“Because…..he’s full of it,” exclaimed Joel. “Seth is alive, which puts his story all out of whack. Why would he be left alive, if it were true? He’d be dead too.”
“Unless he actually killed those he told the story to,” laughed Anna. “Seth, I always thought you did have a dark side about you.”
“All the same,” added Daisy, “I don’t think we should mock anyone. Especially here, in this place. It’s eerie. Far too quiet. I don’t like it. But we agreed to be here because this is the last time we’ll all be together. Seth is right. We agreed to come here, and we did. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.”
“You’re being far too dramatic,” mocked Anna.
“We are leaving school,” said Daisy. “It’s a special time. It won’t happen again. Each moment of our lives that pass, they will never come again.”
“That’s pretty deep, my philosophical friend,” said Joel. “But I just want to hear about the stupid virgin who gets ravaged by her boyfriend, who – oops – turns out to be a vampire. Then he sacrifices her to Satan. The end. No voting. Just story telling. Make it a scary one. Now hurry up Seth, I am freezing out here.”
Seth had remained quiet. He wanted to get the details of the story absolutely right, with nothing left out. But where to start? Seth composed himself and began to tell the story. When he had finished; if he could finish – then maybe the curse would be lifted. Five candles had been lit, but already two were extinguished. Seth would have to hurry.
The Blood and the Raven
The rain hammered down, making a mockery of the road in front of the man and the woman. They made their way towards shelter, trying to stay inside the carriage as it moved at a speed they were unaccustomed to. The horseman was silent.
“Say, would you slow down a little?” asked the man.
The horseman did not reply.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Same response.
“Hmmph!” the man grunted as he sat back in his seat, and battled to keep the window shut. “Once they are paid, you don’t hear from them again.”
“Dear,” said the woman gently, but in a tone that could not hide that she had seen this behaviour from her husband in the past, “the most important thing is that we arrive safely.”
“At this rate, we will be left for dead in a ditch,” he replied. “I say! Slow down!”
The horseman finally responded to the man’s request.
“There,” said the man. “Working class type. Should be used to commands from his masters. Seems he forgot his manners.”
“Shh,” his wife urged. “He might have heard you.”
“I should jolly well hope so.”
Both the man and his wife were nearly thrown forward by the force of the carriage coming to an abrupt halt. The man shouted at the horseman, inquiring in none too discreet a fashion, as to what the hell do you think you’re doing?
The horseman said nothing, but pointed to a light in the distance.
“You’re ordering us off? You’re actually doing that? I have a lady here, don’t you know? You uneducated brutish oik! How dare you!”
“You and your lady will be welcome at The Raven,” stated the brutish oik.
“Excuse me?”
“The Raven. Or to give you its full title, The Inn of the Blood and the Raven.”
“What kind of a name is that for a place of shelter?”
“I wouldn’t know about such things, being uneducated as I am.”
With that, the horseman whipped his horses into a gallop. The man and his wife had little choice but to make their way to the strangely named inn.
“Your cousin mentioned nothing of this place,” his wife offered. “Maybe the horseman has gotten us lost.”
“Or maybe he got us to exactly where he meant to take us,” said the man ruefully. “No matter. Public houses often have unusual names. This could be one of those quirky ones. Don’t let it unsettle you, my dear.”
“I’m fine,” she replied. “In fact, it’s all rather interesting. In London, all the public houses have stock names; being called The Queens Head, or the Kings Head, or something like that.”
“Well this is the Midlands, dear. I just want to be in, then out. There’s not one reason to stay in this godforsaken place any longer than we need to.”
“What exactly do you have against the Midland folk, dear?” she asked.
He declined to answer at that particular moment in time, but ushered her through the door. The pub sign above showed the picture of a raven. No mention or illustration of blood. Just a simple looking raven.
No doubt that raven was drawn - poorly drawn, by a simple minded Midlander, thought the man.
Inside the tavern, the scene looked normal, and was at odds with the tumultuous rain that hammered down on the outside.
The stools and tables of exquisite Victorian design, were packed with well-dressed people in the main. There were a few people who could have been considered of being the uneducated variety that the man hated to be in the same room with. However, outside, there remained few options, so he elected to stay indoors.
He motioned to his wife, who sat down by the only available corner in the public house. The rain splattered by the window, which didn’t unnerve her. Actually, it reassured her – she was glad to be in from the cold, wet conditions.
Her husband was ordering some drinks at the bar. A sherry wine for his wife, an ale for himself.
His wife noticed something as the rain relentlessly pounded at the window. The rain was blood coloured. She removed her glasses, squinted her eyes, then looked again. No. She had been mistaken. Simple, pure rain water.
