The Reformed Vampire Support Group

by Catherine Jinks

  On the contrary, Casimir conveyed the impression of being verminous, like a cockroach. And it isn’t hard to squash a cockroach.

  At the time, Nefley worked on Saturdays. But he received every Tuesday off in lieu. So he broke into Casimir’s flat on a Tuesday, knowing that fewer neighbours would be around during the week. He took with him a pair of gloves, a stake, a crucifix, several cloves of garlic, a can of lighter fluid, a box of matches, and a pistol loaded with silver bullets.

  As it turned out, Casimir’s corpselike appearance made killing him far easier than Nefley had anticipated. It was like spearing a wax dummy. There wasn’t even any mess to deal with; after his mission had been accomplished, Nefley simply closed the coffin and departed. But he picked up Casimir’s address book on his way out – and spent the rest of the week poring over it, whenever he had a minute to spare.

  He knew that he would have to determine whether Casimir’s friends were vampires or not.

  By Sunday he was ready to act. That afternoon, he approached Sanford’s house and knocked at the door. When no one answered, he checked around the back. And when every window proved to be heavily fortified (because it was, after all, a former bank), he proceeded to the next house on his list – which happened to be Dave’s.

  I’ve already mentioned that Dave lives in a skinny little duplex with a basement darkroom. This house is stuck into the side of a hill; you reach the front door by climbing a steep flight of stone stairs, and you reach the back door by turning into an alley that runs behind the house, then pushing through a rusty gate. Because Dave’s garden is massively overgrown with choking vines and unpruned bushes, Nefley was invisible to any neighbours who might have glanced outside at approximately two o’clock that Sunday afternoon.

  In other words, no one raised the alarm.

  Nefley soon located an unlocked window, which gave him access to Dave’s kitchen. From there he penetrated the rest of the house, including the basement darkroom. But the darkroom was empty. No one lay in Dave’s modified sun-bed, which is tucked between great piles of second-hand records in cardboard boxes. Nefley poked around for a while without any luck.

  He was making his way back upstairs when the doorbell rang. It was a terrific shock. For perhaps five minutes he stood frozen on the third step from the bottom, holding his breath. Then he heard the sound of a window being pushed open. I’m not sure if he realised that someone was climbing through the same window that he’d used. All I know is that he bolted for the front entrance, trying to avoid whatever threat was looming out the back.

  He wasn’t aware that there were two intruders, and that one of them – Barry McKinnon – had remained by the doorbell. Nefley suddenly found himself face to face with a man who appeared to be a legitimate visitor.

  So Nefley lied to protect himself.

  ‘I’m – I’m a friend of Dave’s,’ he stammered, in an attempt to account for his presence. ‘Is it Dave you’re looking for?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Barry, before shoving him inside.

  As soon as Barry closed the front door behind them, it occurred to Nefley that if Dave were a vampire, he wouldn’t be receiving visitors in the middle of the day. At almost the same instant, Barry asked if Dave was about.

  ‘No,’ Nefley replied, in his squeaky voice. By this time he understood that he was in trouble. Barry’s tone was menacing, and his hard, pale eyes were empty of emotion. What’s more, he had Dermid backing him up; when Nefley looked around, he glimpsed Dermid’s hulking silhouette, framed in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘He wouldn’t be with that priest, would he?’ Barry continued, as Dermid stood blocking the light. ‘Big bloke. Grey hair. Ramon something.’

  ‘Ramon Alvarez?’ said Nefley, who was familiar with the name. He had found it in Casimir’s address book.

  Barry and Dermid exchanged a quick glance.

  ‘That’s him,’ the older McKinnon confirmed. ‘Where does he live, do you know?’

  Nefley promptly recited Father Ramon’s address, hoping to ingratiate himself with the two McKinnons, and perhaps secure a safe passage out of the house. But they weren’t finished with him. Not by a long shot.

  ‘And Reuben?’ Barry asked. ‘Where’s Reuben?’

  Nefley wasn’t acquainted with anyone called Reuben. He said as much to Barry, who didn’t believe it for one moment. The McKinnons seized Nefley’s gym-bag, which contained a stake, a crucifix, a pistol and a box of silver bullets.

