His Vampyrrhic Bride (11 page)

Once again the thunder bellowed. Immediately after that, he heard the rustle of branches; the animal seemed to be heading towards the river. Strangely, he made out what appeared to be people hissing words at each other. Though he couldn’t decipher the actual words, the unusual quality of that hiss made his scalp prickle. The sound alone pushed a cold current of fear through his veins.

Being scared of something he could not see infuriated Tom. He charged towards the sound. Already, he heard a splashing, as if the animal had blundered into the river. Then a female voice . . . calling.

He stopped dead.
Damn it, that sounds like Nicola! What the hell’s she doing out here?
He listened carefully as he padded towards the riverbank. Before he could hear the voice again, another crash of thunder barrelled along the river. When that faded he heard another voice – this, the rising cry from Owen.

There was no way he could leave the boy alone any longer while he chased shadows.

In seconds he’d reached Owen. He picked him up in his arms. ‘It’s alright, Owen, it’s me, Tom. Everything’s OK.’ He spoke in soothing tones. ‘We’ll go home now. There’s nothing to worry about.’

The boy, however, stared at the churned patch of earth.

He didn’t blink. When he talked, it seemed to Tom that he did so in a trance. ‘It’s not like you see in films. It’s not like that at all. It’s all made from people. Lots of people. They’re all mixed up in it. Stuck together . . .’

Tom carried the boy back home. Soothingly, he reassured Owen that everything was alright. The boy, however, continued to stare back over Tom’s shoulder. He seemed to see something haunting the shadows.

‘It’s not like the one you see in the church window,’ Owen said, still speaking in that trance-like way; a chilling monotone. ‘It was going to hurt me . . . She called it away.’

‘Who called it away, Owen?’

At that moment the thunder let loose a monstrous bellow. The sound could have come from gigantic jaws. There was fury in the sound. A threat of violence and death.

Owen sagged in Tom’s arms and started sobbing. ‘I want my mother. Take me to my mother.’

Tom couldn’t do that. Owen’s mother had been found dead at Mull-Rigg Hall. All he could do was murmur that everything would be alright.

But would it? Tom Westonby felt as if a huge, dark pit was opening beneath his feet. Something was badly wrong here in this remote corner of Yorkshire. Something was rotten. And dangerous. Incredibly dangerous.

Tom managed to get Owen back into bed without waking his own parents. Then he sat in the chair beside Owen’s bed as the child bunched his fists in his sleep. All night long the boy muttered with a dark, fretful intensity about the monster that haunted his nightmares.

T
he rain came. Thunder growled in such a way that it sounded as if an angry dinosaur prowled the valley. Lightning had struck a tree on the village green. The intense heat transformed the oak into an ugly black skeleton. Floodwaters engulfed potato fields by the river. The rain came even harder. Huge drops exploded against the road. In Chester Kenyon’s workshop, the din of falling rain could have been angry fists beating against the roof.

That wasn’t the worst of it. Chester Kenyon stared at Tom Westonby as if his friend has suddenly stabbed a knife into his stomach.

‘Jesus, Tom, you are joking, aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘Nicola Bekk?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re seeing Nicola Bekk?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Jesus Christ, Tom. You idiot!’ Chester flung a hammer down on to the workbench, then ran his fingers through his hair. His eyes bulged as he stared at Tom. ‘Nicola Bekk’s retarded.’

‘Hey, take that back. Nicola’s a great girl.’

‘Tom, she’s got problems here.’ He touched his forehead. ‘Learning difficulties. Backward. Retarded. Do you understand?’

Tom kicked aside a chair. ‘I thought we were friends. Truth is, I feel like punching you in your damn face.’

‘Oh my God. You’ve not had sex with her?’

‘None of your business.’ After the incident last night, when Owen had wandered off into the forest – sleep walking, he guessed – his nerves felt raw. His parents had said they would keep a close watch on Owen after Tom had explained what happened. They wondered if Owen’s grief over his mother’s sudden death had triggered frightening nightmares.

Right now, Tom needed to see a friendly face. Yet for some crazy reason Chester was making these disgusting accusations. Good grief, they were bizarre accusations at that.

Chester grabbed Tom by the elbow. When he spoke it was in a caring voice, though; he seemed deeply troubled. ‘Tell me you haven’t had sex with Nicola Bekk.’

