Halton Cray (Shadows of the World Book 1)

by N. B. Roberts

  ‘It was there in that moment, Alex, I sealed my own fate! You remember the good intentions I spoke of? I myself forged an iron link that chained me to an eternal hell!’

  Twenty-four

  THE PREMATURE BURIAL

  ‘He did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red, and blood and wine were on his hands when they found him with the dead.’

  – Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

  ‘How can I describe what I saw in that room, Alex? It was a massacre! Two blood-spattered bodies slumped on the sofa. They were as poorly dressed as me. Johan stood with his back to me, his waistcoat torn. He roared a cry of mirth as he made sport of the woman left alive, cornering her as she shook and cried. I felt sick and violent! She was begging for her life, praying with her hands and repeatedly making the sign of the crucifix.

  I ran in and grabbed a poker. I hit Johan hard across the back of the head, and I felt satisfaction at doing it. He turned as if I’d struck him with a feather, punching me here’ – Thom thumped at his chest – ‘winding me. It hurled me across the room. He came up to here on me, Alex.’ Thom held his hand horizontal at his mouth. ‘The blow confirmed what I’d begun to suspect – that he was something else. I staggered to my feet to find him tearing into the woman’s throat with his teeth, and more viciously than any wild animal. The pleasure in his expression terrified me most. The woman was dead. I could do nothing for her. Yet I grabbed the poker and ran at him again. He let the woman drop and effortlessly dodged my attempt to stab him. With a fiendish smile and stony eyes, he turned casually to the mirror over the fireplace. He stared into it as if to straighten his collar.

  ‘“You dare to interfere again?” he said evenly. “That’s not what I pay you for. What do you know of those creatures?” He pointed to the women. “Nothing! They’re nothing, but snakes!” he fumed, turning to look a second time into the mirror where a strange light grew. I don’t need to describe his reflection; you’ve seen similar for yourself. But he was proud of it, wore it like a medal.

  ‘“Do you see there, young man, in the glass–” He sneered at me. – If, Alex, I hadn’t looked upon the creature with such horror and disgust, I believe Johan would have killed me immediately. He frowned and grinned at once. “Make yourself acquainted with your preserver!”

  ‘He moved towards me. Still armed with the poker I ran round the sofa towards the door. I knew he could outmanoeuvre me, and so he did, cornering me in the hallway. He guffawed even as I sheathed one-half of the poker, hard as I could, in his stomach. After which he grabbed my hand. He twisted it until I heard and felt the bones crack, so that I was incapacitated. It was one of the most painful experiences of my existence.

  ‘With his other hand he yanked the poker from his body and flung it down. Blood oozed from him, but not like blood I’d ever seen. It was thick as mud. He’d crushed my hand to the point that I was now bleeding.

  ‘He thrust my hand into his gaping wound: disgusting! I could feel his blood mixing with mine. I can still feel it now, creeping through my veins – the very evilness in it! It felt like knives stabbing all at once within my body. I couldn’t move, scream, or cry for the pain. Instinct told me I was done for. I remember hearing his very last words to me –

  ‘“And now with the world before you!”

  ‘Everything went black. I woke in my room with the door shut and locked from the inside. My hand felt and looked normal, as if nothing had happened. I wondered if it was only a bad dream. I’d gotten used to them and the feeling they may have been real. I was sure I must have fallen asleep while originally waiting for his guests to leave. But I still wanted to get out of there! Daylight crept through my window, but I didn’t know what time it was. I knew he was in the house somewhere – sleeping, I hoped. I went straight down the stairs and peered into the dining room before I left. No bodies or bloodstains, not a cushion out of place. I fled anyway. Concerned for my family and desperate to get away from that place, I went to enquire about passage back to Ireland. A steamship was leaving that afternoon for Southampton via Cobh. I was probably the only Irishman going back. Conveniently placed at the port was a pawnbroker’s – for people like me – and the devils running it can smell the desperation on you. They can read every line in your face that says, “I have something of considerable worth, and I need to get home.”

