The Feeding House

by Savill, Josh

  With that the nurse turned and left the room leaving Jack as he struggled to get his shirt on before whoever it was who was coming to visit him entered into the room, Jack knew exactly who it would be, it would be the mystery man who had saved him the man that he had wondered who he was for so long the man that hopefully held all of the answers to Jacks many questions.

  It was no surprise to Jack that moments after the nurse left the room a man dressed all in black just like Jack walked into the room, he was tall and had long combed back brown hair he seemed to be very official and had had a perfectly styled goatee. There was not a hair out of place on the man’s head he seemed very handsome and looked as though he was in his mid-thirties his eyes were the main focus point however and seemed to command respect they were a piercing blue and were the kind of eyes that seemed to look straight through you and into the very deepest recesses of who you were, you could not hide from eyes like that.

  As the man stepped into the room he placed his bowler hat down onto the table and turned to face Jack who was no longer slouching on the bed but was now sitting up intently ready to hear what this man had to say for himself.

  The man began to speak the wisdom in the sound of his voice seemed to well surpass the years that were worn on his face this did not surprise Jack however as the man was a vampire and this was often the way. “I am glad to see that you are well again you have no doubt noticed that I have been keeping a keen eye on your recovery Jack,” The man spoke with a tone of friendship “You have nothing to fear here you are more than safe my name is Isaac and I have been watching over you far longer than you think. My observations of you go back much further than just the night I saved you and it was not by chance that I was there I feel I have some explaining to do so if you feel as though you are well enough to listen I wish to continue.”

  Jack nodded in reply to the man, he had taken an instant liking to him. Isaac felt knowledgeable and level headed these were characteristics that Jack had not seen in any one for a long time now, he knew that everything was going to be fine now that he was in the company of Isaac and although he was still tired from his recovery he pulled himself together and willed Isaac to continue, evidently curiosity had got the better of him.

  Isaac was pleased to see that Jack wanted him to continue after all he had been waiting for quite a long while for a chance to finally speak face to face with him “I think it would be best before I describe to you how you got here to describe to you where exactly here is and what it is that we do here. You are in a farm house on the out skirts of Oxford. I bought this house at auction long ago when it first came on the market and since then we have converted the house and the barn into living quarters for the vampires who reside here.”

  Jack looked hesitantly at Isaac. From what he was saying it sounded as though Jack had found himself in a feeding house, surprisingly one that wasn’t in anyway linked to Dreno which was generally unheard. All the other feeding houses throughout the world were linked together in some way or another usually for safety purposes and for the swapping of humans but either way it was not impossible for a place like this to exist, Jack sat up slightly feeling as though he may have to fight his way out of this situation at a moment’s notice.

  Isaac saw the worry in Jacks face and realised the conclusion that his words had accidently brought him too. He quickly corrected himself as to diffuse the situation “Oh no my good man please relax, we are not like any other vampires you have encountered before I’m sure that you sensed something very different about both me and the nurse. There is a reason why we are in hiding in this farm house it’s because we are the resistance, we have found a way to feed without the need for human blood and unlike feeding on animal blood it is a long term solution we have found a way to cure ourselves of the thirst and as such abolish the curse of being a vampire.”

  Jacks face lit up with both joy at the thought of no longer needing to take the lives of innocent humans and with surprise after hearing that somehow these vampires had managed to do the impossible and take away the need to feed upon human Jack could not help but ask a question “Surely this is a good thing, why are you in hiding?”

  Isaac looked at him with a solemn face as if he was remembering terrible things that had happened in the past “We are in hiding because there are those who would near enough give their lives or at least the lives of many others to keep this a secret, you see in vampire society whoever controls the flow of blood controls those who flock to the feeding house and the more feeding houses you control the more powerful you become. A vampire will do anything to gain his next fix it is an urge that cannot be suppressed.”

  As soon as Jack heard this only one word came to mind, the shape of his face instantly burning itself onto his retina he could not control himself as he whispered his name in a hushed tone “Dreno,” he whispered.

  At the sound of this name Isaac looked directly into Jacks eyes. The look of knowing said it all that Jack was completely right in what he was saying. It was obvious that something had happened in the past between these two there was certainly history between them but Jack knew that for now he would just have to wait, there was only so much that could be told at one time.

  “Anyway,” said Isaac soon after a slight pause had been left to hang in the air “I am sure that you are very interested to know more about this place, its history and how it is that we feed but I am afraid that this is not what I have come to speak to you about at the moment. These are things that I shall tell you about when you have rested more and are able to walk further as I wish to show you around. The subject I have come to speak to you about however is why you are here and why I rescued you from being taken to your certain death.”

  “We had gathered intelligence about Dreno’s new plan, to have the machines that pump the endless supply of blood from children, the blood that is more pure and more refined than any other and most importantly the blood that would make sure that his followers stayed in line and do not stray from him.”

