Whitby Vampyrrhic (30 page)

Tommy sat on the lobby carpet, where he rolled a ball for Sam. Both boy and dog had been so engrossed in the game that she'd watched for a while. That had been the moment when the dreadful enormity of what she'd planned became a reality. Soon he'd walk down the basement steps with her. Somewhere down there Eleanor would wait for him. What then? Dash a bowlful of the X-Stock into his face? Strangely, Beth felt absolute calm.
This is what I must do.
The child would be free of the monstrous body. No more searching for parents who were long dead. No longer spending his days lying in some hole in the earth. To release the boy would be humane.

So, when she uttered the words:
‘Tommy. I want to show you something I've found in the basement'
they left her lips as normally as telling someone supper was ready. Yet, in the back of her mind, she wished that she was so distraught that she couldn't continue with this plan to escort the boy downstairs to his destruction. However, she acted as if nothing was amiss, and she found herself hating her cool single-mindedness.
Is this how those Nazi fanatics feel when they line up innocent civilians and shoot them? That it's just a job of work?

She held out her hand. ‘Come on, Tommy.'
Oh, and the words spoken with such a pleasant smile on my face. Just who's the monster here?
‘Leave Sam there with the ball.'

‘What have you found?'

‘You'll see.'

The slight figure ran gladly towards her. He trusted her and suspected nothing.

‘Wave to Sam.'

‘Bye, Sam, see you soon.'

‘Lead the way, Tommy. Careful with those stairs. They're steep.'

She closed the door after them. In the basement, Eleanor stood facing the wall. Her arms were in front of her; she must have something in her hands. That ‘something' would bring this existence of Tommy's to an end.

Tommy and Beth descended to the floor level. Beth found that she held her breath. Her chest tightened. One hand went out to rest on Tommy's shoulder. She might have to physically guide him to the centre of the basement.

She had taken no more than two steps when Eleanor turned her head slightly towards them.

‘Don't come any closer,' she hissed.

‘Eleanor?'

‘Get out of the basement.'

‘What's wrong?'

‘He's back.' Although she didn't turn around fully, her eyes slid sideways to indicate the grate.

Tommy continued walking. ‘Wasn't there something you were going to show me?'

Beth whirled to the shelves. She darted to an old toy truck, lying amongst a jumble of bric-a-brac. ‘Here, this is it. I found this wagon and thought you might like it. It's got all dusty, so take it to the kitchen and give it a wipe with a cloth.'

Eleanor still didn't turn around fully. She growled, ‘Beth, get him out. You, too.'

Beth whispered to Tommy to go back upstairs. But Beth didn't leave. As soon as the boy had gone, she approached the grate.

Eleanor groaned, ‘Oh, Beth, for God's sake . . .'

A starkly white figure stood beneath the iron grate. The single light bulb gleamed on the skin; shadows from the bars formed a heavy black + pattern on the face of the man. He stood panting there. Some enormous passion gripped him. His eyes could have been eggs planted there in the sockets. They bulged with manic intensity. The pupils were tiny black dots – nothing less than a mad ferocity blazed from them.

‘
Eleanor . . .
' he hissed. ‘
Eleanor . . .
' The whisper of the ocean fused with the voice, sustaining it, and transforming into something that seemed to ghost from a tomb. ‘Eleanor . . . look at me . . .'

Eleanor remained with her face to the wall, not looking back; in fact, at that moment, it appeared no force on Earth could make her turn around to gaze on that abomination.

‘Eleanor. It's me: Gustav. I need you, Eleanor.' He raised his hand through the grating, until the bars were level with the wrist, and the fingers flexed gently, as if they were sensory organs that could taste what emotions stained the air of the vault. ‘Eleanor. I'm here to warn you. The others believe you intend to harm them. Their instincts tell them there is danger . . . and that you are the source of that danger . . .'

Beth found a similar trait in Gustav as she'd glimpsed in Tommy. It seemed to her that the ghost of a tender, intelligent man now haunted that ghastly carcass. He waged a war with the monstrous side of his nature. A war he was slowly and oh so surely losing. Yet in this desperate moment he reached out to an old friend.

