The Last Watchman

by Kevin Partner

  “He will have to wait here until the morning,” Peregrine said, indicating the empty slab but doing nothing to help as Valentina and I lifted the body into place. I could tell she was holding back her fury but couldn’t understand quite why. I caught her dark eyes and, to my horror, saw fear there.

  I hurriedly pulled my arms from beneath the corpse, allowing the broken head to fall back onto the marble with a sickening slap, before following Valentina out of the door and back into the hallway.

  “Now then, my dear Valentina,” Peregrine said in a steady, almost regretful, voice, “you know what must happen now. Please do not make this any more difficult than it needs to be.”

  She turned suddenly to me. “Run.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Go!” She pushed at me.

  I hesitated no longer, setting off along the corridor and trying desperately to remember the twisting route we’d taken here. Over the echoing sound of my boots as I ran, I heard Peregrine’s voice. “Pointless. It would have been merciful to allow me to end it quick—”

  His voice was cut off as I rounded the corner and headed in the direction, I hoped, of the front desk. My insides had turned chill and I thought only of escaping into the night air, though there could be little safety in that. All I knew was that to remain here was certain death.

  Shapes moved in the shadows. I was being pursued. Steps coming at me from all directions. I felt, or thought I felt, hot breath on the back of my neck. There was an all-pervading sense of hunger and anticipation about the place. And the inmates—those who were still safely locked away—were screaming.

  I turned a corner, then another. I was lost. A hand grasped my arm and I swung around ready to strike.

  “Valentina!” I cried. In her hand she held a blood-soaked knife and her face was covered in scratches, her eyes blazing with rage and fear.

  “This way,” she said, pushing me towards a corridor I’d have missed in my panic.

  A shape leapt out of the shadows and my arm exploded with pain. I was knocked backwards, dragging my attacker with me. All I could see in the half-light was a bald head, its jaws wrapped around my arm as it gnawed at me.

  With a thud, Valentina thrust her knife into my attacker’s skull, showering me with blood. The jaw tightened its grip and then, mercifully, was pulled away.

  I held my arm as she pulled me upright before yanking me over the body of my attacker and along the corridor. “Come!”

  “What is happening? Who are these people?” I called as she ran ahead.

  Suddenly, she stopped and turned around, grabbing my arms. “Be quiet! We are being hunted and if we are to have any chance of escaping this place we must be quick and we must be silent.”

  So, I kept my thoughts to myself as we jogged quietly along the polished halls. Since that day I have been in many terrifying encounters, but it was that night, as we stole through the dark corridors chased by a pack of ravening monsters, that remains in my memory as my induction into the underworld and perhaps the closest I came to losing my mind.

  Valentina stopped and put out her arm to hold me back. “We are near the entrance,” she said. “They know we’re heading this way and so we can expect at least some to have arrived here before us. Here.” She bent down and, to my embarrassment, lifted her black, tight fitting dress and pulled from beneath it a small knife.

  I took it from her and, despite the dire situation, experienced a slight thrill at the thought that it had just recently been in contact with her skin, though it was oddly cold.

  “When they come at you, aim for their head—that is the only way to hinder them effectively. Once outside, make for the main road as fast as you can. Run as if your life depended on it.”

  I knew, as she regarded me with those dark mysterious eyes, that she was being quite literal. I also suspected that she was humouring me. I didn’t think she believed I would survive the next minutes.

  “Ready,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady as my heart thundered in my chest.

  She gave a slight smile, nodded and then ran into the main corridor. I hefted the knife and followed.

  They were upon us in an instant. I saw something man-shaped grab Valentina’s arm, but was then bowled over, gasping as the wind was knocked from me. I yelled as I landed on my damaged arm but, in the same movement, brought my other hand round and, by sheer good fortune, lodged the knife into the side of my attacker’s skull.

  I pushed the body away from me, yanked the knife out of its head and hauled myself upright. Panic erupted in my gut as I saw Valentina on the floor pinned down by two attackers. One sat astride her while the other held her arms down, his head at her neck. With a primal yell, I launched myself at the figure on Valentina’s stomach. As I remember this, so many years later, I can feel again the bestial fury that was awoken within me that night. I stabbed and stabbed again, slashing back at another attacker as it grabbed my arm.

  I pulled the thing at Valentina’s neck away from her and my knife swung through the air again. My hand shook as it penetrated the eye socket and I recoiled from the spurt of warm blood that spattered my face.

  “Valentina!” I called. Her neck was violated by two puncture marks and her white face remained inanimate.

  A voice broke the sudden silence. “A pity, and so entirely unnecessary. She sought to protect you and yet, as you see, she has failed, despite paying the ultimate price.”

  I turned to see Peregrine standing with his back to the front doors of the hospital, an ugly weal spanning his face. Beside him stood a half dozen nightmarish figures in human shape with twisted features and protruding fangs. Their dark eyes regarded me with hungry anticipation, like hounds around a cornered fox waiting for the order to kill.

  “What is this place?” I managed.

  Peregrine gestured around at the dark hospital corridors. “It is a place of nightmares, Mr Makepeace. But, for you, the suffering will soon be over.”

