‘Are you feeling sick?’ asked Sanford, who must have noticed Nefley’s colour change as well. ‘Do you want to go to the bathroom?’
Nefley nodded frantically, his lips welded together. He threw off the bedclothes, swung his feet to the floor and made a lunge for the nearest exit – reeling against the doorjamb as he did so.
Being no stranger to nausea myself, I didn’t think this behaviour especially odd. But I couldn’t work out why he recoiled from my touch as I tried to lead him towards the bathroom. And I certainly didn’t expect him to bolt the bathroom door after he’d ducked inside.
‘That’s weird,’ I said, just as Sanford emerged from my room.
‘What’s weird?’ was his automatic response.
‘He’s locked himself in,’ I replied. ‘What if he needs help? How are we supposed to reach him?’
Sanford frowned. Then he tapped on the bathroom door with one knuckle.
‘Hello?’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Are you all right in there?’
But he received no answer.
‘Maybe he thinks we’re in league with the McKinnons,’ I speculated. ‘Maybe he’s scared.’ I put my ear to one of the door panels, listening for any telltale sounds of retching or gasping. Instead I heard the scrape of a window being opened.
‘What is it?’ Sanford was alerted by my sudden frown. ‘What’s he up to?’
‘I don’t know.’ When I tried to peer through the keyhole, a draught like a cold needle made my left eye water. I couldn’t see a thing. ‘He might need some air, I suppose.’
‘Let me look,’ Sanford instructed.
At that instant, Father Ramon spoke from the threshold of the guestroom. ‘Where’s Reuben?’ he croaked.
Sanford and I both jumped like startled rabbits. We whirled around to find that Father Ramon had struggled out of bed. Though his face looked as if it needed ironing, and he was using the door-knob to support himself, there could be no doubt that he was on his way to a full recovery.
Bridget gave a little crow of delight. She had been following Sanford, and had only just shuffled into view.
‘Father?’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Where’s Reuben?’ the priest slurred, ignoring Bridget as he addressed me. ‘Did they take him?’
‘Did who take him?’ I was confused. ‘The McKinnons, you mean?’
‘Where is he?’ asked Father Ramon, then staggered slightly, as if the force of his own question had knocked him off balance.
‘We don’t know.’ Sanford answered before I could. ‘He might be the one in the bathroom. We’re not sure.’
The priest blinked. ‘What?’ he mumbled, and I could sympathise with his perplexity.
‘I don’t think it’s him,’ was my contribution. ‘Horace thinks that Reuben might have become someone else, but I don’t think so.’
‘There’s an overweight man in the bathroom,’ Sanford informed Father Ramon. ‘About five foot six, maybe thirty years old, clean-shaven, receding hairline. He was upstairs at your place. Asleep.’
‘Is he a friend of yours, Father?’ Bridget inquired. The priest turned his head slowly to stare at her. He looked stunned.
‘That’s not Reuben,’ he said at last. ‘That’s Nefley. The McKinnons brought him to my house.’ He screwed up his face in an expression of unadulterated bafflement. ‘Did they really walk off without him?’
A heartbeat’s silence was broken by a shattering noise. E-e-e-CRUNCH! I heard a shriek, too, ahead of the final impact. And somehow I knew instantly what had occurred.
Our guest had fallen into the alley between my mother’s place and the house beside it.
‘Oh, my God.’ Sanford threw himself against the bathroom door. It was a stupid thing to do. I was already quite sure that Nefley had hit the ground; we wouldn’t have been able to reach him through a first-floor window. So I hurtled down to the vestibule, where I met Horace.
‘That crazy fool—’ he began.
‘I know.’ Cutting him off, I tried to push past. ‘He must have jumped.’
‘He was climbing a downpipe!’ Horace corrected, flapping a hand towards the room he’d just left. ‘You can see him through the window! He pulled the pipe off the wall!’
‘Don’t go outside!’ Sanford snapped at us both, from the top of the staircase. Then he, too, made a rapid descent, clutching his medical bag. ‘Don’t anyone go outside unless I say so!’ he instructed, before raising his voice. ‘Estelle! Are you there?’
‘I’m here.’ Mum appeared on the living-room threshold, with Dave at her heels. ‘He’s still alive. You can hear him groaning.’
