Whitby Vampyrrhic (9 page)

Four

Mary Tinskell needed to escape her husband. If only she could put on her best coat, then walk smartly down to the station and board a train that would take her from him and his wearying obsession. Harry played darts. Only, it went beyond that. Those diminutive arrows were his life. Once she, Mary, had been his life, and the children, of course. But now darts, darts, darts. That's all he ever thought about, talked about and probably dreamt about. Oh, he played well, no doubting that. Harry challenged men in the local pubs. Invariably, he won the wagers of beer, which pleased him no end.

‘I went out with exactly the same money I came back with,' was his proud boast (accompanied by waves of beery breath).

Only, it had reached the point where he'd come home, after the pub had closed, to practise darts for hours in the front parlour of their cottage on Henrietta Street. That monotonous thud-thud-thud of darts hitting the board at gone two in the morning had driven Mary outside in desperation. She had to escape that sound; the infuriating man would send her crazy!

So, as the clock hands crept beyond a quarter past two, Mary stood in a calf-length nightdress in the cold winter air in the rear yard. This row of houses backed on to the cliff, which soared eighty feet or so above her, to the graveyard. The night lay still after the air raid (such attacks didn't discourage Harry from playing darts; his new monotonous refrain was, ‘If Hitler wants my darts, he'll have to cut my bloody fingers off to get 'em'). She inhaled the chilly sea air. If she got herself cold enough, then even the
clump
of darts, coming from downstairs, might not seem that bad once she'd slid beneath warm bedclothes.

Mary smoothed the white cotton of her nightdress. At forty years of age she had an enviable figure. More than once, it had occurred to her if Harry's dart obsession grew too much she'd be able to find another husband.

Mary moved around the tiny yard, which was enclosed by high walls. The moon had emerged once more. It revealed the bulbous swellings in the rock face. She blew into her numbed hands.
This is insanity
, she told herself.
I can't let Harry drive me outside. Even yard dogs have kennels. Here I am, freezing in a nightdress.
Probing fingers of air slid around her bare legs. Her skin went bumpy across her chest. Shivers darted down her backbone. The cold grew just too intense. She couldn't stand it any more. When she exhaled, a gust of white blossomed round her head.

As she crossed the yard towards the cottage door, she happened to glance upwards. Moonlight had emphasized those raised bumps in the cliff face. The rocky protrusion seemed to hang directly above her head.

Then the rocky outcrops did something they'd never done before. They moved.

Mary Tinskell stepped into the centre of the yard, staring upwards; only, the harder she stared, trying to identify what those shadowy bumps were, the more the cold made her eyes water. Was the cliff falling? Images flashed through her head of boulders crashing down on to her cottage.

Yet the moving objects made no sound. She blinked until her eyes were clear. Her vision snapped into sharp focus. Those objects clung to the cliff face as they swiftly climbed downwards.

And they descended towards Mary in the yard.

She moved backwards, keeping her gaze locked on the four figures climbing down the cliff. But they climbed head first. And with such speed. Twenty feet above her one of the climbers paused. It raised its head to look at her. She saw a man, wearing pilot's goggles. His face was smeared with a dark liquid. Moonlight made the goggle lenses shine silver. Yet she knew with absolute certainty that he stared at her.

Mary spun round, then raced for the door. Only to find it blocked by a figure. This one she recognized. Dressed in a white shirt, and wearing a striped tie round his waist like it was a belt, was a man she'd seen often in her youth.

‘Gustav Kirk?' Her heart raced. ‘But you went missing twenty years ago.'

He took a single step forwards. Behind her came soft concussions as the cliff climbers dropped the last few feet into the yard.

‘Don't you dare touch me.' Mary had detected the predatory menace in their postures. ‘Don't you dare!'

The figures approached, eyes ablaze with ferocity, their faces smeared with a rich, dark liquid that could be nothing else but blood. In the moonlight, there seemed precious little colour to their irises. If anything, each eye simply contained a fierce black pupil.

