Hotel Midnight (26 page)

‘Ever since I got bit by the sailor from the Holy Land,’ says I, ‘I don’t have a likin’ for bread. All my brain thinks of is blood in the vein.’

Then my master said a prayer and put me into a cask of water, holding my head down underneath. He did this all night and got so he was sweaty and panting and his eyes got bigger, and he was pleading God to let me die. But maybe I got the lung of a fish or a frog because I would not drown. When his dagger broke against my throat he yelled out something I didn’t understand, ‘By God’s flesh, why have you cursed me with a vampyre!’

He carried me to the house, weeping so his tears fell on my face. I licked the tears from where they fell and thought there was something of the blood about them. I desired to put a bite in his arm but I’d been taught to be respectful of my master.

My master put me in the space between the walls. Then he and the yeoman made up a fine batch of mortar mixed with horsehair. They told me to stay at the back of the corridor while they fixed great stones in the old doorway and closed me in. I thought they’d done this for me being disrespectful to the master’s friends. I thought they’d let me out the wall in the morning.

But no. They never came back. I could see through little cracks in the masonry how the doors rotted off their hinges and the winter winds blew in, and birds nested in the chimmly, and all kinds of animals roamed around the rooms. But I couldn’t get out this passageway that doesn’t go anywhere between the walls. Rats come up through the little hole in the floor here by my feets so I don’t go hungry (big master rats I get five sucks out of – wee babes just the one).

New people moved into my master’s house. I watch them through the cracks in the walls. I see children grow into
gentlefolk
. I saw how clothes change their cut, and how the rooms are lit by ’lec-tree-city and the coming of tel-hee-vishon. I hear the folk talk so know about these new wonders. In all this time I’ve not been idle. I used my fingernails to enlarge the rat hole. Now I am free to move ’bout the house at night. Crafty me, I have learnt myself com pewter, so I can write this he-male to you. Once I have finished this writing I will go upstairs to where the master and mistress lie sleeping. And I ask myself:
How many sucks will it take to empty my new master’s vein?

From
Hotel Midnight

Electra calling, my dears. We’ve spoken about things vampiric in the past; we’ve mentioned that not all vampire-like individuals thirst for blood. Consider this, have you ever had a brother who has drawn off all your parents’ love? Have you had a partner who has drained your bank account of money? Or a demanding friend who has been gluttonous for your sympathy when their own
relationship
has failed? Although you might come to realize that someone you trust is a bloodsucker, doesn’t mean that they crave to drink the red stuff beating in your veins. Some ‘bloodsuckers’ have altogether different appetites. This, then, continues our
triptych
– a typewritten manuscript by the name of
Jack Of Bones
that arrived appropriately enough on the eve of All Hallows. For the record, my friends, it was left beneath a stone outside my back door:

‘Why did you tell me she was dead?’

‘Because she was, John.’

‘You know, Colette, that’s an unbelievable stunt you pulled?’ I was so angry I craved to punch the wall. ‘Did Lauren put you up to this?’

‘No.’ Colette was close to tears.

‘I can’t believe you made me come all the way down from Edinburgh for this. Was it a way to remind me Lauren’s marrying someone else next week?’

‘No, John, will you listen to me? When I found her out on the—’

‘I don’t suppose you’re going to let me see Lauren?’

‘No, no, no … Believe me, it’s not a good idea. Not yet anyway.’ Colette shook her head with a laugh when she said,
No, no, no
… But it was such a grim laugh. What’s more, her entire body shuddered as she talked. A tear spilled down from her eye to race down her cheek at such a speed it made me stop talking.

‘John, if you’ll let me finish what I started telling you?’

‘Go on then. Five minutes you’ve got. I can make the last train back north.’

‘I wish you’d stay.’

‘Forget it.’

