The Vampire of Downing Street and Other Stories

by Amy Cross

  “It found a way out,” Mum says, stepping barefoot through the pieces of wood and looking up at the hole. “It got out of the bedroom.”

  “What did?” I ask, following and looking up at the hole. “Mummy, what -”

  Suddenly feeling as if I'm being watched, I spin around and look over at the doorway. For a fraction of a second, I spot something slipping out of sight, something low down and dark gray, but it's gone before I can really see it properly.

  “Mummy!” I shout, grabbing her hand. “I want to get out of here right now!”

  Pulling me to the hallway, she opens the front door and finally we reach the front garden. She tries to open the car door, but then she mutters something about the keys and looks back toward the house.

  “I can't go in,” she whispers, shivering in the cold night air, “I can't go back in, I can't... I don't have keys...”

  “Mummy,” I whimper, tugging on her arm. “Why -”

  “Do you know how to hot-wire a car?” she asks, turning to me.

  “What?”

  “With the wires and all that, do you know how to do it?” She stares at me, her eyes wider than I've ever seen them before. “You could try, at least.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I tell her, taking a step back. “Mummy, we -”

  “Run!” she shouts, suddenly pulling me across the lawn, going so fast that I almost fall. “Cally, run!” Stumbling, she falls and drops down hard on her knees.

  I take a step back and watch as she starts sobbing, while still running her hands over her naked body, searching for another of those pebbles. On the other side of the fence, lights are being switched on in the next house, as Mum starts screaming.

  Chapter Ten

  “We're keeping her sedated for now,” the doctor tells Dad, keeping his voice low as they stand over by the double-doors at the far end of the hospital corridor. “It's the best thing for her in her current condition, while we try to work out the best approach for bringing this manic episode to an end.”

  “So how long's that going to be?” Dad asks, sounding exhausted. “I mean, you can't just keep her here indefinitely.”

  “Under the terms of the Mental Health Act,” the doctor continues, “and with your help, we can keep her here against her will for as long as we deem necessary. Certainly while she's still talking about chased by a creature in your house, I think we absolutely have grounds for that, so...” He pauses, glancing at me and then back at Dad. “I can't tell you what to do, Mr. Taylor, but I strongly advise you to sign the papers and commit your wife to this hospital for the time being, not just for her sake but for the sake of your whole family, especially your daughter. Is that something you'd be willing to consider?”

  Dad doesn't reply. Instead, he looks over at me.

  “Mr. Taylor, I appreciate that this is a difficult decision,” the doctor adds, “but your wife is very sick. She needs to be here right now, but she won't stay voluntarily.”

  Sighing, Dad nods. “I guess I have no choice.”

  “I'll get the paperwork and be back in a moment,” the doctor tells him. “You're making the right decision.”

  As the doctor walks away, Dad turns and comes over. He seems exhausted, as if all the energy has been sucked out of him.

  “Hey,” he says, sitting on the empty plastic seat next to me. “Mummy's going to be -”

  “I heard,” I tell him.

  He nods. “How do you feel about that?”

  “She's not lying about what happened,” I tell him.

  “Cally -”

  “She's not,” I continue, trying to stay calm.

  “So you're saying that you saw the creature she says she saw?”

  “No, I didn't see it, not properly, but -”

  “You heard it?”

  I nod.

  “Okay,” he continues, “I need you to understand something. It was the middle of the night, you were already exhausted, and Mummy... You love her, don't you?”

  I nod.

  “And you trust her.”

  I nod again.

  “And you've grown up thinking that everything Mummy and Daddy tell you, must be true.”

  “This is true,” I tell him, starting to feel as if even after all of this, he isn't going to believe us.

  “And when Mummy tells you things,” he continues, “you believe them, and then you start to think you hear things that maybe aren't really there -”

  “I heard it!” I reply, as my frustration builds. “It was in your bedroom and it was banging to get out!”

  “I'm sure you think you heard something -”

  “And I saw the hole it made in the ceiling to get through from the bedroom to the kitchen!”

  “But you didn't see who made that hole, did you?” he continues. “Cally, obviously your mother is the one who made that hole.”

  Reaching into my pocket, I take out the black pebble I rescued from the bathroom bin the other day.

  “She's been cutting these out of her body,” I tell him, holding the pebble in the palm of my trembling right hand. “I saved this one, but I think there were more, lots more.”

  “Cally,” he says, taking the pebble and examining it for a moment before setting it back in my hand, “that's a small stone.”

  “It was in her!”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “She didn't have to!”

  “I get it,” he continues, “you're just a kid and you're trying to come up with explanations. I'd like an explanation too, but sometimes people just...” He pauses. “Sometimes things like this just happen inside people's heads, and we can't know what caused them. We just have to help those people to get better. Can you understand that?”

  I shake my head. At the other end of the corridor, the doctor comes back through with some pieces of paper.

  “I have to go and talk to the doctor again,” Dad says with a sigh, getting to his feet, “and then we're going to go and get something to eat. Do you want ice cream?”

  “Do I have to go to school today?” I ask.

