Young Blood

by Brian Stableford

In the end, nothing actually happened. If I'd described the event to anyone, they would probably have said that it was nothing at all, certainly nothing to worry about. Dad would have reassured me that however unpleasant it might have seemed, I'd never been in real danger. ‘Boys do things like that,’ he would have said. ‘It's not nice, but they don't really mean it. It's only young blood.'

  Dad used phrases like ‘young blood’ all the time, mostly because he didn't know the proper jargon; the only thing he knew about hormones was the old joke about the difference between a hormone and an enzyme (when you're asked, you're supposed to say ‘I don't know; I never heard an enzyme').

  Maybe Dad would have been right. Nobody waved a knife about or threatened me with death—but what happened would have been terrifying and deeply unsettling nevertheless, and would surely have made me avoid the path for the rest of my time at the university, if it hadn't been for Maldureve's intervention.

  I brought it on myself, in a way. When I set off from the Union building, there was a mixed group in front of me. There were five or six people, including at least two girls. They were boisterously drunk, but good-humoured. I could have hurried to catch up with them and walk close to them, if not actually with them, but I didn't. Instead, I dawdled, letting them get further in front of me, out of sight if not quite out of earshot. I didn't consciously do that because I hoped to see Maldureve again—if I offered myself any reason at all I must have told myself that they were too loud, too playful, too likely to turn and say something to me if I were close behind them. By dawdling, though, I let three other people come up behind me without even noticing that they were there. They were even drunker, and less good-humoured in their drunkenness—and they were all male.

  I don't remember what one of them first called out to me. It was probably something reasonably harmless, like ‘Hello, darling'. But I hadn't known they were there, and I nearly jumped out of my skin—which was probably what the one who'd called out had intended. Reflexively, I looked round—and equally reflexively, I speeded up. That amused them, and they all started calling out.

  'Don't run away, darling, we won't hurt you.'

  'Only if you want us to.'

  'You'll love it. We're the best on campus.'

  'The best in the world.'

  It was all punctuated by laughter, but it was dark, dirty laughter, forced and aggressive. They wanted to pretend that it was all in fun, but they also wanted to make it clear that they were just pretending. The threat seemed all the greater because they were pretending so half-heartedly that it wasn't a threat. The fact that the double bluff was really a triple bluff, and that they didn't really intend any harm at all, was in danger of becoming lost in the confusion—theirs as well as mine.

  I was frightened. I ran.

  Mum always said that I shouldn't run away from bothersome dogs, because it would only make them more excited and they would chase me. Because of that, I'd always frozen stiff when a big dog frightened me, and let him sniff around me until the owner called him away. Perhaps I should have frozen stiff when the boys started taunting me, and let them cluster round me, refusing to react until they got bored and went on their drunken way, but I couldn't. I was too afraid that they'd start pawing me and trying to kiss me, all the while pretending—maybe even to themselves—that they were only being nice, or could at least say later that that was what they'd been trying to be.

  I ran across the bridge, and they ran after me.

  'Hey, wait!'

  'What are you, a virgin?'

  'This is your big chance!'

  'We won't hurt you!'

  'We got the biggest and the best in the whole fucking universe!'

  'You'll love it!'

  I ran across the bridge and on to the section of the path that was bordered by the wood. I knew I couldn't outrun them. They were too tall and too strong, probably sportsmen. They were nearly at my heels already. The nearest one reached out as if to grab me, or at least to touch my hair. Anticipation of that touch sent a shock of anguish through my whole body.

  And then the shadows reached out for them.

  The electric bulb in one of the lamps abruptly went out, and that entire section of the path became dark. It was a cloudy night and there was no moon, so the shadow which pounced on them was very black and deep. It was also inhabited.

