His Vampyrrhic Bride (27 page)

Good. At least the moon was there, even if it was partly obscured. That meant some light would be falling on to his surroundings. His eyes would soon adapt, allowing him to see more. Now for that plan of action. He decided to make for the centre of the village. At first glance this seemed an impossible undertaking, because the floodwaters rendered the streets unusable. Then he noticed the ancient walls that divided the garden plots. Each wall stood around ten feet high. They formed a well-ordered criss-cross pattern. As far as he could tell, most of the walls were slightly higher than the flood waters. He could walk along them as if he walked along a causeway.

Or like walking the pirate’s plank.
His imagination was quick to conjure scenarios of the wall collapsing under his feet, dropping him into deep water.

Panic is the killer, if you let it take control . . . so stay focused on finding Nicola. Keep thinking about Nicola . . .

He sucked in another lungful of that cold air that smelt so strongly of the river. Then he quickly hauled himself up one of the ivy covered walls. Once he was on the flat coping stone he felt more confident. The height gave him a sense of safety: a sense that nobody, and
no THING
, could creep up behind.

He set out along the line of ten-foot-high walls. The brickwork had been capped with white stone blocks, so he followed a gleaming, white path set against black waters. At first, the water swilled along the base of the wall, but the further he walked, the nearer it rose to the top. If the water did come over the top, though, he realized he could climb up on to the roofs of the houses. They were so densely packed together he could probably work his way from roof to roof, as if they were the stepping stones of the gods.

Tom Westonby moved deeper towards the heart of the village. In turn, the water grew deeper. He saw furniture jumbled up with tree branches float by. He glimpsed the upturned belly of a car. Then came a heart-stopping, terrifying sight as the water churned beside the wall.

He expected a vast object to rise up and sweep him away to his death. He couldn’t take his eyes from the bubbles fizzing up to the surface: a patch of gleaming white in the blackness of the flood. A moment later came a wonderful sense of relief as he realized what was causing the churning and the fizzing. A gas main must have fractured under the road, probably due to hundreds of tons of floodwater exerting a crushing downward force. The area of bubbling water here must be a result of gas furiously blasting from the ruptured pipe. Now he caught the stink of inflammable gas.

What that spectacular churning had done was divert his attention from what else was happening around him: mainly that the water now lay just a few inches below the top of the ten foot high wall. Flood levels were rising fast. If Nicola was in Danby-Mask, he needed to find her quickly. Or there was a real danger he never would.

T
he journey into the drowned village of Danby-Mask required sticking to the top of the walls. Even in this meagre light, Tom Westonby could see that the walls, which enclosed the backyards, formed a white grid pattern. The stone slabs, laid end-to-end on top of the brickwork, possessed the same creamy hues as the locally produced cheese.

As he walked, with the floodwater at either side of his narrow causeway, he constantly scanned the buildings for Nicola. Surely, she had to be here somewhere. By now, his eyes had adjusted well enough to the gloom. Yet he still kept a tight grip on the flashlight. He’d need it if he entered one of the flooded houses.

‘Nicola?’ From time to time he called her name. ‘Nicola?’

Each time he listened carefully, hoping to hear her reply. The only sound, however, was the liquid sucking noises coming from the buildings. By now, the Lepping had reached the upper stories. Small waves lapped at bedroom windows. Everywhere, armchairs, wheelie bins, oil drums, dog kennels, you name it, floated in the yards.

Tom knew these walls were around ten feet high. They were a distinctive feature of the village, and they’d been built two hundred years ago when the community became so prosperous from the wool trade that they’d had to build defences to keep out the thieves and vagabonds. Now those walls were the only dry highway into Danby-Mask.

‘Nicola?’ He so desperately wanted to see her face that his heart ached.
Where is she? Has she been trapped in one of the houses? Or swept away?
A sudden mental image came so sharply that he felt sick. In his mind’s eye, he saw Nicola drifting through that black water, her blonde hair rippling outwards, her eyes staring.

‘
Nicola!
’ His voice echoed back from those drowned houses. The silence, the lack of electric lights – they all contributed to the sense that this had become a graveyard for peoples’ homes.

Nothing less than a burning anxiety gripped him now. He decided to speed up his search. Already, he’d convinced himself that she was in danger. Either trapped in a flooded cottage, or held prisoner by Bolter. What’s more, Bolter had proved he would commit criminal acts. He’d burnt down Nicola’s house. So hurting Nicola wouldn’t be too extreme for him.

