by David McAfee
She pulled, and the door swung open. There was no light on the other side, and I couldn't see anything beyond it. I peered into the inky blackness and the hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention. Cold dread seeped into my bones. An alarm hidden deep within my psyche warned me not to go in. To me it seemed like we would be walking into something dark. I felt that if I entered, I would never be able to leave the darkness.
I told myself not to be silly, rationalizing that I could see or imagine anything after the night I’d just had. It’s just a door, damn it! Go through it or go talk to the cops. It wasn’t much of a choice.
I should have listened to my fear. Fear makes a man’s instinct sharper. It is the body’s way of protecting itself when the mind refuses to cooperate. After I entered that doorway, I was never fully a creature of the light again.
***
What meager light existed disappeared as soon as Raine shut the door behind her, and I was plunged into darkness so thick I felt like I could reach out and touch it, to actually feel the lack of light with my fingertips. I even closed my eyes and opened them again just to see if there was any difference. There wasn’t.
Once, in my early twenties, I explored a deep cave with some friends. We brought flashlights, food, and sleeping bags, enough supplies to last the night and into the next day. When we bedded down for the night and turned off the flashlights I discovered it was, in fact, possible for it to be so dark that you literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Until that moment, I'd always thought that was just an expression.
The hallway was much, much darker. Not only could I not see my hand; I couldn’t feel it, either. The darkness was not so much a lack of light as it was a trick of the mind. There is a psalm on that hallway (what you would call a spell) which prevents those who don’t belong there from being able to see. No human would have been able to see anything in that hallway.
Raine, however, could see fine.
I felt her hand grip mine, guiding me as she led the way through a maze of tunnels and doorways in which I was soon lost. Eventually we left the radius of the psalm and I could see again. With all the rights and lefts through the dark, however, I would never have found my way back. Not that I wanted to try; I’d had enough of that hallway to last me a lifetime.
We rounded a corner and came to an ornate set of double doors made of cherry wood. On the surface were all manner of carvings. Bass-relief images of people engaged in a frenzied dance adorned both doors, their faces imbued with a reddish hue by the coloring of the wood. They danced around a large beast vaguely human in shape, but with a head that resembled a snarling wolf. The wolf-thing’s bared its teeth to the moon. Something, most likely blood, dripped from its jaws. Below it more people writhed about in agony, their faces wearing looks of excruciating pain. The artist who’d carved this door had known his work well; these people pulled my pity from me with anguished screams that could almost be heard, but never would.
All in all, with the reddish hue and the people suffering while others danced and feasted nearby, I thought the door very much resembled my own personal view of what Hell must look like.
Raine grabbed one of the handles and pulled. "Come in, Vincent," she said, and I did not hesitate.
I entered a large, sparsely furnished room. Aside from a plush red velvet couch, the only other objects of furniture were two large, overstuffed chairs and a small wooden table that sat between them. The chairs matched the couch. The table was made from the same wood as the door.
“I love cherry wood,” she said. “It’s the color. It’s so beautiful.”
I thought the hue reminded me a little too much of the reddish stain on a certain silver crucifix, myself, but I didn’t say so. I nodded instead. “It’s pretty.”
“Please, sit down.” Raine pointed to one of the chairs as she went through another door directly across the room. I had never heard such a wonderful suggestion in all my life, and stepped over to the chair on the right. I sank deep into its soft cushions and tried not to think about Kagan. My eyes started to droop almost immediately, and I snapped them open, surprised at how exhausted I felt. Before long, Raine returned with a decanter and two glasses, one of which she filled and handed to me.
“Drink this,” she said, “It will help calm you down.”
“Thanks.”
I brought the glass to my face. The sharp, strong smell of liquor hit my nose. Cognac. Courvoisier, no less. I drank the whole thing with gusto, feeling the smooth liquor flow down my throat and into my belly, spreading welcome warmth the entire way. Yes, I thought, that should do the trick.
