Except that she woke, of course. Woke to find Dave fast asleep beside her. What had woken her was that the wireless was on. She didn’t want to wake Dave—he had to work the following day—but she couldn’t go back to sleep no matter how much she tried. In the end she wrapped herself in her dressing gown and went downstairs to switch it off.

  It was coming from the sitting room, from the corner where she always remembered her father would sit and listen to the sports results on a Saturday after having his weekly bath. Aston Villa five...Liverpool—(upward intonation)—nil. Nil...That strange word, not “nothing”, not “zero”—nil. A word made exclusively for sports results, used nowhere else, to her knowledge. Nil...Nil...Nil...

  The fire was blazing. Her father was staring into the grate. The flames shone on his face, in profile, bent towards the polished wood cabinet from which the broadcast was emanating.

  “I’ve got a strange feeling, Geraldine.” He talked to the air, puzzled. “Geraldine? Is there something wrong with my head?” He turned to look at his daughter, and half his skull was missing, as if sliced through with a band saw, the congealed remains clotted with a jelly-like substance and crawling with maggots.

  Her penance the following day was to subject herself to some potentially X-rated American fare by the name of Mohawk Alley. She herself had an exceedingly low level of interest in the stars—Charles Bronson and George Peppard—and even less interest in the storyline, which seemed to be some hybrid of gang warfare and cowboys and Indians on the streets of present day New York. As was often the case, she had to remind herself that her own preferences were of no consequence: she was there merely to follow the guidelines of the EBFC. Her personal feelings didn’t matter...she had to put them aside, just as she had to forget her feelings about seeing her father in the sitting room the night before.

  “Run the film, please,” she called out to Dave, up in the projection booth behind her. She hadn’t told him what she’d seen. How could she? Dave didn’t answer, unless the flicker on the screen as the film began was his reply: the countdown on the leader, which went black at the three-second mark.

  Her spiral-bound reporter’s notebook sat on one raised knee, her pen a bridge between two sets of fingertips, being revolved gently in the air. She took off the cap, switched on her mini light and wrote “Mohawk Alley” at the top of a fresh, lined page.

  The screen lit up and the music boomed. She was surprised it was orchestral. She’d imagined that it would be a jazzy, more contemporary score, but this was faux classical, more suited to a period picture. And the image—with red, Old English lettering over it...A Pitchfork Production...She sighed. Then the title, which she knew by then, because she’d seen this sequence before, and it was etched on her retina. She wished it wasn’t.

  The Mortal Sins of Dracula

  Of all things, really...Of all mistakes...Of all films...

  “Dave? Hello?” She waved one hand in the air—up in the projector beam, so that he couldn’t fail to see it. “Dave!” Louder now. “Hello! You’ve put on the wrong film! I’m here to watch Mohawk Alley. Charles Bronson! George Peppard!”

  The title dissolved and she was where she knew she’d be—at the funeral in the Bavarian village church. The undertakers entering the nave as the church organ ground to a halt. The locals all turning. The organist turning too, as silence fell.

  “Dave?”

  She stood up, looked back, instantly half-blinded. She tried to make out the figure in the projection room, but it was pitch black inside, and the intensity of the projector beam made it impossible.

  Behind her, the head of the black suits walked into vast close-up, filling the wall. Under the top hat, that granite face with its permanent, lopsided scowl. The man behind his left shoulder, visage of a Zulu warrior, dressed identically to the others. Behind his right, his two sons—Peter, barely old enough to shave, and Klaus (also named in the credits as “The Stranger”). Entering the shot as it widens, pulling back, a fifth, skinny and hollow-cheeked one, and a sixth with a glass eye white as a billiard ball. Their leader gracelessly divesting the lid of the coffin of its floral tributes. The locals vocalising their displeasure in no uncertain terms.

