8
José Almonte left his Malaga office and decided he would treat himself to a celebratory drink. That afternoon, he’d gone to the clinic to learn the results of a HIV test that he’d taken following a drunken indiscretion with a prostitute a month earlier. He’d gone to the clinic in a state of darkest anxiety, as he’d managed to convince himself that he had contracted AIDS and was surely going to die. So the news that he was all clear came as an almost overwhelming relief. He’d gone through the afternoon like a man reborn, with joy bubbling in his heart like champagne, and now he decided that if you had champagne in your heart, the best thing to do was to have another glass in your hand to keep it company – or even better, a gin and tonic.
As he rode the elevator down, he thought back to the night of madness that had started it all. He’d gone out for a drink with some of the other guys from the office to celebrate his fifty-third birthday. By ten o’ clock, most of the older men had started to drift away, pointing to their watches and explaining that their wives would be expecting them. But José had felt no such obligation because he and Luisa had had a furious row that morning, and he was in no mood for a re-match. His conscience had been nagging him to get her some flowers and make it up, but after the second drink, another part of him – the part that wanted a third drink and possibly a fourth or even a fifth – won; and when the younger lads had decided that they were going to go on to a strip club, José had gone along too.
It was after midnight when he’d left the club, and no sooner had he done so than she had approached him. He hadn’t understood her at first; she was an immigrant and her Spanish wasn’t very good; but her intention was clear, and that was all he needed to understand. He had accompanied her back to a nearby apartment. When the sex was over, he’d wanted to stay and sleep off the booze, but a man with a much less amiable disposition than the prostitute had entered the apartment to tell him that an overnight stay wasn’t an option.
He’d managed to find a taxi and had woken up the next morning in the guest room of his own house. Luisa had already left for work. He called in sick before rushing off to the bathroom to vomit. Afterwards, as he lay hanging onto the toilet like it was a life belt in a stormy sea, he thought about his encounter with the prostitute. What had possessed him? He’d never done anything like that before in his life. Had he used a condom? He must have done – she would have made him, surely.
Wouldn’t she?
He’d tried to remember putting one on – stopping sex to sheath his penis was usually quite a memorable event, if only because it was an awkward halt to the proceedings – but no fiddly condom fumblings bobbed among his memories of the night before. Cold sweat had broken out all over his body, and a fresh vomit reflex sent his face back into the toilet.
Now, José clicked his tongue at the shameful memory. Thank God it was all going to be okay now. The nightmare of not knowing was ended. He could finally stop cringing away from Luisa’s touch in the bedroom, lying to her about feeling tired or having a headache. She had been patient and understanding, and on more than one occasion he had wept with shame. But tonight, he would return home, guilt free and hard as a fine chorizo sausage.
He left the elevator and walked across the lobby to the exit. Yes, he thought, just a couple of drinks and then home – and no strip clubs. He chuckled as he went through the front doors of the building and out into a beautiful late spring evening.
A man touched him lightly on the arm. ‘señor Almonte?’
José frowned, startled. ‘Yes?’
‘You don’t recognise me perhaps. I am Doctor Morales, from the clinic?’
José hadn’t recognised the doctor without his white coat. ‘Oh yes, doctor. Er, how are you?’
‘Fine, thank you, señor Almonte, but I’m afraid I need to talk to you. It’s about ... well, perhaps we should speak in my car?’
José suddenly felt weak. ‘What? Why? I’m fine, you told me yourself not four hours ago!’
‘Please, señorAlmonte. Could we step into my car?’ He indicated a white Mercedes parked beside him. A man got out from the driver’s seat and opened the back door for him.
‘But I’m fine,’ said José.
‘Please, señor Almonte, if you would just get into the car. There’s something I need to show you.’
José’s legs felt numb. He walked slowly to the car. He hesitated, then got inside. The doctor got in after him and pulled the door closed. The driver got back into his seat and started the car. ‘Where are we going?’ José asked.
‘To the clinic, señor,’ Dr Morales nodded to the driver and the car moved off.
‘But my test ... my test was clear.’
‘I’m sorry señor, but there’s been a little confusion.’
‘What do you mean, “confusion”? Oh my God! Are you telling me there’s something wrong?’
Dr Morales smiled. ‘Oh, no, your test results are exactly what were hoping for: you’re all clear.’
José covered his face with his hands and sighed with relief, ‘Oh, thank you.’
‘But, unfortunately,’ Dr Morales continued. ‘You are going to die.’
José lowered his hands, his expression confused. ‘Sorry?’ He suddenly became aware of a strange smell in the car. He hadn’t registered it earlier as he had been consumed by dread and anxiety, but now it tingled in his nose, a chemical smell redolent of hospitals. He was about to ask what it was just as Doctor Morales provided the answer by pressing the chloroform-soaked handkerchief over José’s nose and mouth. José lashed out, but there was no room for leverage – the doctor was upon him, pushing him down with all his body weight. José tried to call for help, but already he was falling away, as if Doctor Morales were pushing him through the upholstery and down into a soft black oblivion beyond.
