As always, our BH characters belong to Toby Whithouse and BBC. A tremendous thank you to everyone who brought them to life and made us love them so much - the writers, actors, directors and everyone behind the scenes. Also, tremendous thanks to SunnyFla, Jac_E, and Cieria for all of your thoughtful help.
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, corrections, complaints, and questions, because as much as we like writing about BH, we also love talking about it!
-Fleem xx
June, 1969
It's a warm summer night. Roger and I are hanging around the flat, doing nothing much. I love him beyond measure.
His eyes glitter with mischief. He's beautiful and yielding and warm and and hard. When I release him he grabs me and presses me backward into the wall. I push against him and my hands run down the back of him until neither of us can stand it and we roll to the floor together, laughing.
"Let me try something," he says.
He disappears and reappears with a bottle of Babycham.
"Lie down," he instructs. I do, and he carefully takes the drink and pours it over my navel, leans over, and tries to lick it. It drips messily down my side and hips and onto the floor.
"Nope," he says, "that doesn't really work does it?" We dissolve into gales of laughter. He's bent over me, so I wrap a sticky arm around his waist and pull myself to a sitting position.
"Bad man. You lose."
I tie Roger to the bed, and he begs me to violate him, so I do, repeatedly, any way he asks. I know his body better than I know my own. His fair, freckled skin reddens easily. I caress the length of him, his face, his arms, his back, his feet, it all belongs to me. I am capable of more than I let on. I don't give him what he wants. I make him plead for it. It's my power because he's given it to me. When I decide it's time, I take him again. Our skin is slick with sweat and wine.
Roger is half-reclining in bed, his shoulders against the headboard. He's smoking a cigarette and looking toward the shaded window. His sandy hair is tangled to thatch in the back. We're both feeling worn out and a little let down, the show has closed this week and there's the odd detached sensation of having nowhere to be, at least for the moment. We're filling the void with drinking and sleep and sex and aimless walks and and shopping. Most of our friends are away on summer holiday, and a heavy mid-august torpor has set in.
''What do you want to do Josie?" he says. "I mean, when you don't do this anymore?"
I don't know. I think about it, but I can't imagine doing anything else. I don't want to. I know it can't last forever: people grow older, bodies age and wither, we wear out, we get bored, we want different things.
"I'm liking right now so much." I say. "Let's enjoy now."
"Okay. We'll talk about it later."
October
It's not a metaphor. We're vampires.
Why would I ever believe that? Sometimes lunatics have to tell themselves stories to make sense of their own compulsions. Not a metaphor? What else could it possibly be but a delusion?
My mind fills with images of Dracula, of Nosferatu, of grotesque gothic caped undead with fangs and claws. They do not resemble this ordinary looking young man with an Irish accent and dark hair tucked behind his ears, sitting beside me in an expensive but somewhat rumpled suit, his knee jiggling nervously, making the bedsprings creak.
Oh, come on. I've had just about enough of this lunacy. I can barely contain my outrage. He's tied my hands and feet to the bedframe so I can't do anything but shrink further away, though I'd really like to box him about the ears and knock some sense into him.
"You're telling me that you killed those girls upstairs to drink their blood?"
He winces and rubs his temples as if he has an awful headache.
"Only killed one of them," he mumbles. "Herrick killed the other. Like you said: No-one kills without a motive." His voice trails off. He must be starting to realize how mental he sounds.
"So are you planning to drink my blood, then?"
He squeezes his eyes shut, and that muscle in his jaw twitches again. There's a pause that's just a bit too long for comfort.
"I don't think so. No."
My God, he's dead serious. This is utter madness.
"Then why are you still here? Why didn't you, I don't know, turn into a bat or something, and fly away?" I point with my chin. "There's the window."
He gives a short laugh. "We can't turn into bats. I wish we could. That would save us loads of trouble."
I'll say it would. And me too. It was worth a try. Who knows what he'll come up with next. Elves? Fairies? At this point, nothing he says would surprise me.
He turns to face me, and meets my eyes.
"Look, I didn't ask to be this way. You have to believe me. We kill because we have to. We have to.
"The girls up there, the only thing they did wrong was let us in. It was just bad luck. They didn't do anything to deserve it."
