FOUR
I knew when he had arrived because I felt the spine chill that accompanied eyes boring holes into the back of my head. The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention and I had a vision of a darkened shape flitting across the courtyard. I turned, and sure enough, there he was, pale fingers tapping at my window, face in shadows, and two white pinpricks of fire, his eyes, like holes in the night. Polite and obsessed with inevitability was the combination that had me stand up immediately and unlatch the window to let him in.
It had been a while since I'd read 'Dracula', but I remembered Jonathan being unable to shrug off polite formality in the face of increasing weirdness at Castle Dracula until it was too late. I had frowned thinking about it: had Johnny put up a fight, or was I misremembering? Dracula had been a romantic at heart, I knew that much. Vincent's mission statement, when he had described the old woman he had met, dying, on the bus had been dreamlike and, well, romantic for want of a better word, enough to make me understand it. Just like that, I was back in my storybook, and calm. It was strange how he could do that. I was only scared of him in his absence, like the anxiety you feel before a big event, before realising that everything will (probably) be fine. Maybe I would only find him to be a Dracula when he was gone.
Of course, I found out later that If I had only looked a little harder, I would have found the small local article from several days earlier: 'Three dead in house fire', nothing flashy. If I had found it there and then, perhaps it would have been different with Vincent and me- perhaps I would have gained the deeper insight into the sort of person he was, and the work he did, rather than learning this in the cruel shock that came later. As it was, I was currently on track to treating him like an interesting philosophical problem. A hypothetical.
He pushed past me, after he had dragged himself through the window. His face was an impenetrable black mass that twitched and cavorted with every angered breath he took. He didn't look at me, didn't say anything, instead stomped through into the kitchen and dropped a brown paper back on the table. He hadn't been holding his camera. I bit my lip and followed him.
He whirled, and glared at me, and the room suddenly span. I quickly looked away, confused by the state he was in. To look at him directly brought plague and visions. Looming bird skulls and screaming dark souls.
!You seem angry," I stated the bloody obvious, staring at my feet.
He scoffed and whirled round once again. He stopped pacing and held his hands at his face, then began, slowly, to drag his fingers across his scalp, pushing the black hair back from his ruined face. For a moment, he became crystal clear again, but I wasn't staring at his face proper- all I saw was an awful scar, a pink hollow dent, on his right temple for a flash, and then it was gone when his hands fell to his sides and his hair flopped back into place. His face was once again, cast in shadow. He sighed, resigned, and went to sit in his seat, loosing the satchel from his shoulder roughly. It thudded to the floor and crumpled under its own weight. I kept my eyes trained on it- when my grandmother was in one of her moods, I could never look her in the eye. I thought if I pretended that she wasn't there, then she also wouldn't notice me.
I heard him the sound of paper rustling, him nudging the brown paper bag he had dropped on the table, maybe. "I brought food," he said quietly, an edge to his voice. "You've not eaten." With his tone of voice, I couldn't tell whether or not he was scolding.
"What did I do?" I said breathlessly.
He stayed silent, so I risked a glance. His head was tilted. Confused again.
"It can't be that I haven't eaten."
There was another beat of silence. "I'm not angry with you." He eventually said, his voice measured. "I couldn't get the tape back. That's pissed me off, not you."
I breathed out, a sigh of relief even though I barely realised that thats what it had been. How could I not be scared at this- the anger, being on tenterhooks- but be scared of being alone in my flat without him, be scared by my neighbours.
"What are you?" I mumbled, closing my eyes.
"A man," he said curtly.
"Have you ever read Dracula?"
"No."
"No?"
"Seen the movie- the '30s one, I liked. The Tod Browning one."
"I haven't seen it," I said, and reached forward to pull the brown paper bad toward me. There was a burger in there, wrapped in foil. A carton of fries, and a few sachets of ketchup. "Did the person you sold the tape to not want to give it back," I ventured cautiously.
"I told you, it's not that simple,"
"Did it get sold on? Like, you can't track it down, or something?"
"Of course I could track it down- it's mine." he hissed, and my hand slipped from the bag. I think he noticed my discomfort and righted himself. He was less aggressive when he continued. "It got sold on and on and on. I know who had it. But the last person who owned it didn't like it very much. He doesn't like me very much. He destroyed it."
I didn't quite know what to make of that, or what to say, so stored that piece of information away for later. Vincent was gazing at me with something like a forlorn expression.
"Sorry," I eventually decided on, which seemed like the right thing to say.
"It was some of my best work," he said softly. Unlike before, I now couldn't look away. There was something so truly sad in his voice. "It was mine. The closest I could get to beautiful."
