The Sandman

by Miles Gibson

  I stared at Dorothy with a pale grin. For a few moments I vacillated between sweeping her into my arms and brushing her out of the room. Then I reached forward to kiss her mouth.

  “No,” she whispered and turned her face away.

  “What do you want?” I asked in dismay.

  She plucked the belt from the dressing-gown and thrust it silently into my hand. Then she stepped from the gown and let it slither to her feet.

  She had legs of the most remarkable length, as if she had been engineered for sprinting great distances over difficult terrain. Barefoot, she stood on tiptoe with her calves flexed and the bones of her ankles drawn tight. Her hips were narrow and sharp. The hair between her legs had been shaved to stubble.

  She raised her hands and gently rubbed the cones of her breasts. Her fingers had been stripped of their rings. She held out her hands towards me.

  “Here. Tie my wrists together,” she commanded.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t keep asking silly questions, Mackerel. Play the game. Come on, tie me up.”

  I bandaged her wrists with the cord and secured them with an elaborate knot. Dorothy inspected my work carefully and nodded her approval. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Feet,” she whispered.

  I was beginning to get the idea. I scampered about the room searching for shackles. I found a scarf, a leather belt and a long elastic strap. I arranged my equipment on the pillow. Then I tied her ankles together. I threaded the elastic strap around her knees, drew her knees beneath her chin and buckled the strap behind her neck. I used the belt to secure her wrists around her knees. As I worked she muttered little encouragements to me, gasped when I tightened and tested my knots.

  “Does it hurt?” I whispered doubtfully.

  “No,” she gasped. “Tie me tighter – use your strength.”

  I wrenched at the knot until the leather burned my fingers.

  “Does that hurt?” I whispered in a hoarse voice.

  “No,” she squeaked, “It doesn’t hurt.”

  When I was finished she was rolled into a tight bundle and I stepped back to admire my work. And then I noticed that her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, exposing her teeth. I was afraid she had fainted. I peered anxiously into her face and she surprised me with a kiss, stabbed my mouth sharply with the stiffness of her tongue.

  I made an urgent search for a way into a closer embrace. But there was none to be found. No matter how I rolled her about the floor I could not force an entry. Her breasts were pushed flat against her knees. Her feet were knotted together and the heels pressed securely against the stubble between her thighs. I was in a lather of lust but there was nothing I could do to prise her apart. It was very frustrating.

  I struggled to embrace her for a long time until, weary with the game, she woke up and wriggled from bondage, slippery as Houdini. She wriggled and kicked and the knots exploded from her ankles and wrists. She stood up and grinned at me.

  “Lie down on the bed, Mackerel,” she said as she gathered up the shackles.

  I clambered aboard and lay down, adjusting the pillow behind my head and trying to hide the excitement in my pyjamas with my hands.

  “Relax,” she whispered soothingly, “Stretch out your legs and close your eyes.”

  “What are you doing?” I panted as I thrust out my feet and screwed up my face.

  “Are you frightened?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.”

  She took the leather belt and shook it, making it crack like a whip. As she bent to tie my wrists, she touched my face with the tips of her breasts. She pulled my wrists above my head and buckled the belt around my neck.

  “Does it hurt?” she inquired sympathetically.

  “No,” I said. It was very uncomfortable, but I was too excited to complain.

  She crawled onto the bed and sat astride me, wrapping my legs in the long elastic strap. She worked quickly and in silence, threading the strap around my knees and wrenching at the knots to pull them tight. She was not satisfied until I was helpless.

  “We’re a couple of outlaws,” she whispered as she stood above me and blew me a kiss. Her eyes were very bright and her face was hot.

  “Goodnight.” And she tiptoed safely back to Archie. It took me until dawn to escape. She was a natural villain.