  “No,” he replies, patting my shoulder as he turns and heads over to the doctor. “You don't.”

  “It was real,” I call after him. “Everything she said she saw is real!”

  The doctor glances at me, but I can see that he's the same as Dad. He doesn't believe me. Looking down at the pebble, I try to work out how I'm going to make them see the truth.

  ***

  “Jesus,” Dad says as we stand in the doorway, looking at the broken wood all over the kitchen floor. “It's like a bomb went off.”

  “We have to get out of here,” I tell him, tugging on his arm as I look over my shoulder. I don't know where the creature is, but it's definitely around. It's probably listening to us, maybe even watching us, maybe even planning what to do next.

  “We have to clean up, is what we have to do,” Dad mutters. “Okay, Cally, how about you take some toys to the garden and play for a little while? I think I can make the place look respectable again.”

  “We have to leave,” I whimper, close to tears as I try to pull him toward the front door. “Daddy, you're not listening to me!”

  “I'm tired, honey.”

  “It's not safe here! Mummy -”

  “Mummy's sick,” he says firmly, turning to me and carefully moving my hand off his arm. “You need to understand that, Cally. I know it's scary and I know it's horrible, but your mother is very sick in her mind. It's nothing physical, that's why this is so difficult for you to understand.” He taps the side of his head. “It's all up here. She's been sick this way before, when you were very young, but it's never been quite this bad.” He pauses. “She's going to be okay, though. It'll take a while, but the doctors are doing everything they can to make her feel better so she can come home.”

  “But -”

  “And we both need to be strong and brave for her, okay? That includes tidying the house up and making sure that when she eventually comes out of hospita
l, we don't do anything that upsets her again. Do you understand?”

  “But -”

  “So let's be good,” he continues, heading through to the front room. “It's a nice day out there, so playing with your toys on the lawn wouldn't be so awful, would it?”

  “I want to go somewhere else,” I tell him, trying not to sound like I'm whining. “It's not safe here.”

  “This is our house,” he replies, turning to me with a tired look in his eyes, “and even if we thought about moving to another one, it'd take time to arrange that. So for now, we're going to make the place as nice as possible for when Mummy comes home.” He turns and looks around the room for a moment. “Which,” he adds under his breath, “might not be for a while.”

  ***

  As Dad works inside the house, I continue to walk around in the garden, looking up at the windows. I know that thing is still in there, and I'm worried that with Mum gone, Dad will be the next target. After all, it seemed to lose interest in me. If Dad doesn't believe that it's in there, I need to find a way to protect him.

  “Cally!”

  Turning, I see that Joseph is at the fence, waving for me to go over. I take one more look up at the windows, before turning and hurrying across the lawn.

  “How is she?” he asks, sounding worried.

  “She's in the hospital.”

  “And how are you?”

  I sniff. “I'm not in the hospital.”

  “That poor woman,” he continues, making the sign of the cross on his chest. “When I called the ambulance last night, I was so worried. The way she was weeping and shouting...” He stares at me for a moment, with tears in his eyes. “You must have been so scared.”

  “It's not that,” I reply, turning and looking back toward the house. “No-one believes her.”

  “No-one believes her about what?”

  I turn back to him. “She says she saw it.”

  “What else does she say?”

  “That it's been hurting her while she's asleep.”

  “Tell me something,” he continues, “those cuts I saw all over her body last night, did the doctors say what they were?”

  “I don't think so.”

  “Were they just cuts, or where they... I'm sorry to ask you this, Cally, but had your mother been taking things out of herself? Little things, like shiny black stones. Very smooth, not quite round, slightly elongated.”

  I reach into my pocket and take out the pebble. “Like this?” I can see from the look in his eyes that it's the right thing.

  “Oh God,” he whispers, making the sign of the cross on his chest again. “Cally, I...”

  “What is it?” I ask, looking down at the pebble.

  “It's something you... Wait right here.” Turning, he limps back toward his house. I wait for a couple of minutes, examining the pebble, before he comes back out and limps over to me. As soon as he gets here, he holds out his hand and shows me another of the pebbles.

  “Where did you get that?” I ask. “Is there something hiding in your house too?”

  He shakes his head. “Mary Madison gave this to me,” he explains. “She told me... She told me her father had been cutting them out of his body. Is that what happened to your mother, Cally? Was she cutting things like this out of her body?”

  “I think so,” I reply, trying not to feel scared. “What are they?”

  “I'm going to talk to your father,” he continues, climbing over the fence. “You wait out here, and I'll go in and try to make him understand.”

  “Understand what?” I ask, following him across the lawn.

  “That you can't stay in this house. That whatever happened before, it's -” Reaching the back door, he stops and turns to me. “You just wait out here, okay? I'm going to talk to your Daddy and make him see reason.”

  ***

  A few minutes later, sitting on the back step, I realize I can hear raised voices from inside. Turning, I listen for a moment, and it's clear that Dad's really angry with Joseph.

