I was asleep, as the dozen or so schizophrenic patients were quiet at this hour. Dawn was mere minutes away, but the vampire and his confounded Fish came here, banging desperately on my door and begging for in. I thought I had been granted another night off. I had assumed Quagmass was out feeding on the streets, staying with others of his kind, or at some other sanctuary known only to himself, but he came here, scratching for in, like a cat.

Such a dangerously late time for him to be out. I could have left the door locked, and the Sun would soon have freed me from the sight of him and Fish forever, but I couldn't do it. I simply could not. Quagmass is not simply my patient, but in many ways he is like my only son. Terrified of him as I am, I love him dearly.

I opened the door. Quagmass practically fell in through it, weak, exhausted, and hungry. He had clearly been fighting. I closed the door behind him, and I drew the blinds to block out the approaching rays of sunlight. Quagmass called for blood. I offered him my throat. He would have taken it anyway, had I not offered it so freely. I am aware however that the experience of his embrace is not unpleasant. We had done this many times now. This time, however, he was in danger of taking more of my blood than I could have offered and still survived. I somehow managed to communicate to him the need to drink from the blood bags I keep in the fridge. Many psychiatric patients in my care have attempted to commit suicide, so I keep blood of all types just in case anyone needs transfusions. It is also useful to test patients' blood for signs of hepatitis or AIDS or other illnesses. Mainly, however, the blood feeds Quagmass.

Tonight he guzzled the blood greedily, almost making himself ill in the process. I have never seen him like this before.

Quagmass mumbled the word 'Sleep' at me softly then. And promptly fell to sleep right in my Manchester Sanatorium entrance hallway on the floor. He just lay there like a contented child, curled up in a ball, cradling Fish in his arms like a baby's teddy bear.

Fish is a toy, nothing more, nothing less. It is a child's harmless bathroom amusement, and despite its name, Fish is actually a whale. Point this obvious fact out to Quagmass and he will look at you as if you were the one who is deranged or stupid. "Fish," He will say, "Fish! It dances to Marrillion records. This is not a whale. "

His allusion to Marrilion is, I think, because the lead singer of that rock band, is called Fish. Point out to Quagmass that fish need water to survive in, and he will point out that his is a very special amphibious lung fish. "It's amphibious, and it's ambidextrous. Look, It lets me hold it in either hand." Quagmass then proceeds to juggle Fish from hand to hand, and smiles at you, almost defying you to correct his reasoning in some way. Most people usually give up by this stage. It isn't clear how much of this is madness on Quagmass's part and how much is him playing some kind of perverse prank on you for daring to question the identity of his pet. It gives Quagmass an enormous sense of power over you as he knows that sooner or later you will feel compelled to ask him why he carries a whale about with him.

Fish has a face covered in blood, and sometimes goes out wearing little vampire fangs, not real ones but the kind you buy in a joke shop around about Halloween time. Quagmass crams them into its mouth like ill-fitting dentures.

Dawn. My shift was over. I moved the sleeping body of Quagmass to my private store room, where I know he won't be disturbed until I return at nightfall. He is hard to drag. He is virtually dead-weight. I trey to get Fish out of his hands to be able to position him for easier movement, but he growls at me in his sleep and I decide not to separate them.

With the vampire safely secure and protected for the night I retire to my own room, after handing the keys to my day shift successor. She has the easy job, Mrs. Molkini, a bit of light paperwork, handle a few inquiries from potential patients and read her books. It is at night when the patients howl at the moon and claim they see vampires in the dark shadows surrounding them.

MONDAY 21^st FEBRUARY 4.45 PM

I start my shift by opening Quagmass's quarters as night falls again. He rises instantly, alert and lively again. The blood I gave him seems to have revitalised him and healed his wounds, and he looks so less tired now, but there is a deep unhappiness in his eyes that I am not familiar with. Asked about this, he tells me that there is something bad happening inside his head. I enquire about this. He tries to tell me freely. Quagmass is your classic attention seeking patient. He loves a good audience.