As if that makes any difference at all. Whatever twisted fairy story he's using as an excuse, however deranged he is, I still can't see how anyone could just go about randomly killing people, and behaving as if that were anything like normal.
"Nobody deserves that, Mitchell, whatever the reason."
Gazing at the floor again, he exhales loudly.
"I know."
"Fairy story or not, this needs to stop."
"I know. I know. I know," he murmurs.
I'm not sure if he's talking to me. His voice is far away. He's had this particular discussion before, maybe in his own mind, a horrid reverie.
My own problem requires a more immediate resolution.
"Okay," I speak loudly and slowly, as if to a distraught child. "I'll make it simple for you.
"Do you want to kill me?"
His arms are wrapped tightly around his body as if he's trying to prevent it from bursting, the shoulders pulled in and down in a self-protective huddle. Is he afraid I'll hurt him? When he looks up at me, his face is a picture of abject misery.
"No."
"Then don't."
Another long exhale. He straightens and gathers himself. Rubs his forehead. Pushes his hair back. Another moment, and his face takes on a blank expression, he stands, and heads for the door, all business now.
"I'll do what I can. I have to go."
He closes the door gently, as if I'm asleep and he doesn't want to wake me, leaving behind a faint aroma of stale cigarette smoke and clean dishes.
The conversation is loud enough to carry through the thin walls. They're talking about me.
"How about that girl?"
"Oh she's cool, she won't say anything."
"Well if you haven't the stomach for it..."
"Herrick, Herrick, I've got it sorted!"
There's a long pause and then Herrick's voice gets louder.
"Have you ever read any Lewis Carroll?" he asks, and then begins to explain that the looking-glass world is "A lot like being a vampire." Now he's telling Mitchell that to have mercy is a weakness, an indulgence for them.
"Them" meaning vampires.
My heart nearly stops. If this vampire thing is a delusion, they both have it. It can't be true. It can't be. I'm losing touch with reality. There has to be an explanation, it must be code for something, or the name of an organization, or specialized jargon.
But Herrick doesn't stop there. He explains that becoming a vampire doesn't change someone's personality, but liberates it. Then he launches into a rant.
"A vampire is the only truly free man. All his darkness, all his excesses, they can run amok."
Sweet Mother of God. This is truly depraved. I take slow, deep breaths to try and calm myself. What does it mean? Things come into focus, the lens gradually adjusts …
"Didn't need to know them." "More than a hundred, less than a thousand." "Not a metaphor."
It's all real.
Christ.
Herrick is still talking, teaching, asking leading questions. Socratic method - I remember it from uni.
"D'you remember when we met? That forest in France? D'you remember our deal?"
Mitchell's voice is low and halting. I strain to hear him mutter, "You said... if I let you take me, you'd spare my men."
His men? It was during a war then. Is Mitchell some kind of hero? I don't know what to think.
"Why did I do that? Did you ever wonder?"
He answers a bit too quickly. "No. I haven't." Maybe I'm imagining a submerged anguish in his voice, a tight, controlled bitterness.
It's incomprehensibly sad: "I was an only child," he'd said. Despite myself, I feel a stab of grief for Mitchell's long-dead parents. Herrick took their son away from them.
Herrick believes that people are in chains, that they envy the vampires' freedom to terrorize, to break hearts. As if that is the only kind of freedom that matters.
"Now, that little scratch of conscience, that's a lie. That's not who you are."
Evil bastard. He is the one telling lies.
Mitchell held me hostage for hours. He had enough time to torture, rape or murder me a dozen times over. I gave him plenty of excuses to do it, too, goaded him into frustration and anger, even asked him to kill me. He chose, again and again, to do no harm.
Then Herrick issues a direct order that nearly makes my heart stop.
"Now. Go and kill that girl."
He's sending Mitchell back to kill me. Mitchell, who said he didn't know what he'd do.
The door opens. My eyes go wide with horror. There's no escape - all I can do is scream. He's here, but with shiny black eyes like in a nightmare, devoid of expression, lips bared in a snarl revealing lethal looking fangs. This isn't the man who was here before, it's … some other sort of being, otherworldly, indifferent, murderous. If I'd had any remaining doubt about his story, I don't anymore. Everything he's told me was true.
