by Nick James
Anna gave a dark laugh into my chest. ‘As I understand it, they are known to be very brusque. In life and business in my years of being here only tradesmen come, and cook and Mack look after them,’ she stated. ‘They had a few parties, but they died out quickly enough.’
I nodded. ‘What about money and the mortgage?’
‘I’ve heard talk in the house. The mortgage is paid off and there is a large safe in the master’s office – he never liked or trusted banks,’ she explained. ‘And bills are paid by us…well, Mack, but that won’t make any difference as long as they get their money.’
It seemed almost too perfect. ‘Seems like a dream,’ I said, rubbing my face. As Anna parted to light the candle I took my seat, and then she settled onto my lap. ‘What about the bodies? And what if the other two lose their nerve?’ I asked, sounding Anna out with the possibilities of things that could go awry.
‘Errrrr, I have drugged Emily and Stan, just enough for them to sleep soundly,’ she said, looking into my eyes. ‘I prayed you would come tonight.’ Anna relaxed when she saw me smile. Although, she was shaking, but I think that was due to the cold, not me. ‘The bodies, I’m not sure. Do you have any ideas, Berty?’
I sighed. It was something I had thought about over the time at the shop; the pigs were huge. ‘Well, there is something we could try. I read the vampire book again,’ I mused out loud. ‘If it doesn’t work, it’s cold enough to keep them in the cellar for a time.’ I saw her pull a face. ‘But hopefully it won’t come to that.’
‘What first, Berty?’
I kissed her neck, making her squirm. ‘Where are their rooms? Mack first, then the cook,’ I asked, pulling her in tighter.
‘Both Mack’s and Bertha’s rooms are just off the kitchen. They decided not to rut tonight as she was in a bit of a dither.’ She looked at me with a worried smile.
I pressed my lips against hers and then pulled away again. ‘Shall we, my love?’ I asked, holding out my hand.
I saw a flicker of confusion in her eyes, then Anna nodded, got up and wetted her finger before extinguishing the candle. We headed out into the night hand in hand, her breath crystallised in the air as we walked to the house. The back door opened with only a slight squeak, but it wasn’t loud enough to alert anyone.
In front of us were two doors. I looked down at my frail-looking Anna as she pointed to the left-hand door. I nodded, looked around and saw the look of confusion on her thin face as I picked up a large wooden spoon. I gave her a wink and slowly opened the butler’s door. No such care was necessary as he was snoring like a pig; I could’ve kicked the door open and not disturbed him. Anna made to follow, but I held up my hand and mouthed, ‘No.’ She looked disappointed but hopefully she understood.
I stood over the man who smelt of whisky and feet. I raised my fist and punched the bear of a man straight in the face. Clearly, it wasn’t hard enough because the snores finished instantly and his eyes shot open ready to see the second hit. Then that was it; he was out like a baby.
I moved the slumped body and bit into his neck, filling my mouth and throat with his booze-flooded blood, but not too much. I then bit into my wrist and let some of my vampire blood drop into his mouth to start the change.
The man just lay there, so I walked out straight into the cook’s room. I recognised her from the visit with my father – a big red face and snoring just as loudly as the butler. Only one punch stopped the noise. She tasted slightly better than he did. Maybe it was the whisky. I gave her my blood and headed back to the woman-beating Mack.
His chest was still moving, but it was getting slower. I placed my hand above his heart and could feel the beat slow down. Leaving my left hand on his chest, I grabbed the spoon with my right. Then, in an impressive show of dexterity, I spun it in my fingers. As I smiled at my spinning spoon, his heart stopped and once again his eyes flew open.
‘Oh shit,’ I muttered as he turned to look at me. He opened his mouth just as the spoon handle ruptured his chest cavity, then his dead heart. With my hand clamped to his mouth, he screamed as he was consumed by fire.
My clothes were now covered in bloody ash. But hey, that’s why I was wearing the overalls Suzie had bought me, so she can’t bitch about it. I lifted the spoon; it was charred but okay. I shook myself out of the revelry and ran off scattering ash everywhere.
