Chapter Twelve
April barely made it
back to school in time for her next lesson. She was flustered and
red in the face, but she managed to slip through the door for her
English Literature class with seconds to spare. Luckily there was
still a desk free next to Caro, near the back. She glanced at her
friend, but she was avoiding her gaze. April opened her book and
scribbled a note, then passed it across to Caro.
Sorry for overreacting. Sorry I shouted. Forgive
me?
Caro took April’s pen
and scribbled under it, Buy me cake and it’s
forgotten.
April grinned and
nodded. Americano, tonight at
seven?
Caro gave a
thumbs-up, then wrote: Got a plan re: evil
rumours. Now pay attention, some of us are trying to
listen.
April stifled a
giggle. They were reading Hamlet,
which, despite all the killing and ghosts and the weird
Shakespearian language, seemed quite reassuring and normal after
everything April had been coping with recently.
‘Many critics have
argued,’ said Mr Andrews, their English teacher, ‘that Hamlet is
the embodiment of a man’s journey from adolescence to maturity -
birth to death, if you like.’
April wrote it all
down, although she personally thought the ‘many critics’ were
talking cobblers. As far as she could tell, the story was simple:
Hamlet’s uncle has murdered his dad, who appears to him as a ghost
and demands he take revenge on Bad Uncle Claudius. Then Hamlet
drives his girlfriend to suicide, there’s a big sword fight and
everyone dies. Frankly, thought April,
Hamlet’s having a pretty easy time of
it.
April wished she had
a ghost telling her what to do, telling her what those photographs
meant. Was Caro right? Were there really vampires on those photos?
Is that what her father’s notebook was getting at? She shook her
head. Just listen to yourself, April, she
scolded herself. Just because you took a couple of rubbish pictures
on your mobile phone doesn’t mean the undead are walking the earth.
There are dozens of better explanations, if not thousands. A
couple of wonky photos, especially when she’d drunk about eight
cocktails, were hardly proof of the supernatural.
‘It’s one of
Shakespeare’s most enduring plays because the majority of the
audience identify with Hamlet’s struggle,’ said Mr Andrews. ‘He
doesn’t know whether or not to believe the ghost, he’s surrounded
by people with ulterior motives, and then, when it comes to doing
something about it, he finds all sorts of excuses not to act.
That’s what’s at the heart of the play: which is better, thought or
action? Head or heart? And those are questions we have to deal with
every day.’
Tell me about it, thought April.
She was out of her
seat almost the second the bell rang. She muttered a goodbye to
Caro and sprinted to the front of the room. She wasn’t going to
stick around while everyone stared at her and discussed the rumours
about her supposed orgy with Marcus Brent and his idiot friends.
Besides, she had better things to do. She turned right along the
corridor, keeping her head down, pretending to fiddle with her bag
so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone. Finally she
turned into a long corridor with a wooden door at the end, a sign
next to it reading ‘Chandler Library’. She pushed it open and found
herself in a surprisingly large space with a high ceiling and a
balcony around the walls. It was very modern-looking with
steel-fronted shelves and banks of computers.
‘Big, isn’t it?’ said
a voice to her left. April turned; a grey-haired old lady was
sitting behind the desk, stamping a big pile of books in front of
her. She guessed she must be about eighty - she had deeply lined
waxy skin and horn-rimmed glasses in a style that April thought had
slipped out of fashion in about 1956.
‘Sorry?’
‘I saw you looking at
the room, dear.’ The old lady smiled. ‘A lot of people are
surprised at the size of the library when they first walk in. They
added it on to the original building when it was converted into a
school. I suppose they thought all those mighty young brains would
need more books.’
April looked around.
There were two Chinese girls sitting at a long table in the middle
of the room and she could see a couple of pupils browsing the
shelves, but it wasn’t exactly the popular destination she’d
assumed it would be.
‘Oh, it’s all done
over the Internet these days, lovey,’ said the lady, looking
towards the computer terminals with distaste. ‘Or the wealthy
families buy their children all the books they need. People don’t
read the way they used to any more. So the Chandler has become a
repository for a lot of rare and specialised books. Which is nice,
but I do prefer it when people read them.’
April nodded politely
and began to move away.
‘Library
card?’
