* * *
It took the vampire three days to heal.
Judas knew it could have been worse. He would have healed faster had he been supplied fresh blood or assisted in another way. He had made sure the stone was unmoved the entire time, shooing away curiosity seekers and children and worshipers who believed his lies and wanted to touch the grave of a living deity. He would have none of it.
The moon shone brightly on the boulder as it scraped and rumbled, pushed away from the mouth of the cave from within. The creature stood in the opening, moonlight drenching it and making it glisten. It had been cleaned before being interred, but Judas could still see the holes in its hands and ankles. He was surprised it was able to walk, but then he saw it stumble on the weakened limbs and knew it would need to feed soon.
He had to end it before it could start making more of its kind again, but he couldn't do it in private. This one was too public, too well known. It had to die in front of its followers as proof that it was not immortal, that it was not immune to the rule of man. But where? And how long should he wait?
Then Judas remembered. There was a gathering of its followers. They were mourning the loss of their savior, the one who promised to raise them above their true positions in life. It would go to show them the true power of the vampire. Judas would have to show them the folly of trusting such a creature.
* * *
The stolen sword felt strange in his hands. He'd never been a soldier, had never had the desire to kill anyone, but this Jesus needed it, deserved it. The world would be a better place if creatures such as it were not allowed to wander the land with men. Men were the owners of this world, not vile creatures with forked tongues and inhuman powers.
“Are you sure?” asked the man to Judas's right. He was a mercenary leader, his small band hired for the promise of a night's drinking money. Judas hadn't paid him yet and didn't know if any of them would survive the encounter he planned. In the gaining of backup, he'd given Jesus time to recoup, to feed, and to regain some strength.
“I'm sure of nothing except that he must not leave that meeting alive.”
The mercenary shrugged. “As long as your gold is good.”
There were twelve of them in there, Jesus and his brood. Judas would have made thirteen had he remained enthralled by the monster.
He crept to the entrance and listened, eager to hear what lies he told those Disciples. He marveled at his own innocence, that he had once been one of them, determined to show the world the way of God. He had come to realize that nothing that powerful, that incredible could be made for people. Judas would not live a lie for the promise of physical immortality. He did not know God's will, but God was not a vampire, and therefore Jesus could not be His son.
The voices were muffled, echoing around the stone walls until they were a jumbled mess of incoherent sounds. Shouts arose at times, but volume did not bring clarity.
Another round of shouts sounded less argumentative and more convivial. Judas waved the men back from the cave's entrance. Stepping back himself, he squeezed the hilt of his sword, wishing he felt more comfortable wearing it.
They exited in a jumbled group, those in front walking backwards to keep their eyes on the creature at their center. Their faces were flushed with joy. They fairly danced in excitement as they moved.
“Stop,” Judas commanded. He did not raise his voice, but the thing in the middle of the group heard him and raised its eyes to face him.
It smiled. “Judas. It's good to see you, old friend.”
“I wish the feeling were mutual. You should be dead.”
The crowd of men tightened around Jesus, calling out threats and admonishments to Judas.
Judas' mercenaries stepped forward, their hands on their swords. Their presence was enough to quiet the group once more.
Jesus looked around at the men and shook its head. It cast a sad look at Judas. “My father's gifts are for you, Judas. For all men. Why do you reject them?”
“Your father isn't my God. You were once someone I could trust, someone I could believe in. But you've revealed yourself to be an abomination. A creature that cannot be allowed to live.”
“You've had me killed once, and I've come back. What has happened to me can happen to you. Father promises eternal life.”
“God is not one of you.” He didn't know if it was his raised voice or the sudden movement of two of the Disciples towards him that made the mercenaries move. In the end, it didn't matter. The Disciples jumped and the mercenaries charged. The mercenaries were outnumbered, but they possessed skills none of the Disciples did.