Anna jumped and coughed as I headed into the cook’s room, who was just getting up from the bed.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ I announced, making her turn as I lunged and slammed her back onto the bed.
‘NO, PLEASE DON’T!’ she called out as I plunged the wooden spoon into her heart, eventually covering myself in ash…again.
I broke into a coughing fit. Having ash particles in your nose and throat is not the best feeling. I then stumbled out. ‘Water,’ I gasped to a panicked and warmer-looking Annabel.
She ran to the pitcher and poured me a glass full, which I downed quickly. With a gesture of the glass, I received a second glassful.
‘Thanks, Anna, that was a bit messier than I thought,’ I explained and sat down on a chair.
Anna pulled up another chair and looked at the smoking spoon. ‘What did you do, Berty, stir them to death?’ she said before bursting into giggles.
I rolled my still gritty eyes. ‘Oh ha-ha,’ I said dryly, although smiling at her sense of humour despite the event. I took another sip of water. ‘I bit them and started the change from human to vampire, just like the book we read as kids.’ I saw her nod and creep out to observe the scenes.
‘Oh, Berty, what a mess.’ She chuckled and closed the door. ‘That’s a whole day’s work.’ She walked back and placed a kiss on my nose. ‘Maybe cover them with a sheet before you stab them,’ she said with her hands on her hips.
‘Yes, dear,’ I said obediently before standing up and claiming another wooden stake/spoon. ‘How do we get into the safe, do we need a key or combination?’ I asked, hoping luck was staying with us.
Despite the circumstances she smiled a big smile. ‘Key. He knew his mind was more of a passing acquaintance than a friend.’ She chuckled while taking my hand and walking me slowly upstairs to a large ornate door.
I slipped in and saw the house owner and his wife sleeping away merrily. They didn’t even wake as I pushed my incisors through their rice paper-like skin. If I’m honest I think they welcomed death, which is what I delivered. But as suggested by Anna, I made sure they were covered with a cotton sheet before plunging the stake into them.
‘Shit, ANNA!’ I cried out. The door flew open. ‘The bloody sheet’s on fire!’
Anna ran and got the water jug and threw it over the flames that was once the lady of the house. As she did so, we were covered in ash. When the husband burst into flames, she shot me a harsh look, but that just disappeared and turned into one of amusement. Clearly, she held a lot of grudges against the people I killed that night.
‘What now, Anna?’ I asked with a smile.
The beautiful ash-covered brunette walked up, wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me. ‘We need to talk to our kids when they wake up,’ she said with a playful grin.
‘We’ll send the boy to school, don’t you think?’ I asked as we walked back downstairs to the kitchen where we sat for hours making plans.
Things were still new, and I spent my time between the shop and the house. Anna and I went out on some dates, but she admitted she wanted her body to heal a bit more from the punishments handed out by the late cook and butler before sharing a bed together. I didn’t mind as I had all the time in the world.
As the days and weeks went by, Anna found a man who could forge the deeds to the house into my name and Stanley was sent to school as promised.
Two months later when Stanley was at school and Emily had gone to lunch with some new friends, Annabel came to my bedroom. She still sported her crooked grin that seemed to be a permanent fixture now. I went to get up as she closed the door behind her.
‘What’s the matter
, Anna, are you okay?’ I asked, concerned.
She walked closer, and that’s when I noticed she was wearing her favourite silk dressing gown I found in a shop I had robbed one night. Okay, my moral compass had shifted a little since the night of the wooden spoons.
‘Everything is more than all right, Albert, and this will make things perfect,’ she whispered, letting her robe slip off her shoulder.
I could hear the silk rasp against the fine hair on her body. She was naked, and thanks to a decent diet she had filled out, no longer did her ribs show. She was beautiful.
‘Is this wise? You know what I am?’ I asked as I watched her lithe form crawl onto the bed. She captured my lips and the kiss grew. We parted panting from the kiss.
