BH characters belong to Toby Whithouse and BBC. Thanks again for letting me spend more time with them.
We're all animals, it can't be denied. Vampires? Simple. We hunt humans because we need to. It's what we do.
Humans don't make sense. There are millions of them capable of tearing other humans limb from limb, forcing them to wallow for weeks in mud and shit before they drown in the muck or are blown to pieces, locking them in a room and exterminating them with poison gas, or dropping bombs from airplanes to flatten entire cities and towns and everyone living there. And on and on.
Anyone we take is spared horrors like that.
This again.
The light is too bright.
My head hurts.
How long have I been asleep?
Am I alone here?
A strange flat. It's been practically demolished. Metallic smell of dried blood with a vague overlay of piss.
I don't remember much of anything. A long-finished record still spinning on the phonograph. Lampshades spattered with blood. Blood on the carpets. Blood on the bedclothes. On the walls. Upturned furniture. Smoke. Cherries spilled on the table. Clothing strewn everywhere.
A dead girl is lying on the floor. Her eyes are fixed and staring at the ceiling, blonde hair sticking out in all directions, shirtless, mangled. Last night is a blur but I remember that she was good. She was exquisite. Her scent is all over me. Taste of her still in my mouth. Deep, animal satisfaction.
In the hall there's another corpse. Herrick must have had her. Blood is ground into her knees and hands.
How did my trousers get here?
Oh god oh god oh god. Fragmented memories of teeth sinking into flesh, someone holding me, seeing what I was, inviting me in. Soft, dark and warm. Was I cruel and brutal to her? Was she frightened? Did she know?
There's a sound of running water. A toilet flushes. Fuck! I don't want to have to kill anyone else. I've had quite enough killing for one day. Several days. I flatten myself against a wall and look cautiously through the doorway.
Herrick emerges from the bath, fully dressed, picking his teeth, looking remarkably chipper. His satin waistcoat is immaculate. He says we're in London. Then says that we're on our own here with no backup, on account of him having offed someone's mum. Nice work, mate. Really nice. For fuck's sake, was this really necessary?
Want out of here. Soon.
Even better, thanks to the lack of plan, I am the cleanup detail. This is fucked.
"Do what you can."
Herrick toddles off to get the car. Doesn't even remember where he's left it. The door shuts behind him and it's very quiet.
I'm exhausted. Head full of cotton wool and static.
Jenna. That's her name, the one in the hallway.
Herrick ducks back in, giving me a start, saying he's forgotten his keys. Or maybe to check if I've begun the cleanup. I'm told to "get mopping," with helpful gestures to give me the correct idea.
Fancies himself a drill sergeant but he's a fucking schoolmarm.
I pick up the kitchen chair next to Jenna's body, set it in the middle of the floor in the hall, and rest, elbows on knees, head in hands, dislodging bits of dried blood from my hair, gathering myself. I'm not looking forward to this job.
There's a faint tap on my shoulder.
"John, what happened?"
When I look up, a girl is standing in front of me, twisting her foot against the floor like a child who needs to pee. Stiff blonde tangled hair. She's dressed in nothing but badly laddered nylons. Her throat is torn out. Her arms are crossed over a breast that's been savagely mutilated. Smeared in blood from her face to her thighs. I did that to her. She's a ghost.
"You've killed me, haven't you?"
Sound of footsteps behind me, and then a breeze past my ear and a slight sting as Jenna's ghostly hand connects with my face.
"You bastard! You've got some fucking nerve! Look at her! You ripped her to shreds!"
The other one looks her over. "You don't look so well yourself, love."
It's coming back now. The first ghost girl is called Stephanie.
Jenna isn't nearly as damaged as her friend, but there's a great, ragged laceration at her neck, and a fat stream of blood is still congealing as it leaks from the side of her head and drips down her shoulder and back. She is furious.
Shrieking wordlessly, she tries to hurl the telephone at me, but it's still wired to the wall, so it lands on the floor under the table. She throws a candy dish at me, an ashtray, my boots, liquor bottles, clothes, anything she can find. The floor is covered with broken glass and ripped clothes. I wait for her to stop. She collapses on the floor, sobbing.
I'm at a bit of a loss. Because we generally clear out from a kill as soon as we can, I don't usually have to deal with pissed off ghosts. This time, I'm stuck in their home with no way to leave. I wish I had a shirt on. I wish I had already washed the blood from my face and hands. Mostly I wish these ghosts weren't here. There's nothing I can say. Things can't be put right.
Now Jenna's standing, propping her elbow on the table where the phone had been. She gestures at her own lifeless body.
"That mate of yours bashed me over the head with a bottle! Then when I tried to get away, the son of a bitch laughed while he watched me crawl out of the room, waited til I couldn't move anymore, and ripped my throat out with his fucking teeth! Disgusting animals, both of you."
She continues to spew insults at me. I close my eyes and listen. Everything she says is true.
I get up and search the room for my shirt, mainly so I don't have to look at them.
"It's nothing personal," I say. "We just needed the blood." I'm aware that the words are completely horrific. My face is hot with shame.
"D'you think we care?" She stands back, crosses her arms in front of her, looks down and away in revulsion. The pitch of her voice rises and rises. "Do you think our mums care!"
I don't answer.
I say, "Excuse me, I have to clean up now." Then I go into the bath and splash water over my hair and face, scrubbing with my nails until I can't feel any more loose bits of water-soaked dried blood to scrape off my skin. I clean the blood from under my nails and pointlessly try to smooth down my hair.
