CHAPTER 2

He took a walk to take his mind off things. It rarely worked but it was amazing what some fresh air and some changing surroundings could do for the thought process. His pace was brisk for a man of his age but then he was so caught up in his memories that he unintentionally walked faster. London felt so alive this evening and for a moment he was back in the 1950s. He could almost imagine Jan walking beside him, pointing out something rather odd and making fun of people.

He eventually had to stop because his chest hurt. He couldn’t quite catch his breath and John stood there holding his ribs while he waited for the moment to pass, waving away a young woman who had approached him with concern.

“No, no, I’m alright,” he reassured her, “I’m alright. I’m fine.”

“You sure?” she smiled sweetly, young people were nicer than the news made out sometimes and John couldn’t help smiling back.

“I keep forgetting how old I am,” he explained.

She couldn’t imagine such a thing so she wandered away with a bemused expression on her face and John sat for a few minutes on a ledge, waiting for the oxygen to get back into his lungs and his heartbeat to return to normal. It seemed to be taking longer all the time and that worried John a great deal indeed. He may have been proud to be a mortal but this creeping, patient stalker called Time would ruin him.

It would be nice to be a young man again, with a young man’s pace and a young man’s lungs and all that optimism, but John wasn’t sure he wanted to be a young man in this sort of world. Things were so fast, everyone was doped up to their eyeballs in coffee and whizzing around all in a rush. Life back in his time had seemed so much more simple. When men were gentlemen and ladies acted like ladies, and there had been so many ships on the river, coal fires to cosy next to, television showed quality programming, dinners were made with love and care and no unnatural additives and there had been those wonderful sweets you couldn’t get anymore.

But had things been so wonderful back then? There had been such division between the Communists and the West; there had been so much pollution that sometimes you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face when you walked down the street. Women had been made to suffer their abusive husbands in shameful silence, racism was perfectly normal, and the social structure had still been so rigid. Not all of it had been good.

John missed his youth. He did. There was something so horrible about time; one moment you were potential and the next you were yesterday’s man. Hair greyed. Skin thinned and wrinkled. Your joints weren’t quite what you remembered. But sometimes if John thought very hard, if he closed his eyes and stood still just like that then he was young again and the world was still at his fingertips, ready for him to grasp and hold close and make it everything he wanted it to be. John sometimes thought about keeping them closed so he wouldn’t have to be this old man he had become.

Well! You’re only as young as you feel! That’s what John told himself sternly as he finished off his walk, not quite as brisk as before but there was a marked spring in his step, a lightness though Jan’s shadow still walked beside him and followed him home.

John Hawthorne still lived in his father’s house in Bloomsbury, a fine enough place to live in although the cost to heat it didn’t quite agree with him. The house had been altered in the years since the Detective Inspector had left it in the will so now John could only call the bottom floor his own. The two top floors belonged to another family, or at least that’s how it felt nowadays.

For the past three years or so, after a suspicious fire claimed the home of Daniel Hawthorne and his family, John’s nephew, the wife and their three children had transformed the upper part of the house. Like a fool, John himself had suggested it. He may have inherited the house and everything in it from the Detective Inspector but he couldn’t afford to keep it. It was too big; it drained his savings in heating, upkeep, repairs and everything else. So like a fool he’d signed away half the house to the other Hawthornes’.

And now they wanted the other half too.

John cast his eye regretfully up at the upper windows as he climbed the few steps to the front door, and he hadn’t taken more than step inside when he heard HER. That shrill, that hateful, that soul destroying voice that belonged to Diane Hawthorne and he could have sworn that a little more of himself withered and died within to hear it.

Nathan, the middle child, a bright enough thing all of eleven years old, was sitting upon the stairs to the first floor. He gave John a reproachful look as he entered, his hands over his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to her.

“What’s wrong with her now?” John asked, taking off his coat and kicking off his shoes in favour of his slippers. He really needed a cup of tea.

“She’s mad,” Nathan replied.

“Yes, so I can hear for myself,” he frowned, caught between the desire to have some tea and the very real need to be as far away from that woman as possible. “But why is she mad this time?”

