Walking Shadows

by Narrelle M. Harris

  Gary nodded. "That, or go on a killing spree. To give him something to do for the next few hundred years, he said. It's hard to tell with Alberto. He's always kept to himself here. He hasn't killed anyone for a long time. He might have said it just to make a point."

  "Mundy wouldn't let him do it anyway, would he?"

  "That's why Mundy sent me."

  Melbourne's oldest vampire didn't like the attention that came from unfettered blood-sucking. It was too troublesome in these heinous modern times.

  "Even if Alberto found someone who wanted to turn," Gary continued, "there's no guarantee they would survive the process. I don't know how many people might die before he finds someone who could make it. And who knows what they'd be like, afterwards?"

  That was another point. Gary was the only member of the undead fraternity I knew who did not habitually drink blood. Since they claim to drink it for the buzz, how long would it be before a new-made vampire decided to supplement immortality with getting to feel alive about it too.

  "I see the problem," I conceded, trying to keep the repugnance out of my tone.

  "I don't want to do it." The statement was delivered, bare and flat. "But I have to."

  "I'll help you if I can." I didn't want to either, but I didn't want to let him do this alone. If Alberto wanted to die, and planned mayhem if he didn't get his way, helping him go certainly seemed the least intolerable option.

  "No." Emphatic didn't begin to cover it.

  "Well, why did you let me come to Ballarat with you, if it wasn't so I could help somehow? You're the one who said I help you to think."

  "It, I…" He sighed unhappily. "I didn't want to be alone afterwards. I thought I'd like it if you were there."

  I placed a hand over his. "I can do that. I can be with you afterwards."

  He nodded. Rose. "I'd better get back to Alberto."

  "Yeah."

  Again, I could have let it go. Should have. Speaking of Mundy, however, had brought recent events rushing to my attention once more. Wider issues were pressing on us and Alberto, being older than Gary, might know a scrap or two of information about it.

  I returned to the shop with Gary but loitered out of the way while they put their heads together. A few visitors who had made the walk to this shop stuck their heads into the carriage area only to withdraw hurriedly. No doubt Alberto was treating them to an unwelcoming scowl. Not too many people were here yet, though. This early in the day, I guessed that the other shops and activities were more enticing than looking at static coffins and carriages at the far end of the town.

  The row of photographs I found on a shelf in the back of the shed puzzled me at first, and then disquieted me profoundly. Three photographs of women with long wavy dark hair, a wide mouth and light, sparkling eyes. It was easy to mistake them for the same person at first glance but closer inspection revealed the differences. The photos were clearly taken decades apart. The first was a sepia-toned and stiffly-posed picture of the kind you find in books about Australia's colonial history. The next was very fin-de-siecle, and the third was post-World War II and was inscribed, 'To Alberto, eternally, your loving Mary."

  Who was the first prototype, I wondered, emulated in every woman since? Were those lovely women his 'type' or did their resemblance indicate an attempt to simply replicate his first lost love? After all, he had come to live in Sovereign Hill so he could pretend his environment was unchanged from when he'd been alive.

  The thought made me sad, for Mary and for Alberto. You can't make your world stand still. All you can do is try to keep up with it every time it changes.

  "Lovely, weren't they?" came that soft, exotically accented voice in my ear.

  I jumped. Alberto, like Gary, had a very quiet tread.

  "This was Eloise." He ran the tip of his finger over the first image. "Afterwards came Clara." His trailing finger moved across the top of the photo frame, then whipped away as though the metal burned him. "I had letters once. Mice nested in the boxes and shredded all the words we sent to each other. The photographs are all I have left of them. Even the memories are fading. It is the curse of a mind that struggles to learn. Memories fade. Mary will fade too. Perhaps not for decades, but in time. They are all gone now. I cannot find it in me to seek another."

  "You can't remember them?" The idea of that made my heart shiver. If I lost my memories of Belinda, Paul and Nanna, I would really lose them forever.

