Her Vampyrrhic Heart (2 page)

So when he heard the enormous splash from behind him he nearly leapt out of his skin. The sound shocked him so much that he spun round fast enough to send the flashlight spinning from his mouth. Now he could see nothing. Once more the absolute blackness of the night-time forest filled his eyes. As he dropped on all fours to scrabble for the light he heard more splashes. It sounded as if some large animal churned the river. A deer? Maybe. Possibly even a wild boar. Those could be violent brutes if riled.

A second later, he had the flashlight again. Fortunately it hadn't broken, and when he thumbed the switch the light instantly returned. Quickly, he snapped the new battery into place before pushing the camera back into its housing. He realized his heart was pounding.
Stupid idiot
, he thought,
you're not scared of a
hairy pig, are you?
Although he had to admit that huge splashing sound had startled him. What's more, his hands shook so much he found it difficult to slide the camera back into its protective case. At last, however, he'd done the job.
Good! Now get back to the car.

Sounds of a heavy animal lumbering through the bushes reached him. Whatever the beast might be it was close. Maybe several wild boar? Meeting a pack of those vicious porkers didn't appeal. Time to go.

He checked his watch. One minute remained of the four teasingly allocated by Rose. Maybe she'd slipped off her fleece jacket? Or was she in the back seat? Totally naked? With the light splashing against the trees, he ran along the path. Behind him, he heard the crunch of branches. Maybe a stag? Or a wild pony? A big brute whatever it was.

Now he could see the car. Its windows had misted up, yet he heard music. Rose must have turned on the radio. He saw her silhouette through the fogged glass. That sexy outline made him eager to find out what erotic treat awaited him.

Only John Cantley never made it to the car. For a moment he thought that a gigantic oak tree had fallen on him. The concussion was fantastic. The flashlight went flying from his hand. Even though it remained lit, darkness swept over him. Although this was very much a different kind of darkness: this would be a darkness that could never ever be banished by anything so mundane as an electric light. This darkness claimed his soul.

Rose sat in the car. The engine idled just as her boyfriend had left it. Neither wanted to be stranded in the forest if the faulty electrics died on them again, so best keep the old girl ticking over. Her leg began to itch in its cast. She wished they were back in bed again. Making love is the perfect distraction from the realities of life – including being forced to endure six weeks with her leg encased in this itchy shell.

As Rose waited for John to return, she listened to the radio. Meanwhile, the car's windows had misted over. When she was a little girl she liked to wipe away just a tiny bit of condensation so she could peep out as if looking through a keyhole. Peeking through an area of clean glass the size of a penny felt like having a secret view into another world.

Rose did this now. With her finger squeaking on the glass, she cleaned a coin-sized area of white condensation from the passenger window. Beyond the glass, the blackness of the forest. Night times in the wilderness are incredibly dark compared to those in town. Here, not a single glimmer of light showed amongst the trees – those silent giants had stood there for centuries. World wars, revolutions and the deaths of kings and presidents left them untouched. Those oaks seemed eternal – unaffected by either the triumphs or tragedies of the human race.

She glanced at the dashboard clock. Smiling, she realized John would be back any moment now. The side window had fogged over again. Quickly, she wiped a small area clean to create another of her peepholes. That done, she put her eye to the glass.

John was there … her boyfriend's face was just inches away at the other side of the glass.

And he's dead.
The moment Rose saw his face – swollen and grazed and smeared with blood – she knew he'd been killed. And now his murderer held the dead face to the window, showing her.

Fear exploded inside of her. With an utter sense of dread, she thought:
I'm next … they'll kill me.
That's what she expected … but what happened next took her by surprise.

Because her boyfriend's eyes snapped open. His eyes locked on to hers, and he began to shout: ‘Rose! Help me! Please, help me!'

Those words were shocking enough, yet other voices began to shout, too – they shouted in the same desperate, agonized way at exactly the same time:

‘ROSE! HELP US! PLEASE HELP US!'

With a frantic swipe of her hand, she cleaned away the condensation. Now she saw the monstrosity, which was out there just beyond the glass. And that's when Rose began to scream.