‘Nicola . . . it’s Tom.’ The words died out there on this new monster of a lake. ‘Nicola!’

Where is she? I just want to hold on to her. Keep her safe. I want her with me.

He turned a sharp right, following that precise white line of stonework. Water that was nigh on ten feet deep lay at either side of the wall.

‘Nicola!’

Then came the sound of water being disturbed. He paused, thinking that another gas main had given way under the colossal weight of this inundation. True, there was a white mass of churning foam. Yet this time it was different.

The swirling storm of bubbles didn’t stay in one place. Instead, a blaze of white sped along the flooded street. A second later, the bubbles vanished. Even so, he could still see a black wave racing towards him. Years of diving experience told him that wave was produced by a large, fast-moving object just beneath the surface.

Tom held his breath. Whatever headed so purposefully towards him remained invisible. But he had to see it.

Had to.

Not being able to see what raced ever closer, with the speed of a torpedo, became unbearable.

Quickly, he raised the flashlight, hit the switch, then shielded his eyes against the glare of the powerful bulb. He saw a black mass of water being pushed upward into a rounded bulge.

A pale shape raced towards him. He could just make out a huge, bulky body. The water wasn’t clear enough to identify much in the way of detail. But he knew what this thing was.

Helsvir.

T
he creature sliced through the water. This thing called Helsvir radiated a brutal life-force; the essence of savage power.

There he was, balanced precariously on top of a wall. At either side of him, deep water.
And here comes the instrument of my death.

Tom Westonby kept the light on the creature, desperately hoping its dazzling brilliance would keep it at bay. The light did no such thing. The creature rose to the surface as it hammered through the water, tearing it apart in foaming sheets.

That barrier of disbelief that Tom had built inside his mind to protect his sanity was blasted into oblivion. He could no longer insist to himself that Mrs Bekk had induced some hypnotic state, or that he suffered hallucinations due to concussion.
No. Absolutely and totally no!
Tom could not play the role of Doubting Thomas any more.

Helsvir was real.

Dear God. Helsvir was MORE than real somehow. The creature was a powerful example of brutally vivid actuality. When it surged towards him, with its hissing once-human faces, the thing seemed more substantial than the brickwork he stood upon. Whatever had created the monster had embedded it so deeply into this world that it had become the essence of solidity. The Bekk family’s protector exuded a presence that wouldn’t allow you to dismiss it as a dream.

He thought:
Helsvir is real. Helsvir is here to stay. Helsvir will be solid muscle when I’m dead and gone.

The enormity of this revelation stunned him. All he could do was stand and stare at the brute as it powered through the flood. Fear exerted a paralysis – he couldn’t move.

Forty paces away . . . thirty . . . twenty . . .

Tom sensed its eagerness. Helsvir wanted him. Helsvir knew its prey was vulnerable. Helsvir would sweep him from the wall.

Ten paces away.

A shout that combined anger and sheer dismay at being torn from this life exploded from his lips: ‘
No!
’

‘Helsvir. Come.’ The female voice had such clarity. What’s more, there was a silvery quality in the way it rang out through the darkness. ‘Helsvir. Come.’

The creature swung away at the last moment; the flurry of bubbles vanished. Helsvir had submerged itself into deeper waters.

Tom stood there, panting. Perspiration rolled down his face.

‘Helsvir, come away.’

He aimed the flashlight in the direction of the voice. This was a voice he knew and had been longing to hear. ‘Nicola!’

As he stood there, he witnessed an apparition. A beautiful apparition, at that. But one so unearthly, and so eerie, that shivers danced across the sensitive skin of his neck.

The woman he’d searched for stood on a cottage roof not thirty yards away. She remained perfectly still. Her blonde hair shone in the light of the lamp. The blue fire that was her eyes gazed out over the flooded village.

She is beautiful. She really is.

Tom knew that a vital change took place inside of him at that moment. This was such an uncanny setting. Yet Helsvir, the drowned homes, and the oppressive darkness amounted to nothing in comparison to what he experienced now. He’d found Nicola. And he’d found a shining truth. He realized his love for her was so powerful, so real, so immense that nothing must stop them from being together.

