‘Lord Ruthven mentioned they can drown.’
Oldfield nodded. ‘Hence the stories that they fear running water. But the truths about them are shrouded in lies.’ He staggered back suddenly, hands to his head. ‘I don’t have long. It’s all in the journal. Everything. Know a vampire by the soil in his shoes. See how they shun the brightness of the sun. Most of all, the wolf bat …’ His words were lost as they became a cry of pain.
‘Father!’ Liz ran to him.
The old man was bent almost double. He pushed her gently away. ‘It is almost time, my child. She will come for me, unless you hurry.’ He held her arms for a moment. ‘Save me,’ he urged. ‘The wood from the door. Be strong.’
‘George,’ Sir William said quietly.
Liz could see George move slowly towards the doorway. The fog was rising like steam around them.
‘Everything is in my journal,’ Oldfield said. He sounded weaker now and was swaying on his feet as he struggled to stay upright. ‘The journal in the box. Everything except the Great Lie. Couldn’t write that down. Couldn’t risk them discovering that I knew.’ He leaned back, bracing himself against the stonework. ‘Left them a trap. Turned their lie against them.’ He blinked, his forehead creasing in confusion. ‘So hungry,’ he gasped. ‘So very hungry.’
George was giving something to Sir William. He walked over to Liz and pressed it into her hand. A broken shaft of wood from the door, its end a sharp point.
‘He wants you to do it.’ Sir William’s face was a mask of sympathy and sadness. ‘He loves you so very much. You have to do this for him. You have to let him know that you are strong enough. Brave enough. Loving enough.’
‘Hungry!’ Oldfield roared.
Liz turned quickly, the wooden stake in her hand.
The man opposite was not her father. She tried to tell herself that. ‘My father is dead,’ she murmured.
He didn’t even look like her father now. He straightened up, so much taller. The weakness of old age dropped from him. His dark eyes glistened, and his pale lips parted to reveal long, sharp teeth.
Eddie swore.
‘Quickly,’ Sir William urged.
‘I’ll do it,’ George said.
‘No,’ Liz told him. ‘I have to.’
The creature that had been her father rushed towards Liz, grabbing her roughly. His face pressed down towards her neck. She jammed the stake against his chest, felt the rotting wood splintering in her hands.
‘Now!’ Sir William shouted.
The vampire was pushing her, forcing her back against the wall. Bearing down on her. Liz shut her eyes and turned away.
‘Look at me!’ her father yelled in a voice that was barely his own – a ghastly, throaty rasp of sound.
Liz opened her eyes. Her hands were numb as her father pulled the stake from them. And rammed it back at her.
Liz gasped. The blunt end of wood ripped through her dress below the shoulder, under her arm. It scraped against her inner arm before it embedded itself in the crumbling stone wall behind her.
For a moment, no more, the vampire’s face was once again her father’s. He nodded, staring down at the sharp wood pointing back at him. Then he looked deep into his daughter’s eyes, and he smiled.
‘Be brave,’ he said quietly, his voice once again as she remembered. ‘I love you.’
Then his eyes darkened, and his lips parted, and he hurled himself at her. At the sharp wood. There was a crunch as it penetrated. Then he fell back, the wood stuck firmly in his chest. His eyes glazed, and his blood mixed with the fog as it soaked the stone floor.
CHAPTER 21
The door to the shed opened outwards, and George had to trample down the long grass before he could wrench it open. A shower of dust fell from the frame as the lock tore through it, and the timber creaked in protest. But he managed to make a big enough gap to squeeze inside, followed by Eddie, Liz and Sir William.
‘Nothing but dust and cobwebs,’ Eddie said.
The dust was everywhere. It hung in the air like the smog outside. Cobwebs criss-crossed the narrow rafters. Several dark shapes hung from a cross beam – sleeping bats. George drew in a deep, dusty breath.
