by Mike Bennett
Michelle looked mildly appalled. ‘Oooh, what was it like?’
‘Pungent is a word that springs to mind.’
‘Did it work?’
‘At making me smell like a urinal, yes; at making me look younger, sadly, no.’
Gerald chuckled and squeezed Cynthia’s knee. ‘No. Now it’s back to bathing in the blood of virgins, eh, Cyn?’
Cynthia shot Gerald a look. ‘I think you mean Radox, Gerald.’ She swatted his hand from her knee.
‘Oh, yes. Sorry, that was er, Ingrid Pitt wasn’t it? Countess Dracula.’
Cynthia turned to Michelle. ‘Gerald has an Ingrid Pitt fetish, dear. He squandered his youth foaming at the mouth – amongst other places – gawping at her from the back row of the cinema.’
‘I’ve never heard of her,’ said Michelle. ‘Who’s she when she’s at home?’
‘She’s an actress. She popped up – or out might be a better word – in certain horror films in the 60’s,’ said Cynthia. ‘You know the sort of thing: Heaving Cleavage, Heaving Cleavage Rises Again, Taste the Blood of Heaving Cleavage, and so on.’
Michelle gave Gerald’s shoulder an affectionate shove. ‘Ooh, did you have a crush on her then Gerald?’
Gerald’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘Er, perhaps I did, yes – just a small crush.’
‘Did?’ said Cynthia. ‘Do is more like it. You know, Michelle, if they made Ingrid Pitt masks, I’d be spending most of my nights lying on my back, gasping through a rubber-fanged mouth hole with Mr Small Crush here putting a big crush on my pelvis.’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Gerald chortled. ‘I’d never ask you to wear a mask, Cyn. Not unless it was a mask of your own lovely face ... which, of course, would be rather pointless.’
‘Ah, aren’t you sweet, Gerald?’ said Michelle.
‘Yes, isn’t he?’ said Cynthia. ‘Weird, but sweet.’
‘Oh!’ said Gerald, opening his newspaper. ‘Speaking of masks – or heads anyway – there’s a bit in today’s – or rather yesterday’s – Mail about that chap that lost his in Ibiza.’
Michelle felt a sudden knot of anxiety in her stomach. Keith’s horror following his nightmare of this morning was still fresh in her mind. She looked away to where Luis was tending the bar. Did he need any help, she wondered.
‘Oh, must we, Gerald?’ said Cynthia, stoking her brow wearily. ‘Can’t it wait until we’ve each had at least one bloody Mary?’
Michelle brightened. ‘What was that? Two bloody Marys?’ She got up.
‘Yes, please Michelle,’ said Cynthia. ‘Two, and some pain killers if you have any.’
‘Here it is,’ said Gerald, opening out the pages on the table. ‘Look!’ He tapped a photograph beneath the headline: BRITON DECAPITATED IN SPANISH GANGLAND SLAYING. ‘Says here his name was Mark Coleman.’
Michelle saw the picture and her hand went involuntarily to her mouth. The picture wasn’t recent, it was a family snapshot that looked like it had been taken some years ago, but Michelle recognised the face immediately. He’d been a regular at their pub in Benidorm. She’d known he’d been a part of Keith’s little drug clique, but she’d always thought that Keith had been dealing to him. However, after Keith’s confession this morning, she now knew the opposite to be true.
‘Michelle? Are you all right?’ asked Gerald.
‘Yeah,’ Michelle looked up, smiling. ‘Yeah, it’s just, a bit ... shocking, innit?’
‘Says here that he may have been involved in the murder of this fellow,’ Gerald tapped one of two other faces further down the article.
Michelle looked; she couldn’t help herself. Gerald was pointing to the picture of a man she’d never seen before, but next to it was a face she knew all too well: Sergei Alexandrov. Keith was right, Sergei was involved. She suddenly felt weak. ‘I,’ her voice sounded unsteady. She cleared her throat and continued in a cheerier tone. ‘I’ll get those drinks then, shall I?’
Cynthia peered over the rims of her sunglasses at Michelle’s suddenly ashen face. ‘Michelle?’