  "I remember Eloise best. I knew her before I changed. Those memories still seem so very fresh. As for the others… there are snatches. Moments. Sometimes I am not certain which of them is in the memory." Then his voice hardened. "It probably doesn't really matter."

  Not knowing what to say, I said nothing.

  He scowled and turned away. "We are leaving now."

  "Wait!"

  Alberto tipped his face slightly in my direction, his expression becoming flintier still.

  "There are these guys attacking vampires in Melbourne," I blurted, "They nearly burned Thomas to death and one of them hurt Mundy. Last night they burned down Magdalene's place."

  His cold eye now encompassed Gary. Obviously, Gary had not brought up this topic.

  "Is that so?"

  "And I thought you might know something about it."

  "Such as?"

  "Is this anything to do with the hunters that drove Mundy out of Europe?"

  "Is he still telling that story?"

  "Apparently."

  "I remember Gunther," said Alberto, and it surprised me that they'd known each other, before realising that it would have been more surprising if they hadn't. There weren't so many of these guys in Melbourne that they didn't learn of each other eventually. Plus there was Mundy, with his nose in everybody's business, keeping tabs on them all. "I believe he once told me that hunters were after him as well."

  "One of the guys was at the Gold Bug. A blond boy called Abe."

  Alberto's eye glittered speculatively, like there might be something in it, then he sighed. "Gunther was a hundred years older than Mundy, and he was travelling in China at the time. The same people could not possibly have been hunting both of them. Certainly, they are not the same people now."

  "Perhaps it's more of a secret society of vampire hunters." He smirked at me. "Or something. There is a vigilante out there," I insisted.

  "And you worry about that?"

  "I worry about Gary," I admitted.

  Alberto gave Gary an 'I told you so' look, but Gary was busy looking as though it was occurring to him for the first time that he himself could be a target.

  "Good luck to you, then," said Alberto, the interest he had shown subsiding into boredom. "Time for us to go, sir."

  Gary held something weighty in his hands, half hidden behind his back so I couldn't see. "Back in a little bit," he said.

  They left. From the verandah, I watched them walk down the dirt road to the fringe of the mock town, and continue into the trees.

  They had almost vanished before dread seized me. Gary was going into the scrub to reluctantly do this terrible thing, and it made me feel sick with fear. Not of him. How could I ever be afraid of Gary? But for him. It felt wrong to let him face what he had to do all on his own.

  What if something went wrong and he couldn't think his way out of it? What if it goes exactly as planned? I couldn't imagine what afterwards would be like, for Gary or for me.

  Afraid of not knowing what was to come, and because I'm not always very bright, I followed them.

  Twenty minutes walking through even semi-tamed bush is no joke for a city girl who mistrusts the scuttling things that live in the outdoors. Poisonous things with bitey fangs that are even less particular than vampires. I fell behind, but managed to keep Gary's brightly coloured shirt in view.

  More worryingly, some element of civilization was always in view - either the dirt road through the trees, or prop tents and wooden cottages designed to extend the fantasy that this through-road was part of the 1850s. At one point I saw a
neatly laid out, life-sized diorama that I dimly recalled was used in the sound-and-light show in the evenings. Every time the trees thinned a little, the town of Ballarat was visible below the hill, with all its 21st century accoutrements.

  Alberto and Gary stopped at a scrappy corrugated iron lean-to in a tiny clearing surrounded by thick scrub. Another fake cottage was visible through the trees, but the lean-to seemed to offer sufficient shelter for the task. Alberto obviously thought so. He and Gary stood staring at the rickety structure like two road workers regarding a fascinating pot-hole.

  What was I supposed to do now? If I interrupted, would it prevent Gary doing this thing? If I stopped it, would Alberto go on a killing spree? He wanted to die; Gary had no choice but to help him. Every option made me feel sick. So I held my breath and listened.

  Gary broke the silence. "If you've changed your mind, that's okay."

  "No. I haven't." If anything, Alberto seemed at peace.

