by Mike Ashley
“N-n-n—”
“I’ll give you forty-eight hours. After that, you’re juice. Got me?”
Sleepless nodded, feeling the eyeballs rattling in his skull. It was long after Toe Knee had gone back to his subterranean lair that they settled into anything resembling a viewing position. But the outlook wasn’t good.
“What am I going to do?” he wept, since Ribena was no good at all at stiffening up the sinews, let alone summoning up the blood.
Gurkl said mournfully, “Trouble is, Sleepless, the minute you get out of the valley there’s all these gits with garlic earrings and silver bullets and damn’ great chunks of sharpened wood just waiting to turn us into a barbie.”
“Besides which,” Kevin added, “there’d be no point sending you out to bring back supplies. You’d drink the bleedin’ lot before it got here.”
“Even if I could cross the . . . the stream,” Sleepless said, just to remind them that he couldn’t. None of them could. Creatures of the twilight world would fall apart if they crossed running water. Hence the shortage, since the stream crossed the only way in or out of the valley.
“See, what we need,” Kevin said, tucking his fetid feet further under his seat and spreading his hands on the table, “is loads of people coming here.”
Gurkl shook his head pityingly. “You’re not going to get that, though, are you? Stands to reason nobody’s going to come here from outside.” He pushed back his long, lank locks and scratched the great gherkin of his nose. “People come here—” his voice sank to a menacing whisper “—they don’t go back.”
Sleepless grasped at straws. “Isn’t there another film-crew coming soon?”
“Nope.”
“Not even David Attenborough?”
A mass of tongues clicked in disgust.
The quartet sat on in thirsty silence. Mack picked his teeth with a dagger. “What we need,” he said reflectively, “is bait.”
“Oh, brilliant!” Kevin sneered. “Come to the Carpathian Arms and get sucked dry.”
Thud! He looked down aghast as the dagger sliced into the wood between his fingers. Mack smiled a smile that turned the Ribena dripping down the walls into crimson glaciers. “Got a better idea?”
The odour of Kevin’s deadly extremities got suddenly stronger. “No. No, no, no, no, no, Mack. Great idea. Fab. Super.”
Mack swung around to squint threateningly at Sleepless. “You got us into this mess. Don’t think I never seen you creeping through the pinewood. I had my eye on you and you never spotted it. Took me days to pick the pine-needles out of it after.”
Sleepless’s jaw dropped in astonishment, then firmed with anger. (If asked, it would also thrust forward so the teeth could do a chorus-dance, no reasonable offer refused. Sometimes after parties, Sleepless had a heck of a job getting it back again.) He forced his eyeballs to glare balefully at Mack. “So you’re the son of a witch who nicked the barrels from my cellar!”
“I had to. It was coagulating.”
“Clot!” Gurkl said.
“But the question is,” Big Mack said heavily, “how are we going to lure lots of people to the valley?” Mack lowered at the little man. “It’s your fault my glass is empty. So you think of a lure.”
Sleepless’s nose began to run under pressure. Automatically jamming it back, he sniffed. Spiders swinging in the rafters were sucked into that mighty gale.
Sleepless dripped and thought by turns.
They sat and watched him for a while. Then they slumped and watched him for another while.
“How about writing to a university to come and study us?” he asked eventually.
“Pillock! Professors and that, they’d miss their students. Then we’d have the stake and chips brigade on our necks.”
“Well how about tourists?”
They stared at Sleepless, aghast. “They’d— they’d have to have running water!”
“Okay, okay! You don’t need to bite my head off!”
“Oh, bloody hell, we’ll just have to think of a load of people that no one would miss.”
“Tele-sales callers,” said Kevin.
“Double-glazing salesmen,” said Mack.
“Politicians,” said Sleepless. Just before they hit him.
But when the candles had guttered low in their sconces and Liesl was pointedly not putting out the cat, Sleepless woke up.
“I’ve got it!” he yelled. “Football hooligans!”
Even Gurkl spent a microsecond in reverential awe. “It’s a great, shining, incandescent jewel of an idea, Sleepless. A coruscating nugget encapsulated in crystal clarity. A glorious gobbet of genius. But there’s just one fatal flaw.”
Sleepless beamed happily. “Only one?”
“Well up on your usual score, Sleepless. Football hooligans it is. But how are we going to get them here?”
