Creed (8 page)

Envelopes dropping on to his head were the first thing to disturb him. He opened bleary eyes with difficulty and noted that three of those envelopes lying on his chest were brown, the kind that contain bills. He drifted off again.

It was an hour later – although Creed wasn’t aware of the time lapse – that pounding from the other side of the door roused him again.

He groaned, he moaned. He barely moved.

Pounding again, matching the pounding inside his head. Somebody was putting hearty force behind the knocker. Creed attempted to push himself upright, but the effort of doing that seemed to hurt his head more than anything else. More cautiously, he tried again.

‘Mr Creed.’

The letterbox flap above him had sprung open as if it were a mouth. The voice was female. ‘Mr Creed?’ it came again, the caller not realizing just how close he was.

‘Okay . . .

‘Mr Creed!’ Louder knocking this time, too.

‘
Okay
, for f——!’

He sat, the top of his head only inches below the letterbox.

The voice was much quieter. ‘Mr Creed, is that
you
?’

He strained his neck to look round and upwards and saw a pair of eyes gazing down at him. Even without the rest of the face they looked astonished.

‘Are you all right?’ he was asked. ‘It’s me, Mr Creed, Cally. We met last night – at Hamiltons gallery, remember? What are you doing down there?’

He made it to his knees and rested there, knuckles digging into the carpet. ‘A minute,’ he begged. ‘Just wait a minute. Oh Judas . . .’ He gingerly touched a hand to his forehead and groaned aloud once more when he felt the fresh contour. He pressed against the swelling to see if it would go down and instantly regretted the attempt.

‘Mr Creed . . .’

‘
All right, all right!
’ That hurt too.

Drawing in a breath, Creed dragged himself to his feet, clinging to the doorcatch for support. The door scarcely budged when he released the catch and pulled; he remembered the bolt and bent to slide it back. That hurt even more.

The girl’s face was full of concern when he opened the door six inches. ‘What happened to you?’ she said. ‘You look as if you’re growing another head.’

It was then that it all came back to him. He staggered for a moment and quickly sat down on the stairs behind him; he stared ahead blankly, without realizing the girl had stepped inside and was kneeling before him, looking earnestly into his eyes.

‘You look terrible,’ she said. ‘Shall I call for an ambulance?’

He was too occupied with his own thoughts to reply.

‘Let me get you something,’ he heard her say without understanding what she meant. ‘Where do you – never mind.’ She glanced into the room off the hall, then climbed over him to go upstairs.

Still he stared ahead, oblivious to the chill breeze coming through the open door. Soon there were footsteps behind him and a blue-denimed leg slid over his shoulder.

‘Here, drink this.’ Cally put a glass to his lips and tilted it towards him.

He choked, then spluttered as she patted his back. ‘What . . . what the . . . brandy? Brandy this time of the morning?’

‘It’ll bring you out of shock.’

‘I’m not in shock.’

‘I told you so. Come on, take another sip.’

He did, a small one, and had to admit it helped some.

‘Do you want to go to a hospital?’

He shook his head and wished he hadn’t.

He shivered, not because of the brandy, but because he was almost naked. He quickly drew the dressing gown around himself.

Cally pretended she hadn’t noticed anything. ‘Let’s get you somewhere comfortable. D’you think anything’s broken?’

‘Yeah, my skull.’

With her help, Creed rose to his feet, suddenly not sure whether he was shivery or shaky. They slowly climbed the stairs, Cally helping him all the way, and found the cat waiting for them at the top.

‘Move, pussy,’ Cally said. ‘Let’s get by.’ She could have sworn the thing was grinning.

The cat studied the girl, and then Creed.

‘You—’ her master began to say, but the sharpness of his own voice made his head hurt even more. ‘She was the one who tripped me,’ he complained to the girl.

‘Ah, I see. You fell over the cat. My God, I thought you’d been attacked.’

He froze, remembering again what had happened the night before, this time more vividly. ‘That’s not poss . . .’ His words trailed off.

‘Hey, steady. Let’s sit you down. I’ll make you tea or something.’

Cally guided him into the room where she’d found the brandy bottle. She lowered the photographer on to a sofa and again knelt down in front of him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to ring for a doctor?’ She peered intently at him. ‘You look terribly pale.’

He looked beyond her, eyes unfocused. His mouth opened and it seemed he was about to say something; instead he struggled to his feet and dashed past her, almost sending her sprawling. Cally picked herself up and followed.

His naked legs were disappearing up a spiral staircase when she reached the kitchen and she, too, began the circular climb. She found him in a small room – obviously a photographer’s darkroom – staring around in dismay at the mess.

Film was scattered everywhere: sheet film, rolls of negatives, transparencies. The floor was awash with liquid from upturned chemical dishes. The drawers of a tall filing cabinet were open, its contents in disarray, many of the buff-coloured files soaking on the floor. Creed was standing in the midst of all this looking stunned. He kept shaking his head as if to say, ‘No, this hasn’t happened at all, this is only me dreaming.’

