When I lost my job, I was devastated
Being fired was over in a flash. There was an email and a week’s wages paid into my bank account and that was it.
My marriage collapsed over the months that followed and soon after my house was repossessed. That was when I moved to the twentieth floor.
Growing up in America, living on the upper floors of an apartment block was an aspiration. Here in Scotland, on the outskirts of a cold, grey city, it was very different.
For a start it was called a tower block not an apartment block.
Tower like something out of medieval times.
It wasn’t surrounded by a moat. Instead, rubble and broken glass and dog dirt littered the ground all around.
There’d been other tower blocks clustered here once – I’d seen them on an old photograph in the public library.
I loved the library when I was a kid. I’d take out as many books as I could. Horror books especially. Zombies and Werewolves. And Vampires. They were my favourite.
That had been thirty years ago. Now, I was going to the library to keep warm.
Without a car, I had to rely on buses that rarely turned up to get there. I had no internet and a cheap mobile that I couldn’t use because I hadn’t paid the bill.
I thought things could not get any worse, but then life dealt me a new card.
I received a letter telling me that my claim for Unemployment Benefit was being suspended. I tore the letter up then pulled my coat on and trudged two miles through the rain to the nearest shops to spend the last of my money on a bottle of whisky.
I was desperate and angry and I needed to get drunk. And after that?
I couldn’t think that far ahead.
The walk to the shops took me ages and it was dark by the time I got back.
The shared lobby off the entrance to the tower block was decorated with graffiti. Tags were punctuated with obscene offers alongside mobile numbers. Someone had vomited on the floor while I’d been out.
I stepped around it and pressed the button for the elevator.
The elevator stank and was painfully slow, but it was better than the stairs.
After an infuriating wait, the elevator doors opened, and I stepped into its urine-soaked embrace. I pressed 20. The doors closed. Then the elevator rattled and began to move.
Downwards.
Hellfire. It was taking me to the basement. I’d never been to the basement. Why would I?
There was nothing down there that I knew of. It was just dead space.
My shoulders slumped and I eyed the unopened whisky bottle in its white plastic bag. I’d spent the walk back from the shops wanting to open it and take a slug, but something had stopped me.
A sliver of pride. A sliver of hope, maybe.
The elevator thudded to a halt. It rattled once more for good measure as the doors opened.
Darkness stretched out before me, interrupted only by the white gash of a narrow strip light along the ceiling.
There was a large refuse bin. A pushbike lying on its side. Remarkably for round here, it still had its wheels.
I wondered if it belonged to whoever had pressed the button to call the elevator down here.
There was no sign of anyone, and I wasn’t going to wait.
After all, it was probably teenagers, or a junkie. Likely they’d stolen the bike for the trip to their dealers and couldn’t wait for the lift to get there. They’d be somewhere in the basement shooting up.
20 was still lit up but I pressed it again anyway.
Good riddance to them. I would be back in my apartment soon.
I’d double lock the door and turn the TV on. Crank the volume up as high as I could to try and drown out the neighbours – the pounding music and the screaming that never seemed to end.
I was surrounded by noise.
But I lived in silence.
I could not remember the last time I had spoken, other than the odd mumbled word as I handed over money in the shops or on the bus. The last conversation I had had was with my wife and that had been an argument.
If I saw any of the neighbours in the corridor I’d stare at my feet until they had passed. I didn’t know anyone’s name and did not want to.
I reached in the plastic bag and began to unscrew the lid of the whisky bottle.
The elevator shuddered to a halt.
I was only up to 2.
Dammit. I pressed 20 again and again, slamming my palm against the button.
Nothing.
It looked like I had no choice. I pressed the door open button and stepped out. The door to my left would take me to the second-floor apartments.
On my right, the stairwell waited. I had eighteen flights to climb.
I leant against the wall, finished unscrewing the lid and with the bottle still in the plastic bag lifted it to my lips.
The whisky tasted disgusting, as I knew it would. It was cheap, foul stuff, but it did the trick. I decided a drinking game would help. I would take a slug of whisky every time I reached a new floor.
Yes. That would make it bearable.
Smiling for the first time that day, I took another drink then set off on my ascent.
The stairs were narrow and steep. Lights fixed in the ceiling buzzed and flickered. I felt a headache start behind my eyes and paused halfway in-between floors to have a drink.
I was putting the lid back on the bottle when I heard a noise below me. Something lower down the stairwell.
I remembered the junkie – had they given up on the elevator as well and were heading up the stairs now they’d had their fix?
Or was it teenagers after all? Gang members. They all carried knives. I’d seen a programme about that on TV.
Either way, I did not want them catching up with me – and the noise was getting louder.
I swore to myself and hurried up the rest of the stairs to the next floor. I tried not to make any sound but I could not stop myself gasping because of the exertion as I barged through the door which led onto the third-floor corridor.
I’d never seen any police at the block and had wondered in the past if it was one of the no-go zones I’d read about in the free newspaper that I sometimes found on the bus.
If it was a no-go zone for the police, it probably was for the paramedics as well.
I stood in the corridor trying not to think about getting stabbed with a knife or jagged with a needle.
If I was, no one would come and help me.
The whisky I had drunk was burning painfully in my stomach but I took another gulp anyway. It was going to be OK, I told myself as I swallowed.
Whoever it was would be gone soon. Back in their own squalid apartment, chasing the dragon or playing shoot-em-up games, or whatever it was people like that did.