  Her back to the screen, Geraldine shielded her eyes, but still couldn’t see anyone in the projection box. Stumbling clumsily to the end of the row of seats, she banged her knee and cried out in pain, rubbing it furiously. Hurrying to the side door, her movements were accompanied by the sound of the taking off of the coffin lid causing sharp intakes of breath, followed by the alarmed cries that erupted from the townsfolk as Weber pulled back the bloodstained lips of the dead woman to reveal long, pointed incisors. As Geraldine reached the door she heard the shuffle of feet on the soundtrack as the undertakers used their rifles to hold back the now-hostile congregation, Weber shouting with God-given authority: “The disease. We must stop it spreading. Here, and now!”

  She tried the door handle. It wouldn’t open.

  The Burgomeister’s words echoed around her. “I will not let you defile my daughter!” Peter and Klaus held him back. Their father’s words coming as the curtest of rejoinders: “Your daughter is defiled already.”

  Geraldine heard the disembodied snap of Weber breaking his silver-headed walking cane over his knee, followed by the hideous squelch as he plunged the sharper half down through the corpse’s heart, drawing out the inhuman scream that even now went through her like a rusty blade. At the music cue she knew without looking, too, that the actor playing Peter would be turning to spot a large-breasted peasant woman running from a pew near the door, out of the church.

  “Father!”

  “Dave, the door’s stuck. It’s stuck!” Surely he could hear her? But under the urgent strings of the soundtrack, now? “Oh this is ridiculous!” She gave the door handle another abortive twist, then strode off towards the back row, knowing the action happening on screen all too well. The peasant woman running towards a horse and cart with a rectangular wooden box on the back. The driver, an olive-skinned gypsy, seeing the undertakers charging out of the church in pursuit of her, lashing his horses to take flight, leaving the poor woman in their dust trail.

  Geraldine stood on a seat in the middle of the back row, and tried to look into Dave’s domain, but the spill of the projection beam still prevented her seeing anything. She rapped on the glass. “Hello? Hello!” Nothing. She stood on the armrests, giving herself a few more precious inches, but the images on the film only ran over her face like luminous, multi-coloured tattoos. The undertakers leaping onto their hearse—two up in the driver’s seat, two on the running boards, two clinging to the back.

  The whip cracked in the air and immediately Geraldine felt she was in the midst of the pursuit, as if the heart-pounding music was mirroring not the action on screen but her own fearful anxiety. It couldn’t be, of course. The thundering hooves were a million miles away—in a place that didn’t exist. The forest not even a Bavarian forest at all, but some trees in Black Park, just a camera angle away from a bland London suburb. And that “breakneck speed” that wasn’t speed at all. It was all in the editing. Nevertheless the bullet firing at the gypsy startled her. BANG! The second and third flintlock balls that also missed their target—even though she knew they were imminent—did so too. BANG! BANG! The puffs of smoke, the reloading at hurtling speed, the tossing of the black stallions’ plumes—BANG! The fourth bullet hit a sack of flour in the back of the cart. The white powder cascaded out, gusting into a white billowing blizzard, impeding the black-clad pursuers.

  Geraldine squinted hard as the flickering images of the chase played over her face. She felt almost as if they were being extracted from her memory by force. By torture. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. She felt uneasy and wobbly. She felt faint. Giddy. She stepped back down on the seat but forgot it was hinged. It flipped up and her foot shot down through the gap, hitting the floor with force. She extracted it, sitting on the back of the chair in front. Her ankle was sore. She might have sprained it. She swung herself round to drop into the seat in the next row, facing the screen.

  The Zulu undertaker levelled a shotgun as if at her, the end of its barrel exploding in fire. BANG! His shell hit the driver in the back. AARGH! The gypsy flew off into oblivion.

  Geraldine hunkered down, covering her ears.

  Driverless, the cart careered on, out of control, the speeding hearse passing the prone body of the gypsy, as she knew it would. In a shock cut—shocking still, even though she was fully expecting it—the gypsy sprang up, leaping like a cat onto the hearse, plunging a dagger into Peter’s upper arm. Bright scarlet blood squirting out. No. No. No! She recoiled. The very shot she’d—

  Klaus fired his pistol in the gypsy’s face. BANG! The gypsy fell away.

  Her eyes focused. She blinked madly. Wait.

  It wasn’t Klaus. It wasn’t the actor playing Klaus, “The Stranger” to be—it was...No! It couldn’t be!

