"WhiteRotterdam," said the security guy. "Okay. Have fun and be careful." He winked and left her on her own to complete the final few metres of her journey.
-
There was a sense of relief when Rob Wallet stepped outside the arena. He couldn't feel pain, couldn't feel the cold November breeze, but he could feel pressure; that emotional neurological psychological basket case of a feeling that sat like a fucking monkey on every human being between the age of one month and one hundred years. Finally, the comeback was a reality. He knew it was real because if it didn't happen now there were seventeen thousand multicoloured savages waiting just around the corner ready to drive stakes through his chest. Equipment was set up, the band were good to go. The concert was a sell out. No controversies (which is what Susan wanted), no ticket touts hiking the prices (which is what Tom Scavinio wanted) and so far Terence Pearl's friend hadn't shown up (which is what everyone wanted).
The evening sky was losing its strength and the glow from the arena was filling the air with a hint of red. Even upwind the smoke from the flares was visible and the occasional firecracker generated a distant round of applause. Stragglers and smokers mingled outside, chatting and laughing in Dutch. Toten's coach was parked nearby, the lightproof canopy linking it to the arena entrance folded away. It was quite an impressive coach, Wallet thought, examining its glossy blackness and its enormous wing mirrors like insect antennae.
So this was it; this lull, the empty thoughtless moment as everyone else got on with something that Wallet couldn't do, which was just about everything, was the product of eight months hassle. But it was worth it. A year ago he would have been somewhere round the front, arguing about his press pass, fighting for a space to watch, making notes and finally submitting copy to an increasingly bothered editor who was more concerned with getting that month's/week's issue out on time and within budget. Pressure, you see. It falls heavier on some than it does on others. Now he was in control of the press passes and was in a position to repay favours. So far he owed nothing, so no one got in the strength of blagging. Apparently one local Dutch celebrity had tried and failed to get in free on the strength of his Twitter following, but was told to go and steal a ticket off a Toten Herzen fan if he wanted to get in without paying. It would be easier to steal an antelope leg off a starving lion and in spite of having a choice of seventeen thousand potential victims he skulked away, probably tweeting to his flock how shit life was when you're rich and still have to pay.
Next up was Elaine and Dee's homecoming and England, with its health and safety, noise curfews, non-existant integrated transport system and EU employment laws. The only good thing Wallet could think of, was the intensity of support. British fans were the ones with the real dead animals. Outside the Ahoy tonight someone had an inflatable horse, but even that wouldn't be allowed in. The band were quietly prepared for any outrage once the tour cavalcade arrived at Felixstowe. Then Germany, the sensible nation with its sensible hooligans and onto Vienna, where the headbangers knew Bach note for note. Budapest was the unknown and whilst the band were adamant Hungary had to be on the list, Wallet couldn't think why. He knew the aggression there would be wrapped in a veneer of nationalism. And what the fuck the Swiss had to be angry about was anyone's guess. Maybe Geneva had been included so that everyone could relax and count the money.
No, Wallet was being unfair on Toten Herzen fans. His first glimpses of tonight's audience reminded him of a baroque army waiting for the signal to charge, but would they charge, would they rise to the call and become the out of control mob that followed the band in the seventies. He headed back inside. Terence Pearl was waiting for him. He looked fucking awful. "Your friend not here yet, Terence," said Wallet.
"No. He will be let in, won't he?"
"I've told you time and time again, if you gave him the message he'll be let in. The problem will be if he uses a different name."
Pearl had arranged with his mystery friend to use the name John Waters. The message to quote was 'come alone.' "He's gonna have to be quick if he wants to murder the band during the concert. They're on in two hours."
"Yes, I know. He'll be here. Maybe I should go and look for him. He's coming in at the arena entrance, isn't he?"
"Near the central plaza. I don't know Terence, you might run off."
"I'm a man of my word, Rob. I promised to help you and I will. You were right all along, about Peter."
"Yeah, well thank me later. We stuff him in a suitcase and sort out the whats and whyfores tomorrow. Just go and find him and keep him somewhere out of sight."
Pearl was wearing the black clothes of security and was inconspicuous. Only the band and Wallet knew who he was, but his red tabard - access all areas - made him unquestionable to anyone else. He left, but Wallet asked another security guy to follow him. "It's his first concert. Don't let him get into any trouble."
-
Susan's fingers stretched along the neck of the guitar. It wasn't her Flying V, but something else. "Ibanez," she said when Raven asked. "It's a back up in case, well, whatever might happen happens."
"You warming up?"
"Yeah. You need to get all flexible, get these old muscles and tendons working again." Susan looked up at Raven. "Are you sitting down?"
"Sorry, yeah."
"It must have been a long journey."
"It was, but I've travelled to Europe before by coach, so it wasn't too bad."
Susan kept her head down as she strummed the Ibanez gently. Without its connection to an amp it made hardly a sound. "I did think of sending some transport to pick you up, but the logistics were a bit complicated. I trusted you'd get here. But I'll help you afterwards to go home." Raven's face dropped. Susan was having none of it. "What's your real name?"
"My real name's crap, I'd rather be called Raven." But Susan insisted. "It's Barbara."
