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  The fresh salt air smarted in his eyes.

  “I know who you are,” said a disembodied young voice.

  Startled, he looked up and saw a boy about ten years old standing at an inquisitive distance, head tilted to one side with slats of cloud behind him and a book under his arm. He and Helen had no children of their own, or pets for that matter, but felt all the children and animals in the town were their friends. He remembered talking to the twins next door and asking what they wanted to be when they grew up—clergyman, sailor—and them innocently turning the question back at him, albeit that he was already in his fifties: What do you want to be when you grow up? Good question, for an actor. But this one, this boy, he didn’t recognise at all.

  “You’re Doctor Van Helsing.”

  The man’s pale blue eyes did not waver from the sea ahead of him.

  “So I am.”

  The boy threw a quick glance over his shoulder, then took a tentative step nearer. He wore short trousers, had one grey sock held up by elastic and the other at half-mast. Perhaps the other piece of elastic had snapped, or was lost.

  “I… I saw what you did,” he stammered eagerly, tripping over his words, but they nevertheless came ten to the dozen, a fountain. “You… you were powerful. He escaped back to his castle and he… he leapt up the stairs four, five, six at a time with his big strides but you were right behind him. You were determined. And you couldn’t find him, then you could. And he was about to go down the trapdoor but he saw you and threw something at you and it just missed and made a really big clang, and then he was on top of you squeezing the life out of your throat and it hurt a really lot…” The boy hastily put his book between his knees and mimed strangulation with fingers round his own neck. “He had you down on the floor by the fireplace and you couldn’t breathe he was so strong and mighty and you went like this—” His eyes flickered and he slumped. “And he was coming right down at you with his pointed teeth and at the last minute you were awake—” The youngster straightened his back. “And you pushed him away and he stood there and you stood there too, rubbing your neck like this. And he was coming towards you and your eyes went like this—” He shot a glance to his left. “And you saw the red curtains and you jumped up and ran across the long, long table and tore them down and the sunlight poured in. And his back bent like this when it hit him and his shoe shrank and went all soggy and there was nothing in it. And he tried to crawl out of the sunlight and you wouldn’t let him. You grabbed two candle sticks from the table and held them like this—” He crossed his forearms, eyes blazing, jaw locked grimly. “You forced him back and his hand crumbled to ashes and became like a skeleton’s, and he covered his face with his hand like this, and all that turned grey and dusty too, and his clothes turned baggy because there was nothing inside them. And everything was saved and the sign of the cross faded on the girl’s hand. And after you, you—vanquished him, you looked out of the coloured window at the sky and put your woolly gloves back on. And the dust blew away on the air.”

  Indeed.

  The man remembered shooting that scene very well. The old ‘leap and a dash’ from the Errol Flynn days. Saying to dear old Terry Fisher: “Dear boy, I seem to be producing crucifixes from every conceivable pocket throughout this movie. Do you think we could possibly do something different here? I’m beginning to feel like a travelling salesman of crosses.” He’d come up with the idea himself of improvising using two candle sticks. He remembered the props master had produced a duo at first too ornate to work visually, but the second pair were perfect.

  “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “I do believe it was,” Peter Cushing said.

  He did not look at the boy and did not encourage him further in conversation, but the youngster ventured closer as if approaching an unknown animal which he assumed to be friendly but of which he was nevertheless wary, and sat on the wall beside him squarely facing the sea.

  The man was now patting his jacket pockets, outside and in.

  “What are you looking for?” The boy was curious. “A cross? Only you don’t need a cross. I’m not a vampire.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it. I was looking for a photograph. I usually have some on me… I really don’t know where I’ve put them…”

  “A what?”

  “A photograph. A signed one.” No response. “Of yours truly.” Still no response, puzzlingly. “Isn’t that what you’d like?”

  “No,” the boy said, sounding supremely affronted, as if he was dealing with an idiot.

  “Oh…”

  “I want to ask you something much more important than that. Much more important.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  Cushing looked around in a vain attempt to spot any parents from whom this child might have strayed, but there were no obvious candidates in evidence. If the boy had got lost, he thought, then it might be best for him to keep him quietly here at his side until they found him, rather than let him wander off again on his own. He really didn’t want this responsibility, and he certainly didn’t want company of any sort, but it seemed he didn’t have any choice in the matter.

