The Monster Man of Horror House (35 page)

xii

There was only one thing left to do.

I
transformed three more times over the coming nights, all thankfully in the confines
of my reinforced basement, but these transformations delayed and frustrated me in
what I had to do.

Come
the fourth night the moon left me along so I grabbed my bag and headed out into
the darkness, hoping and praying I wasn’t too late.

I
no longer had a car thanks to Rachel who’d used to it take me to Colchester
earlier in the week and who wouldn't tell me where she’d left it. And I
couldn’t report it stolen either in case she’d left it near the scene of our
crimes so I was forced to borrow my neighbour’s car. I hoped to have it back by
the morning before I had to ask his permission.

I
headed down to Colchester once more and parked in the hospital car park across
the woods from the care home. I picked my way through the bushes and was
surprised to see, despite all it had been through in recent weeks, the home was
still open for business, albeit with a police car decorating its drive. Getting
into the home was going to be hard. Getting out again was going to be almost
impossible.

I
weighed up my options, went back to the car and wondered what to do. That was
when the obvious finally caught up with me and I climbed out of the car and wandered
around to Accident & Emergency. The usual array of broken legs and biros up
noses sat waiting to be seen so I held my arm as if it were hurt and limped
through casualty until I found myself in a corridor beyond A&E. I followed
the signs down to the laundry room, picked myself out a slightly blemished
white coat and set off again.

I
grabbed the first nurse who wandered by and tried to look as Doctorly as I
could with seven days worth of stubble and bloodshot eyes – which is probably
pretty Doctorly for the NHS as luck would have it.

“The
patient from the care home, which ward is she in?” I asked, taking a shot in
the dark.

“You
mean the mystery case?” she replied. “She’s up in Isolation, on the third
floor. Who are you?”

“I’m
a Specialist, up from Great Ormond Street. They’ve asked me to come up and take
a look at her,” I said. The nurse looked me up and down in confusion and just
nodded in a way that told me she had no idea what I was talking about. Not that
that mattered? Us Specialists weren’t duty-bound to keep every bed-pan-handler
informed as to our movements so I thanked her for her assistance and hastened
off for the stairs.

The
Isolation ward was made up of a couple of long corridors and a series of rooms
on either side. Only authorised medical staff were allowed see the patients,
which I imagined didn’t include me, the “religious madman” and “rabid dog” of
recent weeks, but it’s incredible what a white coat can do for a man’s
authority.

The
room I was looking for was right at the end of the second hallway. I could tell
it was the room I was looking for because it was the only one with a policeman
sat outside it. I approached as confidently as I could, coughed a couple of
times to get him to look up from
Jaws
,
and asked if this was the room with the girl from the care home.

“Who’s
asking?” the policeman replied, putting his book aside and looking me up and
down just as the nurse had downstairs.

“Doctor
Coal, child specialist,” I informed him with a click of the heels.

“Doctor
Coal huh? Well what are you wearing kitchen overalls for if you’re a doctor
then?” the policeman asked. This was a good question and one that deserved a
good answer, but instead it just provoked a smack in the mouth and a whack over
the head.

I
looked around to see if anyone had seen me, but the corridor was empty, so I
dragged the policeman through the door and into the darkened room.

A
nurse looked up, as did a real-life Doctor who didn’t have gravy stains all
over his tunic, and they watched me drop the policeman on the cold hard tiles
and dig a revolver out of my bag.

“Not
a word either of you!” I insisted, training the gun on them and holding a
finger to my lips.

“I
don’t know who you are but you’ve got to get out of here this instant. This
girl’s desperately ill, the slightest infection could kill her,” the Doctor
insisted right back, ignoring the gun and my threats for the sake of his
patient. It was a commendable attitude, but one which was likely to win him a
look at his workplace from the other side if he persisted.

“I
don’t want to shoot you but I will if you try to stop me,” I promised him.

“Stop
you from what? Who are you? What do you want?” he demanded.

“Just
a friend,” I replied. “And I’m here to help.”

I
approached the bed and looked down at the pathetic sight that greeted me; the
girl no longer had bandages down her arms, she had them all over, as well as
pipes, tubes, wires and straps. She looked as pale as a ghost, even in the
half-light of her room, and as thin as a pipe cleaner. She looked at me, alert,
yet frightened, and a tear appeared in the corner of her eye.

“Please,
don’t be afraid, I’m not going to hurt you,” I reassured her, lowering the gun
from her line of sight. “My name’s John, what’s yours?”

The
girl swallowed a couple of times to find her voice and eventually coughed out
her name. “Wendy,” she told me, panting for breath after such an effort.

Wendy.
Perfect.

“Wendy,
listen to me, I can help you, but you must come with me,” I said but the Doctor
stepped up to the bed and told me not to be such a fool.

“You’re
mad man, she can’t leave here and you’re no Doctor,” he said, trying to reason
with me. “Look, I don’t doubt your intentions are good but if you take her from
this place she’ll die, it’s as simple as that. You have no idea what you’re
dealing with here.”

“That’s
where you’re wrong Doctor,” I told him. “You are the ones who have no idea what
you’re dealing with and you are the ones who are killing her. I know what’s
wrong with Wendy and I can save her, but she must come with me.”

To
illustrate the point, I pulled a penknife from my pocket, sliced open the palm
of my hand and slipped it under Wendy’s oxygen mask. The Doctor flipped when I
did this and tried to tear my hand away, so I laid him out with the butt of my
gun and warned the nurse she’d get the same if she tried anything similar. The
nurse backed into the far corner of the room so I returned my hand to Wendy’s
mouth, making her baulk and gag at the violation until some of my blood made it
between her lips. When it did, she stopped struggling and let out a shudder
that ran up and down the length of her body. This shudder seemed to transform
her in an instant and Wendy now pulled my hand towards her where before she’d been
pushing it away. She lapped against my palm, then sucked and finally guzzled
until I could feel myself growing dizzy from the loss. The nurse watched all of
this with abject horror and began to cry. I told her to sit down and close her
eyes and she did as I said, desperate to block out this nightmare and only too willing
to give me free reign. I let Wendy feed for a little longer, just to get her
strength back, then pulled my hand from hers.
 

