Small Town, Good People

My take on the vampire story, this one was previously published by Rabbit Hole Short Stories, September 2021.

Lifting the firewood from the box trailer, I pause to catch my breath. But not for long. I move the half a cord as fast as I can, transferring the wood from the trailer to the lean to at the back of the cottage, where I separate the soft wood from the hard. It takes longer than expected, but the extra daylight hours will give me the time I need before I barricade myself inside.

I leave the trailer hitched to the car and close the heavy door without locking it. There’s nothing inside worth stealing (not that there are any thieves in Dixon), only a spare wheel and loading straps, tarp, wood chips and dust.

The six-pack of Heineken has warmed during the hour’s drive from the supermarket. I pull the ring on the first one. It goes down easy. I drink it looking out over the field that runs parallel with the side of the cottage. Whoever owns it has long since given up on tilling the soil. It’s overgrown with thicket and weeds, the border that reaches the edges of my garden a mess of nettles and honeysuckle. Beyond the field, the sun burns a hole through the treeline. It looks like a portal offering a last chance at escape before it meets the earth.

Fatigue takes hold. I don’t want to black out, not out here. There was a time before the cancer (“aggressive,” the doctor told me, as if there was any other way to kill a person), when I could go for days on three hours sleep a night. Now it’s easier to succumb to it, let my body conserve what energy remains.

I pull up a plastic garden chair and watch the light changing. I reckon I’ve time for one more beer before dark. I join it with a cigarette, telling myself I might as well enjoy smoking while I still can.

I should be inside, but the six weeks I’ve been here without incident have lulled me into a false sense of security. While I drink, I listen for any signs of life, wondering at the irony found in my choice of words.

The first stirrings are in the air, not audible so much as prescient. Animal sounds become muted as the sun sinks lower, the once nocturnal kind returning prematurely to their holes underground. I spit a little blood into the grass and think about taking the last four beers inside.

It’s time to lock up.

#

Squatting down on my haunches, I brought myself eye level with Terry. She looked worse than the last time I saw her. The dark of the alley made her skin look even paler. She looked as though she was wearing a ghost mask, mottled with red blotches and sores around the mouth. Her rheumy eyes brought my face into focus.

“Do you have a few quid for me?”

“No,” I said, shrugging my backpack off my shoulders. “I can’t give you money, Terry, you know that.”

She pointed a finger, the calloused tip an inch from my nose. “You. Fuck off then.”

I unzipped the backpack and pulled out a box of heat pads and a bottle of water mixed with Vitamin C powder. Seeing how badly her hands were shaking, I unscrewed the cap and handed her the bottle.

“Here. Drink this.”

Her head drooped down, jerked up again as something registered.

“I know you,” she said, taking in the lettering on my Hi-Vis vest: STREET WISE. “You’re the Street Wise man.”

“That’s me. The Street Wise man. John, remember?”

“Yeah, man! Course I remember. John the Street Wise man!”

Laughing, she started shuffling a dance, the cardboard she was sitting on sliding left and right, making it look like she was riding a raft on choppy waters. For an instant, I pictured her as she was before I met her: clubbing, drugging, racking up the good times until the memories of them blurred, faded, and eventually dropped her like a sack of waste onto the streets.

“It’s getting colder, Terry. Why aren’t you at the shelter like you promised?”

She stopped dancing and took a short swig of the water, her face grimacing. You’d have thought I was trying to poison her.

Adopting a sulky little girl face, she said, “They kicked me out, the wankers. Caught me thieving, but I wasn’t.”

“Well, whatever the reason, you need to smarten up. It’s getting cold.”

Back straight, she saluted me. “Yes, Boss.”

I tore open the box of heat pads and handed her four in their paper packets.

“These should help. As soon as you open them, put one on each of your bum cheeks. They’ll keep you warm where it counts.”

I could tell she wasn’t sure if I was being serious or not. She took them, gingerly.

“Heat pads?” she said. “My mum used to put these on her knees.”

