Our trek through the old cemetery that held the mausoleum from which I was awakened was a silent endeavor. I could feel the pinpricks each time she looked in my direction. I wondered what she thought of me now that I had avoided her advances. It was something that I could not take back but might regret for time immortal. God, how I wished I could change the past, but isn’t that every being's regret? The past.
We reached the mausoleum and again I stood at the threshold of the dead. The crypts of those who passed before us and would never rise from their slumber the way Maggie and I had. She entered first and took in the scene for the first time. She could see the pillar that I had damaged in my awkward, relatively newborn state. It was something that I imagined was common for a vampire upon their birth. The strength of ten men controlled by the muscle memory of only one man.
She moved over to the casket that I had slept in, the lid broken by my hands when I had jarred awake and felt trapped. The sensation of being buried alive and caused me to act irrationally, but who could blame me? My last memory before waking was of my attacker finishing the job he started, only scattered pieces of a puzzle laid before me to reveal what was the end of my life, what followed was made evident by my current state of being, my nocturnal, dark immortality. I carried a soul destined for the damned, and I had no idea why or how it came to be.
“This is where you slept, do you know how long you were here before you left?” she asked.
“I am not sure, it must have been only a few minutes after waking, but my concept of time was distorted compared to when I was living. I could be wrong,” I answered.
She removed the lid of the casket fully and peered inside. The plush fabric was welcoming, much like the love seat in her cabin. The velvet interior would never be appreciated by those no longer alive enough to feel it, I wondered why such things were wasted on the dead. She ran her hand along the casket walls searching with deep concentration on her face. What was she looking for?
Soon it was revealed, a secret compartment at the head of the casket, it was nothing more than a slight pocket stitched into the wall. She slit the stitching of the compartment and removed a small piece of parchment paper, the dim light of the moon barely cast its illumination into the room, but still, she read it aloud.
“For thee, darkness weeps
Her hand betrayed the day to sleep
For the world, in darkened light
Turned a wave of fearful fright
Your prejudice dreamed
The plight of schemes
To uncover ever after
Amid the haze
Her preternatural gaze
Is what you’re really after”
The poem was written by a delicate hand, the letters of the words were perfectly spaced as if they were written with care, love even. She past the paper into my own hands and I felt the fibers of it with the pads of my fingers. It was cryptic, but it was beautiful at the same time. I had absolutely no idea what it meant, but I thought that perhaps my maker had been a woman, based on the writing and the only meaning of the poem that could be withdrawn from its words. Her preternatural gaze is what I’m really after. Could that be where my answers would be found? In the gaze of a female vampire, my possible creator?
“What do you think this means?” I asked.
Maggie stood there and looked up at me as the dim light flickered in her eyes. The longing on her face was all but completely removed from her cold eyes, it was not the coldness of indifference, but the coldness of being a predator of the night. We were similar in this way, the eyes betrayed, no longer a doorway to the soul, because that no longer existed. “I think it means we are looking for the same vampire,” she said flatly. “And at this rate, we may never find answers.”
I took her last statement to mean that she had found nothing during her search prior to returning. I hoped that our luck would be different. I was not sure how I could endure this kind of existence without knowing the meaning behind it. I shuddered at the thought as Maggie turned away and placed her hand on the pillar that was cracked and had chunks missing from it.
“Let us go now and regroup. Tomorrow we will set off to find the answers that both of us are looking for, but first, we must feed.” She stepped out of the darkness of the mausoleum and into the starlit cemetery. He hair shown with highlights of gold as she walked away, my pale angel whom I had damaged so, how could I make it up to her? Perhaps I never could, even with eternity. But I knew that I would walk the earth forever in her debt, and one day I would reveal what I should have revealed last night, but was too cowardly to do so.
Chapter 12
The sun crept through the crevices of the boarded windows, shining pinpoints of light in a pattern that dotted the walls around me. It was my first sunrise in an amount of time that I could not hope to tell. Years? Had it really been years since I witnessed such a wonder? It was beyond me that I could have allowed such a sight to escape my attention. Instead, I had been intent on focusing on the bustling business of life in rural Mississippi. Everything took precedence over what was really important in life, I thought to myself. A sense of dread reminded me that it was all but too late to change it now.
I looked over my body, made fragile by the constant give and take of blood. I decided to try my luck at standing as I drew my legs underneath me and rested a hand against the tattered wall. I was surprised at the way my legs still supported my weight. I was less surprised to find that my escape was blocked by chains commonly used to secure pulpwood to a trailer. The chain links were rusted but held me in my confinement with ease. I pressed my body against the heavy oak doors, the white paint chipping as I labored against them.
They buckled just enough to allow me an easy line of site and a fresh rush of air. All else was as damned as I was, trapped in an emptiness that was too haunting and familiar. I could have cried, but there was no use in tears. Instead, I wrapped my heart around my hatred. The emotion evoked the most out of my dire circumstance. Was it my captor's fault? Was it God's? Did it matter? Not to me, not anymore. I inhaled deeply and released my breath in a huff. The wretched of God's kingdom had sent me to a life in hell.