‘Albert, you have saved our lives, and I love you for that alone, and also many other things,’ she said and kissed me again. ‘There are monsters in many forms – you, my Albert, are not one of them. You didn’t ask for this, and you only kill those who do wrong on this earth. So as long as you keep on doing that, I will love you forever until I take my last breath.’ She then placed her hand over my mouth. I was just going to offer to change her, but she said, ‘No, I like me, and unlike you I have a choice, which is no. I want to grow old with you. It will be hard on you, but you’re my tough and beautiful Albert.’
That day we made love for hours until the other occupants of our home arrived. Anna sat them down later that night when I went out to feed and told them that we were now together, and about my condition. In the end they didn’t care; I had saved them and given them a home to call their own and money in their pocket.
The following winter Annabel and I were married by a vicar who was willing to come to our home to perform the service. We lived together for over twenty years. She gave me hope that the curse I carried hadn’t taken my soul away – it had just darkened it. Between the two of us and my shop, we also bought three more properties that we could rent out. We made a very good future nest egg.
My wife and love, Annabel Marie Morris, didn’t wake up on the morning of 15 November 1913 at the tender age of forty-five years. To this day I blame that household who abused and scarred her. May they burn in hell, then when it’s my turn to visit the pit I shall find them again. My heart may not beat, but on that day my heart was truly broken. I had commissioned a family plot, which I had brought my parents to only recently. They couldn’t argue being dead, but they joined my wife, my one and only Anna. She was laid to rest with my children around me, although they did look older than me. It was a lovely service on an overcast day. At dusk, money stopped the vicar from complaining.
That house was never the same after my little Anna left, but the memories were there and I couldn’t leave them. Annabel made me a loving home, which I would never leave. I loved her to my core; she would never leave me.
Emily had long since married an accountant and moved to Nottingham, but she still wrote every month and called me Dad. She had three children and passed away at the age of sixty-six. She had a happy life, and I held her hand as she passed. I pretended to be a cousin so her extended married family would not be suspicious. It hurt when she whispered, ‘Goodbye, Daddy.’ Then her eyes closed, her heart slowed and her spirit departed.
Stanley never got on at school. He was expelled for headbutting a male teacher who had hit him with a ruler. But we arranged for a tutor, and after that he found a home in the army and rose to the rank of sergeant major. I always told him how proud I was of him, and like Emily he called me Dad. Unfortunately, he never came back from France. He died in an explosion from a German shell in 1917. But at least he didn’t have to take that walk into the light alone; his poor platoon went with him into the heavens.
Chapter 6
The years after Anna’s death were difficult for me, but I still had my shop to run. After the Great War, where I had lost my Stanley, I made Suzie my business partner. With the help of her kids we opened another three around London where I would share my time between them. Suzie had lost one of her sons in the war and later her husband due to ill health in 1921.
With all the shops running well, Suzie could finally be a lady of leisure. That meant moving into the flat above our original shop. Her youngest daughter began running the shop with her husband. Suzie spent the rest of her life drinking beer and chatting to me and the pigs.
‘Albert, you need to find someone else,’ Suzie said from her sickbed. She had contracted TB in the winter of 1929.
I opened another beer and handed it to the pale woman. The illness had taken all of the fight out of her, but it had to fight hard to do it. ‘I don’t think I can, Suzie.’ I sighed and pulled out my own cork and spat it into the far corner to collect dust with her other beer bottle corks.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid, Bert. You have loved once, you can do it again,’ she said so forcefully that she fell into a coughing fit.
I took the bottle from her hand. If she had spilt it, she would have been savage as hell. I handed it back and watched her down half the bottle. What a woman she was.
‘I’m not saying go courting or anything like that, but in time somebody will turn up, just don’t push them away,’ she explained.
I took her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’ll try, Suzie. But watching you all grow old, it hurts so much.’ I pulled her hand to kiss it but found it connecting with the back of my head. ‘Shit! Your bloody ring!’ I exclaimed, rubbing my head.