“There you go. Save the other two for tomorrow night. Don’t sell them, don’t trade them. Keep hold of them, and I’ll put a word in for you down at the shelter.”

As I walked to the mouth of the alley, I looked over my shoulder to see her examining the heat pads.

“Tell your brother to come and see me,” she called.

I turned but continued to walk backwards, wanting out of the alley as fast as possible.

“I already told you: Daniel moved away years ago. I’ll see you in a couple of days. Until then, be good.”

Soon after, somebody stole that chance from her.

#

Stupid, stupid man I am. I must have passed out. I’d like to think I sensed him, but my instincts aren’t good, and I know the reality is that I just got lucky, crawling up out of unconsciousness, in time to see him running at me. He’s on me before I can gather my senses, sending us tumbling to the ground, the plastic chair cracking under our weight. He snaps his jaws an inch from my throat. I grip his shoulders, pushing him off me with a knee to the groin. He’s on his feet in the time it takes me to raise myself to a crouch. He lands on my back, and I force myself up, spinning around, trying to throw him off with my arms reaching over my shoulders, thumbs seeking purchase in his eyes. I fall backwards, crushing his emaciated frame beneath me, feeling something give in his body. His grip weakens enough for me to roll off to one side and onto my feet. In the same motion, I grab the short handle axe from the top of the wood pile and swing it blindly. The flat end connects with bone, glancing off an eyebrow, and he crumples to the ground, his hands searching the air for something to hold onto. I swing the axe again, this time taking a slice out of his cheek as he struggles to stand.

The wail that follows me around the side of the cottage sounds less than human. I yank open the trailer door and wait for him to come at me again. Brandishing the axe, I steady myself with one hand on the door. When he rushes me, I dodge, shouldering him into the trailer, slamming and locking the door after him. My head’s swimming. I think I’m going to pass out.

“I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Henry,” I say. “Ride it out until daybreak, and I’ll see you get home safe.”

He slams his body against the inside of the trailer. Pounds his fists against the walls. Claws at the door. Growls, whines, seethes; but never threatens, not in words. In the fragments of English his mind is still able to unearth, he pleads for me to let him out.

“Henry, you know I can’t do that.” Using his name again to remind him who he is.

He tries to force the door, harder this time, and I step back, readying myself. The support wheel lifts an inch from the ground, the hitch straining on the tow bar. The car’s back wheels stay rooted, but only just.

I can hear him panting, not from exertion but with a monstrous desire to feed.

“Please, John,” he says, “or they’ll come too.”

It’s the closest thing he’s said to a threat, but I know Henry too well. Even now, he’s still trying to protect me.

“Then quieten down,” I say, “and they won’t need to.”

The demon fights reason, sending him scrambling around, testing the trailer’s aluminium sides for a weak spot.

Ride it out.

By degrees, the barks turn to snarls, the snarls to whimpers, until all that’s left is a panting, sickening defeat.

I recall my last thought before sleep took me: It’s time to lock up. I recover the four cans of beer from the back and head inside.

The cottage is made up of three rooms: an open plan living room and kitchen downstairs, and upstairs a bedroom and bathroom separated by a partition wall. It didn’t take much to fill it with my personal belongings, and it already feels like home, however temporal.

I nail the boards up against the windows and doors, moving the dining table against the back door, a chest of drawers against the front. The scrape of the furniture along the floor boards sounds too loud in the still. I fight a bout of nausea with a hand covering my mouth.

Upstairs, I place the cans of beer on my bedside table. Next to them is a digital alarm clock and a worn copy of I am Legend. It’s the only book my brother had in the house. If nothing else, Daniel retained his sense of humour.

I pull the ring on a can and lie down on the bed with my boots still on my feet; I never know when I might need to run.

Ride out the night, John, I think to myself. If Henry can do it, so can you.

#

“Hello. Am I speaking to John Fristone?”