  Isaac let this sink in for a moment he had only started to speak and yet Jack had so much to take in from this and you could see that he was figuring out in his head. Just how dangerous this could be if Dreno has complete control of the blood supply to the point where vampires feel that feeding upon adult humans will not sustain the urge to feed that they feel then this would mean that Dreno would be in a position to do anything that he wanted.

  “We know however that Dreno does not just want to stop there in fact this is only the very start of his plan. Once he has gained complete control over the blood supply to the point where no one dare leave his feeding houses for fear of dying from malnutrition he will start his master plan. Dreno intends to declare war on the entire human race eradicating nearly every human alive and creating farms where children will be born and then wired up to a machine until their eventual death as you can imagine this is something that we do not intend to allow.”

  Jack thought about this for a while. He imagined the girls face the one that he had captured he remembered how she screamed in agony when she was plugged up to one of Dreno’s new machines. It was a sound that still haunted him even now the sound of her screams followed him everywhere they were unlike anything that he had heard before or would ever want to hear again. He thought about what Dreno intended, about his genocide that he intended to commit the thought of all of this sickened him to his very core he no longer just wanted to kill Dreno and rescue the girl for his sake, he now realised that there was much more at stake and plenty more people willing to fight for this cause.

  After a short pause in conversation Jack began to speak “I understand and I agree that it needs to be stopped in fact more than that it has to be stopped, but where do I fit into all of this?” he asked.

  “Jack on the night that Dreno turned you and sent you out into the world to be killed by the ones that you wanted to save he did not realise just how much of a mistake he had made. I caught wind of your attempt to try and save the young girl and
how you had killed the Chancellor of the nearby feeding house. I heard about the ceremony to turn you and from that moment on I knew that I had to follow you. I was there at the ceremony, and I was there every day you spent at the saloon I have also been keeping a keen eye on you since you left the saloon as well I would have contacted you sooner and brought you here if it wasn’t for the fact that I had to make sure,” Replied Isaac.

  “Had to make sure of what?” Jack was confused he didn’t see why Isaac couldn’t have just rescued him the day that he woke up in the saloon.

  “I had to make sure that you didn’t want to kill and feed. You see at first a lot of vampires resist the urge to kill but soon they find themselves loving it. I had to make sure that you didn’t. I wanted to know if you still cared as, horrible as it is, you had to feed in order for me to know that you would never want to do it again given the option if I had brought you here before you had fed you might have had an interest and one day it may have got the better of you. Do you understand why I had to do what I did?” Isaacs’s words sounded wise and Jack was beginning to realise that this was not uncommon for Isaac, he was indeed a very wise man.

  Jack was slightly annoyed at the concept and wished that he had never had to go through the past month and a bit with the pain and the heart ache of Missy dying in such a terrible way but he realised that it was indeed for the best and it unfortunately was the only way solemnly he replied looking down as he did so. “I understand, I know it was for the best.”

  Isaac gave Jack a look of sympathy as he smiled at him. It was almost as if he was giving Jack a small look of sympathy due to his first-hand knowledge of how hard the past month and a bit had been for him. Isaac felt as though now would be a good time to take his leave for now and allow Jack to rest up. There was still so much to tell him and although Jack was eager to learn everything Isaac had to say it would have to wait as Jack still needed his rest and Isaac had business to attend to.

  “Jack, I have to leave you for today. I have much business to attend to and you need to rest, I shall show you around tomorrow when we have more time and I shall try to answer all of your questions then but for now I hope that you rest well. You have a lot to see tomorrow.”

  Jack nodded he was deep in thought, although he didn’t want to remember anything of his past the images of the faces he had seen over the past month a bit seemed to burn themselves onto his retina making themselves inescapable. Isaac took his leave from the room, and Jack settled down in the bed again his body was weary already he could feel his eye lids becoming heavier and heavier. He soon fell into a deep slumber, the thoughts of what he had heard that day from Isaac were still running through his mind, he was exited to learn about these strange vampires.

  Meanwhile in the Oxford feeding house Dreno walked down one of the many cavernous corridors on his way to the basement. He had been given word several hours earlier that one of the tests that he had commissioned only a day or so before had begun to show some very interesting results and that he should come and look at immediately. Dreno knew instantly upon hearing the news what test it was that he had been asked to come and view. His excitement had stemmed from the thought of what would happen if he got what he wanted from this test he knew that then and only then would the blood of the children be ready to release into the general population.

  Dreno had been very clever in choosing Oxford, Mississippi’s feeding house as his test subject of choice. It wasn’t too big a feeding house as to be noticeable to the vampiric community if something went terribly wrong and equally it wasn’t too small as to be a poor choice of test subject not allowing for enough different results to come through. Of course Dreno would never tell any of the residents this fact, but then again he kept many secrets from them and this was one of the least severe.