“How
do you feel now?” I asked, wrapping a bandage around my palm to stem the
bleeding.

“Still
hungry,” she gasped, straining against straps that up until a minute ago had
kept her in her bed with their sheer weight alone.

“Wendy,
come with me and I can take care of you,” I told her, but Wendy’s bottom lip
began to wobble and the tears returned to her eyes. In spite of the food I’d just
given her, I had to remind myself that Wendy was still a frightened, confused
and desperately unwell little girl. And, like her poor tormented benefactor,
she would stay this way for centuries to come. Of course Wendy didn’t know any
of this and I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. But I would in time. I’d find a way,
but for now what I needed was her trust.

“Wendy,
do you know who I am?” I asked, stepping around bed and into the light of the
single lamp in the corner so that she could see me more clearly.
 

Wendy
shook her head and looked away so I told her to look again.

“You
do know me,” I assured her, retracting my left leg so that I was standing on
just my right. Wendy didn’t get it at first but when the penny dropped she put
a hand to her mouth just as she had done before.

“Oh
my God! I… yes. Yes, I know who you are,” she finally said.

“Then
you know I’m not going to hurt you, don’t you?” I asked.

Wendy
thought about this then agreed, she did. “Yes. I don’t know how, but yes, I
know you won’t hurt me.”

“Will
you come with me then?”

Wendy
took a deep breath, nodded and broke out into a frightened smile.

“Good,”
I said, returning her smile with a mightily relieved one of my own. “Let’s go
then.”

The
nurse was good enough to let me tie her up with all the tubes and wires I
ripped from Wendy and the Doctor and policeman continued to sleep peacefully so
there was no need to trouble them further. I bundled a blanket around Wendy, lifted
her in my arms and carried her from the hospital without a question being asked
of me.

“Can
you really help me?” Wendy asked when we got to the car.

“Yes,”
I sincerely promised her. “We can help each other.”

Chapter 7:

Good night
and God bless

“And Rachel’s been in there ever since?” Barry asked, stepping away to give the
coffin a little more room.

“That
she has. I never let her out after I rescued Wendy from the hospital because she
was just too dangerous. So I read to her in the evenings, play her music and
sometimes stick on the radio, but mostly she likes books, fantasy and adventure
stuff, little bit of sci-fi and occasionally Peter Pan, even after thirty years.”

There
was an audible bristle of excitement as the boys (or at least three of them
anyway) stroked the cedar lid with their eyes and tried to imagine the girl
beneath. Unfortunately, thanks to a childhood wasted playing XStations and
BoyGames they couldn’t see her, so Farny asked if I could unscrew the lid so that
they could get a proper look.

“Sure,
no problem” I told him, “just as long as you’re happy for her to be the last
thing you ever see.”

“What
d’you mean like?”

“He
means she’ll kill us,” Barry transcribed.

“Oh,”
Farny nodded, then asked again; “Not even a quick look, like?”

I
smiled, so Colin asked the obvious; “How long are you going to keep her in
there? I mean you’re an old man. You can’t keep her in there forever,” he
pointed out before blushing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude calling you an
old man or nothing.”

I
gave Colin a wink. “I am an old man, and there ain’t nothing I can do about
that. No, I’ll keep her in there as long as I can, until she learns her lesson,
maybe another ten or twenty years say. She’s a lot better than she used to be
but she’s still a handful,” I said, patting her lid lovingly. Barry went to do
the same, but I told him not to get too close. Not at this time of night. She
could still be a bit touchy with strangers. Barry backed away accordingly and
looked at the others. Farny smirked.

“And
what about Wendy?” Colin asked. “Where is she? Is she in there too?” He scoured
the piles of junk stacked up all around for signs of another coffin, but I had
only the one. Some people might think that would be enough for most two-bedroom
end-terraced bungalows but I guess I’d raised the bar this evening.

“No,
Wendy’s not in here anywhere. She doesn’t live with me no more. She left home a
long time ago but she occasionally pops by from time to time.”

“And
is she still a vampire too?” Barry asked.

“Oh
yes, that’s one thing you can’t shake off. You can get it under control and do
just enough to survive, but you can’t ever be human again.” Which is how it had
been with Wendy, I told them. For the first few weeks I had nursed her back to
health with cows’ blood and a bed of freshly turned soil, but the hardest task
had been preparing her for the life to come. There’d been tears, there’d been despair
and there’d even been the desire to end it all but eventually I’d brought her
around; at least my alter ego had. I’d transformed a little over four weeks
later and Wendy had stayed with me throughout the night, settling me,
comforting me and taking great solace from eight hours of werewolf whispering.
The next morning when I changed back into a man I found Wendy had transformed
too.

“Thank
you, John,” she said, giving me an embrace that lasted most of the morning.

“Where
is she now?” Colin asked.

“London,”
I said. “She’s pretty settled now, gets most of her food from blood banks and
voluntary contributions. There are a few folks who know the score and are only
too happy to help if it saves lives. Wendy’s doing okay, making friends and
getting by. I don’t see her as often as I’d like, but what parent ever does?” even
a surrogate parent like myself, I could’ve added but they’d joined the dots
themselves. “At the end of the day, she don’t come back much because she don’t
like being around her mother,” I said, indicating towards Rachel’s coffin.