Whitby Vampyrrhic

Author:Simon Clark [Clark, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Fiction
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Four

Tommy searched the streets of Whitby for his parents. Even though the town had yielded to absolute darkness, the boy saw every cottage, kennel, alleyway and tavern. The dog loped alongside. Sam’s short fur appeared to shine like black glass to the boy’s dark-adapted eye. A restlessness to find his family didn’t allow him to pause for long. He sensed they called to him. But where are they? They always seem just beyond my reach. Of course, Tommy had yet to understand that his parents had died decades ago. His little sister was now an old woman in a nursing home in Scarborough. In a yellowing, faded album, there were photographs of her, her mother and father, and Tommy, a cheerful boy of eleven, who had vanished one winter’s night in 1868.

Sam sped alongside Tommy as they ran along Church Street to the market square. The clock’s hands touched eleven. No townsfolk ventured out into the darkness. Tommy had seen soldiers with rifles up on the cliffs. But he couldn’t understand why they needed to stand guard there. Any more than he could identify those black crosses that rumbled overhead after sunset. The word ‘aeroplane’ had no meaning for him. Tommy recalled his father would often visit the Black Horse Inn to drink a glass of that rich, amber beer while he discussed the day’s fishing with friends. His father never drank as much as the other men, preferring to return to his family before the children’s bedtime. Might his father have hurt himself on the way back from the inn? Maybe he lay in the street, waiting for Tommy to find him?

Tommy entered the little cobbled area known as Market Place. Like the streets, it slumbered away the night hours in silence. The boy and his dog circled the peculiar stone building, which rested on pillars at the entrance to the yard, where stalls of vegetables and baked meats would be set out by day. He scoured the stone pavement, expecting to see the slumped figure of his father. All he found were discarded cigarette butts, matches, apple cores, shreds of newspaper – no sign of a man needing Tommy’s help to get safely home.

Every so often, Sam would glance in the boy’s direction. The dog sensed the child’s anxiety. And from time to time he picked up on a yearning to find something precious that had become lost.

As he crossed the square, Tommy cried out in excitement. A man stood with his back to him. Tommy wanted so desperately to find his dad that for a moment he recognized the figure as his broad-shouldered fisherman father. He knew that line of the jaw as the head began to turn. Already, he could imagine his father’s face breaking into a smile, when he saw his son running towards him.

‘Dad!’ Tommy ran faster, his arms held out for the warm hug his father always gave him when he returned to port.

But the figure before him wasn’t his father. Sam stopped dead, his front legs splayed out, a snarl rolled in his throat.

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