His Vampyrrhic Bride (5 page)

But what he saw standing just five feet from the cottage door was real and most definitely not a figment of his imagination. For Christ’s sake, Runty saw the thing, too; his eyes bulged as he stared at the strange creature. Zip’s eyes darted to the kitchen window. The women were still making sandwiches. They’d heard nothing from outside yet.

But what was this spook outside the door?

Zip pushed Runty aside so he could approach the pale creature. He shone the light full in its face.

Dear God.

Runty made stupid groaning noises. The idiot was scared half to death.

Borderline-psychotic Zip Pearson wasn’t scared. Once, when a skinhead had stabbed him in the neck he’d only laughed. Zip got ready to punch the monster.

That’s what it is, isn’t it? A bog-ugly monster.
Zip wasn’t afraid. He was excited.

A man stood there. Shreds of fabric passed for clothes. They hung in strips from his shoulders. His skin held a peculiar blue-white tint. The veins in his neck revealed themselves as black lines, almost as if a bizarre road map had been tattooed there.

There wasn’t a single hair on the creature’s bald scalp. Most striking were the eyes. They were white. The same white as the flesh of a boiled egg. In the centre of each eye, a black pupil. A tiny black dot like a punctuation mark against a white page.

The man didn’t move. He simply stood there straight as a soldier, guarding the door. The pinpoint eyes did nothing but stare forwards.

‘No . . . no . . .’ Runty whimpered. He backed away along the path towards the stone archway. Runty wasn’t sticking around.

‘I like you,’ Zip murmured to the creature. ‘You look cool.’ His psychotic condition suddenly erupted. Zip pushed the figure. The bare chest felt as cold as raw beef taken from the fridge. The skin was wet.

‘You were born too beautiful.’ Zip grinned. ‘Want to take me on?’

There was no response from the stark, blue-white man. Zip pushed harder. The figure staggered backwards. Zip nearly whooped with excitement. He grabbed hold of the bony shoulders and threw the spook into the bushes.

‘Runty. Come back. It can’t hurt you.’ He chuckled. ‘The pasty bastard’s weak as gnat jizz.’

‘I’m not staying here,’ hissed Runty from the archway. ‘There’s something wrong with the place.’

Zip turned round. Two more figures stood on the path between him and the house.

Spooky buggers. They’d just appeared there.

So what . . .? They’re pushovers. Easy pushovers.

Zip approached the two figures, which were identical to one another. They
were
easy pushovers. He shoved them over into the bushes to prove it. There they lay like oversized Halloween dolls. Their white eyes, which were centred with the fierce black pupil, stared up at him.

‘Runty,’ he called, ‘they can’t hurt you.’

He shone the flashlight along the path, catching a glimpse of Runty’s feet. They seemed to flicker he was running so fast. Chicken-shit coward.

Quickly, he shot a glance at the kitchen window. The beautiful blonde stared out through the glass. So strange . . . it was one of those sleepwalk stares. A trance state. She didn’t move a muscle. The fact that there were intruders, and ghostly statue men, just outside her house didn’t attract her attention at all.

Somewhere in the distance Runty screamed. A full-blooded scream of pain, terror, despair . . .

Death was in that scream. Death ran through it like an electric current runs through a wire. Runty was gone.

‘Cool.’ Zip smiled; this place was more interesting than he anticipated. He walked purposefully towards the cottage. A plan took shape: kick in the door, tie up the women, and then let the good times rip.

Only, the path to the door had been blocked again. This time it wasn’t a white dummy spook. What blocked the way couldn’t be pushed over.

Zip shone the flashlight on the huge mound that rose out of the shadows.

A moving mound. A hissing mound.

And at that moment he wondered if the psychiatrists had been right all along. That he, Zip Pearson, couldn’t tell the difference between reality and dreams.

Because this was a living nightmare.

The mound’s surface undulated. There was a Mexican wave kind of ripple across the huge body.

Faces. Zip saw faces. Masses and masses and masses of faces. A wall of faces . . . an entire constellation of staring eyes . . .

‘Cool . . .’

Zip never backed off from a fight; eagerly, he threw himself at the mound. Abruptly, there was a sense of being enclosed . . . being swallowed.