He brings his face closer to mine, and I shake and cry out in fear as those teeth get closer and closer. Now he's going to tear my throat out. I close my eyes as tightly as I can. All I hear is his strange, sibilant breathing.
As he did when he first broke into my flat, he claps a hand over my mouth. Its faint scent of washing-up liquid somehow reminds me that he is the same creature...person... as before. The one who copped to it being an act. Who told me killing was cowardice. Who gave himself over to a monster to spare other people's lives.
I'm not afraid anymore.
His eyes are still eerie black, his face an empty mask. In a voice that's more like a hiss, he whispers into my ear. I must hide and stay hidden until long after I am sure that they are gone.
He unties my hands and helps me into the cupboard, pushing back the hangers and boxes so I can creep behind them, and pulling them back in front of me before shutting the door without a sound. It's pitch black inside. I hear the bedroom door click open and then shut.
I pick my way among dusty hatboxes and old sports equipment and crouch in the the cupboard, too stunned to even think. There's a metallic jingling and some muffled conversation, then, as they are leaving, their voices grow louder.
"Ready, soldier?"
"Yeah."
They both sound so nonchalant, like a couple of blokes going to a cocktail party, not murderers escaping in plain view of the police. The sound of feet on stairs gets further and further away.
I sink to the floor, ignoring the cobwebs, dustballs and scattered mouse droppings, wrap my arms around my knees, and start to shudder uncontrollably. The last of the icy sweat drips between my shoulder blades and down my back, plastering my dress to my skin. Great wracking sobs move through me without making a sound. The flat is very quiet. It's dark by the time I unfold myself and emerge back into the bedroom.
I nearly cut my non-lame foot on a shard of broken china. Mopping up the spilled tea and shattered teacups gives me something to do.
I don't want to be alone. Should I call the police? They apparently think the killers have been apprehended, because all the cars are gone, the street is quiet. What should I tell them?
I ring the police station, then hang up when they answer. Why am I hesitating? Because I don't know what to say.
It's about 10 at night. I'm lying on my bed fully clothed, trying to read an Enid Blyton story and failing, my eyes just sliding over the words without comprehension. The phone rings, but I figure it's Roger calling to give me one of his condescending "Oh buck up" calls, and I just let it ring. How did you spend your day, dear? Oh, getting taken hostage by a reluctant vampire, how about you? Got a standing ovation, then shagged Lydia again? How lovely for you.
On about the tenth ring, I pick up. It's not Roger, it's my friend James. He and his boyfriend Albert are aspiring visual and performance artists, highly conceptual, often to the point of inscrutability. Sometimes they like to speak in riddles, or wear matching outfits, or spontaneously burst into song. They also take photographs of puppies, which they then enlarge and deface, and paint giant canvases with semi-abstract images that resemble excrement. I think they're hilarious.
James and Albert have taken it upon themselves to look after me since Roger left. In the past couple of months, I've spent many hours sitting on the floor in their tiny flat weeping while James poured me drinks and Albert fed me endless slices of toast with marmalade. They must have saved my life. I'm so glad they live close by.
"I heard there was a murder in your building. Are you okay?" James asks.
"I don't know," I say. "A bit shaken-up maybe. I'm not hurt. And I didn't see anything. "
"Do you want to come stay with us? We'll take all the canvases off the sofa, just for you."
They've done so much for me already, but it would be a huge relief to get away from here, at least for a little while. Such sweet boys.
"That's so thoughtful of you. Thank you so much. That would be wonderful. Just for a few days. I'll even move the canvases myself."
"I wouldn't dream of it, Josie. We'll take care of it. But you'll want to bring fresh sheets."
I don't want to wear out my welcome, so I stay with James and Albert for several days, then return to the flat and pick back up where I left off.
I go back to my life, teaching little girls in the day, hiding under my afghan at night reading children's literature. The time passes.
It's not so bad. Roger rings me occasionally, and I talk to him in monosyllables and hang up as soon as possible. He wants to know how I am, that he still cares for me but needs to be elsewhere right now. I hang up and vent my frustration at the empty room. Fuck off, Roger.
Something strange happened to me. It could have been a dream, an hysterical fantasy heightened by exhaustion and minor insanity. I remember there was killing, and there were monsters, and there was a very strange and sad young man who didn't really want to be there, and who let me go. I wonder what happened to him.
