“You saved my little boy,” the man from the bar said to me.
We conversed briefly, and I learnt that Raphael had been kidnapped and missing for weeks after the man and his wife attempted to file for a divorce, strictly prohibited by the Catholic Church, and that soon enough, the little boy was taken against his will as dowry, they believed. Truly however, Magalesti used the divorce as an alibi to mask his true intentions, to use human sacrifices in macabre rituals to invoke demonic entities, in exchange for riches in every form. I found later tangible evidence of this from textbook scraps left strewn in the streets of my coven’s city. After I departed from Raphael and his father, a soldier named Cyprian Celentano, and his mother, Jolene, I disappeared back into the forest to the vampiric part of Meytros past the fields.
The town was all but decimated, and many of the dwellings had been leveled to piles of rubble, some of them still on fire. The indications of recent deaths were overbearing. It was a cesspool of genocide. Skeletons adorned in Victorian gowns and suits, and the small bodies of children and infants were randomly strewn about. I still felt the enmity of the murderers, who had long gone ran away. The crime scene of a ghost town was gut-wrenching, especially because I knew everyone here, and I was able to recognize several of the corpses. The worst sight I did see however, were the bodies of newborn infants inside the nursery of our castle, that were defenselessly cremated during the raid. Their tiny bodies remained uncrumpled but burnt to ash, inside of their cribs, and swaddled in blankets. I couldn’t stand to look at those poor infants who weren’t even afforded a chance at life. I immediately thought once again of my unborn baby, and I sank to my knees, cursing the sky out loud from all the force exerted out of my lungs. Children, human or vampire, bared absolutely no fault to the open hatred for us from both the Dragul and the humans from above.
The crunch of leaves was approaching me and caught me during me purging my raw emotions. Much a sight for sore eyes, it was the youthful single mother, Lieutenant Raluca Kristian, and behind her, came Cain. They knelt on either side of me and we hung our arms around each other for a good long while, so grateful for each other’s comforting presence in this inferno. I sobbed uncontrollably till the point I thought I’d run out of tears. My heart was ripped away from me still reeling over the dead children that couldn’t be saved.
“We saw you die, how did you make it back?” Cain asked me.
“I really don’t know how or why. I wish I could have stayed dead,” I replied dryly, inhaling back a cry. “Where is the body of my wife? I know she died.”
“Enttu, I don’t think you’re ready to see what happened,” said Raluca, raising her eyebrows in worry.
“Take me to her, please, I’m begging you,” I said, taking her hands in mine, and gripping them tightly.
She let out a soft sigh of resignation, and the two vampires and I got up and I followed them to the street that I died in. There lay a body of a woman who I immediately presumed was Nayeru, covered head to toe in a black velvet blanket. Raluca had gently tried to stop me from uncovering her, but it was too late, and I peeled back the cover in haste. I almost fainted at the sight of the atrocity before me. Nayeru had been burned alive, just as I vaguely remembered, and was mostly a skeleton with pieces of hair and some charred flesh still attached. I knelt beside her cadaver and rested my head on her ribcage, reminiscing the time when we would lay in each other’s arms and drift off to a blissful sleep. For a moment, she truly felt alive to me, I was running my fingers through her hair and softly touched her lips and felt the contour of her hips under my palms. But it was only a reverie played out alive by the depths of my mind, which I had already halfway lost.
Sometime later, we dug up a hold in the earth and laid her to rest in the grave of her home town, at least this dignity remained. More than half of who I was went into that grave down with her, permanently. The pain had transformed me into an automaton that would eventually only have one thing in mind: vengeance. Everything and everyone I knew and loved so much, before the feeling of love faded into a phantom emotion, left me stranded on my own in this physical plane.
We found the decapitated body of my own sweet, dear Mother, who was a very benevolent, diplomatic and non-violent vampire. I suffered another mental breakdown where I shattered the marble floors of our castle in sheer rage that was the only other thing I felt to know I was still, unwantedly living. Even though this shell of mine had life, my soul ceased to exist, the man named Enttu that the entire coven regarded as their ruler, was gone. A despotic madman would emerge from the aftermath of the calamity.
Mother was buried next to my wife, in the gardens behind the castle, and so were the newborn infants that we had to handle with care to not disintegrate their fragile little corpses. We didn’t leave until every Selenian was given a proper burial in the plots of the land, wherever we could find them. Even our professors and masters who provided our people with a proper education were all but one deceased. One professor, an African American English teacher from America named Bennett Buchanan, was found hiding inside of the back of a stagecoach full of ammunition. He jumped out and threw his arms around me when he realized there were fellow Selenian survivors.
“Your majesty, we all thought you was dead! It’s so good to see you, but I reckoned you was a darn ghost for a minute there!” he exclaimed, with a twanged accent from the Southern States. He continued to ramble on, speaking so fast he stammered on a few words,
“Those other damn vampires, they ransacked the village! They destroyed damn near everything and killed almost everyone! My sweet Angie, she gone! Them ignorant bible thumpers from out there done and chop everyone to bits right in front of me! And those monsters that were coming out of those black holes, it was like the dawning of Satan fell upon us!” he said before breaking down into tears.