As well as the incessant pounding of the rain, she was sure she could hear something else. A fluttering of something - something she could not determine at that time, what it was.
“Ah, the Raven has marked you, I see,” said a man.
“I do not know you, sir,” replied the woman. “It is inappropriate for you to address a lady so.”
“That may be the case in London,” said the man. “But you are far from London. I just noticed droplets of blood on you. The Raven must have made another kill.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Raven,” replied the man. “We used to have a huge population of pigeons, and people for that matter. This pub was so named because of the beast.”
“A beast? It’s a simple bird, surely?”
“Ah, perhaps so in London. But here, the Raven has been seen in different forms. It-”
“Mr O’Mahoney, I like to make the guests welcome here. No scare stories please.”
A lady had appeared from behind the bar. She was elegantly dressed, and the woman observed that her style would not have been out of place in London’s most fashionable balls. The lady was tall, perhaps six feet tall, dark, raven like hair, coifed into a bun, with ringlets hanging either side of her prominent cheekbones.
She wore a dress the very colour of midnight, a square cut on the chest line, with the most delicate and elegant beading adorning the edge of the dress. It was an empire style; and there was no denying it was worn to make an impression.
“My name is Mariana Dreymuir, and I am the owner of this little establishment. Welcome to our pub. Make yourself at home at The Raven.”
Her accent did not sound like someone local to the Midlands, not even local to England. She extended a gloved hand to the woman, and she observed that through her slim fingers, a vice-like grip kept a hold of her. Mariana looked into the woman’s eyes, and smiled.
Their gaze was broken by the man at the bar, who had lost any sense of patience he might have had.
“I want to order drinks, if you have finished interrupting my wife’s evening,” he said curtly.
His wife looked on in horror at him. “Don’t be so rude, dear. This is -”
She paused, and looked sheepishly around her, before returning her gaze towards the lady. “I’m so sorry, I forgot your name.”
“Mariana.�
�� She smiled the kind of smile that could melt the coldest of souls. That accent? Where was it from? The woman could not place it.
“I am so sorry,” she said to the man. “Tonight is our busiest night, and of course, our population has increased by two this evening.”
Nervous sniggers filled the room. Mariana continued to put the man at ease, not shaking his hand, but lightly touching his arm. She was taller than him by a good four inches. The man, also lost in her gaze, tempered his annoyance somewhat, almost to the point that he was embarrassed by his actions.
“It-it-it’s me who should apologise,” he stammered, but fought to control it. “My wife and I have travelled from London, the weather was most terrible, and we happened upon your wonderful establishment.”
“And you are most welcome,” said Mariana. “Please be seated. Enhance our evening with your presence!”
She clapped her hands abruptly, like one of those Spanish flamenco dancers.
“Juliana! Come down here now! We have new guests!”
“Aye, and new blood too!” said a voice. More sniggering from amongst the group. The man finally took his place next to his wife, and looked around to see who was sniggering. His wife noticed his discomfort, patted his arm gently, and he slunk back into the seat, trying not to be noticed. He also tried not to look back at the beautiful landlady, Mariana.
He had been married to his young wife for three years. She was eighteen at the time, whilst he was forty-four. Now she was twenty-one, the difference didn’t seem so bad. Plus, with her headscarf and glasses, she looked older than she was. He had encouraged her use of the word ‘dear’ to further engender this view.
Mariana. She invaded his thoughts. She looked about his age – forty-seven, but did she look good for her age. No real visible signs of wrinkles, no greying hair, piercing brown eyes. And then, there was that dress, that clung effortlessly around her curves. Her being tall just accentuated the whole, mesmerising vision. She had an essence, a strange, alluring scent coming from her too.
Upstairs, Juliana stirred slowly from her slumber. Something had tried to wake her before her mother called for her to work at the bar. The raven, which perched on her window sill, flapped its wings, once, twice, three times, before swooping downward, out of view, and killing something. A bird. A cat. A human.
Then, it would resume its place on the window sill. No amount of ‘shoo-ing’ would remove it. Juliana didn’t care for the bird at all. But it tried so hard to get into her favour, tap-tapping on the window with its beak.
Some nights, Juliana would wake with a start, as the raven would have something in its mouth. The neck of a small bird, which it would crush with its powerful hooked beak. The fur and bloody tissue of some animal it had killed. Tonight, it was a finger. A human finger.
Juliana sprung from her bed and hurriedly closed the curtains.
“Go away, wretched bird!”
The raven disgusted her. She had even asked her mother to change the name of the pub, which had been met with girlish sniggering. From a woman of her years, that was quite something. Then again, her mother often reminded Juliana, who could pass for a young woman of eighteen summers, not to forget her inner child.
She had also told Juliana, in no uncertain terms, to leave the raven alone.