  The darkness enfolded itself around me just as it enfolded itself around them, but I could feel its tenderness, its protectiveness. To them, it was hostile, ominous and dangerous. Maldureve was still a thing of shadow then, without any but the most phantasmal substance, but he was real. He was still in the borderlands, at the interface of his world and ours, unable to cross over. He couldn't have hurt them—not physically. He certainly couldn't have sucked the blood out of them, the way I wished he would. But because he was a thing of shadow, he was more easily able to reach into that private darkness which was the unillumined arena of their filthy, monstrous thoughts. He was able to pierce their souls with black arrows of hatred, and he did.

  'Fucking hell!’ said one, as the darkness burst over him. I heard one of the others gasp wordlessly. They all jumped, every bit as nervously as I had jumped when they first made their presence known.

  I realised then that they were almost as wound up as I was. I understood that their carelessness of the dark was a pretence of much the same kind as their pretence of exaggerated confidence in their sexual prowess: something that came from their competitive solidarity with one another, something deeply and essentially confused.

  They ran on, desperate to get back to the light, hurried on their way by Maldureve's presence. They didn't know who or what he was, but they knew that he was not something they could confront.

  One of them flicked my hair as he ran past. It was a casual, contemptuous and childish gesture, but it was also defensive and defeated. It was all he dared to do, now.

  It wasn't until they were out of the deepened shadow, five or six paces ahead of me and still running, that one of them plucked up the courage to turn back and shout: ‘Can't rape you tonight, darling—in a hurry.'

  Another added: ‘Sorry, girlie—some other time.'

  The third chipped in, belatedly, with: ‘Anyway, you're too fucking thin.'

  I stopped, in the midst of the comforting darkness. I stood quite still while my hammering heart slowed down and the sickening panic ebbed away. Within thirty seconds, it was completely gone, and I felt almost delirious with the lack of it.

  That was when Maldureve first whispered in my ear.

  'Look at me,’ he said—not pleadingly, but not commandingly either. ‘See me.'

  I looked at him—and I saw him. This time, he was near enough to touch. It was so very dark that I could hardly see the shape of his cloak, but I could see his face. I could see his beautiful eyes, his slightly thick-lipped mouth and his nose. I don't know what the word ‘aquiline’ actually means, but it's such a lovely word that his nose must have been aquiline. I was hardly aware of the scent of him, but it was there, soft and sweet and soothing.

  'Each time you look at me,’ he said to me, ‘I come a little closer. Each time you see me, it enhances my existence.'

  'Who are you?’ I asked.

  'Maldureve,’ he told me. He pronounced it to rhyme with ‘receive', but I was never in doubt how to spell it; I always thought of it as a word with a single uncomplicated ‘e'.

  'What are you?’ I asked. I still thought that he might, after all, be just a ghost. I wondered whether he might be the Marquis of Membury who'd planted the garden of exotic trees.

  'A vampire,’ he whispered. ‘A haunter of the dark. But to me, darkness isn't dark at all, because my powers of sight aren't like yours. If you will only let me touch you, you will begin to learn the art of the invisible. If you will only let me love you, I can show you the worlds which lie beyond the world. If you will only consent to feed me, you will begin to learn what it really is to be.'

  There was no pretence in him; no pretence at all. Al
though he knew full well that I would think his claims impossible—that I could not accommodate him at all within my everyday world—he spoke frankly and with perfect honesty. Nor did he attempt to conceal the edge of anxiety in his voice, which told me even then that there was danger in this business, and that all his promises, no matter how sincere they might be, were edged with hazard.

  He was not ashamed to let me see that he was not without fear.

  'I'm not afraid,’ I said to him—because I wasn't too afraid. I was just afraid enough. I trusted him, perhaps more than he trusted himself. Simply to be with him was to participate in a miracle; when he was there, I wasn't afraid. Not of the dark, nor of what the dark might conceal, nor of drunken freaks with bloated, diseased pricks and bloated, diseased egos. The promises he had made had already begun to come true. I had already begun to learn the art of the invisible, to see what I had never been able to see before, because of the black and choking cloak of fear. There was danger in it, I knew, but it was thrilling danger.

  'I'm not afraid,’ I said again; and I saw the gratitude in his eyes, the joy in his smile. I knew then that the world would never be the same again. I knew that I had taken a vital step in choosing to look into the borderlands.