I didn't understand how a video of someone cutting their wrists could be beautiful, but I held my tongue and mumbled something sympathetic as I stared down into the bag.
"It was my early stuff. I had no plan back then. It wasn't scripted or rehearsed. It was barely edited. It was innocent. It meant the world to me. And now it's gone."
Again, I didn't understand how it could have meant that much to him if he had, indeed, sold it, so I just echoed: "I'm sorry," Something in his face and in his voice settled. "I'm just sorry you can't see it. You would have liked it." He gestured to the bag: "Eat."
I had realised I was ravenous, so dug in. I had a thought, as I ploughed through the burger, and he rustled around in his satchel, that the food was an apology to me, for not getting the tape. He was incomprehensible, bound by systems and rules that I couldn't understand. I didn't know what he was, only that he was from another place, and yet he had his own little huffs of apology to make for inconveniences. He too was polite. I wondered as I ate if he had a grandmother somewhere too that kept him cordial.
He lit himself a cigarette and pulled out his camera. "Don't record me while I eat." I said sharply, and he paused and put the camera down on the table, unopened. "Do you want any?" I said, offering him the bag.
He shook his head, once.
"Why? Only eat blood?" I asked, my mouth full.
"You're in a vampire mood tonight."
"Yeah. I was wondering if that's what you were?"
"No."
"No?"
"It's funny. The night will probably end in vampires as well," he muttered to himself. I didn't bother asking him what he was talking about.
"How old are you?" I asked, wiping my hands and shoving the remains of the food back into the bag.
"Twenty-seven."
"Twenty-seven? I'm twenty-seven.' He raised an eyebrow and I got suddenly a bit embarrassed.
"You're not like... I'm not imagining you or anything, am I?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You are real, aren't you?"
"In what way?"
"In an obvious 'are you real' kind of way. Why are you so evasive?"
"Because I just had an idea," he said. "Hm. It won't be perfect. It won't be as good."
"What won't?" I asked. I took my glasses off and cleaned them, already uncaring that he had changed the conversation topic so easily. When I put them back on, he seemed more distinct. I could make out the shape of his nose and his eyebrows. He was smaller than before.
"The other tape I could get for you."
"You made a different wrist-cutting video?"
"Well, yes, dozens. But no, it won't be one of mine. We'll just source something else." He tilted his head and looked at me. "If that's still what you want. Do you still want to watch what happens next?"
I paused, and then nodded "A preview, so we can skip forward."
"Can I use your phone?"
I didn't ask why, just handed it to him. I realised I was maybe being a little too complacent in all of this. "Wait- who are you calling?" I asked quickly, but he didn't answer. He punched in a number and stood up, away from the table.
"Vincent," he said in answer to whoever was on the end of the line. "I know... No, not today- the opposite... No... South, closer to Leeds... Probably... Hm... This is a first... Hm... I don't want to- are you sure?" (At this point, he turned and glanced at me. I stared back blankly.). "Right... Soon... Alright. Bye."
He switched the phone off and handed it back to me. "Who was that?" I asked.
"A friend," he said, distractedly.
"Another person like you?"
"Hm."
"Do they make movies too?" He was collecting his things.
"No. Do you know where the Landy Centre is?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Get ready to leave. We're going there," he said, and made for his satchel.
"Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Where are we going?"
"The Landy Centre."
"Yeah, but why?"
"We're gonna rent a tape."
I shook my head at him. I knew the Landy Centre. It was a big empty shopping mall. It had been shut down for years. Shoppers much preferred the busy city centre, so the Landy Centre, off a highway and tucked next to shipping and export lots, had become lonelier and lonelier until not a shop remained inside. "The Landy Centre's closed. Have you ever been? It's like a disused shopping centre. All the businesses folded, like, went completely bankrupt. There's nothing in there."
"Hm."
"I'm serious. It wasn't even open when I was a student."
"Get your things."
"Are we going to meet your friend?"
"Yeah."
The idea of meeting another Vincent didn't exactly thrill me. "Are they... weird?"
He looked at me. "Weird how?"
"Weird like you."
He tilted his head: "Weird like someone you would willingly let into your house through your window?"
I swallowed. "Just... weird," I said.
"No," he turned back to me. "You have a funny way of showing that you're weirded out."
I shuffled from foot to foot.
"I'm not weird," he asserted. "Get ready to go."
"It's not that. I don't really... go anywhere."
"What does it matter if you're dying?" he asked. I couldn't think of an argument to that.
