Authors: Scott G. Mariani
Technically, the abandoned cottage was Joel’s own property. The uncle and aunt who’d taken him in after the tragedy hadn’t wanted to know about the place, and it had passed to him when he’d turned eighteen. He hadn’t wanted to think about it, let alone renovate it for sale. Let it rot.
The broken door groaned loudly as he pushed it open and stepped inside, shining his torch into the entrance hall. Weeds had invaded the gaps between the stone tiles. The place smelled strongly of damp earth and rats and decay.
It smelled like a grave.
He walked into the mouldering shell that had been the living room, gazed for a few moments at the spot where his parents had lain dead. And the place he’d seen in a thousand nightmares…where he’d killed his grandfather. His right hand twitched. Even all these years later, he could still feel the impact of the blade up his arm as it sliced through flesh and bone.
He tore himself away from that spot, beginning to shiver badly now. Remembering the flask of chicken soup he’d brought with him, he unslung his backpack. The soup was still warm, and he gulped two cups of it down gratefully.
He hated the thought of having to stay the night here, but the wind was building into a storm outside and he couldn’t face another single mile on the Suzuki. He screwed the half-empty Thermos shut and dug in his backpack for the firelighters, candles and matches he’d picked up in the eight-till-late shop near his house. By candlelight he dug the damp ash out of the fireplace and lit a couple of solid fuel firelighter cubes. After checking that the smoke was drawing up the chimney properly, he smashed a chair and used the wood to get a blaze going. When the warmth finally began to permeate the room, he stripped off his clammy leathers and changed into jeans and a thick jumper. He sat by the fire to finish the rest of the chicken soup, trying to shut out the memories that kept returning.
When the flask was empty, it was time to explore the house. He reluctantly got to his feet.
The white circle of torchlight bobbed ahead of him as he climbed the stairs. There were just two doors leading off the cottage’s poky landing. One lay ajar. Joel remembered it as the bedroom in which he and his parents had slept on their visits here. He didn’t look inside. He turned the handle of the other door and pushed.
His grandfather had called it his
‘sanctus sanctorum’,
the hallowed space where he spent hours deeply immersed in his ‘work’. Joel’s father had never let him venture in there. Maybe because, for all the scornful remarks that he made about Crazy Nick’s bizarre obsession with the supernatural, he’d respected his wish not to be disturbed. Or maybe just because he didn’t want his son’s head to be filled with any more of that nonsense than it already was.
The young Joel had formed a vivid image in his mind of what the mysterious room must look like: his grandfather bent over his desk, surrounded by piles of ancient books, poring over abstruse manuscripts, written in ancient, forgotten languages, lost in his quest to discover the secrets of vampires. His child’s imagination had pictured every detail, down to the pipe rack on the desk, the pot full of rich-smelling tobacco from some exotic land, the inkwell and quill pen. Maybe a rumpled bunk in the corner where his grandfather would retire, exhausted, after his hours of study.
Joel opened the door, shone the torch inside, and saw for the first time that the room was nothing like he’d imagined. It was a plain, simple bedroom, nothing more. A single bed, a wooden chair, a dressing table and a big solid antique wardrobe that took up most of the opposite wall. No books, no desk, no rolled-up manuscripts, no vampire-killing paraphernalia to be seen.
So what had his grandfather been doing up here all those hours? Napping?
On the dressing table sat a picture frame. The photograph inside was mildewed and discoloured with age and damp. Joel picked it up and wiped away the cobwebs from the dusty glass. He swallowed as he gazed at the photo. He could remember the day it had been taken, with the self-timer on his father’s old camera. It showed the four of them sitting on the stone wall outside the cottage. Joel’s grandfather was smiling and had his arm around his grandson’s shoulder, squeezing him to his side.
Everyone looked so happy. Just a few hours later, three of the four would be dead.
Joel set the picture down and yanked open a drawer of the dressing table. There wasn’t much inside. A dusty pair of spectacles. An old mechanical day/date wristwatch that had stopped just before four o’clock on March 13. A tortoiseshell comb with a few white hairs snagged in its teeth. Joel touched them, feeling a wave of sadness rise up inside him.
