Whitby Vampyrrhic Read Online Free Page B

Script Supervisor.
Everywhere, on the drab green walls, there were reproductions of the Cromwell-Sterling logo, a female warrior carrying a shield and a spear. She paused. She couldn’t remember if this corridor led to the exit. After all, it was her first time at this particular studio. A pair of secretaries, hugging armfuls of scripts, rushed from a door in front of her. Their red lips were the brightest slash of colour in the corridor.
    â€˜Excuse me,’ she began, ‘can you tell me—’ But they vanished through another door marked
Production Accountant
. ‘That’s it,’ she muttered darkly. ‘I’m doomed to wonder the studios for all eternity.’
    She longed for a lungful of cold winter air. Her head felt muzzy. A pain flared behind her eyes.
Great, just great, now I’m going down with flu. But the symptoms don’t occur so quickly, do they?
Suddenly, the air in the corridor of a million doors – at least that’s what it seemed like – became thunderously oppressive. Pain speared her eyes.
Good grief. My skull’s going to explode.
She gritted her teeth. For some reason it seemed like a huge charge of energy had invaded the building. Dizzy, she placed her hand on the wall to steady herself. Lights dimmed. As there were no windows, the corridor grew so gloomy that she could barely even see those doors leading off; what’s more, the doorways became suggestive of churchyard headstones – tall oblong, shapes that breathed the words
grave
,
tomb
,
cemetery
and
death
into her ear.
    A sudden gust of air raced down the passageway. The gale came from nowhere, but its scent reminded her of the sea. Posters fluttered on the walls. The studio’s logo of the she-warrior writhed on a poster that was the size of one of those damned doors (which could have led to hell for all she knew).
    Then a figure. Beth glimpsed a man in the shadows. A burly individual who swept by her. He pushed open a pair of doors that admitted light into the corridor. Thinking the way led outdoors, she followed the man. Moments later, she found herself bathed in light. Only, it was a thin, grey light. A poor excuse for daylight really. Beth closed her eyes, kept them scrunched shut, then opened them again. She stood in a street. One paved with cobbles. Ahead of her, a line of ancient cottages. Their red-brick walls bulged, and the windows were tiny openings that resembled the eyes of reptiles. Doorways were low, stunted things, seemingly constructed to admit goblin men into their dwarfish houses. An iron plaque fixed to the front of one cottage spelt out: CHURCH STREET – BOROUGH OF WHITBY.
    â€˜Ah.’ Beth rubbed her throbbing forehead. ‘Whitby. It makes sense now. They’ve built a replica of one of the streets.’ She frowned. The detail of the set was extraordinary. Dozens of houses had been built. Smoke rose from chimneys. ‘So why are we going on location, when they’ve gone to the trouble of building this?’ The authenticity took her breath away. She’d seen many a studio set. This, however, had to be the biggest, the best and the most realistic ever. A cat, a live cat, stood on a mound of lobster pots.
Why, I can even smell the scents of the sea and the fish in the market.
    Drawn by the extraordinary craftsmanship of the set designers, she moved further along ‘Church Street’. She rested her palm against the wall of a cottage. The dull red-brick under her hand felt solidly real, not the papier mâché or plywood that was the usual choice of carpenters when they built a mock-up of a town. What’s more, these buildings didn’t resemble flimsy free-standing ‘flats’. They had all the substance of being rooted into the earth for the last five hundred years. Once more she asked herself why the actors and crew were being sent to Whitby, on the English coast, when they could film right here. She looked up at the ceiling