by Vance, Ramy
And watching that same shuffle brought back a flood of memories I thought I had buried long ago.
↔↔↔
Old Scotland—The Day Katrina Darling Died
Turning isn’t like it is in the movies. I wish it were, but when you’re bit, or rather infected, it’s just like fighting off any particularly bad flu. You have good days and bad days, but overall you’re heading in a downward spiral.
Except a downward spiral in this case doesn’t look like you’re getting worse. To the untrained eye, you look like you’re getting better—healthier. You can move, you’re in less pain, your fever subsides and your strength slowly returns.
Those are the other symptoms—the ones that mean you’re getting worse.
The more telling symptoms—the ones you should be on the lookout for, if you somehow knew what you were looking for—are an aberrance to light, weight loss and not eating—as in ever.
I didn’t know what was happening to me, but my vampiric instincts were kicking in, and they were telling me to hide the more telling symptoms as best I could. So I pretended to eat. I asked that my bed be positioned so that direct sunlight never touched it (using a desire to be able to look through my bedroom door and into the house as an excuse). I also pretended to be weaker than I was.
Like I said, I didn’t know what was happening to me. All I did know was that whatever it was, it was going to change me forever. For eternity. At least until the gods up and left, but that wouldn’t come for another three hundred years.
What are the symptoms for those who do not get worse? Simple: the fever takes hold, you fall deeper and deeper into a coma and eventually you die.
Once you are bitten, you will eventually die. Whether you come back as a vampire or not.
And that is perhaps the greatest gift the gods gave us by leaving. The bite no longer kills.
↔
As the day progressed, so too did my strength grow, and much more quickly than I let on. My father didn’t notice; he was too distracted with relief that his little girl wasn’t going to die after all. My mother, however, noticed the little feats of strength that I didn’t hide as well as I should have.
Little things like pushing my heavy oak bed out of the path of direct sunlight or bringing in a bucket to better hide the food I wasn’t eating. I was sloppy, sure, but I could feel my body literally dying. Can you blame me?
She finally realized that I wasn’t eating. At all. In those early days, solid food was repulsive. I could tolerate raw meat, but barely. And as for vegetables, the thought of swallowing a potato or carrot was as physically repulsive to me then as the thought of sucking blood from the carotid artery of a human is to me now.
Life’s strange like that. Death, too.
Given that this was eighteenth century Scotland, meat wasn’t something you ate every day, farmer or no. Meat was far too valuable on the open market, so our diet was mostly comprised of potatoes, carrots, leeks and oats. In other words, food that vampires are practically allergic to. And not an EpiPen in sight. (Tasteless joke, that. Maybe I’ll dissect my morbid sense of humor in my Psych class …)
Anyway, I got very good at hiding my food. Or so I thought. For the most part, what I did was place it in my bedpan (thankfully, because I wasn’t putting anything in my body, nothing was coming out, either) and bury it in the garden when my parents slept.
This went on for a few days until my mother—the shrewd bitch that she is—asked me to join my father and her at the dinner table.
I tried to feign an excuse that I was still too weak and tired. My father even intervened in his way, asking Mother to be gentle on the poor girl who nearly died not three weeks before.
“Pish, posh,” my mother said, waving away our objections like one might chase away an enterprising bee disturbing your picnic. “She’s fine. Come, darling, sit with us.”
We both saw the resolve in my mother’s eyes and knew resistance was futile (hah—my mother was the original Borg). I continued to feign weakness and my doting father came to my side, helping me to a seat at the dinner table.
“Eat, darling,” my mother said, putting a large ladle-sized helping of boiled porridge on my plate. I could have gagged.
“No, thank you—I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense. You’ve eaten every dinner we’ve given you so far. Why is now any different?”
“All the movement,” I said. “I fear the walk from my bedroom to here has tired me. Father—will you help me back to bed?”
My father placed his hands on the table to help himself stand, as was his wont now, so that he could assist me. But before he could right himself, my mother whacked his hand with her ladle. “Sit.”
“Charlotte—what is the meaning of this?” my father said, rubbing the back of his hand.
“Our daughter claims that she was weakened by the walk from that room”—she pointed at my bedroom door—“to here. And yet, she is not too weak to bury these every night.”
Walking over to a basket near the main room’s hearth, she opened its lid, exposing all the food I had buried over the last few days. It was spoiled now, filled with maggots and worms, midges and other insects best left in the dirt.
“She has not eaten anything in ten days and yet she looks as healthy as any young lady her age.”
My father looked at the basket of food, speechless. Then he turned his gaze on me, a dawning realization darkening his face.
“But that is not all,” my mother said, walking to the window behind me. I was frozen in place, horrified but unable to will myself to stop her. She pulled open the shades and sunlight hit my back with the same physical impact a cart or bull might muster.
At that point in my transformation I had yet to be exposed to direct sunlight, my vampiric instincts having told me to avoid the light at all costs. And so when the warm rays of the early afternoon sun scalded my porcelain skin, I leapt and did something that—at the time—I did not know was possible. Cat-like claws extended from my fingers and I hung onto the ceiling of our cabin as if I were crawling on the ground.
