Hadrian's Wall

by Felicia Jensen

  24

  THEORIES

  Delilah walked to the corner of the room and squeezed herself between the cabinet and a chest of drawers, pushing with her body to move them apart. At first I didn’t understand what she was trying to do, so by the time I got up to help her, she had already moved them enough that I could see that there was a small door hidden behind the cabinet.

  “When I moved into this room, I had no roommate. I found this,” she said, indicating the door. Mine is the only bedroom with an adjoining room, like a secret room. It’s probably part of the original construction. I suspect they forgot about it during the building’s renovation.”

  She pushed the door open, lowered her head and disappeared into the dark space. I followed her, unable to contain a shiver of fear.

  Delilah pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling to turn on the single light bulb overhead. There were no windows, only two small slits, partially hidden by external grates, but incredible as it might seem, the secret room was not stifling even though there was no air circulation inside. On the opposite wall, I saw something eye-popping: a huge mural, with newspaper clippings; news printouts from the Internet, photos taken on a cell phone, and colored arrows. It looked like one of those murals seen in TV cop shows, something like Criminal Minds and Without a Trace. When the protagonists were looking for someone who’d been kidnapped, they use murals similar to this one containing the victim’s trajectory and possible suspects.

  Delilah’s mural was better by far. It was a detailed mapping of the Cahills’ actions and people linked to the family. Some of them I knew—Jay O’Neal, Asia Chadwick, Adam Barringer, Ian Talbot, and Keyra McPherson. Others were complete strangers to me, but their names were also there under their photos, all important pieces of a bizarre puzzle.

  Below each photo was a summary about that person. Using colored pens, arrows were drawn connecting the captions below the photographs to dialogue balloons, quotations, and other explanatory information. There were also some questions with answers. A red arrow linked the photo, the name, and the brief biography of that person to past events in the region or their actual position within the family hierarchy. Delilah had placed a photo of Stephen in the center, preceding Adrian as if Stephen was a barrier to prevent others from approaching him.

  A blue arrow linked Stephen’s picture to Adrian’s, to Vincent’s, and to Charity’s. There was also another picture—a guy as blond as Charity. Underneath it was written “Christian.”

  So that’s the mysterious Christian Wade.

  The arrows were interrupted by documents printed from the Internet or by newspaper clippings. Some collages were scattered across the wall, with captions or explanations that had been typed by Delilah. Wow! She had taken her obsession for Stephen to a high scientific level! That mural must have taken a long time to put together. From what I could see, this probably kept her so busy that she had neglected her studies. Her sewing machine, mannequins, molds and other items were crammed into a forgotten corner, with a jumble of fabric scraps thrown over them.

  “I needed to know...understand?” She justified, trying to decipher my face.

  Yeah, I understood...maybe too well. It could have been me creating that mural, but about Adrian. I also felt curiosity and compulsion to investigate the Cahills, but I hadn’t had the courage to dig deeper. Adrian realized that. He gave me every chance to find out, but I ran away from the answers that real mattered. He gave me something easier to accept realizing exactly how I felt...even when I tried to convince myself that the truth didn’t matter.

  Maybe I am a coward. I want to know the truth, but at the same time I don’t want to be confronted with the fact that Adrian is different from the rest of us...from me, as if his wealth and the status of his family isn’t enough. Maybe I don’t want to make the same choice that Delilah seems to have made without hesitation.

  I was forced to revise my previous conclusions—my belief that she selfishly wanted to take advantage of all options, without having to sacrifice anything. Well, perhaps she is selfish on a more superficial level, but what really matters is that she’s ready to face the consequences. Suddenly, I felt a certain connection with her. It wasn’t strong enough for me to trust her, but it was something that changed the way I perceived her.

  I glanced back through the photos of the Cahills, tacked to the mural. Here was absolute proof that I’m not crazy.

  “So you believe me?” she asked me, between looking anxious and worried.