Jesus Christ, I wish I’d never caught the bloody train down from Scotland to York in the first place. It was Colette’s e-mail that made me act before thinking it through. Those were the words running through my head when Lauren pointed to the
television
in the centre of the attic room. Cables ran from it to the window where a video camera sat on a tripod. The camera angle had been locked, so the screen revealed a length of one of the old city walls that protectively encircle York. It was maybe twenty feet high. Running along the top of the structure was a walkway that would have been used by the city’s defence forces anything up to a thousand years ago. The walkway was perhaps six feet wide. Because the house we stood in was on the inside of the walls there was a clear view of the walkway, which was bounded on the far side, by a castellated wall. Looking through the window, the wall manifested itself as a greyish indistinct mass. On television its video image captured by the low-light lens revealed a glowing barrier that almost filled the screen.

I turned to glare at Colette. She was a tall woman of
twenty-eight
with an ever-present look of determination, as if she’d set out from the day she was born to prove herself. In the ten years I’d known her she’d worked hard to transform what she
considered
to be a dowdy appearance. Now she wore permed hair in ringlets that fell in softly falling loops to below her shoulders. She must have combed lemon juice into her hair because what had been a brown, uniform mass had given way to tints of light brown, highlighted with strands of blonde. Good taste in clothes, too. A lacy cotton top in white complimented by a pair of
expensive
jeans.

Terrible taste in humour. E-mailing me to tell me my ex-fiancé was dead could only be measured by degrees of cruelty. Not wit.

As we stood in the attic room I raised my wrist so I could tap my wristwatch. ‘Four minutes. Then I’m going for my train.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m wasting my breath. You’re not going to believe me, are you?’

‘That depends what you tell me in the next four minutes.’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Ten to eleven. But what’s so important about that?’

‘Perhaps you’ll see for yourself.’

‘This is weird, Colette. I always liked you, so why are you
playing
these fucking stupid games with me now?’

‘I’m not playing games, John.’ Her face was like stone.

‘And what’s all this with the camera filming the wall?’

‘The tape’s running.’

‘Uh?’

‘I’m recording what you’re seeing on screen now, John.’

I glanced at the screen. Through the gateway in the wall traffic oozed into the city. Such was the sensitivity of the lens set for night-time use all I could make out of cars and buses were gliding balls of light. It was sensitive enough, too, to pick up bats
fluttering
by streetlights, which in turn blazed like orange suns along the road.

‘Two minutes,’ I told Colette in a prim voice that suddenly assumed the accents of a frosty schoolteacher. ‘Then I’m away to the station. You know, it’ll be a relief to return home to where sanity prevails.’ Even to my ears that sounded pompous. But I wanted to make this woman suffer for sending me that sadistic
e-mail
.

She crossed her arms across her chest as if cold. Such an
expression
of misery passed across her face that what I intended to elaborate about the insanity of this house and its occupant died on my tongue. Colette was certainly going through it tonight.

‘You wanted to know the purpose of the camera?’ She lifted her eyes to lock them defiantly on mine. ‘I’ve a contract with the city council to research a demographic of who comes into the city and when. It’s part of a retail and leisure initiative.’

‘So, why aren’t I wildly over excited by this piece of news?’

‘Because I was up here recording pedestrians using the road through the wall over there when I saw Lauren on the wall with a man.’

‘
A man?
’ I tasted an opportunity for revenge, and that, my friend, is a delicious taste indeed. ‘A man who wasn’t Kevin, I take it?’

‘Kevin’s back in London.’

‘Ah …’ I nodded sagely as I put two and two together in a way that is peculiarly satisfying when you’ve been dumped by a girl for another man.

Colette shook her head. ‘If only it was what you’re thinking, John.’

‘Just what am I thinking, Colette?’

‘Oh, don’t dick me around. Listen, the truth is I stood up here and I saw Lauren walk along the wall with a man I’ve never seen before. It was around this time of night.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘They didn’t kiss.’ Rather than saying the words, she spat them in my direction. ‘The man killed her.’

‘Good God. There you go again telling me stuff that doesn’t make sense.’

‘Try it in my shoes. I thought I was going mad.’

‘Looks like that’s what’s happened, Colette. See a doctor.’

‘Just fucking shut up and listen, John.’

I glared at her. I stopped from walking out. Just.