  But it was. The gun smoke cleared. His face unmistakable...

  Marcus!

  Geraldine bleated. No! This is insane...

  The undertakers were gaining, running the horse-drawn hearse alongside the cart now. Lining it up for Hollow Cheeks to jump from the side rail to one of the horses. To grab its reins. To slow it down to a halt.

  Geraldine shut her eyes tightly. “Stop the film! Stop the film!” Her fingers dug into the armrests.

  She heard the undertakers unbolt the back flap of the gypsy’s cart, drag out the wooden box on their shoulders, carrying it like pallbearers to the hearse, which had its back door open, ready to accept it. Then, of course, Wilhelm Weber—he of the lantern jaw and stentorian voice—saw the dusk reddening the sky in the distance, barking: “There isn’t time! Put it down!” The box soon lying in the dust, the Zulu taking out a broad, curved knife, the Arabic kind, down on his knees now, madly trying to prise off the lid. “I said there isn’t time!”

  She knew the dialogue almost by heart, but hadn’t seen Marcus in the film before—hadn’t seen him in this scene, as one of the undertakers. Was this a cut they hadn’t shown her? Was this a version that hadn’t gone to the EBFC? Another edit they’d concocted to play with her head? Or was she simply “seeing things?”

  She forced herself to open her eyes and find out, and there—there he was again!—glancing fearfully at the skyline as the sun dipped further behind the trees.

  Then a cutaway as Weber pulled a long gravedigger’s spade from the clasps on the bodywork of the hearse, walking back using a hunting knife to urgently hack the shovel-end off, fashioning a spike which he held in the requisite position. At his solemn nod the other undertakers climbing onto it, using the full weight of their bodies to sink the stake a foot at a time through the coffin and into the earth below it. Down. Down! DOWN!

  And then, except for their breathing—silence...

  “It’s over. It’s over, Father.” Of course it wasn’t—it couldn’t be. It was only ten minutes into the movie. But their job was done, it seemed, their panting after their exertions almost matching Geraldine’s.

  The Zulu undertaker took off his top hat, mopped his bald pate with his sleeve. Weber, gimlet-eyed and stone-jawed, bowed his head. They all followed suit. Marcus—again, him—crossing himself as the undertakers intoned their prayer for the dead.

  “Lux æterna luceat eis, Domine:

  Cum Sanctis tuis in æternum:

  quia pius es...”

  Geraldine was mesmerised by the inevitability of it, now...If only life could be quite as inevitable and predictable and knowable. As knowable as the next cut—which was the slow tracking shot towards the gypsy’s cart, the mound of grain trailing off the stationary vehicle like sand through an hourglass...slowly, slowly, slowly revealing a foot, a leg...a body, black-clad...the figure of Dracula...who had lain hidden there, and not in the coffin at all, the whole time. Behind the undertakers’ backs, their rounded shoulders, their heads bowed in prayer...

  “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem...”

  Suddenly Hollow Cheeks, on impulse, dropping to his knees, breaking open the shards of the lid—to see that the coffin is empty. The realisation hitting them all too late. Because the Zulu is getting his throat cut from behind by Dracula’s claw-like thumbnail and falling to his knees—that spout of gore another thing Geraldine adamantly wanted removed. But this wasn’t the edit she wanted. This was everything he wanted. She could see that now. She could see this...Glass Eye instinctively running to Zulu’s aid. Dracula tossing him away with superhuman strength. Klaus firing his pistol...No. Marcus firing his pistol!...Dracula hurling him through the air, impervious, as ever, to weapons that would kill mere mortals. Marcus landing on his back in the dirt. Dracula snapping Glass Eye’s neck with one twist of the jaw.

  “Dave! Dave!”

  The onslaught of violence continued, exuding from the screen. Violating her. That’s how she saw it. Felt it. It was all aimed at her. Meant for her, and her alone.

  BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

  The two brothers emptied the drums of their pistols, bullets hitting their nemesis with no more effect than feathers. Smoke clearing to show only Weber and his two sons left now, circling the beast like lion tamers at the circus.

