by Simon Clark
At the request of her family he’d stopped visiting her at the mental hospital. That had been five years ago: the second she saw him walking across the ward, basket of fruit nervously clasped in palms that would sweat like fury — she’d shriek piercingly, then run away in blind terror. But that was when the letters started. At first, she’d write to him two or three times a day. They were always variations on the same theme:-
Dear David,
I know what you want from me. I sense your passion and determination in wanting to steal my blood. Blood is precious; it is life in solution; it is red rubies; rubies are found in crowns, in the ground; the earth is thick beneath one s feet; that thick earth supported the blanket on which we lay when you forced your penis into me. I knew that penis would not give the seed of life; it would draw life from me; it was a tube that would drain me of my blood. My blood would be in your veins…
The letters rambled on, expressing a chaotic association of ideas (again, textbook symptoms of the schizophrenic which he had studied as a student. Only you never expect that the person you love will ever be held in the evil thrall of such a disgusting disease.)
I know you will kill me, ran the letters, you will drink my blood, you will eat my heart; I will die in your strong arms…
The classic persecution complex; a textbook symptom.
Your feet sound in the corridor outside my apartment (actually her room in the hospital); bare feet with black pads on the bottom like a dog or Benji the cat…
A schizophrenic often fails to distinguish fantasy from reality.
I pray for blue. Only blue can save me now. Blue is the colour of the sky and the veins under my skin; those veins you will bite and suck; your penis will invade my cave and draw my blood once more. You are a vampire-hearted man, David Thomas Leppington. Please eat him, not me (a blue line ran from the word ‘him’ up the page to link up with the Sellotaped fly). I will send you more. Believe me. Spare me. I will send more. I will send a kitten if I can. Eat him — not me. Although I am resigned, stoic, fatalistic. I know I will die in your strong arms…
And so on. He tore open the pack of biscuits. The rain on the hotel room window had begun to irritate him more than was completely rational, and he knew it. Katrina’s letter was corrosive. There was no other description. The bloody thing was eating into him. He’d have to —
There was a knock on the door.
He gaped at it for a moment, so wrapped up in his thoughts about Katrina that it felt as if he was waking from a dream —
— no, a damn nightmare.
The knock came again.
Snapping himself out of it, he opened the door.
Electra stood there with a pile of clean towels in her arm. She smiled warmly. ‘Sorry to disturb you. I’ve just brought you more towels.’
‘Oh, thanks very much,’ he said and awkwardly took the towels while still holding the packet of biscuits in one hand and a half-eaten biscuit in the other.
‘That trip up here must have given you an appetite.’ Her smile was vivacious as she pushed back a strand of her blue-black hair.
‘I expect it has.’
Would it be polite to invite her over the threshold, or would she get the wrong message? he wondered, feeling socially awkward now. It didn’t seem polite to talk to her across the threshold of the doorway.
‘I thought I’d mention we do have a laundry service if you need it. Also, because we don’t have an in-house movie system, we can let you have a video machine on daily rental.’
‘I thought I’d try and give television a miss for a few days.’ He smiled back, wondering if he sounded pretentious. ‘Take advantage of the countryside, get some exercise. I’ve become a bit of a couch potato.’
‘Mmm, you look fit enough to me, Dr Leppington.’
‘Eh, David…please. Just David.’
‘OK, David.’ She smiled as she turned to go. ‘Oh, nearly forgot. Would you like dinner tonight? No, not as a resident, but as my personal guest?’
‘Ah, thanks. I hadn’t made any plans.’ He heard a stammer creep into his voice and wondered if he was blushing. This woman moves fast.
‘There’ll just be three people. You, myself and another one of my long-term inmates.’
He hesitated. Reluctant to hurt her feelings but…
‘We don’t get much news from the outside world.’ She flashed that smile again. ‘The last guest we had for dinner astonished us all with news that man had just walked on the Moon.’
He smiled, amused. ‘I’d be delighted, Electra.’