Tom didn’t reply. The rain fell harder. The furious drumming on the roof became frenzied – it would be easy to imagine the weather itself was growing excited by the atmosphere of violence in the workshop. Thunder roared across the valley.

‘Tom. This is important. Have you had sex with that woman?’

‘Shit . . . I thought we were friends.’

‘Spit it out, Tom. Have you screwed her?’

‘No.’

Chester let out a yell of relief. ‘Thank God for that!’

‘You’re just like the other people in the village, you bastard. You hate the Bekk family. You’ve got a grudge against them.’ Tom stormed out into the rain.

Chester ran after him. ‘Listen, we need to talk.’

‘I never want to talk to you again.’

‘Tom—’

‘If you don’t let go of my arm I’m going to break your jaw.’

Chester spoke gently: ‘Go ahead, punch me. But I’m going to tell you something important.’

Tom said nothing.

Raindrops streamed down Chester’s broad face as he continued speaking: ‘You must have seen for yourself. Nicola doesn’t talk.’

This statement flabbergasted Tom. ‘Of course she talks.’

‘OK, she says a word here and there.’

‘No. I’ve had conversations with her.’

‘We’re talking about the same Nicola Bekk, aren’t we?’

Tom looked him in the eye. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘Come inside.’ Chester’s voice was friendly. ‘There’s something you should know . . . It might just save your neck.’

T
he rain kept slamming at the roof. Once again thunder crashed from the clouds. Fury and anger were there. As if Mother Nature threatened to punish the population of Danby-Mask.

Chester Kenyon handed Tom a mug of coffee before pulling a book from a shelf on the workshop wall. That done, he sat down on a chair alongside Tom.

Chester thought for a moment before speaking. ‘I’m going to show you something. I want you to know that I’m not doing this to insult you, or hurt you. But it’s important that you know the truth, even if that means you knock my teeth out.’

‘After what you’ve said about Nicola I might just do that.’

‘OK, you say she’s your girlfriend. You kissed her. But haven’t had sex yet.’

‘Chester?’ Tom’s voice held the same warning growl as the thunder.

‘Listen. I’m twenty-three years old – the same age as Nicola. We went to the village school together. When she was twelve she stopped going. That was the end of her education.’

‘So explain why you think Nicola has learning difficulties.’

‘For seven years I was at school with Nicola. In all that time I never heard her say a sentence of more than three words.’

‘You only have to look at her,’ Tom protested. ‘She’s normal. And she – she’s beautiful.’
What’s got into Chester
, he wondered.
Why’s he trying to break Nicola and me up?

Chester opened a book covered with children’s drawings. Tom showed him the first page; a title had been printed in green: CLASSROOM FRIENDSHIP BOOK.

‘We used to do these at the end of the school year,’ he explained. ‘The teacher told us to swap the books round in class. We’d draw a picture of the owner of the book and write messages. That way everyone in the class would have drawn your picture and written something about you. You know, a memento?’ He flicked through the pictures. Lots showed a broad-faced boy that was clearly supposed to be Chester. ‘We did this one when I was eight.’ Each page had a child’s drawing of Chester – in one he was playing football, in another eating gigantic cakes; one even had him being fired from a canon. One caption ran:
Yo! Fat Neck Kenyon.

‘Fat Neck?’ Tom gave him a questioning look.

Chester touched his formidable neck. ‘Yeah, the nickname stuck.’

The drawings were typical of those by an eight-year-old. The girls’ pictures tended to be neater and dispensed with the ‘Fat Neck’.

‘I’m showing you the next page,’ Chester said, ‘because it backs up what I’ve been saying about Nicola.’

Tom’s blood drained from his face, leaving him cold inside as Chester turned the page. In the centre of the white paper was a dense black scribble. All jagged lines. A frenzy of black pen-marks. This wasn’t so much a picture as a savage attack on the page. An adult hand had written:
Nicola Bekk says, ‘Hi, to my nice friend, Chester.’

For a moment, Tom couldn’t speak. ‘Nicola did that?’

‘I didn’t bully her like the other kids. Even then I knew it was wrong to call her names because she couldn’t read or write.’ He pointed to the
nice friend
message. ‘Miss Kravitz added that.’

The rain hissed against the roof, rising and falling like angry breathing. A searing flash of blue lightning lit up the workshop.