  ***

  “I don't want you talking to that stupid old man anymore,” Dad says later, as he puts a plate of burger and chips on the table in front of me. “He's not right in the head.”

  “But Dad -”

  “I'm serious,” he continues, sitting opposite me with his own plate. “I don't know what the hell's wrong with him. It's one thing to be mildly eccentric and spout all that crap when things are normal, but to take advantage of a situation like this is just wrong. I told him not to talk to you, and I want you to tell me if he tries, okay? I'll get the police on him if I have to.” He pauses for a moment, clearly frustrated. “It's not normal for an old man to keep talking to a little girl like that.”

  “Why won't you listen to him?” I ask. “Didn't he show you the pebble?”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “It's real!” I hiss. “It happened to Mary Madison and her family and now it's happening to us!”

  “I wouldn't be surprised if he made your mother sick,” he continues. “He probably talked to her and told her all the same rubbish about monsters in the house and people dying and disappearing and pebbles, and it fed right into the fears she already had.” He picks up his knife and fork, but he seems too angry to eat. “He's got a lot to answer for. Jesus Christ, if he wasn't such a doddery old man, I'd go over there and punch his lights out.”

  “We're not sleeping in the house tonight, are we?” I ask. “Daddy, please...”

  “There's nothing here that can hurt us.”

  “There is! It hurt Mummy!”

  “Mummy hurt herself,” he continues. “The doctor examined her and said that all her injures are self-inflicted. Do you know what that means?”

  “It means she did them to herself, but she didn't! Or she did, but it made her, or it didn't make her, not exactly, but -”

  “Cally, that's enough,” he says firmly. “This is a difficult time for all of us, but we have to get through it together. I need you to be a little bit more sensible and a little bit more grown-up for now, is that understood?”

  Staring at him, I realize that it's hopeless. He's never going to believe me, and he's never going to accept that we have to get out of this house.

  “You can sleep in the big bed with me tonight,” he adds finally. “Just tonight. Does that make you feel better?”

  “I suppose so,” I reply cautiously. “At least that way I can try to keep you safe.”

  ***

  Their bed creaks every time I move. As Dad sleeps next to me in the dark, tidied bedroom, I stare up at the ceiling and try to imagine what Mum's doing in the hospital right now. I want to think that she's feeling better and that they might let her home tomorrow, but at the same time I keep imagining the opposite.

  Maybe she's still screaming.

  Or maybe she's still on drugs that make her sleep. I guess that might be better, if it means she's not hurting or upset.

  I remember seeing a film once where someone was in a hospital because they were sick in the head. They got tied to a bed, and nuns were torturing them, and demons were hiding in the corners. I don't think Mum's in that type of hospital, but still, I want her to come back to us.

  Next to me, Dad lets out a brief half-snore.

  It's hard to believe that he actually managed to fall asleep so fast, but I guess he's exhausted after everything that happened over the past day. I feel bad for him and I know he's trying to do his best, but it's like there's nothing I can do to make him believe me. Closing my eyes, I try to imagine what it would be like if we moved to a new house, one where there's nothing hidden and living with us, one where we can all be happy and Mum can come home. Even though our old apartment was pretty cramped, at least I was never scared living there. For a moment, I try to imagine Mum smiling, standing in the garden with the sun shining on her hair. I just want her to come home and for us to live somewhere else.

  Suddenly, opening my eyes, I realize I must have fallen asleep. I started dreaming for a few seconds, about b
eing at Grandma and Grandpa's house, but now I'm wide awake again and I can feel my heart racing. I try to roll over, but something seems wrong, and when I try to sit up I find that I can't really move at all. I can blink, but that's about it, and the rest of my body just feels completely heavy and still. I try to twist, or turn, or move in any way at all, but nothing works: the effort is exhausting, and after just a few seconds I already feel completely drained. I try again and again and again, but my whole body feels like it's made of lead. Trying not to panic, I pause for a moment, but I can't even move my mouth to call out for Dad's help.

  And then I hear it.

  The bed creaks, and although at first I tell myself that it's just Dad, I can see him out the corner of my eye and I don't think he moved. Then there's another creak, coming from further down, but I can't turn my head to look. A moment later I hear something rustling against the sheets and coming closer. I try to open my mouth and call out, but my entire body still feels like it's locked in place. It's as if my mouth has been sealed shut.

  Spotting movement in the corner of my eye, I try to look, but I can't. Something's definitely there, though, and I can tell it's not Dad. It's as if there's something crawling up the bed, climbing onto his chest as he sleeps, and I can hear a faint gasping sound, as if the creature is breathing next to me.

  There's a sound, too, like bones creaking.

  I try again to turn my head, and then to call out, but I can't move. All I can move is my eyes, but not enough to see what's happening. Looking the other way, however, I realize that the light from Dad's radio alarm is casting a faint blue light on the wall, and I can just about make out a smallish, hunched shadow. Filled with horror but still unable to move, I watch as the fuzzy shadow reaches out a hand, as if it's touching Dad, and then it seems to reach up to its own face. After a moment, the shadow moves its hand away from its face and then back down toward Dad.