“Wait, what black holes, Bennett?” I asked.
“I can’t remember, they looked like doors these things were poppin’ out of! One of them things grabbed my wife and just tore her to shreds like she was a rag doll, oh it was mortifying!”
I put my arm around his shoulder, awkwardly trying to console him the best way I could, as we were all grieving for someone. Later, I would come to find out that Cain lost his wife, they had no children, and Raluca lost her two children, who were staked through the heart. I couldn’t think of anything worse happening to us than this already. It was so much, more than enough.
We left Lower Meytros once and for all, a now-abandoned ghost town, after we gathered some personal belongings and small mementos to remember our families by. We had come to agree to meet the North American coven and set sail on our own out there. We had stolen a stagecoach from the humans in Meytros near the cathedral, and used this to traverse the dense, haunted woods of Wallachia for three days and nights. Eventually, we reached the port of Constanta, and rested here until dusk fell.
We got onto a small patrol boat and untied the ropes from the bollards and heaved them back into the windlass and anchor deck, before hoisting up the sails, and steering away from the pier, into the Black Sea. I swayed back and forth just standing inside the boat from the rocking motion of the waves, and the air smelt of salt and seaweed. I soon knew what motion sickness would feel like. I was able to make it dissipate by hovering above the deck, and then taking a nap up on the mast during nightfall. When the sun would arise, we would pull down the specialized shutters to keep the rays out, and we slept until sundown, with Bennett on the sails until dusk, when I would relieve him of his duties.
When we reached the Atlantic Ocean in three days, we were confronted by a tempest maelstrom that nearly engulfed our boat in a colossal tidal wave. Salt water rained down on the forecastle and penetrated the hull of the boat, drenching us entirely. I was able to navigate us out of the storm swiftly, and then we hit still waters near Iceland, where Cain wished to depart here to stay with some distant relatives. We let him go, and kept on our course to New
York City, whose coast we approached by nightfall just right after the New Year, on January 2nd, 1895. The cold of the windchill with the freezing water temperature stung badly, and it was more severe than anything I had experienced in Romania. We docked by inside of a marina on the embankment of the Hudson River, from Manhattan, and not too far away, we had seen the brand-new Statue of Liberty, promisingly waving its torch to us, the refugees who survived. We disembarked, and snuck right past the customs agents, simply by jumping from the forecastle, and right into the corner of a street, where the remaining three of us blended right into the black-clad, peacoat and scarf wearing population.
I swept off the white flakes of snow that settled onto the shoulder pads of my black wool trench coat, and I tucked my mane of long platinum hair into a top hat, so we wouldn’t draw too much attention to ourselves. Bennett was dancing and singing with such elation in his heart to be back into his homeland, and he kept greeting random strangers. And soon enough, a man in his mid-thirties with a red mustache had approached him with a peculiar expression, and then he turned to me and Raluca as if to say something to us but spoke to Bennett. What I heard next made my blood boil red hot, I removed my coat before I was about to lay hands on the man.
“What’s are you doing on this side of town, boy? Where are your owners? I ought to turn you into the police station!”
I didn’t quite know what all this meant at time, mind you, my first language was Romanian, so I had a definite language barrier for a hot minute. But I wasn’t stupid, and I knew that Bennett was being discriminated against, as he had told me that the Civil War era here had just passed, and that black men like second class citizens. It was a concept my mind could grasp around, as to why a person’s skin color was in any way relevant to their character, and quite frankly, it disgusted me beyond belief. Growing up, the way we used the term “race” was about dhampirs, like I was, vampires, or humans. Skin color had never been a matter of conflict, as many of my Selenians came from all over the world to find refuge with us. Before the man spewed any more vitriol at Bennett, I grasped him by the throat and I pushed him up against the wall, unaware that my fangs were bared fully, and my eyes were glowing red.
“If you ever speak to my friend like that again, I will break you in half!’ I threatened him, still clutching his neck and squeezing so hard his face was turning red from being unable to breathe.
Several onlookers stared at the commotion, gasping out loud in horror, I wasn’t sure if towards me or the confrontation. Soon enough, I released the man before he fainted, and he ran away so fast as if police were after him for theft. We went on our way to find the building where the rest of my people should have been waiting for us, and we went arm in arm, singing into the cold air of night, to ward off the sorrow of everything we had just gone through.
“Oh, lonesome is the whippoorwill!” Bennett started, in his robust singing voice drawn from his belly. He pointed at me to continue, and I tried my best, with a thick Romanian accent not as graceful as Bennett’s singing ability.
“He sounds too blue to fly,”
Raluca joined us, hitting the high notes sweetly, “That misses lost the will to live,”
And in unison, we were like a walking, singing acapella mob, “We’re so lonesome we could cry!”
