by Amy Cross
She looks like me. Not completely, but just enough for the similarity to be striking.
Crouching next to her, I nudge her shoulder, hoping to wake her. She doesn't stir, of course, but when I check the side of her neck I'm just about able to feel a pulse, even though I can tell she's weak. A moment later, sensing movement nearby, I turn and see a woman walking toward us. She seems familiar too, even though I have no idea where I've seen her before, and she ignores me as she crouches next to the girl. Snow falls between us as I watch the woman's face, and I can see an expression of absolute love in her eyes as she strokes the girl's cheek, the kind of love that I've never felt in my own life. And then, still ignoring me, the woman takes the girl into her arms and picks her up.
“Who are you?” I ask.
She doesn't answer.
She never answers.
I don't think she even knows that I exist.
Getting to my feet, I follow as the woman carries the girl across the rocky landscape. Eventually I spot a building in the distance, barely visible as snow continues to fall, and a few minutes later we reach the edge of a huge green garden. The snow has stopped now, and I follow the woman as she takes the girl to one of the doors, where another, older woman is waiting to usher them inside. When I try to enter the mansion with them, however, the older woman steps in front of me, barring my way and letting me know with just the look in her eyes that I'm not allowed to go inside.
“Why not?” I ask.
No reply.
“Who are they?” I continue. “What is this place?”
“You have no right to be here,” she tells me, almost as if my presence disgusts her. “You are not welcome. You are not part of this.”
“Not part of what?”
“Go back and live your life in the shadows,” she replies, pushing the door shut and leaving me trapped outside. “Never think of this place again,” she calls to me. “Gothos is not for you.”
With that, she pulls a curtain across the door, and all I can do is take a step back and look up at the mansion's windows. There are lights up there in some of the rooms, but even though I have no idea where I am, I can't shake the feeling that somehow I should know, that I belong here.
“Gothos,” I whisper. “What does that -”
Suddenly there's a vast burst of light from over my shoulder, followed a fraction of a second later by the sound of an explosion. The ground shakes and I fall against the door before turning and seeing to my horror that the rocky landscape is now filled with thousands of figures, and as if from nowhere a vast battle has erupted. There are screams and cries, and I see dead and dying figures sprawled everywhere, their blood soaking into the ground. High above, the sky has become an inferno, with huge shadows rippling from horizon to horizon. Once or twice I see huge, thin legs rising from the flames, as if giant spiders are edging closer across the landscape. The whole scene is chaotic, yet somehow I feel as if there's a point of order in there still, something that's drawing my attention.
And then I see him.
Far away, there's a dark figure standing in the heart of the battle. He has his back to me, but I'm filled with the overwhelming sense that I know this figure, that somehow we're connected. I take a step forward and I want to call out, but I don't even know his name. After a moment, however, I realize that maybe I know a name that would be appropriate, even though I don't know if it's possible.
Finally, I have to call to him.
“Father!”
I wait, but the figure still has his back to me.
“Father!” I shout again.
This time, the figure starts to turn, and I see the side of his face as -
Gasping, I sit up on the bed and find that I'm back in my tiny apartment in the suburbs, with the window open and the sound of cars passing in the street. For a moment, my whole body trembles with the memory of that dream, and I start to realize that this time something was different. Usually, the man doesn't turn to me; the dream simply goes on and on, and I race through the battlefield in a desperate attempt to reach the man I believe to be my father; this time, however, something must have stirred me, but as I look around the room I can't work out what could possibly have caused me to wake up.
A moment later, someone knocks on the door.
“Hello?” I call out.
No reply.
I hesitate for a moment, before getting up from the bed and taking a moment to check my appearance in the mirror above the sink. Heading over to the door, I pull the three chains aside and turn the key, and then I pull the door open only to find that the woman from the library is waiting outside, smiling at me.
“Pleasant nightmare?” she asks, raising an amused eyebrow.
“I -”
“Please don't think that I'm being pushy,” she continues, smiling as she looks past me and sees my open sketchbook on the bed, “but I don't have all the time in the world, and I'm afraid I have to insist that you accept my dinner invitation. After all, you want to know about Gothos, don't you?”
Abby Hart
“Fifteen Morningside Crescent,” I mutter, as I reach out and ring the doorbell. Turning, I look along the quiet little suburban street. “It's hard to imagine someone like Emilia ever living here. It's so... ordinary.”
“According to this, she was in the process of being adopted by the Vaughn family when the orphanage was shut down.” He holds up the piece of paperwork he found in an old, un-emptied trashcan back in the orphanage's main office. “I figure the adoption probably still went through.”
Hearing footsteps inside the house, I turn and see a woman coming to answer the door.
“Can I help you?” she asks cautiously, and I'm immediately struck by a sense of extreme nervousness in her manner, almost as if she's perpetually terrified.
“Elizabeth Vaughn?” I ask, aware that she might not react too well to what I'm about to say. “My name is Abby Hart, this is Detective Mark Gregory. We'd like to talk to you for a moment about your adopted daughter Emilia.”