  Peter. Marcus. Advancing with crucifixes in their fists either side of him. Dracula feigning weakness, bending to one knee, suddenly tossing a handful of grain into Peter’s face, grabbing Weber’s wrist, forcing the old man to his knees, and breaking it like a twig—AAAAH! Marcus reviving, aghast to see Dracula shoving his brother’s face into the glass side panel of the hearse. Peter crumbling to the ground. The plumed horses, startled. The hearse wheel rolling back, over the young man’s throat.

  Marcus turning away, crying out “Father!” as he’s now beholding Dracula squeeze out Wilhelm Weber’s eyes with his thumbs. Very King Lear—very repulsive. Geraldine remembered distinctly saying in her letter why it had to go. It had to go! Why was it not GONE?

  She ran to the door and hammered on it.

  “Hello! Why can’t you hear me?” A sobbing desperation in her voice now, but her eyes still drawn back to the flickering screen and its gigantic phantasmagoria of horrors—where Marcus, in extra close up, held out his crucifix in a trembling hand. Dracula gazing back at him with mocking disdain.

  Medium shot. Marcus running at his adversary, head down. Locking in a fatal tussle, thrashing, entwined, within the swirl of black, red-lined cape. Marcus throttled by undead, bloodless hands, but forcing the vampire back at arm’s-length. Dracula unexpectedly losing his footing. Teetering. Arms windmilling. Tilting backwards, keeling over...and gone.

  Released from his grip, Marcus staggering backwards, wiping blood from his cheek, then swaying forwards again to the edge of the shallow ravine. Looking down to see Dracula lying there—unable to move, flailing in the running water that renders him impotent.

  Cut to Marcus running to his father, Weber, lying dead, with bloody eye sockets—rage filling his brain and belly, sensing the moon-shadow of a cross cast over him. Looking up. Seeing a signpost. (“Carlsbad” in one on direction; “Engelberg” the other.)

  Stained with his father’s blood, uprooting it, the pointed end slurping out of the earth, extracted, Marcus staggered to the streambed with the vast wooden cross against his shoulder. Via Dolorosa.

  Dracula below. Prone. Feral. Immobile.

  With his last ounce of strength, Marcus launching himself into the air, screaming and leaping and landing, shoving the pointed base of the signpost through the vampire’s chest, the Count’s maw opening a continent wide, his unearthly scream that could shatter monuments, lying like Ophelia in the brook, face peeling away to an apple core, and a rotting one at that, the clear water of the woodland stream running dark with his ruin.

  Marcus staggered back up the muddy incline, dropping to all fours, reaching level ground, the crossroads, where his family and colleagues, the undertakers, all lay, scattered, mutilated and dead. His shoulders inevitably sagging with grief. Raising his shaking hand before his eyes. Seeing a bloodstain on his fingers. Tracing it to his neck. Looking at his pale reflection in the broken glass panel of the hearse. Seeing two puncture marks. And then, timed to match the dawning, abject horror on his face...The pealing of distant bells...

  Geraldine stared at the flowers from Denise’s boyfriend, still half in the dream, the film, only half in real life.

  “Are you going to take them home with you?”

  Denise plucked at them, endlessly tweaking the arrangement. “I thought they brighten up the office, actually. Don’t you?”

  “Of course I do. I just thought you’d take them home, that’s all.” The colours were a bit too bright for the office, Geraldine thought. Too bright for her, anyway. And she still felt a bit giddy, to be truthful.

  “Cup of tea?”

  She nodded politely. She wasn’t a person who had endless cups of tea. She thought people used tea as an excuse not to work, half the time. But on this occasion she thought one might revive her a bit. She didn’t like to say, but she thought it could be the flowers, the pollen, the heady scent. She found it overpowering and she was prone to hay fever. She thought Denise would probably pout if she said so, or think she was being a jealous cow. So she didn’t, and let Denise boil the kettle in her cheerful way that did nobody any harm but annoyed her intensely.

  She watched her pour some hot water into the teapot, swish it around to warm it, then pour it out into the sink before spooning in tealeaves. “One for me, one for you, and one for the pot.” Denise offered Geraldine a biscuit. It was a Garibaldi, which Geraldine didn’t like, but took one and smiled.