  “Of course I do. You said you have a theory,” I reminded her, still staring at Adrian’s green eyes.

  She sighed. “I think they’re...vampires.”

  I laughed, but it sounded nervous even to my own ears. Suddenly, I felt a brick sitting inside my stomach.

  “Vampires? They’re not bats, for God’s sake!” I turned to her. “Get yourself another theory because this one is flawed.”

  Without waiting for an answer from her, I turned back to the mural. Vampire...such an ugly word. It didn’t match their beauty.

  “Do you really think they are?”

  “Bats of hell?” Delilah added wryly. “No, but I wonder if they cannot turn into something else...” She shrugged.

  “What, for example?” While I asked the question, my eyes fell on the photo of the Panthers Cliff and then I realized I had my answer.

  “I don’t know...panthers?” She tried to sound lighthearted with her guess.

  “How could they turn into panthers? It is humanly impossible.” I’ve tried to challenge this idea, but deep down, I thought the same thing.

  “Well said... ‘humanely’... but I don’t believe that they are...human. From all that I’ve noticed, the theory that best fits is vampires. They have sensitivity to light, they’re very pale, super-strong, super-fast and they don’t eat. At least they don’t eat what we usually see people eating out there. What else can I think?”

  I remained silent for a moment and as always seems to happen when I get nervous, I verbalize thoughts that spring out of my head without applying any logical filter.

  “I hate bats, crows, vultures, vampires...in short, anything that sucks the blood of other living creatures. It’s ugly, degrading, grotesque...Ugh! I can’t imagine Adrian and Stephen acting like vampires. Even the word ‘vampire’ gives me heartburn.

  “Let me remind you that crows and vultures do not suck blood...and not all bats do it, Delilah interjected with a tone of superiority. Gradually, she was acting like the girl I knew.

  “Yeah, I don’t need a lesson in zoology,” I replied. “There must be another explanation! I accept that they’re supernatural, but vampires they are not. Please!”

  “Let me remind you that vampires are supernatural creatures.”

  She shrugged, as if to say that nothing could be done. It was inevitable. Destiny.

  “I’ve been doing my own research and discovered that there are several myths,” I argued. Vampires are not the only creatures that fit the description of the Cahills, you know. There are demons, jinn, werewolves, evil spirits, and other beings that don’t come to mind right now because I’m too nervous to remember all of the different categories.

  “For me, the legends of the somber people have everything to do with our ‘friends’ here. In ancient times, humans called them ‘somber’ because they believed that they represented the dark side of the supernatural world. The somber were described either as gods of destruction or as guardians of the underworld and death. Just like the vampires, they appear in all traditions. In Egypt, in the Viking lands, among the Roman and Greek people...and so on. The people loved them and feared them. The priests offered sacrifices in their honor to placate them.

  “The somber were considered good in some respects—in the sense that they let humans live under their protection. If someone happens to bother me, I go to the altar of any temple. I offer the blood of my best sheep and, in exchange, the somber god literally eliminates my problem. I didn’t need to be rich to curry favor from th
e gods. If they accept my argument, I only need to compromise myself to them, devoting all my loyalty to them. I think we can consider the somber as a kind of shadowy vigilante from this time.

  “However, there were bad somber in many aspects. They could act as serial killers. They killed animals and men. Do you remember the sacrifices to the gods by the Aztecs? Well, the psychopath somber just kills and kills and kills... If they weren’t killing they sent their heralds to kill humans in their name. But suddenly all of them disappeared, inasmuch as someone bigger than the somber had done a general cleaning to contain the carnage. Mythology says a lot about them, but doesn’t provide much explanation about this subject. Incredible as it may seem, I was getting some info regarding the Celtic culture which has few written records.”

  “They cannot be gods,” Delilah argued against it, as if only that small word in my speech was the one that had been recorded by her brain. I became outraged.