The robber was held in a crushing grip. Teeth from dozens of jaws bit deep into his skin. The CRACKLE he heard was the sound of his ribs breaking. The GASP he heard erupted from his own mouth.

Nothing less than a tidal wave of agony broke over him – that’s when he really started to scream. This habitual torturer eventually understood what torture really felt like.

And the worst pain? That was still to come.

A
t ten minutes to six, Tom Westonby locked the front door of Mull-Rigg Hall. He didn’t want to stand waiting at the gate for Nicola as if he were some overeager teenager. Instead, he headed round the back of the house.

When she knocked, he could stroll round the corner in a nonchalant way. OK, maybe he was overdoing the relaxed nonchalance. The trouble was, he still hadn’t figured out how he’d made that significant transition between telling the stranger in white to clear off and inviting her into the garden for that drink she’d asked for.

She was beautiful. He was twenty-three and had been without a girlfriend for months. So that might account for something. And he knew that sexual attraction played a large part in his motivation.

Tom also remembered a teacher from secondary school pointing out (when Tom was distracted by sixteen-year-old girls promenading by the class window) this important fact: ‘Westonby. In the Middle Ages, if you said a girl had “glamour” it meant you were calling her a witch. Don’t let those glamorous girls cast their spell on you. At least not until you’ve finished that essay on Dickens.’

Nicola had glamour. Without a shadow of doubt, she had glamour. The vital question was:
has she cast her spell on me?
He’d reached the back lawn when the phone in his pocket croaked, ‘Tom! Your air tank’s run out! You’re gonna die!’ Scuba-diver humour even extended to ringtones.

The name on the screen ID’d the caller.

‘Chris,’ he said, ‘how’s it going?’

‘Any sign of that seventeen grand?’

‘I’ve been doing some calculations. I converted what we’ve got in the equipment fund from pounds sterling. That comes to seven thousand dollars.’

‘So where do we magic up the other ten thou?’

‘My dad’s paying me to get the house ready, so I’m going to ask if I can stay on here for another three months.’

‘You mean at Money-Pit Hall?’

‘Mull-Rigg Hall.’

‘That’s what I said, Money-Pit Hall. I didn’t know your dad was loaded.’

‘He isn’t. But my aunt left some cash; they’re spending it on the renovations.’

‘Tom, I
need
the rent. We can’t wait three months for you to make that money refurbing your parents’ house.’

‘The place out there is really that good?’

‘It’s perfect. Just seconds from the beach. We’ll be right next to masses of hotels. There isn’t a better location in the whole of Greece. I know one hundred per cent – shit, one million per cent – we’ve got the right place!’

‘I planned to persuade my dad to give me an advance on my wages.’

‘He’ll give you the money upfront?’ Chris sounded doubtful.

‘That’s what I’ll be asking him.’

‘Tom, there might be another way to solve our problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘Listen. I’ve got some important news, though I wish I could talk to you face-to-face.’

‘Go on.’ Tom had a sinking feeling.

‘You’re not going to like this . . .’ Chris sounded like a man breaking bad news. ‘Well, here goes: Carol’s here.’

‘I thought you broke up with her last year?’

‘We did. The thing is, she’s wanting to try again.’ He finished the rest in a rush. ‘And she’s got the seventeen thousand dollars we need. She’s keen to buy into the business. As a full partner.’

‘Chris, that woman set fire to your car! You can’t seriously be thinking about taking her back?’

‘Carol has the money
right here
.’

‘Are you insane?’

‘Shh . . . I’m here on the beach with her.’

‘No. Damn well no!’

‘Tom—’

‘That lunatic woman will ruin everything!’ Tom looked up. Nicola stood no more than ten paces from him. He hadn’t even noticed her appear.

When he lifted the phone from his ear so she could see that he was taking a call, she gave an
I see
gesture and pantomimed putting her fingers in her ears before backing away amongst the apple trees.

He turned his attention back to the call that threatened to ruin his and Chris’s dive-school plans. ‘Chris!’ he bellowed, not caring whether Carol on the Greek beach, or Nicola in the orchard could hear. ‘Chris. We promised each other not to get seriously involved with girlfriends until we’d got the business up and running. Don’t agree anything with Carol. Nothing at all! I’ll call you tomorrow after I’ve talked with my dad.’

