His Vampyrrhic Bride Read Free Page B

next to the beach.’ He didn’t mention the worrying conundrum of how they’d claw together seventeen thousand dollars by the end of the week.
    ‘Your own diving school? It’ll be a dream come true, won’t it?’
    ‘Believe it or not, we started planning this three years ago. It’s taken eighteen months to save up enough money to get the ball rolling.’
And we’re still seventeen thou short.
    ‘You’ll be taking her?’
    ‘Taking who?’
    ‘The new girlfriend. The one you were tangling with last night.’
    Tom decided he would keep that particular girl a secret. Especially as she was a product of hallucination. So he just shrugged, winked, and said, ‘Who knows?’
    ‘OK.’ Chester laughed. ‘I’ll keep my schnozz out of your biz. Right. I’ll show you how to use the chainsaw.’
    ‘I’m sure I can figure it out.’
    ‘No. I’ll give you a safety lesson. If you cut your legs off with that thing don’t come running to me, complaining that I didn’t teach you how to use it.’
    ‘If I cut my legs off, I won’t be running anywhere.’
    ‘Just my little joke, Tom, to put you at ease.’
    A low roar came from the direction of the forest.
    Chester nodded towards the trees. ‘Don’t worry about the sound. It’s only the local dragon clearing his throat.’
    ‘The local what?’
    ‘The dragon. Haven’t you heard of it? A dragon’s supposed to roam those woods.’
    ‘Sounded like a bus to me.’
    ‘When we were kids we were told a dragon lurked up here in the valley. A big, ugly monster that loves to suck out your blood.’
    The sound of the bus grew closer.
    ‘I haven’t seen any dragons.’ Tom played along with the joke.
    ‘Neither did us kids. I reckon they made up the dragon story to keep us away from the river.’ He picked up the chainsaw. ‘See the D-ring? That’s how you start the motor.’
    Tom wasn’t listening. He couldn’t take his eyes from the bus passing by.
    ‘Did you hear me, Tom? This starts the motor.’
    Tom didn’t hear. He wasn’t thinking about the chainsaw. Or about the appetites of the neighbourhood dragon. He was watching the bus. Or, rather, a specific individual on the bus.
    Because sitting in the middle of the vehicle was a woman dressed in a white blouse. The woman from the hallucination. The same woman he thought he’d chased through the forest last night.
    She turned her head. He thought he saw her nod in his direction. Then the bus accelerated away into the distance.

FOUR
    C heery Chester drove away from Mull-Rigg Hall. He waved a happy goodbye from the van window and left Tom Westonby alone with the rented lawnmower, the chainsaw, and his thoughts.
    Tom ate baked beans on toast for lunch. Nothing like beans, the boldly symphonic fruit, to inflate a wetsuit, or so the scuba fraternity insisted. The sense of humour shared by professional divers tended to be pretty unsophisticated at the best of times.
    After he’d eaten his meal Tom prowled the grounds of Mull-Rigg Hall. He’d lived here alone for the past two months, ever since he’d agreed to get the place ready for his mother and father, and what amounted to a new brother. His late aunt’s son, Owen, was likeable. Tom was sure he’d get on well with the ten-year-old once he got to know him better. In truth, though, they’d spent very little time together. Before Tom had accepted the role of janitor here, along with the post of general fixer-upper, he’d taken a whole string of jobs in different parts of the country in order to raise money for the new dive school.
    Today, Tom found himself preoccupied with how he’d find the seventeen thousand dollars for the premises in Greece. It didn’t help matters that he’d seemed to have a weird out-of-body experience last night after accidentally inhaling those fumes in the basement. By this morning he’d convinced himself he’d been in the grip of a bizarre hallucination: that he’d been chasing nothing more than a phantom of his own imagination