  *

  Dorothy and Archie left before breakfast. It began to rain. The streets were slippery and black. Office girls huddled in doorways and stamped their feet. Old men clung to their umbrellas and were blown beneath buses. Pigeons tried to shelter in drains and were drowned. The Thames was a boiling mustard. The dark sky sagged around the glittering peaks of Victoria Station.

  I watched television for two or three days, asleep with my eyes open. I felt lethargic and bored. The apartment was empty without Dorothy and nothing pleased me. I sprawled on the sofa and watched television, without moving, without blinking, until my eyes burned and my brains were scorched. Finally, more dead than alive, I managed to crawl away, throw a towel over its enormous, glaring eye and tear the plug from the wall. I stood up and yawned in the silence. The rain stopped blistering the windows. It was time to pull myself together and resist the monotonous winter twilight. So I painted the kitchen and forced myself to take morning walks in the park. I took driving lessons and began to collect books. My days were stitched together again by little repetitions and rituals.

  I bought parcels of books from a charity shop and read whatever I happened to find. There were romances, Westerns, thrillers and mysteries, hymn books, travel books, gardening books and scrap books. The books were mostly mildewed. But I was happy to read everything. And in one of these books I found the Dusseldorf Vampire.

  The vampire’s name was Peter Kurten and he killed for pleasure. He killed women and drank their blood. He killed men and children and dogs and horses. He was bewitched by the smell of hot blood. He was amazed by its colour and drugged by its perfume. He killed in sexual ecstasy. He killed in hypnotised delight. When he could not kill he set buildings ablaze because the ripening flames reminded him of spurting arteries.

  During the day the Vampire was a mild and ordinary man. There was a photograph of him in the book. He might have been a tailor or perhaps sold life insurance. His shirts were starched and his hair combed. But at night, while his wife worked, he went hunting in the frightened streets. He was a mad old tiger. He killed but the slaughter only sharpened his hunger to kill again.

  The Vampire was caught in 1931 and executed in Cologne. He was afraid of the guillotine. He was afraid the blade might be so swift he would have no time to smell his own blood.

  I read the book and then I read it a second time. I understood the Vampire, the danger and excitement of his addiction. It did not shock me. The vampire dwells in every man. It is only fear that prevents us feasting on forbidden pleasures. What sweet, unspeakable terrors startle us awake at night, sweating and aroused? What shadows drift in our eyes as we stand to stare at accidents in the street, straining towards the stain of blood? The vampire sleeps in every man yet only the few dare to share its flight. The Dusseldorf Vampire gorged on blood where others are afraid to press their lips. But I understood the Vampire. I shared his addiction. I was most alive when I killed.

  Oh yes, it was true that I missed Dorothy’s mischief and the rain certainly depressed me; but I ached most deeply for the smell of blood. I craved for that most powerful narcotic and the Vampire’s story made me anxious to capture that thrill again. It would be easier and swifter the next time I made a killing because I was determined to learn from my mistakes. I had been no more than lucky in Kilburn but in the future I would be sharp and sudden and very clean.

  My first task then was to find a suitable sacrifice. There had been a lot of wasted energy searching for Doris. Death, after all, does not pick and choose his victims so carefully. He strikes at random. So I packed my shopping bag one evening and went o
ut in search of murder.

  There are many ways to kill a man but I have always favoured the knife. Knives are silent and precise. A pistol will kill at arm’s length but I do not trust them. Chung Ling Soo, the celestial Chinese conjurer, was killed on the stage of the Wood Green Empire while attempting to catch a rifle bullet in his hand. I packed a pair of filleting knives, my raincoat and gloves and a Polaroid camera. Archie’s Instamatic had given me a new interest in photography.

  The night was dry but cold enough to keep tourists off the streets. I took a bus from the station, rode as far as Piccadilly Circus and walked into Soho and beyond. I cannot say exactly where I walked because I was soon lost but it was a miserable corner of the city. The streets trickled into alleys and the buildings were shuttered or abandoned. I turned this corner and that corner, working myself deeper into the maze, until I reached a narrow alley of broken cobbles. The alley was in darkness but for a red light that shone from a room above a derelict restaurant.