He switched off the phone, savagely kicked the heads off a clutch of dandelions, then went to find Nicola.

‘Trouble?’ she asked.

‘Seventeen thousand dollar trouble,’ he growled.

‘Sorry to hear it.’ She smiled.

The smile made him feel better. What was it that his teacher had said about girls with glamour? Witchcraft? The power to cast spells? Her smile was one of the nice spells. His anger at the menacing reappearance of Chris’s old flame evaporated.

Nicola’s fair hair spilled down over a T-shirt that was the colour of burnt orange. With that, she wore a flowing white skirt. Once more he noticed the way her delicate toes peeked from under the straps of her sandals. There was something fetching about those toes. He imagined Nicola’s bare feet slipping into cool pond water. The image quickened his heartbeat. Those bare toes were downright sexy.

‘This way’s the quickest.’ She headed for the bottom of the garden.

‘That’s where you parked your car?’

‘Car? We’re walking.’

‘We could go in mine.’

‘Not to my house. No roads go there.’ Smiling, she led the way.

‘I didn’t know there were any other houses nearby.’

‘You probably didn’t notice. What with living in that big mansion.’

‘So, where are you taking me?’

‘To a mysterious realm all of our own.’ Her tone was light and somehow pleasantly enticing. ‘We do things differently there. The normal laws of the universe don’t apply.’

He politely laughed at her joke. ‘OK, take me to fairyland.’

‘Be warned, Tom Westonby. You’ll pass the point of no return. Your world will never, ever be the same again.’

Nicola moved along the woodland path, almost skipping rather than walking.

Tom followed. He’d been amused by her playful banter about mysterious realms. In fact, this suddenly did seem a magical place. Birdsong filled the forest. The sun drove shafts of light down through the branches, so the place resembled a stage, complete with spotlights ready to illuminate glamorous actors the instant they appeared. Warm air enfolded him in a comforting embrace. Wild flowers scented the air. Above all, he was in the company of a beautiful woman, with bright, shining eyes.

What could be better than this?

Only, that’s the precise moment Tom’s world went wrong. There was that ominous feeling you get when forbidding storm-clouds kill a blue sky. The sunshine vanished. The forest path became so dark that he could barely see Nicola. The temperature plunged. A coldness emerged from the earth. Ice worked its way into his veins. There was an awful sensation, as if snow was being tightly packed around his heart.

Then the birdsong stopped.

In that silent wilderness, there was some
thing
present. A sense that a huge, malignant spirit was focusing all its hatred on him, Tom Westonby. Even though he could see nobody other than Nicola, he had an overwhelming feeling of being stared at.

Shivers swept over his body. As if thousands of vile insects had poured out of a tomb and then scurried up over his body and his face.

Once, a few years ago, his diver’s instinct for survival had warned him not to venture into a shipwreck. A moment later he’d noticed a vicious conger eel lurking there. That monster of an eel could have bitten clean through flesh to the bone. If it had embedded its teeth in his arm it could have held him underwater until he’d drowned. That same survival instinct rose up inside of him now. The mechanism for self-preservation screamed at him to turn back. To run home.
Get out of here. Don’t go with that woman. Glamour means witchcraft. Witchcraft means curses. Something bad is waiting in the forest . . .

Then the inexplicable moment of dread was over. Whatever blocked the sun moved away. Birds sang again.

Nicola hadn’t noticed the eerie change in the forest and called out, ‘Catch up, Tom. Nearly there.’

Tom followed her into the heart of the wood. This had all the importance of crossing over a threshold from one world to another. His diver’s instinct for survival still warned him to turn back.

Glamour’s a powerful thing. Tom Westonby ignored the warning voice in his head. He caught up with Nicola, and both of them walked through a gap between two huge trees – and it felt like he was entering the mouth of a monstrous beast.

T
he path took them to the river.

‘Do you know your way around the valley yet?’ Nicola asked.

‘I thought I did.’ Tom skimmed a stone across the water. ‘One, two, three, four . . .’ The stone clattered over boulders on the far bank. ‘Not bad; I reached the other side.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t know that I had neighbours living so close.’

‘Not so close. We live half a mile from you.’

‘Been here long?’ He picked up another stone.