by Philip Henry
The assistant pulled up outside the house. He would need more petrol to make the return trip. He better get reimbursed for this. This wasn’t part of his job description. He was going to have a word with his union rep about this, make no mistake. Every mile of the two-hour drive had just made him more irritable. Bad enough that his boss had sent him on this wild goose chase, but now his girlfriend who had phoned him several times on the journey and who he had intended to propose to tonight, now appeared to have dumped him. All this because Imogen Collins had gone on yet another bender. He understood now why no one wanted to work with her. She was a lush and a has-been and a raging alcoholic and just a thoroughly unpleasant woman in every respect. What was more annoying was how she always came up smelling of roses.
At the music awards last year she had gone onstage to present a lifetime achievement award to Kylie Minogue and ended up vomiting all over her. To any other presenter that would be a career killer, but not Imogen Collins. She got a crew to follow her through six weeks of rehab and packaged the whole thing as a reality show. She then sold it to a network for a ridiculous sum. And if that wasn’t sickening enough, the twist of the knife was, it had been a hit!
The assistant had a full head of steam when he finally pulled up outside the house. He was going to tell Imogen Collins a few home truths. To hell with the job. If they fired him, they fired him. It would be worth it just to let her have it. And it might cut some ice with his girlfriend when he inevitably went crawling back to her. Yeah, if he showed her he had thrown caution to the wind because his weekend away with her had been spoiled, it might go some way to patching things up between them. But that wasn’t the main reason. The main reason was to bring that hateful bitch down a peg.
This wasn’t why he spent all those years at university getting his Masters degree in Media and Entertainment. This wasn’t why he’d worked two jobs and then came home and did his coursework. This wasn’t why he’d spent years getting three hours sleep a night. He didn’t kill himself for all those years just to play nursemaid to a washed-up old tart like Imogen Collins. There were better jobs out there, there had to be.
The van was still outside the house and there was smoke coming from the chimney so they were probably still inside. He got out and slammed the door of his car, then marched towards the house. The front door was ajar. This halted him for a second. He knocked loudly, giving control back to his anger. ‘Imogen!’ He kicked the door open and the smell hit him immediately. It was like nothing he had ever smelled before. Like rotten eggs and sick and shit all mixed together. She’d been using this house as Party HQ. She probably had gangs of local students round every night. It wouldn’t be the first time; stupid cow still thought she was eighteen.
He walked on into the house, covering his mouth and nose with his hand. It was dark inside, even though the sun hadn’t fully gone down. All the windows were boarded up. He moved to the left and into what would have been the living room. There was no furniture but a fire was blazing in the hearth. The smell was worse in here. He looked around and stepped closer to the fire. He was reminded of the drunken barbecues at university where the meat was always burned on the outside and raw in the middle. What the hell were they burning? He could see blackened metal and melted plastic. Was that the camera? He ventured his toe forward and pushed the contents of the fire. Bones. There were bones in the fire. Human bones! He stepped back and turned to the door.
Imogen stood there in the flickering light of the fire. He yelled and stepped back. She was emaciated, like she had just stepped out of Auschwitz. Dried blood stained her face. Her eyes looked straight ahead and didn’t follow him as he moved. She looked like she was in a trance. He cautiously walked towards her. She didn’t react. When he was close enough he waved his hand in front of her eyes.
‘Imogen? Can you hear me? What the hell happened here? Imogen!’ She didn’t move. He took her by the arm and led her towards the door. ‘Come on, I’m going to get you to a hospital.’ She staggered limply behind him until they reached the threshold of the front door. Imogen screamed and grabbed the sides of her head. She dropped to her knees. He bent down and tried to calm her. The screaming stopped after a minute or two. She released her grip on her temples and sat up. She grabbed his lapels and pulled him close.
‘Downstairs,’ she whispered. Her eyes were wild, pleading desperately.
‘What’s down there?’
She rubbed at her left temple vigorously for a few seconds then said, ‘You have to see.’ She clutched his arm.