  ‘They read me and I sold my own father’s watch for pittance. It was enough to pay for my passage, food and water for the journey. But I felt too sick to eat. I shared a cabin the size of a bathroom with three other men, none of whom spoke much English. They all eyed me strangely, and after the first day never tried to communicate with me. And they had reason to fear me.

  ‘We were eleven days at sea. For most of the journey they didn’t allow us up on deck, which suited me. The very sight of the sea had some strange effect on me, as it had never done before. I knew it wasn’t seasickness because the rolling waves and movement of the ship didn’t bother me, and never had. It was the smell and sight of that water – I hated it! With that, the agitation, and general violence I began to feel towards my cabin-mates – for no particular reason – I was sure I’d contracted rabies or something similar somehow. I wanted to hurt them but I didn’t know why. They looked different. They smelled different.

  ‘Ravenous though I was, I couldn’t stomach a thing. I forced myself to eat some bread. But far from tasting of nothing, it felt wrong and I had no desire to put it in my mouth. Food was no longer my food. I suppose if you tore a page out of that book’ – he pointed to a pile of them – ‘and ate it, you would feel something similar to what I felt then. I didn’t understand what was happening. I was sure I was dying. Yet something was stirring within me, and my cabin-mates knew it. They steered clear of me as much as they could, though it was difficult. More times than I can count I held myself back from attacking them. I don’t know how I managed it, but they survived that journey.

  ‘Once the ship docked I made my way home to Limerick, hoping to find my mother and sister there. Once I arrived I stayed back from seeing them. I feared giving them whatever disease I had. Still unable to satisfy my appetite, I had an idea to end my own misery,’ Thom sighed, shaking his head. ‘Well, Alex, let me ask you. Did you read Shakespeare in school?’

  I scoffed. ‘In my school? We weren’t lucky enough to get Jane Eyre. I’ve read some Shakespeare since.’

  ‘Do you know Hamlet’s monologue on the question of what would be better, to live or die?’

  ‘Yes – to be or not to be. I don’t know it off by heart,’ I added.

  ‘My father read it to me once. I wished then to have it in front of me, to ponder on those thoughts of his – Hamlet’s, I mean. Suddenly I found I could remember it all, word for word.’ He rested his forehead against the palm of his hand. ‘Despite the detestation I felt for the sea, I went down to the Shannon and stared over her black waters. Only she could save me now, I thought. But the river I knew well was now a stranger to me. I hated the sight of her, and she hated me in return! To my horror I found I had no reflection on her surface. She wouldn’t even acknowledge me. I thought this was an omen. Perhaps I was already so close to death, the river didn’t fear to announce it. This drove those dark thoughts from my mind. I had no more energy to keep going and I ultimately welcomed death. I slumped to the ground by the Shannon, losing the battle to breathe, my limbs already frozen with cold. I felt stripped of something, as I’m certain I died then. What followed is beyond me.

  ‘The next thing I knew, I was conscious and lying flat on my back in utter darkness. No light filtered through and yet my eyes quickly adjusted to it. I was inside a wooden box, which I soon realised was a coffin – my coffin. I could hear worms turning and insects crawling in the surrounding soil. Rats scurried aboveground. The smell of decay was everywhere. I knew I hadn’t been buried alive. I remembered taking my very last breath by the river. My body must have been found there and buried here, wherever here was. Not too deeply either in
the economical coffin reserved for poor strangers found dead.

  ‘Did it matter, I asked myself; I was clearly dead. Such was my first thought. I knew though I wasn’t a ghost – unless ghosts can alter things physically. I had a strong sensation however that I was not exactly dead, as much as I wasn’t alive. I no longer felt ill, and the idea of dying was from then as unnatural to me as the idea of breathing underwater is to you, Alex. I felt a surge of energy and a hunger so extreme that I punched a hole in the wood above me. Adrenaline, you see, is useful. Even to my kind. I woke in that coffin with the strength and speed of any regular man. I had no idea of my potential.’ Thom here got up and crossed the room fast as the tail of a comet, before returning to his seat. ‘You see? My strength, too, is practically unrestrained. But I was reborn with only the potential to achieve more – that’s all. In order to realise them, I would have to train like any athlete. None of my newfound capabilities came pre-developed. You do not pick up a guitar and just start playing a great tune without any study or practice, even if you were born with a talent. You must learn, as I had to learn, to defy gravity and the human eye. The demon is naturally lithe and durable, and I could utilise these if I dedicated myself. When hunger visited me, so did the demon, and therefore so did its abilities.