‘If you can make your way down to the lounge bar for around seven-thirty for a pre-prandial something or other — on the house, of course. You’re a celebrity guest. Ciao.’ With another vivacious smile she swept away down the corridor.
David closed the door, unable to avoid asking himself if there’d be another knock on the door later that night. He imagined Electra standing there in the moonlight. If it came to the crunch, what would his reaction be then?
The time was four p.m.
2
At five-thirty Bernice stepped under the hot shower in her hotel bathroom. She loved the sensation of the needle-sharp jets of water as they struck her bare flesh. She’d spent the afternoon working with Jenny and Angie in the dispatch room, preparing the leeches for transit out to the hospitals. The mood had been light-hearted; the three of them had spent most of the time laughing over bits of juicy gossip served up by Jenny or Angie’s reminiscences about her ex-husband’s inept attempt to run a themed Dracula hotel in Whitby.
They’d asked Bernice if she knew any dark secrets about Electra Charnwood and if she indulged in any unspeakable acts in the hotel with travelling salesmen.
‘Of course she does,’ Bernice had said, giggling, as she addressed leech containers, preparing them for the arrival of the courier that evening.
‘Go on, then,’ they’d said, wide-eyed. ‘What unspeakable practices?’
‘I can’t tell.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re unspeakable.’
Angie slapped a label on the plastic travelling box. ‘That Electra. She’s a weird one, though, don’t you think?’
‘Leppington’s answer to Morticia Addams,’ added Jenny. ‘Have you ever seen her with a man, Bernice?’
‘Not a live one, anyway.’
All three dissolved into giggles again.
When Bernice had walked into the hotel after work Electra had stopped her. ‘New guest, Bernice. Absolutely gorgeous. I’ve invited him to dinner tonight. I thought we both could do with a little stimulation.’ Electra had then smiled her wicked smile and added in a whisper, ‘I’ve put him in the room next to yours.’ Then she’d sailed away in the direction of the kitchen with a bright, ‘Drinks at seven-thirty. Put on your posh frock, and don’t be late. The early bird and all that.’
Bernice turned her back on the shower curtain, feeling the sting of the hot jets.
She closed her eyes and raised her face to the water.
Even though the sensation was pleasurable, Imagination, that first lord of mischief, was already trying to undermine her relaxed frame of mind.
Why do I always think of that scene in Psycho? she asked herself. Yes, that scene. The girl’s standing in the water, steam billowing. Then the shadow appears on the shower curtain, a silhouette of a raised hand holding a knife. It’s imagination again. Trying to spoil everything I enjoy. But — no — I won’t allow myself to think of the videotapes in the suitcase. If I don’t think about them now then I might not wake up thinking about them tonight. And I won’t wonder what happened to the man who’d occupied my room. Mike Stroud with the blond hair and gentle voice … Stop thinking about it, Bernice. You see, it begins as insidiously as that. Think about the new guest in the room next to yours.
What he’s like? Tall, dark, handsome? Or short and plump with hair growing out of his ears?
Bernice closed her eyes again and turned her back to the pricking shower jets.
The water streamed down her skin, down her legs, taking the scent of her shower gel, and her body, as it gurgled away into the drainage pipes before it fell four storeys to the main drain.
Electra carefully applied mascara to her long lashes; in the mirror her hair glinted that gunmetal blue. Outside rain fell. When Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and her lover Mark Antony lost the battle of Actium they knew the Roman army would soon reach their palace in Alexandria. They knew they would be hacked to death. But, instead of moping away their final days, they had held lavish parties, listened to music, made love. They were going to make the most of what was left of their lives.
Electra fastened a simple black-bead necklace around her long neck. She knew how Cleopatra and Mark Antony had felt. She would make the most of what time was left to her, too.
