Northern Fiction - Going Underground
Masquerade
'Yeah, of course,' the girl replied. 'You hadn't guessed?'
'I don't believe in vampires,' Hamish blustered. 'And I thought you hated Goths who pretend to be undead.'
The girl smiled again. 'We're not Goths pretending to be vampires,' she said pleasantly. 'We're vampires pretending to be Goths.' She took a small mirror out of her handbag and threw it to the skinhead. 'Try and see us in this.'
Hamish did as she suggested. He glanced from them to the mirror and back again. Then back at the mirror.
'It's fucking impossible,' he muttered.
'Ah, the intelligent response,' the girl sneered.
'Who are you?' Eloise asked.
'I'm Edna, and these are my friends Irene, Virginia and Kitty,' the girl went on. 'Not very trendy names, but we were born just after the Great War, most of us.' She shrugged. 'Not a good time to be around. The Depression made Thatcher's Britain look like a tea party. We all lost our jobs, had to do all kinds of things just to stay alive; begging, scavenging, whoring... In the end, we decided to end it all. We hanged ourselves upstairs. We didn't expect to come back _ but folklore always said that suicides become vampires.'
'This house is supposed to be haunted,' Eloise said slowly.
'Yes. Our ghosts _ psychic recordings of our last moments, separate from ourselves, imprinted on the ether _ hang around upstairs,' Edna said. 'They tend to scare off unwanted visitors. Didn't work with Vlad here, unfortunately. He was too strong_willed for ghosts to be able to manifest themselves in his presence; he had a psychic aura like a ten_ton truck, which went smashing through all our defenses. Without even being aware of it, he desecrated our coffins so we couldn't return to them. Now he's dead we can actually venture into our old squat, regenerate ourselves and reconsecrate it...'
'Really,' said Eloise hurriedly. 'Well, it's been very interesting meeting you, but we must dash, you know...'
Edna smiled again. 'I don't think so,' she said.
'But we helped you!' Eloise exclaimed in outrage.
'But we need blood,' Edna replied. She laughed at Eloise's expression. 'Feeling betrayed? Did you really expect us not to act true to form? Come off it _ we're vampires, we have no ethical code; we don't need one. Morals are for mortals. Morals are for those who cling to society and its mores because they fear death.' She stepped closer to Eloise, and caressed her cheek. 'But as a special favour' _ she winked _ 'we'll save you two till last.'
The other vampires followed her in. One stood in the doorway as the others rounded up Eloise, Hamish, and the three Gothic girls. Try as she might, Eloise found it impossible to struggle as Edna bore down on her, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the others were equally passive, even Hamish. The vampires tied four of them to the altar, but led Miriam into the centre of the room.
Eloise tried to reason with them one last time.
'Can't you find some other way of doing this?' she cried out. Edna spared her a glance.
'Shut up, or your death will be worse,' she snapped. Two of her followers took Miriam by the arms. Edna and the other remaining vampires advanced on their helpless prey; they reached out, pulled the robe down to expose her neck, then took it in turns to sink their sharp white teeth into her soft flesh.
Eloise watched, sickened by the sight and the smell _ the smell most of all. For years she had been obsessed with vampires, seduced by their romantic myth, Anne Rice's most devoted follower; but there was nothing romantic about this. It was real. It was sordid. It was brutal, vicious, heartless.
It was rape.
When they had finished, they took Miriam's limp, ennervated body and savagely tore it apart into bloodless chunks, as if it was a roast chicken. Then they ceremoniously placed the pieces in the nearest coffin.
This completed, they untied Diana, and took her, whimpering, into the middle of the room. She gazed up at their bestial faces with a bovine, almost resigned expression on her face. Edna bared her neck, and the whole bloody process broke out afresh.
Nick awoke to find the morning sun beaming straight into the dilapidated room. He screwed up his eyes, and got slowly to his feet. How long had he been asleep? What was he doing here? His head throbbed.