‘Two bloody Marys and some painkillers, wasn’t it?’
‘What is it dear? Do you recognise these men?’
‘Recognise? Who? Them? Oh God, no. No, I just, I thought,’ she laughed nervously. ‘I’m sorry, I try not to read the papers, you know? It just depresses me, all this violence and war and talk about recession. I’ll just go and get those drinks.’ She turned and went into the pub.
Cynthia and Gerald watched her go to the bar and speak to Luis for a moment before she disappeared into the deeper shadows within. ‘I say,’ said Gerald. ‘That seemed to give her a queer turn.’
‘Yes.’ Cynthia looked at the two pictures. ‘Nicolai Alexandrov, nephew of this chap, Sergei Alexandrov, owner of a number of bars and clubs along the Costa Del Sol and Costa Blanca.’
‘Sounds like Russian mafia shenanigans to me, hmm?’
‘I really wouldn’t know, dear. I’m more concerned with Michelle; she looked as if she’d seen a ghost.’
‘Well, Costa Blanca, that’s Benidorm isn’t it? Her old neighbourhood.’
‘Yes, but she said she didn’t recognise any of the men in the pictures.’
‘Ah well, you don’t have to recognise a bad egg by sight to have your stomach turned over by one, do you? Sometimes the general whiff is enough and maybe Michelle caught the whiff of local villainy from these chaps.’
‘Yes, Gerald,’ said Cynthia, evidently no longer listening as she looked to where Michelle’s daughter, Melanie, was now emerging from the pub. Cynthia raised a hand. ‘Hello, Melanie.’
‘Hiya,’ said Melanie, stopping beside them. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine thank you, dear. And you? How’s school?’
‘Oh, it’s alright. Same as usual.’
‘I imagine you’re the best in the class at English, eh?’ said Gerald.
Melanie smiled. ‘Yeah, I do alright in that. It’s maths I have trouble with.’
‘Ah, maths,’ said Gerald knowingly. ‘Never my cup of tea either. History was my subject.’
‘Yeah, history’s alright,’ said Melanie. ‘I quite like that.’
‘Do you want to be a historian when you leave school?’ asked Cynthia.
‘No. I don’t know what I want to be, really.’ She noticed the newspaper headline and craned her head to read more. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, chap got his head cut off.’ Gerald turned the paper so she could see it. ‘Says here he spent a few years in your old home town.’
‘Urgh,’ Melanie’s nose crinkled. ‘That’s horrible, innit?’
‘Yes,’ said Cynthia, suddenly interested. She pointed casually at Coleman. ‘Do you recognise him?’
Melanie shook her head. Then she pointed at the picture of Sergei. ‘But I know that bloke.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yeah, he’s the one my mum and dad sold our pub to. He came around a few times, but I don’t think Mum and Dad liked him very much. Especially Dad.’
‘Mmm, yes, of course,’ Cynthia nodded sympathetically. ‘It’s always hard, the emotional wrench of selling a home.’
‘Yeah, I suppose. I know I didn’t want to leave.’
‘But you like it here now, though, don’t you?’ asked Gerald.
‘Oh yeah, I love it. Except, well, it’s nice to be near the sea, and to have cinemas and stuff nearby so you don’t have to depend on your parents for lifts everywhere, you know?’
Gerald laughed. ‘You’re becoming quite the independent young lady, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, I suppose,’ said Melanie. ‘Anyway, I gotta go. Nice to speak to you.’ She waved and stepped out onto the street.
‘Lovely girl,’ said Gerald, watching her go. ‘So nice to see good manners in the young, especially these days.’
‘Yes,’ said Cynthia, easing a mentholated cigarette into her slim, black cigarette holder. ‘Charming.’
‘I say. It’s rather queer how she recognised that Russian chap in the paper and M
ichelle didn’t, don’t you think?’ He picked up Cynthia’s lighter and sparked a flame for her.
‘Yes,’ Cynthia took a light and sat back, the cigarette holder clamped thoughtfully between her teeth. ‘Very queer indeed.’