J
une Valko packed in a hurry. The doctor had told June that her mother had deteriorated overnight. Into the holdall went clothes, a toilet bag, together with a document holder bulging with newspaper clippings, copies of witness statements and disks containing TV news reports that she'd harvested from the Internet. Snow had been forecast, which was unusual for November, even here in the North of England. So, along with a keen sense of urgency, she could now add the worry that trains to Whitby might be cancelled.

However, June Valko absolutely needed to make this journey. She had to talk to a man she'd never met before, but whom her mother had once mentioned several years ago. The name of the stranger she needed to find was written in large letters across the document file: TOM WESTONBY.

T
hat November night the forest had been silent. Flakes of snow drifted down through the branches. A fox padded beneath the trees. The animal paused as its sensitive ears picked up a sound that suddenly grew louder and louder until it turned into a vicious bellow as a monster with a pair of blazing eyes appeared.

The fox fled before the rampaging beast. This roaring, snorting thing lurched along the track at whirlwind speed. Riding on its back were two figures. One crouched down, scared half to death, and holding on for dear life. The other whooped. This exhilarating ride excited him so much that he beat the cab roof with his fist and yelled at the top of his voice.

‘FASTER! FASTER!'

The other youth, a green cap scrunched down on his head, forced himself so tightly against the bodywork he seemed to be trying to weld himself there, so he became one with the vehicle – and could therefore avoid the very real danger of being hurled from its back as they hurtled through the forest.

Sixteen-year-old Owen Westonby grinned down at his friend who clung there in terror. ‘Isn't this brilliant? Isn't this the way to feel totally alive?'

‘Shit! We're going to be
totally
dead if he crashes.'

‘Come on, Kit! Live dangerously!
Whoooo!
'

The
Whoooo
came about because the driver had just hit a bump in the road that sent the truck flying into the air.

Kit screwed his eyes shut. ‘Oh, God. Oh, God. I'll never do anything bad again!'

The motor roared. Owen gripped the steel bar that ran along the top of the cab. He faced forward, feeling the blast of cold air in his face, and loving it – dear God, loving every moment of this amazing ride. A ton of steel lurched under him. He bruised his knees every time another lurch sent him crashing forward.
Who cares? This is Fan Tastic! This is the best antidote in the world to boring school.

Owen Westonby and Kit Bolter had called on their pal, Jez Pollock; he lived on a farm a couple of miles from the village. Jez's parents had gone out for the evening, so they took their chance for some fun. Jez had fired up the big old beast of a pickup: then they went for a little drive in the countryside.

With the Pollock farm sprawling between moorland and the river, they'd been able to stick to private roads without using a public highway, where there was a danger they'd be spotted by cops. Here the dirt tracks ran through dense woodland. This is where the excitement lay. This is where they got their hard-earned teenage kicks.

Owen diced with death. Standing in the back of the truck meant that his head was eight feet above ground level. All of which put him nicely at decapitation height. Branches scythed out of the darkness in front of him. He liked to play chicken, ducking at the last second. More than one strand of his blond hair remained sticking to a tree limb as they hurtled by.

Feeling a tug on his leg, he glanced down to see Kit Bolter's terrified eyes. ‘THIS HAS GOT TO STOP!' yelled Kit. ‘We're gonna be killed!'

Owen glanced forward to see a huge branch emerge from the blackness. He ducked just in time. From the cab Jez signalled his glee by sounding the horn.

Then two things happened at once.

First: Kit screamed. ‘I've lost my cap!' The green headgear fluttered away.

Second: the truck swerved. The sheer violence of the manoeuvre flung Owen from its back. The next moment he lay on the ground. Snowflakes drifted down to land on his face. The bellowing truck vanished. Silence returned to the forest – the kind of silence that had haunted this mass of ancient trees at night for the last ten thousand years.

Then the sound of running feet and voices.

‘Look at what's happened to Owen.'

Kit Bolter's voice rose to a squeal. ‘You've killed him, you idiot. Look at his eyes. He's stone dead!'