It was then that I realized how much I did love these two, as we had endured the worst of all nightmares that no one should have ever have to. Why? Because our fault was the fact that we were vampires, except for Bennett, and our existence couldn’t be tolerated, even if we didn’t hunt humans for food. I held this oath for years up until now, when I began to kill for justice. Raluca had lost both of her children and her husband, and sometimes, her pain conveyed right into my soul, as I too, had my daughter ripped away from me. I didn’t know where she was, but I strongly sensed she was not dead. Bennett lost his wife of twenty years which was a long time in the lifespan of a mortal. Still, it was longer than the brief seven total years I was with Nayeru, that I mistakenly thought would translate into a lifetime of bliss, we were immortal after all. We were, but nevermore. If I was to speak to any psychologist in today’s day and age, I would most certainly be diagnosed with some form of psychosis or manic depression, oh, no one knew the extents I went to cope with my infinite melancholy.
As if we could handle any more loss, when we arrived at the new building where the Selenian coven waited for us, we knocked and rang doorbells a countless amount of times. Stupidly, we stood outside for half an hour before concluding that possibly nobody was home, so we decided to break in. This is the only time in my life that I recalled drawing a blank that badly, it was an embarrassment to think about. I kicked down the door and the lock broke off, the wooden door cracking ajar slightly. This was the right place, as the address matched the one in a journal I carried in my pocket, on Wall Street, from a teacher who gave it to me before he departed a month early to organize dwelling arrangements. When we walked inside, it was completely dark except for a single, lit prayer candle sitting inside of a wooden cupboard built into the side of the brick wall. I grabbed it and lit the way for us. The atmosphere in here was just as cold as it was outside, without the blizzards slapping against me, and it smelt of decaying, damp wood. The floorboards creaked underneath my black leather dress shoes with every step I took.
The inside of the five-story dwelling was lifeless, and the silence was tangible. At the end of the first floor, into the right corner, there was a wooden staircase that led up to the rest of the four floors above us. Curious as newborn kittens, we climbed up, and searched every room for a living soul, but found none. The rays of Selene shone in through the sliver of a half-cracked window, and far below on the street, was a sea of moving bodies in suits and petticoats, and patent black stagecoaches that reflected back moonlight, as they were dragged along by horses of assorted colors. They cast their lively shadow on the white diamonds of snow.
“This place is empty, no one to be found!” exclaimed Raluca, through exasperated breaths. Bennett was roaming the fifth floor, when he came running back down quickly, and practically tugged me along back with him.
“Your majesty, you hafta see this! There’s an old man up there!”
“Oh Bennett, please just call me Enttu, I’m no different than you,”
“Well, I don’t have fangs, mister,”
We laughed at this, as he led my upstairs by my wrist, and then indeed, we found an old man in a brown leather jacket and trousers with mismatched socks, and a pipe of lit tobacco in his mouth. It was the teacher I had sent to make this arrangement, Mr. Lindon Thatcher. He was in the company of a single hand-held kerosene lamp.
“Lindon don’t be frightened, it’s just me, Enttu, and a couple of Selenians. I don’t come with good news at all. My people, almost all of them, they…”
“I already know what happened. I had a dream of fires, and bloodshed, that involved you more than anyone. And I saw you die, and I saw you rise back from the dead. You know there is an awful truth about you that you aren’t even aware of, your sole presence is causing death of everyone you know. Everyone around you dies! I really should have known better than to intermingle with you wretched bloodsuckers. I wish you would have all just died, you’re all evil!”
I was puzzled at his rant that was poisoned with what seemed like an early onset of dementia. This was not the Lindon I knew a few years back, and it did hurt to hear him say such words to me. I felt betrayed, but for the moment, I calmly tried to get to the bottom of what troubled him.
“Lindon, I have not a clue as to what in tarnation you are rambling on about, but I need for you to rest your nerves, and to calm down, and then we can sit down and talk about all of this. I understand your heartbreak, but it is not fair to be pinpointing blame onto anybody. This is a grim time for all of us,”
“Shut it with your façade of bureaucracy, you brought this upon all of us! You know damn well that vampires and humans d
on’t mix! If I had the chance, I would have killed you, before you killed me!”
“What are you….”
“My wife and son went down with that ship! All the women and children never made it here! You set them up to die!!”
“Ok Lindon, you are very much crossing the line. What do you mean about the ship sinking? You mean to say the ship that was set sail for here?”
“Culprit!! You even so grossly admit it, so casually. You sent off your own people to die!”
Lindon got up and drew out a silver revolver that he aimed straight at my face, and now I was agitated, conflicted with the choice of resorting to violence.
“Lindon, I am going to ask you once, put down the gun. It is not worth it,”
“Silver nitrate rounds will kill you mighty dead boy! I bet you didn’t know you took in a vampire hunter into your civilization! I’m the one that killed your husband, your beloved Tiberiu!”
I sensed Raluca behind me transforming into combat readiness, as her voice angrily hissed through extended fangs. Both her and Bennett were ready to fight Lindon if we had to. He cocked the weapon to remove the safety, and before I had time to react, he turned the weapon on himself, and shot himself through his open mouth. The back of his brains splattered red onto the wall behind him. His body collapsed in a heavy thud, and a pool of crimson blood poured out of his head and soaked the wooden floor under him.
We stood, in silence, with widened, crazed eyes, bewildered by the suicide that happened in front of us. I couldn’t understand what would have caused Lindon to carry through with the act, at least not at the time.
The Dhampir Dimension Page 24