A Coven of Vampires Read Free Page B

of them, but mainly singles. Most of them were pensioners like myself, out chasing memories of their own, I supposed. And we all stood there waiting for the doors to open.
    I had to look somewhere, and so I looked ahead of me, at these two kids. Well, I didn’t actually look at them—I mean you don’t, do you? I looked around them, over them, through them, the way you do. But something of them stuck to my mind—not very much, I’m afraid.
    The lad would be eighteen, maybe nineteen, and the girl a couple of years younger. I didn’t fix her face clearly, mind you, but she was what they call a looker: all pink and glowing, and a bit giggly, with a mass of shiny black hair under the hood of her bright red plastic rain-mac. White teeth and a stub of a nose, and eyes that sparkled when she smiled. A right Little Red Riding-Hood! And all of it in little more than sixty-two or -three inches; but then again they say nice things come in small packages. Damned if I could see what she saw in him !But she clung to him so close it was like he’d hypnotized her. And you know, I had to have a little smile to myself? Jealousy, at my age!
    About the lad: he was pale, gangly—or “gawky” as we’d say in my neck of the woods—hollow-cheeked; he looked like someone had been neglecting him. A good feed would fix him up no end. But it probably wouldn’t fix the fishy, unblinking stare that came through those thick-lensed spectacles of his. He wore a black mac a bit small for him, which made his wrists stick out like pipe-stems. A matched couple? Hardly, but they do say that opposites attract….
    Anyway, before I could look at them more closely, if I’d wanted to, we went in.
    The Odeon’s a dowdy place. It always has been. Twenty years ago it was dowdy, since when it’s well past the point of no return. The glitter’s gone, I’m afraid, and no putting it back. But I’ll say one thing for it: they’ve never called bingo there. When telly came in and the cinemas slumped, the old Odeon continued to show films; somehow it came through it, but not without its share of scars.
    These days…well, you could plaster and paint all you liked, and you still wouldn’t cover up all the wrinkles. It would be like an old woman putting on her war-paint: she’d still come out mutton dressed as lamb. But that’s the old Odeon: even with the lights up full, the place seems so dim as to be almost misty. Misty, yes, with that clinging miasma of old places. Not haunted, no, but old and creaking and about ready to be pulled down. Or maybe my eyes weren’t so good after all, or perhaps there’s a layer of dust on the light-bulbs in the high ceiling….
    I went upstairs (taking it easy, you know, and leaning on my stick a bit) and headed for my usual seat near the back. And sure enough the young ’uns were right there ahead of me, not in my row but the one behind, at the very back—all very quiet and coy, they were—where they’d chosen one of the double seats. But I hadn’t noticed them buying sweets or popcorn at the kiosk in the shabby foyer, so maybe they’d stay that way right through the show: nice and quiet.
    Other patrons came upstairs, all heading for the front where there was a little more leg-room and they could lean on the mahogany balcony and look down on the screen. When the lights started to go down in that slow way of theirs, there couldn’t have been more than two dozen people in all up there, and most of them in the front two rows. Me and the kids, we had the back entirely to ourselves. It was a poor showing even for a Wednesday; maybe there’d be more people in the cheap seats down stairs.
    In the old days this was the part I’d liked the best: the lights dimming, organ music (but only recorded, even in my time), and the curtains on stage slowly swishing open to reveal a dull, pearly, vacant screen. Then there’d be The Queen and the curtains would close again while the lights died completely. Followed by a supporting