‘I’m
sorry?’
‘I suppose you’ll be
needing a library card?’
‘Oh, yes, of
course.’
The woman pushed a
white form towards her. ‘Fill that out and I’ll snap into
action.’
April stared at her
in surprise; she really didn’t look as if she could move faster
than a snail’s pace. The woman kept a straight face, but there was
a distinctly wicked gleam in her eye. ‘I’m Mrs Townley, by the way.
If you need any help, just yell. I’ll probably hear
you.’
April murmured her
thanks and headed towards the history section. Is everyone around here crazy? she wondered as her
eyes scanned the shelves. Military history, social history,
international, political; each section was amazingly well stocked,
but none of it quite fit the bill. She found one promising book -
The Inquisition in Britain - but beyond
a few engravings of heretics being tortured and burned at the
stake, it didn’t have much else of relevance. April had researched
vampires on the Internet after Caro had first mentioned them a few
days before, but it was frustrating and repetitive with endless
sites trotting out the same old ‘garlic, mirrors, sunlight’ stuff
that everyone had seen in the movies and on TV. She was most
interested in the mirror thing, as it seemed to be the same
principle as cameras - something to do with the silver they used on
the back of old looking glasses - but most of the information on
the Net was contradictory, mainly because most people were getting
their information from different movies and books. She found the
worst offenders in the online discussion groups were incredibly
serious teenagers who felt they ‘were’ vampires, despite the fact
that they weren’t immortal bloodthirsty killers. They all
confidently claimed they knew the ‘real truth’ about vampires, but
most of it seemed connected to various rather sad sexual fantasies.
Ironically, April realised that she was looking for something like
one of her dad’s books - for a work by someone who had sifted
through all the silliness and the rumours and could give her the
hard facts, if there were any. But she couldn’t really ask him,
could she? She imagined the conversation: ‘Dad, you know those
vampires you’re looking for? Well, I’ve found them. They go to my
school. And you know how you told me not to kiss any boys at the
party? Well, I didn’t, technically, because it turns out he’s
actually a vampire.’ I would be so grounded,
if he didn’t cart me off to the loony bin
first.
‘Ah-ha, this is more
like it,’ she whispered as she finally found the mythology section.
Working backwards, there were books on zombies, witches,
werewolves, even a book detailing the folklore of the
will-o’-the-wisp. And then - her heart leapt - there were four or
five books on vampires. She pulled them down and carried the pile
to a table out of sight of the Chinese girls. There were enough
rumours going around about her already without adding fuel to the
fire.
April eagerly flipped
through the books, but she was to be just as frustrated as she had
been with the Internet. Vampires in the movies, vampires in
romantic literature, vampires in folklore, it was all the same
tired stuff: vampires don’t like silver, crucifixes or holy water
and you could kill them by staking them through the heart, exposing
them to sunlight or beheading them. Some could turn themselves into
bats or wolves. The end. There was nothing relating to her father’s
theories and nothing she would regard as serious - a scholarly
dissection of folk myths, for example. And nothing on Highgate or
the Highgate Vampire. She had felt sure a library of this size
would have had something on local legends, but there was nothing.
Dejected, April was putting the books back on the shelf when she
noticed a volume that had been left on top of the book case.
Curious, she picked it up and her heart leapt again.
London’s Cemeteries: A Guide, by Ian
Montgomerie.
Excited, she sat down
and began reading:
In the early 19th century, London was booming. Almost overnight, the population doubled, with unchecked immigration and impoverished workers pouring in from the countryside, but the streets were not paved with gold, as many thought. Disease, overcrowding, poor sanitation and starvation all contributed to a massive rise in the death rate, so much so that in 1832 the government, fearing an epidemic, passed a bill designed to encourage entrepreneurs to set up private burial plots outside the city. Their plan worked and within the next decade, seven new cemeteries were built at Kensal Green, West Norwood, Abney Park, Nunhead, Brompton, Tower Hamlets and Highgate. They became known as the ‘Magnificent Seven’.
April skim-read the
chapter on Highgate and, although it was interesting - the
Victorian attitudes to death, the use of pagan and Egyptian
imagery, the famous burials - there was nothing she wanted. She
flicked through the rest, but there was no mention of vampires or
any sort of supernatural occurrences at all.
