Her Vampyrrhic Heart

  Kit didn’t think that there’d be any commercial application for his Noise Music – a homely name for something that was really quite special in his eyes – and ears. Maybe it was psychological. His parents tended to run wild. They took drugs, drank enough to knock a bull off its feet and got into fights. His father now lived in Leppington (after a stay in prison); nevertheless he still lived a wild life, just as he’d always done. So Kit Bolter had his Noise Music. He knew this had become a psychological compensation for growing up with unstable parents. His music granted him emotional stability. He controlled the sounds. Controlled what he heard. Made the music fast or loud, soft or harsh, or pleasantly melodic, or just downright doom-laden, if that was where his mood took him. Above all, however, he exercised control over his compositions.

  Tonight would be different. He had the pod to examine. Owen Westonby had told him he’d found the pod in the forest. It was a metal cylinder that had been crushed. Perhaps by a heavy weight, such as a tractor driving over the thing. So far, he’d managed to open up one end of the cylinder. Carefully, he’d extracted the electronics. They seemed in reasonable condition. The worst damage had been to what appeared to be a camera lens. So, a camera?

  At that moment, a text came through from Owen. So what’s pod for? His friend was keen to unravel the mystery, too. Kit texted back: Should have answer soon. But not a bomb. Danby-Mask and your ugly face are safe from destruction.

  As he eased away the USB cable that had become detached from the electronics he murmured to himself, ‘I know, I’ll let you tell me what you are … all I have to do is replace the USB. After that, I’ll link you up to my computer; then you can show me what’s stored inside of you.’ He enjoyed this mystery … he loved the idea of activating the device so it would reveal its secret. He had control of this machine; therefore, he had control of his life. Even if only for a short time.

  He selected a USB cable from a hook above his head. ‘Now, speak to me, sweet pea.’

  ‘Who ya got up here with you? A girl?’

  He turned to see that his mother had climbed the ladder, so her top half poked up through the loft hatch. She wore a yellow cardigan buttoned up to her throat. As always, she had that bewildered expression, as if something had gone badly wrong with her life but she couldn’t figure out exactly what.

  ‘I’ve got nobody up here with me, mother.’

  ‘Everyone else in the village calls their mothers “Mam”. But I’m “Muth-haaa”.’

  He could smell whisky on her breath from here. She’d been locked into a passionate embrace with the bottle since breakfast-time.

  Her voice grew louder, ‘I asked who you’ve got up here.’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Oh, talking to your electrical bibs and bobs again, eh?’

  ‘Just passing the time.’

  ‘You’re a strange boy, you know? You’re not like the other Bolter men. I can’t even believe I gave birth to you.’

  ‘Because I keep myself to myself?’

  ‘Because you’re weird. Really, really weird.’ Her voice slurred away into a grunt.

  ‘It’s not a good idea standing on the ladder, mother. I’ll help you back down.’

  ‘What you got there?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There … right in front of you. The silver thing?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘If it’s nothing then I won’t be disturbing you, will I? I won’t be taking you away from your work?’

  ‘Did you want to tell me something?’ He made a point of being patient with his mother. He’d seen enough of his father’s fiery impatience to last a lifetime. Genuinely, he felt sorry for the horrible way her life had turned out. ‘I could make you some supper?’

  ‘I’ve just decided …’ She took a deep breath. ‘There is something important you should know. And now you’re sixteen you’re old enough to know the truth.’

  ‘Yes?’ He had chills as he looked at his mother. She’d never spoken like this before.

  ‘Do you remember your uncle who died when the village was flooded?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, listen to this: that friend of yours, Owen Westonby. … his brother was responsible. That’s right, lad. Tom Westonby murdered your uncle.’

  ELEVEN

  Everything began that night with a knock on the door. When Tom Westonby crossed the lounge to the door his heart began to pound. For some reason he believed he’d find Nicola there. His Nicola, with the pale, blond hair and blue eyes. An impossible notion, yet it suddenly blazed into life inside his head. This is Nicola … somehow she’s found a way back to me.