His story is a mixture of babble and sense. Disturbingly, he talks half in his own voice, and partly by throwing his voice through the mouth of Fish.

"Demon touch. Cold, icy, not nice-scream, not ice-scream more bad scream and I screamed. This wasn't like my other twenty-three demons. They are OK. They are fighting against the alien invaders who have successfully liberated my cerebral cortex from the purple leprechauns. This demon seems plain mean and nasty. He brings a different feel to my madness. He isn't actually doing anything at the moment, but it isn't like my pleasing comforting insanities. This one isn't very nice at all. This madness belongs to someone else. It isn't mine. I love my madnesses. I want this new one out. "

Quagmass is undoubtedly deranged, and childishly naïve about many worldly things. Unlike any other patient on my books, past or present, however, he doesn't deny that he is mad. He positively relishes and embraces the idea of being insane. He sees sanity as an affliction, and embraces insanity with fervour, fanaticism and gusto. His is no pretend, attention seeking affliction. Quagmass really is past the point of no return. He is incurable. He has no more chance of returning to sanity than he has of ceasing to be one of the undead. News that I cannot cure him fills him with delight. Never have I met one so happy with himself as Quagmass.

But now he seems deeply troubled by something. He hurts. You can see it in his dark eyes.

Until now all his madness and lunacy have been very much his own, and he sports them with great pride. This new madness seems to be something that is not of Quagmass, but something that feeds off him, parasitically. "Tape worm in my head" Quagmass says of it, and in an offbeat, skewed way, he is right. Quagmass's head has been invaded, and by something that does not appear to be vampiric in origin.

Though he has not mentioned them, even when I ask him directly, I believe Quagmass is in contact with other vampires. I have seen some strange figures lurking in the shadows at night, as though waiting for him to emerge from my sanatorium. If they discover that Quagmass is possibly possessed they may try to kill him. That would be a grave mistake however. Releasing this malevolent force from within Quagmass may simply make it enter a new vampire host, r free it so completely that it can destroy those who kill Quagmass.

Since I met the mad vampire, I have made some study of the occult myself, and I am beginning to understand the world in which Quagmass moves. It is a cold and horrible dark realm I would be wise to avoid as much as possible, but with Quagmass lodging in my sanatorium, I have ominous feelings that that world is closing in me rapidly.

How did I meet this wretched, insane creature of the night in the first place? How did I find myself serving any of his needs? Why do I fear him and yet choose not to destroy him? It's a long story.

THE BEGINNINGS OF QUAGMASS.

I was once a highly respected trained, qualified psychiatrist in London in the 1980's. I studied the nuances, foibles and problems of the human mind from A level to Oxford Graduation Day. In 1989 however, I made a major career mistake. I wrote a paper for a leading mental-sciences journal in which I argued that mental illness is down to unhappiness. I asserted that if people were made to feel happy and contented with their jobs, they would never suffer the stresses and strains of the mind that can cause any kind of mental breakdown. I argued that radicals, and agitators and political/social malcontents were probably suffering from, and liable to induce stress in others. I argued that stress, distress and depression are perfectly sane, rational reactions to the sheer existential angst that makes us realise life is basically awful. When we are upset we react accordingly. We cry when our loved ones die. We feel passion when we have sex. Why should suicidal impulses not be an appropriate reaction when life kicks us in the teeth once too often?

The paper caused an extraordinary storm of protest among my left wing intellectual opponents. I was accused of advocating a repressive Stalinistic regime in which any voice of dissent or call on society for change was to be suppressed with compulsory happiness. I was accused of being a Nazi. I fought back in a public debate, which grew so heated and angry that I found myself physically assaulting a leading colleague. I was arrested, charged, fined heavily and kicked out of the service I loved so much for professional misconduct.

I lay low and worked in a variety of degrading jobs, and saw the unhappiness that such tedium enforces on anyone. How could I ever have expected anyone to not go mad in such dead end hopeless living? How could anyone squeeze happiness from drudgery and toil?