She took the book
back to its shelf and headed towards the front desk where Mrs
Townley was now sitting with her eyes closed, her knitting on her
lap, listening to an iPod. April sighed theatrically, leaving her
filled-in library card form on the desk and heading towards the
door.
‘Didn’t find what you
were looking for, eh?’
April almost jumped
in the air. ‘God, you scared me!’ she gasped, clutching a hand to
her chest.
The old woman
chuckled. ‘Been doing that trick for donkey’s years. Gets ’em every
time.’
April gazed at her,
amazed. The old woman really was crazy. ‘No,’ she said, unable to
keep the disappointment from her voice. ‘I didn’t find what I was
looking for.’
‘Well, stick with it,
lovey. Whatever you’re after, it’s out there, it’s just a matter of
looking in the right place. And I can always find time to help
anyone who’s really looking for answers.’
April nodded weakly
as she headed for the door. ‘Thank you.’
‘Oh, before you go, I
thought you might like these,’ said the old lady, picking up a huge
pile of books from the shelf behind her and thumping them down on
the desk. ‘Miss Holden’s reading list—’
‘Wow, thanks!’ said
April. ‘How did you—?’
‘No magic to it,
dearie. Miss Holden’s very efficient. She sent me an
email.’
April pulled out the
sheet Miss Holden had given her and pointed to the title the
teacher had added at the bottom.
Mrs Townley peered at
it through her glasses, then looked at April. ‘For that you’ll be
needing Griffin’s.’
‘Griffin’s? Is that a
reference book?’
‘No, the bookshop on
the High Street. Mr Gill is the owner, tell him I sent you and that
you’re one of my “special students” - he’ll know what you mean.’
Mrs Townley leant forward and beckoned April closer. ‘I don’t send
many students to Mr Gill,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a dear man, but
he’s very old and I don’t like to wear him out. So let’s keep it
our little secret, yes?’
‘But why do we ha—’
began April, but Mrs Townley had already turned away.
‘You!’ she yelled at
one of the Chinese girls. ‘Break the spine on one of my books and
I’ll break yours!’
As April walked away,
she heard Mrs Townley turn on her iPod again. Iron Maiden’s
Number of the Beast.
Crazy, April thought to herself as she walked out
of the library. Completely
crazy.
Griffin’s looked like
it had been abandoned, a curiosity from a bygone age left behind as
the rest of the world modernised and moved onwards. It’s a miracle
it’s avoided becoming a Starbucks, thought April. From its tiny
windowpanes to its narrow entrance with its firmly closed door, it
was the absolute opposite of the bright, welcoming, open-plan shops
on either side. Griffin’s bowed shopfront may well have been
painted an interesting colour once upon a time, but whatever it
was, it was now buried under decades of grime from the High Street
traffic. It was a wonder you could even read the dull gold
lettering on the shop sign: R. J. Griffin, Purveyor of Fine
Books.
There was a
hand-written sign on the door - ‘Please ring bell’ - but it took
half a dozen goes before a little old man shuffled up to let her
in: Mr Gill, April presumed. He had ruddy apple cheeks and was bald
but for the tufts of wild white hair sticking out horizontally from
just above his ears. His half-moon glasses and moss-green cardigan
added to the impression of a studious but forgetful Cambridge don.
But he didn’t look particularly friendly.
‘Can I help you?’ he
asked suspiciously, still holding on to the door. ‘We’re not
sponsoring anything.’
‘No, no,’ said April,
‘I’m looking for a book.’
The man raised his
eyebrows and looked April up and down. ‘Oh well.’ He sighed. ‘I
suppose you’d better come in, then.’
He opened the door
just enough to let April squeeze in. She had to duck under a clump
of strange dried flowers hanging from the doorframe and step around
an old full-length mirror. It was an incredibly cramped shop, every
available surface covered with worn, dusty old books. She didn’t
hold out much hope of finding anything here, let alone the book she
needed.
‘Is there something
specific you’d like?’ said the old man sceptically. Clearly they
never had any customers under seventy in here. April fumbled out
her reading list and showed him the book title Miss Holden had
scribbled at the bottom.
‘I’m a pupil at
Ravenwood,’ said April, almost apologetically. ‘Mrs Townley sent
me.’