We left and I locked the door behind me. I braced myself against the cold. Vincent seemed not to notice, but then again, he was donning that huge coat. I wished I had worn a warmer jacket. My breaths puffed into the air in front of me. I had a thought and looked over at Vincent. Similar steam came from his nostrils. Not undead, then.
"We can't walk there,2 I complained, blowing hot air onto my hands.
"Can we get there by bus?" he asked.
"Yeah, the 76 service stops near it, I think. But I don't know if it runs this late."
"We'll catch the last one," he replied.
True to his word, when, ten minutes later, we stood in the empty bus station checking the times, the next available bus was in fact the last one for the night. I shivered, and stamped my feet, though it did little to warm me up. I looked around the station, completely deserted at this time of night save for me and Vincent. The newsagent's shutter was down and covered with graffiti, none of it very good. The information desk was unmanned, and the fluorescent light was flickering overhead.
"Lovely place," Vincent murmured without a hint of irony.
"I was meant to die yesterday," I said.
Vincent remained silent.
"I never thought I'd be at this bus station again. Nothing ever happened to me when I was alive, you know? I never talked to anyone, never went anywhere. I'm... or I was agoraphobic."
"Why?" Vincent asked.
"Because of signs. Because of things happening to me. Things that didn't make sense. Things like you actually, but you don't scare me."
"It's a limbo state," Vincent said, looking at me. "You're between life and death. That's why things are happening to you. Surely you know that?"
I fell into a bus station seat. "Is that why I can see you?"
"No," he said. "Well, maybe. But anyone can see me if they want to."
"Not just right before they die?"
He shook his head, once.
"But you can see things too. You saw Marshall. I've been seeing, y'know, signs and things for years- am I psychic like you?" I asked, remembering all of the books I'd read about ordinary people being plucked from their ordinary lives because they had discovered they had extraordinary powers.
"Not like me," Vincent said. "And if you've been seeing 'em for years, that's how long you've been dying." Fine. I had never liked those 'chosen one' books, anyway. I always worried about the consequences that the authors never got into.
"Is it all planned?" I asked, feeling a mite philosophical. "Am I fated to die this way? Has it been so from the moment I was born?" I realised I was putting on a stupid mystical voice.
"Ask me an easier one," Vincent muttered.
"Alright: where are you from?"
"Newcastle."
"Right," I said, and we sat in a not entirely comfortable silence until the bus arrived.
Vincent got on first and paid for both our tickets with change from one of his coat pockets. The driver gave us both a hard look, but whether she was wary of my obvious shut-in vibe, or Vincent overall, I couldn't tell. The bus was empty save for us.
We sat in silence. Soon, he had pulled his camera out of his satchel and had it pointed out the window, filming the empty night and quickly flashing street lamps as they passed, carousel-like. He shrank inside himself while doing this, I noticed- he seemed completely at ease, more so than he ever did when he was in my flat. Someone had once told me (and whether this was true or an approximation, I'm unsure) that someone dies every four seconds in the world. No one in their sleep, in the houses we were driving past, I hoped. I wondered if death permeated the air and Vincent could smell it on the wind, and in a lull between jobs, he was content to film the little things as we drove past, because death was everywhere and in everything. One dead every four seconds, and here he was with me. And then I felt carsick and couldn't watch the steady progress of his camera anymore.
"How do you choose," I asked, "who to film and who to not?"
"Some people need it more than others. I can't be everywhere at once," he replied. "I wish I could. Some people can."
"Who can?"
"Friends of mine."
"The friend we're meeting?"
"Hm."
"How do you know when people are going to die? How do you know how they'll die?"
"Just do."
I was picturing my corkboard in my head. "And why me?"
"You can answer that one yourself, can't you?" he said, and I fought off the carsickness but realised he was grinning at me. No, I didn't know. I didn't think I would ever know.
After another half an hour, the bus was approaching the Landy centre- not a massive shopping mall by any means, but still a sizeable dirty white building. The bus driver gave us a suspicious look again as we got off, and then pulled away, leaving us in the middle of nowhere that once was somewhere.
Vincent looked around the barren scene with interest, and began, again, to record. "Did you ever come here when it was open?" he asked. I was surprised that he had initiated such a conversation. His camera was pointed at me.
"What is this? B-roll?" I asked.
"Of course," Vincent replied.
I was uncomfortable, but tried to answer his question. "Maybe a few times, with my grandmother. But I think it was on the decline even then. A lot of foreclosure sales, I remember that. Cheap clothes, I think she would buy me. Like, discounted back-to-school shoes. It was never a cheerful place."
