Whitstable (3 page)

It’s your job—Vampire Hunter.

You’re heroic.

You’re powerful.

Cushing swallowed, his mouth unaccountably dry.

“Where’s your mother and father?”

“It doesn’t matter about them. It matters about
him
!”

The boy stood up—and for a second Cushing thought he would sprint off, but no: instead he walked to a signpost of the car park and picked at the flaking paint with his fingernail, his back turned and his head lowered, as he spoke.

“My mum’s boyfriend. He visits me at night time. Every night now. He takes my blood while I’m asleep. I know what he’s doing. He thinks I’m asleep but I’m not asleep. It feels like a dream and I try to pretend it isn’t happening, but afterwards I feel bad, like I’m dead inside. He makes me feel like that. I know it. I can’t move. I’m heavy and I’ve got no life and I don’t want to have life anymore.” He rubbed his nose. His nose was running. Bells tinkled on masts out of view. “That’s what it feels like, every time. And it keeps happening, and if it keeps happening I know what’ll happen, I’m going to die and be buried and then I’ll rise up out of my coffin and be like him, forever and ever.”

Something curdled deep in Cushing’s stomach and made him feel nauseous. He obliterated the pictures in his mind’s eye—a bed, a shadow sliding up that bed—and what remained was a bleak, dark chasm he didn’t want to contemplate. But he knew in his heart what was make believe and what was all too real and it sickened him and he wanted, selfishly, to escape it and pretend it didn’t exist and didn’t happen in a world his God created.

He felt a soft, warm hand slipping inside his.
Helen?
But no. It belonged to the little boy.

“So will you?”

“Will I what?” In a breath.

“Will you turn him to dust? Grey dust that blows away like you did with Dracula?”

“Is that what you want?”

The boy nodded.

Oh Lord… Oh God in Heaven…

Cushing stared down without blinking at the boy’s hand in his, and the boy took his expression for some sort of disapproval and removed it, examining his palm as if for a splinter or to divine his own future. The man suddenly found the necessity to slap his bony knees and hoist himself to his feet.

“Gosh. You know what? I’m famished. What time is it?” His fob watch had Helen’s wedding ring attached to its chain: a single gold band, bought from Portobello Road market when they were quite broke. The face read almost twenty past eleven. “There’s a shellfish stall over there and I think I’m going to go over and get myself a nice bag of cockles.” He straightened his back with the aid of his white-gloved hand. “I do like cockles. Do you like cockles?”

The boy, still sitting, did not answer.

“Would you like a bag of cockles? Have you ever tried them?” He took off the glove, finger by finger.

The boy shook his head.

“Do you want to try?”

The boy shook his head again.

“Well, I’m going to get some, and you can try one if you want, and if you don’t, don’t.”

***

The boy observed the old man closely as he flicked away the tiny cover of the shell with the tip of the cocktail stick and jabbed the soft contents within.

“Will you put a stake through his heart?”

Cushing twirled it, pulled it out and offered the titbit, but the boy squirmed and recoiled.

“You know, long, long ago, people believed in superstitions instead of knowing how the world really worked.” He popped the tiny mollusc into his mouth, chewing its rubbery texture before swallowing. “They didn’t know why the sun rose and set and what made the weather change, so sometimes they thought witches did it. And because they thought witches might come back and haunt them after they were dead, they’d bury them face down in their graves. That way, when they tried to claw up to the surface they’d claw their way down to Hell instead. But, you know, mostly superstitions are there to hide what people are really afraid of, underneath.”

“You know a lot. You’re
knowledgeable
,” the boy said, happy to have his presumptions entirely confirmed. “But you have to be. For your occupation. Vampire Hunter.”

Cushing had had enough of the taste of the cockles. In fact, he hadn’t really wanted them anyway. He wrapped the half-empty tub in its brown paper bag, screwed up the top and deposited it in the nearest rubbish bin a few feet away. Whilst doing so, he scanned the car park, again hoping to see the errant parents. “Do you see him in mirrors? Does he come out in daylight? Because that’s how I discover whether someone is a vampire or just someone human that’s
mistaken
for a vampire, you see.”