In 1995, I secured a new psychiatric diploma. This was a bogus one, purchased for a few dollars on the internet. I had replaced my true qualification (annulled and retracted in scandalous circumstances) with a cheap imitation. I gave myself an alias, the first of many and opened a private sanatorium in Morecambe. I could only refer to centre as a new age experimental course in mental enlightenment. It made me sound like I was running a cult.

I quickly picked up a number of patients and clients. Each told the same story, of despair at the existence they lived. They worked for a pittance while their employees made money through barely any work at all. It was making them crack up. I came to the conclusion that unhappiness and clinical depression were perfectly rational things to suffer. I began to tell many of my patients that they were cured. This was unthinkable for psychiatrists. We never cured anyone. Most trick-cyclists keep their patients in perpetual need of therapy,, replacing one neurosis with another, and charging them through the nose for years. I told patients they were right to be angry and unhappy and even that their madness was perfectly normal. My patients thanked me, left to tell their friends about me, and soon, I was attracting a great deal of attention, as word of mouth told people that there was a psychiatrist in Morecambe who actually cured people of their despair.

Many patients took time accepting this fact of their cure. Some patients needed overnight stays and a few were sectioned into my care due to their high levels of suicide urge, or catatonia. I kept a blood bank of my own to which many patients voluntarily donated blood on each visit. Many also left me their prescription drugs, which I usually resold cheaply on the black market along with many recreational drugs. I was by now myself a heroin addict.

I was becoming too well known now as a miracle worker. My fame was attracting whispers in the media. Worst, some patients 'cured' by me had relapsed into their psychoses and committed acts of rape and violence in the community at large. I started planning my escape from the sleepy seaside town of Morecambe to set up elsewhere, under yet another name.

Before I was ready to go, he came. Quagmass. I never found out his real name. He insisted I called him Quagmass. Many of my patients used aliases, as of course did I.

He was human then. He had no plastic whale with him when he first arrived. Nor did he show any interest in any kind of fish. I have several goldfish in tanks in my reception room. Quagmass never showed more than average passing interest in them. (at least until the night recently when he threw the plugged-in electric toaster into one tank so they could make hot sandwiches for themselves). He was however, deeply fascinated by the cheap Rene Magritte reproduction paintings on my office walls. The first of the three prints shows a locomotive train coming out of a fireplace in someone's house. The second shows a man in a bowler hat with a giant apple floating in front of his face. The third, Quagmass's favourite shows a smoker's pipe floating in the air and has the words (in French) "This is not a pipe." Written below it. Quagmass stands for hours sometimes looking at that painting. Several times he has tried to steal it.

Quagmass came of his own accord. No one sent him to me. He was clearly living rough, on the streets or in the worst possible hostels and cheap bedsits. I was also in little doubt that he was quite truly mad. He dribbled and foamed at the mouth as he spoke, and giggled wildly for no apparent reasons. His stare bore through me, as though he could see through me at something beyond. No patient I had ever treated, not even the infamous axe-murderer, Tom Sadler, ever frightened me so much.

"Cure me, Doctor," Quagmass said. "Cure me. I have some sanity left in me. It needs to go. While I have some sanity left, Bogbrain says he won't take me as his latest child of the night."

Naturally, I asked him to tell me what on Earth he was talking about. However, the name Bogbrain was not unknown to me. Bogbrain is the quicksand bogeyman of Morecambe Town.

Morecambe is a coastal seaside town that has since been overshadowed by the popularity of nearby Blackpool, also on the Fylde. Morecambe has some very beautiful long flat smooth stretches of unspoilt looking beach. When the tide is out it is liking looking across the Sahara desert. It is often easily tempting to children to run out onto the beach and pursue the distant sea, when the tide is out. It is tempting to strangers to the region to cross the Bay, using the Cresent shaped beach to go out towards Lytham St. Annes and Poulton. If people take that chance, they may be lucky and survive, if they happen to chance upon a safe path. Many have tried and died. Morecambe bay is notorious for its shifting quicksands and sometimes the tide can come in faster than a galloping horse. Bogbrain was the name given by parents of old, to frighten their children into not playing on the beaches of Morecambe unsupervised. "Don't go there, or Bogbrain will drag you to your doom in his little Hell under the sands."