‘Imogen, I need to get you to a hospital.’
She grabbed her head. ‘After,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘After you’ve seen. Then we can go.’
He looked back at the open door, then ahead at the darkness.
‘It has to be this way,’ she whispered. Imogen got to her feet and, still clutching his arm, led him to the door under the stairs.
There was light below. Imogen descended the stairs as if she were being pushed every step. She pulled him with her. They reached the concrete floor and she led him to the far side of the basement.
He saw all the equipment first. A generator, a jack-hammer, pick-axes, drills, sledgehammers. He passed a shelf and saw a mobile phone sitting on top of a credit card. He stopped and picked them up. The phone needed charging. The credit card was Imogen’s company expense card. He set it down again.
‘Imogen, you didn’t buy all this stuff on the company’s account did you?’
She was several feet ahead with her back to him. It was the first time he had noticed the seat of her trousers; it looked like she had messed herself repeatedly. Enough was enough. He was getting out of here. He stepped forward and took Imogen’s arm, then stopped. She was standing on the edge of a large hole, maybe six feet long and six feet deep.
He turned to her and pulled her face around to face his own. ‘Did you do this? What the hell for? Imogen? Speak to me! Why the hell did you do this?’
She raised her hand weakly and pointed to the far end of the hole.
He looked and saw nothing. He turned back to her. ‘What?’
She continued to point and stare blankly. He turned and grabbed one of the battery powered lanterns off the wall and took a few steps forward. He held the light down into the hole. What was she trying to show him? He got down on his knees and held the lantern down as far as he could. There was something different at this end. A hole. She had drilled a hole at this end about ten inches from the wall of concrete. He squinted to see if he could look inside. ‘Imogen, what am I supposed to be…?
She stepped up behind him, pulled his head back and ran a knife across his throat. Blood poured from the wound instantly. He dropped the lantern into the pit and raised his hands, trying to staunch the flow. He turned and saw Imogen standing above him with the bloody knife still in her hand. She stared blankly at him and then put a foot on his back and pushed him forward into the pit.
He was choking on his own blood now. He coughed, trying to clear his windpipe, but it was no use. The lantern lay before him. He could see the red everywhere. The blood was rushing out of him too fast. He had to get out of here. He needed help. The blood was pooling under him and circling down the hole like bathwater. He had to get up. His brain told his legs to move but they didn’t. He had to climb out. The lantern was beginning to dim before him. The batteries must be done, he thought. The batteries in all the lanterns in the basement must be dying. All at the same time. They were all dimming together. He’d never heard of such a thing. He wondered who he could tell such a bizarre anecdote to. The old man at his local hardware store. Yeah. He would get a kick out of that. He looked up and almost smiled as all the lanterns went out at once and darkness was quickly followed by nothingness.
Imogen stood over the body. The blood kept flowing after he had stopped moving. She hoped it would be enough. She was so tired. So hungry.
A layer of dust jumped off the floor of the pit. Imogen smiled. The dust jumped again and this time took
some crumbs of rubble with it. The third time the base of the pit cracked. Imogen started to laugh and stumble backwards. Another loud crack sent a huge chunk of concrete into the air. Imogen had reached the wall of the basement. She stood frozen against it as rock and dust erupted from the pit. Imogen started to laugh maniacally. She slid down the wall to the floor just as the figure rose from the dust of the pit, ripping a body-bag off himself. She stopped laughing.
The dust began to settle and she made out the silhouette of a man standing before her with his back to her. His clothes were tattered and rotten and seemed several sizes too big for him. He turned to her and she saw skin tightly stretched over a skeleton frame. His eyes sunken deep into his skull. His cheeks almost transparent. His lips pulled back over his pointed teeth.
He took a few steps towards her and stopped, the rattle of footsteps on the stairs taking his attention. He turned back to her. He sent another thought into her puny brain – One more duty, and then you are free.