Colette took a deep breath, then: ‘After the attack she collapsed onto the walkway. I saw the man just stroll away like nothing had happened. There was no one else on the wall, so I ran across there as fast as I could. It must have taken all of five minutes to reach her. When I arrived Lauren just lay there. Not moving. Nothing! So I checked her pulse.’ She nodded with conviction. ‘She was dead, John. Just dead.’

This time I took a deep breath. ‘OK, OK … but when I got here tonight you told me she was in her bedroom?’

‘She is?’

‘She’s dead in her bedroom? Are you serious?’

‘She’s … just in her bedroom.’ Her nod was a jerky one.

‘I heard her moving around, Colette.’

‘I know, John.
That’s why I thought I was going out of my mind
.’

‘You know something?’ I bit my lip. The words came out anyway. ‘If I stop here another ten seconds I’ll go out of my mind, too. Now, this is my plan: I’m going to put my foot through that television, then I’m through that door. The pair of you have played a sick joke on me, haven’t you? Kick the ex while he’s down for one last time. What a bloody laugh, eh?’

My eyes turned to the television. Dear God, I was going to do it. I was going to kick that thing to shit. I might even rip the curtains down on the way out. The fucking halfwits!

On screen, in a surreal blaze of white, was the old city wall. And, my God, I yearned to put my boot in the centre of the glass, and
POW!

‘John. Stop.’

I thought she meant:
don’t smash the television
.

‘You should have thought of that earlier.’ I relished the menace lacing my voice.

‘No! It’s happening again. There he is.’ She lunged at me. Her fingers hooked around my arm in a fierce grip. ‘If you don’t believe me, look for yourself.’

On screen, where the image wobbled due to magnification, two figures embraced on the wall. They were alone. The taller of the two leaned forward to kiss the other on the lips. As he released her she didn’t merely step back. She dropped limp as an empty sack to the ground. Then lay still.

Colette yanked at my arm. ‘Come on. Catch him before he gets away!’

The ancient city of York is encircled by defensive walls of a yellow-white stone. They are upwards of 700 years old. Although the wall is no longer entirely intact, it is possible, in parts, to ascend to a walkway that runs atop the wall via steps set at
strategic
locations in order to traverse at least a good part of the ancient citadel. On the outer margin of the wall is a secondary elevation reaching to around shoulder height that would have offered protection to soldiers against arrow and musket shot. Often there is no retaining barrier on the inner part of the fortress wall. At the edge of the walkway is a drop of anything between a few inches and twenty feet. Every so often, there are openings set in the fortification to admit roads that carry traffic into the heart of the city. These are known as Bars. They have names like Bootham Bar and Mickelgate Bar. On iron spikes set in the stone archway above the gates were once impaled the heads of men and women who transgressed the King’s laws. The condemned were beheaded before rowdy spectators by the executioner before being spiked. Their heads were intended as a deterrent as well as an overt display to the public at large that justice had been carried out.

It was to one of these Bars, Calder Bar that I ran along the street with Colette. Her athletic legs demolished the hundred yards with ease. If anything my heart was pounding explosively on that cool October night. From being on the cusp of kicking the crap out of the television to realizing I’d just witnessed an assault on a woman took all of three seconds. I no longer brooded over what I took to be a sick joke, that e-mail announcing my ex-fiancé Lauren was dead. Instead, all that mattered was reaching the unconscious woman on the steps. Colette made it to the tower set in the twenty-foot high battlement at Calder Bar.

‘Best if I go first,’ I panted. But she’d already begun to ascend the steps that zigzagged up the sheer face of the wall. ‘Colette!’

At the first twist in the stone staircase I lost sight of her. Although I could hear her feet clattering upwards.

‘
Colette
.’

Down below, what few pedestrians there were glanced at us with passing interest. A row between boyfriend and girlfriend. No doubt that’s what they were thinking. But a chilly breeze from the River Ouse kept them walking home, content with nothing more than a backward glance as we sprinted up the steps.

Here, the walkway is maybe five feet wide. An iron guardrail on the inner side of the bastion prevents anyone blundering over the edge to fall a bone-breaking twenty feet to the roadway below. I climbed the last step onto the walkway to find Colette had vanished. Apart from the stranger lying unconscious thirty paces ahead the wall was empty.