The Monster Man of Horror House (29 page)

Tommy
duly stormed off, only to return a minute later when he saw that none of his
mates had gone with him. They’d become waylaid by some of the more obscure
objets d’art I kept around the basement, such as my mouse crossbow, which I
used for killing (not arming) mice, and my Seeing Eye mirror, which could tell
the future of all those who looked into it, yet had failed to forewarn me I was
about to waste £25 when I picked it up at a clairvoyant’s closing down sale.

“Here,
have some old bullets,” I said, making the lads a present of a handful of old
.22 shell casings I’d collected up off the heath after the pest controller had done
his yearly rabbit cull a week earlier.

“Were
they from the war?” Farny gasped, his imagination whizzing over enemy bunkers
and into chests of advancing stormtroopers, so I decided not to disappoint him.

“They
were from the Battle of Conning Heath; sixty brave souls met their maker in
just one day’s fighting, defending a series of command tunnels from a single
enemy sniper (and each had big teeth and floppy ears). Remember their
sacrifice, boys.”

Farny
clutched the casings lovingly to his chest and promised me he’d eBay them as
soon as he got home, whatever that meant, and so I wished them a goodnight once
more but still they wouldn’t bugger off. Unfortunately I’d already shown them that
my Browning was only lethal if used over about forty years and in conjunction
with fags so I could scarcely go chasing them off with it, so in the end I
asked if there was anything else on their minds.

“Yeah,
come on you twats, I wanna go home!” Tommy snapped, unintentionally siding with
me in a moment of non-thinking. It was Barry who finally spoke up and asked the
question they’d all been reluctant to leave without asking.

“The
coffin upstairs. Is it a real coffin?”

Oh
yes my bait; the coffin I’d placed in the front room to lure them into my trap.
It had obviously done the trick because even now, given the chance to leave,
they still had to know what was inside it.

Or
rather who.

“It
looked like a girl,” Barry said.

“It
was,” I told them. “That’s Rachel.”

“Who’s
Rachel?” Colin pressed.

“She…
well, she came to me for help, so I took her under my wing... so to speak.”

“Is
she dead?” asked Farny.

“Alas
yes, quite dead,” I admitted.

“More
bullshit!” Tommy butted in. “For a start I saw her moving, so she ain’t dead,
she’s just of his mates mucking around. And for another thing he wouldn’t just
have her in his house if she was dead, would he? He’d have to bury her,
wouldn’t she, so there.”

“Well,
for a start, I haven’t got any mates, I think we’ve already established that,”
I responded, answering each of Tommy’s points in turn. “And for another, she
is
dead, but I can’t bury her because like
I told you, she came to me for help and so that’s what I’m doing, I’m helping
her.”

“Helping
her? Helping her do what, stink out the place?” Tommy hawed, still unable to
see he was alone with his cynicism. The others were only too keen to hear and
believe what I had to say, so I took them upstairs and invited them to gather
around for a look.

“This
is Rachel. She doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

I
barely touched the lid before there was a sudden violent knocking from inside,
making them all leap back in fright – including Tommy, who leapt the
furthest I noticed.

“See!
She moved, she ain’t dead, he’s a
fackin'
liar,” Tommy rallied, but nobody flocked to his banner, particularly when I
told them the reason Rachel was still able to move despite being dead.

“She’s
a vampire.”

“Of
course she is!” Tommy raspberried, but as far as the others were concerned, I
might as well have pulled out a red suit and black boots and told them I was
Father Christmas.

“A
vampire? A real vampire? You've got a vampire?”

“Please,
tell us…” Barry implored, barely able to find the words, so I sat them all down
(bar one, who refused to sit, yet also refused to leave) and looked upon my
poor dear Rachel’s casket.

She’d
turned to me for help alright.

All
the people in all the world and she’d turned to me.

And
so for more than thirty years now, that’s what I’d tried to do.

PART 4:

LIKE MOTHER
LIKE DAUGHTER

i

A few years after I’d escaped Long Fenton and had returned to some semblance of
a life, I came home after a less eventful business foray to discover a new
smell in my home. As I may have mentioned I have a particularly good sense of
smell, even when I’m not transformed, and I smelt something unusual in the
basement straight away. It smelt like freshly turned earth, only freshly turned
earth that seemed to be able to move about under its own volition, so I dug out
my most powerful torch and peeped into the basement as carefully as I dared.

I
couldn’t see anyone at first, but a voice called up to tell me I was looking in
the right place.

“Yes,
I’m down here,” she said. “Please come down. I can’t come up.”

“Who
are you?” I demanded, ditching my torch in favour of a kitchen knife now that I
knew it wasn’t one of them shadow monsters who’d tracked me down.

“I’m
Rachel. I’ve come to see you. I want your help.”

“My
help?” I asked, unwilling to accept this as any sort of guarantee for my
safety. “How did you get in? Why didn’t you knock on my door like normal people
do?”

“Because
I’m not like normal people. And neither are you, John Coal,” she replied with a
knowing hint.

As
much as this was true, it still didn’t answer who she was or what she knew
about me, so I told her I was phoning the police if she didn’t step out and
show herself immediately. “This game’s gone on long enough,” I warned her. “This
is private property and you are trespassing.”

“I
must say, for a werewolf you’re something of a dick,” Rachel observed, fairly stopping
me mid-bluff.

“What
did you just say?” I whispered, scarcely loud enough for myself to hear let
alone Rachel down in the basement. But Rachel replied all the same, proving
beyond doubt that she was indeed not like normal people.

“I
said you’re a werewolf. You are John Coal, heir to Tran Van Khan, and one-time
Strangler of the Fens, nomad of the dusk and fugitive of the keepers of
darkness. Oh yes, I know you John Coal. Now come down here at once because I want
to see you for myself.”