At the mention of the
librarian, Mr Gill’s whole demeanour changed. ‘Mrs Townley?’ said
the old man, straightening up. ‘Well, why didn’t you say so? How is
Marjorie?’
Marjorie?
‘She seems, um, very
well,’ said April dubiously.
‘Splendid times we
had by the Serpentine,’ said Mr Gill, almost to
himself.
April waited for a
moment, but Mr Gill was lost in his memories.
‘The book?’ she
asked.
‘Ah yes, the book,’
said the shopkeeper, returning to his previous hostility. ‘I dare
say we have something like it in the local history section. You’ll
find it through the reading room,’ he said, indicating a small door
behind his counter.
Beyond the doorway,
April found herself in a miniature version of an old-fashioned
library, the kind you’d expect to find in a nineteen-twenties
country house or an Agatha Christie novel, with wooden
floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and two sloping reading tables in the
middle of the room. Little hand-written signs were tacked to the
front of the shelves: ‘Classical Rome’, ‘Natural History’,
‘Psychology’ and so on. Slowly she walked around, reading the
spines of the books. She was no scholar, but even she recognised
some of the titles: Origin of Species
by Charles Darwin; George Stubbs’ The Anatomy
of the Horse; Relativity: The Special and General Theory by
Albert Einstein.
‘Wow,’ said April.
She wasn’t exactly sure how rare or valuable these books were, but
she knew they were probably worth thousands each, if not more. The
little corridors formed by the shelves had lots of twists and
turns; it was quite a maze back there and it seemed much bigger
than the shopfront had suggested.
Hidden around a
corner she finally stumbled across the ‘Local History’ section. It
was crammed with picture books, full of old maps and sepia
photographs of the area a hundred years ago, and books with faded
gilt titles like Dr Crippen,
the Holloway Poisoner, The Battle for
Churchyard Bottom Wood and The Life and Death of Samuel Tizylor
Coleridge. It was all murder and death everywhere. She
pulled out some books and checked their indexes, but there was no
mention of vampires and no sign of the book Miss Holden had
recommended. Still, April felt she was making progress of a sort,
and she had the thrill of discovering a place she knew her father
would absolutely love. Making a mental note to tell him about it,
she walked into the section labelled ‘Medicine’. Her eye was drawn
to one ancient-looking book bound in black leather with hinges on
the outside. There was just one word on the outside: Necronomicon.
‘Don’t touch that,
please,’ said Mr Gill abruptly, making April jump. She hadn’t even
been aware he was behind her. He pushed past her and draped a cloth
over the book. ‘Some of these titles are very delicate,’ he
said.
Okay, keep your hair on, she thought, I wasn’t going to set fire to it.
‘Is there anything I
can help you with?’ he asked pointedly. April was reluctant to tell
him, but she had the distinct feeling Mr Gill was about to throw
her out if she didn’t say something intelligent.
‘Well, I’m looking
for something on diseases and myths, something along those
lines?’
The old man walked
over to one of the bookshelves and pulled out a slim volume with a
green cover. ‘This may be of some use,’ he said, indicating a
reading table and stool.
April nodded her
thanks and sat down. The book was called The
Healing Word: Folk, Myths and Medicine. April turned to the
index and was almost overjoyed to see the entry under ‘V’:
vampires, p. 124. She quickly turned to the page:
Vampirism has always been linked to disease. It is often dismissed as allegorical tales about the Black Death—undead strangers coming to remote villages and killing everyone —creating a story people can understand to make sense of the inexplicable. To simple peasants the idea of strange zombie creatures drinking blood makes more sense than the idea of some invisible bacteria carried in the air. But all the traits of the vampire - marks on the neck and wrists, lust for blood, hypersexuality, enlarged teeth, sensitivity to sunlight and even garlic - can all be explained in other ways. They are the symptoms of rabies and porphyria, to name but two of the diseases common at the time that could have added proof’ to the rumours and speculation about vampirism.
Feeling disappointed,
April carefully replaced the book and returned to the front
desk.
‘Not what you
wanted?’
‘Not
really.’
‘You were looking for
something about the Highgate Vampire, I take it?’