Gustav reached out to touch the side of her neck. The cold-as-ice sensation of his fingers on her bare skin did it. In an explosion of movement, she raced through the alleyway to Henrietta Street beyond. If the back door was blocked, she could beat on the front door to alert her husband.

Yet the creatures anticipated her move. And yes they were creatures . . . They were inhuman . . . No living humans possessed eyes like that. When she dashed towards the front door Gustav smoothly sped by her to block the way. He smiled. His teeth were tiny yet perfectly shaped. The other creatures possessed the same kind of teeth, as if God in a moment of reckless abandon had snatched up different animals, then moulded them into something that, at least outwardly, resembled a man.

Running became her mission. Nothing less. If her feet pounded the cobbled street, then it proved she hadn't been caught yet. Because that was her intention. She knew they wanted to lay hands on her. To bundle her roughly away. But what then? What would they do with her? Creatures like that? What brought them pleasure?

Mary raced long Henrietta Street. At this time of night, bathed in moonlight, not a soul graced it. Houses to her left lay in darkness. To her right the hillside flowed down to the vast expanse of harbour waters. And behind her, softly padding feet. Gustav and his monstrous companions were in full-blooded pursuit. Maybe they enjoyed the chase? Did they savour her fear as they closed in?

Mary sped down towards town. Ancient cottages grew more tightly clustered. The incline added to her speed so she kept running downwards. Instead of joining the level ground of Church Street, she sped down Tate Hill. Only, this led to the beach. The tide had rolled in, flooding the sands. So Mary dashed out along the stone pier. Little more than eight feet wide, it jutted out into the waters of the harbour. A bridge to nowhere.

Keep running.
That's all that mattered. Maybe she could elude her pursuers yet. She raced along the tongue of stone. At the end, she kept running. Her heart had become this huge, pounding engine in her chest. Adrenalin filled her veins with fire. In that heightened state, the moon burnt like the torch of the gods in the sky. The ocean became a luminous silver highway all of its own. Nightdress flapping, hair rippling wildly, Mary leapt, then flew outwards, her face turned up to the stars and the moon.

The sea took her into itself. It embraced her tightly as a lover. Its cold fingers explored every inch of her body in a split second. For a moment, she tried hard to swim in the direction of the bridge. However, the tide had turned. Roughly, the current bore her back to the stone pier; there, she buffeted against its stone blocks.

Instantly, hands seized her from above. Gustav, the pilot, and the others, swiftly drew her from the water. She lay dripping in their arms, as they carried her into a secret, shadowed place, where they could do whatever they wanted to her.

But there in the night a strange thing happened. Yes, horror engulfed her. No doubting that. But there was something else, too. A thrill she'd never felt before. Excitement snapped through her veins; an electricity of forbidden desires burst through her English reserve.

She moaned as they fought to be first to clamp their mouths on to her body. The bites were a sweet pain of release. Memories of her life with her husband roared through her head. The confinement in the cottage to cook and clean. The dull monotony. The loss of hope that things would change for the better one day. The never-ending thud . . . thud . . . thud of darts in the board, which could have been nails being slowly hammered into the coffin of a loveless marriage.

When those small, razor-sharp teeth released blood from her veins, she roared with a vicious pleasure. Then, as consciousness began to fade, she pictured Harry's face as he admired his beloved darts . . . and the final words that slipped through her soon-to-be inhuman lips were:

‘
I'm free . . .
'

Five

Unable to sleep, Eleanor Charnwood descended into the hotel's basement. A clock in reception chimed four in the morning as she gritted her teeth against the icy flow of air within the underground vault. She passed the huddle of chairs, where she'd sheltered from the air raid earlier with her new guests. In the corner of the cellar, she tugged back an old rug she'd used to hide a line of gallon jars in thick glass. Pasted on each one, a label that bore a skull and cross bones sign. Beneath that the word:
DANGER!
Because of the war, everything (but fear and want) was in short supply. It had become increasingly difficult to acquire more stocks of the chemical, but she knew she must. So far she'd bought a dozen gallons on the black market. However, she reckoned on needing at least another dozen more, if she were to stand any chance of success.