  I laid down my bag and looked around me. The alley seemed to end in a high brick wall and the surrounding buildings were either empty or locked. I was especially interested in the rubble that had once been the Queen of India and finally, through a mouldering archway, I found a flight of stone stairs that seemed to lead directly to the rooms above the shell of the restaurant. In the shelter of the arch, pinned to the crumbling plaster, someone had pinned a little cardboard sign, 1st Floor Patsy.

  I pulled on my raincoat and gloves, climbed the stairs and found myself in a dirty corridor confronting two identical doors. I hammered on the first of the doors with my fist. An old man opened it and peered out, searching for me in the gloom. Across his shoulder I glimpsed a small, untidy room, hot and stinking, with a television blaring on a table.

  Without waiting for an invitation I pushed the old man backwards into the room and closed the door behind me. The old man looked startled but did not complain. He was wearing a shapeless blue suit and a pair of broken carpet slippers that made him walk with a shuffle. He sat down in a chair and turned his face towards the television. He seemed resigned to receiving unwelcome guests.

  “You’ve come to the wrong place,” he shouted at me.

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think I’ve made a mistake.”

  “Yes,” he shouted above the noise of the television. “Yes. The bitch works next door. She’s next door.” He gestured with his thumb towards the wall.

  “Is she there tonight?” I asked.

  “She’s always there. She never stops,” he shouted, “Thumpty, thumpty, thump. Day and night. She’ll kill herself one day. Bitch.” He pulled a tobacco tin from his pocket and began to make himself a cigarette, taking a pinch of tobacco and rolling it in the palm of his hand. His face was absurdly crumpled. His eyes were pools of bright water, almost hidden among the folds and creases. He rolled the cigarette idly between his fingers. He was waiting for me to realise my mistake and leave him alone. He was expecting me to creep next door to Patsy.

  But as I looked around the room at the remains of this old man’s life I knew I had business with him.

  “This used to be a good area,” he grumbled, “You could walk the streets in safety.”

  “It’s all changing,” I said.

  “It’s full of tarts,” he muttered as he poked his pockets for a box of matches. “Tarts and their darkie boyfriends.”

  “They shouldn’t be allowed on the streets,” I agreed.

  “I was in the war,” he said as he struck a match and sucked at the cigarette, “I fought against foreigners. And now they’re everywhere. This used to be a good area when I was a young man. You could walk the streets …”

  I took a knife from my bag and reached out towards the old neck. As he felt death approach he turned to confront me. I tried to make a grab at him but he jerked back and fell off his chair. He hit the floor and his teeth fell out. He sat up and covered his mouth in his hands. He was just a bundle of rags and bones. His teeth sat beside him on the carpet.

  I bent down and caught hold of his collar. He began to shout and thrash around with his arms. But I was too strong for him, placed the tip of the blade at the base of his ear and drove it smoothly into his brain. It was like forcing a knife through a pineapple. But he didn’t bleed. Perhaps it was the angle of the knife or the shape of the blade that plugged the wound. There was not enough blood to fill a saucer. I stood up, trembling, and stared at the corpse. I was filled with horror and delight.

  How can I make you understand the beauty of the ravishing blade? How can I make you understand when you cling so anxiously to the hovel you fondly call your body? I come in the night to cut you loose from your skin and bone and set you free to drift, invisible and safe from war, poverty and disease. It is done in a moment. The squirming, wriggling dance of death. The sweet hot perfume of rubber and blood. Open your arms and embrace me.

  I hammered on the second door and a woman’s voice shouted back at me. I could not understand what she shouted. So I continued to hammer until the door opened with a flourish of chains.