“Coach.”
They hit him again.
Liesl threw a bucket of Ribena over him as he lay on the floor. He propped himself up on one elbow, sputtering, “No, really, though. Football hooligans travel on coaches ’cause they get chucked off everything else. What we need is a load of fans—”
Kevin stood on Sleepless’s head, his hobnails sticking into the little man’s tongue. Sleepless tried hard not to breathe as his vast nostrils found themselves under Kevin’s fatal feet. Kevin said, “Which means advertising a stadium they could see we haven’t got. And we can’t exactly pay Saatchi and Saatchi, can we?”
Mack nodded. “Specially not within—” he consulted the moondial on his wrist “—forty-two hours.”
“Well a pub football team, then!” mumbled Sleepless, having emptied his mouth by the simple expedient of chewing off Kevin’s toe. “They’re always bragging about how their centre forward used to play in the Fifth Division of the Coronation Cup while they pour another pint of that nasty ’orrible beer stuff into their nasty bloated beer guts.”
“Yeah,” muttered Kevin, “they used to be a contender. Nearly had a trial with Tranmere Rovers’ youth team. Long ago, like, when they were footloose.”
“Like you, old son.” Sleepless bit Kevin’s toenail. Then slurped on the juicy bone. The way Kevin tasted, he didn’t need any parmesan. “So what we want now is a prize.”
“Like what?”
“Big enough to lure the ageing footie-freaks.”
“Like what?”
“But not so big that real players will want to stick their oar in.”
“Like bloody what?”
Sleepless pulled himself up onto the bench. Wriggled nonchalantly, a self-satisfied smirk scooting across those all-singing, all-dancing mandibles. “Like a barrel,” he said, “of beer.”
Mack sent a drowsy eye across to peer at him. “That,” he said, “is the best idea yet.”
“But how am I going to get there? I can’t cross the stream – I’d disintegrate!”
Mack laid a heavy arm around Sleepless’s shoulders. “Disintegrate, shmisintegrate. I have a Cunning Plan . . .”
Kevin had often played doctors and nurses but he’d never played dentists before. Or, come to think of it, football. However, he did a fine line in sharpening up daggers, and at least he had the right tools. So the next night, when they had dragged Sleepless from his hiding-place under a rotting haystack, Kevin waved his long, metal rasp optimistically. “ ’Sokay,” he said, while McGurk and Mack crowbarred Sleepless’s jaws apart and then stopped them scuttling off. “These particular files have the sharp bits cut in the shape of an X. Makes them extra popular. You know, they’re X-rasps.”
“Anyway,” said Mack, “losing an inch or two off your gnashers is nothing to worry about.”
“Nah,” MckGurk drawled. “’Specially when you’re going to lose a foot or two crossing the stream.”
“Mfuh gruh!” expostulated Sleepless in a spray of toothshards. But they ignored him anyway.
Soon his prize incisors would never win a show again. “My victims will have to be catheterized!” he wailed, but M
cGurk and Big Mack were already dragging him across the valley and up to where the— the stream ran gurgling in the light of the all but full moon.
“I can’t cross that!” he protested, but Long-Tooth proudly showed him a length of giant-sized elastic tied between two trees on the river-bank. Sleepless stared, appalled. “That’s not a Cunning Plan!” he said. “It’s a catapult!”
“Pre-zackly.” Kevin helped him ungently into position and tucked a bundle of posters under his belt. “Correct. So you’ll only be above the . . . the running water for about half a second. Stirring deeds are afoot, lad. This is no time to go to pieces.”
As he spoke, Mack nodded, and the combined strength of three large vampyres propelled their small comrade rapidly across the river. He landed in a tangle of his own bodily organs, only some of which were still attached. Replacing his ear with dignity and a blob of plasticine which Mack thoughtfully fired across after him, Sleepless set off disconsolately with the bundle of posters.
He trudged along the gravel road the Gammer film-crew had made for Christopher Flummer’s caravan. The silver star had almost faded from the caravan’s door and spiders now inhabited the immobile dressing-room, but at least it had been fun. Except for the guys from Gammer.
Bright under the light of the big, almost spherical moon, the road passed through the only pass out of the valley. Soon Sleepless’s feet hurt, and a large blister was developing quite a relationship with his corns. “Oh, joy,” he muttered, “pain.”