  His heart raced so fast that he felt light-headed. Quickly, he wrenched open the door, expecting to see the girl that he loved. Light from the room spilled out on to the pathway. When he saw the stranger standing there he froze as disappointment came crashing down on him like a deluge of cold water.

  The young woman seemed tense, incredibly tense, yet she asked politely, ‘Excuse me, is this Skanderberg?’

  Tom stared at her. At that moment, he couldn’t move, never mind speak. His optimism had cruelly persuaded him that Nicola had come back. Now this stranger? What on earth was she doing here?

  The woman asked again, ‘Is this cottage called Skanderberg?’

  Stiffly, he gave a curt nod. He found himself unable to take his eyes from the stranger’s face. Somehow she seemed familiar. He judged her to be around the same age as him – twenty-eightish. Small, slightly built, wearing a pink leather jacket, she had short, black hair and coffee-coloured skin. Yet despite her dark colouring she had blue eyes. They were striking. In fact, the blueness of the eyes seemed to glow as she stood there. The woman carried an electric lantern – a ridiculous, ineffectual one that cast hardly any light.

  What the hell is she thinking? Walking through the forest at night? That’s an incredibly stupid thing to do.

  The woman grew increasingly nervous at being stared at. She must have been asking herself: Is this a madman? Will he attack me?

  Once more, she spoke to Tom. ‘If this is Skanderberg, then you must be Mr Westonby. My name is June Valko.’

  He still stared at her in disbelief. ‘Have you walked through the wood by yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘To see you, Mr Westonby. There wasn’t a driveway that led up to the cottage, so I had to leave my car back on the main road and walk here.’ She tried to sound light-hearted, though she now trembled with fright. ‘I didn’t realize it would be so far. I must have taken some wrong turnings, because I’ve been walking for almost an hour.’

  ‘June Valko? You left me a note earlier?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I threw it away. I don’t talk’ to monster hunters.’

  ‘Pardon? Monster hunters?’

  ‘That’s what you are, aren’t you? A dragon spotter? Let me tell you, Miss Valko, there are no such things as dragons. You won’t find any monsters roaming through this forest.’ He’d not looked her in the eye when he told her that dragons didn’t exist, and he wondered if she realized he wasn’t telling the truth. Because five years ago something had roamed these woods. And it had claimed lives.

  He stepped backwards. Not to invite her in, but to grab his coat and boots. She took a step over the threshold.

  ‘Stay there, please, Miss Valko.’

  ‘You can’t turn me away.’

  ‘I’ll walk you back to your car.’

  ‘But you haven’t let me tell you why I’m here.’

  ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No more interviews. I just want to be left alone.’

  Despite his telling her not to come into the house she did exactly that. Those blue eyes became piercing – the woman was getting angry. Now that he saw her clearly in the light of the room he could tell she was beautiful. Many men would have been asking her to stay, but not him, not Tom Westonby … I want her out …
I want her gone.

  ‘Mr Westonby, you must listen to me. I’ve got something important to tell you.’

  ‘Every reporter, cryptozoologist, ghost hunter and nut-job that comes to that door has something important to tell me. If it’s not promising me worldwide fame, it’s some lunatic telling me the secret to immortality can be found in this forest, or a way to travel through time, or speak to the dead, and I’m sick of it – and I’m sick of people like you.’

  ‘Just listen to me!’

  ‘No way.’ Tom pulled on his boots. ‘I’ll walk you back to the car, because you might get lost again – or simply end up dead out there.’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘This isn’t a safe place to be, Miss Valko. In fact, it’s incredibly dangerous.’

  ‘I won’t leave until you hear me out.’

  ‘Then I’ll drag you all the way back to the car.’ He turned on her now, feeling all the pent-up fury roaring out. ‘I don’t want to hear your crap! I don’t want anything to do with you! You’re nothing better than a grave robber!’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘Start walking, or I’ll carry you out.’

  ‘We belong to the same family. I’m Nicola Bekk’s niece.’