Quagmass seemed to be under the delusion that he had met this Bogbrain and that he was being invited to join the bogeyman of Morecambe if he was just to prove a little less mentally stable. Instead of wishing to free himself of this delusion, Quagmass wished to embrace it all the more. He was effectively making a religion out of the idea that insanity was his road to Nirvana. For Quagmass, insanity should not and must not ever be cured. It should be nurtured, fostered and promoted universally.

Most of my patients were glad to be told that there was nothing wrong with their minds at all, and in some cases this was true. They still paid gladly for certificates that declared them officially 'sane.' These certificates were of course, utterly worthless. Quagmass laughed when he saw one, and asked me for one declaring him officially deranged. I eventually consented to his desire.

Quagmass was paying me for his stay, though he seemed virtually unemployable to me. It struck me that someone was paying me to keep him in the asylum. Pressed for answers on this, Quagmass just started babbling about Bogbrain again.

Quagmass volunteered to be one of my long term stay patients, and I offered him a ward bed in the sanatorium. He took it gladly. It was considerably more comfortable than the beds he had slept in of late. Within days however, there was trouble. Quagmass shad convinced half the other patients to convert to his beliefs concerning Bogbrain. A few were actually keen to meet the demonic monster that Quagmass presented before them.

Within a few more days, there were screams in the night, and people said that Bogbrain had visited them in the ward. Surprisingly this included one of my hired security guards, who was an employee, not a patient. He quit his job the very same night.

I moved onto the night shift myself then, taking over from Mrs. Molkini, who seems somewhat relieved to get the day shift. It is at night that my patients tend to get most active in their screams and terror and nightmares. It was at night when they became convinced that Bogbrain was visiting them in their beds, and night time when they were most dangerous to themselves and to others.

For several nights nothing occurred beyond the usual screams and frustrations of the patients.. Even Quagmass was quiet, sleeping as often, under his bed rather than on it. He seemed to like being uncomfortable much of the time. Then one night, I heard a terrible scream from several patients and many hit the panic alarm buttons simultaneously to summon assistance. This usually happened on a smaller scale when someone was attempting suicide. I rushed to the ward, opened it up with my key, and the fingers of the patients pointed to Quagmass. He lay on the floor, looking pale and positively anaemic. I realised why. Most of his blood had been drained from his body; he had barely enough left to give him life. I looked around, but there was no blood on the floor, or on any of the bedding. Nor was Quagmass's body the subject of any cuts or gashes whatsoever.

One elderly recovering alcoholic lying on a nearby bed was the first to use the 'V' word in relation to Quagmass - "The vampire's been in. Bogbrain the Vampire did it. Bogbrain! Bogbrain!"

Three more times in five nights I found Quagmass reduced to near bloodlessness. Each time, I refilled his veins from my blood-bank. Then one night, I found another patient had also been drained of most of his blood in a similar way, with no physical mark or abrasion upon his body to show for it. I also found on another occasion that someone had raided and consumed blood from my Fridge. The thief had even left a note for me.

"deAR miLKMan/BlooDMann- PLEEZ LeaF Free PINTZ Of TYPE o Bluud Fur TamorAW. TAR - YuRZ SINseerly BogbraIN.

Translated of course, it reads, "Dear Milkman, blood-man - please leave three pints of Type O Blood for tomorrow, thank you, yours Sincerely, Bogbrain. "

I assumed Quagmass was behind it all of course, and that he had somehow managed to drain away his own blood, and that he was somehow behind this theft of my reserves. I assumed that he was faking his alleged illiteracy and that he had written this perversely childish note, in its mismatching capital and lower case lettering, himself.