  The world in which we find ourselves, as Dr Chapman asserted adamantly in one of his introductory lectures, is something we take too much for granted. ‘We are too ready to accept that what we see is what is,’ he read out from his notes, in a tone rather less melodramatic than the one which must have hummed in his head when he first wrote them down. ‘In fact, we are prisoners of our senses, doomed to experience nothing of the greater spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths but that pathetically narrow band which we call the visual spectrum. Sight is a mere slit, which excludes far more than it perceives, and hearing is no better—and as for the sense of smell, how utterly pathetic it is, even by comparison with the faculties of chemoreception possessed by bees and sharks! Their perceived world is very different from ours, although we feel compelled to assume that we share precisely the same underlying reality.'

  Maldureve had the subtlest imaginable odour, by our standards, but I knew that there was infinitely more to him than my poor eyes could see or my poor ears could hear. He belonged to that greater spectrum of sensory possibility, to the greater realm of the real rather than the narrow realm of the apprehended. I believed with all my heart that he could enrich me, teach me the true nature of reality and show me how to live. I wanted to welcome him into my world, to help him come out of the borderlands.

  'I'm not afraid,’ I said to him, for the third time; and I reached up to touch his beautiful face.

  The face wasn't there—not in the solid, material sense which communicates there-ness to poor sense-imprisoned human beings. I couldn't feel its fleshiness at all; all I could feel was a softness beyond softness, and a wealth of promises. But I could still see him within the velvet darkness.

  'Never allow yourself to be conquered by fear, Anne,’ he said. ‘We cannot help feeling it—my kind as well as yours—but we need never be overcome by it. Whatever else you may fear, don't be afraid to look at me, or to see me, or to touch me. Seek me, and I am here to be found. Come to me, and I will come to you.'

  'Thank you,’ I said, as he faded back into the deeper recesses of the shadows, into the gloomy borderlands which separated his perceived world from mine. ‘Thank you.'

  It wasn't long after that meeting that I first began to leave the Hall in the early hours, in search of that deeper darkness which proverbial wisdom assures us can be found just before the dawn. Once or twice I failed to find him; he couldn't always come to me—but every time he did, he became just a little more solid, a little more powerful, a little more beautiful.

  I didn't fall in love. Things which fall can't help themselves; they're dragged down by gravity, whether they like it or not. I leaped into love, or dived into love, or ran headlong into love, knowing every inch of the way exactly what it was I was doing and how and why. Could I have stopped, once I'd started? Perhaps. But I didn't want to stop; I wanted to go on.

  I wanted to go all the way.

  I wanted to be.

  6

  It wasn't until I'd made love with Maldureve for the third time that people began to notice anything different about me. Nobody saw the real transformation; nobody saw the joy, the contentment, the delight in being alive. The only change anyone could see was another kind of change altogether, and they couldn't understand why it irritated me so much; they couldn't understand how stupid it was that they could only see unfortunate and downbeat things when there was so much that was good, wonderful and magical.

  'I want to take you out to dinner Friday,’ Gil said, when he walked me home after the firework party on 5 November. ‘We can go to that little Italian restaurant in the old Market Square. They do great pasta, and we can get a bottle of good wine.'

  'My meal in Hall is all paid for,’ I told him. ‘It's all included in the fee.'

  'You don't have to eat in Hall. It's not compulsory.'

  'But it's a waste not to. The food's already bought and paid for, so why buy more? Let's go to the pictures instead—there must be something on.'

  'Only serial killers and vampires. Anyhow, it's my money. I like to eat out, even though it's so unbelievably expensive in this tight little island of yours.'

  'You just got the habit back home—now you're here you'll just have to break the addiction. It's too expensive, as you say.'

  'I can afford it. Hell, Anne, what's the big deal? It's only a meal.'

  'Exactly. What's the big deal? Why does it matter so much that I want to do something different?'

