To Hold the Bridge

  She looked at him over her loom, but didn’t stop her work, the shuttle clacking backward and forward as she trod the board.

  ‘You be back by five,’ she warned. ‘Theodore says the fog today will be even thicker. It is a shocking month for vampire weather.’

  ‘Yes, Mother,’ said Amos. He planned to run to the mailbox as soon as he was out of sight of the village. That would give him a little extra time with Tangerine. If she came. He was already starting to wonder if he might have imagined her.

  He also made sure to wave and nod to Young Franz, who was working on the roof of his father’s house again. But as soon as he was around the bend, Amos broke into a run, pounding along the road as if there was a vampire after him.

  Tangerine was at the mailbox, but so was the post truck and a postal worker, a man. He was chatting to Tangerine while he put the letters in the slot, and they were both smiling. Amos scowled and slowed down, but he kept going. Since he’d already talked to a girl, talking to a postman wasn’t going to be any bigger a transgression.

  They both turned around as he approached. Amos had seen that postman before, in the distance, but up close he saw details he’d never noticed before. Like the fact that the postman didn’t wear crosses either, and there were no wrist bracers under his uniform coat. It also looked too light to be sewn with silver wire or set with coins.

  ‘Hi,’ said Tangerine. She had a different dress on, but it was just as revealing as the one the day before. Amos couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he didn’t notice the postman wink at him.

  ‘Howdy, son,’ called the postman. ‘Good to see you.’

  ‘Brother,’ replied Amos stiffly. ‘We don’t call each other “son.’’’

  ‘Fair enough, brother,’ said the postman. ‘I guess I’m old enough to be your dad, is why I said son. But I’d better be on my way. Plenty of mail to deliver.’

  ‘And the fog is coming down,’ said Amos. He was trying to be friendly, because he didn’t want to look bad in front of Tangerine. But it was difficult.

  ‘Oh, the fog’s no problem,’ said the postman. ‘I’ll drive down out of it soon enough, and the road is good.’

  ‘I meant it is vampire weather,’ said Amos.

  ‘Vampire weather?’ asked the postman. ‘I haven’t heard that said since … well, since I was no older than you are now. I doubt there’s a wild vampire left in these parts. With nothing to drink, they just wither away.’

  ‘My uncle’s wife and daughter were killed by vampires, not eight years ago,’ said Amos hotly.

  ‘But that’s …’ The postman’s voice trailed off, and he looked at Amos more intently, tilting his head as he took in the necklace of crosses and the bracers. ‘I knew you folk were old-fashioned, but you can’t tell me you’re not vaccinated? That’s against the law!’

  ‘There is no law but the word of the Lord,’ said Amos automatically.

  ‘I gotta get going,’ said the postman. He wasn’t smiling now. ‘Miss Tangerine, you want a lift down to your dad’s?’

  ‘No, thanks, Fred,’ said Tangerine. ‘My grandma’s coming past a bit later, I’ll go back with her.’

  ‘Well, say hello to your dad for me,’ said the postman. ‘Good-bye … brother.’

  Amos nodded, just a slight incline, which if he’d done it to an older man back home would have gotten him into serious trouble.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for a while,’ said Tangerine. She leaned back against the mailbox and tilted her head, so that her hair fell across one of her eyes. ‘I thought maybe you’d come early.’

  ‘Everything’s got its time,’ said Amos gruffly. He took out his key and held it nervously, his mouth weirdly dry. ‘Uh, I have to … to get the mail …’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ laughed Tangerine. She moved aside, just enough that Amos could lean forward and open the lid. She was so close he almost touched her arm with the back of his hand. He reached past and quickly took out the mail. Just two buff-colored envelopes today.

  Tangerine moved behind him as he locked the mailbox, so that just like the day before she was blocking his way.

  ‘I have to get back,’ said Amos. He jerked his thumb at the fog, which was once again eddying down the hillside.

  ‘Can’t we just … talk awhile?’ asked Tangerine. ‘I mean, I’m curious about you. I’ve never met anyone like you before.’

  ‘What do you mean like me?’ asked Amos.

