The Reformed Vampire Support Group

by Catherine Jinks

  So she thanked him, but rejected the offer. Instead she asked him to vacate my room as soon as possible. If he did that, she explained, Dermid could be moved into it, and her own bed would be restored to her. ‘I’ll call a cab to take you home,’ she promised, ‘and give you a ring later on. To see how you’re coping.’ Then she gave him some of her shepherd’s pie to heat up for dinner, because it was going to be hard for him to cook with only one arm.

  I don’t know if it was the shepherd’s pie that converted Nefley, or Reuben’s testimonial, or Barry’s frantic cries for help. It may even have been my diary, which Nefley secretly pocketed when he returned upstairs to fetch his pistol. But whatever the cause, I can attest to the fact that he left Mum’s house a changed man that morning.

  And I’m not just talking about the broken arm.

  Meanwhile, Dermid was really beginning to suffer. By the time Mum had said goodbye to Nefley and traipsed back upstairs, Dermid was on his knees in the bathroom, puking his guts out. I mean, literally puking his guts out; there’s something very nasty that happens to the lining of your stomach when you turn into a vampire – but you probably don’t want to hear all the symptoms. Let’s just say that it’s painful, and terrifying, and almost worse to watch than it is to experience. (Personally, I don’t remember much about my own transformation; it’s poor Mum who’s still having nightmares about bloody discharges, thirty-five years on.)

  Anyway, Dermid was a mess. And so was my mother. For one thing, she hadn’t had enough sleep. For another, as Dermid’s metamorphosis progressed, she found herself troubled by memories of my own first day of infection – when Sanford had been obliged to lock her in the basement to stop her from summoning an ambulance. Nor did Barry make things any easier. He continued to rant and rave in the guestroom until he drove my mother from the house; she had to pop down the road to get some money and cigarettes and a bottle of gin before she had strength enough to go back inside.

  Fortunately, Reuben was around – and he didn’t give a damn about the McKinnons. Being totally unmoved by Dermid’s distress, he was able to wipe up blood and listen to heartrending groans with perfect equanimity. Barry’s tantrums also failed to disturb him. And when at last Barry fell silent, Reuben refused to let my mother open the guestroom door. ‘He hasn’t hurt himself,’ Reuben assured her. ‘He’s probably lying there, waiting to throw a lamp at whoever sticks their head in.’

  ‘If he’s quiet, he might listen,’ Mum speculated.

  ‘Yeah, but he won’t listen to you.’ Reuben was trying to be patient. ‘Not until you’ve got something concrete to offer.’ Seeing Mum frown, he took a deep breath, then tackled the subject even more fervently. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know this guy. He’s too dangerous to mess around with. Just wait a few hours before you talk to him, because I’ve got an idea that’ll give us a lotta leverage. It’ll give him a reason to walk away.’

  ‘What idea?’ asked Mum. Reuben, however, wouldn’t tell her. Not at first. He waited until Father Ramon arrived, at about eleven o’clock, before laying out his carefully conceived plan for revenge.

  First of all, a meeting would be arranged with Forrest Darwell, just as soon as the American called to confirm that he had a hundred thousand dollars in cash. Disguising his voice, Reuben would specify a rendezvous point not far from a railway station. Here the priest would leave Barry’s ute. Long before the American showed up, an anonymous tip-off would alert the police to a possible drug-related transaction. Forrest would be nabbed with a suitcase full of suspicious money, and there would be hell to pay – for the McKinnons, in particular.

  ‘Whatever happens, Darwell’s gunna be furious,’ Reuben opined. ‘He’ll think that Barry set him up, and he’ll try to get even. God knows what he’ll tell the coppers. And Barry will be lucky if they get to him before Darwell does.’

  ‘But how’s that going to help us?’ Mum wanted to know.

  Reuben explained. He reminded her that Barry would be deprived of his hundred thousand dollars at the worst possible time – and would therefore take pretty much whatever we decided to hand over. (A few hundred dollars and a ticket to New Zealand would probably do the trick, as far as Reuben was concerned.) When Father Ramon proceeded to make inquiries about Dermid, Reuben shrugged. There could be no telling how Barry would react to news of his son’s transformation. It was possible that he might lose control. It was equally possible that he might become more cooperative. But Reuben was willing to bet money that Barry McKinnon would put his own interests above those of his son, and skip town without a backward glance.