"What?" Susan coughed. "I don't mean to be rude, but that is a strange name for a girl of your age."
"Yeah. Mum and dad where big trade unionists and called me after Barbara Castle."
"Right. Well, look on the bright side, they could have named you after Arthur Scargill."
"My brother's name's Arthur."
"Get lost!"
"No, I'm only joking. He's called Roy."
"Aha. After Roy Castle then?"
They managed to share a smile, but Raven was still not happy about her ticket home. "Why do you call yourself WhiteRotterdam?"
Susan offered her a bowl of fruit. Raven took a banana. "The doctors called me that when I was in hospital."
"When you were bitten?"
"When I was bitten, yes. They knew I came from Rotterdam and I was quite pale, as you are when you're ill, and it became a nickname. They were trying to make me feel better, but by that time I was already feeling better."
"Did you know what had happened?"
"No." She stopped strumming the guitar and held onto it like a child. "They said rabies, I believed them. But you don't wake up with fangs and a black cape. It was weeks before I figured out what was going on. First sign was the appetite; you don't have one. You never feel hungry, never feel like eating, you don't feel thirsty. It's like your hypothalamus just shuts down. But your physical strength is building all the time. I used to carry equipment around with me, Marshall cabinets, and they were as light as feathers. The road crew thought they were empty, until they came to pick them up. After that, over a period of weeks, your senses start to sharpen, you can hear the slightest whisper of sound, your vision is as keen as a bird's, and colour. Colour is intense as if everything is backlit. Your hair, for example, it's as if your head is a lampshade. I can smell that you've been eating chicken nuggets and drinking Coca Cola."
Raven was impressed. "You can smell it on me?"
"I can. Don't worry, no one else will. I can smell the fires burning outside and the gunpowder that's fuelling the flares they're lighting."
"And what about blood? How did it feel to drink blood?"
"It start
s like a mild craving, like the inside of your muscles are starting to get itchy. I started by cutting myself, with my fingernails, and sucking the wound. But you don't last long with your own blood, so you go out at night and you find birds or cats. It's surprising how easy it is to catch them, especially cats, they just come right up to you and all it takes is your hand round their throat." Raven was eating her banana more slowly. "You still want to be a vampire or is that banana good enough for you?"
"I'd get used to it. You did."
"Can you handle the aggression?"
"I don't know."
"Think about the last time you were angry, so angry you were shaking, sweating, furious, and then multiply that by a hundred. That's how I feel right now and I consider myself calm. Look around at all these people."
"What's wrong with them?" said Raven watching the quiet coming and going of staff and assistants.
"Nothing. Nothing at all, but I could walk over to one of them now and take their head off with one blow and I wouldn't feel a thing. When I get angry I'd go outside where there's more of a challenge. Do you want to live like that? Our publicist, Rob, when we first met him he was an idiot. He drove us mad with his attitude, but he was harmless. Now he scares himself. He is waiting for the next explosion, the next little problem that will tip him over the edge. And he's only been like us for eight months. His problems haven't even started."
"Are you angry with me?" Raven threw the banana skin back into the bowl.
"I'm not angry with you, just puzzled why you want to be like this. I know you have no idea what it's really like. I guess you've seen the films and the tv programmes and think all vampires are spoiled American brats living in huge detached houses and driving fifty thousand dollar SUVs, whining because they can't get a girlfriend boyfriend and life sucks blah blah blah."
"I've never thought it would be like that. I just thought it would be better than what I am now."
"You can't socialise because everyone around you is a potential victim. Nocturnal behaviour is fine if you do what we do. For everyone else it's a career killer. You're constantly trying to hide your teeth and you have no fucking reflection and you don't want people to know about it because then they look at you and say 'how come you have no reflection, are you a vampire or something?' You're constantly hiding what you are, covering up what you've done. You can't talk to people so no one trusts you."
Raven sat cross legged. "They sound like flaky problems to me. Do you have any real ones like having no money, no job. A career killer! I don't have a career to kill. People like me, my age, we've been abandoned before we even had a chance. I haven't got a future because everything's against me, I'm just a puppet that everyone else controls. I live like an animal: I wake up, eat, breathe then go back to sleep. There's nothing else in my life. I feel angry all the time, but what can I do about it without getting into trouble? Live with it? Endure it? Put up with it? Why the fuck should I? If you have a problem you can just go and solve it. That's the difference between what you are and what I am. I can't solve my problems, I have to wait for someone else to do it."
The card game of life being played across a bowl of uneaten fruit was intensifying as they both tried to trump the other's hardships. But Susan didn't have the answer, only the knowledge that what Raven wanted, what Susan could give her, wasn't a solution. "I'm here by accident. I started out with very little and we all worked hard and it nearly failed. But what happened in 1974, that was never part of the plan. We would probably be here now anyway, the whole vampire thing had nothing to do with it. We would have been a struggling band who did the circuit, got the record deal, did more concerts, sold more records. Dying didn't help, and by the way did I add that you have to die first to be like this?"
"I know that."