I dropped my backpack onto the floor, removing my vest and coat with the phone pressed to my ear. Nobody called me on the house phone except for marketing companies, automatons who barely got a chance to mis-pronounce my name before I hung up on them.

I was exhausted. During the past six hours I had to call paramedics to revive (unsuccessfully as it turned out) a kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. I’d been spat on, hugged, and called every name I could think of from a bastard to a saint. The last thing I needed was someone trying to sell me accident insurance for a crash that hadn’t happened.

“Go away,” I said, returning the phone to its cradle.

Before I’d kicked off my first boot, the phone rang again. I answered on the tenth ring.

“I said . . .”

“I’m calling about your brother. This is John Fristone, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “this is he.”

“My name’s Henry Lederer. I’m calling on behalf of your brother Daniel. I’m sorry, Mr Fristone, but I’m afraid your brother’s passed away.”

“When?”

“Four days ago. I’ve been trying to contact you. I’ve left messages on your machine.”

The machine’s built into the phone. I never check it.

“How did you get this number?”

“I found it amongst Daniel’s things, along with instructions for us to act on after his death.”

“Us? What are you, a solicitor?”

“No. I used to be, but that was a long time ago.”

“You talk like a solicitor. Are you a friend of his?”

“I’d like to think we were friends, yes. He’s made you executor to his will. I just need an address to post the information to.”

“How do I know you’re not another one of his shit head friends? What is it, did he owe you money and now you’re looking at getting it from me?”

“No, nothing like that. I live in Dixon, where your brother’s been staying for the past four years. I know you two have been estranged, Mr. Fristone, but I need to let you know that the funeral’s been arranged for two weeks’ time.”

“Who arranged it, you?”

“Me and some of the other folks in Dixon. We liked Daniel. I know he had his problems, but we try to see past things like that.”

“And that’s very decent of you, but my brother was a junkie. He made our parents’ lives a misery right up until the day they died. That cottage he inherited, it belonged to them. Did you know that?”

“Of course. I’ve lived here most of my life. I seem to remember your parents using it as a getaway. We were glad when your brother moved here. The place had been standing empty for some time. But now, well, it’s yours to do as you see fit, though I have to warn you, Daniel left the cottage in pretty bad shape. I’d be happy to offer my services pro gratis, but as I say, I’m retired now.”

“That’s okay. I have a family solicitor.”

“Then you’ll be selling the cottage? With a bit of work it could make a very nice home for yourself.”

“I’ve no intention of moving out of Manchester, especially into a place where my brother stayed. Besides, I have commitments here.”

“Yes, Daniel mentioned you volunteer. Help people in need, the homeless, that kind of thing?”

(Go on, say it, you nosy fuck: “All except your own brother.”)

“Listen, Mr Lederer . . .”

“Henry, please.”

“Mr Lederer, I don’t see what my private life has to do with any of this.”

He sounded genuine when he said, “I’m sorry, Mr Fristone.” He paused, waiting for me to accept his apology. In its absence: “I don’t get the opportunity to talk with strangers as often as I’d like. My mouth runs away with me sometimes. I’m just interested in people, I suppose. Dixon’s a small town, as I’m sure you’re aware. Well, calling it a town is being generous really, it barely reaches the status of village anymore since the shops closed. And now the church is all but abandoned, a hamlet would be a more accurate description. Still, it’s a nice place with good people, and we’re proud to call it home.” He exhaled a stridulous breath into the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry. Like I said, my mouth runs away with me sometimes.”

I kicked off my other boot and fished around inside my backpack for cigarettes. Gone. Either stolen by someone or I’d smoked them without realising.

“Mr Fristone, are you still there?”

“Look, just send me the information. Do you have a pen?”

I gave him my address. There was something in his voice that made me want to trust him.

He thanked me for my time, asked again if I’d be attending the funeral.

“It’s been nice talking to you, Mr Lederer,” I said.

I hung up without saying goodbye.