Jesus pushed those nearest it to the relative safety within the cave and stepped around the men struggling for their lives. It approached Judas, crossing the twenty feet between them in two strides.
Judas jerked the sword from its sheath and brandished it before him in a two handed grip. It wavered before Jesus’ face.
Jesus smiled. It was a friendly smile showing white teeth between a set of fangs that seems to gleam in the moonlight. “I only want to give you, and all who follow my father's will, eternal life.”
“No. You want to feed, to make us slaves or monsters like you. I'll have none of it.”
It tilted its head forward just slightly, looking directly into Judas' eyes through thick brows. “Judas, my friend, you've nothing to fear. Let me into your heart. Trust in me. Trust in God. You will not regret it.”
He wanted to. For a long moment, long enough for the sounds of fighting to fade away and for him to forget where he was, he wanted it. It would have been so easy to acquiesce. Everything in his body wanted what this creature said to be true. The creature was intelligent, cunning, and… wrong.
With an effort of will he didn't know he possessed, Judas tore his mind away from the easy path and drew the sword back. Lunging forward, he swung wildly, without grace or precision. Yet once again an invisible hand guided his own into the right motions, the right position, and with greater force than he could have managed alone.
The blade swung true, striking the creature solidly in its neck. His hand kept going and for a moment Judas thought he had missed. The head fell forward, followed by the body, and Judas was covered in a great gout of red-black blood spraying him directly in the face.
He'd succeeded. The creature was dead.
He was elated for only a moment before realizing his folly. He stepped away from the body. His foot kicked the head lying beside him and he stumbled, fell over backwards, and landed hard on his back. The air was knocked out of him and he thought he was dying. Then the first of the cramps hit him and he knew his mistake.
The mercenaries had either killed or chased off the remainder of the Disciples. They gathered around him expectantly, eyes judging, hands twitching for their swords once more. Judas had more important things to worry about.
He scrambled to his feet, stumbled, fell, and then managed to wrench himself upright even as he began to run.
“Hey!” shouted the mercenary leader. “Don't think you can get away without paying.”
They started to chase him. He reached into his tunic and pulled out a heavy purse strapped to his neck. He ripped the cord and tossed the bundle over his shoulder. “Take it all,” he shouted. “I'll need it no longer.” He heard it land and the silver scatter on the ground. He didn't look behind him, but he heard the men begin to fight over its contents.
He ran. At first, he ran for fear of what he had done. Then, he ran for fear of the future. Finally, he ran because he knew what he had to do.
The Change would happen to him now. He now understood why Jesus had performed so many of its miracles in mysterious ways, using clever words to cloud its actions. It'd been like a sorcerer or an entertainer, showing one hand while the real work was done with the other. Now Judas understood that it was the blood that held the power. The blood was what Jesus had carried that ensured it could heal all injuries, cure all illnesses, and even bring the dead back to life. Jesus’ blood was the cur
se, not just the creature.
Judas ran until he found a lone horse tied to a tree outside town. No one was around, though the horse's owner couldn't have been too far away. It didn't matter. He needed but a few minutes to finish the job.
He had to end it tonight. It was supposed to end with Jesus, with the Disciples dead or scattered, but it could continue with him if he didn't do the right thing.
Even as he fashioned the noose his insides churned, and he vomited at the base of the tree. Blood and the remnants of a simple dinner lay in a puddle at his feet. He could see pieces of himself in that puddle, his life going to ruin even as he rushed to prevent the curse.
He tossed the rope over the strongest branch of the tree. Carefully, he led the horse underneath it and climbed on its back. It took several attempts before he was astride the horse and the noose was in place, but the animal was docile and in no hurry.
Everything in place, he took one last look at the world around him. He hoped he was doing the right thing. He couldn't allow the creature's legacy to continue.
He wiped his face and discovered tears made of blood. He was too far gone. Still crying, he kicked the horse's haunches and shouted for it to move.