From the look in her eyes, I can immediately tell that I was right. Just the mention of Emilia's name has drawn all the color from her face.
***
“My late husband and I were unable to have children of our own,” Elizabeth explains a short while later, clutching an already-damp piece of tissue paper as we sit at the kitchen table. “Peter was against the idea of adopting, he thought we should keep trying to have a child the old-fashioned way, but eventually I talked him into it and...”
Her voice trails off, and as she stares out the window it's clear she's reliving some difficult memories.
“It's my fault,” she whispers.
“So that's when you got in touch with the Albertville Jackson Orphanage?” I ask.
She nods.
“And then you met Emilia?”
She stares at me for a moment, her eyes filled with tears. “She seemed like such a lovely young girl at first. When we were introduced to her in the office, she was so polite and she had the most beautiful smile. Like a gift, you know? Like we were blessed to meet her and she was this angel that God had sent to us. It was only later that I realized she'd been deliberately trying to make a good impression. She'd been manipulating us so we'd take her away.”
“That's not unusual,” I point out. “I'd have thought most children in her position would do the same.”
“But would they change so much after they got into our home?” she asks, her voice trembling with fear. “There had been some unpleasantness at the orphanage, Peter and I were aware of that, and we were also aware that Emilia seemed to have been at the center of it all. We didn't talk about it much, but the authorities assured us that Emilia wasn't one of the ones who... I mean, some of the children from that place had been damaged somehow, they didn't go into details, but they promised us that Emilia wasn't one of them.”
“Are you sure about that?”
She nods. “Somehow she seemed to have kept herself safe. Still, she was aware of wh
at was happening to the other children. I think she...”
I wait, but Elizabeth seems lost in her memories again, and after a moment she dabs her eyes.
“Was there anything unusual about Emilia?” I ask, hoping to get her talking again.
“There was barely anything normal about her,” she replies.
“Such as?”
She pauses. “She had a birth defect,” she says finally. “They told us at the orphanage that it was very unusual, but that it was nothing to worry about.”
“A vertical slit in her belly?”
She seems shocked that I know, but after a moment she nods.
“The doctors who examined her must have...” I pause, trying to find the right words. “I mean, someone must have looked at it and realized it was more than just a birth defect.”
“A doctor came to see her on her very first day here,” Elizabeth replies. “He said he'd known Emilia at the orphanage, and he explained to us that the slit on her chest was absolutely fine, but that we should leave it well alone. He said something about there being a risk of infection, and that it was vitally important that we just...” She shudders, as if the memory is too much. “We were so new to the whole thing,” she continues finally. “We'd wanted a child for so long, and suddenly we had one, and we were terrified. So of course we followed the doctor's orders to the letter, even if we thought they were a little strange.”
“What was the doctor's name?” Mark asks, taking out his notebook.
She frowns, as if she's struggling to remember. “Keller, I think. Sorry, I don't remember too much. He came to see Emilia a few times over the years, just to check up on her. He seemed very nice, very caring, and they obviously knew each other well.”
“So he's not a local doctor?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Do you have his contact details?” Mark adds.
“No, it's been...”
I wait for her to finish, but it's as if dark memories come and go every few seconds, filling her mind.
“What happened later?” I ask finally. “When Emilia got older, when she was in her teens...”
“Something changed again,” she replies, with a sudden hint of steel in her voice. “Around her sixteenth birthday, it was as if all the darkness that had been in her soul just erupted to the surface. She'd been sullen ever since she came to us, but then one day, on a dime, she just became... My husband Peter said it was as if something had woken up in her, as if she suddenly felt she could be her real self.”
“And how did that manifest?” I ask.
“There was a...” She pauses. “There was a local girl named Leanne,” she says cautiously. “She and Emilia were friends. Well, as close as Emilia ever got to being friends with anyone. One day Emilia was out, I don't know what she was doing but she often went out for hours on end, and to be honest Peter and I were glad of the break. I know that makes us sound like awful people, but we weren't, I swear! We were just so exhausted from having Emilia around and...” She pauses. “When she came home that night, that was when she seemed different, as if something had changed.” She sniffs back some more tears. “The next day, Leanne's body was found about half a mile away, in the forest. The police never found out exactly what had happened, but I heard that her belly was all torn out and damaged, like something had eaten her.”
“How did Emilia react?”
“She barely even mentioned it,” Elizabeth continues. “We asked when she'd last seen Leanne, and she said she didn't remember. We asked if she wanted counseling, and she laughed at the idea. My husband and I never really talked about our fears, not once, but I could see in his eyes that he was thinking the same thing that I was thinking.”
We sit in silence for a moment.
“Mrs. Vaughn,” I say finally, “do you believe that Emilia killed that girl?”
She stares at me, before fresh tears well in her eyes and she looks down at her hands.
“And then she was gone,” she says after a few seconds, her voice filled with sobs. “On her sixteenth birthday, she said she was leaving with Doctor Keller, and when we asked where he was taking her she told us it was none of our business. Well, she used more colorful language than that, but... I know we had every right to stop her, but by that point we both felt as if...” She pauses. “Well, we thought a break would be good, and Emilia told us that we should just be glad to -”
I wait for her to finish.