  ‘My coffin began to fill with an avalanche of soil and small rocks from the surface as I struggled to claw my way through it. The strong rich smell of the freshly turned dirt was quite pleasant, almost comforting, but it couldn’t satisfy my appetite. I left the broken box behind in the shallow earth. Using a low sturdy branch of a hawthorn tree hanging just over my grave I pulled the rest of me out. It was night, of course, my natural time: when else should I rise? I knew where I was: south of the Shannon, on higher ground. This was the kind of burial place for strangers and suicides. Other familiar unmarked mounds rested nearby. Some were laden with rocks, as mine had been, owing to superstition – to prevent the dead from rising. The place was deserted. To one side a small field ran down to an abandoned cottage. Its inhabitants had died even before I left for Boston. From where I stood, I could smell the Atlantic. Ghastly was that stench to me.

  ‘I knew I had to find people, living people, if I was to eat something. I made my way to the next village. An overwhelming urge to see my family took hold, just to see that they lived. I went to them, but found the house deserted. Amongst some debris of broken furniture, I came across a mirror: frameless and cracked through the centre. In it I saw a blurry reflection. I felt relief at first, just at seeing something of myself. When I stepped closer to it, there it was – the reflection of Johan! How it stared back at me, and moved as I did! The demon I hoped was only in a dream. Only it wasn’t Johan’s demon now, it was my very own. I fled the place horrified and into the street that I realised was now my hunting ground. That night I felt like a passenger in my own body. A surge of evilness and energy rose up within me. I did things I couldn’t help. I didn’t know it then but the demon within me that had replaced my soul, and coalesced in this body with all that remained of me, now grew restless to feed.’

  Thom paused and got up. He paced the room and recommenced heatedly: ‘Yes, I’ve killed! I’ve killed as indiscriminately as God! And yes, I will kill again. I must. The rule of eat or die doesn’t apply to me! There are two choices, Alex: consume, or be consumed.’

  I shook. I asked, ‘For human blood?’

  ‘The blood of anything else has the same effect as starving myself. It doesn’t contain what the demon wants or needs. It has a lot to do with the kill itself, the sacrifice of a human. I cannot state that the demon and I are the same being; we are not! Perhaps as you learn more you may understand why. The demon becomes desperate, frantic, and out of my control. It’s not as it is with the tiger who once tastes human blood has no delight then after for any other prey. There is no preference. There is no substitute. I have tried other ways but there are immense consequences. I’ve experienced them.

  ‘The hungrier it becomes, Alex, the more this flesh you see me in now will fade and exchange with that in the glass.’ He pointed to the window. ‘I’ve seen it working to get out. I’ve never sinned so much for vanity, or for self-restraint, or for company!’ He collapsed back in the chair and rubbed his hand over his eyes, unwilling at this point to look at me. Meanwhile I tried to remain patient, fearless, and non-judgemental. My silence came easily with this.

  ‘Once I regained control,’ he continued, ‘after the feast, my body revived, but my conscience sickened. I couldn’t risk losing myself to it again. I couldn’t allow it to consume me. Because what happens when I refuse to kill? I become a backseat passenger in this vehicle’ – he gestured to his body – ‘as it takes over the wheel, killing randomly and brutally, taking malignant delight in its actions. I witnessed it all, unable to do a thing. If I acquiesced and committed the crimes myself, at least I could be merciful! I was facing the terrifying truth of what I was. Though it burnt my throat to pray, I did it. I begged God to show me an end to it. And I was answered, in the way such things are. It would be regarded as a strange coincidence by many, but it was no such thing that I then stumbled upon–’ He jumped up again, and went off in a different tone.

