“Gan, Hun,” I said. “You make me very proud.”
“Papa?” Gan whispered.
As Brulde struggled to stem his weeping, I looked at the two young men with a stern eye. “I am so sorry that I could not be there to help raise you and your brothers and sisters,” I said. “That was not of my choosing. But know this: I have watched you all, and loved you all, all the days of your lives. Care after your mothers when Brulde has departed this world. I watch over them too, but I can only do so much from a distance.”
“Is it really you, father?” Hun said.
Gan's mouth worked with some sudden strong emotion. His eyes widened and then glimmered with tears. “I remember you!” he gasped. “I remember you now, father! I would sit in your lap and play with the little animals that you carved for me out of wood. I remember your face, and how your beard tickled my nose when you kissed me.”
He reached for me and I stepped back, holding my body as rigidly as possible. The Hunger--! It was fully upon me now, crowding all other thought out of my mind.
“I love you all,” I said, talking rapidly now, backing away from them. “I have always loved you. Take care of your mothers. Love and obey your father. I must go now. Good-bye, my sons. Good-bye, my dearest friend.”
And then I turned and propelled myself through the air as fast as I could.
To their mortal eyes, it was as if I had vanished into thin air.
5
When word of my visitation spread among the People of the River, I was given a new name, the first in an endless succession of names I would assume over the next thirty millennia. They called me Thest-u'un-Mann, which meant The Ghost Who Is a Man.
If I had appeared only to Brulde that afternoon, no one would have believed he’d actually seen his old companion Gon, who everyone knew had died long ago in a battle that was more myth than memory now, as most of the People who were alive in those days had already joined our forefathers in the afterlife. They would have thought his tale the ravings of a dotty old fool. But he had our boys to verify his claims, and they were much respected in the community, and so I found myself elevated from forgotten hero to semi-divine guardian-- a strange but pleasing sort of afterlife, I must admit.
My Brulde died the following winter, slipping away in his sleep after a long and feverish struggle with what your modern medicine calls pneumonia. Our word for it, loosely translated, was the drowning fever, but what is in a name? Pneumonia or drowning fever, it was just as deadly to the elderly then as it is now. Not even Nyala’s strongest remedies—she was the village medicine woman by then-- could break the deathgrip the illness had on his ancient body.
By the standard of those times, Brulde was a veritable Methuselah. We did not celebrate birthdays in those days. Calendars are a recent invention, believe it or not. But by my reckoning he was just past his fiftieth birthday. He was a tribal elder then, much loved by his children and grandchildren and revered by the young men he patiently tutored in his apartment in the Elder Siede.
As was the custom of my people, he was wrapped in his sleeping furs and bound in leather cords. His meager belongings were placed alongside his body in that primitive shroud, along with small tokens of affection, and then his body was borne on the shoulders of our sons and close relations, and he was carried down the hill to our ancestral burial mound to be interred alongside his mother and father and all the rest of his forebears.
I was watching when he died. I was just on the other side of the river, holding vigil with my powerful vampire senses when he breathed his last and then no more. I did not move through his entire illness but to keep apart from passing tribesmen, but when they bore him to his final resting place, I found that I could not stay away. I could not be apart from him any longer.
I drifted down from the treetops as they carried him from the Siede. To say that my sudden appearance startled the funeral procession would have been an understatement. Some of them screamed, some fell to their knees, and more than a few of them turned tail and ran.
“Thest-u'un-Mann! Thest-u'un-Mann!” they cried.
Old Eyya and Nyala clung to one another as I approached. I could see the terror in their eyes. Their humped backs trembled in awe. I felt such pity and love for them that I could barely stand to look at them. If only I could sweep away the years. If only I could go back in time. Oh, to kiss them again! To hold them in my arms. To laugh again. To love again. As with Brulde, I did not see their wrinkled skin and gray hair, their sagging breasts and toothless mouths. I saw them with the eyes of love. I saw them young and smooth and beautiful, my wives, my sisters, my goddesses!
I trod gently toward them so that their fear did not overwhelm them. Then, just outside of arm’s reach, I sank to my knees at their feet.
“Please,” I begged them, “as you loved me, have pity on me now and grant me this single boon. Allow me to take our husband to his place of rest, not among his fathers but with one who loved him every bit as much as you. You had him in life, now let me have him in death. I wish to keep him near to me in the afterlife, as I will come for both of you, whom I have loved for so very long.”
After taking a moment to absorb my sudden and fantastical appearance, Eyya choked back her terror and nodded, then Nyala.
I wept black tears in gratitude. I could not hold them back. They dripped like tar from my cheeks, speckling the snowy earth between my hands.
“Thank you!” I sobbed. “Oh, thank you, my dearest ones! Thank you!”
“Is it really you, Gon?” Nyala croaked. She left Eyya's side and reached out to me with one gnarled hand.
I took her aged hand and put it to my face, careful not to injure her with my vampire strength. Her flesh was soft and smooth, the skin so thin and fragile it was like tissue. Her living flesh burned like hot coals against my icy cheek, but it felt so good to be touched by her again. I smiled and nodded, fighting very hard to contain my emotions. “Yes, it is me,” I choked. “The Man Who Is A Ghost is the same person you once called husband. Oh, my Nyala! Oh, my sweet and beautiful Eyya! I will always love you!”