Imogen clutched her head for a second and then nodded. She got up and moved quickly around the dark end of the basement.
‘Brother vampire. We are here as prophesied. We are the seven,’ Danielle said as she stepped forward. ‘We mean you no harm. We are a group who campaign to stop the Unequal Treatment of Vampires. We are your friends. Pray, how may we help you?’
The vampire turned and stepped out of the darkness. The women gasped. Some of them crossed themselves. The decayed corpse that walked towards them exuded malice from every fibre of his being. Danielle was suddenly afraid. She turned and looked behind her. She saw Imogen step through the basement door and lock it behind her. Danielle turned back to the vampire, who was getting closer. The women behind her started to shuffle backwards.
‘We mean you no harm, sir,’ Danielle restated. Some of the other women behind her had made it to the basement door and were banging on it, trying to force it open. ‘What… what can we do for you, sir?’ Danielle’s heart was thumping loudly.
‘You don’t have to call me sir,’ the vampire said in a hoarse dry voice. ‘You can call me Kaaliz.’ A smile cracked the taut skin around his mouth.
Imogen Collins ran out of the house and into the assistant’s car. She brought it to life and raced away, just as The Sisterhood of the Kissed began to scream.
the morning after
Sarah woke slowly. Her head felt heavy, her body slow to react. It must have been at least half an hour before she realised she was in her own bed… and there was something wrong with that. Her confused mind tried to find the root of this feeling but memories were unreliable. Dreams and nightmares had intruded on reality and now nothing was certain. She threw back the bedclothes and saw she was still dressed. Wrong. Just wrong. Some primal instinct within her was warning her to prepare herself for attack. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. Her legs were weak. She managed to stand, holding onto the bedpost, and staggered over to her mirror. Her reflection was blurry. She moved closer to the glass. Her eyes were wrong. The pupils small, the iris bleary. She stood there for a long time, just how long she couldn’t tell, but bit by bit the world started to come back into focus. Soon she could stand unaided. She walked to the window and opened it. The morning breeze had a sobering chill that she welcomed. She sat on the window-sill and let the cold air wake her.
The last thing she remembered was… the apartment. Yes. Hal had driven her to the apartment. His apartment. He wanted it to be their apartment. She drank some wine. Oh shit, she told him! She told him about the vampires. Why would she do that? Had she been drunk? This didn’t feel like a hangover. She remembered being dizzy. She remembered Hal watching her. Not helping her. Standing over her as the darkness closed in. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold wind wriggled up her spine. Had he done something to her while she was unconscious? Had he finally got what he had been asking for all these months?
Sarah jumped off the window-sill and closed the window. She pulled the curtains a second later and began pulling her clothes off. The denim jacket was Hal’s. She threw it across the room. She saw the bruise on her left arm. From the crook of her arm to the wrist the skin was coloured shades of purple and black. She touched it. The muscles were taut and tender. A tiny circle at the top of the bruise was more red than purple. She looked closer. There was no doubt in her mind. She had been injected with something. And by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.
She pulled off the rest of her clothes and opened the door to her wardrobe. She examined herself in the full-length mirror. She could see no other bruises or signs that she had been… she didn’t want to say the word. She didn’t want to even think it. Hal, her childhood friend. Her boyfriend for the last three months. How could he do this to her?
She ran into the en-suite bathroom and switched on the shower. She washed herself from head to toe and then stood under the shower while she turned the water up as hot as she could bear. She stood there until the last of the heaviness cleared from her head.
She sat on the end of her bed for a long time. The tails of her damp hair hung around her shoulders. She hugged herself, wrapped in her fluffy bathrobe. She looked into the mirror, but wasn’t seeing the reflection. She was seeing the past. The boy Hal was. How could he grow up to be…? She stood up and walked to her wardrobe. She took the shoebox down from on top of it and sat back down on her bed. She riffled through the photos and keepsakes of her childhood until she found the photo she was looking for. She must have only been ten or eleven. Hal stood on her right with his arm around her, Tom stood on her left with his arm around her. They were all laughing. How did we get from there to here? she wondered.