I questioned the more coherent patients, including the old alcoholic, Richard Ball, who told me that Quagmass and Bogbrain were inviting them all on a picnic on the beach, where they would have jelly, Ice cream and blood and then play a nice game of hopscotch. Most of the patients had refused to go, but Quagmass and five others had agreed to such a field trip outing, declaring it fun, and the insane thing to do. Richard ball had warned them of the dangers of the sands. He had seen a horse drown in the quicksands. Bogbrain promised that he would bring the horse back as a present for him. "I ride it many times," Bogbrain had said.

Then the next night, the situation worsened. Despite a locked door, and no windows being accessible from the room, six patients of mine vanished from the ward, and one of them was Quagmass. I rushed into the ward, and saw the broken skylight and the rope ladder that had been clearly imported from outside. I realised then that Bogbrain was a name used by some intruder from outside the ward, possibly someone known to Quagmass before he came to me. The patients had fled that way, and down a ladder outside. I climbed up to the roof. It was a cold wet night in February, certainly no time for beach-combing or picnic outings. I knew also that the Morecambe tide would be out now, but due to come back in within the hour. I decided to race out to the beach to see if I could stop the escapees from endangering themselves on the sands.

There was a builder's ladder by the wall leading down from the roof to the street below. As I climbed down the ladder, and neared the ground below someone grabbed me from behind. He had huge hairy hands, and a gruff voice, and breath that stank of God knows what. I was pinned against the wall by someone who's face I couldn't see. A voice that certainly wasn't Quagmass's growled at me. "You forgot the blood I asked for, yer bastard. I bet you never left poor Santa Claws any mince pies at Christmas either did yer, ya tight git. I'll just have to have some of yours instead."

Something bit into my neck. There was a momentary sensation of pain, like receiving an injection from a doctor or dentist, and then I felt filled with a sense of tranquillity and bliss, even though I could feel my blood being sucked through the incision made by the beast behind me. I was paralysed and unable to move. I thought I was going to die there. It was Quagmass who probably saved me. "Save some for me. I might need some blood if and when I get back here."

The patients applauded this. They seemed very excited about their pending night out.

The thing called Bogbrain released me, and I slumped into unconsciousness. The last thing I heard was a row between the vampire and his prodigal charge about whether Quagmass was suddenly showing signs of sanity and human compassion. Quagmass denied it emphatically, quoting me as assuring him that he was beyond recovery or hope of ever being sane. That was true, I had told him that recently. He was the only patient who I ever promised such a thing. It made him happy.

I came to, weak and barely able to stand. I looked at my watch. An hour had passed since my assault. I tried to move towards my car right away, but I realised that I was too weak to drive. I went back to the sanatorium, and gave myself a blood transfusion. That is no easy feat, I can assure you. Finally, I was able to give chase.

Morecambe beach is vast, but I assumed that the party had gone to it via the nearest as the crow flies route, so that is the way I went.

I parked the car on the promenade edge and looked out. I saw footprints in the light from my torch, and set out to follow them. Seven sets of prints were going out, and only one was coming back. I had not looked at anyone's feet closely enough to know which were which, so who had moved back, I had no idea. I knew at least one set had to be those of the psychopathic vampire calling himself Bogbrain, after a children's fairy tale nightmare character.

I stepped in some soft sand. I thought for an instant that the quicksand was claiming me. I screamed, and then I felt foolish, for it was just a waterlogged puddle a few inches deep only in the rain. I hoped no one had heard me scream.

Someone had. A torch pointed into my eyes, dazzling me. An authoritative voice called to me to stop where I was in the name of the law.

The policeman came over, swearing and calling me a fool for being out on a dangerous beach like this after dark. "Don't keep coming forward, lad - the place is awash with quicksand, don't you know? We've already lost some fools out here. Don't suppose you knew any of them, did you?

I denied any knowledge of anyone crazy enough to be on the sands. I made up a story about often walking that way, and told them I'd never had any problems, and that I had no idea there were quicksands around. The cops would return to my sanatorium several times to question me further in the weeks ahead, but I kept to my denial story and they eventually gave up on me.