  ‘But what real difference is there!’ he challenged, suppressing ire. ‘People slaughter animals for food every day, when they could survive otherwise. I have no menu, no choice! They know their sin, but would condemn me for mine.’

  He looked to me. I considered the parallel he drew between drinking the blood of the living and eating animals. Perhaps the vampire had a point.

  ‘I do what all beasts must!’ He took a step towards me.

  Naturally, I shrank back.

  ‘You recoil?’ he said. Stunned. Offended. ‘So I’m just that devil in the mirror to you now?’ His hands stretched reflexively at his sides.

  I kept still. My eyes sank. I felt horrid for it.

  He gave an exaggerated sigh and turned his face away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Thom. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Say what you feel, or what you think.’

  I inhaled deeply. ‘Do you want to drink blood?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered quickly. ‘I mean, I don’t want to be what I am. But I have that desire to drink blood.’

  ‘Do you want to drink my blood?’

  He turned to me. ‘No!’ His brow puckered. ‘No. I do not wish to take a bite out of you anymore than I wish to take a bite out of myself. You’re part of me, Alex! I couldn’t.’ He turned slightly away again and sighed.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can be alive. How does that work?’

  ‘Alex, I’m a parasite.’ His chin almost quivered. ‘I live on the lives of others. My body functions almost like yours, but uses their blood to fuel mine.’

  ‘But you can’t…’

  ‘Die?’ He turned to look at me. ‘No, I’m not aware that I can. Not by any way I know for sure.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I know of a poison that incapacitates the demon, and the host along with it. I believe that over time it might destroy it – us both, if left untreated. But it’s impossible to poison myself, and I doubt a human could do it, except perchance by cunning. I discovered this when trying to avoid being a killer. The blood of the dead is a poison that in time, without cure, I think no demon could survive. But I’ve digressed, where was I?’

  ‘In Ireland,’ I whispered.

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Yes. You were praying for a way out. You stumbled upon something.’

  ‘Ah yes, and what a paradox!’ he scoffed in a tormented tone. ‘I stumbled upon Death!’

  ‘Death?’ I reiterated. ‘Death, as in the Grim Reaper?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I thought you were just teasing that day.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘The day you pulled me from the river. You told me you thought I was going to perish in the water. You said you were expecting Death.’

  ‘I was very serious.
’

  He looked it now. His eyes locked onto mine; something distressing passed over them. He went to move towards me again.

  ‘So you stumbled upon Death.’ I looked away, but didn’t flinch this time.

  He stopped, taking the hint, and got back into his chair.

  ‘One of Life’s cruel jokes,’ he muttered. ‘Who should come face to face with Grim Death other than someone who wishes to die but cannot? And I longed to die! I’d discovered by then my mother and sister’s graves in a pauper’s cemetery. I don’t know how they– There was no one left to ask. Sickened further by this discovery I tried various ways to join them. It goes without saying they were unsuccessful attempts. They were what a mortal might try, so you can imagine that they did nothing to me. Oldwives tales at that time were about burying the dead to prevent them rising – useless to me, for I was already risen. I never discovered anything on stakes through hearts or decapitation. Much good it would have done me from what I’ve learned of myself since. How I love those ideas: one stab to the heart with a sturdy stake and we’re dust!’ He shook his head in disappointment. ‘Alex, what is it? Are you in pain?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ I shook my head, trying to hide my agony at hearing him talk that way about himself. ‘Everything you’re telling me is so otherworldly. Is it any wonder I’m affected by it all?’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘So what did you do next?’ I steered him back.

  ‘My objective was to keep the beast at bay, but to find a way to do this without grieving my conscience further. This is how I discovered what dead blood could do to me. I’d begun to wonder how it wouldn’t matter if I fed on the departed. I was dead after all. I was contemplating it when I went back to that cemetery – many of these went unblessed. I wouldn’t have been able to enter onto consecrated ground. – There I was among my own: the dead! I saw a man sobbing his heart out over the grave of a loved one. – Alex, did you hear a noise? It’s only the ranger patrolling the grounds, common at this time of night.’