  "Do you want to do it some other time?"

  "No." Alberto stood tall. "If it were done when 'tis done, eh boy?"

  Gary looked puzzled.

  "Not up on your Shakespeare, Mr Hooper?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Maybe you are more familiar with this one: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time."

  "Um. Maybe."

  "What do they teach you people these days?"

  "I don't know. I haven't been to school since the 60s."

  "I used to teach, in these very goldfields. They took what they could get. Even a half-Chinese man." An austere pursing of his lips. "Though they were not overly enamoured of the Spaniard in me either."

  Gary made no response.

  "I was so many things. Teacher. Painter. Goldminer. Carpenter. I learned carpentry from my father in San Francisco, before I came out here, and became something even more objectionable than foreign."

  Gary dropped his gaze, obviously not wanting to look at the implement in his hand.

  "Life's but a walking shadow, boy. It used to be full of sound and fury. There isn't even that any more."

  "I don't know about that."

  "You will. When it's gone beyond your mortal lifetime and everything is strange, and your memories are fading like mist. You will be an alien in your own world."

  "I felt like that pretty much all the time I was alive, anyway."

  "Then perhaps you'll be one of those to last."

  Gary made no reply.

  "I'm ready now." Alberto positioned himself in front of a sturdy eucalyptus tree, raised his hands over his head and held onto the branches. "Give my regards to Magdalene. Tell her that I hope she burns in hell and I wish she had never made me."

  "Ahhh. Okay."

  Gary hefted the weapon, a long-bladed chisel, sharpened edges glinting in the sun. After a moment testing the weight of it, he placed his free hand against the tree trunk, above Alberto's shoulder, bracing himself. Then, with sudden speed and ferocity, he thudded the chisel into Alberto's side.

  I gasped, then swallowed the sound, afraid they'd hear me, but they were otherwise occupied.

  Alberto grunted as the broad, sharp blade sank deeply between his ribs. He slumped, though he didn't fall. His eyes, screwed shut before impact, opened.

  "Shit." Gary showed every sign of wanting to run away except the actual running. "Let me, ah…" he tried to wrest the blade free but it was stuck.

  Alberto struggled to stand straighter; that thing just sticking out of his chest.

  "Quick, boy. It hurts."

  Gary nodded dumbly. Instead of trying to remove it, he placed both hands against the handle and shoved. A good, solid crash into the chisel head and it sank more deeply into Alberto's chest. On the next strike, Alberto's body drooped against the tree trunk. Gary twisted the chisel, making a cavity. With a sickening crunch, a hole gaped in Alberto's side and Gary plunged his hand into it. His fist emerged clasping a leathery lump of flesh.

  I could almost make out the blood seething around the wound. I told myself it was shadows. Then it distinctly pooled and flowed out of the body, viscous like mercury. It slid cohesively out of the shrinking, collapsing body of the person who had once been a human being. I turned my head to follow its progress, but it sank into the earth. Gone.

  Gary staggered away, holding his hands away from his own body, as though they might turn on him next.

  I caught my breath, held it. Don't scream. Don't cry. For God's sake, don't be sick.

  That's when Gary saw me. I started towards him, stopped abruptly at the desolation I saw in his face.

  "You weren't supposed to see," he said bleakly.

  "I didn't want you to be alone." That didn't help either of us.

  Alberto's once-handsome Eurasian features hardly looked like a face any more. With the animating fluid gone, his skin was shrivelling and his body slowly caved in on itself. He looked grisly and pathetic. Gary stood unmoving, like he had turned to stone, with Alberto's dead heart in his hand.

  "What do we do now?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "What's next?"

  "I have to burn it."

  I took a deep breath. Another. It kept the horror at bay. "What do I do?"

  "You don't do anything." Gary turned away from me, crouched at the entrance of the shabby lean-to. I hovered behind him and watched him drop the heart into a hole, no doubt prepared earlier by Alberto. In the shadows, Gary splashed a small jar of blue fluid over the organ. He picked up a box of matches, struck one, and gingerly dropped it.