Below the hotel, in the brick-skinned tunnels of the sewer, water gushed in complete darkness. From an outlet pipe warm water joined cold water in the main channel. There, noses smelt the water, filtering the chemical odours from the human scents. A quiver of excitement ran through those that squeezed their thick bodies into the tunnel. Beneath the scents of shampoo, the shower gel — the cloaking devices of modern humanity — they smelt the real body beneath: it was sweet, rich, and spoke clearly of the hot blood that coursed through the body’s veins.
Oh, how much they hungered. The need for that blood was a burning fire in their stomachs. Only human blood could completely quench that fire.
The time was coming. He had promised…
3
‘What do you want to go out on a night like this for?’
He didn’t want to. He had to.
‘I promised some of the lads at work.’
‘I thought you didn’t like to socialize with them?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Why are you going, then?’
Jason Morrow looked down at his wife as she sat in her armchair, impatiently flicking through TV channels, hunting for a programme that would occupy her for more than ten minutes.
‘I’m obliged,’ he said. ‘It’s John Fettner’s leaving party.’
‘I thought you hated him?’
She was suspicious. She knew he was lying.
‘I can’t say I’m a member of his fan club.’ He slipped on his leather jacket. ‘I’ll be glad to see the back of the lazy sod. But I’m management now. It’s expected.’
‘How long will you be?’
Get the anglepoise lamp, why don’t you, woman? he thought, feeling the heat rise through his gut. Use the rubber hose; beat a confession out of me. Christ, wouldn’t you be surprised?
‘Just a couple of hours,’ he told her, still managing to sound calm. ‘There’s a bar of chocolate in the cupboard. Want me to get it for you?’ Nonchalantly — at least, making a good act of nonchalance — he checked the cash in his wallet. There was enough if he had to pay for it.
She lit a cigarette and pinched it between her fingers. I bet she wishes that was my damned windpipe, he thought savagely. Bitch. You made me like this. You’re to blame!
He forced a smile onto his face, but already he’d begun to rub the area of skin just above his left eyebrow; a nervous habit of old. ‘I’ll see you later, love. Want a Chinese bringing back?’
‘All right, then; if that’s all I’m getting out of you tonight.’
‘You’ve got some beer left in the pantry?’
‘Go on, Jason.’ She blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling through the tight, spiteful ring of her lips. ‘Hurry up. Don’t keep your friends waiting.’
‘See you later, then.’ She’d turned her attention back to the television by the time he’d lowered his face to kiss her. She didn’t look up so he
kissed the top of her head. The smell of the natural grease in her hair made him swallow. Cigarette smoke was preferable to that.
‘I’ll see you later, then?’ he repeated.
‘Expect you will.’
At the door he paused, looking back at her. He rubbed his forehead. She was twenty-eight. She’d been beautiful once.
He was going to add, ‘Love you,’ the endearment that had lightly slipped from their lips in their honeymoon days. The words stuck in the back of his throat.
Quickly, he walked through into the hallway, then out the back door to where his car was parked on the driveway.
God, he hated to have to do this. But he did have to. It was as if a poison dripped into his system. Every few weeks he’d feel the pressure building. Then he had to release it or he felt something would burst; that he’d spray all the poison, and this madness, this fucking dreadful madness all over the town.
He blamed his wife for his disgusting behaviour. He wished he didn’t do this. He managed to forget about it for weeks on end. Then came the pressure: building and building, threatening to poison his life. For crying out loud, it’s all that bitch’s fault.
He unlocked the car door, sat behind the wheel, jammed the key into the ignition…Right, where should he try first? Which happy hunting ground? The strange grin that racked his face wasn’t one of humour. It was a snarl full of fury and fright.
Christ, this was as much fun as playing Russian Roulette with five shells in the chamber. It’d only be a matter of time before some great bucket full of explosive shit would hit the fan then it would be all over. Finito. RIP.
Christ Almighty, Jason Morrow knew — knew exactly — why people killed themselves. They shit themselves into a corner. They can’t get out. No escape. He rubbed the small ridge of bone over his left eyebrow.
