The Reformed Vampire Support Group (6 page)

BOOK: The Reformed Vampire Support Group
2.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

I have to admit, I was impressed. And I couldn’t believe that the same thought hadn’t occurred to me. It was so
obvious
.

‘God, yes.’ I rounded on Horace. ‘What’s Casimir been up to? You must have some idea – you gave him your computer!’

Horace squirmed in his seat, looking unbelievably shifty. At the sight of his discomfort, Dave and Sanford both stiffened, their eyes widening with alarm.

‘Oh, man,’ said Dave. Then he appealed to the rest of us. ‘You don’t reckon Casimir’s been logging onto that bloody website, do you?’

It was an appalling prospect, which made us all gasp. Two weeks previously, Horace had mentioned stumbling upon a vampire website. The Net is full of vampire blogs and websites, which cater to fans of horror movies and fantasy novels. Sometimes these blogs are frequented by slightly disturbed people who dress like Horace and have an unhealthy obsession with gore. Never once have I sensed the presence of a genuine vampire amongst all the deluded online chat about tissue regeneration and the covens of
Underworld
. On the contrary, it’s all the most outrageous
nonsense – and though it can be useful for someone who writes vampire fiction (like me), it’s also dreadfully misleading. I have to admit, I was always interested in Dracula movies. In fact I used to think vampires were pretty glamorous, until I met my first one. But since then I’ve become more and more disillusioned, as I’ve discovered that glamorous vampires just don’t exist – except in books like the Bloodstone Chronicles.

That’s why I hadn’t been very interested in Horace’s discovery. Not at first. (Why look for fantasy online when you can produce it out of your own head?) But after hearing about the anonymous user who wanted to become a vampire, I’d changed my mind. Apparently, at least one crazy person somewhere in the world was looking for a vampire to bite him (or her). Nicknamed ‘Fangseeker’, this mentally unbalanced individual had provided an email address, and an assurance of complete confidentiality.

Horace had wanted to know if infecting Fangseeker could possibly be regarded as wrong, given the circumstances. He had seemed very disappointed when informed by Father Ramon that on no account should such a perverse desire be indulged. According to the priest, Fangseeker was clearly unhinged, and to take advantage of someone with a psychiatric illness would be inexcusable. There could be no question of reduced culpability, just because Fangseeker claimed to be a willing victim.

I could remember being quite interested in the discussion that followed. I could also remember being disgusted by Horace Whittaker’s ill-concealed regret. But I couldn’t remember a thing about Casimir’s reaction – perhaps because I had always tried to avoid even looking at Casimir, if I could possibly help it.

‘You didn’t give him that web address, did you, Horace?’ Father Ramon inquired anxiously. And when Horace gave a sulky nod, the priest covered his face with one hand.

‘Oh, boy,’ Dave moaned. Even Gladys was scandalised.


Horace!
How could you be so
stupid?
’ she screeched, with such venom that Horace bared his canines at her.

‘Are you calling
me
stupid?’ he hissed. ‘That’s a laugh!’

‘It was probably a set-up,’ I interposed, having refused to be distracted by this pointless bickering. ‘Someone’s trying to lure vampires into exposing themselves. Don’t you think?’ I turned to Dave for support. ‘We have to check Casimir’s computer. We have to check his email.’

‘How can we do that if we don’t have his password?’ Horace sneered, then addressed the room at large. ‘Does
anyone
know Casimir’s password?’

No one did. No one even knew his date of birth, or his nationality. (He’d always been very vague about both.)

‘I suppose I could go and have a look around his flat,’ Father Ramon finally offered. ‘I’d probably be safe if I went back there during the day. But I’m not sure …’ He hesitated, before turning to Sanford. ‘What should we do about Casimir?’ the priest wanted to know. ‘Should we report him missing? Should we pretend that he’s moved? Do you want the police involved, or not?’

‘We can’t let the cops get hold of Casimir’s computer.’ Horace was firm. ‘God knows what’s on his hard drive. Even if we can’t sneak it out, we should destroy it. Plug it in, turn it on, and throw it into a bath full of soapy water.
That
should do the trick.’

‘We can’t leave those ashes, either,’ I said. ‘It might not be obvious what they are, but the police have all these forensic people nowadays. They might be able to analyse stuff like that.’

‘Anyway, vampire dust is very valuable,’ Gladys piped up. When everyone stared at her in amazement, she was prompted to elaborate. ‘Vampire dust has alchemical properties,’ she went on. ‘People do things with it. Curses, mostly.’

