Now, if there’s one thing Dave hates, it’s musical intolerance. Although he’s generally a quiet sort of person, you can always get him talking by claiming that one band or song is intrinsically better than another band or song. His mail-order business caters to a wide range of tastes, you see, so he doesn’t believe in what he calls ‘stylistic elitism’. It’s a real crusade, with him. He insists that there’s a place for every kind of music in this world.
But before we could get involved in yet another endless argument about the merits of easy listening radio stations, I moved unsteadily towards the only exit: a pair of large, dilapidated wooden doors. Though tightly shut, they had been left unlocked, and I was pulling one of them open when Dave warned me, in a hushed voice, to be careful.
‘We don’t know what might be out there,’ he murmured, much to my surprise.
‘But we’re back in Sydney. We’re at Father Ramon’s,’ I pointed out. ‘We’ve probably been left here because you have to park in the street at my mum’s.’ Someone had obviously decided – sensibly enough – that it would be unwise to emerge from beneath a cargo floor within plain sight of any passing pedestrian. ‘Anyway, the McKinnons don’t know this address, remember? They didn’t get Father Ramon’s ID.’
‘I still think we should be careful,’ Dave stubbornly insisted. He made me wait as he rummaged around in the piles of accumulated junk, until he was finally able to present me with an old golf club. For his own weapon he chose a spanner that had originally been stored in the McKinnons’ toolbox.
Then he led me out of the garage and across a stretch of crumbling asphalt, straight to the back door of Father Ramon’s presbytery.
Like the church next to it, this house was built just before World War One, out of maroon bricks and grey slate. It’s a depressing sort of structure, with dark rooms and damp problems. Nothing in it seems to work properly. The roof leaks, the plumbing’s too old, and the dining-room floor has been damaged by termites. Father Ramon’s always sticking tiles back on the wall with super-glue, when he isn’t sealing cracks in the brickwork.
I loathe the place – even though it’s exactly the sort of gloomy, old-fashioned house that most people would expect a vampire to inhabit. I’ve done my best to avoid it, over the years, because the sight of its dour façade never fails to make my heart sink. But on this occasion I was quite eager to get inside – so eager that I didn’t notice one odd thing about the windows at the back of the house.
Dave did, though. He said very quietly, ‘Why aren’t there any lights on?’ I stopped in my tracks.
‘Could he be asleep, already?’ Dave continued. ‘He didn’t get a wink last night, with all that driving.’
‘Maybe he’s at my place,’ I suggested, before realising how unlikely this was. ‘No,’ I added. ‘He wouldn’t go away and leave us by ourselves.’
‘Anyway, his car’s still here,’ said Dave, trying the handle on the back door. It yielded to his pressure. And as he pushed it open, we smelled the gas.
I should probably explain that the back door of the presbytery leads directly into a ramshackle sunroom, which has become a dumping ground for donations of various kinds. Dave and I had to thread our way through teetering piles of tinned food and old blankets before we reached the kitchen, where we turned off the gas burners and threw open the windows. We had to hold our breaths, of course; if we’d been normal people we probably would have passed out. Fortunately, however, vampires don’t need much oxygen to survive.
I only started to cough when I called Dave into the dining room.
‘Look at this!’ I cried, too shocked to remember that I shouldn’t be inhaling. Someone had left a heater running on high, positioning it under a heap of crumpled nylon that was probably a tablecloth. You didn’t have to be a genius to work out what was going on. Clearly, I was staring at a makeshift slow fuse, designed to ignite the gas in the air just as soon as the nylon began to burn.
It was a trick that wouldn’t have worked if Father Ramon had been able to afford new appliances. But his heater didn’t have a safety cut-off mechanism, and his stove was so old that you could turn on the gas for as long as you liked without triggering an electric spark.
As for the wiring in his house, it was ancient. I had to pull the heater’s plug straight out of the wall socket, because there was no ON-OFF switch.
‘Jesus!’ Dave spluttered, upon staggering into the room. By this time I had pushed aside the dusty velvet curtains that hung across the windows. And while I battled with sticky casement hinges, Dave whisked the tablecloth out of harm’s way.