‘Sorry to do this to you, Tom.’ Chester closed the book, hiding that scribble – there was something tormented and desperate about those bursting lines of ink.

‘She’s not like that.’ Tom shook his head.

‘She was. She still is. When Nicola comes into the village she doesn’t speak. If she buys stuff at the store all she does is point.’

‘No. You’re lying.’

‘Come on. There’s one more thing to show you.’

He led the way into a back room that had been fitted out as a rest area. There were ancient saggy armchairs facing a television complete with a DVD system.

‘Wait here, Tom.’ Chester spoke in a kindly way. He obviously didn’t want to hurt his friend. There was a sense he did this reluctantly.

Chester left Tom for only a few moments. He soon returned with a DVD, which he fed into the player. He then switched on the TV.

‘My Grandad filmed this at the Christmas nativity show at school.’ He glanced back at Tom before pressing the play button. ‘I’m doing this because you’re my friend, Tom. If the police knew you were . . . you know, with Nicola, and with her being like she is . . . there’d be trouble.’

Tom could only shake his head. Thunder crashed around the building.
That’s the sound of my world falling down
, he thought.

The television screen flashed. A Christmas carol sung by children flooded the room. The poignant notes of ‘Silent Night’ always had a melancholy air for Tom. The carol celebrated the birth of the Boy Child, yet the melody hinted at tragedy lying ahead. Tom watched as children acted out the Nativity story. Seven-year-olds, wearing towels on their heads, pretended to be Bethlehem’s citizens, and here came the Three Wise Men with cardboard crowns decorated in gold foil. Tom identified one Wise Man as a seven-year-old Chester Kenyon, grinning hugely as the crown kept sliding down to cover his eyes. All the schoolchildren seemed to be taking part, as angels, shepherds, townsfolk, the apologetic innkeeper, and Mary and Joseph.

All the children, that is, except one.

In the background, by a door, stood a little girl. A tiny blonde sprite. She stared at the Nativity play as if the children had deliberately acted in some way that was inexplicable to her. She wasn’t in costume. Her blue eyes glittered with fear. If anything, she resembled a wild fawn from the forest that had been caught in a trap.

Chester’s grandfather had been filming the children in long shot, to get as many on screen as possible. For some reason he zoomed into close-up on the strange sprite of a girl.

The thin, heart-shaped face filled the television screen. The eyes looked into the camera lens. Tom felt as if she stared directly at him. Without a shred of doubt he knew the name of that unearthly child.

That was a seven-year-old Nicola Bekk.

Her eyes narrowed – the Christian festival seemed to be the cause of physical pain.

At that moment a teacher’s voice rang out as she narrated the Nativity. ‘And, lo, a boy child is born. And His name is Jesus!’

In the video, Nicola Bekk let out a piercing scream. The girl was terrified. She pushed open the door behind her and ran into a corridor. There were no lights in the corridor. It looked for all the world that she raced into a tunnel, which led down into the depths of the earth.

Tom’s heart went out to the frightened child that was Nicola Bekk. ‘The poor girl.’

‘You might think that, Tom. The truth is, nobody likes Nicola Bekk. What’s more, the villagers hate her mother. Five years ago, Mrs Bekk tried to set fire to St George’s church. She was lucky she didn’t end up in prison.’

‘There must have been a reason why she did that.’

‘Oh, there’s a reason alright. Mrs Bekk is crazy.’ Chester’s expression was grim. ‘Dangerously crazy at that. If you’ll take some advice, Tom, don’t have anything to do with the Bekk family. Don’t speak to them. Don’t even acknowledge they exist.’

Tom shuddered at the sound of Chester’s words. They had the same chilling tones as a sentence of death.
But whose death? Mine? Nicola’s?

Thunder crashed again. Such a forbidding sound – as ominous as the pounding of monstrous fists breaking down the doors of a tomb to set the dead upon the living.

C
hester Kenyon’s shock warning still rang in Tom’s ears:
don’t have anything to do with the Bekk family. Don’t speak to them. Don’t even acknowledge they exist.
As Tom walked from Chester’s workshop to his car, the words continued to roll about his skull with the same grim resonance as the thunder rolling across the landscape.

Moments later, he drove away along Main Street. Danby-Mask had radiated charm when he first saw the place. The ancient stone buildings, beneath red tiled roofs, nestled alongside the River Lepping. This could have been a quaint hamlet right out of a Victorian painting.