“She’s angry because you fell down and Dad says the walls won’t support the weight of handrails,” the young boy explained, “she says you’re just going to do it again and it hurt her back helping you up last time.”

“I didn’t need help!” John fumed, “I told her so! She hurt me yanking me up like that!”

“She says you do it to get attention and that she’s had enough,” Nathan shrugged.

Diane Hawthorne really had had enough because her voice suddenly became much louder and both down below cringed to listen to her.

"It's me that always does all the washing in our house," she was painfully shrill, "I cook, I clean and I've had it! I really have had it! No one helps, do they? They say they'll help and then they never do and I get left with everything! And what if he falls again? He's 79! He'll be stroking, and heart attacking and it'll be me caring for him as well won't it?! Are you going to be the one cleaning up if God forbid he loses all functions?! If he can't go to the toilet himself?! Will it be me changing his clothes for him, and his bed sheets?! Of course it will be!"

She'd been like this ever since John had reached his life's expectancy, as if she was expecting him to drop down dead at any moment. John thought she just wanted to get her greedy little hands on his index linked pension and his savings, and if he was forced into housing then she would probably take it. Because who would listen to a little old man?

John felt his heart skip a beat and his skin felt like it’d been drenched in ice water when Diane suddenly changed the tone of her voice and she went from shrill to furious.

“That’s him home, isn’t it?” she shrieked, “That was the door going wasn’t it? Oh it’ll be him. I know it’s him. Well if we’re here and the kids are here then who else is it going to be? I’ve had it! I really have had it!”

Panicked, John turned to Nathan and whispered in desperation, “There’s a tenner in it for you if you say I’m not here.”

“Twenty pounds,” was Nathan’s impetuous reply.

“A tenner and you’ll be bloody well grateful!” John thrust it into his hands and hurried quickly back towards the door. Nathan meanwhile stared at the note, considered it, and then much to John’s horror he raised his head towards the roof and hollered.

“Mum!”

Off went John’s slippers and on went the shoes. On went the coat in a mad swirl as he threw it around himself and out went John Hawthorne as fast as his legs could carry him. Suddenly age didn’t seem to matter as he darted back down the street although to be driven out of his own house by such a woman felt so degrading.

He retreated to his favourite little cafe two streets away. It was still a good old fashioned sort of place and it hadn’t bought into the fancy cuisine or supposedly healthy foods that every other restaurant had. Elaine, the plump waitress, was all smiles to see him, her great bosom bouncing as she brought over his usual fry up and tea.

Tucking into his sausages, John gave her a jovial salute, “Marry me, Elaine. Marry me and leave this little place forever.”

“It isn’t me cooking those eggs you know,” she giggled and winked over at him.

“No, it’s the way you make the tea,” he smiled back, “If there’s one thing I can count on in this world it’s that you will always make the best cup of tea.”

“I think you just want someone to wait on you hand and foot, young man,” Elaine teased but she brought over another cup when he’d polished off the first, “and I already have a wretched husband who thinks I’m his maid.”

“Marry me then and I’ll save you from him,” John said, “and you can save me from the bane of my existence, that banshee my nephew calls a wife.”

“Oh you poor dear,” she really did feel sorry for him. He seemed like such a nice old man; he wasn’t creepy and he didn’t leer at her chest like others did.

Once she had got back to work, John just sat there with what remained of his fry up, sipping from his cup of tea and watching the world to go by. He tried to understand some of the people darting here, there and everywhere but he found he couldn’t. It was nice enough just to enjoy the evening though. There was something about summer evenings. It was still so warm and pleasant and it always felt like he should be out and doing something.

He knew he would have to go home at some point, to that big town house that the Detective Inspector left him, such a big and empty place, unwelcoming, cold. He’d always preferred his flat, with its view of the sun rising over the Thames. Thinking about it he remembered the sound of the record player or Jan on that piano. His sister had kept flowers on the window sill; they had been pink.

He’d never truly appreciated it when he’d had it. John had been a little too fond of the drink in his youth. He’d ended up giving it up when-

“So here you are,” Diane glared at him, coming towards him with her heels clicking on the linoleum.

“So it would seem,” John sighed. His little sanctuary away from home wasn’t as safe as he had thought.