Soon we were both draped over the windowsill, sucking in great lungfuls of fresh night air.
‘Okay,’ Dave finally gasped. ‘We should check the rest of the house …’
‘Who did it?’ I asked. ‘Could they still be here?’
‘I dunno.’
‘They wouldn’t risk staying, would they? They must have got out.’
‘Could they have turned on other heaters?’ Dave said. For a moment we stared at each other. Then Dave dashed towards the living room and I made for the office.
But we were lucky. No additional heaters had been left on downstairs. Father Ramon’s office was dark and silent. The bathroom smelled of nothing but mould. The living room contained little of interest except a few dirty glasses and what looked like the contents of Father Ramon’s pockets: his car keys, his wallet, his box of matches and his sunglasses.
Dave took the keys, the wallet and the sunglasses.
‘This is bad,’ I croaked. ‘He wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his wallet.’
‘We’ll look upstairs,’ said Dave. As I followed him to the first-floor landing, I held my breath; not because the gas was bothering me (it wasn’t), but because I was listening hard for any creaks or cracks or murmurs that might suggest we weren’t alone.
All I could detect, however, was a deathly hush – together with a very faint whiff of natural gas.
‘Do you know where Father Ramon sleeps?’ I whispered, peering at the array of dark-brown doors that opened off the landing. Dave shook his head. So we tried each of the six doors in turn, beginning with the one to our far left and working in a clockwise direction.
The first door led to a linen closet stuffed with towels and mothballs. Behind the second was a room containing two camp beds, an empty clothes rack, and nothing else. It wasn’t until we reached the third door that we stumbled upon another human being. He was lying on a double bed beneath a flowered quilt, and he wasn’t Father Ramon.
Though he didn’t move when we peeled the quilt off his face, he was still breathing.
‘Hello?’ said Dave, shaking the recumbent body. ‘Hello?’
‘Who is this?’ I demanded. ‘Do you know him?’
‘No.’
The sleeping man was short and plump. He had very big ears, and mouse-coloured hair that was thinning on top. Because his mouth was open, I could see all his fillings.
He wore a striped shirt under a beige V-necked jumper that didn’t match his pants.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, when no amount of poking and prodding served to waken him. ‘Is he drunk?’
‘Or drugged. Or sick. Or knocked out,’ said Dave. ‘This is weird.’
‘Yeah.’
‘There’s nothing in his pockets,’ I said, causing Dave to rub his jaw.
‘I don’t like the look of this,’ was his muttered verdict. ‘We should call Sanford. Sanford’s a doctor.’
‘But who can it be? Is it one of those homeless guys?’ Father Ramon, I knew, often provided beds for people in crisis: evicted families, abused children, sick vagrants. ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with him. Maybe that’s why he’s here.’
‘Maybe,’ said Dave, before heading off to search the next bedroom. I hesitated, frantically wondering if there was some kind of first aid that I should be employing. What were you supposed to do with an unconscious person, anyway? Roll him onto his side? Slap his face? T
ry to feed him coffee?
‘Nina!’ Dave called, from the very next room, and I reluctantly abandoned the sleeping stranger. When I reached Dave’s side, he was standing beside Father Ramon’s bed, staring down at the priest’s motionless form.
‘He’s breathing,’ Dave announced, before I could even ask. ‘He’s alive but he won’t wake up.’
I can’t tell you how frightening it was, to see Father Ramon lying so still. He’s always been such a calm and gentle man that you forget how full of life he actually is, what with his warm eyes and expressive face and sympathetic manner. Seeing him reduced to an unresponsive lump … well, it was a big shock. A bad shock.
‘We’d – we’d better get Sanford over here,’ I stammered, reaching for the phone on the gunmetal filing cabinet that served as a bedside table. Dave, however, grabbed my arm.
‘No!’ he said. Much to my surprise, he insisted that we should take Father Ramon to Sanford, rather than bringing the doctor to the patient. This didn’t make much sense to me. After all, Sanford was conscious, and able to walk.
‘He could catch a cab,’ I argued. ‘It wouldn’t be that much of a risk – not for Sanford. Or you could go and get him.’
