Sometimes cutting the head off is not enough.
I know that now.
Back then, I had no idea.
My marriage had collapsed, and my career was imploding, and I couldn’t sleep.
I’d get thirty minutes here, thirty minutes there, then bang I was awake and staring into the darkness.
Or I would lie there all night without a wink of sleep, and it would start to go light, and the next thing I knew my alarm was going off and my heart was racing. I’d fallen asleep a few minutes before I needed to wake up.
It was cruel.
And it was beyond exhausting. The world felt blurred, and I was slow and clumsy. This made work worse. My decision making was way off, and, though I was upset, I wasn’t that surprised when I was called into my manager’s office and told I was being suspended.
It was all done above board. There was someone from HR there and a union rep, and, apparently, I’d been sent the meeting request more than once and asked to submit a written statement, but I was in such a daze I had not picked up on any of this.
My manager seemed kind of sad when he was giving me the bad news, and afterwards he offered to walk me out to my car. When we were on our own, he told me I should try and look after myself. That, I should do something healthy. Then he wished me good luck and shook my hand.
Which made the whole thing feel like a goodbye rather than a blip which could be got over.
As I drove away from the office, I did not think I would ever be going back.
Sitting in my apartment in the middle of the day on a weekday felt weird but also kind of nice.
It was like a cloud had been lifted and I must admit I cried a couple of times.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that.
I knew I needed to tighten my belt financially, but I decided to treat myself, so ordered in a pizza. Extra-large with all the toppings.
Then I settled down with my new best friend, daytime TV.
About eleven pm I started to feel sleepy and thought I would be able to sleep. Just a few uninterrupted hours would be amazing, I thought, as I dragged myself off the sofa and went to clean my teeth.
I put on fresh bedding, aired out the room, and lay down, closed my eyes.
Bang!
It wasn’t even midnight, and I was wide awake – and shattered.
I tried to get comfortable, but it was no use.
My insomnia was no better.
I gave up and went into the living room and put the tv back on. Someone was selling jewellery at low low prices.
The next day I didn’t get dressed. I just sat there. I had cold pizza for breakfast and, if I had had any alcohol in the apartment, I think I would have drunk it.
This was bad, and I knew it, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything about it but slouch on the sofa watching tv – until it fell dark, and the prospect of another sleepless night began to press down on me.
I couldn’t face it. I really couldn’t.
I started to feel panicky. I found it hard to swallow and then to breathe. I thought I was going to suffocate and die, and I couldn’t even phone for help because I wouldn’t be able to speak.
Then a gardening programme started on tv – and I know how stupid this might sound, but I was fine.
A man was walking along a path surrounded by plants. They overhung and they bloomed and they shone.
It all seemed so lovely and peaceful. And my breathing, and the rest, was back to normal.
It was as simple as that.
I spent the rest of the night watching the box set of the whole series, and in the morning I decided I needed a garden in my life.
I walked over to the window and looked down at the busy road running past the front of my apartment block, and at the windowsill, which could have maybe fitted two very small plant pots.
This was my first challenge.
I needed a plot of land where I could do my gardening.
I went online and started searching for ‘gardens for hire’.
One of the results was ‘allotments’. I’d heard the word before but knew next to nothing other than that they were a small area of land for growing plants on. It’s all very British.
Over the next few hours, I drilled into the details. It was a whole new world, and at first sounded ideal – but it turned out it wasn’t a world for me.
Allotments needed to be leased from private or public authority landlords, and it looked like all the allotments across the city were taken. And there were hundreds of people on the waiting lists to take over allotments when they became available.
I closed the lid of my laptop harder than was good for it and decided I needed some fresh air.
I pulled on my coat and headed out.
The early winter day was clear and cold. A breeze was whipping leaves into the air. Traffic rushed past me, and other people out on foot did the same. It seemed everyone but me had somewhere they needed to be.
I sighed and set off walking.
I had no destination in mind.
I passed a coffee shop I had not been to in ages, an independent cinema I used to go to with my wife in better days, and the empty shell of a bookshop. I loved browsing there before it closed down.
I passed a place that sold second hand cars, a bar with steel shutters pulled down over the windows. A couple of men stood in its doorway smoking.
A stereo in a car parked on a street corner pounded out a bass beat. Close by, a burnt-out car had been abandoned in the middle of the road.
