The Reformed Vampire Support Group (20 page)

‘Since 1973.’

‘Man.’ Reuben sounded awe-struck. ‘And I thought five years was bad!’

‘You mean they
never
let you out? Except at night?’ I couldn’t see his face from down in my box, so I don’t know why he fell silent at this point. Perhaps he was speechless with fury. He might have been fighting back tears, or distracted by something on the road. Whatever the reason, he didn’t immediately respond.

And by the time he did, I’d already blacked out.

When I woke up, it was the worst awakening of my life. I felt stifled, as if I barely had the room to inflate my lungs. There were cramps in every limb. My head was pounding.

But Reuben had kept his promise to leave the toolbox latch unfastened. With a single shove, I managed to free myself. The lid fell back, the air rushed in, and I sat up like a jack-in-the-box, coughing and moaning.

It was several seconds before I realised that I wasn’t in a car any longer.

‘Dave?’ I rasped, looking around. My toolbox had been dumped on the concrete floor of a garage, between the McKinnons’ four-wheel drive and a grey sedan that I recognised as belonging to Father Ramon. The garage itself was full of cobwebs. Junk was piled high against the walls; in the dimness I could just make out a rusty tricycle, a wooden stepladder, a roll of carpet, a lampshade, a wardrobe, a fireguard and a stack of vinyl records.

Suddenly I heard a thump from inside the McKinnons’ vehicle – and it occurred to me that Dave must still be in there, tucked beneath the cargo floor. ‘Oh! Wait! Hang on!’ I cried, surging to my feet. Almost at once, however, I fell down. After being folded beneath my chin for so long, my legs weren’t being very cooperative.
‘I’m on my way! Don’t panic! I’ll be with you in a jiffy!’

But by the time I was more or less upright, Dave had already crawled out of the car. He too was having trouble with his legs; he hung off the tailgate as he waited for his knees to stop trembling.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘Okay. I guess.’ Considering what I’d been through. ‘I need breakfast, though. How about you?’

‘I’m all right,’ he said hoarsely, glancing around. ‘This is Father Ramon’s garage.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah. I recognise those.’ He indicated the pile of dog-eared album covers. ‘I brought them here for a charity sale. He obviously hasn’t sold them yet.’

‘I’m not surprised. Old Air Supply records? Who on earth would buy those?’

‘Lots of people,’ he rejoined, sounding slightly miffed. ‘They’re collectables.’

I gave a snort. ‘Well, it’s good to know that there are sadder things in life than being a vampire,’ I said. ‘You could be someone who collects old Air Supply records.’

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? Try 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?’