  He pointed at me and the creatures beside him advanced. I was transfixed by their murderous eyes and glistening teeth as they chattered in their excitement.

  I got to my feet, pulled Valentina’s knife from her hand and stood at bay, though, facing such a horror, I felt like a boy with bow and arrow challenging a grizzly bear.

  And then, quite suddenly, the air turned to flame.

  Reflexively, I shied from the sudden fireball that filled the corridor, engulfing the monsters that had advanced on me, and that now reeled away, screaming in their agony. Then I regained control of my faculties and stooped to gather up Valentina. As I did so, she stirred, and I cried for joy in the midst of this inferno. “I can manage,” she whispered as I helped her to her feet.

  “Thank God,” I said, “I thought you were dead!”

  She smiled as she swayed. “Your god has little to do with it. But let us go.”

  “How? We will be consumed ourselves.”

  “He is here,” she said, before swooning.

  I turned to look into the bright orange flames that swirled mere feet away. As I did so, the white-hot centre seemed to take shape and I watched in utter astonishment as it resolved itself into the form of a man walking towards me through the heart of the fire. The figure emerged and the flame collapsed, leaving nothing more than a faint corona that framed his smouldering shape.

  “Grimes!” I cried in utter disbelief.

  He swayed a little before giving a brief nod. “Hurry,” he croaked.

  The Others

  I helped Grimes back into his bed. Immediately, his eyes closed, and he lay there, as still as if he were dead, his pale skin given a false glow in the candle light.

  “You must watch over him in the coming days,” Valentina said as she sat in the chair I’d used mere hours ago to write the message I never delivered. “He had already been injured and the power he expended in that fire will have brought him to the brink. He saved us, and we must protect him from those who might seek to take this opportunity to strike.”

  I s
ighed as exhaustion threatened to overcome me. “I feel as though I have been thrust through a door into another world—a world I know nothing of. Those creatures at the asylum and the one that attacked Grimes; are they … vampires? I can hardly believe I am even asking, but that is the only sense I can make of this night’s events.”

  “It is not my place to educate you,” Valentina said as she rubbed her neck. “You must ask Grimes, when he has recovered.”

  I went to protest, but she held up her hand and sighed. “But your conduct tonight has earned you some explanation at least. Please sit.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed feeling almost overwhelmed by exhaustion and yet desperate to learn more.

  “You are correct, up to a point. While the creatures you saw tonight are not the same as those related in Mr Bram Stoker’s story, he was certainly drawing on much older legends that were a distortion of the truth.”

  She paused for a moment as if collecting her thoughts. “Mankind is not the only sentient species on this world, Mr Makepeace. Others were here long before humans first walked the plains of Africa and more have arrived since. This is not the only world—though the theories and explanations are as uncertain as they are beyond me. It is enough to say that the others have always been here.”

  “For many centuries, they retreated as humanity spread like an infection across the face of the globe. But then there was nowhere left for them to go and they tired of running. There was much conflict and much death on either side for, though many of the other races are superior to mankind, in most respects they were inferior in one critical way—reproduction. Put a small band of humans on a fertile plain and within a century that country will belong to them. The others, though they produce offspring in many different ways, share one thing in common—they only do so rarely.”

  “And so, just over thirty years ago after the bloodbath of the Crimean War, the two sides—humans and the others—came together to agree a truce. As part of the terms of that armistice, enforcers were appointed to police the peace by dealing with rogue elements. Enforcers would come from each of the parties to the agreement. Grimes is one such. I am another. And so our watch began.”

  “You?” I gasped. I could feel bile rising in my stomach as panic threatened to overwhelm me.

  I thought I could detect regret in her expression as she nodded gravely. “Yes, Mr Makepeace, I am one of the shadow folk—one of those some would call vampire.”

  She took one slender white finger and lifted her upper lip. I saw no fang there, but one of them, the canine, was clearly more pointed.

  “That proves nothing,” I spluttered. “I see nothing like the teeth of those who attacked us tonight.”

  “Mine have been blunted so that I am able to walk among humans.”

  I examined her with my eyes for some time, not wanting to believe that it could be so.

  “Do not worry, Mr Makepeace. Much of what is reported by Stoker is nothing more than exaggeration and myth. We are much more alike than we are different. You have your criminals and we have ours, but most of us wish nothing more than to live in peace and security.”

  “And drinking blood?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  She nodded. “Yes, we consume blood. But, then, we do not eat the flesh of animals—something we find disgusting. It is not our place to sit in judgement; we must simply accept that we are different and learn to live together.”

  “I do not know what to say,” I stammered, looking across at Grimes. “Is he a vampire?”

  She shook her head and I bit back the desire I felt for her as I was overwhelmed with guilt and confusion. I had not led a good life. I’d wasted my talent and the privilege I was born into by lavishing more attention on the bottom of a bottle than on cultivating what I had. I had been afforded more opportunities than I deserved and yet, in the end, I had squandered every one.

