He hung up.
I don’t think anyone quite knew what to say, initially. Sanford appeared to be thinking. Father Ramon was obviously reassessing his planned route; he suddenly pulled into someone’s driveway, and executed a rather clumsy three-point turn. Bridget was looking puzzled.
I couldn’t even pretend to be anxious. In fact I was downright disgusted. ‘Ten to one Casimir’s out on the prowl,’ I said at last, airing a very natural suspicion. ‘I bet he’s got his fangs into somebody as we speak.’
Boom! Instant uproar. If I had set fire to Gladys, I might have triggered a less impassioned response.
‘Nina!’ Father Ramon seemed genuinely horrified. ‘That’s a dreadful thing to say!’
‘You shouldn’t talk about people like that,’ Bridget protested. I couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses that she wore, but her face was even whiter than usual. It was almost as white as her hair.
Sanford twisted around to admonish me.
‘Casimir Kucynski hasn’t set a foot wrong since being released,’ he pointed out, in frigid accents. ‘That was five years ago. Casimir’s reformed now.’
‘Reformed?’ I folded my arms. ‘He sleeps in a coffin, Sanford!’
‘He’s doing his best, Nina. Casimir is a victim too – just like the rest of us.’ Sanford’s tone became pompous. ‘You know you’re not the only one who was infected by Casimir. If the others have forgiven him, why can’t you?’
‘Because he’s a creep,’ I replied, without fear of contradiction. Casimir Kucynski was a creep. Even Sanford couldn’t deny it. Though Casimir might have called himself a reformed vampire, he was anything but. He would go on and on about ‘the good old days’, when you could buy your very own black people. (‘Black people blood is meaty,’ he’d reminisce, smacking his lips and grinning like a skull.) He would do the most awful things with his tongue, which was long and blue, like one of those poisonous jellyfish. He had eyes like oysters, and teeth like tombstones.
In fact, if you want my honest opinion, Casimir had been a vampire for so long that he wasn’t really human any more. It’s vampires like Casimir who give other vampires a bad name. But try telling that to Sanford. Even now he maintains that it’s important not to draw any kind of distinction between what’s human and what’s vampiric. He insists that vampirism is just another form of humanity – that there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a vampire. And whenever I try to contradict him, he gives me a lecture about my attitude.
‘Casimir is probably sick,’ said Father Ramon, playing the peace-maker as usual. ‘He probably can’t get out of bed.’
‘That’s right,’ Sanford agreed. ‘He might be having an adverse reaction to his supplements. It’s happened before.’
I could have reminded him, at this juncture, that Casimir had also suffered adverse reactions from fanging dead rats. But I didn’t speak. Instead I stared out at the passing streetscape, which was undergoing a slow transformation: the turrets, avenues, door-knockers, mailboxes and iron railings were giving way to signage, awnings, plate glass, traffic lights and concrete barriers. Pedestrians strolled along, swaddled in winter coats. Coloured lights flashed inside a corner pub.
I lifted my sunglasses, to get a better look at the festivities. It was only going to be a quick squint.
But Sanford nearly bit my head off.
‘Nina!’ he squawked. ‘There are headlights everywhere! Do you want your eyes to start bleeding again?’
Welcome to my world. It’s the kind of place where you can’t do the simplest thing without risking a full-blown haemorrhage.
God I’m sick of it.
2
People often think that vampires live in decrepit old castles, or mausoleums, or sprawling mansions full of stained glass and wood panelling. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Perhaps it would be, if all the vampires in this world were millionaires. But since the ones I know are just ordinary working stiffs (so to speak), their dwellings tend to be on the modest side. They can’t afford towers or gargoyles or enormous iron gates. Some of them can’t even afford a broadband connection.
Nevertheless, there are certain features that distinguish a vampire’s domicile. A vampire, for instance, doesn’t like picture windows. In fact a vampire doesn’t like windows at all. So you’re not going to find a vampire living in a modernistic glass box featuring lots of skylights and breezeways.