‘Bats,’ Liz said. ‘He mentioned bats. And there was something on father’s pillow. I thought it was a bird, but – it was a bat, I’m sure. It flew out of the window.’
‘You think they’re going to wake up and turn into vampires?’ Eddie asked.
‘I think speed is of the essence,’ Sir William told him. ‘Let’s find this journal and leave the bats and the spiders in peace.’
George was looking round. A garden spade and fork were rusting against the back wall, together with a pile of broken and chipped flower pots. One wall had a narrow shelf running along its length. But the shelf was empty, apart from dust and dirt and several dead flies. Their bodies were dried-up husks.
‘Funny place to keep biscuits,’ Eddie said.
‘Keep what?’ Liz said.
‘There’s a biscuit tin over here, look.’ Eddie moved aside the spade and some of the flower pots to reveal a metal box behind them. It was layered with dust and wreathed in cobwebs. Strands pulled away and broke as he lifted the box, suddenly sounding apprehensive. ‘You don’t think they’ll be stale, do you?’ he asked as Liz picked up the tin.
‘I don’t think it’s biscuits, Eddie,’ George told him.
They crowded round as Liz slowly opened the box.
Eddie gave a shriek and leaped backwards.
‘It’s all right,’ Sir William said. ‘I think it’s dead.’ He produced a pencil from his pocket and eased it under the dark shape inside, lifting it out of the box and tipping it on to the open lid. ‘Sleeping anyway,’ he decided. The bat lay twitching on the box. ‘There’s another one in there. Both apparently dormant.’ He prodded the second bat out on to the lid beside the first.
‘How did they get in there?’ Eddie asked. ‘Frightened the life out of me, that did.’
‘We noticed,’ Liz told him. She held the box in one hand and reached inside with the other, feeling through a mass of cobwebs.
‘Be careful,’ George warned. ‘It could be anything.’
‘Books,’ she declared. ‘There are several of them.’ Liz closed the box, the two bats falling back inside. She handed the box to George and showed them the small, leather-bound notebooks she had removed.
Sir William sat with a plate of bread and cheese balanced on one arm of his chair. Between eating, he leafed through the notebooks.
‘It appears that the incident to which your father wished to draw our attention occupies the last of these volumes. Perhaps he stopped keeping a journal after that. Or perhaps he felt the later journals did not need hiding.’
‘So what happened?’ Eddie asked.
‘In a moment. Let me explain the context, what Oldfield was up to and who he was. Then we shall better understand what happened to him.’
‘He was ordained not long before that,’ Liz said. ‘I remember him telling me. And for all his frailty, he was not so old as he appeared.’
‘Events took their toll,’ Sir William said.
‘The events in the journal?’ George asked.
Sir William nodded. ‘I fear so.’ He paused to pop a piece of cheese in his mouth. ‘Horace Oldfield, according to a reference in his journal, was ordained to the priesthood in 1856, at the age of thirty.’
‘I’m not sure what he did before that,’ Liz said.
‘It is not clear,’ Sir William told them. ‘He lectured at Cambridge University for a while, where he had studied for his degree. He travelled extensively as well. And in the fifties he felt drawn to the priesthood. He was offered a curacy in South London in 1857.’
‘St Agnes Martyr,’ Liz put in.
‘He was, it seems, diligent and well liked. The incumbent was elderly and more and more of the parish duties fell to Horace Oldfield. Then, we come to April 1858.’ He picked up the journal and opened it.
Eddie, Liz
and George leaned forward, listening with rapt attention as Sir William began to read.
I have never written of my travels before I was called to God. But for several months I spent time in the mountainous regions of Eastern Europe. Perhaps what I learned there began the process of my decision to be ordained. Perhaps I decided then that if creatures of such evil malevolence existed, then God would need all our help to stand against them.