David sat back from the computer monitor and rubbed his eyes. He looked at his watch. It was two-thirty. He’d been reading through John’s various guides, instructions and history manuals for an hour and a half. He should have kept his studies to the subject of the resurrection, but his reading had turned out to be much wider than he’d originally intended.
Earlier, when he’d first keyed his birth date into the code lock on the study door, his uppermost intention had been getting to the safe and the computer disc that held all of John’s notes on Underwood. However, upon entering the room, his attention had been seized by the glass cabinet that held row upon row of old books of varying size, condition and age. He knew immediately that he must be looking at the Flinch diaries. He’d tried the cabinet doors but they were locked. He’d felt around the cabinet and gone through the drawers of the desk, but found no key. It too must be in the safe, he reasoned.
He looked around, but there was no sign of any safe. A small portrait of Underwood regarded him from the study wall. This time the vampire wore a white wig and a high collar, typical of the Georgian era. The picture was perhaps a hundred years older than the Victorian portrait in the hall, but the face of its subject was unchanged; as far as Underwood’s age was concerned, this picture could have been painted just a day before the other one. David looked closer. The ravages of time were only evident in the paint itself; hundreds of tiny cracks spread across Underwood’s face in a way that nature herself never could. David took hold of the gold-leaf frame and tried to lift it. It didn’t move. Underwood continued to regard him with cool amusement.
‘Fucking wanker,’ David murmured. He felt around the picture frame and his fingers fell upon a tiny button. He pushed it and the picture shifted with a light click. The picture was hinged and David eased it away from the wall. Behind it was a safe with a digital keypad. He keyed in his birth date as he had done with the study door and the safe clicked open. Inside, he saw the computer disc on top of various papers and envelopes. He took the disc and put it on the desk. Then he took out the papers and riffled through them with mild curiosity before tossing them onto the sofa to his right. Where was the key? He reached into the safe and felt around and his fingers touched the links of a small chain. He gathered it and lifted the thing it was attached to; not a key as he had hoped, but an old, full hunter fob watch. He popped a button at the top and the front face opened. On the inside of the case, in letters almost faded with ages of polishing, was inscribed, “To Daniel. Forever yours. Lilly.”
David held the watch to his ear. It was silent. Carefully, he wound it up. Nothing happened. He tapped the scratched face with his fingernail and the second hand suddenly began to move. David swung the portrait back so he was again face to face with Underwood. ‘Who’s Lilly, then, eh?’ The picture made no reply, and David knew that it was just his imagination, but he fancied that Underwood now seemed a tad less sure of himself than he had done earlier, perhaps because David now knew something about him that the vampire mightn’t care for him to know.
‘Was she your girlfriend, then? Or your wife?’ Despite the fact that he was only talking to a picture, the question seemed somehow inappropriate. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, David dropped his eyes back to the watch. He lifted it to his ear and listened to its ticking. ‘It’s a good watch you’ve got here, Milord. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.’ He held up his cheap Casio digital for the portrait to see. ‘I doubt this’ll still be keeping time in ten years, let alone, what – two hundred, three hundred years? More?’
Cautiously, David reached out to touch the painting, but his fingers stopped a few millimetres from the surface. ‘Just how old are you?’ He whispered. He stood for perhaps a minute, lost in thought, adding decades to his own natural time on Earth, going on into the future and imagining himself just as he was now, never aging, never changing with the advancing years: 2008, 2108, 2208, 2308 ... David blinked and re-focussed his eyes. In the portrait, Underwood seemed to have regained his air of confidence. David shook his head and swung the picture so it was again facing the wall. He reached into the safe and felt around for the key to the bookcase, but there was nothing more inside.
He returned the watch and the papers to the safe and closed it, but he decided to leave Underwood facing the wall; he liked him better that way.
Now, gazing at the ceiling in reflection, he felt that it was probably just as well he hadn’t been able to find the key to the diaries after all; if he had, he might have wasted precious time browsing the adventures of his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and Heaven knew how many others. Instead, he’d sat down, turned on the computer, and slipped the disc into the drive. Then, opening up the contents of the disc, he’d clicked on the file simply labelled, “Underwood”.
