by Phil Wohl
Blood Shadow
The Vampire Hartwell
Phil Wohl
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2015 Phil Wohl
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PROLOGUE
My name is Thomas Hartwell and I am a vampire. Saying that after over a century as a blood shadow doesn’t make it any less shocking, even though I have spent more time on this earth as a blessed one than a mortal. The 100 years, or so, was pure torture, except for the random acts of blood-letting and violence that made me one of the most feared disruptive forces of my generation.
My story and the story of my family has been told before, but I thought it was important to fill in the gaps of the journey from my perspective—an autobiographical look if you will—from the very beginning in San Francisco to the time I hit the shores of Beach Haven, New York.
This account will serve as an extended therapy session for a creature purported to exist without a soul. But I will let you in on a little secret: we have evolved greatly over the years and now have a heightened sense of self-awareness and genuine care for others around us (if we like them). You know what happens to people who we don’t like, or threaten the very safety of family: they become little more than a blood snack in a long line of people whose veins have been opened by my razor-sharp fangs. I wish I was a pacifist, but that’s what comes with being a head of the household: protection is my gift.
LOSS
It was 1902, and the Barbary Plague—not-so-affectionately called
The Black Death—was sweeping through Victorian San Francisco. The disease started in Chinatown and spread throughout the city like a raging wildfire. Four out of five people who contracted the disease died within eight days, while the survivors had to deal with being prime healthy targets for a mass of blood-thirsty predators.
I was living in the lap of luxury in San Francisco with my wife Marjorie, or Maggie as she liked to be called, and my eight year-old son, Nathaniel. It was a radical change from the destitute life I was experiencing before Maggie came into my life. Chasing riches in the competitive times that was the gold rush left me with few options other than dying in poverty or robbing a bank such as the San Francisco National Bank. In fact, I was casing the joint out for a few weeks because the gold thing didn’t appear to panning out.
It became apparent to me in just a short time that the bank was most vulnerable just about closing time. All other times of the day there were two guards on duty, but at closing there was just one guard who liked to call it quits a few minutes early each day. I walked into the bank a couple of ticks before 5:00 p.m. one day, and saw a woman with her back to him me when I asked, “Excuse me ma'am, what time do you close?”
This woman, this creature from the heavens turned around in all of her shapely, blonde-haired splendor and looked at the large-round clock with her huge blue eyes and replied, “Five-o’clock, sir.”
I had never seen this woman face to face and when our eyes locked, I literally froze in my boots and finally saw my future standing in front of me. I was so poor that I slept wherever I could, which often meant outside, and my clothes and boots had many holes in them. I need money so badly but I quickly figured that a major hurdle to spending the rest of my life with this woman would be if I robbed her bank. I also thought that this was the first time she noticed me, but I must have been the worst bank robber of all time because she knew who I was and why I was there.
This woman seemed too prominent, so important, that it was doubtful that she would fall for a reckless loser. She tried not to play into my trap by asking, “Is there anything else?” while she jiggled a ring of keys in her hand. “It’s closing time.”
I looked deep into her big blue eyes and wanted to say, “I would like to take you out to dinner when I come into some money,” but I didn’t know when or if that would ever happen. I did look deep into Marjorie Carter’s eyes, she being my long-widowed, 26 year-old angel. Maggie had the blatant misfortune of going through a miscarriage and losing her husband in the same year. The shock of the cumulative setbacks left her basically dormant for six years, as she sorted through the emotional wreckage while working as a bank secretary At the San Francisco National Bank.
“I am sorry I wasted your time,” I said and bowed my head in shame.
She must have seen something in my eyes that resembled a decent human being because she replied, “I don’t think you could ever waste my time, Thomas, unless you came in here to rob us.”
I’m still not sure how she knew my name, but I felt such a surge of energy from what she said that it propelled me to make a better life, and turn into the person she thought I could be, so we could be together. It was this renewed sense of purpose that made me pan through a gold in a site I had combed at least a dozen times, a body of water that was eventually tagged with the name Hartwell Brook. I had hit the jackpot only a month after everything seemed lost when I walked into that bank and a guardian angel saved me from taking a wrong turn.
I became a millionaire just before the turn of the century, in a time when there was scarce few men of such wealth in the country. My relationship history before I became established was what you could call sparse, with only the most drunk of females sharing time and space with me. We settled down at the ripe age of 34, which is akin to about 54 years old in modern times. Of course, there were many women lined up to get a shot at my fortune, but I only had eyes for Maggie, and thankfully she felt the same way about me.
We wasted little time having a baby once we were married a few months later, and were blessed with a strong son named Nathaniel. The eight years we spent together as an inseparable trio were by far the best of my life, as we traveled both north and south to view the magnificence of the Pacific Northwest and their southern neighbors.