April almost gasped
and Mr Gill gave her a slight smile. ‘One needn’t be Sherlock
Holmes,’ he said. ‘You were looking for information on the cemetery
and on old myths. Fairly easy to see the link.’
‘Oh,’ said April, a
little embarrassed. ‘I thought I might find a book on it
here.’
Mr Gill scoffed.
‘Cobblers, the lot of it, I won’t have them in the
shop.’
‘I’m
sorry?’
‘Books about the
Highgate Vampire, they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on,’
he said. ‘But if you really want to know, it’s all up here.’ He
tapped a finger against his forehead.
April’s eyes widened.
‘Really?’
‘When something that
exciting happens on one’s doorstep, it would be churlish to pass up
the opportunity to get your feet wet, as it were. All happened in
the early seventies, you see. I’m sure Marjorie - Mrs Townley -
will remember it as well as I do.’
‘Can you tell me what
happened?’
Mr Gill indicated a
tall stool facing his counter and April sat down.
‘I’m only telling you
this because of our, uh, mutual friend, you understand?’ he said,
pouring her a cup of tea from a tartan flask.
April
nodded.
‘As long as that’s
clear. Well, back in the nineteen-sixties, Highgate Cemetery was in
rather a sorry state. I suppose many of the relatives of the … ah …
inhabitants had died off themselves and the graves had become
overgrown and somewhat neglected. It became a gathering place for
some rather unsavoury characters, hippies and so on, and there were
quite a few incidents of graves being desecrated, even bodies
removed. Anyway, one night, a chap claimed he saw a “spectral
presence” and wrote to the local paper asking if anyone else had
ever had a similar experience in the area. Well, that was a red rag
to a bull, of course, and they were inundated with reports,
although none of them seemed to match: ghosts, blood trails, dead
foxes—’
‘Dead foxes?’
interrupted April.
‘Yes, there was a
story that they were being found dead, with their throats torn
open. But, of course, it was probably just one animal killed by a
dog and the numbers got steadily increased in the telling.
Interesting though.’
‘Interesting?
Why?’
‘Oh, interesting that
they should have chosen foxes rather than cats or rats or birds.
Foxes are quite important in folklore, you see. They’re a symbol of
cunning and deception and also of hunting, for obvious reasons. The
pagan Welsh believed witches could transform themselves into
foxes.’
April stared down at
her cup, her brow furrowed. ‘I saw one,’ she said very quietly. ‘A
dead fox, I mean.’
Mr Gill frowned.
‘When was this?’
‘Last week. Just
inside the north gate of the cemetery.’
The old man couldn’t
hide his concern. ‘Well, it was probably hit by a car, poor thing.
People do drive up there like demons. Probably just crawled off
somewhere quiet to die.’
April nodded
noncommittally. ‘I suppose.’
‘Don’t look so
worried, dear child. After all, remember that none of this vampire
hoopla has ever been substantiated and the people who claim to see
them are the sort who call in to radio shows claiming to have seen
Lord Lucan in their local supermarket. There are a lot of people
who think it was all a hoax.’
‘And are you one of
them?’
‘When it comes to
vampires, you do find most of it is … well, not to put too fine a
point on it, it’s rubbish. Personally I think “vampire lore” is
often a case of people seeking out Eastern European folklore and
making it fit their story, rather than the other way
around.’
‘But how did they get
from ghosts and folklore to vampires? ’
‘Now that’s the
interesting part of the Highgate story. The week after the original
letter, someone else wrote in to the paper claiming that the
original spectre had been a vampire, brought over from Eastern
Europe in a coffin. The claim was completely unsubstantiated, but
the media picked up on it, it made the six o’clock news and the
story grew and grew. There were tales of a woman being beheaded and
even a vampire being staked in a tomb and a nest of them being
cleared out of the cemetery. All very unlikely, but that never
stops journalists in search of a good story.’
‘So you think it was
all nonsense?’
‘Oh no, quite the
contrary.’
April looked at him,
feeling cold all of a sudden. ‘You think there were vampires in the
cemetery?’
‘I don’t think there
were. There are. Present tense. And not only in the
graveyard.’
‘I’m
sorry?’
‘Oh yes, my dear.
It’s my belief that vampires are real and that they are living
among us.’