  Chapter Six

  “Julie! Calm down! Julie, it's me!”

  Getting out of bed and hurrying to my bedroom door in the middle of the night, I lean out onto the landing just in time to see Mum hurrying out of the other bedroom, with Dad just behind her.

  “It's me,” he says again, clearly panicking as he grabs Mum's arm. “Julie, it's me!”

  She tries to push him away, but he keeps hold of her.

  “What the hell was that?” he asks her, before glancing along the landing and spotting me. “Cally, go back to bed, honey. Everything's okay.”

  “Is Mummy -”

  “Go to bed!” he says firmly.

  I take a step back, so they can't see me, but I still want to hear what they're saying.

  “I'm fine,” Mum says, sounding flustered and a little confused. “I just... I think I had a really vivid dream, that's all.”

  “You scared the shit out of me,” Dad replies. “You leaped out of bed like -”

  “It was just a dream,” she says firmly, interrupting him. “Haven't you ever had a bad dream before? One that seems really fucking real?”

  “Sure, but not one where I ended up shouting in my sleep!” He pauses. “Is this something we need to go to the doctor about?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Maybe you need new pills,” he continues. “You've been on your current dose for a while, maybe you've got used to them and -”

  “Don't blame my depression,” she replies. “That's kind of low, don't you think?”

  “I didn't mean it like that, just...” Another pause. “This kind of reminds me a little bit of last time. The beginning of last time, anyway.”

  “It's nothing like last time,” she tells him. “I'm just stressed. We moved house this week, in case you forgot about that. There's been a million things to do, and my sleep cycles are out, and I'm still looking for a job. Please, don't start turning this into something bigger, because it's not. Frankly, I don't know how you're not having bad nights. I guess maybe it's easier for you, since you're not having to look after -”

  She stops before she says my name.

  “Let's go back to bed,” Dad says finally. “It's two in the morning, for God's sake.”

  “I think I want to sit up for a while,” she tells him. “Just to get settled again.”

  “You want company?”

  “No, I'll be fine. Maybe I'll watch some shitty movie online.”

  Suddenly I hear her coming along the landing. I step back further and watch as she passes my door, and then I hear her heading downstairs. A moment later I hear Dad sighing, and he mutters something under his breath before going back into their bedroom and shutting the door.

  ***

  A little while later, I creep downstairs to get a glass of water. Usually I'd wake someone to go with me, but I figure I'm old enough now to do it by myself, and anyway, Mum's already down there.

  On the way to the kitchen, I look through into the living room and see that Mum's in one of the chairs, slumped over on her side and apparently asleep. Glancing at the spot next to her, I'm suddenly filled with the sensation that there was something standing there a moment ago, something that hid just a fraction of a second before I arrived in the doorway. Whatever this thing is that's living in the house with us, I think it's most interested in Mum.

&n
bsp; ***

  “Hey,” Dad whispers, nudging my shoulder. “Cally, what are you doing down here?”

  Opening my eyes, I look up at him, and then I look up at Mum. I'm curled up on the living room floor, right next to her, and early morning light is streaming through the curtains. For a moment, I can't remember what happened, but then it comes back to me.

  “I was worried about her,” I reply, keeping my voice low. “I wanted to stay with her until you got up, to make sure nothing could hurt her.”

  ***

  I'm pretty sure Lego can't fly, but at the same time planes can fly so...

  Holding up my latest Lego creation, I try to remember how I've seen people throw paper aeroplanes, and then I throw the Lego across the garden. It doesn't really fly, though. It just sort of spins in the air, goes over the fence, and lands in the neighbor’s garden.

  “Uh-oh,” I whisper, realizing that I might be in trouble.

  Glancing back at the house, I realize that Mum and Dad are busy. I make my way across the lawn until I reach the wooden fence, and then I lean over and see that the Lego plane broken up on impact, with several pieces on the neighbor’s lawn. Looking over toward his house, I see that he's already coming out the back door.

  “Lost something?” Joseph asks with a smile, limping slightly as he comes over. Leaning down, he starts picking up the pieces.

  “I'm sorry,” I tell him. “It was an accident.”

  “No problem,” he replies, coming over to the fence. As he drops the pieces into my hands, he looks toward the house. “Accidents happen. So is everything okay in there?”

  I nod.

  “There's nothing...” He pauses, looking down at me with a concerned expression. “Your name's Cally, isn't it?”

  I nod again.

  “Well, I'm sure your parents have told you not to talk to strangers,” he continues, “and I guess I'm pretty much a stranger, but I want you to know that if you ever need help, you can always come over to our place. My wife and I... Well, we just think neighbors should help each other out if it comes to it, that's all, instead of... Well, instead of not helping.” He smiles. “You know what? Ignore me. I'm a silly old man. You have a nice day playing with your Lego, okay?”