If only he knew he’d inherited the habit from his great-grandfather, William R. Morrow. When his great-grandfather felt trapped he’d raise a stubby finger to his forehead; then rub the same bony bump above his left eyebrow.
No way out — no way out — no way out…
A hundred years ago Grandfather Morrow’d done the same in the room in the Station Hotel. He’d worked at the bump with his
finger as he’d signed his name on the suicide note.
Then, still rubbing the bump…no way out — no way out…he’d turned on the gas. In those days the gas, produced by baking coal, was lethal.
William Morrow’s great-grandson twisted the key. The engine started.
Jason rubbed the bony lump under the skin with his own stumpy fingers. No way out.
He knew that as clearly as if it’d been written on the side of his poxy house in letters of fire.
His great-grandfather had killed himself (although the great-grandson didn’t know anything of the family history any further back than a great-uncle’s exploits storming ashore at Normandy in 1944). Jason Morrow wouldn’t have the opportunity for that act of self-deliverance, as they called suicide these days.
He was going to die soon. And badly.
CHAPTER 8
1
David Leppington, casually dressed in a white cotton shirt and chinos, descended the main staircase into the hotel lobby. It was deserted; although, from one doorway, he heard a jukebox and the buzz of voices. That was probably the public bar. Electra Charnwood had invited him to the lounge bar. Sure enough, he found the glass-panelled door with the words ‘Lounge Bar’ scrolled across the top in gold letters and went inside.
A girl with fair hair and striking brown eyes stood behind the bar shaking ice cubes into a large plastic head that sat on the counter. Above the plastic head’s two staring eyes were the words ‘ICE TO SEE YOU,’ then came the brand name of an alcopop.
Katrina’s letter still niggled away in the back of David’s head. He thought of the fly Sellotaped to the letter.
Was Katrina even now rocking backwards and forwards on her bed in the mental hospital, humming tunelessly to herself, drool oozing from shapeless lips and imagining her ex-lover greedily tearing away the Sellotape so he could stuff the plump fly into his mouth? Maybe she was; or maybe she imagined he was pacing up and down outside the hospital room, just biding his time before he burst in to fasten his mouth on her neck and…
&nbs
p; The girl was staring at him. She probably thought he was the one out to lunch, he realized.
Order a beer; smile, he instructed himself.
‘Hello. A pint of Guinness, please.’ He reached into his pocket for loose change.
‘You’re Dr Leppington?’ asked the girl, replacing a plastic scalp on the head-shaped ice bucket.
News travels fast in Leppington. ‘Guilty,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m in Room 407; do you need cash? Or can you put it on the room account?’
‘Neither, I’m afraid.’ The girl smiled. ‘I’m a guest, too.’
‘Oh? Sorry. I thought you were one of the bar staff.’
‘I’m just helping Electra out. The cellarman’s not arrived, so there’s semi-organized chaos going on out back. Guinness, wasn’t it?’
‘Perhaps I should wait?’
‘Electra said we should help ourselves. I’m getting a dab hand at this,’ the girl told him, picking up a glass and moving to the beer tap. ‘You know, the trick is tipping the glass to just the right angle. There…’ She concentrated on the white foam pouring into the glass. ‘Also, when you pour Guinness you should only part-fill the glass, then leave it for a moment to settle.’
He saw her glance at his hand that held the coins. ‘No, that’s okay, Dr Leppington,’ the girl told him cheerfully. ‘You’re Electra’s guest. This is on the house.’
‘Thank you very much.’
The girl wiped her fingers on a bar towel and held out the hand. ‘Hello. My name’s Bernice Mochardi. I suppose I’m an old-timer at the Station Hotel now; I’ve been here twelve weeks.’
‘David Leppington.’ He shook her hand and smiled. ‘Twelve weeks? You take your holidays very seriously, don’t you?’
‘I work here, in the town that is, for my sins. I’m still in the process of finding a house of my own, but the truth is staying in a hotel is making me lazy. I don’t have to do my own laundry. I don’t even have to make my own bed. Is that wicked or is that wicked?’