For the same reason, a vampire’s windows are always well covered. Shutters and curtains are favoured over vertical or venetian blinds. Rubbery draught excluders are attached to most of the doors, and there’s never an exposed keyhole or an unsealed mail slot.
What’s more, a vampire likes to sleep somewhere special. Somewhere safe. So a vampire’s abode usually contains the kind of bolthole that you often don’t find in normal homes. Sanford, for instance, lives in a former bank and sleeps in the vault. Gladys and Bridget live in an old butcher’s shop and sleep in what was once a refrigerated meat locker. Even Dave has managed to find a skinny little duplex with a disused darkroom in it.
As for me, I sleep in the basement of my mother’s big Victorian terrace house. It’s quite a nice space, really, even though Mum had to brick up the front window, and block off the outside door. There are quite a few cockroaches, but they only come out at night, when I’m upstairs. And we use a dehumidifier to keep the damp under control.
But Casimir never had the funds to inhabit anything vampire-friendly. While the rest of us have managed to support ourselves one way or another, Casimir was always far too antisocial; he used to get by on a disability pension, augmented by the occasional gift from those of us with money to spare. As a result, he could only afford to occupy a one-bedroom flat. A down-market one-bedroom flat.
The building itself was a dingy art-deco structure, all blood-coloured brick and pus-coloured paint. It stood three storeys high, on a narrow patch of mangy grass. There was a separate laundry block, as well as a two-car garage.
When we arrived there, we saw Dave’s blue hatchback sitting out the front.
‘Don’t park too close to Dave,’ I suggested, leaning forward to address Father Ramon. ‘It might look too busy. Like an emergency, or something. People might get interested.’
‘She’s right,’ Sanford agreed – to my utter astonishment. ‘Park around the corner a bit.’
So we parked around the corner a bit, some distance from the nearest street lamp. As we swept past the hatchback, I spotted Dave in its driver’s seat, with Horace beside him. They had been smart enough to stay huddled in the car, instead of hanging around the front entrance.
I should probably explain, at this point, that Dave Gerace is the only vampire in our group who can drive. When he was infected, back in ’73, he’d already had his licence for just over two years (having acquired it at the age of seventeen), and he’s managed to renew it regularly ever since, by means of various cunning and questionable ploys. That’s why he’s spent the last three decades chauffeuring the rest of us from pillar to post. You have to admire him for it; personally, in Dave’s position, I’d have been tempted to run over Casimir, instead of faithfully picking him up every Tuesday night. But Dave’s so tolerant and mature. And sensible. And safety-conscious. Once I was listening to some music in his car, and when I asked him to pump up the volume a bit, he wouldn’t. He said he was worried that my ears might start bleeding, the way my eyes and nose and gums often do. It’s funny: to look at him, you’d think he was a teenager. But a lot of the time he acts just like my mum.
During all the years I’ve known him, he has never, ever exceeded the speed limit.
‘You might want to come with me, Sanford,’ Father Ramon remarked, when his own vehicle had stopped moving. He jerked at the handbrake as he turned his key in the ignition. ‘Casimir might need some help.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Sanford replied. Then he glanced into the back seat. ‘Someone had better stay with Bridget,’ he added. ‘She wouldn’t even make
it up the stairs.’
‘I’ll stay,’ Gladys offered, in a feeble voice. ‘Casimir smells, and I feel sick enough already.’
‘Then I’ll go too,’ I said. Because the sad fact is that Gladys happens to be a chronic whiner, who rarely talks about anything except her own health problems. She claims that she suffers more severely from symptoms and side-effects than the rest of us do – though I’ve noticed that she’s never too sick to curl and colour her hair. (She’s not a natural blonde, that’s for sure.) At any rate, I was in no mood to hear about her rotting toenails.
‘I want to see Casimir’s flat, anyway,’ I said, pushing open the back door. ‘I’ve never been in there.’
‘It isn’t very exciting,’ the priest observed doubtfully. He seemed to have forgotten that any new venue is exciting when you don’t get out much. Like the rest of our group, I have to put up with a very limited existence: I never meet any strangers, I conduct most of my business online, and I’m frequently so ill or exhausted that I spend entire nights slumped in front of the television.
