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Authors: Danny King

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“Was
she her mum then was she?” Farny said, scratching his head in confusion.

“Only
her vampire mother, if you know what I mean. She made her, but they don’t get
along. Rachel likes to kill. Wendy doesn’t,” I explained. What families don’t
have such problems?

“So
like, she don’t kill no one or nothing never?” Farny complained, clearly
annoyed that there were pacifist vampires in the world that he’d not heard
about.

“No,
Wendy will kill occasionally if she thinks it’s called for. She’ll hang around
a playground late at night after all the other kids have gone home and accept
rides from whatever dodgy fellas come along and offer. She has no problems nibbling
at the edges of society.”

“Righteous,”
Colin said, making a gesture with his left hand similar to the one I sometimes
made when my arthritis flared up.

I
looked over at Tommy who’d stayed uncharacteristically quiet throughout my
latest story and its subsequent inquest and I wondered if I’d finally got through
to him too. Tommy noticed me looking but just went back to leaning against the
doorframe with his arms folded, staring into space and chewing on his tongue.
Finally he snorted, looked at his watch and told the rest of them they should all
go.

“It’s
gone midnight. We’re in for a wallop if dad finds out we snuck out again,“ he
told Barry. But Barry was beyond walloping. He was stood in front of a coffin
that contained an actual vampire that was being looked after by a werewolf
serial killer who could talk to ghosts. Who cared about wallops when life was
this good?

“Oh
don’t you get it? It’s all bullshit!” Tommy suddenly snapped. “All of it,
bullshit! And you dickheads believe him.
Facking
unbelievable.”

“But
we saw her, remember, she moved when we looked in,” Colin pointed out.

“He’s
got some dolly in there or something and rigged it up to a bit of string. Don’t
you watch
Scooby-Doo
for
fack’s
sake?” he dismissed, storming towards
the coffin and kicking it off its trestles and onto the floor. The cedar panels
cracked and for one horrible moment I thought it was going to break open but I
guess they knew how to build them in them days.

Colin,
Farny and Barry all jumped out of their skins and got ready to leg it but Tommy
just laughed.

“Pussies,
the lot of you! Grow the
fack
up.”

He
now pointed a finger directly at me. “As for you; werewolves and vampires and
demons. You can stick ’em up your arse, mate. Oh don’t worry, I ain’t coming
back here again, but not because you is some sort of monster or something. It’s
because you is a boring old bastard and I’ve had enough of it.
Facking
Victoria Crosses and Peter Pan.
You wanna get your
facking
head checked
out you old scarecrow because you’re mad, you are!”

And
with that Tommy finally left, stomping through the hall and slamming my front
door back on its hinges.

He
thought I was mad. He thought I was a bullshitter. He thought I was boring. And
he wasn’t coming back.

That
would do for me.

Farny
and Colin now saw themselves out too, rallying to Tommy’s pied pipe and
dismissing my salty yarns as a “load of old tosh”, presumably for their
glorious leader’s benefit. Only Barry lingered. He watched me roll Rachel’s
onto its back and ignored his brother’s impatient calls to stay and say his
piece.

“Mr
Coal?”

“Yes
Barry?”

He
looked to the door to make sure no one had returned to hear what he had to say then
leaned in and whispered; “I believe you.”

Barry
took one last look at Rachel’s coffin and headed towards the door. I called to
him before he disappeared and thanked him for his faith.

“And
please, my friends call me John.”

Epilogue:

Monsters in
our midst

Remarkably I got no trouble from the boys after that. My milk stayed in its
bottles, my bins left themselves alone and my neighbours’ dog shit stayed on
the pavements outside the chip shop where my neighbours thought it ought to go.
All had returned to normal.

But
what was most remarkable was the reaction I got whenever I encountered them on
one of their street corners. Gone were the catcalls and abuse I’d suffered for
most of the year, in its place was courtesy and even humour.

“Watchya
John, eaten anyone today?” Colin would shout, as I’d saunter by with a length
of guttering or half a dozen bricks I’d rescued from a nearby scrap pile.

“Only
a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, bleeding do-gooders, hardly a snack,” I’d
reply much to their amusement, making even the lads who’d not been with us that
night laugh and howl in deference. I guess word had gotten out as to my “secret
identity” but I didn’t mind. After years of shutting myself in it felt good to
have a modicum of accord for a change, even if it was just from the local
reprobates.

“Hiya
John,” Barry would wave from his bedroom window as I passed.

“Alright
mate,” Farny would call as he bombed past me on his bike.

And
word clearly spread around town because one afternoon two young boys I’d never
even met helped me carry my shopping home for me, while some spotty Herbert
with a runny nose knocked on my door and offered to sell me a car stereo he
didn’t want no more.

My
turnaround was complete.

Obviously
I still wasn’t the best of buddies with Tommy but he didn’t give me a hard time
about it. He would just ignore me whenever I wished him a “good morning” or
smirk sarcastically when I went by, but that would be it. I guess I’d made him
feel foolish the evening I’d locked him up, and he’d not liked how his friends had
sided with me, albeit only for an hour or two, but these were big hurdles for
such young legs and it was hard for Tommy to get over them. But then I guess
that was what being a kid was all about. At least, I think it was. It had been such
a long time that I couldn’t really remember, but there’d been plenty of humility
and humiliation in my dim and distance past, of that I was sure. That said,
Tommy was true to his word and left me alone from that night forth, which I
guessed qualified as respect – especially from someone like Tommy.