  Dreno reached the door to the cellar and began to descend the stairs he had not been down here for a fair long while now it must have been at least a couple of weeks but the sound of the children’s never ending screams of agony that raced out of the crack in the door as soon as he opened it was a very familiar sound to him now. The harvesters had been very good at collecting these children he thought as he walked past a few of many now hooked up to his newly designed machines. It was a messy and difficult task but the harvesters really did make a good job of it. Dreno took a moment to observe a child as he sat hooked up to the machine screaming, never to be set free. Dreno took great joy in his pain and enjoyed watching the suction from the pipes, the skin around them was black from the bruising that never healed and around the outside of the bruising purple blood vessels and veins could be seen they looked strained and strung out just like their owner.

  “Welcome High Chancellor it is always a pleasure to have you visit us down here. I trust that you got my message,” The vampire that approached him wore a white overcoat and sported a smart goatee. He was a scientist and had now assumed the role of head scientist in the research of Dreno’s new machine.

  “Yes indeed I did, I am very interested to see what you have for me I trust it will be something that will progress us further towards our end result.” replied Dreno showing obvious signs of frustration. Although this scientist was the best that Dreno had worked with so far he was, never the less, sick of the seemingly endless amounts of problems that these so called professionals were encountering. Dreno neither had the patience nor the care for science to study any of their findings in depth he just wanted his machines working to the best of their ability’s as soon as possible.

  The scientist led Dreno past rows and rows of children plugged up to machines although the scientists did not know it at the time Dreno planned on releasing the new feeding method into the general population much sooner than they would recommend. Dreno had ordered the harvesters to bring in another twenty children over the past two weeks and soon he would be asking for many more. There was now nearly an even split between the old method and the new one in the cellar.

  Eventually they arrived at one of the far corners of the room, the sound of screaming was muffled at this distance at least enough so that you could hear yourself think. Over at this far end of the room an extremely curious experiment was taking place. There was a large cage that looked as though it had seen quite a lot of damage over its short period of time of being there.

  Inside this cage was a vampire who did not look like his normal self. This vampires clothes were ripped and cuts covered his arms and chest from where he had been scratching himself trying franticly to feed upon his own blood. His clothes were tattered and his face was gaunt and paler than normal. He looked washed out and near death like an addict coming off of his fix. His eyes were yellow and bloodshot and as Dreno got closer the vampire, even in his delirious state, seemed to recognise the High Chancellor and pushed his face against the bar. His behaviour was aggressive and desperate.

  The vampire stumbled with his words as he tried to speak in a pleading tone “Please, High Chancellor Dreno, your Lordship, help me. I need more I’m so close to death I can feel it, please,” the vampire was now pushing his hands out of the bars trying to grab at Dreno’s Jacket. Dreno moved away a scowl of disgust filled his face.

  “I am guessing that this is our test subject,” said Dreno to the scientist. The sarcasm in his voice was not in, any way, subtle.

  “Indeed it is sir, he as you know was originally one of the test subjects who was given the new blood from the machines or as we are now referring to it the “Pure blood” if that is ok with you of course,” Replied the scientist.

  Dreno smiled he seemed pleased with the name that the scientists had chosen. “I like that idea very much, pure blood,” Dreno seemed to contemplate over these two words for a moment “yes it’s very fitting isn’t it, I like it.”

  The scientist could not hide a smug look on his face after hearing Dreno’s reaction to the name. It was not often that anyone manages to impress the High Chancellor he continued “His supply of pure blood has been cut off for the last two days and he has b
een given only the normal blood, the one that he originally craved so much. It has shown some interesting results. He has tried feeding on himself as of yesterday, desperately trying to drink any morsel of pure blood that is left in his system. This, of course, is preposterous however as you can see he is not in his right frame of mind, I would go as far as to say that he has gone completely mad.”

  Dreno was amazed at the results, and to think this had all happened so quickly. It was as if this vampire had not drunk any blood for weeks he had become that bad. However as shocking as the results were Dreno only had one thing on his mind, he wanted to see how much control he had over his test subject.

  Dreno turned to the scientist “Bring me a vial of fresh pure blood,” the scientist nodded and went off to quickly fetch some of the blood as Dreno had ordered, upon hearing these words the vampire locked in the cage began a frenzied torrents of thanks only to be quickly silenced by Dreno as he once again looked down upon the vampire with disgust.

  Soon the scientist returned with the vial of pure blood just as Dreno had ordered he handed Dreno the vial.

  “Now, open the gate,” The scientist gave Dreno a questioning look when he heard this but once he saw that the High Chancellor was not joking he quickly pulled out the key to the cages gate and unlocked it.

  The vampire came running out and fell at Dreno’s knees thanking him once more and hugging his legs. Dreno quickly kicked the vampire off, he fell the floor but this did not seem to faze him as he quickly got back to his feet and approached Dreno once again his eyes were clearly not sure what to focus on more as they darted between Dreno and the vial of pure blood that he held in his hand.

  “Quite down now and don’t worry you shall have your precious pure blood in a moment,” said Dreno as he looked at the twitching vampire in front of him “first however you must answer me a quick few questions then you shall have your reward.”