That was not the only change the ambush of sunlight brought upon me. Now that the monster inside was exposed, it also showed its fangs. I hungered for the one substance on this good, green Earth that would sustain me.
Blood.
And below me stood two humans with enough blood for me to feast on for days.
Every muscle, fiber, thought and desire I possessed told me to leap at them. More than that—it gave me a strategy. Go for my father first—hobble him by severing his Achilles heel. Once he was down, do the same to my mother. With the two of them hobbled, take your time. Savor the drink.
You deserve it.
Truly you do.
Those were what my instincts told me; my heart, fortunately, was a very different story. What I saw below me were the two people I loved more than anything else in this world or any other. And when my eyes locked with my father’s, and I saw the pain in him, the pain caused by saving and then damning his only daughter for eternity, I knew that I could no more hurt them now than I could run into the light and end it all.
I dropped from the ceiling into a dark corner of the room and began to cry.
Nay—to say the expression of pain that came out of me was simply crying is to say that the ocean is filled with a single teaspoon of water. I didn’t simply cry. I howled. I grieved. I wailed.
I lamented.
The mind is a funny thing. In those tears I momentarily forgot why I was crying, and my thoughts were thus filled with a deeper hurt.
Why, thought I, weren’t my parents coming forth to comfort me?
That was their way. Their lot. To scoop me up when I fell, to hold me when I grieved. To love me unconditionally.
Looking up at them I saw love in my father’s eyes. I also saw confusion and hate and rage and fear. I think it was that last expression that hurt me the most. Vampire or not, I would never hurt him. Couldn’t he see that?
At least tha
t was what I believed in that moment.
In my mother’s eyes I did not see the same raw mix of emotions. Her eyes were, instead, hollow. Empty.
After a long moment, I finally managed to get my own emotions under control. “It’s not my fault,” I said.
They were the only words I could think to say.
So I chose to be silent, and we all sat in it. Blessed silence.
But the blessed are only blessed for so long before the good fortune leaves to aid another. Our blessed silence was broken by three simple words spoken by my mother.
“Cast—her—out.”
↔
Despite my mother’s commands to do so, my father did not cast me out. Not immediately. He knew that the light would burn me, and having mercy on me—or perhaps unable to reconcile his guilt for not arriving sooner and saving me from such a fate—he let me stay in the dark corner of our little, once-happy home until dark.
In that time, I sat silent. My mother paced, careful not to get too close to me. My father … my father just sat there, his eyes burning through me as if he were trying to work out the formula to an impossible equation.
I did not move from my corner for hours, even after the sun set. I suppose I had hoped that if I was quiet enough, good enough, they would let me stay.
But Hope is a fickle bitch, only gracing the very few she deems worthy. An hour after sunset, my father hobbled to my corner and offered me his hand.
“Harold,” my mother cried out, “she is not to be trusted. She’s a monster, an animal, a—”
“Enough, Charlotte!” he yelled, whipping around to face her. Then, shaking his head, loosing a tear from between closed eyelids, he whispered, “Enough.”
He held out his hand again and eventually, seeing no other choice, I took it. Gently helping me to my feet, he guided me out of the front door of a home that I once called my own. Never again, I knew.
Outside, he gave me one last look as a final tear rolled down his cheek and quietly, lovingly closed the door. With that gesture, my father made it perfectly clear.
I was no longer his daughter.
I was no longer welcome in his home.
I was a monster.
Cast out and alone, I did what any no-good creature of the night does … I sulked off into the darkness where monsters like me belonged.
And I cried some more.
Truth You Can’t Eat
“Excellent!”
My mother’s cheerful voice brought me back to the present day with a crash. She was frantically writing something down while simultaneously trying to keep the phone to her ear, hold her purse and walk toward me.
She managed her awkward multitasking quadrathlon quite well. Evidently she got what she wanted, hanging up the phone, letting it drop in her purse before handing me a piece of paper with an address on it. “I found Lizile’s address, and wonderful, wonderful news! Excellent news! She lives not six hours from here. Thank the GoneGods for small miracles, even when such things no longer exist. Six hours. We could be there by lunch!”
My mother gave me a smile like she just won the lottery.
I didn’t return it. My memories of those three words still echoed in my head.
Cast … her … out.
“We?” I asked.
That one little word wiped away the smile from my mother’s face. Attempting to save face, she rolled her eyes. “We, me, you—whatever and whoever—someone can be there by lunch.”
“So go,” I said.
I half expected some protest. Some snide retort. But instead she simply held out her hand.
I stared at it. “What?”
“The amulet—half of it, at least. I need it.”
“What? Not coming back once you retrieve the other half?”
My mother shook her head. “Best I keep going and get the whole thing to HQ. Besides, we never know when those Cherub nuts might strike again.”