  Tom stared at her in shock. Those blue eyes … he realized now why this woman had seemed so familiar. She had Nicola’s beautiful eyes.

  In a calm voice she asked, ‘So will you listen to me now?’

  TWELVE

  Tom Westonby murdered my uncle? After hearing the revelation from his mother, Kit Bolter sat inside his attic lab in something close to shock. He’d met Tom plenty of times before. He was a great guy – OK, a bit preoccupied and distant-looking, like he’d got stuff on his mind. He was Owen’s brother, of course, and Owen was Kit’s best friend. Kit knew that Owen and Tom weren’t biological brothers. Owen’s mother had died a long time ago, and the Westonbys had adopted the boy.

  This statement of Kit’s mother had blasted him like a bomb: ‘That’s right, lad. Tom Westonby murdered your uncle.’ Just like the echoes of a bomb exploding, the sentence kept reverberating inside his head. ‘That’s right, lad. Tom Westonby murdered your uncle.’

  Jesus … that can’t be right, can it? What his mother had told him made him feel like puking all over the floor. The whisky must be making her imagine things, surely? My uncle died in an accident. When Kit heard his mother climbing the ladder to his lab he managed to pull himself out of his trance.

  Puffing, while muttering about the steep ladder, she held up an envelope. ‘It’s all in here. Read it for yourself.’ Climbing into the attic was beyond her, so she stood there with her head above the hatchway. ‘Well, come and get it, or do you want me to lose my grip and fall?’

  He took the envelope from her.

  ‘Read every bit of it,’ she told him before climbing back down to the landing.

  The whisky fumes made his eyes water. His mother depended on the spirit of Scotland to keep life’s woes at bay. Kit placed the envelope on his workbench where the light shone brightest. For now the pod would have to wait.

  The large gold envelope had once contained a birthday card that he’d sent to his mother. MOTHER covered the front in black felt-tip. This gold material was hardly an appropriate receptacle for what must be grim contents, but then that was the kind of thing his mother did. No doubt there’d be a bottle of whisky in the laundry basket, and a jar of marijuana in the larder next to the sugar and flour. Yes, his mother got stranger, making Kit worry about her more and more.

  Carefully, he laid out the contents of the envelope on the workbench. Straight away he saw a document headed CERTIFICATE OF DEATH. That lettering jumped right off the page at him. The death certificate listed medical terms that identified the cause of his uncle’s death. They stated that the man’s fatal injuries were consistent with falling from a considerable height. After that, Kit read newspaper cuttings about the ‘tragic night a Yorkshire village was hit by the worst flood in a hundred years’ and the accidental death of one Todd Bolter. Kit knew that his uncle had got mixed up with drugs. Another case of a bored individual growing up in a little village with a hunger for excitement and nothing to do. Newspaper stories also referred to the deceased Todd Bolter’s trouble-strewn past; that is to say, numerous convictions for drug offences. However, every single cutting confirmed what Kit already knew: for some reason, his uncle fell from the top of the church tower. So why is my mother adamant that Tom Westonby committed murder?

  Kit worked his way through the crumpled mass of newspaper clippings. As incongruous as the gold envelope, there was another document that declared that Todd Bolter had succeeded in swimming a length of the pool. He turned the swimming certificate over. On the back he found a handwritten statement. Typically, a member of the Bolter family had simply used whatever came to hand. Ice-cold shivers ran down his back when he saw that this was his grandmother’s handwriting. The shakiness of the script suggested she wrote this towards the end of her life, which would be around eighteen months ago. His grandmother could barely read or write, so this statement, ungrammatical though it was, must have been a considerable achievement for her.

  To who it might concern. My name is Maureen Bolter. I am dying. I want to get this off my chest about Thomas Westonby. Westonby is a murderer. I heard the truth with my own ears from people in the church when the village got flooded. Thomas Westonby hit my grandson, Todd Bolter. Later that night, him and my beloved grandson got into a fight again on top of the church tower. I’ve been told that Westonby and Nicola Bekk pushed my grandson off the roof so that he’d be killed. As God is my witness, I am writing these words to inform you that Westonby is a murderer and should be in prison.