Vincent motioned for us to start walking across the vast carpark and I tripped over myself following him. There were a few parked cars dotted around, its occupants no doubt taking advantage of the seclusion the place offered. I wondered if anyone would notice the camera and get rowdy, but the thought of someone picking a fight with Vincent seemed outrageously silly. Still, I noticed that Vincent was giving the cars a wide berth anyway.
"Is you friend here yet?" I asked. "Are they parked up."
"She's inside," he said curtly.
I gaped. "But its closed!"
He smiled wryly and continued walking.
"We're breaking in?" I asked.
He hummed in acknowledgement.
"What if we get caught?"
"We won't. Have you never broken into some place?" he asked, still pointing his camcorder at me.
"No," I said, looking away. I could still feel the lens on me. It expected more than that. It called for my secrets. "Well, maybe when I was a kid," I began.
"Go on," Vincent urged hungrily. He was some sort of sin-eater, keeping his camera trained on me.
"It wasn't really breaking in." I muttered. "When I was nine or ten, my friend's father worked at this local hotel. A chain hotel, like. It had ten floors. He was on reception. In the summer holidays, my friend had to come into work with him. He was meant to sit in the staff room, or help the cleaners fold towels and linens in the laundry room, he said. But he would go the staff exit and let me and a few others in. We'd just play around all day in the hotel."
"What would you do?"
I sighed. "Make a lot of noise, mostly. Run around the hallways and stairwells and sit in the lift. Steal a lot of juice from the drinks machine in the breakfast lounge. Go into people's rooms with the cleaners. We would play hide and seek a lot, actually. That place was like a maze."
"Were you scared of being caught back then?"
"Scared. Always scared. I knew we weren't technically meant to be there. Whenever I was having fun and being rowdy or whatever, I would just start to feel guilty. I always ended up leaving early."
"But you always went back if you were invited?"
"Yeah, I mean, I had nothing better to do. It was the summer holidays. You would see lots of kids our age walking round the hotel and you knew that they were staying there because they were on their holiday."
"You would pretend that you were?"
"Yeah, sometimes. If I could get away with it."
He tilted his head in questioning, and I saw this because I was still trying to look anywhere but at the face of the camera.
"We weren't supposed to be there," I repeated. "We're at the hotel, but not to stay or to work. It was nice to get out of the house, sure, but I could never fully convince myself that it wasn't... naughty, I guess, to be somewhere where I didn't belong. Well, anyway, I was right to worry, because I think my friend's dad received complaints or something, or got told off by his manager, so we were never allowed back in."
We reached the main entrance of the Landy, padlocked of course, and he snapped the camera shut and seemed to savour the moment.
"The intruders exorcised from the hotel," he murmured, a smile to his voice. "Well, just pretend that's what we're doing now. Just ghosts passing through." He began to walk around the side of the building, clockwise.
"If we get caught it won't be like that," I whined, and he said nothing, still striding on ahead of me. We were out of sight of the car park now, in an area where the bins must have been kept. There was a broken chain link fence, which he stooped down to pass through. I swore and stumbled after him, my heart beating wildly. Here, there was a staff exit, or maybe a fire door. He pulled from his inner pocket two short metal instruments, and crouched down to begin work on the lock. I looked around, visions of security guards with torches spinning into my mind, but then I heard something click and turned: Vincent was holding the door open.
"We're not kids messing around," I whispered to him. I felt that I needed to whisper.
He remained, still holding the door open expectantly. Inside was dark. I stumbled through and he followed. We went through into a basement area, lit only by safety lights. Vincent was in his element, a full silhouette now, save for his glowing eyes. I let him lead the way, as he seemed to know where he was going. He took us into a stairwell, and I only paused once. He took us out another door and suddenly, we were in the mall proper, dimly lit. Our footsteps echoed menacingly, and again, his camera was out and recording. Even I looked around, curious. All the units were sign-less and shuttered. The marble floor was dusty and I risked skidding about. Every several feet, there was an empty fountain, its insides peppered with rusted coins that had stuck to the bottom. Limbo state.
We rounded a corner, and I was surprised to see an actual shop, not an empty unit like the others: this one was alive in the night and pulsed with red. A neon sign flashed and made fun of its blank surroundings, bathing the path toward it in red. It read: 'B.B.'s Video Basement'. I could hear muted chatter from inside. I stopped dead in my tracks and after a few paces, Vincent realised I wasn't following him and turned to see me standing still in awe. The red flashing fluorescents added new and confusing element to the blackened shadowy mess of his face, cutting streaks into his features and turning his ghostly eyes a mottled pink.
"Come one," he urged. "It won't bite."