By the time Sleepless had descended the forty-one hairpin bends, it was worryingly close to dawn. Once he’d finally reached the town below, he rushed around pasting his posters on every wall and door in sight. Soon he had only one left: the biggest one, meant for the door of the inn where the prey were bound to see it. But the inn was damned elusive.
Ugly golden light was plastering the fleecy clouds overhead as he raced up and down the crooked streets. Overhanging gables provided some relief, but there was a nasty azure lightening on the horizon. Disgusting birdsong almost made him want to throw up. Already he could feel the first motes of sunlight ricocheting out of the sky and peppering him with unpleasant sensations, and however hard he looked, there wasn’t a convenient cellar or crypt in sight. The nice, helpful darkness had all but disappeared as he skidded around a corner and into the village square.
At last! There was the alehouse, with a red flower painted on the sign. He just had time to slap the sign up below the lettering which read, “The Pimpernel Bier Keller and Meat Mart”. Then he dived down a manhole cover as the sun peeped nosily into the village.
Gnawing vermin in a sewer wasn’t Sleepless’s idea of fun, but it helped to pass the time of day. Above him in the square, rosy-cheeked peasant women gabbled in the market, kerchiefs wagging as they gossipped. More to the point, rosy-nosed men with beer bellies sat drinking anaemic lager and jabbing their thumbs at the notice:
COME ONE, COME ALL
OVER-FORTIES FOOTBALL MATCH AND
BARBECUE
WITH THE MIGHTY CARPATHIAN WANDERERS
FREE BARREL OF BEER TO THE WINNERS
CARPATHIAN ARMS, SUNSET TONIGHT
BE THERE OR BE BORING
And by late afternoon there was an air-conditioned Van Hool fifty-two-seater horseless coach parked encouragingly over a certain manhole cover right outside the pub. Someone was cutting out very large letters to stick in the back window. Through the gap in the manhole cover, Sleepless could just make out an O, an L, a V, and that was an E, wasn’t it? Maybe he should have paid more attention in school but that snaky one, it was definitely an S.
Men were saying, “I had a trial with Negoi Rangers once,” and, “See, there was this talent scout from Hategului City but me dad wouldn’t let me go,” and thumping each other bluffly on the back in the sunset.
Sleepless wasn’t sure the folks at the Carpathian could manage fifty-two plus driver, but he needn’t have worried. Twenty of the seats were piled with cans of Pilsner, and half a dozen with onion and black pudding crisps. Only a score or so men shook the coach with their stumbling footsteps as they poured themselves aboard. They were deep in an argument about who’d be the next manager of Focsani Tuesday. They didn’t even notice Sleepless creeping into the driver’s mate’s coffin, the little alcove down by the luggage lockers.
Stopping only twice for pee-breaks, the coach ground its gears noisily up towards the twilit pass. Sleepless heard the visitors singing, “With a T and an R and an A N S,” but he was in no position to care. Faint with malnutrition, he found the swaying around the hairpin bends nauseating. He almost lost the contents of his stomach, and when the coach splashed through the ford, he did lose his other ear. In the seconds it took to cross that fiercely running water, his agony made him deaf to what might be happening to the visitors sitting suddenly quiet above.
But it was worth it. It was all worth it when the twenty-seven strangers drew up outside the twinkling windows of the Carpathian Arms. Sleepless slipped out and found himself being hugged gratefully by his mates. With tears in his eyes, Long-Tooth said, “Talk about drinks on the hoof!” Even Mack the Fang whispered, “Nice one, son,” while pretending to welcome the cocktails.
“There’s too many of ’em just to dig straight in,” Toe Knee murmured. “Better pretend we’re going to start the match. Take a few cressets over to my mandrake field, will you? I harrowed it last spring so it should be reasonably level.” Louder he added, “Have a drink or two on the house, lads. Who’s the captain?”
A large, fat, balding man pushed his way forward. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Hans, and that’s Nies, and that’s Igor, and that’s Bumsidasi Junior,” and as introductions do, they went on confusingly for far too long for anyone to find out who anyone else was. But Sleepless hid a mocking smile when he heard the away team’s title. Even if they’d brought their own ref, they’d had it if they had to make up a phoney name like that.