‘Nina, we can’t stay here. Suppose the McKinnons did this? Suppose they turn up again?’
‘But the McKinnons don’t have this address!’
‘How do you know? They might have got it from the hotel in Cobar. Besides, who else could it possibly have been?’
‘The slayer?’ I submitted. And Dave inclined his head.
‘Maybe,’ he had to concede. ‘Either way, they might come back. We’ll be safer at your mum’s house.’
‘I guess so.’
‘We’ll take Father Ramon’s car,’ Dave went on slowly, wrestling with the logistics of our situation. ‘I’ll drive it straight up to your mum’s door.’
‘What about Reuben? Where’s he gone?’
‘I dunno. Let’s have a look.’
But Reuben wasn’t anywhere to be found. When Dave and I checked the last two rooms, we discovered only a sparse collection of op-shop furniture.
‘You don’t think Reuben did this?’ I said, once Dave and I were back on the landing. ‘We rescued him, for God’s sake!’
Dave shrugged.
‘It just doesn’t make sense!’ I leaned against a doorjamb. My stomach was beginning to bother me, and all the stress was making me light-headed. ‘We told Reuben we weren’t going to turn him in! He might be unstable, but he’s not a fool! Why would he do something so stupid?’
‘I don’t think he did,’ Dave replied, after a moment’s thought. ‘If he had, he would have tried to kill us, too. Because he knew where we were.’
‘You’re right.’ I couldn’t help being impressed by Dave’s deductive powers. In fact I was beginning to realise just how quick he really was, under that quiet, laid-back façade of his. ‘It can’t have been Reuben, then.’
‘He’s either run off or he’s been kidnapped.’
‘By the McKinnons?’
‘Yep.’
A sudden chill ran down my spine. It wouldn’t be long before my nausea was out of control. I recognised the symptoms; I was heading for a crash.
I needed a fresh guinea pig and a good, long rest in a darkened room.
‘How could the McKinnons have found this place?’ I queried, struggling to remain focused. ‘They didn’t take Father Ramon’s ID. Do you really think they got his details from the hotel register?’
Dave sighed. ‘I dunno,’ he said.
‘It’s not as if he’s listed in the phone book,’ I went on fretfully. ‘Unless there’s some kind of Catholic priest register that you can look up?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Dave’s tone implied that I was fussing over inessentials. ‘What matters is that we get out of here. Fast.’
‘And the homeless guy?’ I was referring to the stranger in the spare bedroom. ‘What are we going to do about him?
‘We’ll take him with us.’
I blinked. ‘But we can’t!’ I exclaimed.
‘We have to.’ Dave was insistent. ‘If we leave him here, he might die.’
‘But we don’t know him, Dave!’
‘Father Ramon does.’
‘If that fat man wakes up in a strange house, he’ll freak! He might call the police, or something! He’ll certainly call them if he wants the McKinnons arrested for drugging him, and where’s that going to leave us?’
Dave sighed. ‘It’s a risk,’ he acknowledged. ‘Thing is, if he wants to call the police, he’ll do it no matter where he wakes up. Unless Father Ramon asks him not to. He might listen to Father Ramon.’ Seeing my tortured expression, Dave pleaded his case more urgently. ‘We can’t leave the poor guy here, Nina. He could choke on his own vomit or something – like Jimi Hendrix. And what if the McKinnons come back? They’ll kill him for sure.’
‘But he’d be in my house …’ I said feebly, frightened at the thought of a domestic invasion. Dave put his arm around my shoulders.
‘We’ll take this one step at a time,’ he recommended. ‘First we have to get Sanford on the case. He’s a doctor. After that, we can work out our next move.’ When I failed to respond, he added, ‘We’ve gotta be quick, though. Because I’m starting to feel a bit crook.’
The implication was clear. If we didn’t hurry, Dave wouldn’t be well enough to drive. And if that happened, we’d be stuck – since we couldn’t exactly load Father Ramon into the back seat of a taxi.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You fetch the car. I’ll call Sanford.’