  The heart burst into flames. The flames arced and suddenly Gary's fingers were alight.

  I lunged for him, grabbed his hand. He pulled away.

  "Gary!" I grabbed his arm, shoved his hand under my armpit and closed my arm over it. When I let go, my T-shirt was scorched and his hand was red but not burning.

  Fluid gathered underneath his skin and repaired the damage. Gary stared at the process, transfixed. His shoulders twitched and the lines of pain around his eyes made him look like Alberto had done, before the final blow.

  "You didn't have to," I began angrily, smothering fear and distress in wrath.

  "If I haven't done it right, and he comes back…"

  "He can't come back. He's dead."

  "Not until he burns," Gary insisted, "This one time, a man, with no hands, hardly any face, burn scars all over. He made Mundy finish it. Mundy made me…"

  Gary made a concerted effort to pull himself together. "I have to be sure it's done. I promised." The words had the sting of desperation behind them.

  In the end I helped him carry Alberto's body to the lean-to and throw it onto the fire. Desiccated vampires burn fast. Flames were licking around the hollows of Alberto's eyes. The smell of charred meat was appalling.

  Alberto could not be any more dead.

  CHAPTER 9

  The body burned to ashes with surprisingly little smoke. We threw soil over the remains and collapsed the sheets of corrugated iron over the top of the dirty grey pile.

  Instead of returning through the town, Gary and I walked through bush to the fence line that surrounded the Sovereign Hill site. He helped me over the high fence then leapt down after me.

  Wordlessly, we walked back into town, stopping in an unfenced front yard to wash up as best we could with the garden hose. I worried that someone would stop us to find out why we were so dishevelled; forgetting that this was rural Victoria and that looking dishevelled was practically a dress code in some places. In any case, it was a hot day which meant that people were either inside, hiding from the heat, or had driven to cooler or more outdoorsy locales, like a football game. Rural Australians aren't keen walkers. The upshot was that nobody passed us or challenged us. We made it to the station in plenty of time to board the last morning train to Melbourne.

  The silence stretched on. I couldn't think of anything to say. My head was full of unspeakable images and half-formed questions I couldn't yet b
ring myself to ask Gary. Like "Why did Alberto want you to do this?" and "How many times have you done this before?"

  There was also the question of why Alberto had wanted to die. This ennui that I had witnessed and Gary had spoken of didn't seem to move at the same pace for everyone.

  Mundy was much older than Alberto, and he seemed to find sufficient reason to keep on going. Was it less a matter of biology and more one of attitude? Did it come hardest to those who had tried to maintain a connection with the world? Mundy was so self-interested that maybe he found his own survival fascinating enough to keep motivated on an annual basis.

  I glanced at Gary, sitting opposite me, staring out of the window, as expressionless as he could make himself.

  "So how was that, on a scale of one to 10?" When I started saying it, I thought it was going to come out light and flippant. Instead, it was sarcastic and bitter, and I realised I was furious.

  "Depends on the values of the one and the 10," he replied steadily, not looking at me.

  "Don't you go all mathgeek on me," I told him bluntly, "I can't believe what I just did out there."

  "I didn't ask you to do it." He was far from neutral, whatever he was trying to project. "I didn't tell you what was happening for a reason. You couldn't help sticking your nose in my business. You never can."

  "Was I supposed to let you get on with that alone?"

  "Yes." Gary was rarely visibly angry, but he was certainly deeply unhappy with me. My own fury flared up.

  "So this is what you do when I'm not around, is it?"

  "Lissa, I do a lot of things when you're not around. I had a so-called life long before you showed up."

  "You kill vampires." My breath caught. Fury bled away leaving behind all that the anger had been hiding. Shock. Fear. Shame.

  Gary's own anger vanished at the change in me. "Sometimes. Not often. Hardly ever, really."

  "Gary, you killed that man." And had more or less just confessed to killing others.