The challengers were taking it seriously. Some of them had real boots with real studs, and a few of them wore shorts on surprisingly hirsute legs. Once people started taking up their positions, there was a fair bit of pushing and jostling. The opposing goalie jabbed an elbow in Big Mack’s ribs. “We’re gonna slaughter you, mate,” he bragged.
“Yeah, we’re gonna massacre you,” echoed his friend, one of the Hansis.
Now Mack came to look, Hansi was nearly as tall as he was, but still he managed to stare down at the interloper. “Oh, yeah? You and whose army?” he grated. Sweeping his opponent into a crushing bear-hug, Mack leaned his head in close to the other man’s neck, jaws beginning to open.
“Break!” Toe Knee shouted. “No cheating now, lads. Remember,” he said meaningfully, “the barbecue’s not ’til after.”
Reluctantly, Mack stopped, but only because he knew the Carpathianites couldn’t take on the team and the spectators all in one go. They’d have to wait until the other side were dead drunk and knackered . . .
Rudolf tossed a coin, Kevin guessed wrong, and the visitors took the downhill goal. Or at least, downwind from Kevin’s feet.
The moon wasn’t up yet as the players took their positions. Her light was only a dim platinum glimmer on the snow-capped peaks. Still, there were four cressets blazing away to mark the goal-mouths, and the driver helpfully left his coach-lights on to flood the pitch while he snoozed over a crate of beer on the back seat.
Sleepless gave up trying to work out what those letters spelt: W – O – L – or something, and stood sniffing up the odours of fresh grass and living flesh. This was a moment that made him proud to be dead. On the sidelines, Liesl was flourishing her dishmop and yelling, “Come on you Carps!” While on the other side of the pitch, the visitors were chanting, “You’ll never walk alone.”
Then the Big Match started. The hollow crump of boot on bladder rang out as Nies belted the ball off the centre spot. There was a moment of confusion as everyone raced the same way, and Rudolf the ref blew his whistle at the Carps. “You lot are
going that way!” He pointed sternly at the Carps’ goal and the home side drifted sadly away from the men they were marking.
Ten seconds later, he blew it again. “Foul!”
Sleepless had chopped a visitor’s shin. A crowd gathered round the man who was writhing dramatically on the turf, a trickle of blood barely oozing out of the graze on his leg. All the same, Sleepless was down on his hands and knees, licking his lips and bringing his head down towards the infinitesimal gore.
Toe Knee, who’d appointed himself team coach, rushed across with a bucket and sponge. He mopped the man’s shin and carefully wrang the sponge out into the empty bucket. It was turning into a right needle match.
One of the Hansis threw the ball from the sideline, yelling, “On the ’ead!” and the ball went flying into the penalty box. Igor belted it into the back of the net with total disregard for the off-side rule.
The Wolves went wild. With their supporters roaring, they ran to hug Igor. And found that the Carps were also swarming around him. Indeed, Long-Tooth was kissing him warmly on the neck.
Rudolf got busy with his whistle. “’Ere! You lot aren’t supposed to kiss our lot. Do it again and it’ll be the red card, right?”
But the Carpathians couldn’t help themselves. The game got bloodier and bloodier. Fouls grew fouler and tempers frayed. Already the Carps were three men down, and the Wolves were fielding a grandfather with a pacemaker – their “secret weapon”, Grithi having mysteriously vanished, presumed drunk. At 17–0, with the Wolves fans chanting, “We’re gonna kick your blasted ’eads in,” even Kevin was getting narked.
“We’re gonna make you into mincemeat,” he hissed at the Wolf who’d just chinned him.
“Bugger off, giblet-brains.” The Wolf stamped down with his spikes and Kevin lost a toe he could ill afford. In seconds, fists were flying and the whole thing had turned into a free-for-all with whistle accompaniment.
“Get ’em, lads!” yelled Mack, and the vampyres dropped all pretence of football. The visitors were trounced. Then trussed. Then treated to toothy torment, except for the ones who had to wait their turn. Their bodies shrivelled as bit by bit the blood was drained. Most of it, of course, went straight into the vampyres’ stomachs. Sleepless, one eye as ever on the main chance, siphoned a bit off into the football for later. Now his eye-teeth weren’t the right shape any more, it’d be easier that way. He drank the dregs from the body then stole away with his booty to enjoy it in the privacy of the woods. But he stayed where he could see the field in case there were afters.
