Authors: Cathy MacPhail
The man he had never met, though he seemed familiar. He stood up when Mosi walked into the living room, and his tanned face broke into a grin.
‘This is Grant Gray,’ Rose Myer said. She was smiling now too. He’d seen her smile before, but it never lasted. As if the moment it landed on her face, it knew it didn’t belong there.
Grant Gray. The name meant nothing to Mosi. But he definitely recognised the face from somewhere.
‘Had a bad time in school today, Mosi?’ Grant Gray asked, though it was more like a statement. And Mosi remembered now exactly who he was. One of those people who
wanted
things to be bad for them. It suited their agenda. Mosi had met many of them since he came here. He remembered too where he’d seen his face. He’d stood for the local council and his face had been plastered on posters all over the estate.
Grant Gray didn’t wait for his answer. He sat down again. He turned to Rose Myer and his mother and father. ‘I was afraid this would happen. The man who died was a Somalian, I knew they would take it out on all of you, the other African asylum seekers, target the children.’ He looked again at Mosi, his blue eyes boring into his, as if his welfare was all he cared about. ‘I need you to know that you don’t have to put up with anything at school. Report everything that happens. We’re setting up a daily club.’ He nodded to Rose Myer. She was the other part of the ‘we’. ‘It’s in the community room at the bottom of this court. You can come in there any time. If you have any problems, anything you want to talk about, just pop in. Someone will always be there.’
‘This family keep themselves to themselves,’ Rose Myer said, as if it was a fault. ‘Isn’t that right?’
His father spoke. ‘We just don’t want any trouble. We don’t want to risk our chance of being allowed to stay.’
Grant Gray snapped the next words out. ‘That’s the problem. They want to make you victims.’
In Mosi’s opinion it was the Grant Grays of this world who were the ones who wanted them to be victims. So he could fight for them.
‘We’ve had no real problems,’ his father said. ‘People have been very kind.’
‘They never say a bad word about anyone,’ Rose Myer said, as if she didn’t believe them.
‘You don’t have to be afraid,’ Grant Gray said. ‘We’re here for you. The man who died thought there was no one there for him. We don’t want you ever to think that. OK?’
‘They mean to be kind,’ his father said when they’d gone.
‘They could make as much trouble for us as anyone else,’ his mother said. ‘I wish they would leave us be.’
Mosi lay on his bed that night, more worried than he’d been in an age. He could hear a police siren in the distance, hear the whoops of boys as they ran rampaging through the estate. The police would be here for a while, asking questions, looming round them.
Hakim, too, he was sure was going to cause trouble. He was aching for a fight. Him and Cody were already squaring up to each other.
And all because of the man who fell.
He only hoped he and his parents could stay out of it. It was all he wanted.
Patrick’s mother had ranted about the police hanging around the flats. ‘Asking questions. The way they’re acting, you’d think we’d done something wrong. And they’ve only interviewed you the once. I think that’s ridiculous. You’re a key witness.’
His mother was contradicting herself, he could see that, but Patrick was glad it had only been once. He wanted to put it behind him, try to forget it.
Cody was raging about it too. He phoned Patrick that night. ‘You’d think we were the ones that pushed that guy over the edge.’
But Patrick knew the tension had been raised by the graffiti he had drawn. That image, and the words Cody had written. And the blood . . . Who had smeared it with blood?
‘I mean this is our country, our estate. They’re the visitors here.’ Cody had ranted on.
You’re supposed to treat visitors with respect
, Patrick wanted to say. Wished he had the nerve to say it to Cody.
‘Are you coming out the night?’ Cody asked him. And before he could answer Cody added, ‘I think we better leave the graffiti for a while, eh?’
It was the best news Patrick had heard all day. ‘Definitely,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I don’t think I’ll make it tonight.’
Cody sighed. ‘Don’t think I’ll get oot either.’ He tutted. ‘If this keeps up, I’m gonny get really mad at somebody.’