He didn’t even know exactly what it was he was looking for. It seemed impossible that his grandfather hadn’t kept some record of his dark, mysterious ‘work’. There had to be something here about vampires. Something about the cross of Ardaich that he’d talked about so often.
Joel heard his voice again in his mind.
‘It must be a very special cross, Grandfather.’
‘Oh it is, my boy. Very, very special, and quite unique. The ancients spoke of its incredible powers against the forces of evil. It is like no other cross.’
‘What does it do to a vampire?’
‘Even just to go near the cross would mean the most horrible end for them, Joel.’
‘It kills them?’
‘You can’t kill something that’s already dead. No, it destroys them. Completely and utterly, so they can never, ever come back.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘It was lost, Joel. Many, many years ago. Some people have thought it was just a myth, but I know it exists. The world will be a much safer place once it’s been rediscovered, believe me.’
Joel closed the dressing table drawer and went over to the wardrobe. Its door creaked on rusty hinges as he opened it to shine the light inside. Again, there was nothing, just a few old clothes. A cardigan he remembered his grandfather wearing, now thick with dust and mould. He shut the door and kept searching – but he was fast running out of places to look.
His heart jumped when he found two cardboard boxes under the bed. Kneeling in the dust, he dragged them out and started rooting through them. He found yellowed receipts, a warranty for a fridge-freezer, a rail ticket dated 1977, a tin full of old coins, a maintenance manual for a Series II Land Rover, a yellowed photo of his grandfather in naval uniform, standing in a leafy park with his arm around a pretty brunette Joel barely recognised as the grandmother he’d only ever known as a white-haired old woman.
Just then, a sound from behind him made his heart squirm with fear. He dropped the torch and the room went black.
Dec’s world was a swirling tunnel of disconnected thoughts, colours and sounds. He saw a child, running, laughing, and realised it was himself. Then his mother’s face appeared in his mind, distorted like a reflection in a warped mirror. Her voice was muffled and faraway.
What are you doing with that thing,
he heard her say before her image dissolved and he was drifting away on a soft current. Just drifting through the darkness. A fuzzy white blur began to take shape, coming closer. He didn’t know what it was but he felt himself drawn towards it. Then he smiled as the shape enveloped him in its warmth. The touch of her lips. The sharp sting that made him wince, pain mingled with pleasure. Her soothing voice in his ear.
‘Hello, Declan.’
‘Kate,’ he muttered. ‘Kate. I love you. Ka—’
Tap. Tap.
Dec stirred. Where was he? His eyelids fluttered open and he could suddenly feel the seat pressing against his back.
He was in the car. It was dark. Shafts of light from outside, diffused by the condensation that misted the windscreen. Cars passing. Someone was tapping on the window next to where his head was slumped against the door. He turned groggily and narrowed his eyes at the face that was peering at him through the glass.
‘Oi, Dec. Roll your window down, you dozy bugger.’
Dec rubbed his eyes. He groped for the window button and felt the cold, damp wind on his face as the glass whirred down.
‘What’re you doing in your mum’s car?’ the voice said.
Dec stared, trying to place the face of the young, blond, tousle-haired guy who was grinning in at him. ‘Who are you?’
‘Jesus, mate, you’re right out of it. Sat stalled in the middle of fucking Wallingford. You’re just asking for the cops to find you here. In enough trouble already, don’t you think?’
Dec nodded slowly. ‘Matt,’ he mumbled.
‘Yeah, yeah. Remember me? Only the guy you work with. Christ, what a state.’
Matt from the garage. He remembered now.
‘I’m not pissed,’ he slurred.
‘Could have fooled me, mate. Come on. Get out of the car. You can’t stay here.’
Dec fumbled for the door catch, and the next thing he knew he was sprawled on the wet ground.
‘I’m going to be sick.’
He felt Matt’s hands gripping his arm, helping him stagger to his feet. He leaned against the side of the Clio, breathing hard, almost overwhelmed by nausea.
‘I’m taking you home to sober up,’ Matt said.
‘I told you—’ Dec managed to say, then had to clamp his mouth shut and swallow back the rising bile.