  ‘Which would suit you just fine … wouldn’t it?’ Reuben guessed.

  Mum said that she supposed so. Father Ramon asked how he was meant to get hold of the McKinnons’ ute. Reuben suggested that the priest take his own car to Nefley’s flat, where the ute was parked in a visitors’ spot. ‘While you’re at Nefley’s,’ Reuben added, ‘you should pick up that rifle. It doesn’t belong to him, and we might need it.’

  ‘We won’t need it,’ Father Ramon said firmly.

  ‘We will if Dermid blows his top.’

  ‘If that happens, I’m afraid a rifle won’t help us.’

  ‘Then we’ll wave it at Barry,’ Reuben proposed. ‘To stop him from getting any stupid ideas.’

  In the end, Mum endorsed the notion of having a gun nearby; she was becoming quite rattled by Barry’s explosive outbursts, I think. So Father Ramon capitulated (‘Perhaps it’s better that Mr Irving doesn’t have access to something so dangerous,’ was how he rationalised his decision), before he agreed to follow Reuben’s directives.

  After that, it was just a matter of waiting.

  26

  I woke up at the usual time, feeling lousy. It was very dark. When I pushed open the lid of my isolation tank, I wasn’t surprised to see Sanford across the room, struggling out of his sleeping-bag. But I was surprised to see my mother leaning against the basement door.

  Normally she doesn’t come down to watch me emerge from my daily coma.

  ‘Mum?’ I said feebly. ‘What are you doing here?’

  She jumped, then pressed a finger to her lips. Almost at the same instant, Father Ramon addressed her from out in the hall. ‘Estelle?’ He sounded upset. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Mum. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ he assured her, as she fumbled with the lock. ‘But Barry isn’t.’

  Sanford was on his feet, by then; though he looked dishevelled, and was still a little shaky around the knees, he’d obviously grasped that something was wrong.

  ‘What is it?’ he croaked. ‘Estelle?’

  Mum didn’t reply. Instead she jerked open the door to admit Father Ramon, whose face was as almost as white as a vampire’s. ‘You mean Barry’s still in the house?’ she squawked, clutching at the priest’s arm.

  ‘He’s upstairs.’ Father Ramon turned to Sanford. ‘I’m – I’m afraid he’s been infected.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And Dermid’s gone,’ the priest finished, his voice cracking.

  I stood there with my mouth open and my head in a spin. Sanford reeled. He might have lost his balance altogether if he hadn’t propped himself against a wall.

  Nevertheless, he managed to stagger upstairs in pursuit of my mother, his demands for an explanation growing stronger and sharper with every step. I followed him, but only after donning my slippers and dressing-gown. Father Ramon took the lead. I heard him say, ‘It’s a long story, Sanford,’ before entering the kitchen.

  Reuben was there, waiting for us. He wore a pair of Sanford’s lace-up shoes, and was cradling the rifle in his arms. On the floor at his feet lay Barry McKinnon.

  The smell of blood hit me before I’d even spied the fang marks.

  ‘Oh, my God.’ I froze. Sanford had to stop as well; it’s not easy to fight the fanging urge when you’re still groggy and disoriented. We stood in the hallway for a moment, taking deep breaths, while Mum eyed us doubtfull
y.

  ‘Are you two feeling it?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be going back to the basement?’

  ‘No.’ Sanford shook his head. ‘I’m perfectly well, thank you.’

  ‘So am I.’ But I was still confused. ‘Mum, what happened?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ she replied, echoing Father Ramon. Then she noticed something under the kitchen table. ‘Is that my purse?’ she said. ‘Who’s been going through my purse?’

  ‘Give you three guesses,’ was Reuben’s rather sour response. He fell back a little as she passed him, and his feet immediately caught Sanford’s attention.

  ‘You’re wearing my shoes.’ Sanford’s tone was more dazed than accusatory. ‘No wonder I couldn’t find them.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Reuben, who seemed genuinely apologetic. ‘I had to go out. Nothing else would fit.’ With more honesty than tact, he added, ‘If I’d had any kinda choice, I wouldna picked these.’