I
wavered for a few more seconds, even more concerned and confused than ever before
realising I had no choice. I could’ve done a runner, but Rachel didn’t sound
like the sort of girl I’d get very far from, so I slipped the kitchen knife
into my pocket and started down the steps.

“Could
you close the door as you come please?” Rachel asked, so I pulled it shut
behind myself and inched my way into the basement, keeping my back firmly to
the brickwork at all times.

Rachel
didn’t try to hide or surprise me; she was stood across the basement against
the far wall smiling politely.

“Hello
John. It’s great to finally meet you in person,” Rachel beamed, looking
genuinely happy to be saying these things.

She
appeared no more than about twelve-years-old, but her skin was pale and dirty,
so it was difficult to tell. She had shoulder-length curly hair that might’ve
once been auburn underneath all the dirt and grease but now it just looked
black and lifeless. And she wore an old Victorian nightgown, which just about
covered her grubby toes. The gown was white in theory but again like Rachel
herself, it was clearly no fan of soap and water.

She
was also stone cold to the core and smelt of freshly turned earth.

“Hello,”
I responded, unable to reply with a smile just yet but sensing this was no time
to lose my manners.

“I’ve
come a long way to meet you,” Rachel told me, as if this would jog a hug out of
me.

“I
can see that,” I didn’t doubt for a second.

“I’m
not going to hurt you,” she promised. “I just couldn’t come upstairs, that’s
all. It’s too light for me up there.”

“Oh,”
I agreed, as if this was a perfectly acceptable explanation. A dozen questions bounced
around my head, but none of them felt like stepping forward to be voiced, so in
the end I asked her how it was going.

“Fine
thank you,” Rachel smiled. “We have a mutual friend in Alex Earlcott. He told
me about you.”

“Are
you a ghost then?” I asked.

“No,
a vampire,” she replied.

“Ah,
even better,” I blinked.

“You
can relax, I’ve given you my word,” Rachel assured me once again. “Besides,
take it from me, werewolf blood is
not
nice.”

At
this, I almost laughed – almost but not quite, because in order to know this,
she must’ve surely tasted werewolf blood. And today didn’t feel like the sort
of day for upsetting little girls who could take down werewolves.

“Okay
Rachel,” I nodded. “How may I help you?”

It
seemed Rachel had been a vampire for about seventy years now, which in vampire
terms, isn’t actually that old. The chap who’d originally turned her had been
over five hundred years and counting at the time, so in both vampire years and physical
years, Rachel was still a kid, despite being older than my long-dead dad in
real terms.

Anyway
Rachel was a pretty successful vampire, surviving happily on the streets of
London and feeding regularly. I think her appearance helped her considerably because
she was able to play the little-girl-lost card and lead all manner of good
Samaritans off down dark alleyways, but after a while the psychological effects
of looking like a gormless kid when she was actually an octogenarian started to
get the better of her. Rachel found she was being more and more brutal,
particularly towards young women and teenage girls – girls who had what
she didn’t, the ability to grow into women. It’s funny, but if Ulay could
bottle what Rachel had, I bet they’d sell a jar of it to every girl on the
planet. But I’d predict just as confidently that they’d sell two of the
antidote forty years later.

Rachel
had descended into a spiral of unnecessary violence and this made her feel
worse about herself, which would then lead to more violence. She knew she had
to break the cycle but she couldn’t do it on her own. She needed help.

Years
of unhappiness passed into years of anger until one night she heard about a
werewolf who would shut himself away every full moon and who had successfully
managed not to kill anyone for more than ten years. Surely this was a beast after
her own heart wasn’t it? She had to meet him.

“But
there’s a difference,” I told her, now sat a little more comfortably beside her
on the steps. “I can take food as a man to sustain myself. And when the hunger
pains get too much, I can buy myself an animal to eat if I need to make a kill
– a goat, or maybe ten or twelve chickens if I really want to make a
night of it. But surely you can – and must – only drink blood, if
I’ve got this whole vampire deal right. Therefore you have to continue doing
what you’re doing to survive.”

“No,
I need to keep feeding. But in theory, I don’t ever actually need to kill
anyone. Not if I can get their blood voluntarily.”

“Right,”
I pondered. “So how does that work?”

“Well
it doesn’t obviously,” Rachel giggled. “But that’s the theory.”

“Okay,”
I said, scratching my head and wondering just how generous the neighbours around
here were. None of the bastards had parted with a cup of sugar when I’d gone
door to door the previous year. “Okay, let’s talk measures.”

Rachel
needed just two pints a month in order to survive, but that was bare survival
rations. In a perfect world where everyone walked around with cannulas in their
necks, Rachel would’ve taken just a couple of pints a night, but people didn’t
give it up that easily and to take anything more than a pint or two from
someone by biting them would be to infect the victim, so she killed when she
attacked not just to feed, but to protect her territory. This meant in practice
that she was making two or three kills a month and resting up in-between, which
was an average rate for an experienced predator like Rachel, but every now and then
she’d become consumed with rage after watching Pans People on the telly and her
numbers would skyrocket.

“I
shouldn’t behave like that, and I’m always mortified afterwards, but I can’t
help myself. I just get so angry and lonely and scared some times, and before I
know it I’ve done something I shouldn’t,” Rachel shrugged with genuine
heartache. “I guess I’m just an emotional girl.” Which was not only a contender
for understatement of the year, it was also possibly the scariest thing I think
I’ve ever heard anyone say – ever.

“Well
I think you’re great,” I decided to tell her, again and again, as often as I could.