Mysterious Times

Ellie sat opposite him as he bled. 

She watched without any real interest. 

The blood was falling from the wound surrounding the knife’s handle, which was now hard up against the green, knitted sweater that covered his chest. The knife blade was five inches long. She knew that because it was quite new. A utility kitchen knife with a wooden handle, pointed at the end, three quarters of an inch wide and very sharp. It had come from the ironmongers at the end of Brassington street, and she had hmmmmed and ahhhhed over it for seventeen minutes. It cost £43.99 because; “…It’s Japanese steel luv, proper sharp it is. Do a good job for you in the kitchen, and probably anywhere else too as it ‘appens. Quite cheap really.”

The shop guy was called Eric. She knew this from the nametag he wore on his short-sleeved, white shirt. It was a bit askew she noted, but didn’t mention it today. He was too long-haired but he was clean enough and his shoes shined nicely. He wore a tie, which made her chuckle, no-one wore ties nowadays. No-one. 

“I’ll take it.” she had said and smiled her winningest smile at him, all teeth and eyes and cheeks. He had hesitated, briefly, then smiled and run to the till. “Great!”

After the transaction, she had waited, just for a second, then turned and walked straight out of the door. He had caught her a yard onto the pavement, he must have run. “Hey luv, you forgot your knife…!” as he simultaneously grabbed her shoulder and handed her the knife, wrapped in brown waxed paper. 

“Oh My. My hero. Silly me.” she had heard herself say whilst taking the package and swiftly turning to go. 

“Thanks ever so much.” 

When she turned the corner and coquettishly threw a look backwards and saw him still standing there, just outside his shop door, gazing after her.

Anyway, never mind about all that. Here she was, sitting in her kitchen, with a man slumped back in the chair opposite her, a glazed look in his eyes, and the beautiful new knife up to its hilt in his chest. The blood was dribbling down to the belt on his jeans, and his left arm was waving somewhat weakly in the still air to his side. he was breathing still and his breath showed up against the dark-green painted wall behind him. That was interesting. She had not realised how cold it had become.

Ellie was just a tad worried if truth be known. The afternoon had gone as it was supposed to, as she had planned. Do the shopping, have a word with the lady in the Library-van about whether that new book on Bird’s Nests had arrived yet, (It hadn’t – very annoying,) and then an hour sat drinking lattes in the coffee shop by Mr Jones’ butchers, chatting with two ladies visiting town on holiday. They were from somewhere near London and it was their first visit to the North East Coast. They had been to Whitby obviously, and were en route to Saltburn-by-the-Sea where one of them had relatives. and here they were, in her little village. 

Her village. 

She hated talking to people. They were boring. She could do it, chatting, she could do it quite well, under the circumstances, but she hated it. people were just so boring. 

It was when she arrived back home that things started to go a bit awry. A bit off piste. A bit unplanned. 

She had found the door ajar. It had definitely been locked. There was a smell of… she couldn’t quite tell what it was, but knew it was disgusting. On entering the kitchen, she was met by this… man. Sat in the same chair he now occupied, eating chips from her prettiest crockery, the set with robins and deer painted on it, and drinking from a broken cup of the same set. She had stopped in the doorway from the hall, taken in the view, let out a small cry, which alerted the man to her presence and shouted: 

“What have you done to my cup?”

Powerful stuff!

The man immediately jumped up and went into defence mode, feet apart, balanced, rocking, ready to fight.

“Oh sit back down you silly sausage, I just want to know, if you please, why my beautiful cup is broken?” 

She beckoned to the chair, “Sit back down, eat, drink – but do please tell me why the cup is chipped. Did you drop it?”

She waited, silent and looking him straight in the eye. 

He sat, surprisingly, and had both a slurp and a bite. She saw he was eating something white, fluffy, probably bread. His drink was water, she had seen when he jumped up and it had splashed over the table. Urgh.