  ‘Is that Barry’s rifle?’ I queried. And Father Ramon said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘He brought it back from Nefley’s,’ Reuben revealed, as if this explained everything. Instantly Sanford seemed to snap out of his trance.

  ‘Where is Nefley?’ he wanted to know. ‘Where’s Dermid? What’s been going on?’

  ‘I tell you what’s been going on!’ cried Mum, who had retrieved her handbag. ‘Dermid’s taken my money! A hundred and twenty dollars!’

  This news hit Father Ramon particularly hard. He groaned, then churned up his silver hair in consternation. Reuben growled, ‘That figures.’ I stared at them both, all at sea.

  ‘That was my housekeeping money! I just got it out this morning!’ Mum wailed. She was hugely upset, and had to be helped to her feet by Sanford. ‘What am I going to do now?’

  ‘We’ll work something out,’ Father Ramon promised. ‘I’m sorry, Estelle.’

  ‘You should check his pockets, to start with,’ Reuben advised, poking at Barry’s midriff with a leather-clad toe. ‘Just in case. It’s this bastard who calls the shots, not Dermid.’

  But when Mum went through Barry’s pockets, they were empty. Her housekeeping money was nowhere to be seen.

  And that, as Father Ramon said, was very bad news.

  ‘If Dermid took it, he could be anywhere,’ the priest exclaimed, in despairing accents. ‘These days you can buy a plane ticket for that kind of money!’

  ‘He won’t have bought a plane ticket,’ Sanford insisted. ‘He’s not – he can’t – he’s not thinking straight.’ Though his own powers of concentration also appeared to be slightly compromised, Sanford was very firm on this point. ‘Dermid’s entered the second phase. He’s able to move around, but his cognitive abilities will be affected by a profound drop in his blood-sugar levels. It’s going to be making him very erratic. Very disoriented.’

  ‘He can’t be that disoriented,’ said Reuben. ‘I mean, he knew enough to take a wad of money when he saw it.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Sanford rejoined, ‘but not necessarily. He might have recognised the money as something desirable, without actually remembering how to use it.’

  ‘So in other words, he’s out of his mind,’ said Mum.

  ‘You could argue that.’ Sanford gestured at Barry. ‘After all, he just fanged his own father. Isn’t that the scenario, here? In which case, he must be seriously disturbed.’

  ‘So he might not be doing the logical thing,’ Mum continued. ‘In fact he might have gone back upstairs, for all we know.’

  Sanford swallowed. He probably would have turned pale, if he hadn’t been snow-white already.

  ‘You mean you – you haven’t checked?’ he stammered.

  It hardly needs saying that we immediately checked the first floor. At least, Sanford did. He wouldn’t allow any of the nonvampires to risk an encounter with Dermid, and he wanted me to search a few of the likelier ground-floor hiding places – such as the cupboard under the stairs, for instance. Sanford even shone a torch around our attic area, just to be on the safe side. Only when we were convinced that Dermid wasn’t anywhere in the house did we finally transport Barry McKinnon up to my room.

  We couldn’t return him to the guestroom, because of the damage he’d done to it.

  Poor Mum received a very nasty shock when she saw what Barry had accomplished. He’d done a pretty thorough job of trashing just about everything within reach. Nevertheless, the trail of destruction that he’d left behind told us exactly how he’d managed to get out.

  First of all, he had applied so much pressure to one particular bedpost that a weld had snapped. He had therefore been able to slip a handcuff over the top of the post, having first unscrewed the knob. From the enormous dents in its solid oaken panels, we deduced that – once free – he had tried to kick down the bedroom door, without success. So he had then climbed onto the wardrobe, using the bedside cabinet as a kind of stepladder, and knocked his way through the plaster-and-lathe ceiling with an old marble lamp-base that he’d found in the bottom drawer of the dressing table. (‘Dammit,’ Mum said gloomily, when this lamp was discovered. ‘I forgot all about Auntie Vera’s stuff.’) After squirming through the rough-edged escape route that he’d made for himself, Barry must have located the nearest access panel, and dropped onto the landing – because when we looked, we saw that the aperture most commonly employed by electricians and exterminators hadn’t been covered up again.