‘Shall I call the police?’ Cally said, stepping up behind him and touching his shoulder.

He looked at her as though disbelieving her presence too. ‘Uh . . . yeah. Yeah, call the police,’ he said at last, some sense beginning to creep back into his expression. ‘Wait, though, wait. Just give me a minute.’

He stared around again, then briefly closed his eyes. ‘They won’t believe me,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘The police won’t believe what I saw last night. They’re gonna think I’m crazy.’

‘You saw who did this?’

He nodded slowly. ‘At least, I think so. It couldn’t have been a dream. Could it?’

Cally didn’t have the answer to that.

He shuddered. ‘Let’s go downstairs. I’ve got to think.’

They left the darkroom and Cally led the way down to the kitchen, twisting her body as she descended as if to catch him should he stumble. Creed pulled out a chair and sat, elbows on the kitchen table, hands over his face, while she switched on the kettle and dropped a teabag into a cup. She sat opposite him while the water boiled.

‘You want me to try the police?’ she asked again, quietly.

Creed took his hands away from his face. ‘It must have been part of a nightmare. Maybe I didn’t see anyone at all, maybe I just think I did. The bump on the head, y’know? Maybe I’m remembering wrong.’

‘You’ve had an intruder, there’s no question of that. Unless you caused all that mess upstairs.’

‘No, I mean what I think I saw. I imagined something, or I dreamed it. I honestly don’t know.’

‘Tell me what you – what you
thought
– you saw.’

‘Got a cigarette?’

She shook her head.

‘Hand me that tin then, will you?’ He pointed to the dresser.

Cally brought the tin to him and watched as he fumbled it open. He reached in for a brown pre-rolled cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. He searched around, not leaving the chair, and the girl spotted the matches for him. She brought them over and lit the cigarette, wondering if it were a joint. The first unpleasant billow of smoke confirmed that it was straight.

‘D’you like old movies?’ he asked her.

Surprised, she said, ‘What?’

‘Old films. Really old ones – silents, black-and-white. You know the stuff.’

‘It isn’t really important right now, is it? Your place has been ransacked and you’ve been hurt. Tell me what you saw, who made that mess upstairs.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to get to.’ He drew in on the cigarette and released the smoke in small coughs. He gave a shake of his head. ‘I had to be dreaming.’

She reached across the table and touched his wrist, a hint of impatience creeping into her tone. ‘Just say it.’

‘D’you like vampire movies?’

She let go and straightened in her chair. Her mouth had dropped open.

Embarrassed, Creed cleared his throat before going on. ‘My favourite was always the first. I think it was made in the early ’twenties. The . . . uh, the person I saw last night . . .’

The kettle began to boil noisily, steam rolling from its spout. The
click
as it turned itself off was like a gun hammer on an empty chamber in the stillness of the room.

‘Oh shit,’ said Creed, as if coming to a decision. ‘I saw Nosferatu last night.’

Cally’s mouth opened a little more.

‘I saw the first bloody vampire.’

He puckered his face, as if the words, soft-spoken though they were, had hurt.

You know, some people will refuse to believe what their own eyes have told them. Usually it’s because they don’t want to believe. Put it down to ignorance, prejudice, or blindness to the realities and the enigmas of life itself. It can also have a lot to do with being unable to deal with the unpleasantnesses of the world we live in. This doesn’t just occur in the individual; it’s probably more common with the masses, and often more prevalent with certain peoples (although we won’t give any particular nation a hard time here, because none of us have copyright on the blind-eye). Lest we get too deep – and too depressed – let’s stick to Joe Creed.

Now, you can’t really blame him for disbelieving what his eyes had told him that night (disbelieving
after
the event, of course); rationale tends to rear its pushy head in the cold light of dawn. And besides, if
you
thought you’d caught sight of a vampire, or
vampyre
, especially if it wasn’t in the darkly suave guise of Christopher Lee or Louis Jourdan, nor the comically pasty-faced version of Bela Lugosi, then you’d probably want to reason sensibly with yourself and come to an accommodation that might just prevent a nervous breakdown.

You see, the original Nosferatu/Dracula was the
scary
one. Visually created by the German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau for his film
Nosferatu
,
eine Symphonie des Grauens
(Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horrors) made in 1922 and unofficially adapted from Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
, the vampire was portrayed as a rat-like creature, with an enlarged bald head, permanent long thin fangs in the middle of his mouth (as opposed to the magically blooming incisors of later movies) and cruel curling fingernails that resembled talons. To complete the flesh-crawling image, our man was humpbacked and supported by spindly, crooked legs. The real McCoy, this one, the kind of guy you’d sincerely hope never to meet in a crowded supermarket let alone on your own in the dead of night.