Immediately he found himself looking at files that held the answers to every question he’d ever had since childhood. He’d begun clicking on all of them, reading snatches of one thing and whole pages of another. One of his main concerns had been his question of this morning about Underwood’s ability to influence things from within his coffin. He’d found something germane in a document entitled “Communion” which he’d printed off and now he leaned forward, took the sheet of paper from the printer and drew a circle around the key area of text with a red biro:
“The blood of the sacrifice should be uncontaminated. No sedatives or any other drugs should be used. Secure the sacrifice and extend a limb over the Master’s mouth. Make a small cut across a minor vein so that blood will drip – but not jet – from the wound. This flow of blood should be directed to the Master’s mouth. It may be necessary to part the Master’s lips so that the blood can flow into his mouth, but only a little at a time. If nothing happens, withdraw the limb and wait. Do not allow the Master’s mouth to become filled with blood in case he inhales it and chokes. About a tablespoon’s worth should suffice.”
David raised his eyebrows. It sounded like something out of a cookery book. What the hell did John mean by the sacrifice? A goat? A chicken? David hadn’t seen any animals around the place. Could they be intending to use a volunteer human being; someone from the Sect who was willing to give their blood? No, that would be a donor, not a sacrifice. So did that mean that there was perhaps someone who was willing to die? Scenes from Hammer movies flashed across his mind: girls dressed in flimsy white robes, trembling on stone altars, getting turned on by the sight of the curved dagger that was about to be plunged into their heart. Would a Sect member, someone like Conchita or Ana, allow themselves to be in that position? They were devoted, yes, but were they that devoted? David lit a cigarette and read on.
“When the Master begins to revive and drink the blood, bleed the sacrifice some more, repeating the process until the Master is able to feed for himself.”
David sat back. Feed for himself? And so, what? Drink from the sacrifice? Perhaps unto their death? Surely no one would go willingly to that end? How into something do you have to be to die for it? Was anyone into anything that much? He immediately thought about himself and the other junkies and addicts of the world: was their relationship – his relationship – with alcohol really that different? Whiskey may be a slower route to the grave than a vampire’s teeth, but it would get you there in the end. Then there were the suicide bombers, of course – they all see their deaths as a necessary sacrifice to the desired long-term end. So was Underwood’s resurrection a cause worth dying for? For him, no, but then he was sane. He read on:
“After feeding, the Master may wish to rest, or alternatively may wish to rise and engage with you and the small gathering of the faithful present at the Ceremony. This cannot be predicted, however, as we have no record of the effects of such a long period of hibernation.
One thing I should stress is
the importance of avoiding what the Master refers to as “Denis Wheatley” type ceremonial activity. The numbers of those attending should be kept to a minimum. Many in the Sect will seek to attend the resurrection, but I urge you to keep numbers to the absolute minimum. I know that many members of the Sect are important to both our family’s interests and the Master’s, but he expressly requested that things be discreet. I personally would not exceed ten people, including the guardian. David, if you have returned, then heed this well. Do not let Lydia convince you otherwise.”
As if on cue, David heard the sound of Lydia’s voice in the kitchen talking to Ana. ‘Finally,’ he said. He got up and started for the door just as Lydia stepped through it.
‘David,’ she said brightly. ‘Ana said you wanted to see me.’ She grinned. ‘I’m almost surprised to see you here; I’d half expected you to be on a flight back to London.’
‘No, I’m still here.’ He sat down again. ‘Where have you been? Didn’t you get any of our messages about John?’
‘Yes. He’s dead.’
‘Oh, you got the messages then? Conchita and I, we tried to contact you but your phone was switched off.’
Lydia slipped off her suit jacket and draped it over the back of David’s chair. ‘I had a meeting with clients. I never have my phone switched on during meetings, David. It rings too often. I’m sorry, but I only found out about John this morning when I reached the office.’
David nodded. ‘I see. Well, you’ll be consoled to know that he went peacefully.’
‘Yes, of course. Has the undertaker been?’
‘Yeah. He came about an hour ago.’
‘Good. So, tell me, what are your plans?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you know, about the things we were talking about yesterday. John’s dead, so you don’t need to be here anymore, so … when are you off?’