  ‘That’s where he would have come down,’ Father Ramon decided. ‘And from here he must have gone straight in to rescue Dermid.’

  ‘Because the door wasn’t locked,’ Mum agreed, adding, ‘I was told not to lock the door.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to.’ Sanford was quick to defend the decisions he’d made. ‘Barry’s mistake was to cut himself while he was breaking into the roof. He blooded his own son. It’s as simple as that.’ Irritably, he rounded on the nearest available scapegoat – who happened to be Reuben. ‘Why weren’t you here?’ Sanford snarled. ‘I thought you were going to keep an eye on things.’

  ‘I was. I mean, I did,’ said Reuben. ‘But I had this idea. It was a good idea.’

  Suddenly Mum’s phone rang. The noise made everyone jump; even Reuben was startled. After a moment’s pause, my mother went off to answer it, leaving Father Ramon to recount the day’s events.

  That’s when Sanford and I heard about Forrest Darwell’s first call. The priest also told us about Nefley’s conversion, and Barry’s violence, and Reuben’s carefully laid plans. According to the priest, Forrest had phoned back at about four o’clock. Afterwards, Father Ramon had driven Barry’s ute to a deserted inner-city laneway lined with skips and bins and garage doors. (Father Ramon’s pastoral duties had taken him there once, when he was searching for the runaway child of a widowed parishioner.) On the train back to Parramatta, the priest had notified Reuben of the truck’s exact whereabouts. At which point Reuben had left Mum’s house to find a public phone box.

  ‘I didn’t want to ring the police from here,’ he explained, ‘just in case they ended up tracing the call.’

  He also hadn’t wanted to use the nearest phone box, and had spent about forty-five minutes wandering the streets of nearby suburbs. Meanwhile, Father Ramon had returned to Nefley’s apartment, where Nefley himself was already halfway through my diary. Any normal person, of course, would have tried to conceal this diary before answering a knock on his door. Any normal person would have been ashamed of getting caught with his nose stuck in someone else’s private papers.

  Nefley, however, isn’t exactly what you’d call a normal person. As soon as he had admitted Father Ramon, who was there to collect the rifle, Nefley began to babble on about the insights he’d gained from my diary, and how he’d never realised how fragile vampires actually were, and how sorry he felt for me – now that he knew the kinds of difficulties I faced – and why he wanted to do something that would make amends for the crime he’d committed. ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life in the service of the very people I once tried to destroy!�
� he had announced, in the manner of a comic-strip hero.

  Father Ramon had been torn. On the one hand, Nefley’s change of heart had been gratifying to witness. On the other hand, it’s always a shock to encounter someone who can’t understand the concept of privacy. According to Father Ramon, Nefley seemed to view reality as an extension of his own personal fantasy world. ‘He’s very immature,’ the priest reported, in worried tones. ‘I’d have to recommend that we keep him under surveillance, or he might do something stupid.’

  After expressing himself very strongly on the subject of stealing, Father Ramon had persuaded Nefley to hand over my diary – and had been on the verge of mentioning Barry’s rifle when his mobile had rung. It was my mother, calling with bad news.

  Barry had managed to free himself.

  At that stage, she wasn’t quite sure how he’d done it. All she knew was that he had managed to climb into her attic. And since Reuben wasn’t carrying a phone, she had immediately rung Father Ramon – who had told her to lock herself in the basement. ‘Get down there now,’ he’d instructed. ‘Take your mobile with you. If anyone tries to get in, just contact the police. I’m on my way.’

  In fact, he had been on his way with the rifle. He might even have entered the house with it, if he hadn’t picked Reuben up in the street. (Reuben had made his anonymous call, and was retracing his steps along a main road when Father Ramon spotted him.) After conferring together, they had decided to enter Mum’s place from the rear, sneaking in through the kitchen fully armed. And they had both agreed that Reuben should be the one to carry the rifle, since Father Ramon didn’t even know how to load it.

  They hadn’t expected to find the back door standing open. Nor had they expected to find Barry already in the kitchen, sprawled on the linoleum with fang-marks in his neck.