The Monster Man of Horror House (30 page)

“Do
you think you can help me?” Rachel asked.

I
considered the problem long and hard and told her I’d give it my best shot.
“But, if you want me to be honest, the only person who can really help you is
you.”

Rachel
smiled once more and agreed. “Alex said you were a good man. I’m glad to know
you John Coal,” she said, leaning in to give me a little kiss. I didn’t realise
this was her intention, so I belted her in the face and dived off the steps, snatching
up two bicycle pumps up as I rolled across the floor to form a cross with.

“Get
back demon bitch!”

Rachel
stared at me in mild amusement and shook her head.

“For
a werewolf, you are
such
a dick!”

ii

First things were first. I hired a van and drove down to London to collect Rachel’s
things from a boarded up row of Victorian derelicts just off the Mile End Road.
She had a couple of little keepsakes she wanted me to grab, like a silver locket
on a chain that contained a few strands of auburn hair and a couple of dirty
and scratched dollies I had assumed were treasured childhood toys until Rachel
told me were just props for when she was out hunting. I had to remind myself
that she wasn’t a little girl any more and that I had to stop thinking of her
as such. The main thing I had to collect though was her casket. It was lined
with earth from her original grave and it weighed a ton. After an hour of
wrestling with it in vain, I stood on the street for ten minutes fanning myself
with a handful of fivers and soon recruited a motley party of pallbearers.

Rachel
told me to bring back some food too, so I sized up the misfits and asked the
shakiest of the lot if he’d like to earn another hundred on top of the ten I’d
already paid him, helping me out at the other end. The old boy fairly clambered
over the coffin and into the back of my van, so I slammed the doors behind him
and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

No
one had.

Over
the coming weeks, Rachel and I got to know each other as much as we dared. We took
midnight strolls around the surrounding countryside and talked about our families,
our experiences and our regrets as we unburdened much of what we’d buried. This
was a new experience for me because I had grown used to locking it all away,
but Rachel had been around a lot longer than me and had talked with other
supernatural beings on her travels.

“Like
Alex?” I prompted, as we strolled down a grassy bank and towards the sound of
running water below. It was a moonless night, with clouds piled thick overhead
but neither of us had any difficulties seeing in the darkness. I guess there
are some perks to eternal damnation.

“Yes,
like Alex,” Rachel confirmed. “If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be here today.”

“Where
did you meet him? Did you go to Long Fenton or was he on a daytrip to London?”

Rachel
giggled like this had been a joke, so I giggled too and pretended it had been.

“No,
he came to me in my dreams,” Rachel told me.

“You
see ghosts in your dreams?”

“Of
course, don’t you?”

“No
– I don’t know – no, they’re just dream, I think,” I said, to which
Rachel predictably asked how I
knew
they were dreams. “Because my dad never wore a sari,” I replied, and could’ve
added, “or rode a bike that could cycle up the side of skyscrapers”, but Rachel
was right, how could I know what the old bastard was doing these days?

“And
of course I’ve known a few vampires in my time – arseholes most of them
– and warlocks and hobgoblins, and even the occasional human,” Rachel
reminisced as she hopped and skipped across a series of stepping-stones that
spanned the gentle brook she was leading me across. “But it never works out,
not with humans. No matter how comfy you get with them, there’s always a moment
when they panic and get scared and I’m forced to deal with it, but that’s
because humans don’t understand us. You’re different though, John. You’re a
werewolf, so you know what it is like to be us. Which is why I think this could
really work.”

I
agreed and I told her I thought she was great again before checking my watch
when I caught up with her on the other side of the brook.

“Sun’ll
be up in a couple of hours. We should probably start heading back soon.”

On
our way home we passed a large farm that was set back from the road. Rachel
asked if we could stop and get a chicken, or even a baby lamb, as it had been a
week since her last feed. She wasn’t a huge fan of feeding on livestock; it was
not considered the “done thing” in vampire circles, but it would see her
through for a couple more nights and it would save me driving down to London to
snatch another bum off the streets, so we climbed over the gates and crept up
to within thirty yards of the farmhouse.

“No
baby goats,” I said, sniffing the air. “But there are fresh calves in a barn
behind the house.”

Rachel
tongued her fangs until they were fully engorged and told me she’d only be a
minute. While she was away I wondered what would happen if she didn’t kill the
calf outright, would it become a vampire calf and stalk the land attacking
other calves? Come to that, what would happen if I bit it? Would be become a
werecalf? How did this work? I’d never really known. Not fully. Was it worth
taking the calf home to experiment on, or would I run the risk of starting a
Noah’s Ark full of monsters and angering the resident’s association who, and
let’s be honest here, had only just gotten over Mr and Mrs Singh moving into
number 27?

I
decided to let sleeping calves lie and wondered how I could get blood (human or
otherwise) for Rachel on a regular basis without killing anyone. Alas I didn’t
have time to come up with any ideas because there was an almighty screech, and
then a scream, and then a bang, like the sound of a gun being fired, followed
by shouting from the direction of the barn.

I
ran around to look for Rachel, to make sure she was okay and to drag her away
from the danger, but there was no sign of her, just a lot of distressed mooing
from the sprawling corrugated barn and several angry voices. I looped around to
the rear of the barn, looking for a side entrance in, but again found nothing.
I was just about to try the other way when a voice screamed at me that I was a
dead man.

“You
sick fuck!”
 