And
it could’ve gone on like that as far as I was concerned. I’d not been this
content for longer than I could remember but an unexpected knock on the door
changed everything, as unexpected knocks on doors have a want to do.

Standing
on my front door step was a shaven-headed man I didn’t recognise, in a football
shirt and tracksuit bottoms. I thought he’d come to ask for his ball back, but
instead he grabbed me by the throat and barged me into my house.

“You
dirty paedo scum!” he shouted, throwing me to the floor and stamping on my face
before I had a chance to ask what the problem was. “
Facking
touch my kids will you! I’ll
facking
kill you, you sick bastard!”

I
raised my arms to defend myself but he was too big and too heavy to ward off.
He booted me in the face, kicked me in the stomach, stamped on my chest and
rained blows across the rest of me with his tattooed fists. He was well-schooled
in the art of beating up old aged pensioners and I stood little chance against
him.

“Pervert!
Facking
animal!”

I
think that would’ve been my lot had Tommy not charged in and grabbed the shaven
headed man, pulling him away and pleading with him to leave me be.

“Dad,
don’t, he didn’t do nothing to us, honest, please, just leave him!”

But
the shaven headed man turned his fists on Tommy instead, shouting at him that
he weren’t his son no more and that he was a “
facking
queer” who’d let his little brother get “knobbed by a
scarecrow”. Tommy denied it all, even when he was on the floor himself, and
insisted I hadn’t touched anyone, least of all Barry, and that all I’d done was
tell them ghost stories.

“Fink
I’m daft or somefink? Fink I just come off the banana boat from
facking
banana land? I know what sickos
like him are like. Want shooting the
facking
lot of ’em, grooming my
facking
kids like
that!”

“He
weren’t grooming us, dad, honest!”

“You’re
a
facking
disgrace!” his dad decreed,
and had he been the calibre of gent who could negotiate a belt and buckle, I
don’t doubt we would’ve both tasted its lick. But Tommy’s dad was straight-up
elasticated waistband man and made do with fists and feet, slapping Tommy and
kicking me all over until it hurt no more.

The
irony of the moment was not lost on me and I even managed a broken smirk in
response. I’d shared tales of werewolves, ghosts, ghoulies and vampires with the
boys but when all was said and done who were the real monsters in this
neighbourhood? My stories must’ve seemed tame by comparison. Poor young Tommy,
he didn’t stand a chance.

I
finally got it.

But
that was it. One final punch in the epicentre of my thoughts and then there was
nothing.

Alex was standing in front of me. I got the sense he’d been there for some time
because he was at his wits’ end, tearing his hair out and shouting at me to get
up.

“Come
on John, please, get up! Move it. I know you can hear me. Just get up. Get up
now!”

“Alex?”
I said, trying to push myself up to see him better but unable to do so as my
arms felt like lead. “What’s happening?”

“You’re
out of your basement. Quick, you’ve got to get back into your basement. Come
on, John, move!”

I
didn’t know where I was or what was going on, and when I tried to lift my head,
I felt sick to my stomach, but Alex was determined to see me up.

“John,
please listen to me, you’ve got to get into your basement now, you need to wake
up. Come on John, you can do it. Open your eyes. Just open your eyes!”

I
knew it must be serious because one dodgy referral asides Alex had never
steered me wrong in over thirty years of friendship so I focussed every ounce
of my strength into a single point and finally –

–
I opened my eyes.

Everything
was quiet.

Alex
was gone. So were Tommy and his dad. I was all alone on the floor of my hallway
and it was dark. I could hear my carriage clock in the next room chiming out
for midnight and I could see the basement door open just a few feet away.

Oh
Jesus, Alex was right, I was out of my basement and it was almost time.

I
tried to crawl towards my sanctuary but every movement was agony. Some of my ribs
felt broken and my face was stuck to the carpet with blood. I didn’t manage an
inch but I had to keep trying. I had to reach that door.

But
it was already too late, my body began to burn and my clothes fell away in
rags. Oh God please, this couldn’t happen. Not like this. Not here. Not now. But
God had forsaken me for the best part of seventy years and he saw no reason to
answer my calls now.

Two
rows of savage teeth cut through my gums to fill my enormous black mouth. And
jagged claws sprouted from each of my thick and powerful fingers as my hands
grew to the size of dustbin lids. The pain suddenly slid away too; my bruises became
but memories and my invalidities were put on hold as I clambered to my full
height, smashing the overhead light bulb on my snout and not even feeling it.

My
mind was a fog of thoughts and emotions but my senses were needle sharp. I
could smell the dead chicken that had been placed in the basement by my keeper,
but beyond the flimsy door in front of me there was fresh meat – lots of
it, and it was grazing unawares. There wasn’t even a decision to be made but in
case I was in any doubt after all of these years on the leash, Rachel called to
me from the next room, from behind her dusty cedar lid, to tell me what I had to
do.

“Go
on John, what are you waiting for? You know what you’ve got to do so just go
and do it!

“Kill
the bastards! Kill them all!”

The End

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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