  When Barry laid eyes on those silver bullets, he immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘I think you might know who Reuben is,’ he sneered, as Dermid put a knife to Nefley’s throat. The two McKinnons then searched Nefley’s pockets, consulted his driver’s licence, and forced him into their ute – which was parked in the street outside. Despite his strenuous denials, they were convinced that Nefley had been hiding behind a bush somewhere, watching and waiting, as they drove the orange removalist’s van away from Wolgaroo Corner. They decided that he must have been the one who’d rescued Father Ramon. It was therefore obvious to them that he must also be hiding their runaway werewolf. And they wouldn’t believe anything he said to the contrary.

  Not even after they’d searched his flat, and found no one there.

  By this time they must have realised that they were dealing with a rather strange sort of person. For one thing, Nefley kept babbling on about the undead. For another, his entire flat was full of garlic and pentagrams and crucifixes and posters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If they hadn’t been so intent on their need to locate Reuben, they might have stopped to wonder what the hell was going on.

  But they didn’t. Instead, having drawn a blank at Nefley’s apartment, they dragged him off to the presbytery. Their plan was to use him as a kind of Trojan horse, gaining access to Father Ramon’s house by making Nefley knock on the door for them. They assumed, you see, that he had been working in league with Father Ramon. They wouldn’t believe that Nefley and the priest had never met.

  The McKinnons’ ruse only worked because Father Ramon is accustomed to having lost souls turn up on his threshold at all hours. If he had checked through his peephole and spotted the McKinnons, he would never have let them in. But he didn’t know the man who was hovering on his front veranda. And he saw enough of Nefley’s shaking hands, damp brow and tortured expression to conclude that he was looking at a desperate case: an addict seeking counsel, perhaps, or a sinner wishing to unburden himself of some terrible secret.

  So Father Ramon opened his door, just as he’s opened his door to a hundred other forlorn supplicants. At which point the McKinnons (who had been waiting out of sight) hurled themselves at him like a couple of attack dogs.

  I should tell you, at this point, that they had come to Sydney fully prepared for a showdown. Their ute was stocked with a .22 rifle, several sets of handcuffs, a syringe full of anaesthetic, a bottle of tranquillisers, and lots of nylon rope – enough to sedate and secure at least ten people. What’s more, they had also taken Nefley’s handgun, and his stack of silver bullets. So poor Father Ramon didn’t stand a chance; the McKinnons had him hogtied on the floor before he could say ‘boo’.

  And then, of course, they went looking for Reuben.

  It was unfortunate that Reuben happened to be asleep upstairs at the time. If he’d been awake and alert, they might not have been able to subdue him. Knowing Reuben, the very sight of Barry and Dermid would have enraged him to the point of apoplexy; he would have tried to tear them apart. But when the McKinnons finally tracked him down, Reuben was snoring in one of the spare bedrooms. They had the barrel of the .22 shoved into his ear before he’d even opened his eyes.

  He woke up to find himself already handcuffed, with Dermid sitting on his legs and Barry measuring out a stiff dose of anaesthetic. ‘You know the drill, mate,’ said Barry, before plunging a loaded syringe into Reuben’s left buttock.

  The McKinnons spent about fifteen minutes upstairs with Reuben. Meanwhile Nefley and Father Ramon lay
in the living room, gagged, handcuffed, and forcibly drugged. Nefley blacked out quickly; despite his generous gut and double chin, he isn’t a big man, and he’d been given a generous dose of knockout drops. The priest, however, succumbed more gradually. He was still conscious when Barry wandered past, growling into his mobile phone.

  It just so happened that Barry was talking to an American millionaire named Forrest Darwell – the same man who had offered to buy Reuben for a hundred thousand dollars. Darwell ran his own illegal werewolf fights in Colorado. He had been visiting various countries in the southern hemisphere, looking for more ‘stock’, and had been most impressed with Reuben’s fighting ability. But Barry had refused to sell Reuben for less than half a million dollars. And since Darwell wasn’t willing to pay that much, he’d flown to the Philippines in search of cheaper options.