#

The night seems to last forever. At some point I drift into sleep, but I’m woken by a disturbance from outside. There’s the sound of wood splintering. Henry’s broken free. Others have come to his aid. I can hear them chattering, deliberating over their next plan of action. The night language they speak comes from somewhere ancient and alien. The closest approximation I can make is that it sounds Proto-Germanic.

When their footsteps fade, I let go the breath I was holding.

The luminated clock face reads 2:47AM. The beers have left my mouth dry and bladder full. I drink from the tap in the bathroom, light a cigarette and smoke while I piss. I read somewhere that a burning cigarette contains an average of seven thousand chemicals, an eighth of them cancer causing. Urine contains vital minerals. I fill my lungs and empty my bladder.

I fall back into bed, listening to them gathering on the park. In the still of the countryside, the sound carries, pressing at the skylight above my bed. Children laughing, growling, coughing. They sound joyful, sick and animalistic. Other voices, older, more guttural than the youngsters’, bark orders at one another.

Their voices merge as their frenzy grows. I pick out Henry’s voice, raising itself above the others and they fall silent. They’re listening, pin-pointing a sound.

Prey.

I hear them scramble, running off in a pack towards the woodland, away from the village, away from me.

A deer’s bellow, the crashing of bodies through the undergrowth, then grunts and cracking bones. In the aftermath of the hunt, all that remains is the squeak of the swings’ chains. I suppose one of the children chose to stay behind.

I put light to another cigarette and open I Am Legend. I’ve marked the page with the warning note I found pinned to the door when I first arrived here.

Stay indoors after sundown.

Lock yourself in.

We don’t want to hurt you.

There are more notes in my dresser drawer. Introductions left by Dixon’s residents: Henry, Andrew, James and Linda, the names commonplace and friendly. The notes are written on behalf of themselves and the dozen others that people the town, each one carefully worded so as not to cause too much alarm. Welcoming in their own way, warnings without threat. I take them out and read them from time to time, reminding myself I’m in the company of good people.

#

I’d been in Dixon for six days before Henry paid me a visit.

I was clearing some of the rubbish out of the lean to when he appeared behind me, giving me a start. The heavy summer rain that had been falling throughout the day accounted for the hooded raincoat he was wearing but not the sunglasses and scarf covering his face. He held out a gloved hand.

“Henry Lederer,” he said.

I took his hand. His grip was strong.

“John Fristone. We spoke on the telephone a while back.”

Pumping my hand like I was an old friend, he said, “We were starting to think the house would remain unoccupied. It might have been for the best, but I’m glad it’s you who’s moved in. No children? You’ve come alone?”

“I have.”

“That’s good.”

Why good?

“I see you’re dressed for the weather there, Henry.”

“Oh, this? Yes. Protection from the sun and the rain. I have a condition that keeps me under wraps.”

“Then why don’t you come inside. I was thinking about taking a break anyway.”

He paused for a moment, stepping from one foot to the other like a kid needing to pee. “You’re inviting me into your home?”

It was the same level of politeness that bugged me when we first spoke on the telephone. A fault in me, though, not him.

“Jesus,” I said, “yes, you’re invited. Unless you want to stay outside and get wet.”

Inside, I handed him a beer. Cracked one for myself. He moved to a corner of the room away from the window, removed the sunglasses and pulled the scarf down enough to take a drink.

“So you decided against selling the place,” he said.

I shrugged. “I thought maybe it was time to live somewhere new. I’ve been attacked too many times by the people I was trying to help. Then I found out that one of them had been murdered. A woman called Terry, who I happened to be very fond of. So, I thought, what the hell, I’ve done all I can in the city. Let someone else take up the baton. Truth be told, I needed somewhere I felt safe.” I took the note from a kitchen drawer. “Then I found this pinned to my door. You know anything about it?”

“I know everything about it,” he said from the shadows. “I wrote it.”

“Not quite the welcome I was expecting after talking to you on the phone.”

He scanned around the room -- in hindsight I guessed he was gauging the degree of sunlight – then edged forward to the periphery of the shadows. His ice blue eyes shone like needle points dripping with venom.