"You live while everyone around you dies. And you live with the knowledge that eventually everyone you've ever known will be gone. Your friends, your parents. And when they die you won't be there at their funeral unless they bury them at night and then you spend the rest of eternity knowing you couldn't say goodbye and you go insane trying to make up for it and you end up trying to relive your life over and over except the bit you want to relive is always missing so you end up in stupid comebacks, doing stupid press conferences before stupid concerts in front of thousands of stupid people who are only here because they like watching car crashes and think it's cool to have a fascination with death."
"People die around me too. My friends and relatives are not immune just because I'm human. But if everything goes pear shaped for me I don't get a second chance to have another go at it." Raven sat forward. "All the people you know who died would still be here if they were vampires. If you made them vampires."
Susan bristled and put the guitar to one side. "That's not the answer and it's not my choice to make."
"No, it's mine. And I'm giving you permission."
Susan slumped backwards into the chair and groaned. Was that checkmate or did she still have a way out. Raven would be swapping one set of problems for another, but it sounded like a quick fix, an easy way out. Susan wanted to lecture her on working hard and earning rewards, the same old horseshit she'll have heard a thousand times. She knew the score and so did Raven. Raven was Susan's opposite: alive but not living.
-
Why do people want to live like this, thought Terence Pearl as he mixed with the fans wandering in and out of the arena foyer. The doors were open and the crowds outside were organising into thick snaking queues heading off to the concert hall entrance, their fires and flares extinguished, their flags furled, horses deflated. He stood by the VIP kiosk and was distracted by a conversation taking place at a cafe table on the other side of the foyer. He almost missed the exchange close by when he heard someone say 'come alone.'
Pearl stepped across. "John Waters?"
"Yes."
"Good. Please, follow me."
The two men stepped away from the kiosk and security and the risk of detection. They both knew each other; they sat on the same pub quiz team every week, shared the same disappointment every time they lost for knowing the right answers, left the Ring of Strawberries together weighed down with the conviction that society grew dumber by the day. Tonight though, they weren't part of the Jolly Troubadors, they weren't here to take a beating. They were themselves: Terence Pearl, retired schoolteacher, writer, commentator; and Patrick Wells, trickster, antagonist, and nephew of Peter Miles.
"Where are they?" Wells asked.
"Several places at the moment." Pearl was confident the crowds would only hear bits of this conversation as the two men passed through them. "The drummer is practising in a room on his own, the singer is with the technical crew, Susan the guitarist is with a fan and I'm not sure where the bass guitarist is." Pearl turned to his accomplice. "She's the most aloof, the most elusive one. Be careful with her."
"You've been extremely brave, Terence. I know I've said it so many times, but I really can't thank you enough for this. Trust me, by the time it's over you'll understand just how important this is."
"If you don't mind me saying, what you're doing is wrong. It is wrong in the eyes of the Lord and I hope he shows understanding when you face him."
"Let me worry about that, Terence, when the time comes."
"But I'm an accessory."
"Look," Wells stopped. They were in the concourse beneath one of the heavy concrete roof supports, the only two people not fixed on the gathering crowd and the expectant stage with its promise of visceral treats and wild surprises. "You can walk away from this, even now at this late stage and I wouldn't blame you. I want you to have a clear conscience, Terence."
"It's rather too late for that. I'm a man of my word, but I think you should know that your uncle wasn't murdered. He committed suicide."
Wells closed his eyes and shook his head. "No, Terence, he was murdered. My uncle was murdered and they put his grave on their album sleeve to mock his memory. As if killing him wasn't enough they had to desecrat
e his memory. They have destroyed his family. My family." He lowered his voice. "How do they know it was suicide if they never found his body? Don't you see, without a body to bury you cannot grieve. You cannot say goodbye. For all we know he might actually be here tonight, unaware of who he is."
Pearl looked at the crowd, the seats disappearing beneath an expanding surface of blackness. Peter Miles here?
"But that's what I'm trying to tell you. The band have looked for him. They have tried to find him."
"They told you that?"
"Yes."
"And you believed them?"
"Yes. There was no evidence to suggest they killed him, none to suggest they didn't. In law that would be called an open verdict."
"And the grave, on the album sleeve, was that an open verdict or were they laughing at his corpse? And what about a statement of regret. An apology. There's been nothing. Once I've done what I came here for you can consider your role in all this finished. I won't ask you to do anything else for me."
Pearl turned to continue and barged into a woman with green hair and blood trickling down her chin. "Terribly sorry," he said. He turned again to Wells, but he was gone.
-
Tom Scavinio stood towards the back of the concourse watching the hall filling up. He tried not to worry, but he had a feeling. It came from years of experiencing this moment as the final hour counted down. There was no support act, so the audience would have nothing to vent their aggression at (let's face it, that's what the support acts are there for. You know the old line: the act before me was so bad the audience was still booing them when I went onstage.) He'd seen it all from deluded to deranged, hip to square, suspiciously young to ridiculously old, drunk, high, crushed, unconscious, excited, disappointed. But this lot . . . on the surface they looked like any heavy metal crowd, but checking out those seats closest to him, people looked agitated and suspicious. He couldn't put his finger on it, why they didn't look right. Who were they?
We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1) Page 28