  Now he was Barry’s last hope. The McKinnons were on the run; a hostile group had discovered their nasty little secret, and news of the discovery might very well have leaked out. As far as Barry was concerned, Wolgaroo Corner was no longer safe. He wanted to start afresh somewhere.

  To do that, however, he needed money. And Reuben Schneider was not only the McKinnons’ most valuable asset – he was also a walking time bomb. Testimony from the abused werewolf would be enough to put Barry in jail for life. That was why Reuben had to be prevented from approaching the police with his story. It was also why the McKinnons were fully prepared to kill Father Ramon. Even if he didn’t go to the police (having apparently committed a double homicide), the priest was still a potential witness. There was nothing to prevent him from getting drunk, one night, and spilling his guts to a loose-lipped friend. He had to be silenced somehow, or the McKinnons would never rest easy.

  As for Nefley Irving – well, Nefley had got in the way. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The McKinnons had sent at least three people to their deaths in the pit at Wolgaroo; they weren’t particularly worried about one extra corpse, especially since their plan was to make everything look like an accident. They’d been intending to kill Father Ramon with an overdose of tranquillisers, until Barry saw what passed for a stove in the presbytery kitchen. Then it became obvious to him that the entire house could be blown up. In Barry’s view, no investigator would ever suspect arson once it was established that Father Ramon had been using fifty-year-old appliances. And any traces of foul play would be turned to ash in the subsequent fire.

  You may recall that when Dave and I found Father Ramon, he was in bed, asleep, with no ropes or handcuffs restraining him. This was part of Barry’s carefully thought-out scheme. Once the priest had lost consciousness, he was freed from his bonds and carried upstairs, where the McKinnons left him lying with his quilt tucked under his chin. It was all meant to look perfectly innocent. Even if Father Ramon wasn’t burnt to a crisp, the smoke or the gas would certainly kill him. And the pill bottle left by his bed would convince any suspicious detectives that he had dosed himself with barbiturates – or so Barry was hoping. As far as Barry was concerned, every base had been covered.

  But he was wrong, of course. For one thing, he didn’t check the garage. For another, he neglected to lower his voice during his conversation with Forrest Darwell. The priest heard every word that Barry uttered – and therefore became privy to several important facts. Reuben was being sold to someone called Darwell, for a great deal of money. Mr Darwell would be returning to Australia on a plane that was scheduled to arrive in Sydney the next morning, at half-past eight. And the ‘delivery’ of Mr Darwell’s purchase would then be arranged over the phone.

  Until that time, however, the McKinnons would have to hide out somewhere.

  It was lucky that Barry decided to discuss the alternatives with his son as they untied Nefley Irving. ‘Gimme his keys,’ Barry said to Dermid, unaware that Father Ramon was still conscious. Barry went on to explain that the keys would give them access to Nefley’s flat. ‘We’ll hole up there tonight,’ Barry decreed, ‘and piss off early, before anyone comes sniffin’ around.’

  ‘I dunno.’ Dermid sounded unconvinced. ‘Couldn’t we just sleep in the ute?’

  ‘What? All three of us?’ Barry sneered. ‘We’ll have the kid, dozy.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  ‘If I take this guy’s wallet, no one’ll know who he is,’ Barry declared, as he pocketed Nefley’s identification. ‘And if he doesn’t end up totally barbecued, they still won’t figure out his name until we’re long gone. Don’t worry. I’ve got it all sorted.’

  You can imagine how Father Ramon felt, upon hearing this. He remembers thinking vaguely: They’re going to set us on fire. I have to get up. But his eyes were already closed, and a deadly numbness was creeping over him. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.

  The last thing he heard, before he went under, was Dermid’s loudly voiced complaint about Nefley’s flat. ‘All that bloody Goth stuff gives me the creeps,’ Dermid grumbled. ‘I hate that stuff. How am I going to sleep in a room full of skulls and crosses and shit?’ Then darkness descended, and the nagging, nasal monologue simply faded away.