‘Eleanor.' His whisper joined with the murmurs of the sea. ‘They will try and reach you tonight. And your friends, too. Please take my hand. I'll try and help you. But I need to feel your touch, because if I have something human to hold on to it might stop this thing inside of me. It's taking control . . . I can feel it . . . I want to taste blood. I am trying to resist, but the animal inside of me is getting stronger. I know I am a vampire . . . but if I try, with all my heart, I might not succumb absolutely to bloodlust. But I must confess: I've taken human blood. You saw as such in the cave. I couldn't stop myself. But your hand in mine will help so much.'

Eleanor stood absolutely still, as if hewn from cold granite.

‘Eleanor, please . . . don't let this devil inside of me win.'

Beth's heart surged. ‘Do as he asks.'

Eleanor shook her head.

‘If we can help him, then maybe he really can stop those things.'

Still Eleanor refused to even look at the man beneath the grate. All she would do was mouth the word
no.
This rejection struck Gustav hard. He sagged; the strength bled from his limbs. The white face, with the colourless eyes, suddenly became more alien, more terrible – the emotion that flickered across the features was one of utter desolation. Here was a man that had almost lost his final battle.

Beth urged, ‘Go to him. I know he won't try to hurt you.'

The woman closed her eyes. She did her utmost to pretend he wasn't there.

‘I'll do it!'
Beth threw herself to her knees beside the grate. Beneath the iron bars the vampire stood there, the ocean tide had turned, water swirled around his ankles. It poured along the same tunnel that Gustav would have used to enter that pit beneath the basement floor. Expressions flitted over the man's face. Hunger. Desperation. And, more than anything, such a sense of loss that it hurt Beth to witness it. ‘My name is Beth Layne. I'm Eleanor's friend.' She clasped the man's hand in hers. Such coldness possessed it. It felt like plunging one's hand into a mountain stream. The moment she did take his hand, his fingers closed over hers, a grip so tight she gasped. By this time, Eleanor had turned to watch the pair. On her face, an expression of pure shock.

The man's eyes glared up through the bars. The tiny black pupils were fierceness themselves. In those points of darkness, the raging passions that burnt within him. She saw his Vampiric lust for chaos, destruction, and above all blood. He wanted hers now. He longed to feel that torrent from her vein – for it to flood through his lips, to play on his tongue, before slipping so delightfully down his throat.

Eleanor gasped, ‘You shouldn't have touched him. He'll bite.'

‘No, he won't.' Beth didn't try and pull free, instead she gripped his hand firmly. ‘That's right, Gustav, isn't it? You won't attack me. I trust you, Gustav. I believe you are fighting the vampire inside of you. And you've fought that life and death struggle every night. A terrible battle inside your heart. You've done everything in your power not to hurt a human being. Don't I speak the truth, Gustav?'

The grip tightened. She wanted to scream at the intensity of it. Yet she didn't allow the slightest trace of that pain to alter her expression.

‘Gustav, if need be, you'd give your life to save Eleanor, wouldn't you?'

The gust of air from his vampire lungs blasted into Beth's face. It smelt of nothing, yet its coldness evoked eternal despair.

When Gustav spoke again the tone and the phrasing had become that of a normal young man. ‘I don't want Eleanor to be like me.'

‘But she never will.' Beth shook her head. ‘Twenty years ago, those creatures in the cave bit Eleanor on the wrist. The wound never healed, but she was never infected. Isn't that true, Eleanor?'

Eleanor clenched her fists. ‘Yes, but what does that make me?' The woman groaned. ‘Oh, look at his eyes.'

Colour returned to the man's irises. A pale blue. The pupils lost that fierce aspect.

Eleanor laughed, but it was a defeated sound. ‘Beth. I hate you. For twenty years I've turned my back on Gustav. Now you come here and you've made him at least half human again.'

‘Then if we help him fight this thing?'

Gustav pushed his other hand through the bars. ‘Eleanor. Take hold. There's a chance I might get well again.'

Eleanor, shaking her head, tears streaming down her face, raced up the steps, back into the body of the hotel. Beth remained crouched there, her hand grasping his.