The horse dutifully obeyed. It leaped forward into a gallop, and quickly left the tree and its rider behind.
Judas watched it go even as his throat tightened and his vision darkened. The cramps hit him once more, doubling him into a ball even as his neck strained against the rope and his lungs burned.
His vision darkened and he heard its laughter in his head even as his body relaxed in expiration. The tears kept flowing after his vision faded to complete blackness.
* * *
It awoke at sunset. The world swung around it in a gentle breeze. It heard the creaking of wood strained under a burden it wasn't meant to take. It tried to take a breath, found it could not, and also found it did not need the breath anyway. It reached cold hands to its neck and found the rope it had known was there.
There was some pain, but it felt a dull discomfort compared to the searing, sharp pain coming from its gut. It needed something it could not yet understand. It was time to move, to seek a way to eliminate that pain.
It wriggled fingers beginning to regain feeling under the rope, digging into its own skin with dirty nails. With more strength than it had expected to possess, it yanked hard. It took two tries to part the rope. It landed hard on its feet, but pain shot through its knees and it collapsed into the dust. Its gut wrenched and vomit shot from its mouth in a geyser of black chunks and bright red blood.
The world turned red before darkening once more into welcome oblivion. When it awoke again it was hungry. It sat up, breathed its first breath, and scented prey on the wind.
As it ran its body awakened fully, singing of the gifts each part possessed. It was alive, and powerful, like never before. It thrilled to the scents and sensations coursing through it. Life truly was the greatest gift of God.
THE END
VICIOUS SCISSORS
By Carlton Herzog
I was never one to believe in ghosts or the supernatural. Indeed, I was astounded at the gullibility of people, who, on the one hand, relied heavily on science in their day to day experience, while on the other, subscribed to the misguided belief that we live in a demon haunted world, wherein all manner of unseen things walk parallel to the path of the living.
I was never sure if such nonsense originated in the fear of the unknown, escape from boredom, or pure ignorance. To my mind, science adequately explained the nature of reality, and did not, therefore, require unsolicited assistance from the lunatic fringe. The same fringe that believes aliens travel hundreds of light years just to give Cletus the slack-jawed yokel a colonoscopy above a deserted country road.
My attitude underwent a profound transformation soon after I received a bequest from my great aunt, Clarissa Leeds, a rather eccentric old coot who claimed to be both a witch and a medium. She had, as it were, conferred upon me a family heirloom some four hundred years old. It consisted of an engraved wooden box containing a holy relic in the form of ancient shears. The Roman Catholic Church referred to them as the Maleficarum Placenta Forceps, or the Scissors of Witches.
Mind you I had never met the woman. I could not understand why she gave the box to me rather than any of her other great nieces and nephews. Then again, I’m told she walked around naked, chattering dentures in hand while aping a British accent in the vein of Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher, and Monty Python’s Mrs. Dim. She’s the kind of relative that makes you question your bloodline, wondering if your kid will turn out to be a failed entertainer or a loony in a straightjacket.
When you’re a tenured Professor of Linguistics, you necessarily worry about unwanted genetic drift in your bloodline, since the sudden appearance of a drooling doodle-brain would seriously compromise your legacy as a scholar. The bequest magnified those concerns by its very strangeness. For example, the runes on the box were in a language that I had never seen, suggesting the carver was either in tune with the cosmically large or was a simpleton who had married the fine art of whittling with old-fashioned gibberish.
Whatever the case, the box itself was made of yew. Not a surprise, since witches of old revered yews as the home of unseen forces antithetical to Christianity. They believed that Eve supposedly plucked the forbidden fruit, not from an apple tree but from a yew; they also took comfort in the notion that Jesus was executed on a cross made of yew. Supposedly in medieval times, yews were planted in church graveyards because they were believed to inhale and feed on the putrefaction of decaying corpses and their vapors.
But it wasn’t the box that made me blink: It was those shears. I expected them to be dull, old and rusted, an object to be admired by an antiquarian with an itch to clean and polish old metal.