David sat on a patio chair on the balcony of John’s bedroom, smoking a cigarette and watching a tiny grey lizard. The lizard lay absolutely still in the shadow of one of a group of pot plants. David leaned closer; it looked dead. He reached out tentatively and touched it lightly with his finger. It was smooth and dry and cool to the touch. Then quite suddenly, it woke up and scurried off, disappearing into the shadows between the other pots.
David dropped the butt of his cigarette and ground it out underfoot. He felt exhausted. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face.
John’s words came back to him, saying that Lydia had an agenda of her own. What had he meant by that? He’d said she was evil, a bad seed. But that didn’t make sense either: evil was the family business. It was like the head of a family of jockeys complaining that a kid was a bad seed because they were great on horseback. Surely a Flinch that lacked evil would be a bad seed.
Conchita stepped out onto the balcony behind him. She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. ‘You don’t have to worry about anything now, David. It will all be taken care of.’
He looked up, confused. ‘What? What do you mean?’
‘The funeral: arrangements were made weeks ago. John will be taken away and cremated. Afterwards, his ashes will be stored with your father’s and Martin’s alongside the Master.’
David sat back and frowned. ‘You mean in the cellar? In Underwood’s crypt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. There is a special alcove for the Flinches.’
David thought for a moment, then looked away to the mountains. ‘Oh well, if that’s what he wanted.’
‘It is. It’s what they all wanted – to be near their Master in death, as they were in life.’
‘Fine. But for the record, if I die, don’t go putting my remains down there, will you? That’s the last place I want to be ... or rather it isn’t, if you see what I mean.’
Conchita raised her eyebrows. ‘You don’t want to be with your family and Master?’
David turned to her. ‘No. I want to be free in death, as I haven’t beenin life.’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean, I – ’ he shook his head slowly. ‘I’m not ready for this, Conchi. It’s come very suddenly and – well, I just don’t know if I can handle it.’
‘But of course, it’s a lot to have to absorb.’
He laughed. ‘Oh yeah, you’re not kidding. Twenty-four hours ago I was opening a jar of chicken korma sauce, getting ready for a nice romantic dinner with my girlfriend, and now look at me: my brother’s dying wish was for me to swear on the sword of our ancestors that I’d raise a vampire from the grave and guard him for the rest of my life. I’ve got to play Jeeves to Underwood’s Wooster. Only instead of just being an upper-class twit, my Master’s a serial murderer of gargantuan proportions. Oh, yeah – it’s a lot to absorb all right.’
‘You sound like you don’t want the job, David.’
‘Would you?’
‘Of course, I would be honoured.’
He laughed bitterly. ‘Now you’re starting to sound like Lydia.’ He took out his cigarettes and lit one. He offered her the pack. She shook her head. He took a long drag then said, ‘I dunno. Maybe it’s because it’s just so much more normal for you here. You guys are all involved in the Sect, you’re near this – near him,’ he pointed to the floor and to Underwood’s crypt below. ‘This is what you are, but it’s not what I am. I’ve got a life far away from all this and it’s one I don’t want to leave, you know?’
Conchita sat down beside him. ‘You are scared?’
‘Yes. You bet I’m scared.’
‘I understand. It is for you to decide David, for you are guardian now. Lydia will do it if you don’t want to. But you know ... that is not what John wanted.’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, he said that before he died.’
‘And I think he was right. It is good that you have fear of Underwood; fear is what keeps us alive in dangerous situations; it tells us to protect ourselves and the things we care for.’
‘Yeah, but Underwood is the thing I fear – not the thing I care for, not the thing I want to protect.’
‘But you will protect him. It is in your nature. John knew this. He told me so.’
‘Oh? Did he tell you why he didn’t want Lydia to the job, by any chance?’
‘No,’ she looked away. ‘He only told me that it must be you. You are a man, after all.’
David felt she was holding something back, but he didn’t push the issue. Instead he said ‘Oh yeah, the old man’s work business. He gave me that speech as well.’
The sword John had given him now lay across the small patio table in its scabbard. Conchita made to pick it up. ‘May I?’
‘Sure. Mind your fingers.’
She picked it up and raised it before her. ‘Can you imagine the battles – the fights to the death – this sword has seen?’ She gazed at the sword in wonder.
‘You want it?’ said David. ‘Only a hundred or so previous owners.’
She smiled. ‘It was the sword of Matthias Flinch.’