I set the empty glass on the table and looked at Raine, who looked back at me. For a while neither of us said anything at all, both of us were lost in our own thoughts. Mine involved the man I had killed. Raine’s were a mystery. I could not read anything on her face. She grabbed the decanter from the table and refilled my glass.
“You were looking for me,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“How did you know?”
“I saw you from the club. For the last three days I watched you sit in the diner, staring the doorway of The Eye. When Kagan distracted you, I thought I could make it out without you seeing me.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” I asked, taking another long swig of Cognac and grimacing as the burn flowed down my throat and into my gut.
She nodded. “You saved me. Kagan and Sanders would have killed me.”
“Sanders?”
“Carl Sanders,” she sighed. “Kagan works for him. Those two have been hunting me for a long time. They finally tracked me down at The Eye. It was only a matter of time before they struck. They would have attacked sooner, but neither of them dared enter the club, and I've stayed inside for the last three days, sleeping in the back room, trying to avoid you.”
“Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” she said, her voice firm, and placed her hand on my shoulder. “You didn't do anything wrong. I was avoiding you because… because I wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me? From what?”
Raine’s eyes went to the floor, and she didn’t answer. Her shoulders slumped, and her dark hair fell in a thin curtain, obscuring her face. I reached out my hand and gently cupped the bottom of her jaw, lifting her face until her eyes once again looked into mine.
“Protect me from what, Raine?”
A single tear welled in one sapphire eye, then spilled over onto her soft cheek.
“From me,” she whispered.
Chapter Four:
Bachiyr
“From you?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”
Raine shook her head, but didn't reply. Her gaze slid to the glass in front of her, which she cradled between her hands like a baby chick.
Something wasn’t right. I had a nagging feeling I was about to learn something that I might be better off not knowing. I thought, and not for the first time, that I should just walk away right then and never look back. With everything that had happened to me that evening, it seemed like a good choice. Just go. Forget everything. Forget Raine and Kagan and puddles of dirty blood. Forget Crucifixes and dark corridors and doors with demons carved into them. Forget all that crazy shit and just get the Hell out while I still could. It was a good idea, and one that made perfect sense.
But of course I did no such thing.
“Talk to me, Raine,” I said. “Tell me what it is, already.”
She looked up into my eyes, tears tracking down either side of her nose. As they broke from their confinement to roll unheeded down her cheeks, I was struck by how sad she looked, and ashamed. Like she had lost something important. The longer I sat there, the more I felt it, and the more it hurt.
“You won’t understand,” She replied.
“Then make me.” I reached out and put my hand on top of hers.
She sighed, then looked back at her glass. Her face turned to steel, replacing the melancholy as she waged her own inner war. Was she se
eing someone already? Married? Please God don’t let that be it. I did my best to appear steady and calm while I readied myself for the worst.
She pulled her hand from mine and poured me another glass of cognac, and then she raised her own glass to her lips. “Cheers.”
I expected her to take a little sip and then grimace, like I did. On the contrary, however, she took the whole glass down in one pull. She smiled at me as she filled her glass a second time.
Not wanting to be shown up, I quaffed my entire glass, and again felt the comforting warmth spread through my body. Nothing collects a man’s thoughts as quickly as a hard pull on a stiff drink. I felt better already, and I guess she did too, because after she poured me a fourth glass, she began her revelation. And what a revelation it turned out to be.
“Vincent,” she began, “have you ever heard the word Bachyir?”
“Back-yir?” I replied.
“Bachyir,” she said. “It’s from ancient Hebrew. It means Chosen, or The Chosen.”
“No,” I replied. I was well into my fourth glass of cognac, and feeling very little pain. A warm, slightly fuzzy sensation had taken root inside my head, and I was content to let it stay there. The fuzziness sloshed around inside my skull like clothes in one of those Laundromat washing machines with the round window on the front, and I had to set my glass down to keep from spilling it. “Can’t say that I have. Why? What is it?”
