Whitstable (6 page)

Night
.

Cushing remained tight-lipped. The face of a hundred movie stills. Immobile. “You’re telling me I shouldn’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth.”

“Honest to God.” The man’s next exhale was directed at the moon. The whites of his eyes seemed flesh-coloured too, now. Perhaps it was the ambient yellow glow from within. He dawdled in its penumbra. “You think he’s some kind of angel? You don’t know him. You don’t know any of us.” He let that fact, and its obvious truth, bed down in Cushing’s mind. “I didn’t have to take on this woman with her boy, did I? Let’s face it, lots of blokes would run for the hills the minute they know there’s a kid in tow. And I haven’t, have I? Because I love her. I’m trying to piece this family together. God knows. I’m going to marry her, for Christ’s sake. Put everything right for both of them. The boy too. I’m not a bad person.” He offered the palms of his hands.

“Then what do you have to fear from me?” Cushing spoke quietly and with precision.

“I don’t know.” Gledhill shrugged. “I don’t know
what
you think.”

And he laughed again. And the laugh had a
wrongness
. There was something in it, a grace note, deep down, disingenuous, that the older man detected and didn’t like. If pressed, he couldn’t have explained it any more than he could have explained why, on meeting his wife he knew instantly they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together: it wasn’t even love, it was that he’d met his
soul
. Similarly, the thing embedded in Les Gledhill’s laugh was inexplicable, and, inexplicably,
enough
.

“I think you’d better leave now. Good night to you.”

He shut the door but found something wedged into the jamb, preventing it from closing. The laughter had stopped. He didn’t want to look down and didn’t look down, because he knew what he would see there: A foot rammed in between the bottom of the door and the metal footplate.

O, Lord. O, Jesus Christ.

“I’m trying to be reasonable. I’m trying to…” Gledhill’s teeth were clenched now, tobacco-stained, his face only inches from the other man’s. “Why are you doing this?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why are you
doing
this?” The Kent accent had become more pronounced, transforming into a Cockney harshness. “I’ve done nothing to you. I’m a total stranger to you. Have you ever met me before? No. So why are you doing this to me? Going to my house, upsetting my girlfriend. I come home to find her in bits. How d’you think that makes me feel? Before I know it she’s firing all kinds of questions at me. Stupid questions.
Ridiculous
questions—”

“Please…” The older man’s voice was choked with fear. He couldn’t disguise it any more. It took all his strength to hold the door in place. “I have nothing more to say.”

Gledhill’s face jutted closer still, his shoulder firm against the door, holding it fast, and Cushing could detect the strong sweet reek of—
what, blood, decay?
—no, alcohol on the man’s breath. But something else too.
Something of death.
“What kind of person are you, eh?”

Cushing stood fast, half-shielded by the door, half protected, half vulnerable. “I was going to ask you exactly the same question. Except Carl answered that for me. In his own way.”

“How? What did he say?”

“He said you’re a vampire.”

The laugh came again, this time a mere blow of air through nose and mouth accompanied by a shake of the head, then the bubbling cackle of a smoker’s hack. It came unbidden but there was no enjoyment behind it or to be derived from hearing it.

“That kid cracks me up. He really does. Such a joker. You know what? That’s hilarious.” The turn of a word: “
You’re
hilarious.” Now Gledhill’s expression was deadly serious. “You’re being hilarious now.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t stop you.”

“I’m innocent! I’ve done
nothing
wrong. Haven’t you been listening to a bloody
word
I’ve said? You need to clean your ears out, mate. Get a hearing test, at your age. Pay attention to people. Not just listen to idiots.”

“Carl isn’t an idiot. I don’t consider him an idiot.”

“I know you don’t.” One elbow against a glass panel of the door, Gledhill jerked his other arm, tossing his spent cigarette into a flower bed without even looking where it fell. “Why do you believe him and not me, eh? What gives
you
the right to cast judgement on
me
, anyway? You, a stupid film star in stupid films for stupid people.”

So much for being a lifelong fan. His true colours, at last. “I know evil when I see it.”

A grunt. “What? Dracula and Frankenstein and the Wolf Man?”