‘Yeah. John told me. I didn’t know that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I haven’t been here for twenty years, Conchita. Last time I was here, Rick Astley was number one. I wasn’t interested in swords and ancestors, I was interested in ...’ He shrugged. ‘Well, things that sixteen-year-old boys are interested in.’
‘Like this Rick Astley? Who is he?’
David smiled. ‘Never mind.’ For a moment they were silent then David said, ‘So, if this is the sword of Matthias Flinch, then whose is the other sword downstairs, the one that crosses this one over the fireplace?’
She looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
David frowned. ‘Is that – ?’
‘The sword of Lord Underwood?’ She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Jesus Christ. All this time and I never knew!’
‘I think there are many things that you do not know, David. And much you need to learn if you are going to take this sword as your own.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘So, are you going to take it?’ She inclined the handle towards him.
He reached out for it and she passed it to him. He took it, curling his fingers around the worn handgrip. With his other hand he gripped the scabbard and slowly drew the oiled blade out.
‘It’s magnificent, isn’t it?’
David nodded, an unconscious gesture as he looked along the length of the blade. The aged steel, nicked and scratched and scored with battle, gleamed in the late afternoon sunlight.
‘You know I don’t want to influence your decision,’ said Conchita, ‘but I have to say, it suits you.’
David swung the sword lazily from left to right. ‘Really? You know it does feel weirdly ... comfortable.’
Conchita smiled. ‘I think perhaps you were made for each other.’
David lowered the blade. ‘Yeah, and that’s what scares me most of all.’
José Almonte returned to consciousness like a man rising slowly through cold black water, his dreams of pain dissolving into a reality of the same: a hangover? His head pounded, which was to be expected after a night out drinking, but more than that, he ached in other places too – unusual places. Jesus, he must have really gone to town last night. But why? What had been the occasion?
Not having HIV of course.
Suddenly, the memory of his last waking moments returned to him: the doctor from the clinic, the car, the handkerchief, sodden with chemicals. He opened his eyes to darkness – but not complete darkness, there was light moving on the surface in front of him, the surface he hung over. Hung over? José’s eyes came fully open. He was tied to something, but his weight wasn’t on the thing he was tied to. He was suspended from it, his body hung horizontally, as if the thing he had been lying on had been flipped over in space and he had remained attached to it. Panic seized him. He tried to move and found he couldn’t. He turned his head to the right and saw his arm lashed by duct tape, beyond that his wrist was manacled by handcuffs. He snapped his head left to see his other arm fastened the same way. He raised his head suddenly and it struck whatever it was he hung from. He cried out and discovered that his mouth had been sealed shut with tape. He struggled, writhing against his restraints which he could now feel at various points the length of his whole body, chafing against his bare skin, tearing at the hair of his naked body.
Oh God! What was going on? As he struggled, José felt himself swaying slightly. Above him, he heard the sound of chains clinking gently against each other.
What was this? What the hell was this? His mind raced for reason, for sanity. Could this be the prostitute’s work? Was this her revenge for ... for what? No, that was insane. But there was something sexual – sexually perverse happening here. There had to be. Why else would someone kidnap a middle-aged man, strip him naked and suspend him from ... from what? Where the fuck was he? A dark room. The air was cool, almost cold. A cellar? His eyes were now accustomed to the gloom and he focussed on the floor beneath him. He had to be about six or seven feet up from it. It was black, its surface rippled and shone dully like oil, then he realised it was just a sheet of clear plastic spread out over a large black square. But why? Why spread plastic over the floor? To keep it clean? What did that mean? Ejaculations? Whose? The doctor’s and the other man in the car who had kidnapped him? Oh Jesus, what sick game did they have planned? Panic returned and he fought, contorting helplessly against his bonds, his howls of anger and desperation loud only in his head as he gently swayed along with whatever it was he was lashed to. After a few moments, he realised it was hopeless. He gave up the struggle and allowed himself to hang, breathing hard through his nose and watching the dim light flicker on the surface of the plastic beneath him. But where was that light coming from?
As best he could, he looked up. The light got brighter as he did so. It was coming from a point ahead that he couldn’t raise his head high enough to see. It was candlelight, he was sure of that. He pushed his head back as far as he could, the skin of his bald patch scraping against the irregular metal surface of whatever it was he hung from. Then, he saw the source of the light and his breath stopped suddenly in his chest. Two candelabra, each with three candles burning, stood at either end of a long table that was covered with a deep red cloth.
Hanging on the wall behind the table was a painting. Red eyes stared back at him from the canvas. José recognised the subject of the painting immediately. He screamed, though against the gag his scream was a pitiful muted whine. The face before him was that of the horned beast. With the head of long-horned goat and the body of a man, it sat cross legged, a pentagram in the centre of its forehead, its wings furled behind it, and its malevolent eyes alive in the flickering candlelight. José suddenly understood that the doctor had meant it when he said he was going to die. He wasn’t going to be used as part of a kinky sex game; he was going to be sacrificed.