  “No! I said they were worshiped by humans as gods because of their extraordinary powers. The legends describe them as seductive creatures with piercing eyes—yellow or black, most of the time. They also describe them as having incredible strength, even invulnerable. Our friends fit that description perfectly.”

  She snorted and opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off.

  “The records of their passage are vague. Because our history is human, it does not mesh with their history. I believe that to discover who they really are, how they live, and what they want, we have to get their records. I bet they must have their files kept by...” Suddenly the light went on in my brain! The Cahill codex was like a record that fit the mold that I was describing.

  “Kept by...?” Delilah said, wondering at my sudden pause.

  “Anyway, I doubt that they kept records.” I shuddered, realizing what I almost said outloud.

  “Apparently, we have to ask them directly,” Delilah quipped: “Hey, Mr. Cahill, come here a minute. We have a question to ask you: Are you an angel, a devil, a somber, or a vampire? I bet the answer will be: VAMPIRE.”

  “Wait a minute, funny girl! Did you read the meaning of vampire available on the Internet? Do you really think they are corpses animated by demons? That they turn into disgusting bats, probably smelly and filled with contagious diseases? Why can you agree with such an absurd idea, but cannot accept that they are gods?”

  She looked at me in a foolish manner.

  “Oh, whatever!”

  I sighed, thinking that I needed to set my expectations slightly lower than Delilah’s conjectures. She deserves a time. After all, she knows nothing of the conversation between Adrian and Dr. Barringer, just as she is unaware of the codex’s existence.

  “Well, before we find some concrete evidence of what you’re saying, my theory is the best. They’re vampires. Game over.”

  I frowned, trying to imagine Adrian with his hair slicked back with gel, wearing a frock coat of the nineteenth century and a flowing black cloak with its upturned collar, displaying his pointy teeth and his bloodshot eyes comically wide open… Ridiculous!

  “But if they are vampires,” I insisted, dissatisfied, “there should be accounts of murder in the town. They should attack people, shouldn’t they?”

  Adrian is not bad person. I cannot believe he would...would he?

  Suppose that a predator is forced to kill another predator to save a helpless creature of his claws...Could you forgive him? (...) Even if this predator had the option to not kill, but just lost his mind... Could you forgive him?

  “I studied them closely. They don’t kill people or animals, but that does not mean they aren’t vampires,” Delilah insisted. She was picking up bits of information here and pieces of the puzzle in order to find pieces of the puzzle. I stared at her, confused.

  “Yes, I managed to invade their intranet.”She answered my unspoken question. “Don’t ask me how because it’s a long, long history and we’ll be here until tomorrow. Anyway, they discovered that someone was browsing their network and shut all the doors. But the little I got, Hadrian’s Wall is actually a type of fortified city. It’s from here that their leaders command the actions of the rest of the species throughout the world. And it’s here that the ‘summit’ is protected from their enemies.”

  Clan Cahill is the summit, of course.

  “Also, I’m sure that Hadrian’s Wall is used as a training center for young vampires—those who still need to hone their powers and...instincts.”

  “What instincts?”

  “Don’t ask me...you wouldn’t want to know!” But just then she spit it out: “I had an idea. I think that among their instincts are the act of...of killing humans to drink their blood. What works for my hypothesis that this place is a training center and obviously they are vampires.”

  She giggled. “There could be no safer place in the world in terms of low crime than Hadrian’s Wall! Here, all humans and vampires are watched very closely by the superior vampires.”

  I winced when she repeated the word “vampire” for the fourth time.

  After going through training and by forced cohabitation with our species, they go to the real world; otherwise... Well, I suspect that vampires that don’t adapt to a peaceful coexistence with humans, who see us merely as food, are destroyed.”

  We were staring at each other under the impact of her assumptions. Destruction was something so...so definitive. If all of it was true, how could these creatures be destroyed? Morbid curiosity!