“He does go out. In the day time, but…”

“Aha. What does that tell you?”

“Different ones have different rules. Sometimes they
can
be seen in daylight like in
Kiss of the Vampire
on TV. You weren’t in that one, so you don’t know. There are different sorts, like there are different cats and dogs but you can put a stake through their heart. That
definitely
works, always. And that’s what you’re brilliant at.”

Cushing sat back down next to the boy, put on his single white glove and lit another cigarette. He remembered something that had troubled him in his own childhood. He’d mistakenly thought the Lord’s prayer began:
Our Father who
aren’t
in Heaven
. But if God
wasn’t
in Heaven, where was He? The question, which he dared not share even with his brother, had kept him awake night after night, alone. Where? He rubbed the back of his neck: a gesture not unfamiliar to fans of Van Helsing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the boy said. “You’re thinking how to trap him.”

“No. I’m not.”

“What are you thinking then?”

“Do you want me to tell you, truthfully? Very well. I believe if there’s something troubling you at home, whatever it is and however bad it is, the best thing to do—the first thing to do—is to tell your mother.”

The boy laughed. “She loves him.
She
won’t believe me.
Nobody
will. That’s why I need
you
.”

“Perhaps your mother wants to be happy.”

“Of
course
she does! But she doesn’t want to be killed and have her blood sucked all out, does she?”

“This man might be a good man trying his best. I don’t know him, but why don’t you give him time to prove himself to you and I’m sure you’ll accept him for what he is.”

“I
know
what he is! He won’t change. He
won’t
! Vampires don’t become nice people. They just stay what they are—evil. And they keep coming back and coming back till you stop them!”

“Listen. I’m being very serious…”

“I know. You’re
always
serious.”

“Yes, well. These feelings you have about your mum’s new boyfriend?…” Peter Cushing felt cowardly and despicable, and even as he was uttering the words disbelieved them almost entirely, but did not know what else to say. “They’ll go away, in time. You’ll see. They’ll pass. Feelings do.”

“
Do
they though? Bad feelings? Or do they just
stay
bad?”

Cushing found he could not answer that. Even with a lie.

“My mum wants to marry him. She loves him. He’s deceived her because really he doesn’t love her at all. He just wants to suck
her
blood, too.”

“But you have to understand. I can’t stop him.”

“Why?”

Cushing stumbled for words. Fumbled for honesty. “I don’t know how. You have to talk to somebody else. Somebody…”

“Yes you do! You
do
! The villagers are in peril, and
I’m
in peril, and you’re Doctor Van Helsing!”

A large seagull landed on the rubbish bin and began jabbing its vile beak indiscriminately at the contents.

“I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Yes, you
can
. Please!
Please!
…”

But Cushing could say no more. Dare say no more. The desperation in the boy’s voice struck him mute and the rolling eye and the hideous ululating of the seagull made him look away. He felt pathetic and cruel and lost and selfish and small—but he wasn’t responsible for this child. Why should he be ashamed? The vast pain of his own grief was heavy enough to bear without the weight of another’s. Even a child’s. Even a poor, helpless child’s. He was an actor, that was all. Van Helsing was a part, nothing more. All he did was mouth the lines. All he did was be photographed and get his angular face blown up onto a thirty-foot wide screen. Why was the responsibility his? Who asked this of him, and why shouldn’t he say no?

Now a second gull, even bigger, had joined the first and added to the cacophony. In a flurry of limbs they squawked and spiked at the bag the cockles were in, then began snapping at each other in full scale war with the yellow scissors of their horrid, relentless maws.

When their aggression showed no sign of abatement, Cushing crushed out the remains of his cigarette on the stone, hurried over and shooed them away with flailing arms from the debris they were already scattering with their webbed feet and flapping wings. He felt their putrid dead-fish breath poisoning his nostrils. They coughed and gurgled defiantly and showed their pink gullet-holes before begrudgingly ascending.

After stuffing the brown paper bag deeper into the bin he turned back, and to his sudden alarm saw the boy walking briskly away.

“Wait.”

But the boy did not wait.