“No. I’m talking about the true evil that human beings are capable of.”

“And what’s that, eh? Tell me. Tell me what’s going on in your
sick
mind, because I have no bloody idea.”

Cushing did not reply. Simply stared at him and with supreme effort refused to break his gaze. He saw for the first time that the monster’s eyes were as colourless as the invisibly pale eyebrows that now made an arch of self-pity over them.

“You think I’d hurt him? I wouldn’t hurt a hair of his head. Cross my heart and hope to die.” With the thumb of one hand, Gledhill made the sign of the cross, horizontally across his chest, then from his chin to his belly.

“It’s curious,” Cushing said, one hollow cheek pressed to the side of the door. “In vampire mythology, evil has to be invited over the threshold. And she invited you in, didn’t she? With open arms.”

“Yeah, mate. It’s called love.”

“Love can be corrupted. I will not be witness to that and let it pass.”

“How Biblical.” The glistening eyes did not suit the sneer that went with them.

“I have been a Christian all my life. It gives me strength.”

“You Bible-thumpers see evil everywhere.”

“No, we don’t. But to God innocence is precious. It’s to be valued above all things. It must be protected. Our children must be safe. It’s our duty as human beings.”

“Too right. They
do
need to be protected,” the creature that was Gledhill said. “From old men talking to young boys on the beach. Boys all alone. What did you say to him, eh? That’s what the police are going to ask, don’t you think, if you go to them?” His voice fell to a fetid, yet almost romantic, whisper. “That’s what people are going to ask. What were they talking about, this old man who lives all alone? This old man who makes horrible, sadistic films about cruelty and sex and torture, someone who’s never had any children of his own, they tell me, someone who
adores
other peoples’ children? This old man and this innocent little boy?”

His skin prickling with the most immense distaste, Cushing refused to be intimidated, even though the nauseous combination of beer and cigarette breath in the air was quite sickening enough. “I’m quite aware he is innocent, Mr Gledhill. And I’m quite aware what you might say against me.”

“Good. And who do you think they’ll believe, eh? Me or you?”

“They’ll believe the truth.”

“Then that’s a pity. For you,” the mouth said. It wasn’t a face any more. Just an ugly, obscene mouth.

Cushing did nothing to back away. He knew that once he did that, physically and mentally, he was lost. But he was backing away in his mind like a frightened rabbit, and he feared that Gledhill could see it in the clear rock pools of his eyes. Frightened eyes.

“I should knock you into next week,” Gledhill breathed. “Just the thought of what you were doing, or trying to do, makes me want to puke, d’you know that? But I’m not someone who takes the law into their own hands. I obey the law, me. I’m a law-abiding…”

Though he wanted to cry out, Cushing stood his ground. He was resolute, even if he didn’t feel it. He felt crushed, battered, clawed, eviscerated. The truth was, he knew, if he gave into impulse and stepped away, then he was afraid that would mean
running
away. And what might follow that? His visitor was clearly big enough and strong enough to barge through a door held by a flimsy old man with no effort whatsoever. Yet he hadn’t. Why, the old man dared not contemplate. Sheer
inability
, not bravery, glued him to the spot. But how much of that could the other eyes looking back at him see?

“You need to drop this, I’m telling you,” Gledhill said. “For your own good, all right? I’m doing you a favour coming here. You don’t get it, do you?”

“Oh, I do. I ‘get it’ entirely. Thank you for clarifying any doubt in my mind.”

Cushing instantly wished he’d kept that thought to himself, but now there was no going back and he knew it.

With all his strength he shoved the door hard in the hope the latch would click and he’d turn the key in the Chubb to double-lock it before Gledhill got a chance to push from his side—but Gledhill had already pushed back, and harder. He was a builder, labourer, something—
heathen
, Cushing didn’t know why that word sprang to mind, but he didn’t want him in his house, he wasn’t a reader he was a destroyer of books, and people. He fell back from the door, panting, a stick man, brittle. Then he did decide to run, the only thing he could do as it flew open, banging against the wall.

He dashed to where the telephone and address book sat on the hall table and snatched up the receiver and put it to his ear, swinging round to face the man in the doorway as his finger found the dial.