‘Come with me,’ Sanford barked. He glanced over his shoulder to where Father Ramon was progressing unsteadily downstairs, step by careful step. ‘Can you manage, Father? Don’t push yourself.’
‘I can manage,’ the priest avowed. ‘I have to talk to Nefley.’
‘You’ll need the keys, first.’ I thought it worth reminding people, at this juncture, that our side-alley was secured by two high metal gates, one at each end. ‘They’re in the kitchen.’
So everyone charged towards the kitchen, heading for the back door. Even George and Gladys joined in; they had managed to tear themselves away from the skinny little window in the western wall of my mother’s living room, from which it was possible to glimpse Nefley’s twitching, whimpering form if you pressed your cheek firmly against the glass.
But very few of us advanced beyond the kitchen. Sanford held firm; he wouldn’t let anyone accompany him outside except my mother and Father Ramon, just in case there was a lot of blood. ‘I want the rest of you down in the basement,’ Sanford decreed, ‘except you, Dave. I might need you for something.’
‘What about me?’ I wasn’t about to be overlooked. ‘I’ve been blooded too. Didn’t you know? And I passed the test.’
This would have been big news at any other time. It would have been the subject of exhaustive discussion during at least six consecutive meetings of our support group. Even now, it was received with a discernible gasp; had Bridget not been thumping her way slowly down the stairs, she would have given me a congratulatory hug, I feel sure.
‘It’s true,’ said Dave, as people looked to him for confirmation. ‘I was there. She did it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us before?’ Gladys demanded.
‘I don’t know.’ It was a good question, which I couldn’t answer. ‘There was too much else happening, I guess.’
‘Well, now – that’s excellent.’ Sanford hovered near the back door, clearly desperate to be on his way, yet feeling obliged to acknowledge my achievement. ‘I suppose, in the circumstances, you might be usefully employed up here,’ he went on. ‘But the rest of you need to be downstairs, because we’ll be bringing the patient inside. And I don’t want to take any risks.’
It was a reasonable sort of request, in the circumstances. Horace, however, wasn’t pleased.
‘What the hell did you do to that poor bloke, anyway?’ he snapped. ‘Did you push him out the window?’
Before Sanford could reply, Father Ramon spoke for him. ‘No one pushed anyone,’ the priest quietly insisted. ‘Nefley tried to escape because he knows you’re vampires. And he’s very, very scared.’
During the stunned silence that greeted this announcement, Father Ramon turned on his heel. Then he vanished outside – leaving the rest of us goggle-eyed and slack-jawed. Even Sanford couldn’t move for a few seconds. It was my mother who finally broke the spell by jangling her keys.
‘Wait! Father!’ she cried. ‘I have to unlock that gate!’
She limped after him, hampered by an arthritic knee, as Sanford brought up the rear. I’d been wanting to ask Father Ramon if he had actually told Nefley about us, but Sanford slammed the door in my face.
Though I attempted to pursue them, Dave stopped me.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Sanford’s right. The smell might be a problem.’
‘But this doesn’t make sense.’ I was flummoxed. ‘
How could a complete stranger know that we’re vampires? Did Father Ramon tell him?’
‘Maybe no one told him.’ Seeing my blank stare, Dave spelled things out for me. ‘He’s called Nefley, Nina. Think about it. How many people in the world are called Nefley?’
You can probably blame a deep-seated fatigue for my slow reaction time. The impact of recent events must have left me a little duller than usual; I was still pondering when Horace suddenly gasped.
‘He was on that customer list!’ Horace exclaimed. ‘Nefley Irving was! He bought those silver bullets, remember? He was next on the list after Barry McKinnon.’
‘And he recognised my name.’ At last I saw what Dave was getting at. ‘He knew it, Dave. Nina. He heard it and he turned green.’
By now, evidently, Gladys was feeling ill-used. ‘What are you talking about?’ she whined. ‘Will someone please explain what’s going on?’
‘He’s the slayer.’ Horace rounded on her. ‘That fat guy out there on the ground. He killed Casimir, and he stole Casimir’s address book.’
Gladys caught her breath. George clapped a hand over his mouth. But before I could remind Horace that all we had so far was circumstantial evidence, a sudden screech sounded from the alley.