I
spun around and found myself staring down both barrels of a loaded 12-bore and
saw a young fella in pyjamas and overcoat on the other end pulling the trigger
without waiting to hear my side of the story. The gun flashed and I was slammed
into the side of the barn by the blast, but I opened my eyes to see Rachel
wrapped around me. She’d appeared from out of nowhere and had borne the brunt
of the blast, right between the shoulders. But Rachel didn’t even seem winded.
She just gave me a wink and flew off again, covering the distance between myself
and the shooter in the blink of an eye. He fired another shot, but it had made
not a jot of difference as Rachel thrashed her nails across his throat and wrapped
herself around him as he fell to the ground. She feasted hungrily and quickly,
gulping down his blood and jumping to her feet to reload his Purdey and blow
off his head from the neck up. Then she slung the weapon and looked around with
an alertness I’d last seen in Khan at his prime. Before I could stop her Rachel
was off again, haring into the night to deal with the rest of the voices that
had emerged to challenge her.

“No
Rachel, come back!” I shouted, sprinting after her as screams and gunshots
echoed all around the farmhouse. I arrived in every room just seconds too late,
with blood dripping from the ceiling and the walls and another pyjama-clad
gunman laid out for infinity. I guess they must’ve been the farmer and his three
sons but they’d stood no chance once Rachel had got the bit between her teeth. She
covered her tracks with each killing by gunning her bite marks to make them look
like plain ordinary murders, but she dropped the ball with the farmer’s [once]
attractive wife, more or less decorating the bathroom with her to such an
extent that I didn’t see Rachel at first because she was the same colour as the
walls. It was only when she moved that I realised she was there, perched on the
toilet cistern like a gargoyle, breathless and exhilarated, if a little ashamed
of herself.

“I’ve
been bad,” she admitted, staring down at the poor unfortunately farmer’s wife,
or at least what was left of her after one of her ‘darker moments’. She twirled
a filthy strand of hair around one of her bloody fingers and finally managed to
look me in the eye. “Are you cross with me?”

Cross?
I was out of my mind with horror, but Rachel needed reassurance at this point,
not criticism, and we weren’t going to get anywhere if I put her over my knee
and spanked her every time she slaughtered a house full of people. So I told
her it was fine, I wasn’t cross, I was just disappointed, and this seemed to be
enough of a ticking off for Rachel to bear with good grace.

“I’m
sorry,” she simpered, technically apologising to the wrong person, but it was a
positive sign that she felt the need to apologise at all, so I took her by the
hand and led her off into the darkness once more.

“Thank
you for saving my life,” I figured I should tell her.

“That’s
okay,” she smiled. “Any time.”

iii

At home Rachel got cleaned up, but only after a fight. She liked the feel of
blood on her skin, particularly drying blood, and one of her normal rituals had
been to wait until it flaked off by itself before going out hunting again. I
told her this was not the sort of behaviour that was going to help her break her
cycle, and she eventually agreed to a sponge bath. I ran a wet flannel over her
hands and mouth, between her fingers and toes, and even made a little headway
with her hair, but I stepped out of the basement when she stripped out of her
nightgown and offered herself up to me. Rachel didn’t like my reaction and accused
me of looking upon her as if she was still a kid.

“I
bet you’d be only too happy to wash me if I looked twenty-three and had big
boobs and round hips,” she sulked, but I assured her it wasn’t like that.

“It’s
not that you’re not… er, I mean don’t look mature or nothing. If anything, I
actually like girls who are… are young like you,” I lied; pained at having to
pretend I was some sort of kiddie fiddler when I was already the son of a
serial killer and a werewolf. No wonder I couldn’t get a girlfriend. But Rachel
was right; I didn’t feel comfortable washing down a prepubescent girl,
particular a prepubescent girl who longed to be treated like a woman. Some men
might’ve dreamed of the opportunity, and while I wasn't one of them, I would’ve
been only too happy to introduce those that were to Rachel for themselves.

“Call
me when you’re finished,” I told her, taking her nightgown upstairs to pop its
washing machine cherry.

“Arsehole!”
she sulked.

*

We didn’t go out the following night because the moon had come full circle and
I needed to transform. Rachel was interested to see this for herself and
refused to leave the basement, no matter how much I pleaded with her. In the
end I agreed it was her choice, but I was still concerned, not just for Rachel,
but for myself. I really didn’t want to wake up tomorrow morning having spent
the night slugging it out with a vampire, but Rachel assured me it would be okay,
she had a way with animals, so I locked the reinforced steel door and dropped
the key into a drain in the corner of the basement.

“What’s
that for?” Rachel asked.

“For
my own protection,” I explained. “It’s just big enough to get my hand into it
as I am now, but too small for the beast so I can’t get the key once transformed.”

“What
if I let you out tonight?” Rachel asked, a little mischievous glint in her eye.

“What
if I wheel you upstairs for a suntan tomorrow?” I replied.

We
sat playing cards for a couple of hours until Rachel noticed I’d stopped laying
Jacks. The skin on the back of my neck was getting hotter and my muscles were
tightening.

“It’s
started,” I told her, shaking the knots out of my body as the fires took their
hold. “God help us both!” I gasped and tumbled onto the floor.

I
remember little else of the night. I remember Rachel clearing the chairs away
and I remember her telling me that I looked amazing, but very little else from
the perspective of John Coal. My memories once transformed are always sketchy,
almost dreamlike. The thought process is gone, so too the ability to order the
memories afterwards. They’re all emotions and compulsions, sensations and
instincts. I can remember certain events if they are vivid enough and I can
remember being a part of them; I can even remember thinking they were a good
idea at the time (like eating that chap from the Ordnance Survey department up in
the Ben Armine Forest several years ago), but I can’t remember why I ever thought
they were acceptable. It was like my desires would have all their fuses
replaced with six-inch iron nails so that no matter how overheated my impulses
got, nothing would trip my conscience.