Chapter 8: What the hell is going on here?
The town of Reading, in the county of Berkshire, is around 40 miles west of London. An hour’s drive, more or less. Though I never got a driver’s licence or took driving lessons, I’m sure I can drive. Drive pretty well, actually, since us vampires are really good at everything.
But I shall restrict my thievery to donated blood; I’ve never stolen anything in my old life, and I won’t steal a car to revisit it. Walking home will apparently take up to 14 hours. Hah! Not for me. I could run there in under 10 minutes, maybe less. I should totally time myself.
Being an underground vampire however, I decided to take the subway from the tube station near David’s house to Paddington, and then get the last train to Reading. It’s just one stop and takes less than half an hour.
And yes, I did pay for the tickets. As soon as my mother told me about David, I knew I would come to London to look for him after my exams. So I left home with all the cash I had stashed away in a shoebox under my bed and one of the first things I did after leaving Christian’s apartment as a newborn vampire was deplete both my current and savings accounts. I knew I’d need all the money I had. It was enough to bring me to London and there was enough leftover to get me back home.
I spent the commute wondering whether my family still consider me missing, or have they concluded that I’m dead by now? They’d be right, sort of. Human Ellie is dead.
Vampire Ellie however, is currently strolling in the shadows towards the four-bedroom terraced house she grew up in. Its real dark now, the black moonless sky such a contrast to the light jade one I saw the last time I was here.
Suddenly, I see myself staring back at me from every tree and lamppost lining the road outside my old home. ‘Have you seen Ellie?’ are the words I read. There are flyers stapled everywhere, with my face on them. Some look freshly printed and mounted up, others are tearing at the edges.
I’m taken aback by the phone number written on them.
Not my sister Heather’s.
Not my mother’s.
But her husband Jake’s mobile number.
I don’t need a closer look, but I run down the pavement, quick as a flash, smelling the scent coming off the tattered papers stuck to tree-trunks and metal posts. It’s his aftershave on all of them. When I stop at the newest-looking of the flyers and inspect it closely, I don’t smell anything of my mum’s on it.
Just Jake.
He’s the one who’s still putting these up, still searching for me.
Did my mother give up after a few months of looking for me, the flyers she put up washed out by the rain, blown away by the wind, cleaned up by the bin-men, dissolved by time? Or has it always been Jake?
I find that I can call him dad again. I reach out and touch the digits printed below my photograph and whisper, “Thanks, dad.”
Sticking to the shadows, I approach the house opposite ours and prepare to appraise the property I’d been avoiding since I arrived. Still a teenager at my core, I sort of want the dramatics that go with that first glance at my former home.
My hood is pulled close to my face, my hands in the pockets of my grey fleece that’s over my white T-shirt which is barely obscuring the studded black belt holding up my faded denim jeans. My eyes are on my dirty white trainers with fraying laces. Knowing I’m directly opposite my bedroom, I take a deep breath and lift my head up slowly.
The window of my room is black. It’s the only room which hasn’t had the curtains closed. Neglected.
I cast my eyes down. The living room light is on. I hone in on the TV in it and realise its playing the last segment of a football show. Dad always liked to watch the after-match analysis. I can make out easily that Heather’s in her room, clicking and tapping away on a laptop.
Mum is in her room, the one next to mine. I see her silhouette on the illuminated curtains, a black, curled shape surrounded by a yellow glow. Bedside lamp on, she’s sitting on the bed, staring at something on her lap. A book? She’s silent. All I hear is her slow breathing, her heartbeat.
I can’t say it yet, can’t say all the things I came to say. Forgiveness and goodbye get stuck in my throat. I don’t want to be angry with her again, but I’m still quite young, both in terms of human years and vampire months, and I feel a ball of fury rise in my chest.
How could she give up on me so quickly?
Stop! I tell myself firmly. I came here for closure. Not to return to London with a new monkey on my back.
I concentrate all my energies into listening to her breathing. I succeed. The sound is almost mesmerising.
