19/21 (300 Years of Sin)

by Cristina M. Sburlea

  “Yes, yes there is.” said the girl still trembling. She then continued “I remember, I remember now. I remember what I did.”

  “Ava, it was nothing but a dream”

  “No, I… I did it, I killed my mother. I took the knife and struck her hard.”

  “Shhht, try to stay calm, it was only a dream.”

  “No, it was not.” she continued with tears in her eyes.

  Tudor realized she was speaking the truth. She was too scared to be making it up, but he did not move away. He calmed her and they both fell asleep.

  A bird came to the balcony of the hotel room and right then the girl opened her eyes wide and woke saying a scared “No!” She then went to the bathroom and, on the sink, there was a small plastic bottle of pills, the one given to her by the old man. She took it in her hand and took a deep look at it. “If I was capable of killing someone so close to me, how will these pills stop me from doing it again?”

  “Are you alright in there?” asked Jonathan from behind the door.

  “Yes!” said the girl as she took one of the pills and swallowed it.

  The day went by and the four individuals decided it was time to move from the hotel. Until that day, Mark had been looking for a place they could use and he found the perfect house in south-west London, in Belgravia. On that morning he received the keys to the house and the four of them moved in. There, Rene tried to think of new spells she could use on the girl, to make her remember her past lives. Tudor, on the other hand, tried to teach her methods of restraint.

  “What is this?” asked the girl.

  “This was given to me by a friend from the morgue. It is the blood of a serial killer.”

  “It smells enticing.” she continued and then grabbed the plastic bag out of the man’s hand.

  “No!” he said, taking it back. You will not drink any of it. I will open it and pour it in a cup and you will not touch it for one hour. If you succeed, then I will give some of it to you.”

  “You cannot be serious. I won’t be able to withstand the smell for so long.”

  “You have to. Remember this is all for your own good.”

  The cup was left on a table in the living room and the girl kept going round and round until, fifteen minutes into it, she rushed to the table, but Jonathan stopped her right before she could take it.

  “You failed. Now let’s start again!”

  And then thirty more minutes passed and she gave in and ran toward it, but Jonathan was quicker and stopped her another time and then said: “Again.”

  The cup was right there in the middle of the room. The girl tried to read a book to take her mind off of it. She looked through the window, she paced, but the appetite was still there.

  “Good. You passed the test!”

  “Seriously?” and she rushed to the cup but again Jonathan stopped her.

  “No! That was a trick to see if you would pass. You still had two minutes to wait.”

  “You can’t be serious. This is torture.”

  “Torture will be if you make another mistake and someone else finds you or worse, someone captures you. Now let’s go again!”

  Fifty nine minutes passed, then the sixtieth minute went by and the girl had finally been able to wait for a whole hour with the blood lying there. Jonathan then took another cup and poured a drop of the blood into it and gave it to her.

  “Is this a joke? You said you would let me drink it. I am starving here.”

  “I said I would give you some of it, now drink up because you must wait until this evening until you will feed on any blood.”

  Now she was angry, but she did not object to it as she knew she needed to exercise restraint. Once the night set, she finally received the cup and not even a drop survived on its surface. The girl sipped it all in an instant.

  “Next we will exercise restraint but not with just blood. Tomorrow you will have something else.”

  The whole house was quiet during the night and, in the morning, as she opened her eyes, the girl heard a strange noise and felt a stench. She got up and went to the living room and there her face opened in a wide smile.

  “I was not expecting to see her smile like this.” said Rene.

  “You have never seen her feed before. Trust me, this is nothing in comparison to some of the expressions I’ve seen on her face at the moment of feeding in the past.”

  “Behold the new test! This man, this Allan, has raped a child and two teenagers. He will be yours to feed on once the night comes. But try even once to come close to him and you will not feed until I decide to let you again and it might even take weeks.”

  The rapist was tied with a lofty rope and his mouth was filled with a cotton cloth so he was not able to speak or scream. His hands were placed to his back, in handcuffs, and he sat on his knees in front of the girl.

  She felt more fury and more desire to feed than ever, it was the strongest she had ever felt, well, it was the strongest she could ever remember feeling.

  “I will take huge pleasure in killing you. Children, why go after children? You know what? Even if I would not kill you, if my father would see you, he would kill you on the spot. He is a wonderful man. I was lucky to have him as a parent in this life. I do not remember much about the man who was my father in the 1800s, but I know for sure that this one would rather see you dead than alive and posing a danger to other kids.”

  In the evening, Rene asked “How is she holding up?”

  “I do not know for sure.” said Jonathan. I try to think that she did not jump to his neck until now because she is fighting the urge to kill, but I am inclined to believe that she actually enjoys seeing the man suffer.”

  “Either way, it is good that she is resisting.” added Mark.

  “I guess so.”

  An hour later, Jonathan told the girl she had passed the test and she was free to feed. She took out the cotton cloth from his mouth, she cut the rope and, while Jonathan was holding him down on his knees, the girl bit the throat of the criminal with no remorse and the feeding seemed to make her the most happy she has been in a long time. After the feed, she went and took a long relaxing bath. Jonathan incinerated the body and the pile of ash was put in a garbage bin.