So I ignored Father Ramon and set off towards Dave’s car.
By this time it was empty. Dave and George and Horace had already climbed out, and were standing around with their hands in their pockets, waiting for us. Dave was dressed in his usual jeans and denim jacket, so he looked all right. George was wearing the kind of baggy, oversized, swamp-coloured clothes that you see on most sixteen-year-olds these days, so he wasn’t too conspicuous, despite the orange fuzz on his scalp.
Horace, however, had arrayed himself in a Gothic assortment of crushed velvet, black satin and patent leather that shouldn’t be allowed, in my view. He might as well have had I AM A VAMPIRE embroidered across the front of his watered-silk waistcoat. An outfit like that is going to get him staked one of these days; it’s exactly what Boris Karloff would have worn, if he’d joined the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
‘You shouldn’t be out in that stuff,’ I muttered, as soon as I was close enough to be heard. ‘Why not go the whole hog, and put on a bloody bat costume?’
‘Get in the car, Horace!’ Sanford snarled. He was close on my heels, and took me by surprise. Even Dave looked startled. But Horace merely lifted one side of his mouth, exposing a yellowish fang.
‘Bite me, Sanford,’ was all that he said.
‘Is the intercom actually working?’ Father Ramon quietly asked Dave, before any further comment could be made on the subject of Horace’s ridiculous costume. ‘Did you press the other buttons?’
‘Only one,’ Dave replied. ‘A woman said hello.’
With a grunt, the priest pulled a bunch of keys from somewhere beneath his cassock. And Horace snorted.
‘I don’t know why you’re so worried about my clothes attracting attention,’ he remarked. ‘Father Ramon’s wearing a dress, for God’s sake!’
‘Shut up, Horace,’ said Dave. He must have been quite rattled, because he rarely snaps at anyone. On the contrary, he tends to slouch glumly in the background, hiding behind his hair and his five-o’clock shadow.
Sanford always used to say that Dave was stuck in the depression phase of the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle. But then again, Sanford was born in the nineteenth century; he thinks that any man who doesn’t shave every morning is either clinically depressed or a prison inmate.
He also likes to see women wearing hats, even in the middle of the night.
‘George, you should go and sit with Bridget and Gladys,’ he said, as Father Ramon strode down Casimir’s front path. ‘If anything happens, they’ll need somebody with them; they’re not fit to take care of themselves.’
Then he followed Father Ramon, leaving the rest of us dumb-struck – because George Mumford isn’t someone I’d like to have taking care of me. One look at his gormless, waxy, nondescript face is enough to tell you that he’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the box.
But perhaps that was why Sanford had decided to get rid of him. Perhaps Sanford felt that George was much better out of the way.
Horace certainly seemed to think so.
‘Yes, off you go, George,’ said Horace. ‘No reason why we should all head up there. We wouldn’t fit in, for a start.’
‘How do you know?’ I was taken aback. ‘Have you been inside Casimir’s flat?’
Horace shrugged.
‘I had to upgrade my PC, so I gave my old one to Casimir,’ he revealed. ‘Someone had to get him connected.’
‘To the Internet?’ This was ominous news, which hadn’t been debated at any of our meetings. Before I could pursue it, however, Dave beckoned to us.
‘Hurry up,’ he said, ‘if you’re coming.’
And we went.
The main entrance to Casimir’s building was protected by a security door with a missing pane of glass. Beyond it, a shabby foyer contained a noticeboard, a light switch, and something that was either an empty planter or a very large ashtray. The carpet looked older than I am. Cobwebs fluttered from inaccessible corners of the ceiling.
I couldn’t imagine how Casimir’s coffin had been lugged all the way up to the top floor.
‘Don’t make too much noise,’ the priest murmured, putting a finger to his lips. It was unnecessary advice. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt horribly vulnerable as we approached Casimir’s apartment. Every creak of the stairs made us wince. Every peephole in every numbered door seemed to be aimed straight at us, like a loaded gun. I couldn’t help wondering how on earth Casimir had survived in such a crowded place. How had he smuggled in his guinea pigs? And by what means had he disposed of their telltale little corpses?