  17

  You’ve probably worked out by now that Nefley Irving was the mysterious stranger upstairs in the presbytery. He wasn’t a homeless person at all; he was Casimir Kucynski’s murderer. But Dave and I didn’t realise that. So we loaded him into Father Ramon’s grey sedan, which Dave had parked near the back door of the presbytery.

  And after Father Ramon had also been manoeuvred into the sedan’s back seat, Dave drove to my place, wearing Father Ramon’s sunglasses. We were lucky poor Dave was even capable of driving, after our struggle to get two massive dead weights down those presbytery stairs. I sat in the front passenger seat – shielding my eyes from the glare of passing headlights – while our two unconscious passengers made snuffling noises behind us. We reached our destination at 7.15. Dave had barely pulled up to the kerb when a flock of people started to spill out of Mum’s house: Mum and Sanford, Horace, Gladys, George. I had phoned Sanford before leaving the presbytery, to make sure everything was all right back home, so he knew what to expect.

  When he reached the car, he immediately plunged inside it to get a better look at its drugged occupants.

  ‘Where’s that bottle of pills?’ he barked at me, without even saying hello. I shut the front passenger door, then passed him the little plastic vial that I’d found by Father Ramon’s bed. Though I’d already told Sanford that the vial wasn’t labelled, he wanted to inspect it anyway.

  He tucked it into his pocket just as Mum threw her arms around my neck.

  ‘Thank God!’ she wheezed. ‘Thank God you came home!’

  ‘It’s okay, Mum. I’m fine.’

  ‘What a nightmare!’

  ‘Yeah. It was.’

  ‘I won’t let it happen again, darl. Not ever. No more bloody wild-goose chases for you.’

  ‘What the hell is going on, anyway?’ asked Horace. He was still dressed in his ridiculous black cape and frockcoat; I realised that no one else had changed so much as a pair of socks since Tuesday, either. ‘Who’s the bald bloke?’ he added. ‘Have we worked that out yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Dave, slamming the driver’s door. ‘But we have to get him inside, no matter who he is. Just give me a hand; I can’t do this on my own.’

  ‘Yes, both of you take care of our guest,’ Sanford instructed, from the back of the car. ‘George, you can help me carry Father Ramon.’

  ‘And make it quick,’ my mother added. ‘Or we’ll have the whole neighbourhood out here, stickybeaking.’

  She promptly hustled me into the house ahead of Gladys – who had already started to whine about the cold night air. Bridget was waiting for us in the vestibule, leaning on a cane. She greeted me with a paper-dry kiss and an inquiry about my health.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ she quavered. ‘Your colour’s not good.’

  I refrained from pointing out that my colour was never good, even at the best of times. Instead I muttered some
thing about missing breakfast the previous night.

  ‘Yeah, we heard about that,’ said Mum. ‘Father Ramon told me you had to leave the guinea pigs. I’ll get you one right now, shall I? And your supplements, as well.’

  Instead of answering her question, I asked one of my own. ‘So you’ve talked to Father Ramon? Since we got back?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Mum’s made an impatient gesture. ‘He rang this morning, soon as he got home. He would have come straight over if he hadn’t been worried about leaving you two. We must have talked for two hours, I reckon. He told me everything.’ At that moment Sanford appeared on the threshold, shuffling backwards with his arms wrapped around Father Ramon’s chest. My mother’s face crumpled. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said hoarsely. ‘We were on the phone, not long ago, and now look. What the hell could have happened?’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Sanford wheezed, pausing at the foot of the stairs. ‘He might wake up with a headache, but at least he will wake up. This doesn’t look like an overdose – all his vital signs are normal.’ He nodded at George, who was supporting Father Ramon’s legs. ‘Can you keep going? It’s not much further.’

  ‘Put him in the spare room,’ was Mum’s recommendation. ‘I’ve changed the sheets.’ Then she watched as Dave and Horace staggered through the front door, bearing our mystery guest. ‘I suppose you’d better put this one in Nina’s room,’ she decided, much to my dismay.

  ‘But Mum,’ I cried, ‘that’s my bed!’

  ‘You don’t use it, though, do you?’ said Horace, in a deliberate attempt to bait me. When I rounded on him, he smirked.