John looked behind her to see his nephew, Daniel, following his wife and frowning like he always did. Both of them rudely took a seat at his table, without him inviting them to join him, and they gave him those horrible patronising stares that put him off his tea.

“We need to talk about the house,” Diane said. Her face always reminded John of a smacked arse but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Now we know you’re having trouble getting around the place.”

“I’m managing just fine!” he hated it when they tried talking down to him.

“Well we’ve been talking,” she gave him that irritating sweet smile and John wished he could drive a stake through her heart. She was more of a vampire than anyone else he’d ever known. “Well, Daniel and I have been talking and we just feel that the house isn’t right for someone of your circumstances anymore.”

“I am perfectly mobile,” John argued back. He may have been seventy nine but he didn’t look it. His mind felt it but his body was still capable of everything it needed to do.

“You fell on Tuesday,” Diane interrupted, “And next year you’ll be eighty. There’s a rather big chance that you are in danger of falling again and you’re not a young man anymore, are you? What if next time you bust your hip or you are unable to get up?”

“I only fell because your daughter left her skates in the middle of the floor and I wasn’t wearing my glasses!” John snapped.

“We could install handrails and that sort of thing but we might need to look at alternatives?” she ignored the accusation.

“Do you really let your wife do all the talking?” John glared at Daniel, “If my mind serves me right it is my bloody house and before anyone thinks of installing anything or moving anyone out of it they should get my permission first! You are not, YOU ARE NOT, putting me in some nursing home. They are for old people.”

“Uncle John,” Daniel sighed and shook his head, “we weren’t thinking about a nursing home. There is sheltered accommodation and other things that might work too. You could even have a garden.”

“You know what?” John’s hands were shaking, “I think it’s about time you lot found your own place again. The two floors aren’t big enough. You should find your own house, somewhere outside London where it’s nicer and you can have a garden.”

“It’d take too long to commute,” Daniel shrugged.

“And the kids are settled now,” Diane smiled, “They like being city kids.”

“My father left me that house,” John argued, he was finding it hard to keep his hands still, “He bought it with his promotion. He left it to me. And I don’t care if I’m eating mush and messing my trousers I am staying in that house until it’s time for me to pass it on!”

“Uncle...” Daniel used his rational, reasoning voice.

“No!” he kept blinking behind his glasses, “I’ll sell the place from under you if I have to! I’ll leave it to some trust! I don’t care if it’s the trust for the preservation of bloody garden gnomes, you are not forcing me out of my house just because I am getting older!”

“You can’t sell it,” that awful woman smirked, “We do own half of it now.”

“And I regret the day I did it!” John was causing a scene but surely the people staring were on his side. Surely they didn’t see him as some befuddled, confused old miser? “I regret the day I left you come to my house. Especially you!” he pointed at Diane, “You make my life an absolute misery! And yes maybe there’s not much of it left but you’ll have me in my grave before I’m even cold! And you’re not much better, Daniel. All your life you’ve fought against me. But once you actually had a backbone, once you weren’t the worn down husband to this trollop. I raised you and this is how you repay me?!”

“You’re getting hysterical,” Diane was seething over the insult but still she was patronising, “see? You’re not quite yourself anymore. You need to be somewhere where you can relax and really enjoy your retirement.”

“Diane,” her husband spoke up, “Would you jump back to the house and check on the kids? Let me have a word. No, go on, it’s alright.”

She didn’t leave willingly. It took a lot more persuading and at last Daniel raised his voice and put her in her place for once in her life. John glared daggers at her back, imagining where that cold black heart was and stabbing a stake into it....

“Trust me,” his nephew sighed, shaking his head once she’d gone, “That isn’t exactly how I wanted this conversation to go.”

“But she will have her way,” John replied.

“She is worried about you,” Daniel said, “she just worries more about your physical health. You do look great for a man of your age but it’s what’s going on inside that matters.”

“I would be much better if your kids didn’t leave things for me to trip over,” he scolded.

“Diane’s worried about your physical health,” again the reproach regarding the children was completely ignored, “But me? I’m worried about what’s going on up here. I’m worried about that head of yours, and it isn’t the first time.”

