The Midnight Hour (4 page)

“Hello? Sir? Are you alright?”

It was probably a stupid question, but he felt he had to say something. Just in case.

He kept some distance from the body as he moved round the side of it, trying to get a look at the face.

He gasped. He moaned.

“Mr Malone!”

He really should have guessed. Who else would be here this time of day? And if it hadn’t been Mr Malone then Mr Malone would have been standing here wanting to know what a dead body was doing half in and half out of his building!

Then Paul saw Mr Malone’s neck, span on his heel and vomited on the street.

Sergeant Alexander Roland was a soldier and a scientist. He had been tracking the things for more than two days now, getting closer but never quite close enough. But he knew they were up ahead, and he knew what they were capable of. And he was afraid.

He had stopped his Jeep at a crossroads. Four roads in the middle of flat grasslands. An isolated farmhouse here and there. A grain tower. A water tower. A barn. There was little else to help him decide which way to drive.

He could feel a breeze blowing one way, but he knew that air movement, while used by them, was by no means any limitation for them. If they decided to fly against the wind they would do so. He could not rely on that.

He looked at the signs, four arrows of wood on top of a long, thick pole. Four towns he had never heard of. Laketown, 20 miles. Hillson, 40 miles. Mirkton 25 miles. Sheldsville 5 miles.

He smiled. He knew.

They were hungry. They would not travel further than necessary before feeding.

They would head straight for the nearest town.

“Vampires don’t exist Mr Walker.”

“Dracula was based on a real historical person.”

“Did he bite people’s necks and drink their blood?”

“Well… no, but…”

“Vampires don’t exist.”

Paul wiped palms slick with sweat over his face. He looked despairingly at the thin, even gaunt, detective across the table from him. He had been in this interview room for over an hour, answering the same questions about how he found Mr Malone’s body.

“But you saw his neck! And he looked so pale. And why was there hardly any blood around?”

“Mr Walker,” Detective Saul Greenbaum sighed. He enjoyed a good horror film as much as the next man, but this was beyond a joke. “How many holes does your typical vampire make in a victim’s neck?”

Paul frowned, puzzled at the question.

“Two. But what…?”

“Mr Malone had at least ten holes, and the rest of his neck looked like it had gone through a meat tenderiser. I don’t know what was used to do that, but it wasn’t someone biting him, Mr Walker.”

“But the blood had been drained out of him,” insisted Paul, stubborn and determined.

“Blood will settle to the lowest possible level after death Mr Walker.”

“Surely that only happens after some time? Mr Malone hadn’t been dead that long!”

Detective Greenbaum sighed.

“Neither you nor I are pathologists Mr Walker. I suggest we leave that kind of thing to them.” He shuffled the papers in front of him into some semblance of order. “I don’t think we need continue this interview any further Mr Walker. Thank you for your help.”

“But…”

Detective Greenbaum leaned towards the small microphone on the table, ignoring Paul.

“Interview terminated 8:35am.”

He turned off the tape recorder and forced a smile.

“Good day Mr Walker. Thank you again for your time. We’ll take it from here.”

After feeding they would find somewhere secluded, out of sight, and rest, sated. Too heavy to lift themselves on the air currents, suffused with the blood of their victim, they would curl into a protective spiral in a dark, cool place. Depending on how deeply they fed it could take up to half an hour for the blood to be fully digested, absorbed into their systems, until finally they could once again fly, immediately hungry and searching for more prey.

They lived, they moved, they fed, they killed. There was nothing more to their existence.

Janet found the scarf soon after she began her walk through the town.

There were still very few people about, even though the stores were beginning to open. It would be another hour before most people would stray from their homes. Another hour before it became more crowded than she found comfortable.

The scarf lay discarded behind a trashcan at the end of an alley. She had not noticed it at first, hidden in the dark shadows thrown by the wall. It was a deep red, and looked to be made of a fine, shimmering material. She was immediately drawn to it. She could imagine something so rich and expensive looking flapping about her long, thin neck, looking elegant. It fitted her self-image perfectly.