‘Oh dear.’ Father Ramon wrinkled his nose. He’s always had an absolute horror of witchcraft. ‘In that case, we shouldn’t let poor Casimir fall into the wrong hands.’

Finally, after much fretful dispute, our plans were laid. Father Ramon would first collect the generous supply of emergency sleeping-bags that were stored in his presbytery. He would then deliver them to my house, before returning home for a well-earned sleep. Finally, in the morning, he would proceed to Casimir’s apartment, where he would destroy the computer and dispose of Casimir’s ashes.

‘You’ll either have to dump them out the window or flush them down the toilet,’ Horace recommended. ‘You won’t be so memorable if you leave the place empty-handed.’

‘But—’

‘If you come out with anything at all, you’ll look like a burglar,’ Horace said impatiently, dismissing Father Ramon’s objections. To which Sanford’s response was, ‘Surely not, if he’s dressed as a priest?’

Horace snorted. And I couldn’t help butting in.

‘Are you kidding?’ I cried. ‘If he’s dressed as a priest, someone’s bound to remember him.’ I was so sure of this that I leaned over to grip the priest’s arm. ‘Don’t wear your cassock, Father,’ I begged. ‘Just put on something bland.’

Wearily he agreed. Then Sanford began to delegate the various other tasks that faced us. Back at my house, Father Ramon’s sleeping-bags would be distributed over my mother’s basement floor. Meanwhile, Dave would use my computer to track down the manufacturer of the silver bullet. Horace would also use my computer to communicate with Fangseeker, if possible. With any luck, some progress would have been made by daybreak.

If not, we would continue our search the following night. And
the night after that. We simply wouldn’t give up until Casimir’s killer had been identified.

‘As long as he’s out there, we’re in mortal danger,’ Sanford insisted, addressing us all in a solemn, self-important manner that – for once – didn’t seem overblown or inappropriate. ‘We have to act as a team and work together for as long as it takes. Because if we don’t, we might not get through this.’

It’s funny – I hate so much about my life. I hate the cramps, and the nausea, and the boredom, and the listlessness. I hate surviving on guinea pigs, and not being able to get a decent haircut. But that night, when it came to choosing between life and death, I didn’t hesitate. Not for one second.

I didn’t want to end up as a pile of ashes on a bedroom floor.

5

There’s an abiding
myth that vampires are afraid of garlic. This, of course, is a lie. The garlic myth was triggered hundreds of years ago, when a nameless vampire joked about not attacking some woman because she smelled of garlic.

I mean, how could anyone be terrified of a culinary herb?

It’s true that garlic makes vampires sick. But in that respect it’s no different from bread or bacon or brussels sprouts. A vampire’s stomach isn’t capable of digesting normal food; one slice of watermelon could put half a dozen vampires in bed for a week. Even stale blood can result in some pretty gruesome side effects: not just stomach cramps and migraines, but continual vomiting, extreme dehydration, and a kind of slimy red discharge from the gums.

I’ve heard tell that Gladys once
begged
for a stake through the heart, after she stupidly dosed herself with horse chestnut. The skin was peeling off her in powdery flaps, and her joints swelled up like balloons.

So it’s important to be very, very careful. The only thing a vampire can absorb is fresh blood, straight from the vein (and even
then, if it’s animal blood, it has to be taken with special enzymes to counteract the impurities). But
you
try looking for a constant supply of live animals, and see how far you get. It isn’t easy – not unless you live on a farm.

Sanford’s solution was guinea pigs. He made the choice about sixty years ago, and has stuck with it ever since. Guinea pigs are small, so their drained cadavers can be concealed without much effort. They’re also fast breeders, and they aren’t fussy about their food. Even more importantly, they can be kept indoors. And they’re tough little things, in many ways. You don’t have to be a genius to raise them.

That’s why George Mumford was given the job of supplying each of us with our daily ration: one guinea pig, taken in the evening, with supplements. One guinea pig seems to be enough; as Horace often says, ‘A guinea pig a day keeps Sanford away.’ (If only it were true!) Thanks to George’s excellent breeding program, none of us have missed a meal for the last twenty-six years.

George moved in with Horace Whittaker some time around 1961. The residence they bought together was a spacious and solid brick bungalow with a wine cellar, a dilapidated conservatory, and six enormous bedrooms – so it was perfectly suited to raising guinea pigs. I went there once and it freaked me out;
I
certainly wouldn’t want to live my life surrounded by animal pens. Nevertheless, despite all the droppings and the bad smells and the clouds of fur, it was an ideal set-up.

