by Tim O'Rourke
Chapter Two
Despite the overcast sky, I made my way on foot through Havensfield town centre. A cool breeze swirled litter along the gutter and I pulled the collar of my jacket up about my neck. The streets with their rows of Victorian-built shops were just beginning to close for the day, and most of the shoppers had started to head home for the evening. Being a coastal town, seagulls squawked overhead and the mouth-watering smell of fish and chips wafted on the air.
It was just short of five in the afternoon, and I was annoyed that I’d wasted yet another afternoon being analysed by Keats. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, and there was a small part of me that felt bad for saying what I had. But hey, she asked for it right? I told myself. She wanted to know what I could see about her – so I’d told her – but had I needed to be so smug about it? Whatever, it was done now and so were my weekly afternoon sessions with her, I hoped.
Quickening my pace, I made my way across town towards the newsagents. I wanted to buy a copy of each of the national newspapers before they closed up shop for the day. Since leaving The Ragged Cove and my suspension from work, I’d taken to buying as many newspapers I could each day. With the T.V. permanently tuned to the news channel, I would sit on the living room floor of my small rented room and search each of the papers for news stories involving any sudden disappearances of people. But what I was really looking for were any stories relating to murder where the victims had been found with injuries to their throats. I would spend hours shut away, my eyes scanning every page looking for anything that might suggest the return of vampires. If there were vampires, my belief was that the Vampyrus would be somewhere close by, and that meant Luke might be with them. Murphy had told me that they were going in search of Taylor and the other Vampyrus that were like him, unable to resist the taste of human blood. If I could find Luke, Murphy, or Potter again, then they would lead me to Taylor and perhaps my old trainer, Sergeant Phillips, if he were still alive.
I wasn’t interested in finding Taylor and Philips in order to seek any revenge, or help my old colleagues destroy them – I hoped to be able to convince Luke, Murphy, and Potter to keep them alive long enough, at least, for Taylor and Phillips to tell me what had truly happened to my mother. Ever since leaving The Ragged Cove, the thought of finding out what had happened to her and that image of Henry Blake’s grey, cold hand clutching a lock of her hair wouldn’t leave me. Nights had become almost unbearable, as I lay awake on the sofa, staring blankly at the news channel, my dreams and thoughts consumed by images of my mother and the nightmare that I’d lived at The Ragged Cove.
Night and day I thought about her and I wanted so much to keep the promise that I had made to my father. I knew that she was still alive and suspected that Taylor and Phillips held the answers. When I wasn’t thinking about my mother, I was thinking about Luke. I wondered if he were alright and if he had managed to survive the burns that he had received saving my life in the sky above St. Mary’s Church. On my many walks to see Doctor Keats, I would look down at the paving stones and wonder if Luke were somewhere beneath me in The Hollows. Then I would get to thinking that perhaps he wasn’t beneath me at all, that he had recovered and was already above ground tracking Taylor and Phillips like Murphy had said they would.
There was so much that I didn’t know, and that was what was driving me mad. Sometimes, after my sessions with Keats, I would question my own sanity. Had I really seen the things that I had in The Ragged Cove? Had I really been working the night shift with men that claimed to be a race of vampire bats? If I had been told such a thing by anyone, wouldn’t I have had the same reaction to them as Keats had towards me? I mean this was the stuff of fairytales, horror movies, and books. But I knew that it had all been real, I hadn’t imagined any of it. And in the darkness at night as I lay awake, the T.V. set flickering in the corner, I would think of Luke and the brief time that we had spent together. Those feelings that I had felt for him would come flooding back and they would feel as raw and intense as they had when he had held me close to him, when he’d kissed me and enclosed me in his wings.
Had I really felt love for him? Or had it just simply been my emotions freaking out due to the unimaginable situation that I had found myself in? Had it just been lust? The guy was a hottie. But when I thought of him, his jet-black hair, bright green eyes, and fit body, I knew it was more than those things that made my soul ache for him. Like everything else that had taken place it, was hard to explain to myself, so how would I ever get the likes of Keats to understand or believe me?
Within days, of leaving The Ragged Cove and returning to my room in Havensfield, the nightmares had started. It was strange, because although I could see more than I always wanted to when I was awake, my dreams were a blur; a mosaic of broken images, distant voices, violence and death. The result was always the same; I would wake in my bed, but more often than not on the couch, with my heart thumping in my chest and gasping for breath. Then one night, as I sat gasping in air, I noticed something warm and wet trickling down my cheek. Dabbing at it with the tips of my fingers, I was horrified to discover that I was bleeding from my left tear duct.
Leaping from the couch, I raced to the bathroom and looked in the mirror to find a crimson stream of tears running from my eye. Taking a piece of tissue, I wiped it away, leaving a red smear across my cheek. At first I didn’t do anything, telling myself that I must have unknowingly rubbed my eye in my sleep and scratched it with one of my fingernails. But it happened again the next night, and the night after that, a stream of blood-red tears flowing from my eye. For weeks I didn’t mention this to Keats, I kept it to myself.