  “Does this not seem odd to you?” asked Rene. “She seemed so hell bent to stop her urges and she said it felt horrible, but now she seems happy after a kill. Something is not adding up here.”

  “The important thing here is that she resisted” said Jonathan trying to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with it.

  Then she had to fight the urges for a whole week and that would be the last phase of the program. But as each day passed, the girl seemed very calm and Rene found it to be quite alarming, but both Mark and Jonathan kept saying she grew to be very calm in between kills in the past also, and that she did not fall off the wagon once so there was nothing to fear now.”

  On the last night of the week, the girl dreamed again of 1807, but also of 1795. She dreamed of her first kill.

  It was the year 1795 and the girl had barely turned 9. Her mother took her to the theater to watch a play, but during it, Ava just stared at her mother. She felt strong disgust toward her. The girl could see all the brutal acts her mother had committed. Ava did not see it before, but on that week she had only seen people burned alive for refusing to believe in her mother’s faith. She even felt the way fire was burning their skin, she heard their screams, she saw it all even when her eyes were closed. Ava tried to deny all she was feeling, but it did not work.

  During the play, Ava took her mother’s small purse and she found a knife inside, it was small, but it was sharp. Afterward, on the way back home. Ava asked her mother to come close to her so she could tell her a secret, but, as the woman, got her head close to the child’s, Ava stuck the knife right in the neck of the woman. Her mother fell on the cobblestone street and Ava kept pressing and piercing until the woman lay flat, in front of the Mayflower.

  Duke Henry Burke came out of the house r
ight when Ava was pulling the knife out of the pale neck. He then covered up the entire affair and took his child to Amara, a witch who was forced by him to perform a spell so the child could forget all the events of that night. The witch warned the duke that, one day, she might again do whatever act she had committed. She saw the gift the child had. Ava could see the sins of people. She could pierce through their soul and conscience and see their crimes. Amara also warned that the gift comes with a curse. The child will kill those who she will deem unworthy of life. The witch said that if she does not learn control, she will end up not being able to differentiate between the innocent and the guilty.”

  “No, if she forgets now, the curse is lifted and she will not kill ever again. I will do whatever it takes to not see my child walk down that road.”

  Years passed and, in 1807, a few nights after Ava remembered what had happened to her mother, she heard a burglar come into the house at night. Both her father and Lord Tudor were away. The burglar walked up the stairs and entered Ava’s room and, right then, she jumped to his neck and ripped his throat out. She drank the blood bursting out and her white dress turned red, but when she finished she was horrified. She did not scream, she did not move, she just looked and looked with hands turned red.

  Suddenly the door opened again and Lord Tudor came in and what he saw was beyond imagination. He knew what he would find before he entered the room as he could feel the smell from outside the home, but he did not know who the killer was.

  Ava turned her gaze to him and her large brown eyes looked in dismay and denial. She then looked at her hands and again at the corpse and became horrified. “No! I, I… I…” she said.

  Tudor got close, took her hands in between his palms and said: “Do not worry, I will clean this up, now go wash and change.” She then ran to the bathroom and Tudor wrapped the body in the carpet and carried it to the carriage and threw it in the Thames, but not before he left marks similar to those of wild animal bites on the burglar’s corpse, just in case someone found it and thought of murder. He then took a match and lit the carpet on fire. When he returned to the Mayflower he went into Ava’s room and she was standing on the bed still looking at her hands, but she had washed and changed.

  “What is wrong with me? What have I done? I could see his sins. I saw him killing an old couple when he entered their house and stole their jewels. He killed a mother and a child in the same attempt. You have to believe me!”

  “I believe you,” said the man taking her into his arms “I believe you, now try to rest, we will figure this out in the morning. Rest!”

  During the next day, Lord Emery told Ava about the stories of people who can see evils hanging on the conscience of people. He said that this ability comes with a desire to kill each and every one of these individuals.

  “This hunger only grows until it reaches a boiling point and from there on the appetite grows weak.” said Tudor.

  “So I will stop killing from there on?”

  “I did not say that. But you will be able to control yourself and if you kill you will only do it by choice.”

  “So I just wait until I reach that boiling point you talk about? I don’t think so. This has got to stop.”

  “Ava, there is no one in this world who knows how to deal with someone like you. We only have stories about your kind, no one alive today has ever seen one of you. The more you will feel the lust, the more you are exposing yourself to being caught. If you value your freedom as I know you do, you should stay hidden, at least until you learn to control it.”

  “As you said I value my freedom more than anything else. I have school, what about my studies? Do I just put them on hold until this is over? How long could this take?”

  “I do not know.”

  “So it could take a lifetime. Should I just hide my entire life? I don’t think so. I won’t! Besides, as you said, if someone has no fault, then they have nothing to fear.”

  “I could not agree more, but the times we live in do not grant one like us many chances?”