Just as well he hadn’t made any rash promises to Cody anyway, because there was no chance of Patrick getting out that night. His granny arrived. She walked into the living room after tea and hugged him. ‘How are you, son?’ she said.
Patrick couldn’t speak. He was squashed against her. His granny was a big woman; she nearly smothered him. She pulled him down beside her on the couch. ‘I wish I could have been here.’
‘I was here,’ his mum reminded her.
His granny glared at her. ‘Not for long, I bet.’
His poor mum never knew how to answer his granny. She just shrugged. ‘Patrick knows I’m always here for him.’
‘Away and make us a wee cup of tea,’ his granny ordered. ‘And a sandwich for me,’ she shouted when his mum was safely in the kitchen. ‘That is, if you’ve got anything that’s not past its sell-by date in that fridge.’
She hugged him again. ‘A lot of bad things are happening on this estate. I don’t like it.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ Patrick said, out of habit.
She pinched his face. ‘Of course it wasn’t you. I just mean . . . that man throwing himself off the roof, and his brother disappearing, and all these weird things happening. That dead cat for one. That was awful.’
Patrick interrupted. ‘Did you hear about the blood in the underpass?’
‘Oh aye, I heard. That graffiti was shocking. Whoever did that wants to be locked up.’
At that point Patrick began to cough. Wished he hadn’t mentioned the blood now. ‘Do you think it’s all connected, Granny? Do you think it might be voodoo? That’s what people are saying.’
He didn’t mention the ‘people’ were only Cody and his dad. Not that anyone would ever believe them.
‘Naw, naw,’ she said. She brushed that idea away as if it was an annoying fly. ‘That’s the kind of thing people say to cause trouble. There’s a lot of gangs here on this estate. That’s what it’ll be. Always up to something.’
Patrick could hear his mother on her mobile in the kitchen. Probably explaining she would be late going out tonight . . . if she ever managed to get out at all.
‘You can’t blame the asylum seekers for the weird things that have been going on. I could tell you a few stories about the strange things that went on when I was a wee lassie,’ his granny said.
‘I know, you told me.’ His granny was always regaling him with stories from her childhood. ‘I remember you telling me about them. Teddy boys,’ Patrick said. He remembered her tales of funny looking guys who wore long pointed shoes and had weird haircuts.
‘That’s right. They ran about in gangs called The Tongs. Bad boys, some of them.’
He had heard all her stories. ‘But nothing as weird as this, Granny,’ Patrick said, with certainty.
She looked right at him. ‘Oh, do you think your generation’s cornered the market on weirdness?’
‘Well.’ Patrick hunched his shoulders. ‘I mean, people disappearing, suicides, strange things happening round the estate . . . headless cats hanging in the underpass?’ He said it in a ‘beat that’ kind of tone.
A wicked smile appeared on his granny’s face. Then she said, quite casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Well, we had a vampire.’
Patrick thought he’d heard her wrong. He almost fell off his seat. ‘Did you say a vampire?’
‘Oh, indeed I did. It’s a well-known story,’ she said. ‘The Gorbals Vampire, they called it. There were things happening then as well. Weird things. Children had gone missing . . . two boys had been kidnapped, at least, that was the rumour.’
‘Kidnapped!’ Now she had all his attention.
‘Och, that wasn’t the worst of it. We heard they were eaten as well.’
‘Eaten!’ Patrick could hardly take this in. Eaten?
‘Och, that’s what they said anyway.’ His granny went on. ‘We didn’t know if that was true. Didn’t matter. We believed it. Then, out of the blue, we started hearing stories about a vampire roaming the Necropolis. That was what they call the big cemetery in Glasgow. City of the Dead. Well, once the rumour started that there was a vampire, it spread. Like Chinese whispers. The story went from one school to another. And got weirder with every telling. He was seven feet tall, with iron teeth. You could see his teeth shining in the dark, they said. The teachers tried to tell us it was nonsense . . . but I was nine. Who was I going to believe? A teacher, or my big brother? He was your age, and he was totally caught up in it. I believed it. We all believed it.’