He thought
: I love you. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives under the same roof.
That certainty was indestructible.

‘Stay there,’ he called. ‘I’m coming over to you.’

He ran along the wall, following that gleaming route of white stones. Within thirty seconds the wall had taken him to the house where Nicola waited. Deep water still lapped against windows and gurgled around walls, but he hardly noticed the flood now, because he’d spotted a grouping of outhouse roofs that formed a series of steps, allowing him to reach the cottage. Soon Tom was bounding up thick red tiles to Nicola.

Sheer exhilaration carried him up the slope. Seconds later he put his arms round her. ‘Thank God.’ His heart pounded like fury. ‘Are you alright? You’ve not been hurt?’ He crushed her against him. He could feel her ribs, the cool wash of hair against his face; her subtle perfume filled his nose. This was a sweet moment . . . an incredibly sweet moment. Emotion blasted through him, and all he wanted was to stand here on this roof and hold her hard against his chest.

Only after a few moments did he realize that she wasn’t responding. She didn’t even seem to know he was there.

‘Nicola? What’s wrong?’

‘Helsvir,’ she breathed. ‘Helsvir. Be gone. Don’t hurt him . . .’

He looked into her face. The blue eyes gazed across the rooftops.

‘Helsvir, be gone.’

‘Nicola. It’s me – Tom.’

She stood there without moving. There was something strangely stiff about her body. As if an electric current ran through her muscles, turning them rigid. Her eyes didn’t even glance in his direction once. They remained fixed, unblinking. A gaze that remained locked on the heart of a great darkness.

‘I’m here, Nicola.’ Gently, he hugged her. ‘I’m here. I’m staying with you. Listen, I love you. We’re going to get married. And I’m going to fix all the problems. Everything’s going to be alright.’

She gave a slow blink. ‘Tom.’

He smiled. ‘That’s me: Tom through and through. The Tom-shaped boy.’ He knew he was talking nonsense. That didn’t matter one little bit. The words were a tender stream of reassuring sounds. He wanted her to feel safe. ‘We’ll go to my house. There’s food, clean clothes. Everything will be good. We’ll lock the doors and keep the world out for as long as we want.’

‘Tom?’ Nicola seemed to be waking up from a deep sleep. Only, she wasn’t fully there yet. A dreamy quality possessed her. ‘I’ve had such strange dreams . . . Helsvir.’

‘You called him off at the last minute. Otherwise I’d be . . .’ He shrugged. No need to finish that particular sentence.

‘Helsvir. Yes . . . but how can you know what I was dreaming about?’ She sounded so sleepy. ‘You wouldn’t know about my dream. Helsvir swam down the river. Into the village . . . Then I saw you.’ She smiled. ‘And here you are.’

Nicola’s head rested against his chest, her eyes half closed. She seemed deflated somehow. All the strength had been drained right out of her. Gently, he eased her down until she sat on the roof tiles, her legs resting on the downward slope. He sat beside her with his arm around her shoulders.

For a little while she spoke in a sleepy voice: ‘Helsvir isn’t real, you know? My ancestors made him up hundreds of years ago . . .’ She snuggled against him in such a wonderfully relaxed way. ‘They invented stories about how Helsvir was created by the gods to protect them. They told the story to their children . . . to reassure them . . . so they’d sleep all cosy in their beds. I feel cosy now. It’s lovely being with you, Tom.’

She lifted her head, kissed him softly on the cheek before allowing her head to sink down against his chest again, as she drifted in and out of sleep. And there they sat: side-by-side on the roof.

When Helsvir had swum towards him just a few moments ago the terror had overwhelmed his senses. He’d frozen up. His body seemed to set solid. He couldn’t move his legs; his heart had pounded furiously against his ribs. Now, after the emotional storm, there was a sort of calm. Maybe psychological overload had caused a partial shutdown of his mind to protect his sanity. The panic had left him. His heart resumed its normal rhythm. In the circumstances, it would be entirely understandable if he screamed about creatures built from human body parts; however, he had no inclination to rage or yell. Instead, he accepted that this must be part of the human instinct for self-preservation.
When faced with the extraordinary, deal with it in a practical, level-headed way, otherwise you really will end up losing your mind.
During his training as a diver, he’d been told often enough that panic is a killer. And that whatever dangers you do face underwater, you must always keep your nerve.