I stumbled forward slowly, feeling suddenly like a condemned man on his final walk to the gallows. The noose swung in time with the on-off flashing of the video shop's sign.
"Am I meant to be here?" I asked quietly, coming side to side with Vincent.
"We'll see," he said, and opened the shop door. A bell tinkled. The occupants looked up. The chatter I had heard was coming from an old TV set on the shop desk: all the shoppers were lone shoppers, standing and looking at their own things. There were three in total, and these people didn't look quite right. There was something off about them in an indescribable way. I couldn't tell if they would pass for human in a human setting, but here, tonight, they were wrong, and I immediately thought that I stuck out like a sore thumb and that's why they were staring. They knew that I didn't belong and, in a moment, they would pounce and eat my soul. As it were, they were staring at Vincent - one of them nodded at him briefly and then they went back to browsing.
A woman came out from a back room behind the desk and smiled widely when she saw us. She was quite old, with a mess of matted, white hair perched birds-nest like on her head. It was cut choppy and short. Her lined face sported metal piercings that glinted red under the light and didn't suit her- one through the bridge of her nose, one through her eyebrow, and two spikes protruding through her thin bottom lip. She wore a faded black band t-shirt, the logo washed out, underneath a patchwork quilt posing as a cardigan. She came out from behind the desk and toward us, enveloping Vincent in a hug that was meekly reciprocated. She looked over his shoulder at me, and I realised that her left eye was completely red- no pupil, no sclera, just red.
"Oh Vincent," she said, breaking off the hug and holding him at arms-length. "You've made my night- you always stay away far too long." She sounded Northern also, with the same androgynous rasp that Vincent had. Smokers, I decided, and one piece of the puzzle melted away in my head.
"It's been busy," Vincent said, embarrassed. Embarrassed! I looked at him in surprise.
She looked at me again. "Introduce us," she commanded.
Vincent also turned to look at me. "This is Bertha," nudging his head in the woman's direction.
"Nice to meet you," I said breathlessly, still unsure of how I should act. Bertha smiled at me, a bit too sweetly, a bit condescendingly, and walked back to the shop desk, quick on her feet for an older woman. Vincent followed. I followed.
"Well, this is exciting," she said, as Vincent leaned on the desk and retrieved a cigarette, lit it. She seemed to await some response from me, but when all she got was more staring, she turned down the TV on the desk and addressed Vincent. "What can I do you for you, then?"
"We're looking for something he'd like," Vincent said in between cigarette puffs, gesturing to me with a slight incline in his head.
"Oh!" Bertha said in mock exaggeration. "And what sort of things does he like." This seemed like a well-rehearsed pantomime routine, a game they played many times. Playing shop and customer.
"Something like this?" Vincent queried, and reached into his jacket. He withdrew the book I had given him - my book, my favourite book - and handed it across the counter.
I was about to protest, but Bertha took it gently, and opened it as not to damage the damp pages. She glanced at it and then looked up, coyly, shaking her head. She addressed me. "I'm sure it's a good read, young man, but the mould has completely changed the story. It's re-written. Co-authored. I've heard of places you could take it, but books aren't really my specialty. As you can see," she said, gesturing round at the shelves lined with video tapes.
"Why don't you tell her what you want?" Vincent said to me.
I stepped forward, up to the counter, and swallowed to clear my throat. "Um. We're looking for a- a suicide video. Tape. A film with someone cutting their wrists."
She gasped in mock horror: "dark tastes! Someone your age should be watching the sports." Vincent grinned at her. They knew each other well, I could tell. She handed my book back to Vincent while I stared at my feet. "Well, young man, we have a 'Tenenbaums' around here somewhere. God knows no one ever rents it. It's not really my thing, but you might enjoy it."
Vincent groaned. "Don't pawn that twee stuff off on us. This is me here with him. I'm asking." His voice sounded fuller when he was around her. Confident. Someone showing off when they're in front of their friends. I frowned. Did that mean he wasn't confident when he was around me?
Bertha grinned. "I'm just having fun with him. Young man," she addressed. I looked up. "Why don't you have a browse and see what you can find. I'll be out to help you in a minute after I've served this nice woman here." I turned to see that one of the patrons had snuck up behind me without my realising, the one who had nodded at Vincent when we came in. She was holding a stack of tapes and looked down at me strangely.
