Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-one

I slammed my fist down on the table, blank and white like everything else in this awful place. The table shook violently, I felt a little giddy with rage, a little proud of my indignation. Doctor Steward didn’t bat an eyelid, as usual he was smiling, the smile was tired now though, more forced. There was woman by his side, another Doctor, short and Hispanic with a scattering of worry lines across her forehead. She jumped a little as my fist banged down, the small sprawling plant rang against the plywood.

‘Calm down,’ Doctor Steward said, some of his own calm had left his voice.

I glanced at Lisa, she was biting her lip, her eyes didn’t leave the Doctor’s face. I shook my head violently. As I began to talk I was so angry my voice was shaking, it was like an acid running through me, busting through my throat. ‘I saw his Mother,’ I mashed my finger against the table, ‘I heard her crying, screaming out for him.’

‘With all due respect,’ Doctor Stewart’s voice took on a smug undertone, ‘you also heard Mark’s high emotions.’

‘But I heard his mother,’ I sneered, ‘it’s different.’ I stopped for a breath. ‘What exactly are you doing here?’

‘I told you,’ now he was exasperated. ‘We’re trying to help these people.’

Now Lisa stood up. ‘How do you help the families of their victims?’ She said, ‘did you send a fruit basket to Tony Calliser’s parents?’ She snorted. ‘These are not people, what person would do what this,’ her voice turned ugly, ‘Mark, has done?’

‘You don’t understand,’ He shook his head. ‘You can only see them as monsters.’

‘You’re a monster,’ I spat at him.

His chair scraped loudly on the floor as he stood up to face me. ‘Mark was one of our greatest students,’ he said, outraged, his face red. ‘You destroyed all our work with him when you decided to have a cigarette.’

‘I didn’t know that would happen,’ I snapped, ‘I didn’t know you let your students keep rotting corpses in their rooms.’

‘Mark was different,’ the Doctor shot back, ‘our work with him was so important, you just don’t-’

‘Don’t tell me again that I don’t understand, you clearly don’t understand the pain of losing a child.’ I breathed deeply in an attempt to calm myself. ‘Tony Callister was Seventeen Doctor, Seventeen.’

‘But we’re doing this to stop that from happening again,’ he banged his fist down on the table, equally as violent as mine. ‘Doctor Garcia, please explain.’ He turned away from me and waved at the woman in the room, feigning indifference.

I was wrong to think that this woman, Doctor Garcia, was nervous and scared. As soon as she stood and smoothed down her skirt, short though she was, an air of authority beamed from her. She was stony faced, serious and unmoved. She nodded to us, ‘I see you’re frustrated.’

Lisa snorted, but one swift glance from Doctor Garcia, seemed to quiet her. Doctor Stewart sat still as a statue with his head in his hands.

‘I know you’ve had a lot to take in recently,’ she didn’t give us a moment to agree or disagree. ‘Now there are some things you’ll want to listen to.’ We didn’t have a choice.

‘I’m a leading specialist in Vampire Society,’ she went on.

‘Vampire what?’ Lisa raised her eyebrow. Doctor Garcia raised an eyebrow back and Lisa lowered hers, I had never seen her chastised before.

‘Yes, Vampire society,’ she paused. ‘Now, there are a few common practises when dealing with creation. That’s what they call making new vampires.’ She paused again, to check if either of us were looking sceptical or like we might argue. ‘The vampires they create are referred to as their children, and those vampires become brother and sister to each other.’

‘A happy family,’ I snorted, I couldn’t help myself.

Doctor Garcia ignored me. ‘There’s something we’ve discovered recently. In some cases the creator, or father, helps the new vampire, guides them through the first few weeks of their new life.’

‘Teaching them to ride a bike, patching up a grazed knee…’

‘Mr Duncan we quiet or I will remove you from the room.’ I shrank into my chair.

‘There’s the popular belief that the humanity in the new vampire needs to be wiped out, the compassion, the feeling that life is sacred, you understand?’ We nodded, neither of us dared say anything. ‘So on the first kill, they’re instructed to take someone who they’re attracted to, someone they’d desire if they were an average human. The point of this is a test of strength, a test that they’re beginning to lose their compassion.’

‘Tony Callister?’ I asked in a deep exhale, ‘that’s why Mark was special, because he couldn’t lose his humanity.’

She nodded curtly, ‘he didn’t attack when he was supposed to, he kept a relationship with him, even slept with him, and didn’t kill him. But, when the pressure got too much he gave in.’ She sighed, but she didn’t look particularly sad.

‘And stole his body?’ Lisa asked sceptically.