Where were the parents? Where were the dashed parents and why were they not—? …but all Cushing’s thoughts and recriminations hung in the air, incomplete and impotent. He had denied the boy the help he had craved—however fantastical, however heartfelt, however absurd—and now the lad was gone.

“Wait…”

Cushing sat back down, alone, and saw that the book from under the boy’s arm was still sitting there.

***

Movie Monsters
by Denis Gifford.

He placed it with its cellophane-wrapped cover on the desk of the public library. They knew him well there. They knew him well everywhere, sadly, and he intuited as he approached that there was an unspoken choreography between the two female assistants, vying for who would serve him and who would be too busy. It was not callousness that made them do so, he knew—merely the all-too-British caution that a wrongly-placed word might cause unnecessary hurt. Did they realise their shared eye contact alone caused hurt anyway? He forced a benign smile.

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Cushing.” The younger one drew the short straw. He was still unshaven, had been for days and he wondered if he looked rather tramp-like. Little he could do about it now.

“I’m terribly sorry to trouble you, my dear, but I wonder if you might help me? I found this library book near Sea Wall today and I wonder if you’d be so kind as to tell me the name and address of the person it belongs to. They must be dreadfully worried about losing it. I’d be most awfully grateful.”

“By all means. Just a moment, sir…” She checked the date stamped inside the cover and turned to consult the chronologically-arranged index of book cards behind her. Her rather thick dark hair fell long and straight across her shoulder blades. She wore a tight green cardigan and high heels that made her calves look chunky from behind, and he pondered whether she was happily married and, if so, for how long. With how many years ahead of her? “That’s fine, Mr Cushing. We’ll make sure he knows his book has been returned.”

“No, you see—bless you—it’s no trouble for me to return it to him personally. I really am quite grateful for the distraction.”

A flicker in her eyes. “Oh. I understand. Of course. In that case…” She coughed into her hand and looked at the details a second time. “The name is Carl Drinkwater.” She read out in full an address in Rayham Road. “That’s one of the new houses over on the other side of the Thanet Way, off South Street. Do you know it?”

“Not at all.”

She opened a drawer and produced a small map of the town, unfolded it and marked the street with a circle in red Biro as the black one was empty.

“Splendid. Thank you so much.” He took her hand and kissed it, as was his habit (“immaculate manners; such a gentleman”) before walking to the exit.

“Mr Cushing?” He turned. “Mrs Cushing, sir. I’m so very sorry. She was such a delightful woman.”

He nodded. “Thank you so much.”

He was astonished to hear the four words come from his throat, because the fifth would have stuck there and choked him. He hoped the woman was married and happy, with children and more happiness ahead of her. He truly did.

***

He returned home to fetch his bicycle, the Jaguar of more joyful days secreted in the garage these many months: memories preserved in aspic, too painful to be given the light of day. He swapped his woollen fisherman’s hat for a flat cap, grabbed a heavier scarf, and, with the library book in his pannier, rode via Belmont Road and Millstrood Road to the boy’s house—what appeared to be a two-bedroom bungalow on the far side of the railway track.

The February sun was low by now and the sky scrubbed with tinges of purple and ochre. He chained his cycle to a lamp post opposite and stayed in the protective shadow between an overgrown hedge and a parked white van (
For All Your Building Needs
) as he scrutinized the place from afar.

The garage had a green up-and-over door with a dustbin in front of it on the drive. The lawn grass was thin and yellowing. He could see no garden ornaments and the flatness of the red brick frontage was broken only by a plastic wheel holding a hosepipe fastened to the wall. Two windows matched, a third didn’t and the door, frosted glass and flimsy, was off-centre.

He looked at his watch—Helen’s ring tinkled against the glass face—and placed it back in his pocket. He blew into his hands, preparing himself for a long wait, hoping he had enough cigarettes left in his packet and, no doubt because of the worry this engendered, lit one, no doubt the first of many. He might of course smoke the lot and find this turned out to be a fruitless enterprise. There was no guarantee the man went out on a Saturday night, though a lot of men normally did. He was not dealing with, perhaps, the most normal of men.