“I’m going to eat this and drink some more, then I need to sleep a while before I get on my way. You don’t need to mind me lady, just ignore me and you’ll be ok. I promise. Just need a bite and a drink and a nap. OK? I won’t hurt you if you leave me be…” His eyes were tired and red, and he grimaced as he lifted his left arm to drink. the clothes he wore were wet, presumably from the rain earlier in the day. That was the smell. Wet, sweaty clothes. He stared at Ellie and went back to chewing, interrupted only by the regular slurping of water from the chipped cup. 

Ellie decided to play it all by ear from here on in. She took her shopping bag to the kitchen top nearest the fridge and placed it gingerly down. She removed a bunch of orange freesia and a bunch of yellow primroses, inspected and unwrapped them before cutting the ends of their stems and arranging them in an empty crystal vase. The vase was cut in a pattern resembling waves falling on a shore and had been given her by a suitor years ago. Many years ago.

She threw the rubbish into the bin and went to wash her hands, drying them fully on a gingham tea towel that was multi-coloured squares. It was rough from being dried outside at the back on the line. She liked that. 

“I’ll tell you what Mr…? here is a slightly different scenario for you to muse over. I’ll get on with my chores, and you explain to be exactly why you are here in my kitchen, what you have done, and where you are going to go – if you leave here… Ok?”  she said the ‘ok’ with the same exaggerated questioning that he had used on her. He caught it too. There was a mocking in her voice which he interpreted as meaning he wasn’t quite as in charge as he had assumed he would be. Civvies usually just capitulated when threatened with implied violence. In fact, nearly always. He smiled a harsh smile at her, let’s play it your way and see where it goes, he thought. “Ok lady. Deal. Name’s Jimmy. Done a bit of a job yesterday but it went wrong, I got a bit hurt, and I need to hide out for a few days. I need food, but you aint got anything to eat. And nothing but water to drink neither…. You on a diet or something? Bloody vegan are you?”

He laughed at his joke. But saw that the slur had not worried her at all. She had smirked at him. Smirked! What the hell.

“I can buy you food, and drink if that’s what you want. I, don’t need to eat much. You can stay overnight if you need to. It’s not a problem to me, I don’t sleep much ‘either’.” emphasising the last word in a subtle correction of his earlier grammar.  She could see he was intrigued. Could smell that he wasn’t scared any more than he was earlier, and saw that his stance had eased somewhat. For herself, she was not scared at all. She was strong, fit, intelligent and trained. She knew she could defend herself if need be. But she guessed she wouldn’t need to. 

“Let me get my notepad – you can write down a list. include anything Jimmy. My treat. This has made the week much more interesting!” and with that she left the kitchen, rumbled about in the lounge and returned with a pad and a pen before he could answer. He stared at her, took the pad and started to write, stopping every few minutes to look up and, she assumed, to think. When he had finished he pushed the pad to where she now sat, opposite him, and she read the list. She laughed. Then looked at him and said, “It’s only a small village, but the corner store should have everything you need. I’ll go now while it’s still light. I’ll be thirty minutes. Don’t stress, you’re safe here for now.” she picked up her bag, grabbed some shopping bags and left, again giving him no chance to answer.

He just sat and stared at her back as she left.

The shop had been packed. The two young girls working tills struggled when it was empty to be fair, but today, they were really showing signs of stress. Ellie counted the customers, she counted everything, and thought to herself that seventeen people bustling round the shop would definitely hold her up a bit. It may take forty minutes instead. “Oh no – he’ll think I’ve run for the police!” she giggled to herself. Of the eleven items on Jimmy’s list she only had to improvise three, and thought she had done well. It was a fun experience for her, it was ages since she had food shopped. After paying the dozy older till girl, Ellie walked promptly towards her house. She was rather excited by the current situation. It was a clear change from her usual dull existence. The house looked the same as she pushed open the front door, she hadn’t locked it, no point. She shouted out “I’m back Jimmy.” No answer. Probably asleep slumped on the table. She walked into the kitchen, and yes, he was slumped, but backwards. She put the bags on the unit top and gave him a good look at. Eyes closed, arm waving slightly, and a red stain growing on his green sweater. “What the hell…?”  