‘Yes, eventually. You see, he thought he could change the boy, turn him into one of his own. But it was much too late.’ She looked uncomfortably at the floor, it was the first time she had shown a weakness. ‘He’s been holding onto the belief that he can do it, he hasn’t drunk a single drop of blood since Tony Callister.’

‘But he can’t do it,’ Lisa shot at her. ‘It’s far too late, that,’ she shuddered, ‘thing, that’s never going to be anything, is it?’

‘Of course not,’ Doctor Garcia said with a sly smirk which made my stomach lurch.

‘But you let him believe it was,’ Lisa started back. I stared at her in return, she had never shown any of these sympathetic feelings before, especially not to these creatures. ‘Why?’

‘We’ve told you before,’ Gave Doctor Stewart’s groan, ‘we’re trying to help.’

‘By letting him die?’

‘It’s not him,’ Doctor Stewart said desperately, ‘it’s the others. All of them, and all the ones who might be, we’re trying to rehabilitate them. We lose Mark but we learn so much from him.’

‘If he’s more human than the others, then what you’re doing is wrong.’ I realised Lisa was right, though I was still surprised by her.

‘He was always going to die!’ Doctor Stewart shouted back at me. His sudden anger made me jump. ‘He heard a rumour,’ he started again more softly. ‘A rumour that vampire blood would sustain a vampire, the wound heals and no one dies. He was going to feed from his lover exclusively.’

‘But that rumour isn’t true?’ I guessed.

Doctor Stewart broke into a sarcastic grin, more like the wide smiles he had first greeted me with. ‘Have you ever smelt the blood?’ He asked me, ‘it’s rancid, it’s a poison, a killer, which is why it spreads the infection. It’s dead blood, they cannot live on it.’

‘But you let him believe he could, just like you told him he could bring a month dead corpse back to life.’

‘No,’ Doctor Garcia cut in sharply, her tight thin eyebrows contracting, she was looking at me like a stern teacher. ‘We did not, we do not influence the creatures, in any way. We leave them to create and feel and learn, alone. Progress is not the same if it is forced.’

‘Then where did he hear these rumours?’ My head had started to thud painfully. I began to doubt everything I was being told.

The Doctors looked at each other with caution. ‘From his brother.’

‘And by brother you mean…’

‘A vampire with a shared father,’ Doctor Garcia nodded. ‘I believe you’ve met the father.’

‘Jarl,’ Lisa breathed slowly. ‘What are you doing about him?’

‘We’ve been tracking him, of course,’ she said curtly, ‘there are authorities stationed in Cuba to try and contain him.’

‘Just like you contained him from Marietta Benavente,’ I snorted. ‘Just like you contained Al-’ I stopped myself. ‘Its Alex, the brother is Alex?’

‘They were easy to track,’ Doctor Garcia smiled shallowly. ‘Jarl has a calling card.’

‘In death we love,’ Lisa repeated, stony faced, her voice thin.

‘Alex likes to do these things, create chaos, spread rumours,’ Doctor Garcia started, ‘as a case study he’s fascinating, as a vampire, he’s very dangerous.’

I thought about Robert Thompson. ‘I know,’ I shuddered.

‘For his first kill,’ she continued, ‘he chose his ex-girlfriend.’ She paused, ‘he ripped her throat out with his bare hands, he didn’t even drink from her. He laughed and moved on to the next.’

‘The children in Norway,’ my voice shook.

Doctor Garcia nodded again, ‘he liked the idea of a pack of feral children, haunting the cold northern towns the way wolves used to, that’s what he told me.’

‘Alex looked at me,’ I confessed, ‘he looked at me like he hated me. Are you sure he’s safe here?’

Again the Doctors looked at each other like they shared a common secret. ‘Alex has escaped from here twice.’ Doctor Stewart said with a careful sympathetic smile. Flashes of Robert Thompson’s mangled body splashed like blood splatter across my thoughts.

‘We try to help them,’ Doctor Stewart continued, ‘but sometimes there is no helping them, they’re past being wild hungry animals and have developed this deep malicious intelligence which Alex has. It’s a disappointment for the research but in cases like these there is only one thing we can do.’

‘And that is?’

‘Keep them heavily sedated, and when we’re sure they can’t defend themselves.’ He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a length of dark wood, pointed sharply at one end. ‘We terminate the vampire.

‘A wooden stake? You’ve got to be joking.’

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

The corridors were chaos. All the doors had unlocked except those holding in the monsters, so they were all banging against their doors and giving long anguished screams. Staff were handing out more blood calm them down, but the water came still, the trolleys they were pushing waded through a developing stream.