There is a point in the night when the morning sun begins to crest the horizon in a way that the human eye cannot see. This is the only part of the morning that a vampire can gaze and enjoy without the blindness of the light overtaking them. It is a soft glow, much like a halo surrounding a streetlight, but it is a splendid wonder to partake. That was the landscape we now enjoyed, with our thirst satiated and our lithe bodies clutched to tall, dark pines, higher than I would have ever climbed as a mortal. The height of the tree struck no fear in me, the fall and even touching the ground posed no threat as it had once before.
“We should go back to the beginning,” she said. Her hand curled around the trunk of the tree, delicately touching the pine bark with her small fingers.
“What beginning?” I asked, unclear as to her reference. “We have already gone to the mausoleum and to the post office where you, yourself were made. There is no further back in our past to go.”
“What is your last vivid memory of your human life?”
I thought about it for a moment. “I was at the tree line looking for evidence. There was a string of murders that had begun around that time and I was looking for a lead to help solve the case.”
“So you were a police officer?”
“No, I was just a concerned citizen. The local law enforcement did not have the resources for twenty-four-hour investigation. I guess I thought I would try my hand at gathering evidence.”
“Were you successful?” she asked, never looking directly at me, but instead marveling at the pre-sunrise dawn.
“I imagine I was close, that was when my maker attacked me, I presume.”
“Do you think you can find this spot again?”
“I think I could, why do you ask?”
“Because if we’re going to find answers then we need as much evidence as we can find. The p
oem means nothing without something to reference it by.”
“It’s been over a century,” I said. “What kind of evidence do you think can stand the wrath of time?”
“It’s nothing physical. I am hoping that you will experience a trigger for your memory, perhaps take us to the next destination before you died.”
It was a better idea than anything I could have come up with. “What if I don’t experience a trigger?”
“Then we move on to something else, but standing in the treetops looking at the horizon will get us no closer to the truth.” She was right, “We leave after sundown, so use this time to pull as much detail from your memories of that time as you can. Preferably in the comfort of our home,” she said as she dropped herself down from the top of the tree. It was a descent slowed to a feathers pace, she landed on all fours, agile as a cat. I followed her, landing just behind her and together we stood and walked back towards the cabin as the first light of the dawn pierced the dark canvas of the sky, obscuring the starlight of the eastern sky and dulling the sheen of the moon in the west.
We closed ourselves into the cabin, surrounded by the bound books of the past and memories of another time. The comfort of the loveseat in which I claim residence welcomed me. I sat in the form fitting cushions that held me and closed my eyes. The memories would come in a dream as I drifted into the slumber of the dead. The fear of human life tickling the edge of my subconscious.
I was there again, like the first time, but my vision was better, more in tune with the darkness. I realized that my dreams brought about a memory of that night that I could not have remembered with mortal visions. In the distance, I could see the outline of a decrepit old church. Its white paint was chipped by the gnashing of rain, hail, and time. It was abused by the torrents of years and neglect. I could feel the gravel move under the gait of my captor. The clicking of his heels upon the hard concrete leading to the large oak doors of the church. And the smell of musky paper entered my mind in this vivid dream.
My eyes opened from my sleep as the sunlight fell upon my eyelids. Hours had passed during my dream and I knew that I had remembered something, but like a stirring from any dream, the details floundered and began to fall away. I mentally flailed about trying to grasp at each detail like it was a lifeline to the past. Each detail was, and all I was left with was the smell. Such a useless sense in the context of memory, but it was the only clue to reveal the secret of my past.
Chapter 13
The fascination in hopelessness was a difficult emotion to express in words. I felt condemnation more easily now, feeling as though I was now part of the fold, the accepted one. Albeit of me to ignore the sounds of what could have been my rescuers. The sound of movements in the cemetery outside brought more chills than anything else. I was more concerned with them discovering me and facing the same fate than I was of what was in store for me. It had been days since I had been graced with their presence, though a ration of human food had been left behind for me during this ‘fast’ of sorts.
The pull of the leader was falling away, but it was replaced with an ache reminiscent of heartache. That sensation best described as the ripping away of your devotion. I had experienced it only once in my mortal past, I knew that this was worse, there was a kind of finality to this feeling. I was ready to welcome death, but she would not accept me. In resignation, I succumbed to my peril and kept quiet.
The mutterings of the other humans seemed to run my internal clock to eternity. It might have been ten minutes, but it was a lifetime in my current state. As the truck pulled away, spitting loose chunks of gravel from its tires I pulled another stick of jerky from the box of junk food that had been left for me. I rationed them out as best I could, though I knew it was unnecessary. Each morning for the last four days my stock had been replenished.
It led me to believe I had a bigger purpose to these captors.
I paced the space that had once been the center aisle of the church. The faded floor boards were of stark contrast than where the pews had once been mounted. Rough patches of wood had been clumsily disrupted by crowbars and hammers as the pews had been ripped from where they had once been mounted. The splinters were the size of pencil lead. I counted five pews out of what should have been over twenty based on the marks on the floor. There were broken pieces of wood piled to one side under the tapestry of faded newspapers that lined the old windows. Several broken pieces of glass dangled from the adhesive that was applied to the paper and they swayed as the wind blew gently through those cracks.