  'Oh hell! Well, if you really want to know, I'm worried that you're not eating properly—or even at all. I mean, have you looked in a mirror recently? You're fading away, Anne—you're as pale as a ghost. I know you don't like me making anorexic jokes, but hell, Anne, it's getting past a joke.'

  'I don't have anorexia. I've told you a dozen times. I'm just naturally thin. I eat, like anybody else. If you want to check up on me, come watch me. I'll buy you a ticket for dinner in Hall, and you can sit with me and monitor every mouthful.'

  'I might just do that, Anne.'

  'Then do it. If you can't believe me, check it out. It's a simple matter of fact. Dr Gray would approve—if all else fails, try it and see. You can come and watch me eat all my meals if you want to, just to make sure. After all, I wouldn't want you to think that I was making a special effort just for the one occasion.'

  'Okay, I'll come—even if it makes you angry. I'm not prepared to back off on this, Anne. I care about you, and I want to make sure that you care about yourself. No matter how much it freaks you out, I'm going to make sure that you are eating. It isn't that I don't trust you, it's just that I have to make sure, because if you do have anorexia somebody has to make sure that you get cured before you starve yourself to death.'

  He didn't trust me, but after his fashion, he did care. He bought himself a ticket, and came to watch me eat my dinner in Hall.

  I didn't put on any kind of a show; I got the vegetarian salad, just as I always did, and the fruit for dessert, and I didn't eat the things I didn't like, but I had enough. Even he had to admit that I had enough.

  'That's really what you always eat?’ he asked. ‘Amount-wise, I mean? You're really not just putting on a show?'

  'I eat,’ I told him. ‘I always have and I always will. It isn't the greatest joy in my life, but it's not repulsive. I'm not anorexic, I'm just naturally thin.'

  'Like hell,’ he said. ‘Maybe at the beginning of term you were naturally thin—I'd never have mentioned anorexia in the first place if I'd really thought you had it—but now you're in trouble. If you haven't got anorexia, you've got a hyperactive thyroid.'

  'What the hell's a hyperactive thyroid?'

  'The thyroid gland produces a hormone which helps to regulate your metabolism. An underactive thyroid gives you a thick neck—goitre, it's called. It
used to be quite common in the days when people had lousy diets, because sometimes they got no iodine. Iodine's a trace element you need to make the hormone. A hyperactive thyroid makes you burn up all your calories far too fast, so that whatever you eat you never put on any weight. It's serious, Anne, if that's what you've got. You have to see a doctor to check it out.'

  'It sounds to me like the kind of disease most girls would kill to get infected with. You can never be too rich or too thin, right?'

  'Wrong. Too rich I wouldn't know about, but too thin is definitely on the cards. It isn't making you any more attractive, Anne—believe me, I know.'

  'Oh, well, if that's all that's bothering you, it's no trouble at all. Look around, Mr Macho—there are half a hundred girls in this very room who'd just love to let you fondle their ample flesh. You don't need me. If you like cellulite, just go grab yourself a fistful—there's plenty of it around.'

  'Anne, you're ill. You mustn't let this ludicrous feminine pride in being thin make you oblivious to that fact. If you do have a hyperactive thyroid, you really are in danger. I can see you getting thinner and paler with every week that passes. What's your mother going to say when you go home for Christmas? Hell, Anne, even if you don't believe me, you have to check it out. You have to see the doctor just in case. Maybe he can set your mind at rest—maybe he can set my mind at rest—but you have to ask him about it. Weren't you going to see him anyway, to see about going on the Pill?'

  'Is that what this is all about? You want me to go to see the doctor because you think I'm dragging my heels about the other thing? Aren't you getting enough? Or is it just that it detracts from the quality of the experience—like eating a sweet with the wrapper on, isn't that what they say?'

  'Oh, shit! I shouldn't have ... Anne, you have to believe me, I'm not just making this up. You're not well, and you know it. It's not just being thin; you're twitchy, too. You can hardly sit still for five minutes. That patch of skin on your neck you keep picking at is coming up like a blood-blister. For fuck's sake, Anne, look at yourself in the mirror.'