Stephen Volk - Whitstable

He felt a soft, warm hand slipping inside his. Helen? But no. It belonged to the little boy.

“So will you?”

“Will I what?” In a breath.

“Will you turn him to dust? Grey dust that blows away like you did with Dracula?”

“Is that what you want?”

The boy nodded.

Oh Lord… Oh God in Heaven…

Cushing stared down without blinking at the boy’s hand in his, and the boy took his expression for some sort of disapproval and removed it, examining his palm as if for a splinter or to divine his own future. The man suddenly found the necessity to slap his bony knees and hoist himself to his feet.

“Gosh. You know what? I’m famished. What time is it?” His fob watch had Helen’s wedding ring attached to its chain: a single gold band, bought from Portobello Road market when they were quite broke. The face read almost twenty past eleven. “There’s a shellfish stall over there and I think I’m going to go over and get myself a nice bag of cockles.” He straightened his back with the aid of his white-gloved hand. “I do like cockles. Do you like cockles?”

The boy, still sitting, did not answer.

“Would you like a bag of cockles? Have you ever tried them?” He took off the glove, finger by finger.

The boy shook his head.

“Do you want to try?”

The boy shook his head again.

“Well, I’m going to get some, and you can try one if you want, and if you don’t, don’t.”

The boy observed the old man closely as he flicked away the tiny cover of the shell with the tip of the cocktail stick and jabbed the soft contents within.

“Will you put a stake through his heart?”

Cushing twirled it, pulled it out and offered the titbit, but the boy squirmed and recoiled.

“You know, long, long ago, people believed in superstitions instead of knowing how the world really worked.” He popped the tiny mollusc into his mouth, chewing its rubbery texture before swallowing. “They didn’t know why the sun rose and set and what made the weather change, so sometimes they thought witches did it. And because they thought witches might come back and haunt them after they were dead, they’d bury them face down in their graves. That way, when they tried to claw up to the surface they’d claw their way down to Hell instead. But, you know, mostly superstitions are there to hide what people are really afraid of, underneath.”

“You know a lot. You’re knowledgeable ,” the boy said, happy to have his presumptions entirely confirmed. “But you have to be. For your occupation. Vampire Hunter.”

Cushing had had enough of the taste of the cockles. In fact, he hadn’t really wanted them anyway. He wrapped the half-empty tub in its brown paper bag, screwed up the top and deposited it in the nearest rubbish bin a few feet away. Whilst doing so, he scanned the car park, again hoping to see the errant parents. “Do you see him in mirrors? Does he come out in daylight? Because that’s how I discover whether someone is a vampire or just someone human that’s mistaken for a vampire, you see.”

“He does go out. In the day time, but…”

“Aha. What does that tell you?”

“Different ones have different rules. Sometimes they can be seen in daylight like in Kiss of the Vampire on TV. You weren’t in that one, so you don’t know. There are different sorts, like there are different cats and dogs but you can put a stake through their heart. That definitely works, always. And that’s what you’re brilliant at.”

Cushing sat back down next to the boy, put on his single white glove and lit another cigarette. He remembered something that had troubled him in his own childhood. He’d mistakenly thought the Lord’s prayer began: Our Father who aren’t in Heaven . But if God wasn’t in Heaven, where was He? The question, which he dared not share even with his brother, had kept him awake night after night, alone. Where? He rubbed the back of his neck: a gesture not unfamiliar to fans of Van Helsing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the boy said. “You’re thinking how to trap him.”

“No. I’m not.”

“What are you thinking then?”

“Do you want me to tell you, truthfully? Very well. I believe if there’s something troubling you at home, whatever it is and however bad it is, the best thing to do—the first thing to do—is to tell your mother.”

The boy laughed. “She loves him. She won’t believe me. Nobody will. That’s why I need you .”

“Perhaps your mother wants to be happy.”

“Of course she does! But she doesn’t want to be killed and have her blood sucked all out, does she?”

“This man might be a good man trying his best. I don’t know him, but why don’t you give him time to prove himself to you and I’m sure you’ll accept him for what he is.”

“I know what he is! He won’t change. He won’t ! Vampires don’t become nice people. They just stay what they are—evil. And they keep coming back and coming back till you stop them!”

“Listen. I’m being very serious…”

“I know. You’re always serious.”

“Yes, well. These feelings you have about your mum’s new boyfriend?…” Peter Cushing felt cowardly and despicable, and even as he was uttering the words disbelieved them almost entirely, but did not know what else to say. “They’ll go away, in time. You’ll see. They’ll pass. Feelings do.”

“ Do they though? Bad feelings? Or do they just stay bad?”

Cushing found he could not answer that. Even with a lie.

“My mum wants to marry him. She loves him. He’s deceived her because really he doesn’t love her at all. He just wants to suck her blood, too.”

“But you have to understand. I can’t stop him.”

“Why?”

Cushing stumbled for words. Fumbled for honesty. “I don’t know how. You have to talk to somebody else. Somebody…”

“Yes you do! You do ! The villagers are in peril, and I’m in peril, and you’re Doctor Van Helsing!”

A large seagull landed on the rubbish bin and began jabbing its vile beak indiscriminately at the contents.

“I’m sorry. I’m—”

“Yes, you can . Please! Please! …”

But Cushing could say no more. Dare say no more. The desperation in the boy’s voice struck him mute and the rolling eye and the hideous ululating of the seagull made him look away. He felt pathetic and cruel and lost and selfish and small—but he wasn’t responsible for this child. Why should he be ashamed? The vast pain of his own grief was heavy enough to bear without the weight of another’s. Even a child’s. Even a poor, helpless child’s. He was an actor, that was all. Van Helsing was a part, nothing more. All he did was mouth the lines. All he did was be photographed and get his angular face blown up onto a thirty-foot wide screen. Why was the responsibility his? Who asked this of him, and why shouldn’t he say no?

Now a second gull, even bigger, had joined the first and added to the cacophony. In a flurry of limbs they squawked and spiked at the bag the cockles were in, then began snapping at each other in full scale war with the yellow scissors of their horrid, relentless maws.

When their aggression showed no sign of abatement, Cushing crushed out the remains of his cigarette on the stone, hurried over and shooed them away with flailing arms from the debris they were already scattering with their webbed feet and flapping wings. He felt their putrid dead-fish breath poisoning his nostrils. They coughed and gurgled defiantly and showed their pink gullet-holes before begrudgingly ascending.