Donning thick protective gloves, she tugged the jars deeper into the basement, where she could lock them in the wine cellar. Until a couple of weeks ago, she'd not anticipated that the hotel would be opened up again to paying guests. At first she'd resisted; an official from the Ministry of Information, however, made it absolutely clear to her that if she didn't make the hotel available to the film people it would be requisitioned anyway. That would spell disaster for Eleanor's plans. In a matter of days, the place would be bustling with actors. She couldn't even keep them out of the basement, because it served as the air-raid shelter. So, no time like the present to move her precious hoard.

Eleanor had dragged five of the heavy jars to the subterranean store when she heard a voice.

‘Eleanor . . . Eleanor . . . It's me.'

She paused only for a second. Then, taking a deep breath to steady her resolve, she continued her work. There was barely enough time to make the preparations as it was. Many a time, she'd find herself becoming increasingly moody, as she worried about all the jobs she needed to do in order to carry out her plan. The enormity of the task left her anxious, flustered, in fact so on edge that she wanted to yell at anyone who called at the hotel.

Now that voice . . . She'd heard it at least once every twelve months for the last twenty years. It started just weeks after she visited Hag's Lung Cave with that shy, dreamy youth. The one who loved nothing more than to find some sheltered corner of the beach to read his treasured books.

‘Eleanor?'

She continued working.
Go away
, she thought.
I'm busy. I'll never get this done.

‘Eleanor. I know you're there. Why have you never spoken to me? For twenty years I've come back here in the hope you'll discuss what happened.'

She dragged more of the hefty jars full of that fiercely toxic brew to the storeroom.

‘Eleanor.' The voice shimmered from some other world, or so it seemed to her. ‘Do you remember what happened that night at the cave? You put your arm into the hole; something bit you on the wrist. When you fainted I carried you outside. Then I went back into Hag's Lung. It was a stupid thing to do, but I wanted to know what lay beyond the hole in the cave wall. I widened it with the crowbar, then I put my eye to it to try and see inside. What a foolish boy I was, Eleanor.' He paused. ‘Will you tell me about your wrist? What happened?'

In the shadows of the basement, she couldn't stop herself sliding back the sleeve of her pullover. On her wrist, eight open wounds. They'd never healed since she'd been bitten there twenty years ago. The punctures resembled tiny open mouths, with delicately pink lips. The holes, arranged so – :::: – extended deep inside the flesh. Most nights they itched . . . a furious itching.

‘They bit me, Eleanor. But you were never infected. Not like me and the rest. Why do you think you're immune, Eleanor?' A pause. ‘Please talk to me.' The soft, whispery voice continued until it resembled the throb of surf on the beach just yards from the hotel. ‘Please talk to me. I want to see your face. You were the only girl who didn't make fun of me at school. Listen, I've told you this before. Myself, and the other ones, have tried so hard not to feed. If we ingest human blood it speeds the transformation in our bodies. We have tried to resist. But it's getting difficult. Bodies of sailors are washed up on the beach, the blood still fresh in their veins. It's this war. It delivers prey to us. We try not to feed on it, but it's difficult to resist. Sometimes airmen fall out of the sky. It's like a hungry child, standing in an orchard, with ripe apples dropping from the trees into its hands. Help us, Eleanor, we need you.'

But those incessant pleas – ‘Talk to me. Help us.' – and the power of the sheer sorrow in those words overwhelmed her self-restraint. She set the jar down, then marched to the iron grate. And there he was. Gustav Kirk stood beneath it. His hands clenched about the bars. His bone-white face peered up through the gaps at her. The fierce black pupils locked on hers.

‘You left me in the cave!'
Traitorous mouth
. She'd tried so hard to ignore Gustav all those times before, when he'd crept along the tunnel. ‘You abandoned me to them!' She flashed the wounds at him. ‘They've never healed. So how could I ever marry a man with these marks of damnation?'

‘I didn't leave you. The candle went out so I had to go get my bag. The matches were there. Eleanor, I saved you.'