And that brings us back to now.

Ellie knew there was a chance that someone else was in the house. Someone had stabbed Jimmy, if that was actually his name. And they had done it within the forty-two minutes that she had spent going to the shop. Wow. She was thinking that she had been really lucky to be out. But so had the assailant. The murderer. The killer. Where was he or she now? had they walked passed her? Had they hidden and watched her walk in to her house? Would they return? 

She watched as Jimmy opened his eyes again, there were tears, he was dying – and he knew it. He was probably wondering why she was just watching him die. Fair enough too. Should she explain? “Hey Jimmy, can you hear me?” He nodded slowly. “Do you know who did this to you? And why did they use my new knife? Oh, I suppose they just grabbed it from the drawer did they? Crept up behind you – were you asleep Jimmy? Is that how they got so close to you?” 

She moved forward and gave him a questioning stare. He nodded. “I’ll take that as yes to all!”  He nodded again, slowly, and then tried to speak, but blood bubbled over his lips and he only managed a long gurgle. “Its ok Jimmy, don’t stress yourself. I think I can make up a likely story. You know you are dying I guess?” He looked pleadingly into her eyes, and nodded. He accepted that if she was going to call help, she would have already done it. She was going to sit there watching his life ebb away. Why? he asked her with his eyes, snot blowing from his nostril. She understood him. “Why?, because I can. that’s all. You are not here because I asked you, and this that has happened to you is not of my doing. I shall simply run down the road screaming for help, and when the police eventually arrive, I’ll tell them I just found you. Really it is the truth. they’ll take fingerprints et cetera, interview me, but in the end it will be recorded as a murder between two people who broke into a single lady’s house. I may have to move away due to the stress it brings me, understandable people will say. But I won’t ever go away. I never go away. I’ll change my hair, buy new clothes and effect a new lease on the house, my solicitor will deal with everything. The name change, everything Jimmy. You see, I have to live here, in this house. It is my house. I was born here, grew up here and took it over when mother died. I should have died too, years ago, but that night when the storm hit this coast and that ship ran aground, I was out with my fiancée. He had just proposed, we were dancing, and drinking, and decided to run up the steps to the old Abbey. Half way up, and with my Carl racing faster and me falling behind, I was suddenly pushed over by a tall man in black. He bit me Jimmy. Bit me here…” and showed him her neck, the two round scars still prominent against her pale white skin. His eyes widened, now he was scared… “He bit me and drank of my blood. But did not drain me. My Carl came running back down the steps, shouting my name. The man stood, snarled at Carl and picked him up and snapped his neck, right in front of me. He looked at me and spoke some words in a language I did not know. Then he disappeared, and as I lay there dying I heard the sound of a wolf howling as it ran down towards the harbour. When we were found I was dead, and they took both our bodies to the church hall, until the authorities arrived to investigate. I awoke the next morning Jimmy. Awoke from being dead. The man was talking in my head, and I understood him, but he was nowhere to be seen. I stood, looked at my Carl’s body, then broke out of the church and fled town. Back in my village the news took a week or so to get through, and names were muddled, so by then I had begun to understand what had happened to me, and what I had become. I had been turned into a vampire Jimmy…I died on the eighth of August in the year eighteen ninety-seven. And I came back to a new, different life the very next day.” She leant toward him and licked at his sweater, then kissed his bloodied lips and took a drink from there too. She spent a minute at that before getting up, washing her face and walking back to him. He was still alive, just. Not long now though. “Bye Jimmy. And thank you for stopping by.”  

Ellie sat back down, watched as the last breath was grabbed and lost, and heard the air rasp as it weakly made its way back out. The light dimmed in Jimmy’s eyes, still seeming to stare at her in astonishment.