They were, however, something entirely different. They were golden, but not gold. They had the luster of newly forged metal. But they weren’t made of any alloy I could identify. When I held them, they seemed to vibrate, so much so that when I handled them, they slipped and cut me. The curious thing was that when I went to wipe the blood from them with a rag, there was none to be found, as if those shears had absorbed it.
I knew something of metallurgy, specifically, when you heat metal to a very high temperature, it doesn’t cool uniformly. It crystallizes in different orientations, forming little cells with defects between them. Hence all the blacksmith’s hammering.
But the shears had no visible imperfections, no tiny basins into which the blood could have drained. So, I was at a loss as to where it had gone. Exsanguinating scissors was a new one on me, and, no doubt, even to those who give credence to idiotic urban legends. It would not therefore have surprised me to see a Sci Fi original movie titled, Vampire Scissors.
But I digress. The first scissor event occurred after I had placed the box on the mantle just below the lithograph of Jesus. My wife leans Christian. I do not, nor have I ever. My parents were stout atheists who steered me away from church, even though my girlfriend at the time insisted I needed baptism to avoid the fires of hell. Although my wife is a devout Christian, she is more progressive in her views, relegating the concept of hell to the realm of mythology and feeble minds, as do I.
My only thought in placing the box on the mantle was to have it handy as a conversation piece when we had dinner guests. Little did I know the firestorm it would cause.
To wit, the next morning, I found the Jesus lithograph shredded into a thousand pieces. My two sons professed ignorance of the blasphemy. Whatever my suspicions, I could prove nothing. They are good boys, not prone to malicious mischief or acts of profanation against religious icons.
That is not say that they were pro-religion. My son’s favorite author, CD Herzog, had just penned a story titled, Jesus versus Godzilla, which pokes fun at the church. As we were sitting around the dinner table spit-balling different ideas about the crucifix massacre, my son blurted out, “Jesus never condemned slavery, not onc
e. So why was he all hot and bothered about demonic possession? Isn’t that slavery?”
That sent my wife around the proverbial bend. To pacify her, I found a large crucifix in the attic and mounted it where the lithograph had been hung. The next morning, I found it cut to pieces. My sons again professed ignorance. Although they seemed the logical culprits, I found their demeanor sincere, and given their otherwise blameless lives, exonerating.
Later that day, I mentioned the incident to a colleague at the university whose specialty is world religion. I told him of my queer Great Aunt Clarissa and her affiliation with the occult. He didn’t offer any direct insight as to the shredding of the cross and picture. Instead, he rambled on about the potential relationship between the shears and the Salem witch trials.
To be sure, he spoke with an air of expertise and academic stuffiness you would expect from a sitting professor. But it was hard to keep a straight face because he was severely cross-eyed. I tried to listen intently, but all I could think of was whether his strabismus caused him to see two of everything. I almost asked him how many fingers I was holding up but refrained as he droned on about mystical nonsense.
“Did you know that not all the suspected witches of Salem were hanged or drowned? There was a queer Christian sect known as the Cutters who believed that they could exorcise a known witch’s evil by shearing off various body parts, depending on nothing more than where they intuited such evil was concentrated. Thus, ears, noses, tongues, fingers, arms, feet, legs, genitals and breasts were fair game. And once severed from the body, the scissors themselves would pull the evil out of the cut body part and into its metal, thus imprisoning it for all eternity. Supposedly the metal was forged by the angels themselves, and impressed with angelic imprisonment symbols.
“The Cutters took their ideas from the ancient Greeks. You know the Fates: Clotho spun the thread of life; Lachesis measured it; and Atropos with her golden shears—always razor sharp and good for a clean cut—snipped it, leaving no loose ends. The Greeks considered the Fates to be so powerful they could end the life of even an immortal god such as Zeus.”
Blood and Blasphemy Page 19