Down at the far end of the corridor, the black starless sky could be seen through heavy double doors as people tried to sweep it out. The employees were trying to act as if this was a minor inconvenience, but painted too plainly on their faces was the look of panic as they fought against the torrent. It was too easy for two people to slip about the chaos unnoticed.

Mercifully, the water stopped flowing. I could hear someone screaming about smoking in the building and I felt mildly guilty. I turned out my upturned shirtsleeves and water poured out, without the constant flow I began to shiver. I looked over at Lisa clutching her arms tightly to herself.

‘You know why they’re so scared of fire don’t you?’ She whispered as we ducked into an empty corridor to avoid being seen. I shook my head, distractedly, not really caring. ‘The old legends and that, fire kills vampires.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Where do you think her room is?’ I asked. I was still fevered with the image and the memory of her, her casual gaze on me still replaying over and over.

Lisa looked troubled, she took my hand and squeezed, as if trying to comfort me. She believed I had been bewitched, maybe I had, but it didn’t make the need to see Teresa any less powerful.

‘That’s not what I was looking for,’ she whispered back, she pointed down the corridor we had been hiding in, dull outraged screams still echoed through the doors, but there were no employees here.

Then I caught the smell, it was even worse now because it was damp, the smell of dirty wet mud had crept into the mixture of rotting matter and public toilets. My eyes started to water, it was a smell that got inside you, like petrol or paint, only much, much worse. It was giving me a thumping headache. I stumbled blindly as Lisa drew me towards the smell. The floor was dotted with dead flies, soaked and swimming in the pale brown water that oozed out from under the door. Lisa gave a dry retch and straightened herself before moving closer.

The cries and screams died down, all except one, and that was coming from the room we were approaching. It wasn’t an indignant cry like the others, and as soon as I heard it alone I wondered why it hadn’t stuck out before.

It was such a human sound, so full of despair. It was as if the screamer had forgotten they were a sophisticated creature and had given into instinct. Something has been lost to them, that was clear from the cry, but it was something so basic, like food or water, something they couldn’t exist without.

Lisa looked into the glass partition in the door. She backed away slowly, made it walking backward to the other side of the corridor, then promptly vomited a pearly liquid all over the floor.

I made my way through the heaving smell, so bad it was like a living thing. ‘Don’t’ Lisa croaked as she knelt, clutching her stomach.

I would’ve pretended that I was the man here and that women are more delicate than us stronger folk, but when it came to Lisa, I knew that wasn’t true. I will never forget what I saw, and I have reminds in my dreams too often.

That black haired skinny man who hadn’t moved or even reach for his blood, the one who had just stared blankly at me out of a sea of flies, he was crouched on the floor making this wail of despair. His brown eyes were red and dry, they no longer sparkled , they were dull and dead, his face screwed up into an animal snarl.

His arms were clutched around a body; dry and shrivelled body with sparse black hair around a brown cracked face. The flesh had been eaten away by maggots and flies so that it was sparse and stretched over the teeth and empty eye sockets. Clothes were hanging limply from a shrivelled body, soggy skin clinging tightly to bone. Beneath the body seeped that foul smelling liquid, oozing under the door. The wails continued painfully, harsh and unending like a car alarm.

I felt Lisa’s hand on my shoulder and I jumped. She was stony and pale, I looked on the floor and the stream of vomit was meeting the stream of brown fluid. My head was swimming, I was dizzy with the smell and that awful siren.

‘Do you think?-’

‘I don’t think, I know.’ Lisa’s shaking voice cut me off, ‘that’s Tony Callister’s body

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

If left alone, I probably would’ve died in that place. I was still naive about this world and these animals, despite everything I had gone through over the last two months. It was quite lucky then, that I had no idea where I was. It was another white room with no windows and hideous strip lighting, nothing to mark it out. I was still wrapped in the thick blanket and I was till shivering slightly.

Was overcome with a need, like those few times I had tried to quit smoking, my foot started to fidget and I needed something to occupy my mind before I reached for the lighter. My fingers felt numb, I kept squeezing my fingers together to relive some non-existent pressure while trying to focus on my surroundings but finding nothing solid to look at.

Lisa, leaning against the wall, watched me with the same detached sadness you use to look at the terminally ill. Someone in a coma, unable to listen to you or interact with you in anyway, to Lisa, I was already a lost cause. I wondered if she would ever get over her high expectations of other people. She expected everyone to be as resilient as her, dust themselves off and move on.