I nodded quickly and scuttled away from the counter to busy myself with one of the shelves. When I looked back, all three of them seemed to be engaged in cheerful conversation. I concentrated on what I was looking at. I was in a horror section of some kind. There were some here that I'd heard of, some that I hadn't, and more strangely, a great number that had unboxed. I pulled one out to take a look. On its label was written, in strong block capitals ''Gore Rise: Spirit' (unreleased), M. Capello, 1986'. I ran my fingers along the spines. There were two copies of The Fly. A few more I hadn't heard of, and then another blank tape, which when examined, read 'Crooner test footage, 1991-2'. They were obviously ordered alphabetically, by director, maybe, but I still had no clue what I was searching for.
I turned to the shelf behind me. One of the patrons left the shop and the bell tinkled again. I took a tape out at random and read the text on the back: 'Kristen knows better than to fool around with cannibals, but when an enigmatic-'. Nope. The next tape was in Russian, or Polish, and I couldn't read it. The woman who had nodded at Vincent moved to the shop door. "Catch up soon!" she said, and then she too had left. Vincent and Bertha came over.
"No, No," Vincent said to me, "We're looking for non-fiction."
Bertha glanced at me and then back to Vincent. I was caught in the middle. "Are you sure?" she asked him.
"Hm."
"Well then," she smiled at me, "You're in the wrong section. But Vincent knew that."
"It's your shop," he said.
"Come on," she took me by the arm and led us a few aisles away, to where all the tapes were unboxed.
"I still have a few of your old ones," Bertha said to Vincent wistfully, and then the tone of her voice became softer, sympathetic. She said to him quietly: "this wrist-cutting thing... It wouldn't be related to the rumour I head earlier today, would it? Someone told me you were trying to get 'First Visit' back. I'm sorry."
Vincent immediately soured. "It's fine."
"It's really not," Bertha said. "You know that it was Dime that sold it on to Newmaker?"
"Hm."
"He didn't know. He's beside himself- really sorry about it. Don't be too mean with him."
"I won't."
"Newmaker's still blacklisted from here, anyhow. More people are finding out about him, so you won't have to worry. No one will sell to him soon enough."
"He'll find a way," Vincent growled.
"Is this the tape you were going to show me?" I asked with interest. "'First Visit'? Is that the one that got destroyed?"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore," Vincent said loudly, so loud that the one remaining customer looked up from where he was poring over a selection of tapes.
"Hurry it up over there, Garth, you've been in here for forty minutes," Bertha said to him.
"Just looking," Garth said sheepishly, and put his head back down.
"Right," Bertha said to me. "All this shelf is suicide. Here to here is wrist-cutting, so you could take a look at those. We have, like, cutting videos that don't end in death, too, if you want, but they'll be scattered about. Some in the performance art section, maybe."
"Thank you," I said, unmoving.
She stared at me expectantly, and gestured to the shelf: "Ok, so..."
I took one tape out and looked at it blankly, having no clue what it meant. I took the next one out and did the same thing. I was reaching for the next one when Vincent stopped me.
"Tell Bertha what you want specifically. She can narrow it down. Else we'll be here all night."
"Um. Just, like, a general look at it. Like, an overall kind of... Just something basic, like- showing you how it's done." I really didn't know what I was doing here. Dialogue didn't just write itself.
"What do you want, an instructional tape?" she asked, incredulous.
"Yes!" I seized. "Yes, exactly that, do you have one of those?"
Bertha looked at Vincent and grinned "'O' Leary's Guides'!"
"No. Oh for God's sake no." He said, holding his face in his hands.
"It's pretty much a guide with commentary," Bertha said to me, raising her voice over the top of Vincent's groaning. "It tells you how much it hurts, in what scenarios it could go wrong- stuff like that."
"We'll go with that- sure," I replied, unsure, looking at Vincent.
"Ignore him," Bertha commanded, pulling one of the unboxed tapes out from the shelf with ease. "He's overdramatic. And it's your choice."
She took us back over to the counter, Vincent complaining under his breath, and wrote some things down in a heavy ledger, the type old-fashioned hotels used to use.
"How long do you want it for?" She asked.
"Oh. Umm," I looked to Vincent.
"Three days should be enough," he said, chagrined.
"Three days," she echoed, penning it into her book. "On Vincent's tab, I assume."
"Hm." he huffed. Bertha handed him the tape and he shoved it into his satchel where it jostled amongst the others. Bertha eyed the bag with a look akin to greed on her face.
"Wait," Vincent said, and turned to me. "Do you even have a VCR?"
"No... Sorry?"
"That's fine," he said acidly. "Can I go and get mine? I need to drop some things off anyway." He asked Bertha.
A look passed between the two that I couldn't decipher. "Sure," Bertha eventually said. Vincent went behind the counter and disappeared into what I had assumed was the back office. "Don't stay up there too long!" she called after him.