The colour leeched from Gustav's eyes. The black pupils became prominent once more. Yet a human lilt remained in his voice. ‘Look after her, Beth.' On the vampire's face a ghost of a mortal smile played. ‘I've a confession. Though I was afraid of Eleanor Charnwood, when I was young, I had a crush on her. She was the loveliest girl in Whitby. Her intelligence shone as bright as the sun. I could warm myself beneath it. Since I stopped being the flesh and blood Gustav Kirk, I'd still pretend to myself that one day I'd become well again. And I'd no longer be forced to live like a snake in that hole in the cliff. That, eventually, I'd climb out into the bright sunlight. I'd stand up straight. Then I'd walk through the graveyard to the long flight of steps down into town. Feeling human, a big smile on my face, pleased and happy, I'd come here to the hotel. Instead of creeping through the tunnel into this basement, I'd march into the lobby. There I'd find Eleanor standing at the reception desk. She'd be so pretty in the brightness of a spring day. And I'd say to her, “Eleanor. I've never dared confess this before. But I've loved you since I was ten years' old. And I'm here to ask if you'd be my wife.” That dream stopped me from doing awful things, Beth. But if it had come true, and I became mortal again, do you think she would have married me . . . or does she find me repulsive? After all . . . did she find me repulsive when I had human blood in my veins?' The dreamy smile became lost to the shadow. Sighing, he released his grip on her hand. The pallid shape retreated into darkness.

Earlier, it had seemed as if Eleanor had successfully formulated a plan that would get them through the night.
Now it's all unravelling,
Beth told herself.
Eleanor isn't as strong as she thought. And I don't know what the next few hours will bring.

Five

Eleanor stumbled into her rooms on the upper floor. There, she raged at the reflection in the mirror: ‘You ineffectual, idiot. You coward. It took a stranger to do what you daren't.' Tears came. ‘Beth Layne! She's an actress. One of those glittering angels that's all make-up and make-believe. You even saw her serving a cocktail to Cary Grant . . . up there . . . on the silver screen. Ha!' She laughed at her tear-stained reflection – a harsh, mocking laugh. ‘Now she steps into your hotel here in Whitby and she takes hold of Gustav's hand, and she makes him human again. Or . . . or at least something akin to flesh and blood.' Eleanor threw her arms in extravagant movements. A personal melodrama that she wanted – really wanted to hurt her. ‘Because I deserve this.' She loathed those watery eyes in the mirror. ‘Scaredy cat. You never even spoke to Gustav all those times he crept through the tunnel into the basement. All he wanted was human contact, but you were afraid to even engage him in conversation. It's not as if you wanted him in your bed, is it?' She ripped back the sleeve to expose the never-to-be-healed wounds on her wrist. Yes, oh yes, it seemed insane – yet she had to sink her own teeth into her flesh – into the puncture marks with their pink edges that resembled tiny roses. Though she bit hard, the pain in her wrist couldn't match the sensation of her heart being torn in two.
If only the pain of a broken heart could be negated by mere physical agony.

‘Ah, yes, that's the old Eleanor.' She whirled away from the mirror, drunk on her own misery. ‘You make clinical observations on your own sorrow, on your own mucked up life, like your some psychologist observing the nervous breakdown of some godforsaken patient. Nice work, Eleanor.'

Laughter vied with sobs. Instead of returning to the mirror, she threw a punch at her shadow, which the bedside light cast on the curtains.

‘When are you going to take control of your life? Are you going to hide in this hotel forever, Miss Haversham. Because that's what you became. A lonely Miss Haversham. Forever hiding away from the world. And you were bitten by the vampires. But you never became one of them. Why? Does that mean you were never ever human, too?' She lashed at her shadow on the curtain. This time the fabric didn't yield softly beneath her fist. The impact, however, didn't suggest contact with the wall or window pane.

As Eleanor recoiled, the curtains were swept aside. A stark, white face erupted from the darkness behind the fabric. Gleaming eyes locked on hers. The pupils were like spikes being driven into Eleanor's brain. The attacker shoved her with such power that she left the ground before bouncing down on to the bed.