Suddenly, it all came back to him in a rush. The nightclub, Eloise's sister, the police, the house... The ghosts. He glanced around nervously. No sign of them. But it was daylight outside, so that was to be expected.
But where were Eloise and Hamish? They must have gone without waiting for him. That wasn't nice, was it? Maybe they'd thought he'd gone already. He'd better try and find them, catch up with them, discover what had happened while he was out cold. And if he couldn't find them, well _ he'd survived without them before.
He headed for the door, eager to get back on the road.
In the cellar below, the morning light had no chance of penetrating. The smell of spilt blood and posthumous egestion filled the air as the vampires placed Maria's lacerated remains in one of the coffins. Edna turned, and headed towards Eloise.
She struggled in her bonds. 'Hamish...' she whimpered,
The skinhead lay beside her, unable to move.
'Oh, fuck,' he muttered inadequately.
The vampires clustered around Eloise, and she shuddered with revulsion at the touch of their cold, dead flesh on her skin. They unbound her, and heaved her up. Three of them held her while Edna stepped closer. The vampire bared her fangs, threw her head back, then plunged her teeth into Eloise's flesh.
The door creaked open. A voice could be heard.
'Eloise? Hamish?'
Simultaneously, a beam of morning sunlight forced its way through the widening gap between cellar door and lintel. Edna tore herself away from her meal, and spun round to confront the horrific sight. The other vampires dropped Eloise and turned.
The light struck them like a laser_beam. One after another, they exploded into flame, shrieking and sobbing with pain and rage as their superannuated flesh blazed. Edna stumbled halfway across the room, still burning, then crashed into the wall and slid, rattling, down it, leaving a smear of burnt flesh. The rest of the vampires smouldered where they fell. The stench was repellent.
'Er, Hamish? Eloise?' Nick repeated, peering in through the doorway, silhouetted by the sunlight. Eloise, freed from the vampires' influence by their demise, staggered to her feet and ran to him, hugging him ecstatically. Nick returned the embrace with a foolish, embarrassed grin.
'Hey, what did I do this time?' he laughed.
A quarter of an hour later, they were sitting on the cellar steps with the morning sun beaming down from the passage above. Eloise was hugging Rebecca's corpse to her chest.
'Hers must be the only body to survive intact,' Nick said sadly. The others had filled him in on the events of the night. He would have thought they were taking the piss if he hadn't grabbed a brief, sickening glimpse of the morbid detritus in the room, before staggering out to be sick. He'd almost regretted his decision to take a look in the cellar, on the off_chance of finding them.
'She doesn't have to be dead,' Eloise moaned. Tears were streaming down her face.
Hamish decided it was time he reasserted himself. 'Face it, Eloise,' he said firmly. 'She's dead. There's nothing you can do about it.' His helplessness in the face of a faggoty Goth and a few undead dykes had left him smarting, and he needed some way of regaining his self_respect. All the same, his experiences had touched a hitherto unsuspected sensitive streak. He didn't want Eloise to cling to her delusions, but he didn't want to upset her, either. But she looked irritatingly superior, despite her grief, when she turned to him.
'I can bring her back,' she insisted. Hamish shook his head. 'I can,' she said angrily. 'That notebook Nick robbed from Anghelides, the occultist we tangled with in Silchester. It said something about a discovery his master had made in Wales, at a place called Caer Pedryfan. I'm sure if we get hold of the Cauldron of Annwfyn we'll be able to return my sister's soul to her body...' There was a brief silence.
'Well, we can't hang around here much longer,' Nick said. 'We've already got the bizzies after Hamish. If they find us here, they're not gonna believe a fuckin' word we say.'
Eloise looked determined.
'We'll put Beckie in a coffin,' she began. 'Then we'll make the cellar inaccesible.'
She glanced at her two companions.
'Then we'll hitch a lift to Caer Pedryfan.'
'And then what?' asked Hamish.
'Then?' Eloise replied. She smiled. 'We'll see.'
They got up, and went about their business.
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