She threw a simple tunic over her dress, and ran downstairs.
“Juliana,” said her mother warmly, and embraced her. “We have new guests. Please tend to them. An ale for the gentleman, and a sherry for his lovely young wife.”
“But I didn’t say what drinks I wanted,” offered the man.
“Oh, you look like an ale man,” smiled Mariana. “As for your wife, she looks too young for gin. But we can get you whatever you would like.”
“How about Hung, Drawn and Portered?” shouted a voice amongst the crowd.
“Yeah, and a Raven’s Blood for the lady!” shouted another. The sniggers had become laughter, uncomfortable to the man, but Mariana continued her smile as if she had not heard a thing.
“An ale,” ordered Mariana. “Gorgon’s Blood, and a Pitcher’s sherry for the lady. Make sure it is a lady’s glass.”
“Yes ma’am,” replied Juliana courteously.
With the drinks warming their throats and bellies, the couple began to relax. “I say,” said the man, “this is excellent – a really excellent brew. Where do you brew this? I should like to visit there one day.”
“Derbyshire,” replied Mariana, who worked other tables in the pub, but returned on frequent occasions to their table. “It is about an hour and a half from here, as the crow flies.”
“Even quicker if it is the raven doing the flying,” laughed a voice.
The man looked around to see who was laughing, but it was so hard to tell. Every one of the punters appeared to be looking the other way. It was most disconcerting to the man, but he decided to think no more of it.
Juliana brought the drinks over. The woman observed her on approach, and was almost transfixed by the girl’s appearance, who perhaps was a similar age to herself.
Juliana placed the drinks on the table, and to the woman’s surprise, sat next to her. “I hope you’re enjoying your stay. You are strangers to this town. You would do well to stay the night, now the hour is late.”
The woman thought Juliana spoke very eloquently for someone of her years; the thought that Juliana was like an old woman in a young girl’s body did cross her mind.
“We haven’t decided yet,” replied the woman. She gave her husband a nudge, whose gaze was being held by Mariana, who had returned to the bar. “Have we, dear?”
“No,” he said, rather absent-mindedly. Turning to Juliana, he ventured the question that was in his mind. “Say, young lady. There is a lot of chittering about the raven and so on. Do the locals want to upset us for some reason?”
His wife thought it rather forward of him to ask. At the same time, she believed it to be a fair enough question. Juliana leaned forward, as if she was going to answer, then sat back again. She placed a hand underneath her chin, continuing to gaze at the woman.
“Chittering?” replied Juliana, after what seemed like an age. “Cats chitter, but not people, and certainly not ravens!”
“I meant no disrespect,” said the man. “We are from London, you know.”
His wife dropped her head forward in disbelief. As if this Juliana would not know that!
“Many of the punters drink more than they should, and so, speak more than they should,” offered Juliana simply. “They mean no disrespect either. Just men, being men. Please, take your time with your drinks. I will bring you more shortly. Then I will show you to your rooms.”
“Excuse me? Rooms?” exclaimed the man. “We are married. We require one room only.”
“Your ways, those of London, are perhaps not our ways,” said Juliana cryptically. “Here, a lady stays with her maid. She will not lie with any man, not even her husband.”
“Preposterous!” The man’s voice raised to a shout. “Dear, we are leaving.”
The woman said she did not feel well, but her husband was insistent. He hurried his wife into her coat, and pushed her towards the door. She claimed that she could see dots in front of her eyes. As she lapsed into a standing faint, she claimed the dots were in fact eyes. Black eyes.
“The eyes of the raven,” she murmured.
Juliana said no more, but returned to behind the bar, with the lady’s glass in her hand. “Sorry, mother. They left, despite my best intentions.”
Mariana propped her daughter’s head up by placing her fingers under her chin. “They have left. For now.”
Outside, the rain which had showed no sign of stopping, had worsened since the man and his wife had been inside the Blood and the Raven.
“Damned place,” the man said, covering his head from the rain as much as he could, Then, his expensive hat blew away as a strong gust of wind rose out of nowhere. He found he could not cradle his wife and keep his head protected at the same time.<
br />
He shouted out in the darkness for a carriage. The wind howled, the rain hammered, the icy night bit, and bit hard. At least the cold kept his wife from collapsing.
To his amazement, a four-horse carriage appeared, led by a figure in black.
“Take us to…..Derbyshire,” said the man, “and away from this cursed place!”
The figure said nothing, and the man ushered his wife into the carriage. As soon as they were inside, the horses broke into a gallop uncomfortable for the man, and he was about to complain about that to his wife, when she spoke ahead of him.
Three Tales of Vampires (The First Three Books in the Tale of Vampires Series) Page 6