This is some negative space in a very familiar story. The subsequent chapter will color a little further outside the lines.
Thanks again to BBC and TW and everyone involved for letting us spend more time in the BH world.
I'm never angry at them. They are all performing their part in the dance, round and round and back and forth, faster and slower but always turning, leading, following, right up to the end which is always the same. When I consume a life it is gone: never to be shared or held, maybe to be remembered for a while and grieved.
Put a different record on, somebody.
I'm ready to leave. The flat is not perfect but its at least a little less awful. It'll have to do.
I put on my jacket and tie and head out. Thoughtlessly I grab a pint of milk that's just been delivered, and a girl is coming out to get it, so I am still holding it when I have to dive into her flat to avoid the policemen thundering up the stairs.
Shit shit shit shit. I just want to be somewhere still and out of the way. Instead I'm clamping a hand over this girl's mouth to keep her quiet. Her tiny crucifix burns my eyes, and I make her take it off. When she asks me why, I realize she's going to be difficult to handle.
It would be an understatement to say I'm not in the mood for this.
Police knock on the door and the girl tells them she's seen nothing. Good girl.
She's brunette and pretty, in a flowered mini dress. Her false eyelashes make her eyes look enormous.
She fixes me with those wide serious blue eyes. "You're a killer."
This flat looks like she has a life here. There are shelves full of books and LPs, posters on the walls, knicknacks and family photos on the mantlepiece. I think of the flat upstairs: Stephanie's stack of 45s lying scattered and broken on the floor, the cheap cotton tapestries tossed over the battered furniture, the collection of empty liquor bottles on the mantle. I wonder how well she knew her neighbors.
I let her go to the toilet. She comes out and I find she has written "help" on the window in lipstick. I have to tie her up so she doesn't try anything else. The clever ones are always trouble.
As I am working on the knots, she starts asking me questions. I don't like it. She seems to think I'm vaguely ridiculous.
"Why did you do it? You must have had a motive. No-one kills without a motive. You didn't even know those girls, did you?"
I don't want to be talking about this. Should I tell her I only killed one of them? Did I know her? She was damaged and kind. She had blonde hair with dark roots. Scars. She left her drug dealer boyfriend to get clean. A violet and peach halo. Taste of flowers and smoke and salt and blackness. Stephanie. She could have been anyone.
"I didn't need to know them." I close the door, then check the window to see if Herrick is back yet. He's not, but there are several police cars parked outside, not going anywhere soon. I'm trapped here.
"They were in a bar, they were up for a party, and now they're dead. Tomorrow I won't even remember what they looked like."
"I don't believe you. Even if you said you enjoyed it, it would make more sense."
The questions go on and on. Am I a disappointment to my parents? How many people have I killed? Is this really what I'm like or is it an act?
I sit on the sofa to escape her critical and slightly condescending stare. If she's tied up why am I the one who feels like a bug on a pin?
She says she's not afraid of me. For everything I say, she has a scathing response. I'm starting to get exasperated.
"Do you know what else I think? No-one's even asked you this before."
When would anyone ask? There are no witnesses who survive.
She is picking away at me, taunting, probing. I don't know why I feel compelled to keep speaking to her. Her eyes fix on me like floodlights. My nerves are raw, my head aches, and everything feels unreal and out of focus. I'm barely holding it together. Question after question. I can't bear it. I'd rather be kicked and beaten.
"I had to kill them, ok? I didn't have a choice."
"That's the first thing you've said I actually believe. You have to kill them, but you don't really want to."
Stop talking stop talking shut up shut up you smug bitch. And fuck you. Don't really want to? As if this is an inconvenient hobby? This is me: A vicious bloodsucking killer. A murdered soldier. An orphan. Beg for fucking mercy. Please. I don't know what I'll do if you don't.
Don't say any more.
I'm almost blind with rage as I shove the gag in her mouth. She looks down and away, but she knows she's reached me. I have to leave the room and regroup. Clouds of red are creeping into the borders of my vision.
This is taking far too long.
In the kitchen I make myself a cup of tea and try to calm down. She's shaken something loose. I feel dislocated. I should just kill her now, but we might need her alive if there's a standoff.
You have to kill them.
You don't really want to.
You have to. Who has to?
You don't want to.
I don't really want to. What do I want? Blood?
Holy fuck. Do I have to? Suddenly I don't know. Not knowing feels like shedding a skin; I'm wrenched and torn and twisted and exposed. The hungry red tint in the air is replaced with a bright silvery mist that hurts my eyes. The room is so cold. I can't feel my feet. I have to grip the wall to steady myself until I can regain my balance.
The midday sun filters through the windowshades and fills the room with gentle yellow light. I let the heat from the thin china cup warm my hands as I check the scene outside. Policemen are milling about, talking on radios, making notes, getting in and out of cars. They aren't leaving.
From the other room, there's a creaking sound. The front door's been left wide open and she's gone. There are heavy footsteps coming up the stairs and I hear her say "Help me, he's in my flat!" No escape. The cup slips from my hand and shatters. I'm expecting the worst.
In pounds Herrick in a police uniform, looking very proud of himself indeed. The girl points at me.
"That's him!"
"What took you so long?" I say.
"I had to get a uniform just to make it through the front door."
She looks from me to Herrick, then runs for it. He catches her by the hair and throws her to the floor.
He rolls his eyes in mock despair at my lack of knot-tying skills.
She sits on the floor against the wall, cowering. I almost wish she'd escaped.
Herrick has frightened her. Now she truly understands she's angling for her life. She asks if I can be the one to kill her.
I nod an agreement while the knife twists. She knows, she knows, she knows: I don't really want to. It comes to that.