“I still have all my marbles,” John was quick to defend himself, “they’re even numbered and catalogued and arranged in order.”

“Now you listen to me,” Daniel was ready to lose his temper, “I could have reported you long ago but I didn’t. You have always been not quite right up there. For as long as I can remember you have suffered from delusions even though you always tried to hide it from me. Trust me, you can’t hide such things from children and I did find out about your ridiculous paranoia. I would have told someone but I would have ended up in care and you hear about the awful things that go on in those places.”

“I can’t imagine what you mean,” he suddenly felt quite cold. All he could think about was how much did Daniel really know?

His nephew leaned over the table, his eyes filled with contempt and he spat it out, “Vampires.”

“Now really,” he pretended as though it meant nothing to him, “If anyone should be getting their head examined it’s you!”

“It’s been considerably more than a hobby or something you just enjoy reading,” Daniel said, “It has! And that’s why I think you might be better off somewhere else. I think you could be a danger to someone and I have three growing kids to think about.”

“I wouldn’t hurt them,” he replied, “It’s nothing. It’s just a mythology I like to read about now and then. Absolutely fascinating! An entire concept grown out of man’s fear of death, their ignorance about the decomposition process and a paranoia about religion.”

“No,” Daniel sighed, “You think they’re real. And I’m worried about my kids. So tomorrow, the books and the films and all those little trinkets you have hidden away? Either they go or you do.”

John folded his hands in his lap and tried not to get upset. Instead he stared into his nephew’s face, but Daniel never looked away, nor did his expression soften in sympathy. It was coldly resolute. John studied it, looking for some trace, some hint, something, but he ended up turning his gaze away. His nephew noticed and wondered what he had been searching for but his uncle remained silent.

Daniel left, repeating his warning with considerable more force, and then out he went too, leaving John sitting there alone at the table with his hands shaking and his eyes stinging behind his glasses. He took them off his face and wiped his eyes with his pocket handkerchief, feeling bitterly small and alone in the cruel, wide world.

Elaine, the little sweetheart, tried to soothe his spirits by bringing over another cup of hot tea but his throat was so tight that he couldn’t swallow. He let it warm his hands, staring down in the swirling depths and feeling so wretched, remembering everything he had ever given up for that nephew of his, the sacrifices he had made to keep people like him safe. They lived in such blissful ignorance. They had no idea how dark the world could be, they couldn’t see those creatures waiting in the darkness ready to kill and drain their blood.

John knew. Oh, how he knew. They were always with him now. They lurked just out of his reach, staring from shadows, watching him, seeing through him. They weren’t just some delusion and they never had been.

He had given up so much. He had even given up his identity although those ungrateful swines didn’t know it. John Hawthorne had worked in the Home Office for nearly forty years and when he left he knew enough tricks to make it seem that he was a complete non-entity. His pension was paid into his bank, his bank was only one of a large chain and his name could not be found on any record, any document save his birth certificate and his passport. His house was in Daniel’s name now just so they wouldn’t find him.

When John died, it would be like he had never existed at all.

And yet, somehow it seemed as though Jan no longer existed either. John had searched for him everywhere, on election registrars and hospital records but he too had disappeared into the system. It was strange; if they hadn’t known each other all those years ago there would have been no way to know they had ever once been such good friends.

Thinking back to his map, it seemed very likely to John that Jan must have left the country altogether. He had thought about that before of course, so he had given Jan’s description to every airport, every ferry port to stop him from fleeing the country again. But the tricky bastard must have found someway out. It was the only explanation now. But where would Jan have gone?

The lady’s ring on his pinkie finger caught his eye and it seemed to glint in its strange way. Russian gold, such a pretty thing. Such a bloody history.

John stared at it and he sighed. It seemed as though Daniel and Diane would get their wish for a while at least. He would go home and announce that he intended to use up some of his savings for his own enjoyment. It was just a case of deciding where to start; he only knew a few facts about that part of Jan’s life but he was supposed to be the vampire hunter. It was time to start hunting again.

“Elaine?” John called her over for his bill, “You don’t happen to have a Russian or Romanian phrasebook handy, do you?”