  But, for all that, mine was a simple enough story. I felt as though, in the space of a few hours, I had learned that it was all simply a veneer and those things that had seemed so important to me were like the petty intrigues of children who play while their parents plot revolution.

  I snapped out of my reverie when I sensed her watching me. We locked eyes and I saw sadness there, as well as pity. “Grimes must tell you his own story, but no, he is not one of my people. And now I must go, there is a body swinging in a shed that must be reported to the police.”

  “But will they not suspect you?” I said as she stood up and moved towards the door.

  She turned and smiled. “I did not say I would be making the report, Mr Makepeace, merely that I will see it done. A man has died tonight—a good man with a story of his own—and he deserves to be treated with at least the appearance of respect. The Thames has quite enough bodies as it is.”

  “Many of them put there by your kind,” I said bitterly.

  “Indeed. And yours. Be careful when attempting to occupy the moral high ground, it may turn out to be rather less solid than it appears.”

  And with that she left.

  I pulled Grimes’ chair across to the side of his bed and slumped into it, too exhausted to think of the wider implications of what I’d learned tonight. All I could focus on was the protection of the man I sat beside and the dull ache in my bandaged arm.

  The untidy white stubble and grizzly features that, when awake, gave Grimes such a singular vitality here, in sleep, made him look more like a waxwork exhibit from a freak show. Some sort of monster reconstituted from the mismatched parts of other men. His head, it seemed to me, was too large for his body and, whilst his legs were short and powerful, his arms were longer and almost ape-like. For a moment, my mind turned to the work of Mary Shelley, but Grimes was no reanimated corpse, he was a living man and he needed my care. Who knew how many lives depended on his surviving to resume his duties?

  “Makepeace?”

  My face felt as though it was stuck to the rough blanket of Grimes’ bed. And then adrenaline surged through my heart as I realised I’d fallen asleep. I sat up, shrinking from the light streaming in through the bedroom window.

  “Be a good fellow and fetch me a bedpan, would you?” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

  I heaved myself up, rubbed the life back into my cheek and then found the pan beneath the bed, mercifully empty. Not for long, I thought, and I suspected I would have the ignoble duty of dealing with it.

  I turned away as he slowly and painfully raised himself up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and began relieving himself. I sneezed on the acrid aroma that filled the room, struggling to hold back the vomit rising in my stomach.

  “Well, my new friend,” he said as I leaned against the mantelpiece and attempted to compose myself, “it seems we have rather a mess to clear up.”

  The Purge

  At some point in the night, I made my way back to my room, having first locked Grimes' door as instructed. He had fallen asleep soon after I'd helped him with his ablutions. It's an odd thing indeed to find oneself in such intimate association with a man who, until only hours earlier, was nothing more than a recognised face. My years at boarding school, followed by a brief and unsuccessful stint in the army, had prepared me, at least in part, for helping this sick man, but there was something pathetic about him that awoke feelings of pity and, I admit, some disgust in his current state.

  I'd tried and failed to dismiss such thoughts as soon as they'd occurred, coming, as I knew they did, from those parts of the mind that have more akin with the animal kingdom than mankind. Even in this weakened form, I'd sensed there dwelt a power within him that was entirely alien to me. And so, I'd watched as he fell asleep, my mind still whirling as it tried to make sense of the night's events.

  I desperately needed to sleep, but each time I closed my eyes I saw pointed teeth and animal faces. I must have dropped off eventually because I woke suddenly, my heart racing, as I imagined Valentina leaning over me, her lips drawn back like those of a monstrous bat, as she stooped to feed.
/>
  The lodging house inmates tended to wake before 7am and their tramping on the threadbare carpeted stairs below was enough to ensure that I awoke also, though I had no idea whether I'd slept for minutes or hours. It certainly felt as though it was the former.

  I relit the candle by my bedside and washed my face in the bowl of water I kept for the purpose beneath the windowsill. I have many faults—too many to list here—but I still take a little pride in my appearance and I did not wish to be seen by any of the lodgers until I had shaved and changed my clothes.

  Dragging the razor across my chin, I winced as the blunt blade nipped me. I could see why Grimes wore a beard, but I still had a vestige of pride so I ploughed on, wiping the blood from my neck with an old cloth and holding it up to the candle light. By God, I'd seen enough blood last night.

  Eventually, the flow was halted, and I was able to pull on my shirt without staining the collar—essential since I only had two white shirts to my name. The one I'd worn to work the previous day had been soaked and left to dry and I didn't know what I'd do if this one became stained. I decided to keep my distance when I checked on Grimes and to get away as quickly as possible.

  I knocked on his door and waited for a response. I was torn between the fear that something might have happened to him in the night and the hope that I could avoid having anything further to do with him. Presently, however, I heard shuffling footsteps on the floorboards and the door swung open to reveal his horrifically pale face. I barely noticed that, however, as I almost fainted at the disgusting miasma that accompanied him.

  “Sorry, old chap,” he said. “Pongs a bit, I know. My pot probably needs emptying.”

  I stepped back a little and nodded. “Indeed. I was going to suggest fetching you some breakfast, but I see, and smell, that there is a more pressing errand.”