I've finished tying her hands and feet. Reef knots. I'm almost out the door.
"Mitchell, wait. Please. This is between us. It'll never leave this room. I know you're not like him. You want this to end."
Oh, Christ. All the fight goes out of me. I can't hide from her anymore: I confess that I'm afraid to stop. I tell her what happens. I remember them all, I'm with them again, and I'm terrified. They all ask why, and I want to weep. I kill with one mind and repent with the other. I need it. I hate it. The light shifts and I'm a monster. It shifts again and I'm just a miserable, trapped, nervous bloke in a suit.
"Have you ever tried to stop?"
For a long moment I search for words to answer the question. I can't find any. She takes that for yes.
"Would you like to try again?"
I watch her for what seems like a long time. The floor seems to fall away and I'm standing over a great black emptiness, suspended by some inexplicable belief that gravity won't take me.
"I don't know. Like I said, it's complicated."
"Why? Why is it complicated?" She just won't quit. I am starting to admire that.
"Do you really want to know why we do it? The real reason?" I gather myself. This is unbelievably difficult, far harder than killing her would be. I sit on the bed beside her but look at the wall, the ceiling, anything but her. I wish I were invisible.
"The monster - it's not a metaphor. It's real. Herrick and I, we're... we're vampires."
I let the word sit while I look out the window at the police cars below. I listen while her heart beats several times in the quiet. Her mouth tightens around the corners. A few more heartbeats. Beside me, her shoulders tense and she leans away from me as far as she's able.
When she speaks again, she's trying to pull herself further away from me.
"You're telling me that you killed those girls upstairs to drink their blood?"
I thought I couldn't feel any worse but I was wrong. I can't look at her, but I'm sure I can I feel her staring in disbelief. I fold my arms tightly against my body.
"Herrick killed one of them. Like you said: No-one kills without a motive." I stare at the pretty silk scarves I've used to tie her wrists and ankles.
A long silence.
"Are you planning to drink my blood?"
This close to her, she smells of sweat and soap and hairspray. I think about teeth puncturing and then sliding through skin and the warm rush of blood running out. I think about burying my face in her neck and drinking deeply. My body relaxes.
"No."
"Why are you still here? Why didn't you just turn into a bat and fly away then?"
"We can't turn into bats. I wish we could. That would save us loads of trouble.
Look, I didn't ask to be this way, but it's what I am now. We kill because need the blood. Or, we want it. I don't know which. The girls up there, the only thing they did wrong was let us in. It was just bad luck. They didn't deserve it."
I curl my fingers into my hair and pull. It keeps me from dissolving into nothing.
"Nobody deserves that, Mitchell, whatever the reason."
"I know."
"Fairy story or not, it needs to stop. "
"I know."
"Okay. I'll make it simple for you. Do you want to kill me?"
"No."
"Then don't."
"I'll do what I can. I have to go."
I leave the room, carefully shutting the door behind me. In my mind, I'm trying over and over to come up with a scenario where this girl doesn't end up dead.
Herrick's about to clap me in irons and march me out of the apartment. That police uniform is his favorite trick yet. I'm betting that there's no way he wants to get it dirty on the way out of here. I give myself even odds that this will work.
"Er, oh, now, what about that girl?" he asks me.
I'm almost amused. He's going to hate this. I try to sound as offhand as possible. "Oh she's cool, she won't say anything."
"Well, if you don't have the stomach for it..."
"Herrick, Herrick, it's fine. She's cool. Seriously. I have it sorted." I watch as his eyes harden at me. Good.
He is is so wired on speed that he can barely blink, and he's winding himself up for a lecture. This will be another "vampires are better than humans" speech. He thinks if he keeps repeating these things to me I'll eventually believe them.
He says we're through the looking-glass, and we're to do the opposite of what humans would do. That, for vampires, mercy is wrong and conscience is a lie.
He reminds me of our deal, in France, when he killed me. He could've taken me outright, bargain or no. He could've killed everyone. Christ, I almost wish he had. He asks me if I thought about why he did it.
The best thing to do is play dumb. "No. I haven't."
He says he sees in me a great man. A terrible man. An orphan-maker. A breaker of hearts. I don't know who he's talking about.
Oh wait, of course I know.
Herrick firmly believes he's given me a gift, and is frustrated that I don't appreciate it. For more than fifty years he's been trying to make me over in his own image. For more than fifty years I've made my best effort to love him for it. I can't. I understand that I don't want to stay with him any longer. I can't keep killing everyone who makes me feel less alone.
"Now go and kill. That. Girl."
As I enter the room I don't know what I'm going to do. The angry red haze is building, my body hollows itself out, and my eyes are showing all black.
Before, to her, I was just some weird skinny bloke who tied her up and claimed to be scary. She didn't believe me. Now she sees the rest of me and is afraid. Her scream of horror brings me back to myself. For a second I stand there and blink, then I tell her to keep screaming. My eyes are still black and she seems not to want to stop. Good.
I clap my hand over her mouth, stifling the noise enough for me to whisper in her ear: "I want you to hide. If there's a dark corner in the closet, stay there. If there's a hidden alcove, even better. Then be quiet. Don't come out until we're gone. It should be soon. Wait for awhile after you're sure." Then I untie her.
"Now hide. Don't make a sound."
I emerge from the room and close the door behind me.
"It's done," I say. "I tried to keep things tidy."
My jaw is tense with exertion and I hope he doesn't notice. He wants to believe I've learnt his lesson and taken it to heart. Don't check on the bedroom don't check let's go let's go. To my immense relief he doesn't check. Instead, he handcuffs me and leads me out to a police car and drives us home.