I’d drifted into an area I’d never been too before – one that had clearly seen better days – and I figured I should probably head back to familiar territory.
Maybe call into that coffee shop.
I was about to turn around when I saw the plot of land.
It was in-between a derelict building and a pile of rubble. It was about twelve feet long and eight feet wide and it was covered in weeds.
Without thinking what I was doing I walked over to it.
The weeds were all tangled together, a riot of straggly stalks. I had no idea what they were. The gardening show on tv had been big on showing captions with Latin names on. But these were a mystery to me, and I was wondering why I had been drawn to this patch of waste ground in the wrong side of town, when I saw the strip of dark red almost hidden amongst the weeds.
I knelt down.
It was a flower. It was long and slim. Kind of tube-shaped with the top of the petals gathered to form a small opening.
I had never seen anything like it before. It was beautiful.
The stalk below the flower was striking for different reasons. It was curved, light green, and was covered in small thorns. They looked very sharp.
I got to my feet. Looked at the plot of land. And smiled.
I had found my garden.
After making sure my phone could show me the way back, I set off for home. The coffee shop would have to wait.
I was bursting with ideas and questions, and I needed my trusty laptop and the net.
One practicality which had occurred to me was, what if someone owned the plot of land?
Sure, it didn’t look like it, but perhaps a developer did, and they were planning on building on and around it. Gentrification was still all the rage.
Back at home, I started to search.
I remembered that the nearest street sign to the plot I had seen was for Ashburn Road and so I began with that as my search term. The results immediately threw up something unexpected.
Something gruesome.
The news website raced through the details:
A man’s body was found on waste ground near Ashburn Road this morning by a passer-by, who alerted emergency services. Responding paramedics pronounced the man dead. Unconfirmed reports say that the man’s skin was pierced in a number of places and he had significant blood loss. A police spokesperson said there were as yet no suspects in this case.
I stopped reading there. This was way too dark for me.
I went back to my search and did not find any reason I should not use the land as a garden. No one seemed to own it and, from the date on the news story, the killing had taken place a couple of months before, so it wasn’t like it was still a crime scene.
That was it then.
I was a man on a mission.
The next morning, I went to a hardware store and bought secateurs and a trowel for cutting and digging and clearing away. I also bought lots of little packets of seeds. I did not know what would grow there, but I figured if I scattered and planted enough seeds in the ground, something would flourish.
With a spring in my step that had not been there before, I set off for the plot of land.
When I got there, I laid my new purchases out in a line by edge of the plot. Then I spotted that there was a second flowering plant close to the first, and decided to begin by clearing space around them.
Carefully snipping away the weeds with the secateurs, I whistled tunelessly to myself. There was a strong breeze, which felt fresh against my skin.
It all felt good.
It was therapeutic.
After an hour or so both the flowering plants were free of their plain neighbours, and the flowers and the stalks swayed in the wind.
I was transfixed.
I reached out to touch the petals of one of them – and winced. A swaying thorn had caught my skin, right on the end of the middle finger of my right hand.
Blood seeped out.
I rummaged around in my pockets and found a tissue – which didn’t look very clean, but I wrapped it around my finger anyway.
It was stinging quite badly by now.
“Dangerous business this gardening,” I said to myself, and laughed.
It had been a while since I had laughed like that – and a while since I had done any physical labour. As I straightened up, I felt a twinge of pain in my back.
With the tissue in my right hand, I put my left hand against my back, and pulled a face.
That was how I was standing when the old man appeared.
He came striding out of nowhere.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he shouted. He had a few wisps of hair on his head, and plenty in his nose and ears, and his cheeks were a patchwork of broken veins.
Even though he had come to a halt a good few feet away, I could smell alcohol on his breath.
He scowled and yelled, “You need to leave, and leave now!”
Just great, I thought.
“Get out of here!” he screamed.
Being shouted at was spoiling what had been a good day up till then, so, being careful not to step on any of the flowers, I gathered up my things and walked away.
I glanced back once, and the old man was gone.
“Good riddance,” I said under my breath.
Back at home I made a warming bowl of soup and settled back down in front of my laptop.
The browser was still open on the same page of the news site, and I noticed a link to a related story:
Disgraced academic claims Ashburn Road killer was something very strange
Talk about click bait!