Suzanna cackled away happily; you could hear the damage to her lungs. ‘Shouldn’t have bought it for me, Berty,’ she retorted.
This time it was her turn to show affection, which was rare and fleeting. The bruiser of a woman cupped my cheek.
‘I can’t imagine how you feel, Albert. You may not have chosen your lot in life, but you have done a lot of good, especially for Anna, those kids and my whole family,’ she whispered with tears in her eyes, and then she started to cough again into the handkerchief that I pressed to her mouth. I dabbed the spittle and blood from her paling lips. ‘My family owe you so much – remember, we may die but we’ll always be with you.’
Suzanne Atkinson died in her sleep that very night of 17 February 1930 at the ripe old age of seventy-five. Her family, knowing about my condition, arranged an early evening funeral. Again, it’s amazing what money will buy you. As she was buried with her husband, we all joked about him having at least a decade of rest. I placed a crate of her favourite beer onto her casket, much to the disgust of the vicar. The next day I signed over my share of the shops to the family, but I stipulated that I wanted my name to remain on the business signs, to which they all agreed. And so, I started to pull away from public life. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t stay held up in my house just looking at pictures of my family – well, not all the time.
My old school friend Mickey Edwards’ son was now a police officer, and by the sounds of it, just like his old man, he was a damn fine one. His name was Sergeant Stuart Edwards, and his circle of friends kept me busy. When they couldn’t find someone, or there was a particularly nasty murder, they passed the case on to me to look into, in an unofficial capacity. Sometimes they wanted them alive, but they wanted the really nasty ones to just disappear – and that’s what happened. So it worked out well for everyone, except the lawbreakers, of course.
The years passed in a blur. It was November 1940 and the Germans were at it again. We were kicked out of France, but then again everybody saw the writing on the wall, and we hadn’t prepared. So, when we did declare war on Germany, we sent those poor boys over there, undermanned and outgunned, but they did their best. And now the Luftwaffe were bombing us nearly every night. So far I had lost one of my houses to the bastard Hun, but thankfully the family who were renting from me survived. I moved them to another property that had been empty for a while.
I was sat in front of a roaring fire with a bottle of red wine. I could almost hear Suzie calling me a tart already. There was a banging on the front door. I closed my eyes and reached out with my senses; my contr
ol of them was getting better and better as the years had gone by. There was a man of my age, who seemed to have lung problems on account of the late nights chasing down criminals, another one who I didn’t recognise in his early fifties and a third man in his forties. I put my glass down, walked to the front door and opened it.
‘Mickey, Stuart,’ I said with a smile to the father and son team. I then locked eyes with my now very old-looking school friend. ‘What are you doing out on a cold night like this?’ I asked, shooting his son a look that made him step back.
‘Oh, leave him be, mate. Now, where is that rum of yours?’ Mickey chuckled, shaking my hand as he walked past straight into the lounge and to the drinks cabinet.
He had lost his wife, Tabatha, three years previously, and unfortunately his own health was slipping. But he still came around every week to swap stories and drink me dry.
‘Sorry, Uncle Albert, he insisted on coming, you know what Dad is like,’ Stuart explained, shaking my hand as I looked the third man up and down.
He was tall and thin with a pencil-thin moustache and hard grey eyes. He was wearing a dark pinstripe suit with a bowler hat, but his demeanour screamed army.
‘This is Major Matterson, from the Foreign Office,’ Stuart introduced us.
We shook hands as Stuart walked past, hopefully to save my rum from his dad, but from the tinkling sound I heard I was mistaken. Like father, like son.
‘Good evening, Major, please come in.’ I smelt a whiff of gun oil on him, strong enough to show that he was armed.
He removed his hat, showing off his perfectly cut hair which shone the purest silver. ‘Thank you, Mr Morris, you have a lovely house,’ he said stiffly, in the typical way of not meaning it and just keeping up appearances.
I closed the door behind us and walked past to show him into the lounge where the Edwards family were sat on their usual sofa with two glasses and a bottle of rum. This was the same rum that the navy uses. It’s good to be old sometimes.