In fact the whole system’s worked very well, right from the beginning. George discovered a new way of earning money, the rest of us secured a reliable source of live animals, and when Dave appeared on the scene, he started making deliveries twice a week (for a modest payment).

There was only one drawback. Fresh blood can be messy stuff,
and no one likes living in an abattoir.

You probably haven’t seen a vampire fanging a guinea pig. For your sake, I hope you never do, because it’s not a pretty sight. Guinea pigs tend to wriggle around, you see; since adulterated blood isn’t good for us, we try not to drug them if we can possibly help it. That’s why we sometimes miss the right spot, and end up with arterial sprays all over the wall. That’s also why we tend to consume our meals alone, in tiled bathrooms. In fact I usually try to do it when Mum is asleep. And I always clean up afterwards.

Nevertheless, it’s been hard for my mother – in all kinds of ways. Vampires make untidy house guests. They litter their domiciles with animal corpses. They stay up all night watching television, and surfing the Net. They’re always having medical emergencies. They’re often too tired to pick up after themselves. And not all of them (let’s face it) can be trusted. I mean, you only have to look at Casimir.

So although my mother is used to vampires, even
she
baulked at the idea of having seven of them sleeping in her basement.

‘For Chrissake,’ she said, after our dire situation had been explained to her, ‘this isn’t a bloody hotel. Why don’t you go to Rookwood Cemetery and find yourselves a nice mausoleum?’

She was only half joking. I could hear a cranky note in her voice, and she stubbed out her cigarette as if she were squashing a cockroach.

Sanford, however, took her seriously. He has no sense of humour.

‘A lot of very questionable people frequent Rookwood Cemetery, especially at night,’ he said. ‘Vandals and drug dealers and so forth. You wouldn’t want Nina exposed to them.’

Mum blew a mouthful of smoke at his face. ‘Nina wouldn’t be exposed to anyone like that,’ she retorted. ‘Because Nina would be
sleeping at home. As usual. I wouldn’t throw out my own daughter, would I?’

‘Give it up, Mum.’ I wasn’t feeling strong enough to sit through one of her rants. ‘Either the others stay here or they all get staked. End of story.’

My mother grunted. She was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a disgusting old nightie under her hideous quilted dressing-gown. Though her dentures were in, she hadn’t done anything about her hair.

My mother is only seventy-six, but at that precise moment she could have been ten years older. She’s never at her best in the middle of the night.

‘Well, all right, then,’ she growled at last. ‘I suppose I can’t really say no.’ From the arrangement of her features, I could tell that she was wondering how on earth it had come to this: how she, of all people, had ended up with a kitchen full of vampires. But the funny thing is that the kitchen and the vampires were a perfect match, because Mum isn’t a granite-benchtop, stainless-steel-appliance kind of person. Her kitchen is all peeling linoleum and cracked tiles. It’s clean, but it’s not cheery. Everything that isn’t black or brown is pale green, except the fridge – and that’s so covered with trashy fridge magnets, you can hardly work out
what
colour it is.

In a dingy, well-worn, utilitarian environment like my mother’s kitchen, vampires tend to fade into the background. They’re all of a piece with the discoloured grouting, the ancient electric jug, and the baked-on grease stains in the oven.

‘How long will you be staying?’ Mum asked, eyeing Horace as if
he
were a baked-on grease stain. But it was Sanford who replied.

‘That depends,’ he said. And Dave added, with a sidelong glance in my direction, ‘The sooner we find this maniac, the sooner we can leave.’

He was prodding me, and I knew it. He wanted to start an Internet search as soon as possible.

So I hauled myself out of my chair.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’ll be needing my password.’

‘Wait.’ Mum’s voice cracked on a cough. ‘Wait just a minute,’ she croaked. ‘No one goes anywhere until I lay down the rules.’

She went on to declare that her bedroom was out of bounds, that no one would be permitted to touch the washing machine, and that all guinea pigs were to be confined to the basement. Fanging was to take place in the bathroom
only
. No calls could be made from the kitchen phone. There would be a very strict policy about the distribution of keys, and every exterior door had to be deadlocked at all times.

BOOK: The Reformed Vampire Support Group
2.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Sword of Shadows by Karin Rita Gastreich
The Catbyrd Seat by Emmanuel Sullivan
The Lights of London by Gilda O'Neill
The Mating Intent-mobi by Bonnie Vanak
Playing for the Other Team by Sage C. Holloway
Long Lies the Shadow by Gerda Pearce
Charming Isabella by Ryan, Maggie
The well of lost plots by Jasper Fforde