The next thing I know, almost every house on the street is erupting with the closing soundtrack of the football show. I listen to dad getting up from his seat, clicking a button, and the lounge going quiet. He’s turned the TV off with the remote. Following the sound of his footsteps, the creaking and snapping in the hallway, I know he’s heading up the stairs to his bedroom.
Moments later, I see his shadow on the curtains, to the right of my mother’s crouching form. He approaches the bed and his silhouette merges with hers before mum’s shadow pulls away and swiftly exits the room, still holding that flattish object in her hand.
They didn’t greet each other? Mum was never into sport, but she always asked him about the game afterwards. Did they have a fight? If so, what about? Not over me, surely? But a twinge in the back of my head thinks otherwise.
The black windows of my old room are suddenly bright sunlight-yellow. The lights have been turned on and I can see the room hasn’t changed one bit in the last 6 months.
Mum. I can see her now. She’s putting whatever she’d been staring at before on the bedside cabinet. She straightens and stares down at it. The bed and cabinet are parallel to the window, just a yard from the sill and I wish she’d move out of the way so I can get a glimpse of what she’s looking at!
And then she does and I see it. A framed photograph of me. I don’t know what to think. I just feel… warm inside, and I’m a ice-cold vampire!
Before I can assign a label to this feeling, she twists on the spot and comes towards me. Well, towards my window. To close the drapes, I suppose.
She might see me so I make an arcing run around the line of houses behind me, find the property opposite my old home, jump onto the tree in its back garden and then leap onto the house’s roof. I don’t make a sound as I land.
I’m not entering their house – I didn’t even set foot in their garden, so I don’t need permission to lie on the slanting roof and watch what’s happening in my room. No invitation required when climbing peoples’ homes; it’s just getting inside that’s the problem.
My mum’s not even at the window yet. Told you I was fast!
She doesn’t close the curtains as she reaches the glass. Instead, she looks through it for a long moment. Then she takes a long intake of breath, holds it for a few seconds, and when she eventually lets it out, the sound it makes is, “Oh, Ellie.” Her words are like a prayer and a request and a resigned moan at the same time.
I lie motionless and listen to the next few words she says as though she’s whispering right in my ear.
“When are you coming home, Ellie? How long will you be angry with me?” She closes her eyes and inhales again, holds it, and lets it out slowly. “This will always be your home sweetheart. You’re always welcome. Always invited.”
My eyes widen at her last two words. I get the two sentences preceding these words, but… always invited? What kind of mother would want to convey to her runaway daughter that she’d always be invited?
Because I’m a vampire, and because I’d only just thought about the catch regarding our kind breaking into a stranger’s home, I can only draw one conclusion.
And it makes no sense.
Crazy! I scold myself.
“Ellie?” my mum asks pointedly, as though she can see me curse my stupidity. “Elisia, dear, please,” she whispers into the glass. It steams up where h
er breath hits it. “There’s so much you need to know. I need to tell you so many things. Come home, Elle.”
Okay, so she hasn’t given up on me. And the reason she hasn’t been distributing flyers is because she doesn’t think they’ll do much good.
Because no, no one would’ve seen Ellie, the teenaged mortal girl.
She thinks I’m out there somewhere, not buried 6-feet under, but alive. In some way. Dead perhaps, but not completely. That’s what her words suggest to me. That she knows I might be… might be a vampire. Maybe Christian told her?
Crazy! I scold myself again, shaking my head. Crazy, crazy, crazy. That’s so beyond absurd that I chuckle to myself.
Mum’s head jerks up a little. Her eyes vigilantly roam the rooftops ahead of her. As though she heard me chuckle. She couldn’t have heard me. My chuckle was barely a breath through my nose. So low, only a vampire would be able to hear it from where she is.
And I know for a fact she isn’t a vampire – I can hear the beating of her heart, smell her blood.
But she’s really, determinedly, searching for something in my general direction. Narrowing her eyes, she fixates on the roof I’m lying on. I don’t dare move. It’s like she’s looking right at me.
The next second, with a fiercely penetrating look right at me, she says, “Oh Ellie, you’re home!” Her hands reach for her mouth, relieved.