To his astonishment Gledhill stopped dead, his feet see-sawing on the threshold, his boots pivoted between toe and heel.

“Sorry! Sorry. Sorry. I’m really sorry, mate! I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. Shit! That, that’s the booze talking. I don’t normally get like that. I don’t normally say boo to a fucking goose, me.” The swear word pierced Cushing like a blade, deep and hard and repellent. He knew people used it, increasingly, but he hated such foul language. But now he had the measure of the man, and the difference between them, and it gaped wide. In the full glare of the hall light, scarlet sweater radiant, a bloody breast swimming in the older man’s vision, Gledhill wiped his long, shiny slug-like lower lip. “But I don’t like people making allegations against me, okay? When they’re lies. Complete lies, all right? What
normal
man would?”

Les loves that boy.

The low burr on the telephone line changed to a single long tone and Cushing tapped the cradle to get a line.

“Please go. Immediately, please. I don’t want to continue this conversation.”

“Mate, honestly…”

“I’m not your ‘mate’, Mr Gledhill, quite frankly.”

His heart thudding in his ears, Cushing dialled with a forefinger he prayed was steady. The wheel turned anticlockwise with the return mechanism, waiting for the second ‘9’.

The cold had infiltrated and he felt it on his blue-lined skin as he stared at the long-haired man framed in his front doorway against the February night and the other did the same in return. Neither man dared give his adversary the satisfaction of breaking eye contact first. Gledhill hung onto the door frame, meaty hands left and right. Passingly, Cushing thought of Christopher Lee in his big coat as the creature in
Curse
. But all that monstrousness on the outside, for all to see.

He dialled a second time, straight-backed, not wanting to show the stranger he was afraid, but he
was
afraid. Of course he was afraid. He wasn’t a young, athletic man any more, sword-fencing beside Louis Hayward or leaping across tables. Far from it. If this man chose to, cocky, powerful and threatened, he could stride right in and beat him to a pulp, or worse. There was no guarantee that a man prone to other acts,
despicable
acts, would be pacified by a threat of recrimination at a later date. Or a mere
phone call
. Criminals did not think of consequences. That was one of the things that defined them as criminals. There was nothing, literally nothing, to stop his unwelcome guest killing him, if he decided to.

For the third time he placed his index finger in the hole next to the number ‘9’ and took it round the circumference of the dial.

“All right,” Gledhill said. “All right. I’ll say this, then I’m going. There’s nothing going on here, okay? It’s as simple as that. Nothing for you to be involved in.
Nothing
. Okay?”

Emergency. Which service do you require?

Cushing stared. Gledhill stared back.

Emergency. Hello?

Gledhill laughed with a combination of utter sadness and utter contempt. “Jesus Christ. You’re as loopy as he is. You’re losing your
fucking
marbles, old man.”

Hello?

Then Gledhill left, slamming the door after him and the hall shook, or seemed to shake, like the walls of a rickety set at Bray, and Cushing did not blink and did not breathe until he was gone, and his after-image—the halo of redness—departed with him. Cut!

Hello?

“I’m most awfully sorry,” he whispered into the receiver. “I thought I had an intruder. I can see now that’s not the case.” He tried to cover the tremor he knew was in his voice, and tried to make it light and chirpy. “I’m perfectly safe. Thank you.”

Cushing hung up, re-knotted the cord of his dressing gown, hurried into the sitting room and parted the drawn curtains with his fingers, a few inches only, to see—nobody. Even the last fragment of light and colour had faded from the sky. It was now uniformly black and devoid of stars.

The dryness in Cushing’s throat gave him the sudden compulsion to breathe, which he thought a very good idea indeed but strangely an effort. It was as if he had done a ten mile run, or heavy swim. Not only was his chest still thumping like a kettledrum, he could not get air into his lungs fast enough, and lurched, quite light-headedly, needing to prop himself on the arm of a chair in case he should fall. Sweat broke on his brow. He undid the buttons at his throat but they were already undone. He opened more, but his fingers were frozen and useless, fumbling and befuddled and half-dead.