When I come out, Jenna marches up to me and knees me, hard, in the groin. I'm more surprised than anything, but, ghost or not, she has managed to deliver enough force to make me hit the floor. She gives several swift kicks to my head and sides. I don't fight her. Since she's a ghost the impact isn't very great, but she is at it for long enough that there are bruises rising along my ribs.
I fix my eyes on a point where light glints from half of a broken 45 on the floor in the other room and let her hit me and kick at me over and over with bare bloody feet until she is spent from the effort. Despite all her fury I hardly feel anything. I wish it hurt more.
"Did that help?" I say. "Do you feel any better now?"
"A little." Her expression is grim and resentful. I can't blame her. "You're not even the one who killed me, just his little toady."
"Believe me when I say it's better that he's not here."
She sits on the floor leaning against the wall, very much like she had done last night after her fight with Robbie. Poor girl. About as bad a night as she could have, and now she's wound up dead. I feel a distant sense of sympathy for her like I would for an accident victim, which she is, after a fashion. The two of them could have been any other two girls in Bristol; it wouldn't have mattered.
I've pulled myself to a sitting position and plan to stay put until they're gone. There's no point in apologizing but I do anyway.
"I'm so sorry."
Jenna snorts with contempt.
Stephanie stands over me and shakes her head.
"I liked you," she says. There's disappointment in her voice, and shock, and outrage. Her eyes show bright blue against the dried blood covering her face.
I can't look at her. "I liked you too," I say to the floor.
She puts her hand on my shoulder and I turn so our eyes meet. She's a painful sight.
"When you first kissed me, I felt light as air. It was as if I had been pinned to the ground under a heap of sand and you lifted the weight from me, and I could move again. My mind was blown. It was like you could reach into me and take out the fear and sadness. I don't know how you did that.
"When I went to you later, you were gasping and shaking, surrounded with black. I wanted to help you.
"Then the black seemed to take you over, and your face changed. You wanted to take more from inside me. I felt a great wrenching and burning and ripping and I was laid open and it hurt but somehow I wanted it out, and you tore and tore until it was out of me, then everything was so light, I felt like was floating away and it got very cold. I was scared then, and I don't remember anything after that."
She turns from me and sinks to the floor, small and puzzled and sad, and wraps her arms around her knees. She must be remembering the cold, because she's shivering. Following some long-dormant instinct, I move close to her and put my arm over her shoulders. She's barely substantial against my bare skin.
Now I recall more of what happened last night: how we'd ended up together in the car; her playful laugh; the glow around her that changed from angry and jagged to calm and serene; the texture of her scars and how they had welled with black; how she'd been warm and sweaty; the feel of her mouth on me; her smell of cigarette smoke.
I lick my lips and taste her sweet narcotic blood. Even that trace of it makes me feel hazy and numb. She couldn't have suffered. I did as well as I could, given the circumstances.
"Freddie doesn't know where I went. I wanted to leave. I hated it - he'd make all the girls give him blowjobs before they could score, and sometimes he passed me around to his friends, but he had the money and the skag and kept me hooked. He kept threatening to kill me if I left him. I came to stay with Jenna because I was ready to try and kick. I was afraid he would find out I was here and do something awful to us.
"I can't believe it ended up being you and not him."
Jenna has been listening. "Why can't you believe it? Look what his mate did to me. Look what he did to you. He's a sick, filthy, cold-blooded monster."
Stephanie looks down at her own mutilated body and recoils at the destruction. She feels her face and neck, and her hands catch on the torn edges of her wounds. Her fingers sink into the injury at her throat. She shudders. Under its film of dried blood her face goes grim and cold.
"Fucking hell, why am I being nice to you? Why am I even speaking to you?"
Idiot. Of course I'm seriously the last person in the world who should be trying to comfort her. She pushes away from me and turns her back.
It takes some time to realize that the hollow sinking ache in my chest is because I'm grieving. I don't want Stephanie to be dead. I want her colors and textures and smells. I want to roll a cigarette and light it for her. I want to flirt with her and make her smile. I want to bury my face in her hair, to take off her clothes and feel her body moving with mine, because she wants to and I want her to and for no other reason.
Instead, she invited me in, and I killed her. That's what monsters do.
Jenna says to Stephanie, "Look, there's nothing else worth saying to him. He's a waste of space and I think he knows it. Anyhow, this flat looks like hell. Let's get out of here."
Their door appears in the wall. It's battered metal, painted gray, with a small window reinforced with iron mesh.
For a second, the hall is full of light from the open door. There's a hollow, rushing sound, and the click of a latch falling into place, then everything is quiet.
I suppose Herrick's idea is that somehow we'll load the rubbish and bodies into the car, take them back to Bristol to be dealt with, and the place will look like nothing happened. I'm skeptical, but I have my orders.
I try not to think. Do what needs doing. Concentrate on tidying up. Roll up my sleeves. Set things right. Wrap up the bodies. Sweep away the clutter. Hoover up the shattered bits of glass and plastic, spilled peanuts, hanks of hair. Smooth out the covers. Straighten the picture frames. Wipe everything down. Pay attention the rhythm of the work, only that. My fingertips wrinkled from the soapy water.
As much as I can, I wash away the traces of evidence. Chaos becomes order. Pour the blood-tinged water down the drain.