I did learn however what they knew and had not informed the press about. People had phoned the police and the coast guard that they had heard a bunch of drunken hooligans laughing and playing far out on the beach. The callers were concerned knowing the dangers from the sands and the tide, (which had returned moments after the police escorted me off the beach myself.)

The police had gone, and saw what I had seen for myself, a set of seven lots of footprints leading in to the death-trap, and only a single set emerging. They had followed the steps on to as near the quicksand as they could, and swore blind that they could see the crumbling edges of a child-like hopscotch grid drawn in the sand with sticks. The end of the hopscotch grid vanished into the quicksand itself.

They'd chased back, after meeting me, to find the one who had escaped, but with no luck. Their investigation had come to a dead end. In the town, rumours spread, and once again, families told their children dire stories about the bogeyman of the beach who's name was Bogbrain.

My reputation was in tatters too. People stopped sending word of mouth about my success rate. My centre was believed to harbour dire secrets. I was shunned as if I was some kind of Frankenstein. I have even heard that my sanatorium address was included in a book from the region on haunted houses, but I have never seen a copy of the work personally.

I was ready to move on. I had secured a lease on a new smaller, more discreet sanatorium in Manchester and a new alias, Dr. Jonathon Forrett. I was due to go in a matter of weeks. That was when he, Quagmass returned, and I finally knew which of my patients had survived that terrifying and utterly insane picnic on the quicksands of Morecambe Bay.

Quagmass was dressed just as he had been when I last saw him, but his clothes were ragged and mud/blood stained. He smelled awful too. His eyes looked just as piercing as before, but also somewhat lifeless. He was also clutching the toy whale now, and calling it Fish. I made the mistake immediately on asking him about the whale, and found him lecturing me on why it wasn't a whale at all. He pointed to my Magritte prints. "That is not a pipe. This is not a whale. Nuff said?"

"Enough said, " I agreed.

"So where have you been ?" I asked him, casually, as if he was just an old friend I was enjoying a reunion with years after leaving school. "How are you?"

"Not too well, to tell you the truth, Doctor," Quagmass replied smiling. "I have a bit of a medical problem…."

I prompted him to share it with me. He did.

"It's like this, Doctor, he said as though embarrassed and describing some sexually transmitted disease he might have caught. "My pulse has stopped. I have an overwhelming urge to drink blood, any blood, from any human, including yourself, and well, I think that makes me dead. " With a shrug of his shoulders, he sighed. "As if not being totally insane wasn't bad enough, now I'm a fucking vampire as well."

I was about to reply to that, but he grabbed me, and took some blood from my neck, as the entity called Bogbrain had done. It felt just as good, but Quagmass just took a little. He licked the gash in my neck which healed instantly without leaving any scar tissue.

"Man, that hits the spot, "Quagmass said approvingly. "You have good blood in your veins, Doc. Mind if I dine off you more often?"

"Do I have a choice?" I asked him. He shook his head as assurance that I had no option but to accept my fate.

"Won't I turn into a vampire myself, now you've bitten me,?" I asked him.

"No! Don't be silly. I don't want to make you like me. You're too sane. You'd end up being a Vent…. " He changed the subject quickly as though scared of giving too much away. "It wouldn't be allowed. They'd never let me have permission to make you."

"Permission? From who? Other vampires?"

"Just settle for thinking of them as 'they' for now, " Quagmass said, threateningly.

"I presume Bogbrain had permission to make you then?" I asked him, pointedly.

He nodded his head affirmatively. "Yes, he sent me here, to help me get ready. Thank you for your part in all this, Doctor. Really appreciated." He shook my hand vigorously and with a pathetic degree of sympathy. He almost crushed my fingers doing so.

"Where did you find the wha… er, Fish? Where's he from?"

"He's an orphan. The child I took in the bathroom as my first solo conquest meal was playing with him when I killed her. He's adopted me as his new family. I love him dearly. " Quagmass started petting and kissing his fish.