Alone with Bertha, I didn't quite know what to say. Garth was still rummaging through the shelves behind us. I'm a character in a book, I reminded myself. Things are simply happening to me. It doesn't matter what I say or do. The ending is near.
"Weird," I said to her with a forced laugh, slipping into character. "I always thought that the Landy Centre was closed. Are you, like, the last business operating in here."
"No," she said, kindly. "It's closed."
"... Right. It's just-"
"We only operate out of dead places. Keeps the rent cheap!" she said with a smile.
"Like an underground... video ring... type thing?"
"Yeah, like that."
"Do you never worry about getting caught?"
She laughed at this, and it was a genuine laugh. She threw her head back, receiving another puzzled look from Garth, but then saw my face and stopped. She looked as confused as I felt.
"Oh," she said to me. "You're really not-"
"Got it," Vincent said, returning from the back room cradling a VCR player in his arms.
"Great," Bertha said, composing herself. Before she properly came back into her dramatic self though, she gave Vincent the same indescribable look, which this time went unnoticed. She almost looked scared of him. Or scared for him.
"Garth!" she shouted. "Pick something or you'll starve, for God's sake. I have no time for picky eaters. I'll give you it discounted. Afterwards, you can take these two fine young men home. You came in through Landy, right?"
"Yeah," Garth said sullenly, and seized a tape seemingly at random, bringing it to the front. It was the one I had glanced over earlier. Something, something, Kristen and cannibals. "One night," he said.
"I won't still be here tomorrow, mind. How are you getting it back?"
"I'll send it on."
"Two nights, then."
Garth whined but Bertha was already writing it down in his ledger. "Hey Vince," Garth mumbled. "Been a bit, hasn't it?"
"Hm."
"Right. Not talkative," Garth said. I suddenly liked Garth. He was a short guy, quite young, a bit younger than me, maybe. He was wearing slacks and a dress shirt, with a blue tie, loosened around his neck, as if he had just gotten out of some office job somewhere. He had a buzzcut, bleached blonde but growing out, so that you could see felt patches of brown hair underneath. He was wearing heavy square glasses. He forked over some money up front to Bertha, who slid him the tape.
"Two days, Garth. And make sure it's rewound."
"Sure, I will," Garth said, and then to us "C'mon then guys. I'm parked outside."
Vincent said his goodbyes to Bertha, who turned to me and gave me a small piece of card. "In case you need anything else," she said with a smile. It was a business card: 'B.B.'s Video Basement', and below, a number. Below that: 'See you soon!' It vaguely creeped me out, but not to be rude, I thanked her for it, and for the tape, and then added: "I hope your eye heals up soon!" She looked at me incredulously, and nothing more was said until we left.
Garth led the way back through the Landy Centre, but took a different route to Vincent, and we ended up outside another fire door. The night air was cool and refreshing, and I breathed out for the first time in what seemed like a while. I caught sight of the fire door as we walked away, and far from the finesse of Vincent's lock-picking skills, this one looked like it had been hammered away, with a sizeable dent near the locking mechanism. I looked ahead at Garth's back as he led us across the darkened car park, suddenly unsure if I wanted to be in a locked vehicle with him. His car didn't exactly put me at ease, either. It was a small red thing, the hood covered in deep scratches.
I looked at Vincent in panic, the fear creeping in, but he already had the rear door open and was sliding in.
"Guess you're up front, buddy," Garth said to me, grinning. He was missing two teeth, I noticed, both canines. I stood still for a moment. Terrified of strangers, and unable to ignore these silly little unpredictabilities, I was now, as I said, petrified. I thought briefly of running away, taking a mad dash across the car park and going- where exactly? They would catch me. I thought then that to be a book character would really be ideal. Then I could simply sink lower into my body and relinquish all control, letting the prose do whatever it wanted. At least then, if something bad should happen, it wouldn't really happen to me. I knew Vincent wouldn't hurt me, but hadn't the first clue about Garth. Still, because of course I did, I got in the car. Garth slid in shortly after.
He started the engine: "Where are you two headed?" Vincent remained silent.
"Moorside," I stammered. "Do you know it? If you don't that's fine. We could call a taxi, or-"
"No, I know Moorside," Garth said, pulling us out of the carpark and onto the road. "All the student gaffs are round there, right? You look pretty old to be a student." There was a beat of silence. Garth followed it with a sigh. "Sorry, that was rude," he said.
"It's fine," I whispered.
"So, are you a student?"
"No. I used to be."
"Cool, man. What did you study?"
I glanced back and noticed that Vincent had his camera out, the red eye recording the whole thing. Vincent only recorded the demises. I wondered if I was to be killed right here.