The buzz of the whisky was flooding my body and I kept drinking, stopping to gulp and breathe and then lift the bottle once more to my lips.
It was going to be OK. I’d be back in my place soon and I could finish the whisky in peace.
I lowered the bottle. Staggered a little, then heard the door to the stairwell open.
I froze.
There was someone behind me. Moving towards me.
Only it wasn’t footsteps I could hear. It was a scraping, scratching sound. Like something sharp was being dragged along the ground.
I turned slowly, reluctantly – and saw a nightmare. A creature conjured from the darkness.
It was tall and slender and naked. Its skin was taut and pale. It had the beginnings of hands and feet, but these tapered out into single curved claws that looked sharper than any blade I had ever seen. It eyes were red, vivid and penetrating as they fixed me in their gaze. Its nose was flattened bat-like against its face.
As I stood staring, this monstrous apparition shuffled forwards and I realised the scraping was the sound of its claws catching the floor beneath it.
Sweat ran from my face. All the strength had drained from my limbs but I knew I had to run. The creature was seconds away from me. Its mouth opened and I could see trails of spittle glistening between long, twisted fangs.
I stumbled, backwards, away and then I ran. I hammered on doors as I careered down the corridor.
“Help me!” I cried. “Someone, help me!”
No one answered. No one ever did in this block, because no one cared.
And I had reached the end of the corridor. There was nowhere else to go. There was just the final door. I slapped it, kicked it. I pleaded.
The creature was close enough to touch. Its breath was hot against my skin, and fetid. It stank of decay.
Of death.
The door clicked and opened. A crack of light appeared and the line of a door chain draped in place. Whoever was inside swore – a torrent of abuse as they told me to go to Hell.
I’m already there, I thought, and a manic laugh bubbled inside me as the creature turned its grotesque glare on the gap in the door. Then, with a single sweep of a claw, it sliced through the chain, then pushed open the door.
A man stood there. He was skinny, wearing a stained vest and shiny tracksuit bottoms. As he gawped open mouthed at the creature, a dark patch spread out over his crotch.
And then, I swear the creature smiled as it looped a claw around the back of the man’s neck and pulled him forwards, towards it, towards its mouth.
Its jaws made a cracking sound and opened impossibly wide, and then it bit. Its fangs pierced the man’s scalp and the underside of his chin.
Blood spurted, showering the walls and the ceiling.
And me. I felt the hot, thick liquid strike my skin.
It brought me out of my daze.
The creature’s attention was fixed on its kill. That was clear.
This was my chance. My only chance to get away.
I darted past it and sprinted back down the corridor and through the door to the stairwell. I hesitated, torn between the sanctuary of my flat and getting out of the building.
Out, I decided. Three flights versus seventeen.
I raced down the stairs, almost falling, but made it and exploded out into the lobby.
Where another creature waited.
Its appearance was the same as the thing I had just encountered but I could see that it had long flaps of skin folded over on its back.
It was hunched over a body. A woman. Her arms and legs were twitching as the pool of blood around her grew.
The creature’s mouth was over her throat and it was oblivious to me.
I staggered past and outside into the night.
Derelict ground stretched out before me. I needed to keep going. To get away. But I could barely breathe after running down the stairs.
I bent over, put my hands on my knees and glanced back up at the block.
A pale shape circled the building. Slender wings rising from its back showed in the lights from the windows.
It was looking for a way in, I knew. A new victim.
All it had to do was look down though, and it would see me.
There was no way I could make it across the open ground before this happened.
I moved back towards the block, pressed my back against the wall and tried to make myself as small as possible.
I stood there shivering, waiting to be discovered.
Time felt as if it had stopped and I thought that the night would never end – but when light finally began to creep into the sky, I knew I was safe, for a few hours at least. Because I believed I understood now what they were, the creatures.
They were Vampires.
But not the blood drinking, brooding immortals of literature that I had once loved.
They were vicious, unthinking monsters driven to slaughter by their hunger, and the tower block was their hunting ground. The people who lived in the block, their prey.
I decided there and then, that was not going to be my fate.
Darkness was the Vampire’s time. They would be hiding now from the light. I would take this opportunity to escape.
I started walking.
I had nowhere to go, apart from away. I had no money, no friends, no family.
There were soup kitchens in the city centre, shop doorways to sleep in. Ways to score drugs to get me through the night if I couldn’t find booze.
I hesitated.
All I had done for a long time was spiral. I’d given up and then given up some more. And it was never going to end. Unless…
I turned around and headed back to the block.
A dark smear stained the floor of the lobby. It could have been anything, if you did not know it was blood. The woman’s body was gone. Likely taken to the creatures’ lair.
I made my way up the stairs and along the third-floor corridor. At the far end, another stain lay across the floor. The door was closed. There was nothing else. No sign.
But I knew.
I returned to the stairs, walked up to the twentieth floor and let myself into my apartment. I still had my bottle of whisky in its plastic bag.
I went to the kitchen, poured a measure of whisky into the nearest thing I had to a clean glass, then broke a chair against the wall.
I took the pieces into the front room along with the whisky and a kitchen knife and then I began to carve.
I could keep running.
I could spend the rest of my life running.
Or, I could stay and fight.
I held up the wooden stake I had carved from the broken leg of the chair and smiled.
It was time to make my stand.