Whitechapel Halloween

We left the party together a little after midnight. Since we were headed in the same direction, she asked me to walk her to the tube station and I couldn’t really say no.
I was dressed as a vampire, in a dinner-jacket that was a size too small and a cape that had cost me five pounds in a charity shop. I had some cheap plastic fangs in one of my pockets, but they made it hard to talk, so I had taken them out. It was only a student party for Halloween, an excuse to get drunk and dance to cheesy music, so I didn’t see the point of trying too hard.
She was dressed in a 1920s flapper outfit that looked like it had been sewn onto her, it fit her body so well. The colour suited her too, just the right shade of green to bring out her eyes. Even the details were perfect, art deco and layered beads completing her outfit.
We were walking along Whitechapel road together in silence and I watched the cars as they passed us so that it wouldn’t look like I was staring at her. The sky had been overcast all night, threatening to rain, but never quite working up the enthusiasm to do it, leaving an orange haze of reflected streetlights overhead.
I glanced in through the window of a bookshop as we passed, looking at the selection of best-sellers out of morbid curiosity. There were a couple of decent fantasy novels, but it looked like tragic life-stories were coming back into fashion. Given the state of the country, I thought I’d rather have mindless escapism, but to each their own…
When I turned back, I noticed that I’d fallen behind. The woman I was meant to be accompanying was waiting patiently in front of a petrol-station forecourt and trying not to look like she’d been abandoned. When I caught up, she was staring at me thoughtfully.
"Do you know anything about vampires?" she asked me.
"A little," I said. "Everyone knows about vampires, don’t they?"
"No," she said. "Not the ones in books, real ones."
I laughed. I didn’t want to insult her, but I think we both knew it was a silly thing to have said, that she didn’t really believe in vampires. She just stared at me for a moment and then she smiled back.
"Okay," she said. "Maybe not real ones, but you know… if they were real."
I told her that I didn’t really think about it much. I mean, I liked watching Dracula, but everyone knows that vampires only exist in stories. She said she wasn’t so sure.
"There are so many stories," she explained. "Why are there so many stories from so many places if they don’t really exist?"
"Maybe they’re a metaphor," I suggested.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I think they’re real."
She looked deadly serious, but I just shrugged. I knew it was a strange thing to be talking about as you walk along the East End, but I didn’t mind. It was just nice to talk to her, even if it was about vampires and even if it was only for a little while.
"I think they must be lonely," she continued. "I mean, they don’t really belong in the normal world, do they? They’d be like elderly people, always remembering the old days and not really having anything in common with the younger generation. All of their friends will have grown old years ago."
"I suppose so…" I conceded.
I thought about a documentary I had seen about Amish people in America, young men and women who had heard of computers and mobile phones, but never learned how to use them. Maybe that was what she meant, I suggested, seeing the world move on around you and being left in the past.
"Yes," she agreed. "That’s precisely what it would be like. Always falling further behind the fashions and technologies."
"No," I said. "I think they’d adapt. They’d have to if they wanted to fit in with the people they were living amongst."
"They might try," she suggested with a sigh. "But it’s hard. Things change so fast."
She looked so sad, sympathising with the imaginary vampires, that I put my arm around her. I didn’t mean anything by it, but her sadness was contagious. We were coming up to an Indian restaurant that I was sure used to be a pub and I almost suggested going in for a curry before I remembered that it would have been a waste of time.
"I suppose you’re right about things changing," I told her. "I remember there used to be a theatre here a few years ago."
I pointed to a building on our left and she stopped to stare at it with me for a while. It had only been six years, the but the place was almost unrecognisable. We walked in silence a little while longer and I saw a pale concrete silhouette on the pavement where I remembered a restaurant had sat a decade ago.
Like the vampire in her tale, the world I had once known had moved on without me. Boarded up windows stared down at me from shop I had visited just a few short years ago, making me nostalgic for a past that was barely out of view. Maybe she was right all along, a better judge of the undead condition than I could ever have been.
I think we were both lost in our own thoughts for a while because I almost walked into her when she stopped. It took me a second to realise that we’d already arrived at the Tube station.
"Would you like to come home with me?" she blurted out as we stood there on the pavement.
I tried to say no, knowing deep down that it was a bad idea, but I found myself following her down toward the platform. There was such a vulnerable edge to her voice that I couldn’t say no without hating myself.
The station hadn’t changed much. The posters on the walls were different from last time, but it was the same slightly-bleak walk under the same harsh lights. She held on to my hand as we walked in, her delicate fingers closing around mine.
The gates had been left open, so I let her lead me down onto the platform instead of fumbling in my wallet for my Oyster card. It didn’t really matter to me right now.
"I feel like I have known you for years," she said. "Isn’t that strange?"
"Not really…" I told her.
We sat side-by-side on the bench, the only people in the whole station, and a comfortable silence stretched out between us. I found her fingers gently tracing the line of my neck, sending a shiver through me, and I closed my eyes as she moved to rest her head on my shoulder.
"You’re so cold…" she said, her voice little more than a breathy whisper. "What can I do to warm you up?"
I pushed her back, scared that events were moving too quickly and wanting to prolong the evening, but it was too late. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood filled my nose, the heady scent of her perfume waking the darker part of me, and I returned her embrace in spite of myself. My lips traced her throat and I knew that there could be no turning back.
I bit down hard, tasting her blood on my tongue. She should have screamed, but instead she only gave a gasp of shock that turned to a moan of pleasure. Wrapping her up in a final embrace, I drew her fading body to me.
I held the ghostly form of the first woman I had ever killed, forcing myself to relive her death like I had every Halloween for almost ninety years now. Even as her body turned to mist and was scattered by the wind of the train finally coming into the station, I leant down to whisper in her ear.
"I’m sorry…"