"Um. Writing. Books and writing," I answered, like my life depended on it, keeping my eyes fixed to the road. "What about you, are you a student?" I had the idea that as long as I could keep the conversation going, I would live.
"Nah. I'm a tailor. Used to be an apprentice, but now I've got my own shop and that."
"Really, your own shop? Where is that- around here?"
Garth chuckled. "It's in a lot of places, man. You're new to all this, aren't you?"
"Yep," I nodded. "I barely get out of the house, to be honest. I'm very boring. I know literally nothing- not an interesting person at all," I rambled.
"Ok, man, easy. So, you know that B.B. isn't only in the Landy, right?"
"What, like, she has a chain of shops?"
"No, dude. Only one shop. Many entrances. Do you know what I mean?"
"No, I don't know what you mean."
"Well, you can get to her shop, the exact same one you've just been in, through a lot of places. The Landy, sure. Then she's in the boarded-up booze shop in Manchester. What is it, Vince- the basement, in Newcastle, right?"
"Hm," Vincent confirmed.
"A bunch of other places. There's not many of us, so it's for accessibility's sake. We're dotted all over the country, so it's just easier- saves people like us the travelling. It's the same with my shop."
"Right," I said, and nodded like I understood. Then I caught something. "Wait, what do you mean, people like us?" I said, looking at him.
Garth glanced up from the road, stone-faced. "Well- sorry- people like me and Vincent, I guess," he glanced up at the rear-view mirror and his face broke into a gapped grin. "Though I've heard you don't mind the travelling, isn't that right, Vince?"
"People like you," I echoed, suddenly excited that my book was going somewhere. "People like you, people like you."
"Is he alright?" Garth asked Vincent.
"He's nosy is all."
"Nosy? But he's-"
"I know. He's strange."
"I'm not strange," I blurted. "You guys are strange." They both got a good laugh at that.
"Hey, I tell you what, Vince, if you're still around here on Friday night, there's a get together. Come and tout some tapes- good money in it."
"All vamps?" Vincent asked, looking up over the top of his camera while I sat, listening keenly, in the front seat.
"Yeah, maybe a few others. I think Dime is coming, you know." I forced myself to remain silent so that the conversation would continue and that I could keep being nosy.
"Hm."
"I'll send you the place and time," Garth said. Vincent shrugged. "Oh shit," Garth continued. "You've got no phone, have you? C'mon man- still?" He looked at me instead. "Have you got a phone, funny man? I'll send it to you instead. What's your number."
My face scrunched up and I remained silent. I wasn't that far gone that I was just going to give out my number to a complete stranger. Before I could think of an excuse, Vincent piped up from the back seat, rattling off my number perfectly. I glared back at him and he tilted his head cheekily.
"Ok, got it," Garth said. He held his gaze on me. "You come too, of course. Come meet more strangers for you to be nosy at."
The rest of the drive was a quiet one. Garth tried to speak to me some more, and it's not as if I was trying to ignore him, but I couldn't give him more than one or two words in response, because I was starting to feel a bit ill again. A head-ache was coming on. After that, Garth tried to engage Vincent in a conversation, with similar ill success. Still, when we pulled up at Moorside, Vincent thanked him. I didn't, and practically fell out of the car.
"Friday! Remember!" Garth yelled from the window as he drove away.
Despite the creeping pain in my temples, I turned excitedly to Vincent, who had since put his camera away. "Vamps! Vamps as in vampires?"
"Yeah," he responded lazily.
"You are a vampire?"
"No. I already said."
"But he is?"
"Well," Vincent moved his head from side to side, as if trying to ease a crick in his neck. "Not really. It's complicated."
"Will you explain it to me then? Please?"
"It's not my place to say," Vincent fixed me with a look and headed toward the building entrance. I trotted after him.
"But there are vampires? It's just like you said: the night has ended in vampires!" I went a bit pale as I wobbled, a wave of pain hitting me. "And you told him I was nosy."
Vincent sighed. "Don't worry about Garth. He's friendly enough."
"For a vampire."
"Again, not quite."
"Is Bertha a vampire?"
"No."<.p>
"Then what is she?"
"She's just a woman."
Frustrated that I was probably going to get no further than that, I used my key to let us in. We went back to my flat.
"Give me a minute," I mumbled to Vincent. "Give me a minute." I sank down into the sofa, and couldn't stop myself from slumping into a lying position. I couldn't see Vincent. My head was in the lap of Marshall Friess. I groaned and tried to remain still. I closed my eyes, and I must have fallen asleep.