‘Uh-oh,’ said Horace, under his breath. I peered past him, unnerved by a muffled roar of canned laughter. Clearly, the occupants of number twelve were watching television. The walls were so thin that I could hear the clink of cutlery, and the sound of someone coughing.
Father Ramon had reached number fourteen. Even from where I was stationed, bringing up the rear, it was obvious that Casimir’s lock had been tampered with.
The spare key wouldn’t be needed after all.
‘It could have been a robbery,’ the priest said at last, his voice a mere thread of sound. ‘Casimir might have been scared away if he woke up and found the place ransacked.’
‘But why not call us?’ I whispered. And Horace hissed, ‘Let’s just go in. Now. Before somebody asks what the hell we’re doing.’
There was really no choice. Father Ramon pushed at Casimir’s front door, which creaked open to admit us. One by one, those of us wearing sunglasses slowly removed them.
Inside the flat, total silence reigned. I couldn’t even hear the humming of a fridge.
‘Casimir?’ said Father Ramon, hesitantly.
No one replied. It was very dark. Even so, there was enough light spilling across the threshold to show me that Casimir had taped sheets of cardboard over the windows. I could also see how bare the living room was; it contained one stool, one recliner chair, a portable TV on top of a milk crate, and a wooden desk supporting Casimir’s personal computer.
‘This place wasn’t robbed,’ Horace opined, as Father Ramon flicked the switch by the door. But nothing happened.
‘Oh dear,’ said the priest.
There was no bulb in the overhead socket. Vampires are extremely sensitive to artificial light; I realised suddenly that Casimir must have functioned quite well with only the TV and computer screens to illuminate his domestic environment.
That’s why I offered to turn on both machines.
‘I’ll do it,’ Dave said softly, and sidled towards them, step by cautious step. Sanford took the priest’s arm.
‘Just stand still, Father,’ he advised, in an undertone. ‘You might run into something, otherwise.’
At that instant the TV clicked on, brought to life by a jab of Dave’s finger. Shots rang out and music blared; we all flinched like nervous chihuahuas. Frantically Dave scrabbled around for the remote, which he used to adjust the volume.
&nb
sp; For some reason, however, that blast of noise had changed things. It had broken the spell cast by such a creepy, all-encompassing silence. We felt safer, and more courageous.
Horace, for example, suddenly marched towards the kitchen.
‘There’s no one in here,’ he announced, peering into a narrow, murky, unrenovated nook. ‘Unless Casimir’s hiding in a cupboard.’
Gently, Father Ramon shut the front door. Sanford headed for the bathroom. Dave and I peered through another door, into a space that looked pitch black from where we were standing.
‘His coffin’s in there,’ the priest informed us. Dave and I exchanged glances.
‘You’ve got the best eyes,’ Dave pointed out – and it was true. I have terrific night vision. Perhaps it’s because I was infected at a younger age than anyone else in our group.
‘I found a candle,’ said Horace, from inside the kitchen. ‘Matches, too.’
But by then I was already stepping into Casimir’s bedroom, where I almost fell over his coffin. It had been placed directly onto the floor, you see, and lay much too close to the entrance. Upon crouching down, and running my hands over a large expanse of polished wood, I discovered an extremely handsome piece of funeral furniture with brass fittings, carved embellishments, and a lid that was divided into two parts.
I couldn’t lift even one of these parts by myself.
‘You’ll have to help,’ I told Dave, who was hovering around in a nervous manner, as if he expected something to come leaping out of the shadows. Obediently, he squatted, his knees cracking.
‘You don’t think he’s still in there, do you?’ Sanford enquired from the doorway. All at once the room was flooded with a faint golden glow; I glanced around to see that Horace had entered, carrying his candle. He was shielding the flame with one hand, looking positively spectral in his black cape and frockcoat. His lank, oily, slicked-back hair gleamed like a billiard ball in the flickering light.
On either side of him stood Sanford and Father Ramon, their faces creased with anxiety.