  She wasn’t very old but her face had already hardened into an expression of bored belligerence. Life had made her sneer so often that her lips had grown curly and pulled out of shape. There was a fine blue scar across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were pink and her short, black hair was smeared damply around her ears. They were very small ears and had to work hard to carry the weight of an enormous pair of glass earrings shaped like pears. When she moved her head the pears swung back and forth against her jaw. She was wearing something that looked like a shower curtain trimmed with feathers. She peered at me standing there in my raincoat and gloves and called me a filthy word.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t do anything nasty,” she sneered, pulling at my raincoat with her fingers.

  “What?”

  “You’re sick,” she said, “You need a doctor.”

  “But I saw your advertisement downstairs …”

  “You made a mistake. Try next door,” she said with a jerk of her head. She was wearing a strong perfume that wafted through the shower curtain whenever she made the slightest movement. It was a queer, sweet animal smell – the scent of baboons eating wedding cake.

  “I’ve already tried next door,” I smiled. The shower curtain had fallen open.

  “So try again tomorrow night,” she sighed impatiently.

  “It won’t take long,” I said.

  She drew the curtain tighter and the feathers trembled at her throat.

  “I happen to be entertaining an important international businessman,” she said, “And if you don’t piss off he’ll probably come out and break both your legs.”

  Then she tried to close the door in my face.

  “Oh, but I’m interested in violence of every description,” I crooned as I broke into the room and slammed the door.

  The room was filled by a muddy red light. It stained the walls to the colour of brickdust. The pasteboard furniture glowed dark as claret. The very air seemed rouged. But even the flattering nature of the light could do nothing to improve the appearance of the brute who sat on the bed and glared at me.

  He was huge. He was wearing nothing but a pair of purple underpants and he sat on the bed like an ugly Buddha, nipples the size of raspberries, scratching the hair on his massive belly. When he glowered at me he looked angry, but he also looked frightened, and began to cradle himself in his arms as if he felt cold.

  “What’s your game?” he barked at Patsy. “Who is this clown?”

  “Jesus, I don’t know.”

  “You’ve got the wrong address, my friend,” he growled at me. “You’ll find the door behind you. Don’t fall down the stairs.”

  “No, this is what I want,” I said cheerfully and laid down my bag at the foot of the bed.

  “Piss off!” screeched 1st Floor Patsy. “I’m working …”

  I stared at the man in his underpants. The hair on his head was thin, grey and grown very long a
gainst his neck. He began to stroke it nervously.

  “We were just having a few drinks,” he said in a defensive tone of voice.

  Patsy kept glancing at the telephone. I walked forward, picked up the telephone and tore the cable from its socket. I had seen it many times on television; the killer bursts into the room and finds the kidnapped girl trying to phone for help. He slaps the girl to the floor and whips the cable from the wall like licorice bootlace. The girl screams. The killer grins and shapes the bootlace into a noose. But it’s not so easy. I wrenched at the cable but it would not leave its anchor. I wrapped it around my fist and pulled against the wall with all my weight but the cable seemed to stretch to impossible lengths. Finally it snapped and threw me against the bed.

  “Stop him, Jumbo,” screeched Patsy.

  The man stood up and then sat down again at the sight of the knife.

  “What do you want?” asked Jumbo.

  “I’ve come to collect you,”

  “Nobody knows I’m here. My wife is …”

  “I’ve come to collect your souls,” I said grandly.

  “You’re mad,” declared Patsy, “What are you going to do with us? What do you want?”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “You can’t kill me – you don’t know me,” blurted Jumbo.

  “I don’t like the look of you.”

  “What kind of reason is that for killing someone?”

  “It’s enough of a reason. Thousands of people are killed every year because they’re the wrong colour or have the wrong opinions. You’re nothing special. You happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Calm down, my friend,” said Jumbo nervously, “You’ll find my wallet over there in my jacket. If you need money, take whatever you want – but don’t hurt me.”

  “I want to take some pictures,” I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out the Polaroid.

  “Yes,” said Patsy with enthusiasm, “Yes, that’s better – let’s have some fun.”