  ‘Nothing bad!’ exclaimed Tangerine. She came closer to him and gave a little tug at the lapel of his coat. Amos took a half step back and almost didn’t hear what she said next, the blood was rushing so in his ears. ‘I mean, you’re a really good-looking guy, but it was kind of hard to tell at first, with the big hat and the coat and everything. And I never saw so many crosses—’

  ‘I told you, it’s for … to protect us … against the vampires,’ said Amos.

  ‘But you don’t need them,’ said Tangerine. ‘Like Fred said, there’s no wild vampires left. When most everyone got vaccinated, they just died out.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Amos. ‘People see them, in the fog, through the windows.’

  ‘Have you seen them?’ asked Tangerine.

  Amos shook his head. He’d looked, but all he ever saw were drifts of fog, occasionally spurred into some strange eddy.

  ‘There you go then,’ she said. ‘Besides, if you did think they were still around, you could get vaccinated too.’

  Amos shook his head.

  ‘But it’s just like getting a shot for polio, or measles,’ said Tangerine.

  Amos shook his head again. His little sister had died of measles, but everyone said that it was the Lord’s will. Amos had taken the measles too, at the same time, and he hadn’t died.

  ‘If the Lord wants to take you, then that’s it,’ he said. ‘No amount of vaxinating can stand against that.’

  Tangerine sighed.

  ‘I guess you hold to some pretty strong beliefs,’ she said. ‘Do you even get to watch television?’

  ‘Nope,’ said Amos. ‘That’s just a door for the Devil, straight into your head.’

  ‘My dad would kind of agree with you on that,’ said Tangerine. ‘Not enough to stop me watching, thank heavens.’

  ‘You watch television?’ asked Amos.

  ‘Sure. You could come down and watch it too, sometime. My place is only half a mile along the road.’

  She pointed and Amos suddenly realized that the fog was upon them. Tendrils of cold, wet whiteness were undulating past, weaving together to make a thicker, darker mass.

  He looked up the mountain and could no longer see the sun. The two arms of the fog had already joined, and he would be in darkness all the way back to the village.

  He must have made a noise, a frightened noise, because Tangerine took his hand.

  ‘It’s only fog,’ she said.

  ‘Vampire weather,’ whispered Amos. He tried to look everywhere at once, peering past Tangerine, turning his head, then spinning around so that somehow he ended up with Tangerine’s arms around him.

  ‘I can’t get back,’ Amos said, but even in the midst of his panic, he was thinking how wonderful it was to have Tangerine’s arms around him, and then out of nowhere her mouth arrived on his and he supposed it was a kiss but it felt more like he’d had the air sucked out of his lungs, but in a good way; it wasn’t something horrible, and he wanted it to happen again but Tangerine tilted her head back and then settled her face into his neck, all warm and comfortable.

  He patted her back for a little while, something he’d seen his father do once to his mother, before they’d seen that the children had noticed their embrace. Tangerine said something muffled he couldn’t hear, then she stepped back and disentangled herself, but she was still holding his hands.

  ‘Don’t go back, Amos. Come down to my house. You can stay with me.’

  ‘Stay with you?’ mumbled Amos. A great part of him wanted more than anything to always be with this wonderful, ama
zing girl, but a possibly greater part was simply terrified and wanted to sprint back up the road and get home as quickly as possible. ‘I … I can’t … I have to get somewhere safe …’

  A noise interrupted him. Amos flinched, looking wildly around, arms already coming up to make a cross. But Tangerine dragged his arms back down and hugged him again.

  ‘It’s just Grandma’s car, silly,’ she said.

  Amos nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He could see the car now, turning in off the main road. A small, white car, which sent the fog scurrying away as it pulled up next to the mailbox.

  The car’s headlights turned off, and the light inside came on. Amos saw a white-haired old woman in the driver’s seat. She waved and smiled, a tight smile that bore no relation to Tangerine’s open happiness.

  Tangerine held Amos’s hands as they watched the little old lady get out of the car. There was something strange about the way the woman moved that Amos couldn’t quite process, how she kind of unbent herself as she rested her hands on the roof and got taller and taller, maybe seven feet tall, with her arms and legs out of normal human proportion, and then she didn’t look like a little old lady at all.

  ‘Oh, God, Grandma, I can’t do this,’ said Tangerine, and all of a sudden Amos’s hands were free and the girl was pushing at his chest, pushing him away. ‘Run!’