I spent a week once in the company of the elder of a small village in the Carpathians. His name was Klaus, and by day I read in his small library. In the evenings we sat in the local hostelry and he translated for me the stories of the other customers. By night we remained locked in the house, like the other villagers in their homes. Listening to the sounds of the wind and the baying of the wolves. And in the morning we woke and prayed that none of the village children was missing.
He had made the study of local legends his life’s work, having lost his only son and his young wife many years before. He had succeeded in separating the truth from the myth, he told me. And from him I learned such terrible things.
Of course, once I returned to England, my experiences and discoveries seemed at best exaggerated, at worst ridiculous. How much had I imagined, how much had the local people invented and embellished? Certainly the parish of St Agnes was not the place I ever expected to put my reluctant learning to the test.
I have not written for over a week. Not since I received my dear sister’s letter and was so overjoyed at the news of her imminent visit. How quickly things change. I was then so full of hope and anticipation and life. But now I can feel that life ebbing away. I know I must commit the horrific events of the past days to these pages.
Though it seems a lifetime ago, it is only ten days since Reginald Carr came to see me. He had been to the rector already and told his story, only to be met with platitudes and a distinct lack of sympathy. When he said he wished me to perform an exorcism on a haunted house, I began to feel the same scepticism. Surely in the middle of the nineteenth century no one can still believe in such things?
But then I recalled my experiences in the Carpathians, and I agreed to hear the man’s story. He had purchased, he told me, a property at the end of Mortill Street. It was an old house, in dilapidated condition, which he was planning to renovate. He is, he explained to me, a builder by trade and having saved an amount of money over the years wished to reinvest it in bricks and mortar. I asked what was the nature of the haunting that he perceived. He grew very uncomfortable and I could tell that he was far from happy even to discuss the matter. But I pressed him nevertheless. Was it that the house made noises? It was. But surely, as a builder he knew that every house has sounds and settles or decays in a different way? He did. And these sounds were not the noises of an old house slipping further into disrepair.
And then there were the figures. Dark, lean, hungry creatures that came and went during the darkness. They entered the house, but they did not come out. Had he seen them himself? He confessed that he had, but only once. For the most part he relied on the testimony of an elderly lady, a spinster, who lived nearby.
‘There are no houses adjoined to the property,’ he explained. ‘No one in their right mind would build close to it. But further down the street, that is where Miss Radnor lived.’
‘And she tells you that the house is haunted?’ I could not resist a smile as I said it.
‘This is no laughing matter,’ he rebuked me. I apologised, and he told me that he too had been a cynic. He had no more believed the old lady’s assertions than I had been inclined to believe him.
‘But the sounds I have heard, the things I have seen.’ He shuddered, and immediately accepted my offer of a small glass of brandy, which he drank in a single desperate gulp.
‘You must see the house for yourself,’ he said. ‘I would sell it, but I would find no buyer. And how can I knowingly pass on such a thing? What would my conscience or my God have to say about that?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, thinking I perceived the real source of his discomfort, ‘I should speak with this Miss Radnor.’
‘Then I hope you are still on good terms with the Almighty,’ Carr told me. ‘For her soul is no longer on this earth. And her body …’ He held out a trembling hand, and I refilled his glass without comment. ‘Her body was found in the street three days ago. They say her heart gave out, but I know the surgeon who examined her.’
‘And what does he say?’ I asked. Though somewhere deep inside, I think I already knew his answer.
‘He says that if her heart gave out it was through a lack of work. A lack of anything to pump round her body. He said that the poor woman was completely drained of blood.’
In spite of my rising trepidation, I assured Carr that I would visit the house. He apologised for not coming with me, but asserted he would no more set foot in that house before it was exorcised than he would drink the ocean. Though the way he was now going at the brandy, I wondered if he might not be preparing to give it a try.
My fears growing with every moment, I resolved to visit the house the next day. I dared not venture out there at night, and I prayed that tomorrow would be sunny and bright.
In fact it was dull, with a miasma of smog hanging in the air. But I determined not to wait. With my Book of Common Prayer, a Bible, a flask of holy water from the church font, a silver crucifix and several other items I felt might be of value, I set out for Mortill Street.