“In the past two years, Dixon’s been hit with a terrible affliction, Mr. Fristone. Luckily, I suppose, my wife passed before she could see how bad it got. Perhaps I could have left you a note explaining things more clearly. Told you that we’re vampires, that we’re surviving the best we can. I could have also mentioned that there’s enough livestock around here to keep us contained, but that sooner or later, we may have to venture outside of our little hamlet, and until that day comes, the least we can do is look after those who choose to live here. It’s the privilege of choice we no longer have, but nevertheless the same privilege we extended to Daniel. Alas, your brother’s choice of lifestyle left little hope of his blood ever cleaning itself. So, tell me, would that have been a more apt welcome?”

He removed a glove, stretched his fingers out into the light. Let me watch as his flesh blistered before he pulled his hand back.

Through gritted teeth, he said, “That hurt. I don’t want to have to do it again to prove myself.”

How should I have reacted to that? Ran screaming from the cottage? Returned to the city, or returned his honesty?

I said, “Henry, I’ve been around the undead most of my adult life. Zombies, junkies, selling their souls while they survive on a diet of death. Believe me, Dixon’s not all that exclusive.”

His smile transformed his face into something like human.

“Why did you move here, John?”

“I came here to die,” I said. “I was given twelve months at life with treatment. That would have meant staying in the city. Instead, I chose here.”

“Perhaps we could help you with that. As long as it’s not tainted your blood too much, there may still be hope.” He drained the last of his beer. “Thanks for the drink. Very welcoming. You might want to think about boarding your windows though, as much for your own protection as consideration for us. Return the gift so to speak.”

After he left, I did just that.

#

The first signs of sunlight cast beams through the cracks in the wooden boards. Dust motes float on ribbons of blue smoke hanging in the air. I’m tired as hell but I need to eat first before I sleep. I’ve taken to sleeping a lot in the day now. It’s become the normal thing to do, the only time I can rest soundly without keeping one eye open.

Slowly, I descend the stairs. I’m light-headed and there’s the iron taste of blood at the back of my tongue.

The idea of food makes me feel sick. I lie on the sofa, an ashtray balanced on my chest, a cigarette burning between my fingers. My eyelids feel raw and heavy. I switch on the TV and stare blankly at the living. Everyone looks so healthy and pure, their true selves hidden under flattering lights and carefully applied makeup.

A girl’s scream then, young and shrill. I sit up to better gauge where it’s coming from.

The field.

I fall out of the door wearing only my sweatpants and boots. Absently, I notice the trailer door left wide open and splintered at the lock. I follow the screams as they grow in intensity, smashing through the thicket, the thorns and vines pricking and whipping at my chest and arms. I smell burning hair and flesh. As I near, I see tiny hands dressed in mittens fanning clouds of grey that puff up like smoke signals.

She can’t be more than seven years old. I stand over her, blocking the sun while I unfasten the cloak from the branches that have snagged it clear off her head. I cover her the best I can, wrapping her in the cloak and pulling her into me.

“You’re okay now,” I say, gently rocking her. “Come on. We need to get you indoors.”

We move clumsily as one, her back folded into my stomach as I try to keep my own to the sun. The thicket doesn’t seem to sting as much as it did on the way in.

I soak a tea towel with cold water and drape it over her head. Most of the hair has burnt away, leaving wiry singed clumps patching a blistered crown. Gasping with her bottom lip sucking in and out and in and out, she asks for her daddy. Her eyes are wide and fixed on a shaft of sunlight lining the floor. I follow the light to a gap in the board nailed to the kitchen window, cover it with pages from a newspaper, tearing and jamming them inside the crack. The light in the room dims and she sits on the floor, her knees pulled up to her chin. In the gloom, she calms a little.

“Who’s your daddy?” I ask. “What’s his name?”

She doesn’t answer straight away, wary of a stranger asking too many questions. I pour her a glass of milk from the fridge and hand it to her. After she’s drank it down, she says, “Mister Blakely.” With her milk moustache she looks like any other ordinary kid, scared and vulnerable.