Years spent building a fortress of love and fulfillment all came tumbling down one day when news of a great plague filtered through our West Coast community. This blackest of plagues didn’t discriminate when it came to touching lives of both the rich and poor. People were dropping like flies and I started making plans to get out of the Bay area when Maggie came to me and said, “I feel a little achy and slow today. I’m having trouble getting going.”
That same morning, Nathaniel was running an abnormally-high temperature and was literally sweating through the sheets. Eight days later, my wife and son were both gone, taken by a disease that ate them up and spit them out. The whole thing left me in a bad dream-like state as I took to the cobblestone streets, demanding an explanation from the heavens for giving me everything and then taking it away. The pain and anguish I was suffering was far greater than any mental challenges I had experienced previously. While I probably should have been grateful for the time we all got to spend together, and how blessed I truly was to live such a life, I was dropped on the dark side and really saw no way to escape into the light.
People were running frantically throughout the streets—some were escaping the disease, while others were trying to avoid the deadly bite of a creature just as devastating as any disease. I had other thoughts that centered on putting me out my misery and joining my family ion the next world. There was nothing left for me in San Francisco or any other place in the new world, or at least that’s what I thought.
BRIDGE
I can’t even remember how long I was out walking the streets. It had been a we
ek since I had slept and I had gone more than a day since thinking of food or vital sustenance. I walked back on my house, somehow finding the place by muscle memory, and started to hallucinate that Maggie and Nathaniel were sitting on the coach talking to me.
“Thomas, join us,” Maggie said. “We can all be together in this world if you choose to do what has to be done.”
They both looked healthy again, so I asked, “How are you both feeling. You appear to have made a full recovery!” It was the most hopeful moment I had experienced in some time. “Are you back? Can we resume our wonderful life together now?”
Maggie replied, “We are not really here, Thomas. We have passed on to next world and that is the only place you can be with us.”
“You need to get that gun you hid in the back of the closet in the holster,” Nathaniel said.
“How did you know about that?!” I asked worried for my young son’s safety. “Did you ever touch it?”
“No, father. I am a good son,” Nathaniel replied.
“Yes, you are a good son,” I replied and then walked over to touch and hug my family but they were gone. “What the…” I started saying because the image had convinced me that it was corporeal in nature.
And then I heard Maggie’s voice in the distance, “Hurry, Thomas! You’re running out of time…”
“Maggie! Nathaniel!” I yelled and there was no response, which led me to act instead of feeling sorrow for losing them again.
I ran into my bedroom and dove into the far recesses of the closet’s top shelf, where my pistol was still holstered. There were no bullets in the gun, which gave me great comfort that I hadn’t put my son in harm’s way just as I thought. But then I realized that I was going to pick up the gun and aim it at my head, that I needed at least one bullet to accomplish this feat. It was my wisdom that made me place the gun and bullets in separate locations in order to diffuse the situation in case my wife and son found the firearm. My mind was so clouded that I hadn’t the foggiest idea where I had hidden the bullets, so I yelled, “Where are the bullets?!!!”
My wife and son continued the hallucination by standing near a dresser set of drawers, “You put them in the back of your sock drawer, Thomas,” Maggie said as they pointed to the location. “Hurry!” Nathaniel added as the faded out again, much to my frustration. I ran over to the dark wood dresser and opened the drawer, throwing socks in the air behind me until I came onto the box of bullets. It had been a while, at least eight years, since I had loaded a gun, so I nervously and unsteadily tried to fit the bullets in a chamber with little success until a voice inside me said, “It only take one.”
I must have been walking while I was trying to load the gun, and when I finally got one in the chamber I was standing near the front door. I lifted the gun toward my head without hesitation until I heard someone pounding on my front door, which temporarily stopped me from completing the task.
“Please go away!” I yelled as I continued to raise the heavy gun until it was pointed at my head.
“Don’t do it,” the voice calmly said from the other side of the door. “I have a way that you will be able to see your wife and son again.”
Before that knock on my door, I felt that I had run out of options. But now I had a choice: either blow my brains out and potentially be with my family, or listen to the voice on the other side of the door promising full restitution. I decided to walk toward the door as I lowered the gun to my side, “How do I know you’re not one of vile things that bite people?”
“I’m offended,” the man said. “How do I know that you’re not lousy with the plague?”
I nodded my head in understanding, “Well, how can I get my family back?” I asked as I lodged the gun against the door.
The man literally wasn’t born yesterday, “You’re going to have to let me in to find that out, Thomas Hartwell. What other choice do you have?”
I chose to reflect briefly on the sordid events of my life and then looked over at the loaded gun. My decision was to open the door, “Okay, you can come in,” which unlocked my last seal of protection in the mortal world.