“Indeed,” I said, scanning her face for some betrayal of what she was really thinking. I saw nothing and had to admit that she could possibly mean what she was saying. And yet …
Cast … her … out.
My mother continued to hold out her hand. I continued to stare.
Until eventually: “OK, Mother—I’ll give you the amulet … but you have to do something for me first.”
Another eyeroll. “What?”
I smiled. I’d finally found my ace. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet. An Other named Mergen. He’s kind of a legend around here.”
↔
Mergen was the avatar of the Turkish god of wisdom. In other words—whenever someone on Earth was lucky (or unlucky, depending on what you did) to meet one of the Turkish gods, you never got to meet the actual guy. You met their avatar.
Next best thing? Possibly. But just because you’re only meeting a god’s avatar, doesn’t make the experience any less powerful. Or weird.
And when it came to Mergen, weird was what you got. You see, Mergen didn’t eat food, drink blood or soak up sunrays for nourishment. He ate Truth—the real stuff, with a capital T.
Tell him a lie—anything, really, that wasn’t the Truth, the Whole Truth, So Help You, God—and he’d groan like he just took a sip of sour milk. Tell him the truth—the Truth—and he’d smack his lips in exquisite joy. The bigger the truth, the happier he is. Same goes for the other way.
In other words, he’s a human lie-detector.
I took my mother to the alleyway behind McGill’s bookstore, the avatar’s usual haunt. Sure enough, there was the nearly translucent, white Other sitting on a cardboard slat. He wore traditional Turkish garb that made him look like the father in Aladdin and was reading a stack of Harlequin Romances. Egya asked him about that once. Supposedly those little trashy books contained more truth about love, sex and relationships than you’d think. And judging by how plump he was these days, he was getting a lot of Truth out of this batch.
“Mother, meet Mergen.”
She looked at him, then me, before extending a careful hand. “Hello, Mr. Mergen. Pleasure to meet you.”
Mergen, instead of taking the proffered hand, groaned in dissatisfaction.
“Interesting response,” my mother whispered to me, retracting her hand.
“He’s eccentric, Mother, but he is brilliant. No one knows more about magical artifacts than he does.”
At this, he groaned again, making a “yuk” face. He knew about as much about magical items as I did. I ignored this—my mother wouldn’t know what he meant by that—pulled out the amulet half from my purse and handed it to him. “What can you make of this, Mergen?”
Mergen looked at it, confused.
“My mother says it can …” I turned to her. “How did you phrase it?”
Instead, she glanced at him dubiously. “Are you sure we can trust him?”
“With my life,” I said.
At this he smiled, smacking his lips. Which seemed to only unsettle Mother more, much to my delight.
“Very well,” she sighed. “Once activated it will help us know where the gods went and why.”
Mergen made a sour face, which my mother hopefully interpreted to mean that he, too, thought the knowledge too great for any one person to have.
“Don’t worry,” I said to him, playing along. “My mother knows people.”
“Indeed—my organization will protect it.”
At this, surprisingly, Mergen smiled.
OK—so far one in the lie column, one in the truth column. Let’s dig.
“Mother, do you have any idea how it works?”
My mother shook her head. “From what I understand, you have to ask it the right questions. It will only answer with the knowledge it possesses, but I’m told this is almost infinite.”
Mergen rubbed his tummy in satisfaction. Mother took a small step backward, as if sickened by him.
“I also know,” she went on, “that there is a difference between what you want to be true and what is actually True. It will tell
you both—and you have to decide which one you will follow. That is why it is so dangerous.”
Judging from Mergen’s pleased look, more Truth.
So far my mother was hitting it out of the park. Everything she said was true except one thing—what the amulet actually revealed. I also had proof that she knew it wouldn’t do what she told us it would … I knew this because Mergen can only tell when you are lying. If my mother actually believed the amulet possessed the knowledge of where the gods went and why, Mergen would not have reacted the way he did at her answer.
“Mergen,” I said, “any idea how it works?”
The avatar just shrugged.
“OK.” I about-faced, facing my mother, and folded my arms. “Mother, one last question … what does the amulet actually do? No more games. And no more lies.”
↔
“Darling, whatever do you mean?”
“I mean that you are lying to me … well, actually you’re telling me a lot of true stuff … but you’re lying about the knowledge the amulet possesses. It doesn’t know where the gods are, does it?”
“Darling—again, what are you talking about …?” Her voice trailed off as she looked down at Mergen. “You, ghost man … who are you?”
“Mergen. I already told you.”
“Not you, darling, him. Answer me.”
Mergen just looked up, sucking air between his teeth. It took me a long time to know how to talk to this guy. It would take my mother even long—
“My name is Charlotte Darling,” she said.
Mergen narrowed his eyes.
“Fine, my name was Charlotte McMahon, but some years after turning into a vampire, I changed it to Charlotte Darling so that my daughter and I could still have … a connection. After all, vampire or not, we were still flesh and blood.”
He smacked his lips.
“I’m a famous ballerina.”