I was shocked. He'd murdered a child, and had said so to me as though describing having just helped an old lady over the road. I realised that Quagmass would probably kill me just as easily and without any flicker of sorrow in doing so too, one day.

"Did anyone else survive, at the beach? " I asked him. "Did Bogbrain survive too?"

"The old codgers died for us. That was funny. Bogbrain made me a proper vampire, and we bit the men to make them bleed for us. They screamed and cried a lot. Then we made them play hopping the scotch. It was funny when they started sinking into the ground like they did. I wanted to sink too, but Bogbrain pushed me back and said no. Then he disappeared. He just went away."

"Did he fall in the quicksand too, Quagmass?" I asked with a note of sympathy.

Yes! No! Don't know! Damn it! I just don't know! I was too busy laughing and watching the not mad enoughs drowning. I didn't see what happened to Bogbrain or where he went."

I put a hand on the vampire's shoulder to console him. "Maybe he'll come back to find you. He may come here."

"I doubt it," Quagmass said. "I think he would have been by now. He's left me, just as the little girl left Fish. We're both orphans now. Can we move in with you?"

I agreed immediately. It wasn't just that refusing was never really an option, because I suddenly realised how interesting and possibly safe life would be in Manchester with a vampire guarding my premises. I told Quagmass about the proposed change of address. After a brief chat with Fish, he agreed to come too.

Over the coming days I let Quagmass stay in my private quarters, sleeping on my floor. I offered him the spare bed, blankets and or a sleeping bag, but the cold floor was enough for him. He slept most of the day, every day, and I had to take care to block out all sunlight from the quarters. Quagmass could move about in the day, as long as he was shielded from the Sun, but he was noticeably weaker then.

Often, as he retired to his floor when dawn was breaking, he had me read him fairy stories - these were in fact the confidential case histories of my patients, especially those who I never successfully cured. If everything ended in madness, murder and suicide, Quagmass saw it as a happy ending, and went to sleep smiling. "There is madness in the world," he said often, nodding his head appreciatively and approvingly.

Some nights he went out to feed and didn't return. At first this worried me, just as it scares a parent who's child stays out too late, but after a while I realised that Quagmass was meeting other vampires and staying at their havens, or was possibly using other hiding/bedding places some nights too.

Some nights he took some of my blood from my veins. "You're my little blood bank, Doc," he said laughing. "We keep money in a piggy bank, and I keep my blood in you, for the rainy nights."

Often as not, Quagmass drank blood from the refrigerated bottles I had stored. It sustained him, but he told me straight that he preferred live blood to bottled. "It's like the difference between draught ale and bottled beer.

One night, a few hours short of dawn, Quagmass woke me as he returned to my sanatorium, with great excitement in his voice. "I've found a way to get to Bogbrain."

Still half asleep, and grateful that my girlfriend and date had left before he arrived, I asked him what he meant.

"I met a Gangrene. She's called Melissa. She can go down into the ground, and sink into the soil, like someone going down in Quicksand. All the Gangrenes do it. They call it melting … no melding. That's it, melding. I've asked them to watch out down there, in case they see Bogbrain. They can bring him back if they do."

I had no idea what Quagmass was babbling about, but it hinted that there were vampires with some powers to do something that fitted loosely to his description of this melding process. Generally though insanely skewed, Quagmass's pronouncements had a logic and sense all of their own. He was telling the truth, but in a very cryptic way. Sometimes it was possible to work out bits of what he meant.

And now, soon after we reached Manchester, or as he calls it, "Morecambe no more," Quagmass has a new problem, a new insanity that he is not entirely happy with, as it is not of him. He comes to me and asks for reassurances. "I am still mad, aren't I? "

I know what he wants to hear, and so I tell him in all sincerity. "Bonkers, yes. You're certifiably a 100% basket case, totally incurable."

He hugs me tightly, and makes the Fish kiss me. "Fish loves daddy."

I smile and thank the Fish, then to my horror, Quagmass kisses me too. "Quagmass loves daddy as well."

On the whole, I preferred to be kissed by Fish.

Arthur Chappell

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