The shock of it galvanised Dave.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘You three get downstairs.’
‘But—’
‘Go on, Horace! You know the rules!’ As everyone gawked at him – astonished to hear him throw his weight around – Dave raised his voice to address Bridget (who had only just reached the vestibule). ‘Bridget’s going down there – aren’t you, Bridget? You’ll be happy in the basement, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Bridget, who always finds any kind of descent very difficult. Perhaps Horace had this in mind when he abruptly – and unexpectedly – agreed to help her downstairs. Perhaps he was hoping that her slow progress would give him time enough to hear everything he wanted to hear.
‘Well, I suppose I’d better make myself scarce, since I’m obviously such an impediment to everything,’ Gladys remarked, fretfully rearranging her shawl. ‘Unlike Nina, of course, who’s welcome everywhere now that she’s carrying on like Zadia Bloodstone. It’s a wonder I’m allowed out of my smelly old sleeping-bag at all, really, when you consider what a nuisance I am—’
‘Oh, shut up, Gladys!’ My nerves were shot, or I wouldn’t have lashed out like that. ‘Stop moaning, for God’s sake! It’s not my fault you fanged Bridget!’
I have to admit, this was out of order. You should never chide people for failing the big test. Even Horace winced – and Gladys turned an unhealthy, yellowish shade.
‘I only fanged Bridget because I didn’t have Dave with me!’ she squawked. ‘I was all on my own, Nina – not like you! I bet Dave held you down, didn’t he? Didn’t he?’
I couldn’t deny it. And I didn’t get a chance to. Because Dave stepped in, taking advantage of everyone’s discomposure.
‘Okay, come on,’ he said. ‘Move it. Now.’ Thrown off balance, the others meekly shuffled towards the stairs, while Dave seized my arm. ‘Come here,’ he ordered, then dragged me over to the living-room window.
‘Sorry.’ I was feeling ashamed of myself. ‘She gets to me sometimes.’
‘Not fair, Nina.’
‘I know.’
‘You shouldn’t rub people’s noses in it—’
‘I know.’ We had reached our destination, so I peered through the iron security bars in search of something that would distract him. Sure enough, the scene in the alley was as full of incident as I’d hoped it would be. Father Ramon was crouched over Nefley’s head, trying to offer comfort. Sanford was preparing a syringe. Mum was speaking to our uninvited guest quite roughly; I could hear her through the window glass.
‘For Chrissake, you moron, will you calm down? I’m not a bloody vampire – look.’ And she flipped her dentures out of her mouth. ‘Thee?’ she said. ‘No teeth! Let alone fangth!’
Nefley, however, continued to emit feeble protests, which doubled in strength when Sanford stuck a needle in his thigh. It occurred to me that if the neighbouring house hadn’t been a business address – if it had contained a sleeping family, instead of a collection of empty offices – we would have been in trouble.
‘It’s all right,’ Sanford attested, his voice muffled and unclear. ‘You’ve broken your arm … there doesn’t seem to be any spinal damage, though I can’t be sure just yet …’ He looked up. ‘Dave? Can you hear me?’
‘Yeah,’ Dave replied, nodding energetically and moving his lips in an exaggerated way, as if he were talking to a deaf person. ‘I can hear you.’
‘We need some kind of stretcher,’ Sanford told him. ‘Get a sleeping-bag and stick an ironing board inside it – can you do that?’
‘Sure,’ said Dave. He immediately went to retrieve a sleeping-bag from the basement, while I fetched Mum’s ironing board. But he wouldn’t let me go with him when he delivered these items to Sanford. ‘There are too many people in the alley as it is,’ Dave said, before loping outside. I had to wait by the fridge, nursing a headache, until the whole rescue team came staggering into the kitchen. Nefley was in their midst, strapped to a makeshift stretcher.
He smelled of fresh blood.