Then the red tears came during the day, but it was more than that. I started seeing things. I mean more than seeing. Those flash-bulbs would go pop again inside my mind’s eye. Fleeting glimpses of crime scenes, bodies laying dead and bleeding, their eyes turned towards me. The images became more horrific – terrifying – like waking nightmares. I would get snapshots of catastrophes; buildings reduced to rubble; iron girders twisted out of shape; planes falling from the sky; trains crashing, piles of bodies stacked as high as mountains, limbs entwined like a grotesque puzzle; row upon row of open graves for as far as my eye could see. These images, however quick, came without warning and when I least expected them, they hit me like a blow to the head. They left me feeling confused, dazed, and nauseous. Then the tears would come, thick and red – almost black. It was as if holes the size of pinpricks had opened in my mind and was bleeding the anguish and suffering of those who I saw in those flashes.
In the end, I had to tell Keats – I had to tell someone. At first I didn’t tell her about the visions I saw, just about the tears. Immediately, she sent me for CAT and MRI scans, but they found nothing. Doctor Keats became suspicious and that tone crept into her voice again, whenever I mentioned the tears. So I told her about the pictures I saw in my head. How it was like being in the dark, then suddenly the blackness is lit-up with a flash of white light revealing the gruesome scenes hidden within.
Keats wanted more detail. “Kiera, who are these victims you see?”
“I don’t know,” I told her with a shake of my head.
“Where are these bodies that you see?” she pushed.
“I don’t know that, either,” I said.
“What about the planes? The ones you see falling from the sky?”
“What about them?” I asked.
“Why are they falling from the sky? Are these catastrophes that have happened or yet to take place?”
“I don’t know!” I insisted.
“What causes them to crash?” she pushed harder, the gap between her questions getting less, and reminding me of being cross-examined in court.
I felt I knew the answer to her last question, but I just couldn’t say it.
“Well? Who is responsible for these atrocities?” she came at me again.
All I wanted to scream was: The vampires did it! The vampires made the planes fall out of the sky. It was the vam
pires that brought those buildings to the ground and it was the vampires that killed all of those people! But I couldn’t say any of that to her – because I didn’t know if that were true myself.
With my world seeming to fall apart all around me, I knew that I needed to occupy my mind. It had to be kept busy. I needed a mental challenge – some stimulus, a puzzle to solve to take my mind off what was happening to me. I needed to be back at work where I belonged – but I didn’t know when or if ever that was going to happen. So I placed a small add in the local paper, which read:
Got a problem that needs investigating?
I’ll solve anything!
Email: [email protected]
I soon realised that I should have been more specific in my advert, as the first email I received was from a guy who thought he was paying too much for his electricity and wanted me to find out why. The second was from a woman who had lost her cat and the third was from an old gentleman who…well lets just say it was more of a medical matter. The fourth was not a great deal more interesting, it was from an old woman who had misplaced her wedding ring. Mrs. Lovelace was seventy-eight-years-old and had been married for sixty of them. Her husband had died in the last six months. She looked frail and vulnerable so I agreed to help. During one long Sunday afternoon and over several cups of watery tea, I got her to work backwards in her mind exactly what she had done and where she had been on the day that she had misplaced it. Eventually she remembered taking it off and placing it on the kitchen windowsill the previous Thursday morning.
“My fingers are thinner than they used to be,” she smiled. “I always take the ring off when I’m washing the dishes. Don’t want it to slip off and lose it down the plug-hole, you see. But I get so forgetful these days and don’t always remember to put it back on again. Frank was forever reminding me.”
“Frank?” I asked.
“My late husband – his memory was sharper than mine,” she said, a sadness overcoming her face as she thought of him.
“May I take a look in the kitchen?” I asked her, placing my teacup on the table that sat between us.
“Of course you can, my dear,” she said, struggling out of her chair.
Taking her by the arm, I led her into the kitchen, and she pointed to the spot on the windowsill where she had last seen her wedding ring. The window was open and a breeze blew in and cooled the stuffy kitchen. I lent forward and inspected the area where she said she had left her wedding ring.
“Mrs. Lovelace, can you remember if the window was open last Thursday?” I asked her.
“Now let me see,” she said, and scratched her grey wispy hair with her gnarled fingers. “Yes, it would have been. I always have the window open in the warm weather.”
“Can I take a look outside?” I asked her.
“Outside?” she said, eyeing me with curiosity. “What ever for?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I smiled at her. “I’m just nosey like that.”
“Go right ahead, my dear,” she said, and shuffled behind me to the kitchen door.
Stepping into the small garden, I could see a pretty-looking flowerbed in the earth directly under her window. Kneeling down, I brushed my fingertips over the Lavender that grew there.
“You’re an excellent gardener,” I said, gently pushing the plants aside so I could inspect the earth.
“Oh it’s not down to me, a local man comes in twice a week and does it all for me,” she said. “He’s a terrific chap.”
I had seen enough, so standing straight, I asked, “When was your gardener last here?”
“Let me see,” she said, and scratched her hair again. “Last week sometime, I think.”
“Nice is he?” I asked her.
“He’s a lovely man,” she said.