Patrick was silent for a moment. ‘Are you winding me up, Granny?’
‘Not at all. We all got so worked up about it, and scared, that we decided to go out after school one night and watch for the vampire at the cemetery.’
‘Did . . . did you see it? The vampire.’ He waited for her to say no. He expected it.
‘Well, do you know, I could have sworn I did. But see, that’s what happens. When you’re all caught up in something, you can make yourself believe you saw anything. Some of the older boys, my brother included, they went into the cemetery. The rest of us sat on the wall, waiting. I seem to remember there was a full moon.’ She hesitated. ‘But that might just be my imagination. Anyway, we waited for ages . . . Next thing, there was all this shouting and screaming, and the boys all came running out of the cemetery as if the Devil himself was after them. ‘He’s in there. He’s there!’
His granny shouted it so loud, Patrick fell back.
‘And I saw something moving in the cemetery. I was sure I did. Like a dark shadow. A giant shadow. We all saw it. And somebody screamed, ‘That’s the vampire!’ And the place went crazy. There was a stampede. Weans were running everywhere. I fell off that wall, and skinned my legs. And I ran for home. I’ve never run so fast in my life.’
‘Do you mean . . . you really saw a vampire?’ Patrick was mesmerised.
His granny shrugged. ‘At the time I didn’t know what I saw. We certainly never heard about the vampire again. But we always said that it would come back, to have its revenge.’
The story sent a chill down Patrick’s spine.
‘How come you’ve never told me this story before, Granny?’
She hesitated. ‘You know, I think I actually forgot all about it.’
‘What made you remember?’
She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I think it’s the things that have been happening here. That was a terrible thing you saw, son, that man dying.’ She hugged him closer. ‘Maybe it’s just a bad feeling. It made me remember how it all started with us. Way back then. One rumour led to another, it went from school to school, and it all got out of hand. It was a kind of mass hysteria.’
‘Do you think the vampire’s come back, Granny?’
‘Well, if you see a seven-foot-tall man with iron teeth hanging about, let me know.’ And then she laughed and punched him playfully. ‘It was in our imagination, son. A great story to tell your grandchildren, but it wasn’t true. There are no such things as vampires. But at that age you want to believe in them, don’t you?’ She let out a sigh. ‘I’m telling you that story to let you know that there’s always been strange things going on. Nothing to do with the asylum seekers and nothing to do with voodoo.’
Just then his mother came through from the kitchen with two mugs of tea in her hands. ‘Oh, Mum, I wish you would stop telling my Patrick things like that. You’ll give him nightmares.’
His granny let out a bellow of laughter. ‘Me! You let him sit up half the night watching horror movies. I’m filling him in with a wee bit of Glasgow history. You’re the one giving the boy nightmares!’
His mother never could win over his granny.
‘I don’t. I’m very careful what he watches on TV.’
‘You’re never in to see what he watches!’
They went on arguing back and forth, but Patrick wasn’t listening. He felt as if a light bulb had been switched on above his head. He remembered that dark shadow in the underpass, the blood spread over the graffiti. And though he had never seen it, he could picture the headless cat hung in the underpass. It hadn’t been any of the asylum seekers who had made all those terrible things happen. Nor any of the gangs. The thought was beginning to take hold that there might be another answer to everything that was going on here.
Perhaps the vampire was back.
There was a meeting in one of the community halls that night. Local councillors were coming, and representatives of the asylum seekers, the residents’ association and the media. Journalists flocked in like vultures. The police were there too, just in case there was any trouble. The television cameras were practically camped on the estate, aware of the bubbling tension, ready to capture it on camera and eager for it to boil over.
Mosi wished they would all leave. They were only making things worse – their questions, their assumptions about who was to blame creating even more antagonism between the people here.