I have to admit, I found that smell very difficult to endure. It made me slightly dizzy; I had to lean against the fridge and clap a tea-towel over my nose. But I didn’t lose control. I didn’t forget who I was, or what I was supposed to be doing. Dave had been one-hundred-per-cent right: the second time was much easier than the first – especially with Dave there, and Sanford, and Father Ramon. Just looking at them helped me. Dave did appear to be slightly affected, though his livid cheeks and faltering step might have been the natural result of overexertion, rather than a response to the smell of blood. As for Sanford, he was taking it all in his stride. His voice was firm and his manner brisk as he explained to me that he had fashioned a temporary splint out of a large screwdriver from Mum’s garden shed.
‘But I’m going to have to set the bone, once the swelling’s gone down,’ he declared. ‘And I can’t do that without my plaster-kit. I have everything I need except my plaster-kit.’ He glanced from Dave to Father Ramon. ‘Someone will have to get it from my house.’
‘Not if we call an ambulance,’ said Mum. When everyone stared at her, she became slightly flustered, and reached into the pocket of her housecoat for a cigarette. ‘I know what that would mean,’ she acknowledged. ‘I know the coppers would get involved. But don’t you think this has gone far enough? I mean – bloody hell, we’re dealing with some serious crims, here. How can the cops be any worse?’
From the look on Father Ramon’s face, I suspected that he was about to agree. Sanford, however, wouldn’t let him.
‘We’ve been through this a thousand times, Estelle,’ Sanford reminded her, with the air of someone dismissing a subject once and for all. ‘It wouldn’t just be the police – it would be the rest of world as well. The best we could hope for would be some kind of quarantine. The worst …’ He shook his head as his gaze drifted down towards Nefley, who was beginning to lose consciousness. ‘Well, it doesn’t bear thinking of.’
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ Father Ramon interposed. ‘But don’t you think, all things considered—’
‘No.’ Sanford was adamant. ‘I’ve seen what can happen, Father. You weren’t there in the old days. You don’t know what people will do.’ He was referring to the episode of sun exposure that I’ve already mentioned; it was an experience from which he’s never fully recovered. ‘If we can keep this under wraps, it’ll be better for everyone,’ he declared. ‘Now who’s going to bring me my plaster?’
Mum raised her hand. She would catch a cab, she said, and fetch whatever was needed. But Father Ramon refused to allow it; he insisted on going himself.
‘This is your house. It’s where you belong,’ he told her. Then he turned to Dave. ‘How did you get here, Dave
? Did you use my car?’
Dave nodded.
‘In that case, if you give me the keys, I’ll drive to Sanford’s myself,’ the priest continued, before fixing his attention on Nefley Irving. ‘Hello? Nefley? Are you awake?’ he inquired.
‘Ah-ngh,’ said Nefley, struggling to focus.
‘Nefley?’ Father Ramon poked him in the gut. ‘Where do you live? Can you tell me that? What’s your address?’
‘Ummmm …’
‘Nefley!’ When the priest began to slap Nefley’s cheeks, I think everyone else was just as surprised as I was. Sanford, in particular, reacted sharply.
‘He’s sedated!’ was Sanford’s outraged protest – which Father Ramon ignored. And just as well, too, because the next slap elicited an answer from Nefley. He mumbled a Parramatta address, and something about a spare key under a peg basket, before shutting his eyes again.
Father Ramon immediately cast around for paper to scribble on.
‘Sabel Avenue,’ he repeated, snatching up the notebook that Mum keeps beside the telephone. ‘Sabel Avenue …’
‘What’s so important about Sabel Avenue?’ asked Dave. And Sanford said, ‘He can’t be moved. Not yet. He can’t be taken home until he’s in a stable condition.’
‘I’m not going to take him home.’ Father Ramon wrote down Nefley’s address, tore the sheet of paper out of Mum’s notebook, and tucked the folded slip into his pocket. Then he swung around to confront the rest of us. ‘I’m going to find a public phone box,’ he said, ‘and I’m going to make an anonymous call to the police, informing them that two men currently residing at that address are holding a teenaged boy against his will.’
Everybody stared.
‘I have to do it,’ he went on. ‘I have to do something. Because if I don’t, I won’t be able to live with myself.’ He surveyed the ring of thunderstruck faces surrounding him. ‘Unless anyone has any objections?’
19
When Father Ramon left Mum’s house, about ten minutes later, he took with him a list of required medical equipment and the key to Sanford’s front door. But he didn’t have permission to call the police.