She looked quickly around. Those few storekeepers opening their doors were taking no notice of her. For a moment she wondered who had lost it, and whether they would come looking for it, but then any feelings of guilt were replaced with the desire to own it. She bent quickly and picked it up.

She almost dropped it again instantly.

It felt… strange. Oily. Greasy. Almost silk-like but somehow a little too slippery. And when she first touched it she almost felt like it had moved in her hands, but she knew that was just her imagination, just the fabric slipping slightly in her fingers.

She had a moment of second thoughts but then decided the look was more important than the feel. Only she would feel it. Everyone else would look and be envious.

She placed it quickly around her neck, suppressing the shudder that threatened to ripple through her whole body, and, with a grand flick of her new scarf, turned on her heel and headed for home.

Paul sat in the van, his hand on the key in the ignition. He wasn’t sure quite what to do.

He had stopped at the public phone in the police station long enough to phone head office, tell them what had happened and ask for the rest of the day off. At that point he had been intending to just head home, rest, forget about it. But how could he forget about Mr Malone’s neck? The holes. The pulverised mess of broken skin and mangled muscle. That single smear of blood on the sidewalk. The unnatural paleness of his face.

Despite everything the detective had said, Paul could only think of a vampire, or something vampire-like, that could have caused such damage. The thought frightened him.

He turned the key, fired the engine into life. He knew where he had to go. He
would
go home, but first stop was the corner store. Time to stock up on the garlic.

Alex Roland pulled to a stop by the sign.

Welcome to Sheldsville. Pop 1,250.

He reached down to the floor of the Jeep and lifted a medical neck brace. He wrapped it round his neck and fastened it in place, the hard plastic digging into the underside of his chin. It was uncomfortable and restricting, but he felt safer with it on. As strong as they were, he didn’t think they would be able to penetrate this strengthened plastic shield.

He studied the sky and for a moment he thought he saw one, ephemeral, fleeting, twisting. But he couldn’t be sure. They were so difficult to see even close to, unless you knew what to look for. But he felt certain they were there, up ahead, if not in the sky then already feeding on the inhabitants of this small town.

Grimly he shifted the Jeep into gear and headed up the road towards the first buildings on the outskirts of Sheldsville.

By the time the fifth body had been reported with the same gruesome neck injuries, Detective Greenbaum was convinced they had a vicious serial killer in town. He didn’t know what exactly had caused the injuries, but he was certain it was the same man behind all five.

And it certainly wasn’t any vampire!

The pathologist’s report hadn’t come back from the first body yet, that of Mr Malone, but he didn’t need it to know those few small facts.

Someone was out there killing his fellow citizens. The Sheldsville police force, small though it was, was fully mobilized. No one messed up his town!

“Is that you Paul?”

Paul kicked the door shut behind him and carried the grocery bag to the kitchen table.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Janet appeared from her bedroom dressed, as usual, in a long flowing gown, full makeup, a cigarette dangling between her long, elegant, nicotine stained fingers.

“Do you like my new scarf?”

Paul glanced up at his sister.

“Pink? I would have thought pink was a bit tame for you.”

Janet frowned down at the scarf.

“I could have sworn it was more red when I picked it up.”

Paul sighed, uninterested in her fashion concerns.

“Where did you find the money for that?”

She pouted.

“I didn’t exactly buy it.”

“You stole it?”

“I found it!”

Paul turned away from her, exasperated.

“We may not have much money Janet, but we don’t need to go searching through other people’s trashcans!”

“It was on the ground. Someone had dropped it, not thrown it away. It looked too good to leave there.” She spun on her heel, putting every ounce of drama into the turn she could muster. “You wouldn’t understand my perception of beauty.”

Paul shook his head. “I guess not.”

She mumbled as she returned to the sanctity of her bedroom, “I was so sure it was red…”

The first that had fed began to revive, slowly uncurling, writhing on the ground, preparing to lift themselves on the air once more. And as they did they registered that the feeding had been good and that there was more in the immediate vicinity. Much more.