“You should glad to what?” I ask.
She looks at me again, as tears stream down her face. “She told us we should just be glad she was letting us live.”
Jonathan
“I have to admit,” Emilia continues, nibbling at a bread-stick as we sit by the window in a downtown Italian restaurant, “you're the first man who has ever turned down the chance to come to dinner with me. I know I'll probably sound terribly big-headed when I say this, but most of the time guys jump at the chance.”
“Well, I'm sure they do,” I reply, trying very hard to not look at her cleavage, “but the truth is -”
“You're not like other guys?”
“I won't flatter myself quite like that,” I tell her as I adjust my glasses again, “it's more that...” I pause, struggling to find the right words. “I'm just not the dinner type.”
“I can see that.”
“Or the social type.”
“I can see that too.”
“Or the going out at night type.” I take a deep breath. “When I'm not at work, I'm pretty much always at home, catching up on some reading or doing some research for my doctoral project or checking websites to see if there have been any developments in the studies I've been following, or -”
“Drawing pictures of your dreams?”
I open my mouth to reply, but I feel a little too awkward.
“Huh,” she continues with a frown. “Well, that all sounds frightfully boring. It never occurred to me that you might be such a dull man.”
“I certainly don't find my life boring,” I explain, as the waiter brings a bottle of wine to the table and pours just a drop into my glass. As he stands back, I realize he's waiting for me to take a taste. “Oh,” I stammer, “I really don't -”
“Just try it and then say it's fine,” Emilia tells me.
“I don't know anything about wine,” I reply, feeling very much as if I'm in the spotlight.
“You don't drink?”
“I prefer the rigors of sobriety.”
Sighing, she reaches across the table and grabs my glass, and then she takes a sip of wine before setting the glass back down and turning to the waiter. “It's fine. Fill us up. Both of us.”
“Oh -” I reply, thinking to protest but then deciding that perhaps I should accept the presence of the wine. After all, I don't have to drink.
“So you're an extremely boring man,” Emilia continues once the waiter has left our table, “and you basically have no life whatsoever.”
“Well -”
“And you're quite happy with that kind of existence?”
“I...” Pausing, I tell myself that there's no shame in the way I spend my days. “We can't all be party-animals,” I say finally, adjusting my glasses yet again. “I've always been fairly quiet and reserved. As a teenager, I found it was the only way to counter the sense of chaos in the world. My adoptive parents -”
“You were adopted?”
I nod. “Yes, and they always said I should -”
“Well, snap!” she continues with a smile. “What a small world! I was adopted too!”
“I see,” I reply.
“I came from Albertville Jackson Orphanage,” she tells me. “Heard of it?”
“Is that the place that had the... unpleasantness?” I ask.
“No, it's the place with the freaky old man who sold kids to parties. Unpleasantness really isn't the right word for what went on at that disgusting place. Still, it's in the past now, so...” She takes her glass and holds it toward me. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” I reply, raising my glass to my lips but taking no more than a taste. Having never really drunk wine before, I have no desire to start now. It's hard enough keeping my thoughts together at the best of times, and I'm certain alcohol wouldn't help.
“Have you ever tried to track down your biological family?” Emilia asks after a moment.
“I...” Taking a deep breath, I can't shake the feeling that she's digging with some specific aim in mind. “My understanding is that I was abandoned as a newborn,” I tell her. “That being the case, there's very little that I can do to uncover the truth. Obviously my parents, whoever they were, felt they couldn't raise me. I can only assume that they were right in that assessment, and I most certainly have no complaints about my life. In many ways, I've been extremely fortunate.”
“But aren't you curious?”
“Perhaps I would be, if there was any hope of getting anywhere.” I swallow hard, hoping that she'll drop the subject. “Since there isn't, I choose not to waste my energies.”
“How logical and dull,” she mutters, taking another big swig of wine, enough that she already has to top her glass up from the bottle.
“You drink a lot,” I point out.
“I find a little alcohol helps keep my thoughts together,” she replies with a grin.
“You mentioned -” I pause, unsure about whether I really want to bring this matter up. “You mentioned the word Gothos before,” I continue cautiously. “To the best of my knowledge, that's a word that sprang up unbidden in one of my dreams, so you must forgive my surprise to hear it coming from your lips.”
“Do you always talk like that?” she asks.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Using ten words when one would do.”
“I wasn't aware -”
“Gothos is the traditional home of the vampire race,” she continues, interrupting me. “It's a mansion in another world. Once it was the glittering home to an entire civilization of boring-ass vampires, although in recent years the old pile has rather fallen on hard times. Of course, to add to the confusion, Gothos is also the name of the man who founded the building, a wise old chap who unfortunately failed to prevent a terrible civil war. There's far too much history to go into right now, but trust me, the story of Gothos is a long and painful tale of arrogance, conceit and hypocrisy. Seriously, vampires tend to be very full of themselves.”