James was pensive on the way home, waiting for further questions that didn’t come. All Gabriel said was, ‘Your accent comes out when you’re stressed or hurt. Did you know?’
‘I know.’
‘It’s gone again.’
‘I’m fine now.’
After that, Gabriel lapsed back into contemplative silence and James waited.
Then, two steps through the downstairs door to Ivy Gardens, the questions and comments started again, so rapidly fired that there was no time to answer a single one.
‘How long have you been a vampire? Is that the right term? How did it happen? Who did it to you? What are the rules? Those movies are stupid and never make sense. Can you turn into a wolf? Of course not, stupid question, sorry. Where do your teeth go? You still breathe – do you need to? Do you have a heartbeat? What’s the deal with your saliva? I felt how it worked on the cuts when you bit me and there’s not even a scar now. I could take samples, and the saliva, skin and hair as well, and do some tests–’
Gabriel stopped, hand on the open door, when he realised James was still standing, grim-faced, at the top of the stairs. ‘What is it?’
James’s jaw worked until he found his voice. ‘Gabriel, this isn’t a Boy’s Own Adventure. I’m not a school project. I’m a vampire. I’m a monster.’
That snapped Gabriel out of his excitable blathering. ‘Of course you’re not a monster.’ He entered the flat and waited for James to follow.
Sensing that the top landing was not the place for this conversation, James stepped across the threshold and shoved the door shut. ‘Gabriel, are you paying attention? I’m a vampire.’
Gabriel exhaled a slow breath. ‘You know, James,’ he said carefully, ‘I lived on the streets on and off for the better part of a decade, and I’ve become a good judge of character. I had to. And here’s something else. I’m now certain I’ve met vampires before. In fact, I think some things I thought I’d imagined over the years, maybe I really did see.’
He’d gone from giddily fascinated to oddly sober. ‘For years, I’ve thought I was crazy. Not in one of those “oh I’m zany, good for a laugh, me” ways. I mean “psychotic, seeing things, shadows in my head” crazy. I tried to tell myself instead that I was imagining things. But I knew that I saw them, the way I used to see things when I was small. But I was damned if I was going to let anybody start dosing me up on neuroleptics again, so I shut up and explained the weird shit I saw as hunger, or the cold, or tricks of the light. But here you are. A vampire. Real.’
‘That doesn’t make me safe.’
‘No. But I’ve just told you, I’m an excellent judge of character. Frankly, there are human beings who’ve been a long way from safe for me. I don’t doubt you, James. I might have only met you a month ago but I know you. You don’t scare me.’
James regarded Gabriel with a mixture of wonder and curiosity. Then he frowned. ‘Who the hell put you on neuroleptics? That’s an anti-psychosis medicine – and you were a kid when that happened?’
Now it was Gabriel who looked like he wished James didn’t make beelines for the one topic he’d hoped to avoid. ‘My dad thought I was bonkers when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘Actually, he still does.’
James’s expression changed to one of concern. ‘What did you see? When you were little.’
Gabriel moistened his lips nervously, then figured that if confessions were to be made this evening, they had to be made in full.
‘Ghosts. I used to think my house was haunted. Nobody ever believed me. My father said I was over-imaginative, and that I made up invisible playmates because I was in that huge house on my own so much. Then I described one of my imaginary playmates as having her entrails spilling out of her stomach, and the boy in the coal cellar had rope around his neck and his tongue was black and stuck out of his mouth like a sausage, and that the creepy baby would cry and cry and cry until the lady in the white dress picked it up and smashed its head into the fireplace.
‘My father said I was sick in the head. He sent me to a lot of psychiatrists and the occasional institution and he fed me a lot of fucking pills before I learned to keep my mouth shut.’
Gabriel leaned towards James. ‘What you did tonight. That’s the first time in twenty years I’ve thought maybe I’m not deep-down crazy. Maybe my house really was haunted. You don’t understand what this means to me.’
‘Gabriel…’
‘Because if you’re real, then the ghosts were real. And if they’re real, I want to know what they are. Ghosts and vampires, and those other things I thought I saw. I want to know everything that can be known about it, because it’ll keep proving I’m not mad and I never was.’ The relief in his expression, the hope in it, was nearly heart- breaking.
Then Gabriel, fierce and earnest, wrapped his long fingers around James’s blunter ones. ‘You’re not a monster, James. My father is, sometimes, but not you. You’re a good man. You saved my life; in more ways than one. And I want to find out exactly what it means. Being a vampire. You can tell me how it works. There must be rules–’
‘I don’t know how it works,’ James snapped. ‘I didn’t come with an instruction manual. I woke up as this thing, and was left to work it out on my own.’
‘I could help you work it out. I’m a chemist, remember. We’ve got somewhere to start.’
‘I’m not a science project, Gabriel. Don’t make me into one. I couldn’t stand it.’ Not from you.
‘Don’t you want to know?’
To know what West turned me into? The myths are no good. So much of what’s in the movies and books isn’t true. I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what this is or what it means.
‘Of course I do.’
‘And of course you won’t be a science project. How could you think you would be? James, you’re my friend.’
James saw no fear in Gabriel’s eyes. He saw burning curiosity, yes, but also warmth. Pleading. He saw something he had not seen since before that day in Helmand. A friend, offering to help.
‘I’ve never seen a ghost,’ James admitted slowly.
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘That’s not what I’m saying.’ James grimaced. ‘There’s so much I don’t know.’
‘Then let’s find out together.’
‘All right.’ James swallowed. ‘Aye. That’d be good.’
‘It would be good,’ Gabriel agreed. ‘We’ll be pioneers in the field. That’s fantastic, that.’ He grinned broadly.
‘It’s mad, is what it is.’
‘Bloody mad,’ Gabriel agreed.
Their eyes met and then they were both giggling in fits.
James felt like something had been unlocked inside. With this secret gone, he’d be able to help Gabriel find out what the hell was going on – because Gabriel was right. The police wouldn’t do much here. They couldn’t. Not if they spent their time seeking a simply human reason for it all.
And, James couldn’t help thinking, with a fluttering sense of hope, he could finally have more of his life back. You were always right, Granda. It’s a lang road that’s nae got a turnin.’
‘So. Do you have a cape?’ Gabriel asked cheekily on the way to the kitchen.
‘Opera cape,’ James replied, deadly serious. ‘And