  “Like us?” asked the girl, noticing that he implied he is in a similar position.

  He said nothing, but then the girl went on: “Amara, the woman my father took me to when I was a child, maybe she can help with this predicament.”

  Tudor stood in silence for a moment, looking at her, as questions were clogging his brain. If she killed her mother then the duke was innocent, if he was innocent in this regard, what else could Tudor have been wrong about? Why does he not seem to be upset about Ava’s condition and he is more preoccupied with her not getting caught? And why does he keep feeling this desire to keep her safe?

  Meanwhile, a few streets away tension was growing in a small basement. A man entered and said that Bart did not get out of the house he broke into so as to steal the jewels. There were five brothers in the basement, one standing up and four sitting at a table. The man told them that he saw a lord get out and shove a rolled carpet in a carriage after. “He drove to the Thames River and I followed him and saw him dispose of Bart’s body. As the corpse was rolling into the Thames I only heard him mutter these words: ‘Ava, why did you kill him?’”.

  The people inside the basement were angered, their brother was killed. Sure he was in there with the desire to steal, but it was their brother and they needed the money he would have gained from selling the jewels. Their brother was killed and this demanded retribution.

  Back into the Mayflower, Tudor reassured Ava that he would find Amara, but when he asked her to not go to university the next day she blatantly refused.

  “Then you shall have company. Wesley is going to take you there and he will ask Professor Gutenberg if he can stay during the class as he misses his school day. Gutenberg will agree as he could never say no to anyone who wants to learn something.”

  The next day the girl, accompanied by Wesley, went to her classes, not knowing that someone had been following the carriage since she left home. Two of Bart’s brothers were on her trails and when she arrived to school, one of them went to let the others know where she was. Professor Gutenberg was delighted to see Wesley so interested in his classes so he did not refuse him the opportunity to witness him teaching for a day. When the classes ended it was already 7pm and darkness was beginning to set.

  The girl was so tired with Wesley’s nagging that she decided she needed to go back home alone so she ordered the driver to take her there, but “This time, take the short road back.” she ordered. Ava usually told him to take the longer road as it was filled with people and she liked the busy streets, but today she knew that avoidance of eye contact with others was better. After a turn right, a man came in front of the carriage and scared the horse. Another man hit the driver and killed him with a knife. Ava was pulled out by force and she again felt a hunger stronger than herself but she was up against five men with knives. As one of them tried to kill the girl, Tudor, seeming to come out of nowhere, grabbed him by the neck and pushed him aside. Three others jumped at him with knives and then he threw his hand through the chest of one of them and ripped his heart out. He grabbed one by the head and hand and bit him by the neck, pulling one of his arteries out and letting blood spring out like a river. The third man was killed with his own knife. The other two let go of Ava and ran but Tudor caught up to them and grabbed them by their coats, pushed them back and they fell. Next he twisted their heads until their necks snapped. Then the lord looked back at Ava; she had ripped out a piece of the cloth her dress was made of and handed it to him to wipe the blood off his face. Tudor heard people approaching the street, grabbed the girl by the hand and ran straight into the Mayflower avoiding any other human. Wesley also arrived there and asked what had happened.

  “Listen to me! If the police asks, say that you and Lady Ava decided to walk home and you sent the driver back alone. Tell them that you felt very stiff from sitting in that class all day and you needed to move your legs a bit. In no way can they find out that Ava was the one attacked as that would just raise a
set of questions we do not want to answer. And I told you not to leave her out of your sight.”

  “She told me she was going to use the restroom. I believed her. How was I supposed to know she would run away?”

  “You were unbelievable nagging, you wouldn’t shut up all day. I could barely listen to a word of what the professor had to say.”

  “I was there to…”

  “Enough!” interrupted Tudor. “No more, please! What’s done is done. Wesley, go to your home now. Remember: you know nothing!”

  As Wesley left, the two washed and changed and when Ava finished she barged into Tudor’s room while he was trying to get dressed.

  “Excuse me, but I am still getting dressed here.” said the man.

  “I do not remember you being a prude.” said Ava as she went to him and with her hands opened his mouth.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tudor trying to move his head away, but the girl kept holding his head close.

  “I saw your eyes getting dark, the veins of your face were swollen and blue and your teeth…” The girl could not go on, as she heard policemen approaching, and she went to the hallway leaving Tudor to finish getting dressed. He soon followed her. The police was there to give them the news: the driver was dead and so were five other men.

  “That is impossible. He said he would go buy a little gift for his wife and so he would run a bit late. He can’t be dead! He’s buying a gift.” said Ava with tears in her eyes. She was playing her part perfectly.

  “Do you know if he quarreled with anyone, if he owed anybody money or if he had any problems?” asked Terrence Smart, the one in charge of the investigation.

  “No, he was a lovely man. He had been employed by my father since 1801 and we never heard him complain of anything.”

  Terrence Smart asked a few more questions then he told Lady Ava to lock the doors tightly as a killer or several are roaming the streets of London and then the policemen left concluding that Ava and Tudor had no idea what had happened.