I clicked and started to read.
A former history professor at the city’s university has been contacting the police and local news media claiming that the man found dead suffered a very unusual fate. The professor, who was fired from his teaching position for unprofessional behaviour, is insisting that he fought and killed a vampire on the plot of ground near Ashburn Road and that its ashes, which he buried on the spot, have led to the victim’s death.
I stopped reading, my attention having been drawn to a photograph of the professor accompanying the lurid text.
He had a bit more hair on his head and less sprouting out of his nose and ears and his cheeks were not such a mess, but it was clearly the old man who’d shouted at me earlier.
It’s a shame, I thought. This individual clearly had serious issues.
Well, I had my own problems to deal with, and with any luck I wouldn’t see him again.
I checked the time. It was only three o’clock and I decided to go back to the plot. I could hopefully get in another hour of gardening before it went fully dark.
Maybe scatter my first lot of seeds.
My good mood fully back in place I walked back to the plot. The winter sky was already showing swathes of red by the time I arrived, and I got busy emptying a packet of seeds onto the ground as dusk started to fall.
I was still doing this when I saw him again.
My heart sank.
He was walking towards me, and again ground to a halt well clear of the plot of land, but close enough for me to smell that he reeked of booze.
I counted to ten and said in what I hoped was a reasonable tone of voice, “Will you please just leave me alone. I’ve read about you and what you claim happened and frankly…”
He didn’t let me finish. His voice was raised and his words rushed out, almost tumbling over each other when he spoke:
“I know what I’m talking about. I just find everything so difficult since I fought the vampire. I had a breakdown afterwards and I’ve been drinking, but I thought I could recover, because the danger was gone. But then I realised it wasn’t. The danger is still here, but it has changed. It’s the plants now. The flowering ones. They fed on the soil where you’re standing, where I buried the ashes of the vampire, and they were corrupted by the evil still held in his remains. The plants have developed a taste for blood.”
As he spoke his eyes shone with what looked to me like insanity.
Horrified, I glanced away… and remembered the man who had died here. Unbidden, it came back to me. How he was found on the ground. His skin pierced. With significant blood loss, the story had said.
And I thought, No, it can’t be true what the old man was saying. There had to be a reasoned explanation.
But what was it?
I needed to think.
I took a step backwards – then pain shot through my leg.
I looked down.
I’d snagged a trouser leg on one of the plants. Some of its thorns had cut through the fabric and dug into my flesh.
Its slender flower pointed upwards – Almost as if it was looking at me, I thought, and a wave of panic rushed through my body.
The old man had not moved and this time when he spoke his voice was quieter but still urgent.
“You need to deadhead it,” he said. “Remove the flower and the body should wither. You need to do it now.”
I was starting to feel nauseous, and the pain from the thorns was agonising. It felt like they were digging in deeper.
A part of me knew that I was panicking. That panic was spirally into fear. And that my imagination must be overturning reason.
But there was nothing I could do about it.
Fear had reduced me to this.
“Please help me,” I said, hating how pathetic I sounded.
The old man was shaking his head. “It’s dangerous,” he said. “So dangerous to go close. That’s why I don’t you see. Why I don’t cut the heads off.”
“Please,” I begged.
He sighed deeply and finally moved towards me. He took a pocket knife out and slid it open. His hands were shaking badly, and I was worried he might accidently cut me, but, with a sudden slice, he cut the flower off.
Then he hurried back to where he had been standing before. A dark patch was appearing on the front of his trousers.
I don’t know why but the thorns did not feel to be pressing in as badly now. Something had eased, and I managed to extricate myself.
The old man was leaving by now, he was running, stumbling as he went, and shaking his head.
I stood there shivering for a long time then went to get my secateurs. There was the one other plant in flower – but it wouldn’t be for long.
Crazy or not, I would follow the old man’s advice.
I deadheaded the plant.
And that’s where I’m at. I’m standing in the plot of land. Gripping the secateurs tight.
The wind has died down completely, the air is still, and dusk is a memory.
I’m not like the old man, I’m telling myself. I’m not going to run away.
I’m going to be calm. Think rationally.
I mean, a vampire and plants with a thirst for blood. That’s all nonsense – isn’t it?
Only… the plant I just deadheaded is still swaying and its thorns look like fangs in the dark, lonely night.