‘You’d better not chuck up in my Subaru,’ Matt warned him. Dec could barely keep his eyes open as his workmate led him over to the blue car parked behind the Clio and helped him into the passenger seat. He rested his head against the dash as Matt locked up the Renault, pocketed the keys and came trotting back over. ‘Your old lady’s gonna fucking murder you for this,’ he said cheerily as he got in next to Dec. ‘That should be fun to watch.’ He grinned. ‘While yours truly is the hero who saved you from the police. Should be good for a beer or two.’
‘Dontwannagohome,’ Dec moaned.
‘Why not?’
‘Please.’
‘Family tiff, huh?’ Matt looked at him, then shrugged. ‘Fine. I know how that goes. You can crash over at my place. All the same to me.’
Dec closed his eyes. The next thing he knew he was lying on a couch and Matt was nudging him awake and giving him a mug of steaming black coffee.
‘Get this down you, mate. Sober you up.’
Dec was too weak and dizzy to protest. He slurped at the coffee.
‘I’m going to call your folks to say what’s happened and where your mum can pick up her car.’
‘Don’t tell them I’m here,’ Dec said. Or thought he said. He might have just imagined it, but he was getting so disorientated he couldn’t even tell. The nausea was getting steadily worse. The strong black coffee hadn’t helped at all.
‘Listen.’ Matt’s voice echoed from somewhere a million miles away. ‘You’re probably too out of it to remember, but me and a couple of mates’re off to Mexico tonight. I’m leaving in half an hour.’
Dec must have mumbled something in response, because Matt went on:‘…the wedding I was telling you about? Back in a week. Try not to burn the place down while I’m…’
Dec heard nothing more. He was already gone and drifting far away.
Joel heard the sound again.
It was coming from the wardrobe. A strange scuffling, scratching noise.
He fought back the terror and groped for the torch. He tried the switch and to his relief the beam cut through the darkness. He aimed it at the wardrobe. The sound had stopped. Heart thudding, he stepped over and pulled open the wardrobe door.
A sudden movement from inside startled him. A large rat clawed its way out from among the clothing and dropped down to the floor with a soft thump. Joel followed it with the torch beam as it scuttled away to escape under the bed.
Where had the animal come from? The wardrobe had been empty just moments ago.
Joel shone the light back inside the wardrobe and saw the small hole in the back panel. The rat must have come from there.
But that didn’t make sense. There should have been solid wall on the other side. He put his fingers to the hole and felt a draught coming from somewhere.
Joel stepped inside the wardrobe and pushed gently against the back panel. It didn’t budge at first, but with a little more pressure it gave with a crack and hinged away from him like a door. He brushed away the thick matting of cobwebs and stepped through the hidden doorway.
And now he knew where his grandfather had spent all those private hours.
The secret study was cramped and windowless. The torchlight picked out a desk and chair, piles of old books, scattered heaps of notes. Joel ran his hand excitedly over the desktop and opened the middle drawer.
The first thing he saw in the drawer, lying on its side among the dust and mouse droppings, was a revolver. He hesitated for an instant, then picked it up. It was heavy in his hand, an old-fashioned lump of steel, its blued finish pocked with corrosion. He recognised the antiquated design as a 1940s service Webley .455, the type of gun that had flooded post-war Britain and found its way into a lot of illegal arms caches. Obviously one had managed to fall into his grandfather’s hands, too. Joel broke open the action and saw that there was just one tarnished brass cartridge in the cylinder. The rest of the chambers were empty.
Joel wondered about the gun. It didn’t make sense for his grandfather to have kept one as defence against vampires – especially not one with only a single bullet in it.
There was only one answer. It was simple and brutal, and when it hit him it filled him with sadness. The gun hadn’t been meant for defence against vampires at all. The old man had intended to use it on himself, if they ever caught up with him. One shot to the head, to save himself from a fate worse than death. Only, when that day had finally come, the gun had been out of reach. Joel stared at the weapon in his hand and his vision was clouded by sudden tears. He blinked them away.
The only other item in the drawer was an old notebook. He laid down the revolver and flicked through it. It was badly damaged with damp, half chewed by mice, but he recognised his grandfather’s handwriting on the mouldy pages. He quickly slipped it into his back pocket, then scooped up an armful of books and papers. He was halfway to the door when an afterthought made him go back to pick up the old gun. He stuck it in the back of his jeans.