David walked down the stairs carrying the sword and trying not to look at the painting of Underwood that hung on the wall opposite. He knew the sensation had to be just his imagination, but he could feel the portrait’s eyes on him as he descended, commanding him to look up and meet them.
He stopped on the bottom stair and raised his head to look into the eyes of his Master. The face in the portrait smiled at him.
David drew the sword from its scabbard. ‘What are you looking so smug about?’
He pointed the sword at Underwood’s face, the tip of its blade aiming right between the mocking green eyes. ‘You should fear me, you know? I’m the one with the weapon here, and you – you’re nothing but a dusty old corpse.’
Underwood smiled back at him from the canvas.
‘Oh, but you don’t see it that way, do you? You think I’m just like all the other Flinch boys, don’t you? Someone to fetch and carry your bags and mop up the blood after your murderous mealtimes. But I’m not like them, y’see? Just because I told John I’d serve you, that doesn’t mean I actually will, you know. I’m my own man!’ The sword wavered slightly in David’s grip and he lowered it. He looked down to where the tip rested against the marble stair. In his imagination, Underwood’s portrait was on the verge of breaking out into guffaws. Then, David was suddenly struck by the simple truth of what he just said: rather than he being afraid of Underwood, it was Underwood who should be afraid of him.
Lydia had gone out, John was dead, and Conchita was busy upstairs. David tapped the sword against the stair. How fitting it would be to use it on Underwood, to just open the coffin, pull up his rotten old corpse, and chop his head off with a single slash of Matthias’s steel?
A smile, which almost exactly mirrored Underwood’s, rose to his lips. He looked up, his eyes bright with purpose. ‘You know, Milord, we may never get another chance to be alone like this again. Just you, me,’ he raised the sword. ‘And this.’ He slashed the blade through the air between himself and Underwood’s throat. He glanced quickly around, then, assured he was alone, turned and hurried down the corridor towards the library.
As he was passing the lounge, from the corner of his eye, he noticed something different. He stopped and looked into the room. Above the fireplace, the other sword had gone. That was odd. He went into the room and glanced around to see if the housekeeper was polishing it, but she was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she had taken it away somewhere to polish it with some special antiques-only polish. It didn’t matter. He turned from the room and hurried on down the corridor.
He knew the library door from childhood; it was a door he had always avoided whenever possible. As he approached it, he suddenly remembered why, and stopped.
When he was nine years old, Lydia had rewarded his confession that he’d almost peed his pants at his baptism the year before by daring him to go down to touch Underwood’s coffin. Determined to prove that he was no longer a silly little kid, he’d taken the dare. Immediately, Lydia had grabbed him by the hand and hurried with him straight to the library. She dragged a chair over to the bookcase against the far wall and climbed up, pulling books out until she found the concealed release switch. A few moments later, the doorway yawned open onto the stairs that led down into the darkness of Underwood’s crypt. She’d turned to him, grinning, pointing down the stairs with one hand while holding tightly to the door with the other.
He heard her voice again, taunting him from his memory. ‘Come on, Scaredy-Cat. What’s the matter? Afraid you’re going to pee your pants again?’
‘You’ll shut me in!’
‘Course I won’t, Davey. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’
He’d taken a step closer to the door, then another. Then, he stopped. The darkness beyond the doorway seemed almost a breathing thing. He shook his head, ‘No.’
Suddenly, Lydia had lunged for him. He’d lashed out, terrified she’d manage to get a hold of him and pitch him into that terrible darkness. His fist connected with her face and she screeched in pain. He’d turned and ran as fast away as he could.
David blinked, returning to the present. He forced a little laugh. ‘Gave you a shiner didn’t I, Lyddie? And you deserved it too.’ He turned the handle and entered the library. All the walls were lined with books, but David’s attention was fixed on the panels directly opposite, against the far wall. He closed the door and walked over to them. What shelf was it? He couldn’t remember. Then an idea occurred to him: there was bound to be some dust. He stepped up close to the shelves and looked along each one towards the light from the window. There was a fine layer of unbroken dust in front of the all books – except one; a spot where the dust had been disturbed. He checked the books at that point and saw a very old paperback copy of Dracula. He smiled, and pulled it and its immediate neighbours from the shelf.
Behind them was a small wooden switch. He pushed it, and with a low click, felt the panel in front of him come loose from the wall. He stood back and took hold of the bookcase. It swung open easily on well-oiled hinges, and there before him, just as he remembered it in his nightmares, was the staircase to the cellar. A coldness crept up the stairs and poured around his ankles, the musty air causing his skin to prickle and crawl away from it. But this time, there could be no running away. David gripped the handle of the sword and drew it from its scabbard. He took a deep breath, and stepped through the cellar door.