I kept a tight grip on the gun as the distinguished-looking gentleman walked in slowly, hardly befitted the demeanor or aggressive tendencies of a savage beast. The man’s beige wool, three-piece suit, well-groomed mustache, and classic bowler hat that he removed and held in his hand, lessened my anxiety as it had for the hundreds of his unsuspecting victims. He then conveyed the mental message, “You can put the gun away. We are all friends here.”
So I put the gun in the top drawer of my rolling desk and asked, “Can I get you anything, friend? I’m going to put up some tea.”
The man reached down into his vest pocket and pulled out a gold pocket watch, which he had picked up along the way. He opened the engraved latch and realized that his window of opportunity was closing fast. The hunters were tracking his scent and would be closing in within minutes.
I walked back into the room and was instructed to sit next to the man on the couch.
“My name is Alexander Lowery and I am here to offer you eternal life.” Lowery thought for a moment and then decided to slightly alter his claim, “In any event, you can last pretty long if you eat people on a high fiber diet and do your best to avoid those persistent hunters.”
I took in the information but wasn’t really caring about my well-being or life at that point, “What about my wife and son?”
Lowery’s hair was slicked back and finely combed as he stroked his mustache before speaking in a dramatic tone, “Your boy shall rise again on the moon of the new century. Oh, and your wife should be along in another eight to 10 moons after that.”
I was confused be the reference, “How long is a moon?”
Lowery replied, “A moon is about a year in most circles, give or take a few months. In Germany…” he started before screams and heavy bangs could be heard in the street below.
That’s when I first met Abraham Ellison, Lowery’s protector, a muscular fellow wearing a finely-tailored suit who burst into the room, "My food fellow, you might want to speed things up a bit!”
Lowery’s eyes transformed from brown to orange and razor-sharp fangs sprouted from the upper and lower portions of his mouth, as he ferociously bit into the right side of my neck. Conflicting emotions flooded my clouded brain, as I was horrified and totally intrigued at the same time. He must have put some sort of mind-whammy on me, because I thought my brain was telling my being to run but I sat motionless.
The searing pain I initially felt was replaced by the euphoria of seeing my wife and son smiling and waving at me near a large back of windows to my left. As I started fading out, their images shifted from a form that I knew to another version of dress that I was not familiar with.
Lowery quickly drained my blood and then opened the vein on his right wrist to keep me from dying, “No, not just yet. You have some work to do before you see them.”
I instinctively drank the blood from Lowery’s wrist as if I was a baby and he was holding a bottle. Only this ‘formula’ was my bridge from mortality to immortality, from man to blood-thirsty monster.
“Two other things,” Lowery said. “I dripped a little blood – clumsy me – on the couch, so you might want to treat that when you come to. And, the second thing is, and this one’s real important, so get your hearing shoes on – after you die 100 times you become mortal again.”
There was a huge thump on the front door of the building and Lowery hastened to finish the job, as his ally rushed toward his side.
“Good luck, Hartwell,” he said, as he removed his arm from near my mouth and then snapped my neck, all in one motion.
“We have to go,” the Ellison said to Lowery, as I dropped lifeless to the floor. Lowery and his Ellison knew the front of the building would be blocked so they slipped out of an open window and into the sky, narrowly escaping a group of aggressive hunters that burst into the room.
The San Francisco plague had taken its toll o
n the vampire population. By the time Lowery had me for dinner, the fanged ranks had been trimmed from thousands to mere hundreds. My turning was more a part of an informal drive to recruit new blood, than a merciful act performed by a compassionate beast.
The Black Death, while lethal to mortals, also had a significant impact on the vampire community. Death was an outcome seen in 44 percent of the vampires, but there were a few cases where vampires were killed for the 100th time and then contracted the disease, opening their intricate immune systems to the unstoppable force. There were also many instances when vampires lost a strength, or two, such as chain-saw-sharp teeth or the ability to fly. It was definitely the worst of times in the City by the Bay.
REBORN
The hunters that were tracking Lowery burst into my house in San Francisco and found me dead in a pool of my own blood on the floor between the couch and the coffee table in the living room, or parlor as they called it at the turn of the century.
The male hunter put his fingers on my broken and bloodied neck and said, “This one’s as dead as a cricket run over by a carriage.”
The female hunter asked, “Do you think he turned him?”
He moved his lantern close to my mouth and took a look inside, while also getting a good sniff.
“His smell is everywhere, but there is no sign of blood,” the mountain- of-a-man said as he let my head fall to the floor. “I say he didn’t have time. Let’s get going before we get too far behind.
So the hunters left the house and I lay dormant for another few hours before the darkness of the night permeated the room. At which time, the brute force and potency of Lowery’s blood coursed through my veins and worked to repair and upgrade my lifeless body.
In the days before computers, I was essentially swapping my basic PC hard drive for the size, speed, and massive processing power of a mainframe computer. But the transformation was a gradual process, as I quickly found out when my eyes opened and the new world was simply black.