She’s seen me.
I almost slip off the roof and into the back garden.
What the hell? She can hear and see me from there? No way.
She opens the window and the wind blows her fair hair back. Sticking her head out, she whispers, “Ellie, get down off that roof and get through this window now!” Her tone is no different to when she used to tell me to hang up the phone and lay the dining table.
Her bossiness provokes the usual reaction in me. I clench my jaw and shake my head stubbornly, not wanting to give in. Annoy her, make her repeat herself.
Tonight she smiles at this, takes a couple of steps back from the window and waits patiently.
Grudgingly, I get to my feet. Standing on the apex of the roof, I ensure no one’s crossing the street and jump towards my house. I land just outside the front door. I can enter the house because she’s already invited me. I climb up the exterior wall and throw myself into my old room through the open window.
Of course she hugs me immediately, whispers, really quietly, how relieved she is to see me, overjoyed to have me in her arms again. She barely makes a sound when she asks if I’m alright, if I’ve been hurt. No human could hear it.
I can hear her clearly, of course, and she seems to know.
When she lets me go, she regards my pale face, the dark eyes and the even darker circles around them. She pats down my glossy, wavy brown hair and gives me a despairing smile.
It’s me who flinches when she cups my face in her hands. The warmth of her skin stings me, the way my temperature ought to freak her out. But she seems oblivious to the iciness. Oblivious or accustomed to it.
Something tells me it’s the latter.
“So, it is done,” she says sombrely, appraising my oil black eyes. That’s exactly what Christian said when he first saw me after the conversion.
I take a step back. No matter what, I can’t admit what I think she knows. “What’s done?” I ask flatly.
“Oh Ellie, you don’t have to keep the secret from me,” she says indulgently. “I’m part of the secret. Well, sort of.”
“What secret?” My thoughts are spinning. I can’t focus on a single one; they’re swirling around my head, dizzying me.
“You’re a vampire,” she says simply. I fall to my knees, gasping, choking on air. “But at least you’re alive.”
I snap my head up. She seems thankful. This stills my mind. She knows about vampires, knows I am one, and still thinks I’m alive? That I didn’t die to her the moment I became this monster. That’s nice.
Getting down on her knees, mum puts her hands on my shoulders to calm me. I’m sort of shaking.
“Who changed you?” she asks through her teeth, a murderous glint in her eyes. Murderous intentions for the vampire that ended my human life. This sort of protectiveness, I can get used to.
But I suddenly realise I don’t want Christian hurt. I keep my mouth shut.
“It happened on the night you ran away from home, didn’t it?”
I nod silently.
“Ellie, who was it?”
“Lydia,” I lie.
Mum’s reaction tells me she knows of Lydia and therefore must know of the psychic’s mate. “That doesn’t make sense,” she says to herself, shaking her head. When she studies my eyes again, I can see she’s trying to believe me, wondering why I’d lie about it. “Lydia, really?”
The burning in my throat increases tenfold as I say, “Christian. Christian made me.” I want to throw up. God, what have I done? I shouldn’t have told her that. My head starts panicking again.
Mum nods. “I thought it might be.”
Damn it, she knows him. I don’t like this one bit.
“He’s the only one powerful enough to get through…” She looks deep in thought as she continues to murmur to herself. “But we would’ve heard if he’d been killed… No, he’s still at large, I’m sure of it. But how…?” She looks at me inquisitively. She seems to think that Christian turning me into a vampire ought to have been followed by his death…
“My blood,” I just about manage to choke out as my quick mind solves the mystery, “is poison… was poison to vampires?” I’m sort of panting now. Can vampires have panic attacks? I think I’m having one.
“Defence mechanism,” she says matter-of-factly. “Christian knows that and still he bit you…”
“What was he supposed to do?”
“Kill you,” she answers methodically, clinically. I’ve never seen this side of her. “Which makes me think The System decided to go with Plan B. They wanted to make a vampire out of you.” So The System wanted me dead or un-dead. Just not human.
What the hell is going on here?