  Amos glanced back over his shoulder, only half running, till he saw that the old woman’s mouth was open, and Amos wished it wasn’t, wished he’d never seen that mouth, never met Tangerine, never got caught in vampire weather, and he was running like he’d never run before, and screaming at the same time.

  The vampire stalked past her granddaughter, who held a necklace of crosses in her hand and wept, a girl crying for her grandmother the vampire, and for a boy she hardly knew.

  Amos felt the cold, wet air against his bare neck, missed the jangle of the crosses and knew that Tangerine had taken his protection when she kissed him. He wept too, tears full as much of the hurt of betrayal as fear, and then something fastened on his coat, and he was borne down to the ground, sliding and screaming, trying to turn onto his back so he could cross his arms, but the vampire was so much stronger, her hands like clamps, gripping him to the bone, keeping him still, and he wet himself as he felt the first touch of those teeth he’d seen on his neck and then—

  Then there was a heavy, horrible thumping, cracking sound, like a big tree come down on a house to smash it to bits. Amos felt suddenly lighter, and with a last surge of desperate energy he rolled over and brought up his bracers to form a cross – and there above him was Young Franz, in full silver-embroidered coat and hat, a bloodstained six-foot silver-tipped stake in his hand. Behind him was Old Franz, and Amos’s father, and all the older Brothers, and his mother and the aunts in their silver-thread shawls, argent knives in hand.

  Amos sat up and a bucketful of tainted dust fell down his chest and across his legs. It smelled like sulfur and rotten meat, and the reek of it made Amos turn his head and vomit.

  As he did so, his mother came close and raised a lantern near his head. When Amos turned to her, she pushed his head back, so that the light fell clear upon his neck.

  ‘He’s bit,’ she said heavily. She looked at Amos’s father, who stared blankly, then held out his hand. Young Franz gave him the bloodied stake.

  ‘Father …,’ whispered Amos. He reached up to touch his neck. He could, quite horribly, feel the raised lips of two puncture wounds, but when he looked at his fingers, he could see only a tiny speck of blood.

  ‘It is the Will of the Lord,’ said his father, words echoed by the somber crowd.

  He raised the stake above his head.

  Amos let himself fall back on the ground and shut his eyes.

  But the stake did not enter his heart. He heard someone screaming, ‘Stop! Stop!’ and he opened his eyes again and tilted his head forward.

  Tangerine was running through the crowd of villagers, who parted quickly ahead of her, but closed up behind. She had his necklace of crosses in her left hand and a small golden object in her right.

  ‘Another one,’ said Amos’s mother. She raised her knife. ‘A young one. Ready your stake, Jan.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Amos. He twisted himself up and grabbed his father’s leg. ‘She’s human. Look, she’s holding crosses! She’s a person!’

  Tangerine stopped at Amos’s feet and glared at his parents, not even looking at the stake. She was shouting too, and holding up the gold object.

  ‘I’ve already called the police! And my dad! You can’t kill Amos!’

  Amos’s father looked her up and down, the stake held ready in his hand. Then, without taking his eyes off her, he spoke to his wife.

  ‘She’s holding crosses, sure enough.’

  The older woman sniffed.

  ‘This isn’t any of your business, outsider. A vampire’s bit my son, and we must do what must be done.’

  ‘But he can be vaccinated!’ sobbed Tangerine. ‘Within twenty-four hours of a bite, it still works.’

  ‘We don’t hold with vaccination,’ answered Amos’s mother. She looked at her husband. ‘Do it.’

  ‘No!’ shrieked Tangerine. She threw herself over Amos as Jan raised the stake. Amos put an arm around her and shut his eyes again.

  ‘I said do it, Jan!’

  Amos opened his eyes. His father was looking down at him, with an expression that he had only ever seen once before, when Jan had broken his favorite chisel, broken it beyond repair.

  ‘My phone is still connected to the nine-one-one operator,’ said Tangerine. ‘Listen for yourself, Jan.’

  She held up the tiny gold object. There was a distant voice speaking from it.

  Jan took it from her. For a moment Amos thought he would throw it away, or crush it beneath his heel, but instead he lifted it to his ear and spoke slowly and heavily.

  ‘This is Jan Korgrim, from New Rufbah. We need an ambulance for a vampire-bit boy. He’ll be by the mailbox. No, the vampire’s dealt with. I reckon it was an old family one, let loose.’