  “There’s a hierarchy here,” she continued. “They’re very strict about it. I just can’t figure out yet what the levels of their hierarchy are. They act with more discretion than the Masons, damn it! I believe that they form a very well-articulated organization which controls up to what may or may not be published about them. Since the general thinking of human society about them is ‘belonging to the tales’ or they are ‘make-believe’ creatures, I think that they don’t really care about whatever books and movies suggest about them. I think they have great fun with this whole situation.”

  I laughed incredulously. “Mafia of vampires?”

  “I would say ‘yes’—they’re a powerful brotherhood, with tentacles much longer than the Mafia, the yakuza, or the bratva.”

  “If they control everything as you say, if they have branches that deep... why did they let you go so far in your investigations?”

  “I think Stephen protected me somehow.” She smiled confidently. I’ll bet he poured oil on troubled waters or something. Even if he doesn’t like to admit it, deep down he likes me.”

  But I was reading the situation differently. Since she seems to be a crazy worshiper of Satan, no one will care much. The truth for me is that Delilah doesn’t pose danger to them—not yet anyway. And if she becomes a danger, what would Stephen do if they choose to eliminate her? Would he take sides against the clan to defend her?

  And Adrian? Would he take sides in my favor, if the roles were reversed?

  While I was debating between doubts and dilemmas, Delilah took a flashlight and walked to the door.

  “Come, let me show you something else.”

  I had a jolt. What other surprises had she reserved to me? We went out into the hallway and Delilah was following a path entirely unknown to me alongside the bathrooms and into another wing of the building with many doors. Delilah commented that these were the apartments of Keyra McPherson, a few teachers, and McPherson House staff.

  We continued down a hallway which was gradually getting darker with every step we took, as if in that area, people dispensed with using light. The corridor ended at a simple door on which there was a sign: “Employees Only.” The warning did not deter Delilah. She turned the knob...and if I hoped to find something surprising, I was disappointed me. There were only brooms, buckets, and gallons of cleaning products.

  What does she intend to do here? I asked myself, exasperated.

  I followed her into the cubicle, eager to question her. We moved in the darkness until I started to fear hitting some
thing. Even in the darkness, I saw the outline of shelves filled with cleaning supplies. The space was so narrow that I was afraid to turn around for feat I’d hit something and something would fall on me. No sooner had that thought occurred to me when something fell on my foot. I had to stifle a scream.

  “Shhhh!” Delilah admonished.

  “Don’t shush me!” I whispered angrily.

  “So, stop making noise.”

  “Why don’t you turn on a light?”

  “I have no idea where is the switch. Moreover...”

  I rolled my eyes. “Then why did you bring the flashlight? Is it the newest fashion accessory?”

  “Moreover,” she repeated as if I had said nothing. “It’s not a good idea to turn it on now. It’ll draw attention to us. The light will show under the door and anyone passing through the corridor will see that there are people in here. Calm down! I know what I’m doing.”

  She stopped suddenly, lifted her hand and pressed her ear against the bottom of the wall. I could barely see her silhouette. I could! The girl was dressed all in black! I blinked a few times, trying to see what she was doing.

  Delilah listened awhile and then began to grope the side until I heard a dry snapping sound of a door disengaging from its closed position. It was a false wall. I was speechless.

  Delilah pushed the barrier and I realized that we were facing a row of stones filled with cobwebs where a cool breeze was blowing and flowed into what seemed like a cave. Mournful sounds came from inside, as if the cool breeze blowing through its interior disturbed the ghosts, provoking a chorus of wailing voices that sounded almost human. Almost.

  It’s just the sound of the wind, your idiot! Even knowing this, my arms were bristled.

  The somber used that path in past centuries,” said Delilah. I was wondering if she was taking me to know the address of vampires… I visualized the whole scene in my head—some elegantly carved coffins with air-conditioning. Yes, because to endure the heat of this summer...where they would go to sleep during the day. I almost had a stroke.