‘They’ve locked us in,’ she hissed, ‘you do know that?’

This was all my fault, of course I should’ve forced my way into Teresa’s room, and we had been locked up as a result. It didn’t matter anymore, I didn’t want to leave now. I spared a glance to the door, it was hard to see the join around the wall, everything was so painfully white.

‘I don’t want to go,’ I said, and my voice sounded dreamy and far away.

She snorted. ‘Doctor Stewart said he would let us go once you calmed down.’

‘Maybe he was right,’ again I didn’t sound normal, ‘there’s so much left to learn.’

‘I know all I need to know,’ she shot back.

A memory clicked into place. ‘The Doctor told me something about you.’ I almost whispered, my eyes fixed on the floor, because I was too scared I would see Teresa’s eyes in Lisa’s.

She blushed, it was so brash and obvious against the wall. ‘Not now,’ she said, and her voice was almost a whisper too.

‘He said you knew more than you were letting on.’

‘Please,’ her voice cracked. ‘That woman has done something to you, lets just wait until it passes.’

I blinked several times to clear my foggy head. ‘I know I’m acting crazy,’ I shook myself, ‘but Doctor Stewart is lying, I know her.’

‘Or she made you think you knew her.’

‘No, I knew before she looked into my eyes,’ I shivered again, remembering her eyes.

‘He said she’d been here or thirty years,’ Lisa sighed, ‘she’s the oldest one here, over a hundred apparently.’

‘How could they possibly know that if she won’t talk to them.’

‘She wrote it down,’ her eyes rolled.

‘She’s lying.’

Lisa paced about the room breathing heavily and huffing. I watched her, her hands fists, she looked determined again and I felt my heart jolt despite everything. Something had clicked back into place, she was excited, ready to solve a problem.

‘I have to talk to one of them,’ she said with her fist against her head. ‘One of the creatures.’

‘So do I,’ I had turned dreamy again, picturing all that dark blonde hair cascading down Teresa’s back.

Lisa growled slightly. ‘When they bought you to that room, did you walk past a room which well,’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘it stunk.’

‘With the flies?’ I sat upright.

‘I was bought to be questioned in the daylight,’ Lisa went on, ‘all the others were asleep. But he was sitting there, staring at the wall. I thought I recognised him.’

‘Me too,’ I was brought out of myself for a moment.

‘Then I remembered,’ she said, ‘in Glasgow, Tony Calliser.’

I thought about the goth kid I saw in the pictures, the shocking blue hair and an expression like the world owed him. ‘It can’t be,’ I shook my head.

‘No,’ Lisa continued, she looked impatient, ‘there was a poster, it was an obituary to a young man who’d died of a drug overdose.’ I remembered glancing at it vaguely, there was a similarity, in the smiling face of that poster and the tired, lost look on that man behind the glass.

‘You think he killed Tony?’

‘Finally he gets it,’ she rolled her eyes at me. ‘I’m sure it’s the same man, positive. It can’t be a coincidence.’ Then she fixed her narrowed eyes on me, ‘but because of you, we’re stuck in here.’

‘I thought you wanted to go home,’ I retaliated sharply.

‘That’s not important anymore,’ she shrugged, ‘we’re not going home are we. I don’t think we ever were.’

‘You mean, we know too much?’ I almost laughed.

She frowned, thoughtful, ‘maybe they showed you into that room because they knew what would happen, how you would react to her.’

My chest burned ferociously, ‘I need to see her,’ my voice croaked out.

Lisa snorted, ‘no you don’t, the feeling will go in a few hours.’

I shook my head, ‘it feels like I can’t breathe, Lisa.’ I wasn’t being melodramatic, I couldn’t breathe, it felt like I was being crushed, like I was bent too far and my insides were squashed together. I was almost gasping, taking in big panic breathes whenever those clear eyes crossed my mind.

Lisa got up and grasped the door handle, again and again, as if our situation had changed over the last few minutes. She turned away, huffing, as if expecting locked doors to open before the very presence of her. I noticed something shimmering in her pocket, a cigarette packet.

‘Thank-you Jesus,’ I said and reached into her pocket with my shaking hands. As I lit up she screamed something insubstantial at me, something lost in that first blast of nicotine.

But as soon as the smoke ran down the back of my throat and almost reached my lungs, a downpour erupted. The heavens opened and gallons of water drenched me. Except it wasn’t the heavens, it was a sprinkler system in the ceiling. I coughed and spluttered on my one drag as the clear water began to pool beneath me.

When I looked up to Lisa, she was smiling beneath the limp curtains of wet hair. She was holding the door wide open.