Branches rustled as a breeze sighed through this frozen world.

That's when Owen sat up, threw back his head and laughed so much his ribs hurt.

Kit yelled, ‘Jesus, Owen! That's not funny. I thought you were dead!' He stomped off to retrieve his green cap.

Jez held out his hand. Owen grabbed it and hauled himself up to his feet.

‘You pulled a massive swerve there, Jez. It was fantastic!'

‘I didn't do it deliberately,' said the towering youth. ‘Something crawled out in front of me.'

‘Crawled?'

‘Yeah, kind of crawling.'

‘You mean, like a hedgehog or something?'

‘Nah, it was huge. Big as an elephant.'

Owen stared at the youth's serious expression. However, Jez couldn't hold it in any longer; laughter blurted through his lips.

Owen laughed, too. ‘You had me believing you then. I thought you were going to say you'd nearly hit our famous dragon.'

‘Right … the dragon.' Jez grinned. ‘You know, when I was a little kid, my mother used to tell me stories about a dragon living in the forest – the woman gave me nightmares.'

Kit returned with the cap back on his head again. ‘Did anyone mention our neighbourhood dragon?'

‘Jez nearly smacked into it, that's why he swerved.'

‘Really?'

‘Yeah, really, Kit.' Jez pinched the green cap and put it on his own head. ‘You can't drive down a road here without smacking into 'em, and getting dragon blood and giblets all over your car.'

The three friends spluttered with laughter.

As suddenly as they started laughing they stopped.

‘What was that?' Kit asked.

‘Dunno.' Jez tilted his head, listening. ‘I heard it, though.'

There was another crash.

‘Something's out there,' said Owen. ‘It's smashing up the forest.'

Kit stared anxiously into the gloom. ‘This is actual wilderness out here. The forest has existed since the last Ice Age.'

‘You astound me, Holmes.' Jez adopted a loud, theatrical voice. ‘Do you declare that to be a mammoth of woolly appearance out there?'

‘Animals that were thought to be extinct are being found all the time.'

‘Did they pipe Wikipedia directly through your arse into your brain?' Jez climbed into the driver's seat. ‘A cow'll be wandering about in there or something.'

Owen took the green cap from Jez's head and put it on his own. ‘Kit. This has stretched out of shape, because your brains have grown too big.'

Jez started the engine. ‘Hop in the back. My dad'll be back in twenty minutes. If he finds out I've been driving this he'll kill me.'

As the truck headed back to the farm, this time at a slower speed, Owen Westonby kept his eyes fixed on the trees behind them. For a moment, he thought he saw a shadow moving through the gloom. A tree swayed as if some massive body had pushed against it.

‘When I fell back there, I think I took a knock on the head,' he called to Kit over the engine noise. ‘I'm sure it's making me see things.' He grinned at his pal, who still held on tight despite the slow speed. ‘OK. Use this to keep your brains warm.' Owen plonked the green cap on to Kit's head, and then settled down to enjoy what remained of the ride.

O
n a cold November morning Tom Westonby stepped into the river despite there being snow on the ground. Here the river ran through a ravine. Winter had robbed the trees of their leaves so branches formed a mass of black spikes against the sky.

Tom wore a thick-skinned ‘dry suit', which differed from the traditional diver's wetsuit. As the name suggested, the suit kept his body dry; what was more, he'd donned layers of thermal underwear – although deeply unattractive to behold, they did keep him warm. The river's temperature stood just a few degrees above freezing. Without the dry suit the cold would kill him.

After twisting the aqualung valve to start the flow of air, he pulled down his face mask before moving deeper into the river. Within seconds, the black water had risen over his head, and he swam from a world of light and sound into another world entirely – this was a silent, alien place. Strands of weed floating by. Fish ghosting from the darkness to stare at the intruder. He switched on the helmet light. A cone of yellow illuminated rocks carved by the current. These natural sculptures resembled strange creatures. More than once Tom Westonby found himself half-believing that they were the remains of ancient statues. They even seemed to possess faces with deep-set eyes.