If ever a house had been designed to look haunted, this was it. The place was in a sorry state. The windows were broken and boarded, the front door rotting away. The steps to the porch had collapsed and the garden was overgrown with nettles and brambles.
I could tell as soon as I was inside that this was a house of evil. I do not use the word lightly, but the whole place resonated with the fear and oppression that I had come to know so well while staying with Klaus the village elder.
It is hard to describe the events that took place that afternoon and evening. But suffice it to say I soon discovered that the whole house was infested with the creatures of the night. They rest, sleeping like dormant animals, for much of the time and had made this place their own. It was as if the very walls breathed with their foul presence.
I stood in a circle of chalk and holy water in the hall of the house, holding my crucifix and my Bible as I recited the words of power. I said the Lord’s Prayer and took communion. I repeated the words I had learned from Klaus in his library and I listened to their shrieks and screams as I bound them to that place. Their hands clutched and tore at me, but in my circle and my faith I remained secure.
Klaus had told me he believed the words of power worked because they believed them to be a powerful restraint. But that belief would soon wear off. If I was to entomb them, I would need more. I would need a more physical restraint to make this house a prison for ever.
Carr was happy to be rid of it. He accepted the small amount I could afford, and I had Mr Jenkins of Jenkins and Mallerby draw up a covenant so that the house would stand for as long as there is a legal process and justice in the world.
All the time, all that week, I worked. I had brought back what I needed from my travels – as a curiosity as much as insurance. I had barely sufficient for the task, but as the years passed, there would be more. I knew from Klaus of the Great Lie. I dare not speak it here. But now I turned that Lie against them as I set my trap.
If ever they woke, that would be their destruction. They were safe only while they slept. They could survive for all eternity, but only if they lay dormant, entombed with their evil.
All but one. All but the one who broke the circle. That last night, as I laid the traps and performed the rites again, he came at me out of the gathering night, stronger than the rest. Perhaps he had not slept. Perhaps he was a guardian of some sort. That might explain his rage, if he knew he had failed his fellows and allowed a mere mortal to defeat them. And if he must account for that failure. He railed at me like a man possessed – which in a sense
he was. When that failed, he pleaded. He said when the Coachman found what I had done, how I had imprisoned his sister, we would all pay a heavy price. A life for a life. Undeath for undeath.
Time and again he came at me. Time and again I beat him back. Until, at last, he fled into the darkness. And as he went, his coat spread behind him like the wings of a bat, I knew that of all of them he was the absolute worst, most pernicious and evil. I had let him escape, and for as long as I lived he would be forever in my mind, colouring my thoughts and judgements. Waiting for his revenge. Only vaguely remembering how he had mentioned a sister …
It was gone midnight by the time I stumbled home, exhausted and terrified. But the work was done. I washed the dust of that house from my body, and I stared into the mirror hoping to find some glimmer of satisfaction at what I had achieved. Or at least, to reassure myself I still reflected in its surface.
An old man stared back. Sapped of his life energy, with sunken eyes and greying hair. I knew I had paid a price. And I knew also that for what I had bought, whether it be an end to the evil or merely a little time for the world, it was a small price to pay.
I had no idea of the price that would be exacted so soon after. I had dismissed from my mind the threats and entreaties made that night, and forgotten all mention of the mysterious Coachman and his sister – trapped within that house.
Until the following week. Until I met the train that was bringing my own sister to me. And found that she was not on it.
A life for a life. Undeath for undeath.
Oh what have I done?
Her cloak was like a bloodstain in the swirling colourless mist. Clarissa made her way eagerly through the graveyard, her anticipation increasing with every step. Soon, so soon, he would be waking – he might even be awake already. If she could have come here earlier she would, but the Coachman had delayed her. He of all people should have recognised her hunger.
The Parliament of Blood Page 18