‘Tell him—’
‘I know what to tell him. I’m not stupid.’ It was mean of me to snap at Dave when he was being so nice. I’m not sure why I did it – fear, perhaps? But before I could apologise, something occurred to me: something so dreadful that I actually reeled, and almost dropped my golf club. ‘You don’t think – I mean, whoever did this …’ I had to take a deep breath before continuing. ‘What if they know where Mum lives?’
‘They don’t.’ Dave hastened to reassure me. ‘Remember what your mum told us? The McKinnons asked for an address, and she wouldn’t give it to them.’
‘But what if it’s here somewhere? What if there’s an address book in the office with my name inside? What if they heard you call me Nina, back at Wolgaroo?’
Dave stiffened. Our gazes locked.
Then we turned, simultaneously, and bolted for the nearest phone.
16
I’m going to cheat a bit now. I’m going to tell you something that wasn’t known to me until long after it actually happened.
You see, while Dave and I were out cold in Father Ramon’s garage, Nefley Irving was climbing through Dave’s kitchen window.
Let me introduce you to Nefley first. At the time of which I speak, he was a postal worker. Don’t imagine that he served behind a counter, exchanging gossip and counting out change; his job was in mail sorting, so he didn’t have to interact with many people at all. And this was just as well, because he’d never been very sociable. In public he was shy and timid, hovering on the fringes of every conversation – unless that conversation dealt with horror movies, psychics, or paranormal phenomena. Nefley always had a lot to say on those topics: so much, in fact, that he could become very boring to listen to. The world of the paranormal was his obsession. He spent most of his free time reading books about ley lines and alchemy and demonic possession, watching films about shape-shifters and witchcraft, and researching occult subjects on his computer.
Needless to say, he wasn’t married. Nor did he have a girlfriend. In fact he didn’t have any friends at all, except the ones he’d made over the Internet. To some of these Internet friends he’d expounded his theory about the role of evil on earth: how evil was a kind of spiritual waste product that had to be collected in certain ‘vessels’, so that it wouldn’t spill out and contaminate everything. Some of these vessels were inanimate: rocks and weapons and houses. Some of them, however, were
human beings.
There were also Hemihoms, who were supposed to be half-human, half-animal. According to Nefley, they were the most dangerous vessels of all, because they contained a concentrated mixture of conscious and unconscious evil. Vampires, he told his Internet friends, were Hemihoms. And they were a danger to the entire human race.
At this point you must be thinking that Nefley was out of his mind. But he wasn’t. There are lots of perfectly sane people who create their own weird philosophies, and Nefley was no different. Nor was he particularly violent or cruel. On the contrary, he wanted to be a hero. He wanted to be a warrior fighting for good against evil.
His problem was that he didn’t have anyone sensible to talk to.
When he posed as Fangseeker on the Net, Nefley was still living in a kind of fantasy world. But Casimir’s response changed all that. For the first time Nefley realised that he was in actual, physical danger, and it scared him. He wondered what would happen if he refused to meet with Casimir after all. Suppose the vampire became angry and tried to track him down regardless? Suppose Casimir was a computer expert?
Faced with this awful possibility, Nefley devised a ‘honey-trap’. This he did after consulting one of his geeky Internet contacts, who probably took it for granted that they were both engaged in an online role-playing scenario. Upon discussing Casimir’s unexpected approach, they agreed that Nefley should arrange to meet the vampire at an all-night coffee-shop in the middle of town. But Nefley wasn’t to make contact with Casimir. He was to monitor Casimir from a distance until the vampire grew impatient and went back home. Then Nefley would pursue him, in the hope of discovering Casimir’s lair.
So when Casmir did show up, at the designated place and time, Nefley was waiting in his car. And when, after thirty minutes, Casimir finally left the coffee-shop, Nefley followed him home. As luck would have it, Casimir even checked his mailbox before disappearing inside – thus revealing his exact address.
The broken pane of glass in the building’s front door sealed Casimir’s fate. Once Nefley had spotted it, he realised that a break-in would be easy to carry out. He could offer no valid excuses for shirking his duty to protect the world from evil – especially since Casimir was such a small, hunched, withered, pasty, shuffling creature. Faced with a strapping great vampire in tip-top condition, Nefley might have had second thoughts about attacking him. Even Nefley, however, didn’t find Casimir intimidating.