“The Bachyir are a race of people, similar to humans, but very different. They...we... can be any size, gender, or color, there are no boundaries as to who can become one.”
“Become one? You aren’t born that way?”
“No,” she replied, “No one is born this way. We are normal people until we Turn. That’s actually where our race gets its name. ‘Chosen’ because we are, quite literally, chosen by whoever Turns us. The founders of our race, the Council of Thirteen, were chosen by The Father over six thousand years ago. He directed the original thirteen Bachyir to likewise choose suitable humans to be their offspring, and spread our race across the known world.
“But he warned them not to be too prolific, because if our race was discovered we would be hunted down and destroyed. We must always remain small in number so as to remain undetected.”
“Why?” I asked. The liquor made me lightheaded, and I found it difficult to concentrate on Raine’s words. I was doing an admirable job of paying attention up to that point, if I do say so myself. After four and a half glasses of cognac, however, even the most valiant effort of will only goes so far. I needed her to get to the point before I passed out right there at the table. “What, exactly, is a Bachyir?”
She looked thoughtful for a moment, eyeing me with her crystal blue eyes. Then she set her glass on the table and leaned closer, bringing the smell of roses back to me.
“Imagine,” she began, “that you were immune to Time and all its debilitations. No disease dared touch you, and Shakespeare’s Mortal Coil no longer held you in bondage. Not only that, but imagine in this state of immortality that you are stronger and faster than ever before. Imagine you had abilities far beyond those of normal men. What you would do? Who would you become if the limitations of this life were not pressed upon you? Can you imagine such a thing, Vincent? A world without Time? It exists. The Bachyir see it every night.”
“Yeah? Who do you have to kill for that?” I said, joking.
Raine didn’t find it funny. She leaned back in her chair and her shoulders slumped. Her eyes found her hands, which lay folded in her lap. I felt like a piece of shit. Way to go, dickhead.
“There are several downsides,” she admitted. “Foremost among the things we sacrifice is the Day. We can’t venture out into the light of the Sun. Instead, we lie in a dormant state through the day. Also, we cannot come into contact with any object that has been consecrated or blessed without tremendous pain. The level of pain varies from individual to individual, and some feel it so lightly that it almost doesn’t exist for them. Almost. It is always there to some degree, however.
“We can’t eat food without getting ill. There is no variance with this price. Any Bachyir who ingests, say, a double cheeseburger will soon find themselves in great pain as their body rejects the foreign matter. It’s never killed anyone, but it has made more than a few wish they were dead for a few hours. For most of us, the same is true of drinks, as well. I am able to enjoy a nice glass of cognac with you, though I am not immune to its effects, but most other Bachyir can’t do so without getting just as violently ill as if they had eaten regular food.”
Her words had come easily to her until this point. She was, after all, only reciting the facts of Bachyir life. Rather like explaining to a child the process of going to work to make money. Something ordinary and everyday; easy enough to describe. Raine had slipped into the comfortable oratory of a learned educator giving a simple lecture. But now her face clouded over, as though there was more to say, but she didn’t want to say it.
“We can kill, though,” she said finally, so low I could barely hear, “In fact, we live for it. We have no choice, we must feed.”
“Feed?” I interrupted, “Huh?”
She fixed me with a look that sent a shiver though my body. Sad, yet hungry. A prisoner before their last meal. “Vincent, there’s just no easy way to say it.”
“Then just spit it out, already. Geez, Raine, how bad could—”
“Your kind know us as Vampires,” she blurted, then covered her mouth with her hand as though she could force the words back in.
And there it was. The truth. No more dancing around the topic, not more shuffling words. Just the bald, naked truth. Let out into the open like a wild animal that just escaped from the zoo.
And it was total bullshit.
For a time, I just stared at her, waiting for the punch line. I thought she was joking. Not a very funny joke, though. I spent perhaps a full minute in silence, waiting for her to laugh or smirk or at least say something else. Something like “Ha! Gotcha!” or “Boo!” after which we would both laugh, even though mine would be forced.
She didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she sat there looking at me with those sad eyes, a strange mix of shame and defiance on her face. Then it dawned on me she was waiting for me to speak. Funny, huh? I was waiting for her to say something and she was waiting for me to do the same. The resulting silence seemed to stretch on for an hour, though in reality it may have been as little as a minute and a half or so.
Disgusted, I stood up, my hands balling into fists at my sides. Obviously, she wanted to get rid of me. I couldn’t imagine why, or why she didn’t just tell me the real truth. After what I’d done for her I deserved that much at least. She wanted the silence broken? She wanted me to be the one to break it? Ok, I’ll break it, I thought. I’ll break that fucking silence all to Hell!
“Oh, really?” I asked. “A vampire? I suppose Kagan was the Wolfman, right? Who was the other guy? The Mummy? Frankenstein’s Monster? I know he wasn’t the Invisible Man, because I could see him!” I jabbed my finger into the small tabletop on the last syllable to emphasize my point, and my empty glass wobbled for a moment before it fell to the floor with a crash. Raine winced at the sound, but I barely heard it.
“Well?” I pressed.
That was all I could get out. I tried to say more, but I couldn’t. There were too many words, too many thoughts driving mad circles around my head for me to pick any one and give it coherence. Nothing would come, the whole process of speech seemed to have broken down, and I was left standing there in disbelieving fury. I might have started sputtering, since nothing else would come out. I can imagine how I must have looked. Mouth opening and closing with no words coming from it. Like a fish. Soon I gave up trying to speak. I’d had enough. My mind, besotted though it was, told me one thing; it was time to go.
Without another word, I turned and made for the doorway. The ornate set of double doors with their carvings of the people and the wolves on the outside looked like ordinary doors
from the inside. Good. It made it that much easier to touch them.
Just as I reached for the handle, a hand grabbed my shoulder. Annoyed, I tried to shake it off, but I couldn’t. Her grip was like iron; I wouldn’t have been able to pry her hand off me with a crowbar. She pulled me back to the chair with the same ease I would have had lifting an infant and setting him back in his cradle. I couldn’t speak. Holy shit, she’s strong, I thought. She was, too. Unbelievably so. Come to think of it, I guess you’d call it unnaturally strong.
She forced me to sit, and then she glared down at me, her eyes aflame with righteous indignation. No longer the beautiful woman I’d fallen so hard for, her eyes scalded me like boiling water. This wasn’t the Raine I’d met. This was something else. Beautiful and terrible. I sobered up in an instant. Raine was nothing short of breathtaking, even in her white-hot fury, and what I realized with my cleared head was that even though she was a raving lunatic, I still loved her. I thought she would hit me. Or worse. But she didn’t.
“You don't believe me.” It wasn’t a question.
“Would you?” I shot back. “Christ, Raine,” I continued, “how could you expect me to believe that? A Vampire? How dumb do I look? You don’t have to lie to me. If you want me to leave, just say so.”
I again tried to stand and walk to the door. This time, if she tried to stop me, I would have to hit her or something. I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t going stay there for another instant.
Before I left my seat, the world began to quiver. The whole room lurched. It seemed like the walls and floor were falling away from me. In another second I realized the room wasn’t moving at all. I was. Rather, my chair was moving. It rose straight up from the floor and carried me with it, clutching the armrest with white knuckles. I looked over the side and watched the floor grow farther and farther away.
When the chair finally halted its ascent, I looked around the room. At all four walls, at the ceiling, and at the floor. I looked for anything that might have caused the chair to shoot straight up from the floor in such a manner, but found nothing. No wires, no cables, no hidden forklift behind a curtain. Hell, no curtain, for that matter. And where was Raine? I didn’t see her anywhere. Had the floating chair scared her off? I doubted it, but I conceded to myself that I just couldn’t tell. With her, anything was possible.