“What is this?” asked Brenden, wondering how he had gone his whole life without having this drink that was most certainly the most satisfying he had ever had. He even started to feel rejuvenated, with strength finally returning to his limbs.
“Blood,” replied Ms Halford. “Look, my dear, you really ought to know. You’re a vampire.”
Brenden said nothing. Instead, with the strength that had been granted to him by the drink, he pushed himself up into a sitting position and started to look around at where he was. He looked down towards where the street ran alongside the field he was in, and as ridiculous as what Ms Halford had said, it became apparent to Brenden that he was in a graveyard. Slowly, Brenden raised himself off the ground and picked up one of the two torches that still lay in the grass before moving over to the end of the newly dug hole. He expected to then see a headstone with his name carved into the surface but found only a temporary wooden plaque to confirm where he was.
“What about my Mum?” whispered Brenden.
Ms Halford moved over to Brenden’s side and he noticed for the first time he could just about see through her to the street beyond.
“I can’t go back, can I?”
Ms Halford raised her transparent and incorporeal hand to his face for just a moment. She smiled, but the rest of her features spoke only of sadness.
***
Brenden rested his head against the window of the rather battered mini-bus that Freddie had ushered him into after brushing off the worst of the earth from his burial clothes. He shifted uneasily on the plastic tarpaulin that Ms Halford had insisted he sit on so as not to dirty the vehicle’s seats too much and looked out on the almost empty motorway that was passing by. At first, he had tried to sleep, but despite being an hour on the road and his usual form of falling straight to sleep in any car, he could get no rest. Questions were constantly raising themselves at the back of Brenden’s mind about who he was, where he was going, what was going to happen to him, but he did not want to face up to them. So, he quietened them down again and again with the thought that he had lost his life - whatever it was worth - and by letting himself fall into the sense of loss and emptiness that this conjured up within him.
Freddie kept the mini-bus at a steady 60 miles per hour, meaning that even though the road was nearly deserted, Brenden was able to see a number of passers-by as they either overtook the vehicle or slowly drifted into the space behind the boy. With his head still leaning against the window, he watched the other vehicles appear and then disappear, wondering who was in them and if they had any idea of what was sitting in the mini-bus they were driving by. An estate car, going only a little faster than the Freddie, came up alongside the mini-bus in the middle lane and Brenden noticed that there was a little girl asleep in the back seat; her head resting on the window, in a similar way to himself. After the car passed over a bump in the road, the girl stirred and looked in his direction. Brenden waved to get her attention, but she either did not care to notice, or she was still too drowsy to take in what was going on around her. Instead, she looked away from the road and started speaking while rubbing her eyes. Brenden turned his attention to the front seat to see who the girl was talking to and found the driver, who he assumed must have been the girl’s mother. The mother looked a little frustrated and tired from the road - not surprising seeing that it must have been after five in the morning - and he thought how often he had seen his own mother tired and frustrated after a long day.
Brenden suddenly felt the urge to get in contact with his mother and his old life. He looked away from the estate car to let it slowly move away from the mini-bus without his further attention. Earlier on, Ms Halford had told Brenden that he could go back to his mother if he truly wished to do so as neither she nor Freddie had any hold over him. However, she also made it very plain that it would be very unwise for him do so.
“First of all, Brenden,” she had said, “there is a good chance that your mother will just not be able to accept that you have come back. She will think that you are either an imposter or that she has gone quite mad. You see, she has seen you buried and has said her goodbyes. I do not tell you this to warn you off from going, I speak from knowledge of what has happened before. Is this not so, Freddie?”
“Mmmhh”
“I have heard so many accounts from people who have returned only to be chased away, especially from those unfortunate to be, well, a zom…”
“Mmmhhhh!”
“Well, to be in such a position as poor Freddie here, especially since all of those awful films came out. But this is not the worst possible outcome, my poor boy. You see, if you decide to return home, things can get a bit tricky. We have a code, you see, to protect ourselves and others like us. If you turn our offer of help down now, there is a good chance we will not