“What’s his name?”
“Dave-something-or-other,” she smiled. “I can’t remember, and I only spoke to him this morning.”
“How come?”
“He telephoned to ask if I wanted him to get me some more Fuschias. Apparently they’re on sale at the gardening centre,” she told me.
“You don’t have an address for him, do you?” I asked.
“It’s written down somewhere,” she said, shuffling back into the house. “Now let me see…where did I put it?”
Following her into the kitchen, I watched as she picked up a tatty-looking handbag. Pawing through it she said, “I’m sure it’s in here somewhere – he gave me one of these little card things with his number on it. Oh dear, I can’t seem to find it now.”
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lovelace,” I assured her, then walked into the hallway where the telephone sat on a small round table. Anyone else called you today?” I asked over my shoulder.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said back from the kitchen.
Lifting the receiver, I pressed the ‘last caller’ button and made a note of the number. Going back into the kitchen, the old woman was still rummaging through her bag.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lovelace. It wasn’t important,” I told her.
“Why did you want it?” she asked.
“My garden is a bit overgrown and I could do with a gardener, that was all.” Then changing the subject, I added, “Have you got a picture of your wedding ring?”
Trundling back into the living room, she took a picture from the mantelpiece and handed it to me.
“That’s me and Frank,” she said. “One of the last pictures we had taken together,” and I noticed her pale blue eyes begin to water.
In the picture she had her arms around her husband, both of them frail-looking but happy. Her left hand rested against Frank’s arm, and I could clearly see her missing wedding ring. It was gold, with a yellow transparent-looking stone set into it. I guessed that the stone was citrine. On either side of the stone sat a cluster of tiny diamonds.
“It certainly is a beautiful ring,” I told her.
“Will you be able to find it?” she asked, her voice wavering.
“I’ll do my best,” I said, taking her hand. “Can I hold onto this picture for a couple of days?”
“Yes, but why?” she asked, giving me that curious stare again.
“Oh it’s just a hunch.”
“Ok, if you think it will help, although I don’t see how,” she said, easing herself back down into her arm chair.
“I’ll be back in a day or two,” I told her, heading for the door. “I’ll see myself out.”
Climbing into my beat-up old Mini, I headed straight into town. Parking, I went to the local pawnbrokers. With picture in hand, I peered in through the windows, and there sitting on display, was Mrs. Lovelace’s wedding ring. Without my badge, I would never be able to seize the ring from the owner of the shop, so heading across the street to a nearby Starbucks, I called the only person that I had stayed in contact with since being temporarily relieved of my duties – while I was mentally evaluated by Doctor Keats.
Constable John Miles had joined the police force at the same time as me and not being the brightest of recruits he had soon acquired the nickname ‘Sparky’. But John was a sweet guy, dependable, and a loyal friend. Whereas my other fellow recruits had given up on me, Sparky had stayed in touch. He had been my lifeline back to the police, just updating me with gossip really, but it helped me maintain some kind of contact with the job that I longed to go back to. Sparky had never asked me about the ‘vampire thing’ which had caused so many raised eyebrows, sniggers, and condemnation amongst my peers. In fact, John had been pretty cool, and on the odd occasion that I had needed some information regarding my own enquiries, he had put his job on the line and run checks on the police computers for me. I knew that John wanted more than friendship, but I didn’t have those kinds of feelings for him. The only feelings that I had for anyone like that was Luke, and I couldn’t even be sure what they were anymore. But in return for the odd piece of information that John gave me to assist in one of my cases, I would sometimes cook him dinner or take him to the movies. John was awkward-looki
ng, gangly, and shy and there was a part of me that I hated because I knew deep down I kind of used him. But knowing this didn’t stop me from calling him up and asking him for his help - again.
John was on a day off from work, and joined me in the coffee shop within half an hour of my phone call to him. Nervously kissing me on my cheek, he pulled up a chair and sat opposite me. For someone who was in their mid-twenties he still had a sprinkling of spots on his forehead and cheeks – giving him a constant flushed look. His eyes were a dull grey and his glasses always perched lopsided on the bridge of his nose, giving his whole head a slanted look.
“What is it this time?” he asked, almost sounding excited that I was including him on one of my cases.
“I need you to flash your badge for me,” I told him, with a smile, knowing that I wouldn’t have to work hard at getting him to help me out. I then told him about Mrs. Lovelace’s missing ring and how I’d found it sitting in the front window of the pawnbrokers across the street. I explained to him that without a badge, I would never be able to convince the owner to hand it over and get a look at the CCTV to see who it was that had brought the ring into the shop.
After finishing our coffees, I followed John across the street and into the pawnbrokers. Flipping his badge from his pocket, John spoke coolly to the owner and said, “I’m Constable Miles and this is Constable Hudson from Havensfield Police.” Without giving the owner the opportunity to ask to see my identification John had started to talk again. I was impressed.
“The ring in the window, the one with the yellow stone, we suspect has come from a burglary,” John said.
The owner, a smartly dressed man in his fifties with combed- back greying hair, looked back at John and said, “How can you be so sure?”