This was the most lucid feeling that I could remember in a long time. I had plenty of time to think, to exist in this realm of waiting. I could remember most of all my fears from that night. A chill swept my body at the other memory, those of the gnashing of teeth and severing of flesh.
“Are you getting anything?” Maggie asked as we stood in approximately the same location as I remembered. There were a few changes such as the widening of the highway and a new set of houses had been built a few hundred yards away, but the same tree line stood boldly despite centuries worth of years and hardships.
“I believe it is,” I said with an assuring tone. I walked in the dim amber glow of the street light, hoping beyond hope that a detail other than a moldy smell would enter my mind. Nothing happened.
“I don’t imagine you were taken far. Perhaps we should search a few miles radius of this area to see what we find,” Maggie suggested.
“What kind of places should we look for?” I asked.
“Well if my experience from my awakening is any indication then I would go for something that was abandoned, maybe an old barn or house.”
It made sense considering she woke in a closed down post office.
“After you,” I urged, pleading for her to lead the way, I was nervous about what we might find and honestly wanted to stall the event for some peculiar reason that I could not quite put my finger on. It could have been fear of the truth, but I don’t know where I would have picked up fear of the truth.
She stepped into the dark wooded area and sniffed the air around her. A gentle breeze pushed her hair aside and carried with it the scent of her shampoo, that floral scent that I loved so much. It also carried with it something else. I could smell the radiated heat from a home’s heating unit, I could also smell the fragrance of cinnamon dancing through the air, possibly from some kind of pastry baking in an oven based on the sugary scent that accompanied it. Those were not the smells that interested me, though, it was fainter than that, a smell much older than those others. It was a smell of something almost antebellum in nature, perhaps turn of the century, twice removed.
“Do you smell that?” I asked, willing her to find that hint of fragrance wafting in the air.
“Smell what? The swamp, the baked goods, or the rat piss?” she asked playfully.
“Neither,” I said as I jutted off into the woods, careening over fallen trees laid over by storms and dying. The smell grew stronger as I hurled onto a semi-paved road that was not seen from the highway when we had first arrived. The old pavement was cracked and had deeply rooted grass and weeds sprouting every few feet from one another. Loose gravel covered several pot holes, but it no longer served their purpose, scattered about clumsily. I walked further east as the road grew darker, more ominous, more hopeful for answers.
It was about a mile and a half from where we entered the hidden road that had once been attracted traffic in its long lifetime. The old building stood, partially standing on three corners, the fourth corner had been disrupted by a falling tree that caved in that side sending planks of wood and shards of glass out into the dirt landscape. The cemetery’s wrought-iron fence did little to protect the headstones that gaped from the ground, marking the dead, the sleeping, the resting.
It was marred by sadness that I looked at this place, once full of life, and the promise of salvation. The flocks of metaphorical sheep had gathered under the roof of the building, experiencing something akin to God, maybe they fel
t His presence, maybe they just wanted to. I stepped close and the breeze met with me the fragrance that had drawn me to this place initially. The smell of moldy paper, a smell from my childhood sitting next to my grandmother in church. The old, tattered hymnals carried the old book smell and the promise of silverfish bugs that fed upon the old pages. I also remembered the smell of her lipstick and the spearmint gum that she chewed so frequently.
I stood outside that old church and gazed at it longingly, I could not deny the power that the image of the church had on me, the breeze nuzzled a small chime from the bell that sat crooked in the steeple, marking our arrival with its soft death knell. This was the place of my dream, my memory bringing me back to it. I did not yet have my answers, but I could tell that this was the place of my rebirth. This was where my mortal flesh died and I stood to walk again. This was where hell birthed its damned offspring into the world and then left it behind.
Chapter 14
The floorboards groaned slightly due to my weight as I walked over towards one of the covered windows. Boredom had taken its toll on me and I wanted to escape. Did I fear that my captors would track me down? Of course, I did, but my will to live had grown over the course of a week. Maybe it was because the vampire's blood was being replaced by my own, severing the ties that he had on me.
The window was masked with the comics section of the Clarion Ledger. Faded illustrations were barely recognizable except for the bolder printed areas. A scene of Snoopy sleeping on his doghouse, of Dennis the Menace riding his bicycle, and other images drew me into my past. I was frustrated that I could not read the word balloons on the pages, besides, this could be the last chance I had to be entertained like I was when I was a child.
That frustration was expelled as I broke the window with a hand wrapped in the fabric that once was a curtain that hung in the vestibule. The dry rotted fabric served its purpose in protecting my flesh, though my efforts were futile. I was welcomed by the appearance of burglar bars that were mounted outside of the window. The wrought-iron was seated deep into the wood of the church, and despite its age, it still held up against my attempts to break free. I sincerely doubted that anyone could break in, or in my case out, without some kind of machinery.
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