  “I said I’m not a vampire.” The boy interrupted his thoughts. “But I know somebody who is. And if they get their own way I’ll become one too, sooner or later. Because that’s what they do. That’s how they create other vampires.” The child turned his head sharply and looked the man straight in the eyes. “You said so.”

  Quite right: he had done. It wasn’t hard to recall rewriting on set countless scenes of turgid exposition on vampire lore so that they didn’t sound quite so preposterous when the words came out of his mouth.

  “Who is this person?” Cushing played along. “I probably need to take care of him, then.”

  “He’s dangerous. But you don’t mind danger. You’re heroic.”

  Cushing twitched an amused shrug. “I do my best.”

  “Well it has to be your best,” the boy said with the most serious sense of conviction. “Or he’ll kill you. I mean that.”

  “Then I’ll be as careful as possible. Absolutely.”

  “Because if he finds out, he’ll hurt you, and he’ll hurt me.” The words were coming in a rapid flow again. “And he’ll hurt lots of other people as well, probably. Loads of them.” The boy drew up his legs, wrapped his arms round them tightly and tucked his knees under his chin. His eyes fixed on the horizon without blinking.

  “Good gracious,” Cushing said. “You mustn’t take these type of pictures too much to heart, young man.”

  “Pictures? What’s pictures got to do with it?” The abruptness was nothing short of accusatory. “I’m talking about here and now and you’re the vampire hunter and you need to help me.” The boy realised his harsh tone of voice might be unproductive, so quickly added, sheepishly: “Please.” Then, more bluntly, with an intense frown: “It’s your job.”

  It’s your job—Vampire Hunter.

  You’re heroic.

  You’re powerful.

  Cushing swallowed, his mouth unaccountably dry.

  “Where’s your mother and father?”

  “It doesn’t matter about them. It matters about him!”

  The boy stood up—and for a second Cushing thought he would sprint off, but no: instead he walked to a signpost of the car park and picked at the flaking paint with his fingernail, his back turned and his head lowered, as he spoke.

  “My mum’s boyfriend. He visits me at night time. Every night now. He takes my blood while I’m asleep. I know what he’s doing. He thinks I’m asleep but I’m not asleep. It feels like a dream and I try to pretend it isn’t happening, but afterwards I feel bad, like I’m dead inside. He makes me feel like that. I know it. I can’t move. I’m heavy and I’ve got no life and I don’t want to have life anymore.” He rubbed his nose. His nose was running. Bells tinkled on masts out of view. “That’s what it feels like, every time. And it keeps happening, and if it keeps happening I know what’ll happen, I’m going to die and be buri
ed and then I’ll rise up out of my coffin and be like him, forever and ever.”

  Something curdled deep in Cushing’s stomach and made him feel nauseous. He obliterated the pictures in his mind’s eye—a bed, a shadow sliding up that bed—and what remained was a bleak, dark chasm he didn’t want to contemplate. But he knew in his heart what was make believe and what was all too real and it sickened him and he wanted, selfishly, to escape it and pretend it didn’t exist and didn’t happen in a world his God created.

  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.

  After stuffing the brown paper bag deeper into the bin he turned back, and to his sudden alarm saw the boy walking briskly away.

  “Wait.”

  But the boy did not wait.

  Where were the parents? Where were the dashed parents and why were they not—? …but all Cushing’s thoughts and recriminations hung in the air, incomplete and impotent. He had denied the boy the help he had craved—however fantastical, however heartfelt, however absurd—and now the lad was gone.

  “Wait…”

  Cushing sat back down, alone, and saw that the book from under the boy’s arm was still sitting there.

  ***

  Movie Monsters by Denis Gifford.

  He placed it with its cellophane-wrapped cover on the desk of the public library. They knew him well there. They knew him well everywhere, sadly, and he intuited as he approached that there was an unspoken choreography between the two female assistants, vying for who would serve him and who would be too busy. It was not callousness that made them do so, he knew—merely the all-too-British caution that a wrongly-placed word might cause unnecessary hurt. Did they realise their shared eye contact alone caused hurt anyway? He forced a benign smile.

  “Good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr Cushing.” The younger one drew the short straw. He was still unshaven, had been for days and he wondered if he looked rather tramp-like. Little he could do about it now.