Stephen Volk - Whitstable

“The young girl is not herself. She’s infected.” The knife tip dug a V in his skin, rasping against the stubble, loud in his ear.

“What if she’s like that deep down in her nature, and the other one has just awakened what she really is? Set her free?”

“That’s probably exactly what a vampire might argue. But no-one becomes a monster willingly.” The knife against his cheek did not move, but he felt it tremble.

Both men’s eyes were glued unwillingly to the screen.

That night Madeline begs Ingrid not to leave her room. She never feels tired at night any more, only excited, she says. But so wretched during the day. She hasn’t told anyone. Not everything. She can’t. How the cat comes onto her bed. How she tries to scream as it stretches across her, warm and heavy. How she feels its fur in her mouth…

Both men stared.

Madeline Smith says it’s like the life running out of her, blood being drawn, then she wakes, screaming. Ingrid Pitt unties the girl’s night dress —poor Madeline told by the producer it was for the Japanese version, but there was no Japanese version— and Ingrid pushes her back against the plump pillow. Her mouth is on the young girl’s throat, then slides down to her young breasts. In close-up, Madeline’s pretty eyes —poor child, Cushing remembered, a virgin, didn’t know what lesbians were— roll wide in simulated rapture…

“How were you bitten? Infected?”

Gledhill pressed the blade harder, making the old man’s head shy away. “Life. Life made me like this.”

Cushing could not be sure whether he detected glee, sarcasm or resignation. “Others need not be hurt. The very ones who—”

“You think I haven’t been hurt?” Gledhill spat through locked teeth. “I’ve been hurt in ways you can’t even fucking imagine.” He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his free hand.

“That’s what made you what you are.” Cushing tried not to think of the knife any more, or the threats, or the obscenities. “You know that. And you know deep down the boy must suffer, because you suffered.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Who was it?”

“Jesus fucking Christ…”

Gledhill snatched the oyster knife away from the old man’s cheek, tossing it to his other hand and back, then plunging it dagger-like into the soft upholstery of the seat in front of him, tearing it back and forth, ripping the material, then slicing it across. The dramatic surges of the soundtrack seemed to accompany his action, and when he was finished he hunched forward, the oyster knife gripped in both fists between his knees, his forehead resting on the seat in front, his whole body shaking.

“Who?”

“Leave me. Go.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You can fuck off.”

“I’m quite aware I can.”

“Why don’t you then?”

Peter Cushing prised open the other man’s fingers and gently took the knife from his fingers.

“Who?”

The pale man from the General’s party appears. The cadaverous man in the red-lined cape stands in silhouette in the woods as if bearing witness to Gledhill’s words.

“Someone who made me think I loved him. Someone who twisted me round his little finger.” He sniffed. A mocking musicality came to his voice, lifting it, lightening it: a delusion. “I fell for his charms, you could say.” He seemed fearful the bitterness in his words evoked no sympathy. “I have feelings too. Did have. Till he fucking ripped them out of me. Why the fuck am I telling you this?”

Madeline cries out. The house is in darkness. Kate O’Mara, the governess, runs in.

“I know you won’t listen to me,” Cushing said, “but… confess.”

A wettish snort, not even a snigger, in reply. “Bless me father for I have sinned. You make a good priest.”

“I have done.”

Outside the door the two women look at each other knowingly. Kate goes into Carmilla’s bedroom and turns down the lamp. In darkness Ingrid slips out of her dress. The moonlight outlines her naked form. Kate moves closer.

“All is not lost. Tell the police. Nothing can be worse than the Hell you’re enduring now. Do it. For the sake of your immortal soul.”

“Soul?” Now the sound through Gledhill’s nose was more weary than dismissive. He sat up straight again in the cinema seat and shook his head. “No. No way. I can’t. The boy… What would he think of me?”

“Dear God, man.” Peter Cushing could not disguise his bewilderment. “What do you imagine he thinks of you now ?”

The blurry vision of Carmilla enters Madeline’s room. The vampire appears to be comforting her in her sickness. The young girl wonders if she’ll live until her father comes home…

“He loves me,” Gledhill said. “I know he does because he shows it. I never have to force him. He never says no. I never force him, ever.”

The Doctor arrives saying Mr Morton asked him to look in on his daughter. Kate O’Mara tells him Madeline has been ill, but it’s nothing to concern him.

“You know what they do in prison to people like me?”

Garlic flowers. Their antiseptic scent. Village gossip. The Doctor puts a cross round Madeline’s neck.

“Sometimes…” Gledhill struggled to complete the sentence he had in mind. “Sometimes I…” He failed a second time.

Ingrid returns to the daughter’s room. She sees the garlic flowers and crucifix and backs out fearfully.

The two men sat in silence facing the screen.

The Doctor rides through the woods, against unconvincing back-projection. His horse suddenly shies and he is thrown. Carmilla comes round the edge of the lake towards him. In a flurry of autumn leaves she wrestles with him and sinks her fangs into his neck.

Neither Gledhill nor Cushing spoke. It was almost as though they had come to watch a horror film, and nothing more.

George Cole rides for the Doctor, but runs into a coach carrying not only Peter Cushing but also Douglas Wilmer—somewhat aged by make-up since the decapitation prologue—a man The General says he has travelled miles to find. To George Cole’s horror the dead body of the Doctor is on the back of the vehicle. Peter Cushing says: “Now I can tell you, and leave us if you wish. Our destination is Karnstein castle.”

“What do you want me to do?” Gledhill said.

The great chords crash. The coach pulls up at their destination. Douglas Wilmer holds a lamp aloft.

“Primarily I don’t want anything to hurt the boy further, in any way. Bringing in the police and the courts will most surely do that. Horribly. But I shall do that if you leave me no alternative.”

“What do you want me to do?” Gledhill repeated.

Cushing said what had been in his heart all along, and begged that some sliver of humanity inside the man still might grasp the simplicity of it:

“Do what is right and good, for once.”

“Good?”

Said more in genuine puzzlement than disdain.

“Vampires are intelligent beings, General. They know when the forces of good are arrayed against them.”

“Save yourself, in the only way you can. Disappear. Turn to dust.”

Carmilla is dragging Madeline down the stairs. She needs to take her with her. Kate O’Mara pleads with Ingrid Pitt to take her too. Ingrid sinks her teeth in Kate’s neck. Madeline screams. Jon Finch leaps off his horse and bursts in. Ingrid sweeps his sword out of his hand and grabs him but he grabs a dagger tucked in his boot and holds it up in the shape of a cross. Ingrid backs away from it. He throws the knife. It passes right through her. Double exposure. She fades and is gone.