  Kit had difficulty in deciphering some of the sprawling scribble. He doubted that the police would investigate, given the poor mental state of his grandmother when she scrawled this down before she died. What troubled Kit was that he couldn’t dismiss what he’d read about Tom Westonby murdering his uncle. Just because the Bolter family were cynically dismissed as thieves, drug-sellers and liars didn’t mean that they, themselves, weren’t sometimes victims of crime. There were times when Bolter folk told the truth, too.

  Kit Bolter wondered how he’d react the next time he met Owen Westonby. Should he tell Owen that the Bolter family believed that Tom had murdered one of their own? Even just a mention of an accusation like this could explode a friendship to nothing. Kit closed his eyes and thought hard about what he should do next. Because all of a sudden, the immediate future looked darker – storm clouds were gathering over Kit and the best friend he’d ever had.

  THIRTEEN

  She wanted to talk. Tom, however, knew she must get away from the cottage and back to the car as soon as possible. He finished tying his bootlaces, fastening his coat, and retrieving a powerful flashlight from the kitchen.

  The beautiful woman with the coffee-coloured skin and those amazing blue eyes watched him with an expression that blended sorrow with desperation. ‘Mr Westonby. Now that I’ve told you that I’m Nicola Bekk’s niece, won’t you listen to me?’

  ‘How do I know that you really are related to Nicola? Journalists have tried all kinds of tricks to get information out of me.’

  ‘My eyes don’t lie. These blue eyes are pure Bekk, aren’t they?’ June Valko thrust a phone towards him. ‘This is a photograph of my father. See his eyes? They’re the same blue.’

  Tom sighed when he saw the photograph. A man stood with a dark-skinned woman. His eyes were blue, and his hair possessed that same shade of blond as Nicola’s – an extremely fair blond that wasn’t far away from being an ethereal white. He sighed again, because he couldn’t avoid the truth any more. This indeed was a blood relative of Nicola’s.

  ‘So you do believe me, Mr Westonby?’

  He nodded. ‘Call me Tom.’ This time he held out his hand.

  Shaking it, she smiled, though her eyes remained deadly serious. ‘Please call me June.’

  ‘OK, June. The bot
tom line is you must get back to your car as soon as possible.’

  ‘You believe I’m Nicola’s niece, so why do you want me to leave?’

  ‘This forest is dangerous after dark.’

  She laughed as if he’d made a joke. ‘Dangerous? It’s just a forest.’

  ‘If I trust that you’re a blood relative of the Bekk family, then you must trust me when I say it’s not safe out there.’

  June’s blue eyes strayed to the sofa. ‘Can’t I stay? I thought we could talk?’

  ‘We can meet up again. But not here – and certainly not at night.’

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

  Tom had seen that look before. ‘Yes, I know, you think I’m insane. But it’s not safe out there. I only go into the forest after dark if there’s an emergency, and lives depend on it. Do you follow what I’m saying?’

  ‘Perhaps we could just talk for a couple of minutes?’

  ‘No can do.’ He checked the flashlight. ‘You have to get back to your car. Give me your phone number.’

  ‘I already did. It’s on the note I left you.’

  ‘I burned it.’

  She didn’t ask why. Instead, she pulled a card from her purse. ‘My name and number’s on there. I’m stopping at the Station Hotel in Leppington. Do you know it?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll give you a call. We’ll meet up at the hotel.’ The look she gave him prompted him to add, ‘In the bar.’

  Even though June began to fasten her jacket she moved slowly so she could talk. Clearly she needed to reveal information that was important to her. ‘I came here by train from Manchester. When I reached Leppington I hired a car so I could find you.’

  Despite a sense of urgency to get her away from here, he had to ask the question: ‘Why?’

  Those astonishing blue eyes locked on to his. ‘Twenty-nine years ago my mother met a man called Jacob Bekk. My mother’s the lady you saw in the photo. They fell in love. Before I came along, however, my father returned to this cottage. My mother never saw him again.’