  Jan handed the phone back to Tangerine. His wife looked at him with eyes sharper than her silver knife, and turned away. The other villagers followed watchfully, lanterns held high to illuminate the fog, stakes and knives still kept ready.

  ‘Father, I—’

  Jan held up his hand.

  ‘There’s nothing to be said between us, Amos. You’re an outsider now.’

  ‘But Father, I don’t want—’

  Jan turned away and strode quickly up the hill, toward the fuzzy, fog-shrouded lantern light that marked the way home.

  Tangerine rolled off Amos and stood up. He looked dully up at her and saw that she was crying.

  ‘My name’s not Tangerine,’ she said. ‘It’s Jane.’

  Amos shrugged. He didn’t want to know this, he didn’t want to know anything.

  ‘And I’ve got a steady boyfriend.’

  Amos just wanted to lie on the ground and die.

  ‘Grandmother wanted me to find someone she could drink. Someone unvaccinated. She was tired of reheated plasma. She promised she wouldn’t kill you, but then when I saw her … I saw her go full vampire … I’m sorry, Amos. I’m sorry!’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Amos. ‘You’d better go, though.’

  ‘Go? I’ll help you down to the road, to meet the ambulance.’

  ‘No,’ said Amos. He got up on his knees and then slowly stood up, pushing Tangerine … Jane … aside when she tried to help. ‘I’m not going down to the road.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a cold lake in a kind of hollow up near the peak,’ said Amos. He staggered forward a few steps, almost colliding with a tree. ‘The fog sits there, day and night. I’m going to take a rest up there. Just for a few days, and then—’

  ‘But you’ll turn,’ exclaimed Jane. She tugged at his arm, trying to drag him downhill. ‘You’ll be a vampire!’

  ‘I’ll be a vampire,’ agreed Amo
s. He smiled at the thought. ‘And then I reckon I’ll go home and … despite crosses and silver and everything, I’ll—’

  He stumbled and would have fallen, but Jane held him up. He kept mumbling about drinking the blood of girls with names Jane had never heard of, like Hepzibah and Penninah, and killing someone called Young Franz, and was so intent on this litany that he barely noticed when they reached the mailbox and Jane sat him down against it.

  The ambulance came with two police cars. The police spoke to her briefly, before driving on up the road to the village. The paramedics gave Amos a sedative and then the antivampire shot, and chatted cheerfully with Jane as they loaded Amos into the ambulance.

  As Jane climbed in the back, one of the paramedics, the older one, looked around the shrouded landscape and took a deep breath.

  ‘Ah, I like a lungful of mountain fog,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you just can’t beat a touch of vampire weather.’

  Strange Fishing in the Western Highlands

  IT IS FORTY YEARS AND more since I first went fishing with Hellboy. I was a young man then, with a fresh-minted medical degree from St. Andrews and what I thought was a wholly rational view of the world. Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery I was, with ‘Mb ChB’ after my name, and a head stuffed full of scientific knowledge and a bare modicum of practical surgery from the hospital in Dundee.

  The last few years of my medical studies had been extraordinarily busy, and in that time I’d seen very little of my father, my sole living relative. He hadn’t made it any easier, choosing when he retired to live not in our comfortable former family home in Edinburgh, instead moving to the house he had inherited from his uncle, a remote place on the shore of Loch Torridon in the Western Highlands. It was four miles from where the road terminated, had no telephone and only occasional electricity from a diesel generator, and for the most part, could only be easily reached by boat from Lower Diabaig or Shieldaig, across the loch.

  So, having unexpectedly been given four days off duty from the hospital due to what I supposed was a rostering error but may have in fact been a direction from on high that I was working too hard, I decided to visit my father. I sent a telegram to advise him, but as it was February, and the winter storms busy on the west coast, I thought it unlikely it would reach him before I did. Though I had no doubts about his filial affection, we did not enjoy the closest of father-son relationships. So I took the precaution of purchasing a ham, a dozen bottles of his favorite burgundy, and a few other odds and ends to offer as gifts, all of which went into a hamper that I could only just jam into the very slim boot of my senior colleague Dr. Teague’s Austin-Healey 3000, which he had reluctantly lent me for my journey.