She suddenly felt very alone. She left her bedroom and walked down the hall. Her mum wasn’t in the living room or kitchen. Sarah looked at the clock; it wasn’t even nine yet. Maybe her mum was still in bed. As she passed the front door she saw the mail lying on the mat. She knocked lightly on her mum’s bedroom door. No reply. She opened the door a crack, then fully. Her mum’s bed was made. She had either got up early this morning, or she hadn’t come home last night. Sarah went to the bedside table and lifted the phone. She dialled her mum’s mobile and got the answering service. She hung up without leaving a message. It was strange, but she wasn’t worried. She looked out the window and saw her mum’s car was gone. Wherever she had gone, she had gone of her own choosing.
Sarah went back to her room, dressed and dried her hair quickly. She left her house without breakfast and walked to the gate. She had been planning to take the bus into Coleraine, but now another thought struck her. Uncle Derek’s motorbike was just sitting in the shed. Her mum hated that Derek had taught her how to ride a motorcycle and worried incessantly when she went out on it. But her mother wasn’t here now, and neither was Uncle Derek; he was off with his girlfriend somewhere.
Sarah pulled the helmet on and kicked the bike to life. She revved it loudly, scaring the birds from the trees, then dropped it into gear and sped off down the lane towards the main road amid a cloud of dust.
Sarah stormed in through the doors of the hospital and stopped the first porter she saw. ‘Hi, do you know what shift Hal’s on today?’
‘Hal’s covering the theatres today,’ the porter replied brightly. Sarah had met him before but couldn’t remember his name at the moment. She smiled and thanked him and made her way down the corridor. The theatres are at the very end of the first floor. She took the stairs instead of the lift and ran up them, hoping to burn off some of the excess energy that was coursing through her. It didn’t help though. The closer she came to him, the angrier she got. She turned off the main corridor at the end and walked quickly past the ICU. The theatre porter usually sat in a little alcove on the left just before reception. And there he was, sitting behind a tabloid newspaper, oblivious to her approach.
Sarah slapped the paper out of his hands and grabbed him by his collar. She lifted him off the ground and pushed him up the wall, surprising herself with her streng
th as much as him.
‘What the hell did you do to me last night?’
‘I didn’t do anything.’ He was trying to sound bewildered.
‘Bullshit.’
‘I swear. You just got drunk and passed out. I took you home.’
‘Really?’ She dropped him and he fell awkwardly on his chair. She pulled up the sleeve of her sweater and showed him the bruise. ‘And how did this happen then?’
He looked at the bruise and struggled for words.
Sarah grabbed him around the throat again. ‘You fuckin’ drugged me! Why? What did you do to me when I was unconscious?’
Hal got angry now and got to his feet, pushing her hand away from his throat. ‘I didn’t do anything to you. What the hell do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know who you are. That’s the truth.’
Hal turned and saw the theatre receptionist was looking worried and had the phone lifted, poised to dial. He raised a reassuring hand and shook his head. He turned his back to her and faced Sarah. He took a deep breath. ‘Look, we can talk about this later. I’ll pick you up tonight after work.’
‘Forget it,’ Sarah snapped. ‘I never want to lay eyes on you ever again.’ She turned and started to walk up the corridor.
Hal ran after her and grabbed her. He spun her around to face him. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes, I fuckin’ mean it!’
Still holding onto her arm, Hal hung his head for a few seconds, then looked her in the eyes. ‘I love you, Sarah.’ She shook her head. ‘Whatever I did,’ he continued, ‘I did for you. To keep you safe. I know you don’t understand that and I can’t explain it to you right now, but please, believe me, it was for your own good.’
Sarah punched him in the face and he dropped backwards to the floor. He put his hands on his erupting nose. By the time the tears had cleared from his eyes, she was gone and the receptionist was fussing around him trying to staunch the flow of blood.