“Andrew?” I say. “Your daddy’s Andrew Blakely, has the farmhouse up the road?”

She nods with the tea towel plastered to her skull.

Not wanting to get too close again, I fight an urge to lower myself to her level. Now she’s here, I suddenly want her out of my house.

“What’s your name?”

“Katherine.”

“That’s a nice name, Katherine. How about we get you home, eh?”

She nods again, sniffing back a fresh flow of tears.

“Okay. Stay in the shadows. I’ll be right back.”

I grab the tarp and unhitch the trailer.

While I drive, I sing to her. Blackbird by The Beatles. She’s become very still beneath the tarp across the back seat. I keep my eyes open in case Andrew has discovered his daughter gone and braved the day to find her. There are no signs of him or anybody else.

The Blakely farmhouse is run down with weeds forcing their way through the cracks in the driveway. Ivy, unruly and dark leafed, covers the walls. The windows are boarded up from the inside. The door’s been left unlocked, in keeping with an ages old countryside tradition based on trust. Or lack of fear. I step inside, leaving the door open, standing in the protection of a rectangle of sunlight that lights the carpet in the hallway. The murk either side of me is thick with something unnameable.

“Andrew, are you home?”

He appears at the top of the stairs. I can make out his form in the dark but not his face. Did he hear me pull up outside, or did he already know I’d be coming?

“It’s Katherine,” I say. “I have her with me in the car. She’s been hurt.”

“Is she covered?”

“Yes, of course. I think she’s scared of moving again. If you want, I can try and bring her inside, but I think she needs her daddy more than anything else.”

“One sec.”

The darkness takes him back into its fold and I hear him call Katherine’s name, making sure I’m telling the truth. There’s the sound of drawers opening and closing and his heavy footsteps on the ceiling above my head. When he reappears, moving slowly down the stairs, every inch of his body is covered with heavy clothing: jeans tucked into thick socks and a pair of Timberland boots, a windbreaker over a duffel coat over a jumper. His face is obscured by a balaclava and a pair of sunglasses, his hands clad in ski gloves. On his head is a wool cap.

I edge backwards out of the door into the bright morning sunlight, standing twenty feet to the side as he carefully lifts the tarp bundle out of the back of the car. He walks hurriedly back to his house. After the door closes behind him, I move fast and get in the car. Andrew’s voice from the other side of the door stays my hand on the ignition key.

“Thank you, John,” he calls from his place in the dark.

I turn the key and reverse at speed down the drive.

Down winding lanes I fight a black out. The rising sun’s still low enough to blind me.

Not far to go. Hold on.

#

I must have been here for hours. The daylight’s given way to night. The cool evening air fills my nostrils, the smell of foliage, wet and pungent in the night’s mist. I’m lying on a grass verge. My car is nose down in an irrigation ditch at the side of the road. The rear lights beam a red signal to the stars above.

The pain in my leg causes me to move my head to see it bent backward at the knee. My head swims. I taste blood.

I recognise the faces looking down at me. There are eight of them in all, with Henry at the centre, a flashlight trained on my face. They could tear me apart. I’m in awe of their restraint.

Henry brings his face close to mine. He sniffs at the shallow and rasping breath as it leaks from between my parted lips.

“Last chance, John,” he says. “We can cure you or you can die here. If you choose to die, we’ll make sure you get a Christian burial.”

His voice, flat and without emotion, defies his good intentions.

Too weak to respond in words, I nod.

“A cure?” he says.

My voice is a whisper. “A cure.”

“Then close your eyes.”

“What are you going to do?” I ask, though I already know the answer.

“Return your kindness,” he says.

I leave my eyes open. Losing another sense would only enhance the pain to come.

My body spasms as his fangs pierce my throat, but the pain quickly gives way to numbness, the cold to warmth, as my bad blood spills out of me and stains the midnight earth.

The End