Signals began to flow from the creatures, thoughts, messages sending out across the fields, away from the town. Back to the swarm.

Janet sat at her dressing table, retouching her makeup in the mirror. She glanced towards the scarf where she had discarded it, over the back of a chair.

“Cheap dyes. Fade so fast. Disgraceful.”

It barely had any colour at all now. Indeed, she almost felt she could see the chair through it. So pale. Hard to believe it had been such a deep red when she found it.

She turned back to the mirror.

The scarf moved.

She saw it in the reflection. A small movement, perhaps more of a slip than a movement. Fascinated she watched, expecting it to slide off the back of the chair at any moment.

Instead it writhed.

She let out a small cry of surprise.

The now translucent ribbon tensed, gathered its strength, and leapt.

The moment before it wrapped itself around Janet’s neck, a row of ice-like needles sprang from within its twisting form, and as it made contact with her flesh they punctured her skin, some stabbing into her muscles, injecting her with a paralysing venom, others opening her arteries and veins, sucking blood. And along its whole length it oscillated, rippled, massaging and masticating the flesh around the wounds.

Janet was able to scream once before the venom took everything but thought and pain and fear away from her.

Paul turned from pressing garlic cloves when he heard the short scream.

What had she done now? Smudged her lipstick?

“I’m coming,” he called. “Hang on.”

He pushed open the door to her room, already preparing the comments he would make. She would panic at the slightest change in her appearance. He sometimes dreaded the thought of still being here with her when the wrinkles really began to show.

Any words died before they were spoken as he saw his sister, sprawled across her dressing table, her limbs jerking spasmodically as if dancing to some unheard arrhythmic music. And something pulsed around her neck.

Her scarf.

It was no longer pale pink but a deep, blood red, and it not only pulsed, it writhed, it shivered, it rippled around her neck.

It drank!

He knew, although it was nothing like the creatures in his books and DVDs, he knew it was a vampire. It was sucking the blood from her neck, just as it had sucked the blood from Mr Malone. It’s colour was his sister’s blood, filling it’s otherwise colourless body.

He thought of Mr Malone.

He thought of something hitting his van windshield, leaving a greasy smear as it slid off.

He shuddered.

He ran to his sister.

Fighting down his revulsion, his fear, he grabbed at the creature, his fingers slipping off the gelatinous body. He held a vague hope that the garlic on his hands might have some effect, but it seemed as ineffective as his own fingers.

He tore at the thing, scratched at it. It showed no sign that it even knew he was there.

Crying out in rage, in frustration, he pounded on it with his fists. The body, solid with blood, barely gave beneath his knuckles.

He needed a weapon.

As his sister’s limbs grew still he ran for the kitchen, grabbing up the largest knife he could find.

When he returned the creature had gone. A slight trail of blood smeared across the floor to an open window.

His sister was dead.

Detective Greenbaum recognised Paul Walker as he left the police station.

The younger man was running towards him. He seemed distressed, his tear streaked face grimacing in pain and anguish. It was not a look unfamiliar to the detective.

“Mr Walker, what…?”

“Detective Greenbaum! Thank God! My sister…. It killed her…. Her neck… her blood!”

Paul almost fell into the detective’s arms as he stumbled trying to slow his run.

Greenbaum was vaguely aware of a vehicle, a Jeep, rattling to a stop behind him, but his concentration was on Walker.

“Who killed her Mr Walker? What are you talking about?” The man was almost incoherent.

“The vampire…. Around her neck…. Mr Malone…”

“Vampire?” Greenbaum almost sighed. The man had obviously cracked, the strain of finding Malone’s body just too much for him. “I told you before Mr Walker….”

“Vampires exist.”

The voice came from behind him and Greenbaum turned to face the uniformed soldier who stepped out of his Jeep, stiff and awkward in a neck brace. He was uncomfortably aware that other people were gathering, drawn by Walker’s shouting, drawn by the grim spectacle of a man gone mad. He needed to get this inside the station as quickly and quietly as possible.