Nyala stumbled back into Eyya's embrace, sobbing loudly.
I stood then and went to Brulde. The men bearing his body placed him gently on the ground. My sons, graying now themselves, eyed me reverently. My daughter Breyya, a baby on her hip, pushed through the crowd to touch my face in passing. I paused to kiss her palm, stroked my grandchild’s ruddy cheek with a finger, then continued on. I kneeled beside Brulde and lifted him into my arms. He lay in sleep-like repose, wisps of curly white hair blowing in the wind. I looked at my wives and nodded. “I will return for you,” I said, and then I flew. Before my children and their children could gather ‘round and tempt me, I flew from the village in a single great bound, vanishing into the treetops on the far side of the river.
I buried him in the cave I had resided in since the night that I’d killed Ludd. It was a small cleft in a high peak that overlooked the valley of the River People, windblown and lonesome, but it was my home and had been for decades. Perhaps it was selfish to want his body near me, but I cared not. Let our ancestors have his spirit, I could at least have the bones! That was not too much to ask, was it?
I passed many a lonely night talking to those bones. Sometimes I imagined that his spirit was very near to me. I talked to him as I had when we were young men.
Ah, those long ago nights when we first left my father’s wetus and made our home together! We were just two Paleolithic bachelors with no cares but for our own pleasure, not an inkling of the sacrifices that time and love would shortly demand of us.
I think loneliness would have driven me insane if I did not have him there with me, and when Eyya died a couple of years later, I returned to the village and took her body, too.
I lived on the blood of animals and watched over my People and talked to my loved ones like a madman.
Immortality is such a dreadful curse!
When Nyala died, she joined us as well.
By th
en my name had been shortened to Thest and some of my clan had taken to leaving offerings in the woods for me. They had seen me fly, and so I became a sort of elemental deity to them, Thest, the god of the winds, like the imaginary gods the Neanderthals had worshipped. They placed carved figures inside stone circles and called on me for blessings. If I accepted these tokens, it was considered good luck. Usually their offerings were carried away by animals. Sometimes I really did take them, if they were cleverly made. I did not have the power to bless anyone, although once or twice I was able to rescue a lone hunter from a hungry speartooth or prevent a child from drowning in the river.
After Nyal died, I became Thest, who rescues the children from beasts. Later, when my children and their children had perished, I became an even more powerful god. I became Thest, who guards his people from evil. And later still, Thest, who punishes the wicked with eternal death. It amuses me to recall how powerful a god I became when I was really just a crazy old vampire who spent his evenings talking to his dead loved ones in a drafty old cave.
From time to time, I appeared to ensure the survival of my tribe. Sometimes I battled raiders from a neighboring tribe. Sometimes I warned the People of an impending natural disaster, like a flood or a forest fire. Each time I interceded on their behalf, my legend grew.
My descendants married and produced children, generation after generation of children, until the entire tribe was directly descended from our family, which made me, quite literally, their Creator. As the last great ice age dawned, I was the white-skinned god Thest, protector of the River People, and the People had begun to call themselves the Forst-Numra... the Chosen Ones.
Yet, their God was not happy.
As the summers cooled and the winters grew longer and more bitter, as the glaciers began to slowly expand across the land, I inexorably lost what little remained of my sanity. I began to believe that I really was this god named Thest. If not for my conversations with my long departed loved ones, I probably would have forgotten there was ever a man named Gon at all.
Each night I sat in my cave and watched the glaciers creep further over the mountains, consuming the valley as they had long threatened to do. The thrum of their movements was omnipresent. It was a sound I could feel as well as hear, a constant low rumble interspersed with resounding thunder as great rifts burst open in their humped white backs. The glaciation of the valley was a slow white flood, a million pounds of grinding ice that threatened to drown the world in endless cold.
My people finally abandoned the valley for better hunting grounds, which I certainly understood, but as much as I loved them, I decided I could not follow them on their exodus. I could not bear the thought of leaving the bones I shared my aerie with. In truth, they were not even bones anymore. Brulde and Eyya and Nyala had long gone to dust, but I was mad. I was beyond mad. In solitude, I watched the glaciers fill the valley up, day by day, inch by inch, until at long last I decided to end my lone vigil.
I flew to the vanguard of the glacier and placed my hand upon its flank, savoring for a moment its coldness. It seemed the only thing in the world harder and colder than I.
I wish to end this, I said to myself.
In my crazed solitude, I had tried to kill myself many times. I had pierced my own heart, set myself aflame and drowned myself in the river. No human method of death was adequate to end me. This white beast, which was slowly devouring everything I cherished, which was, in fact, a perfect metaphor for the curse that had befallen me... perhaps this vast dreadnought was massive enough to grind me to dust, to erase me from the world as if I had never existed.
It would be a great relief.
I climbed its icy shelves, ascending higher and higher until it seemed I stood upon the very shoulder of the heavens. Clouds of condensed moisture and stinging spicules of ice whirled around me as I mounted the behemoth. I could see the whole world stretched out around me: the low peaks of the Swabian Alb, submerged now in the glacier like gray stones in a frozen puddle, and beyond them, the limitless steppes rolling to the hazy horizon. The wind whipped my hair to and fro as I gazed once more upon the land of my birth, and then I found a deep and jagged crevasse and threw my body into it.
I closed my eyes as I descended through the cold throat of the glacier, bouncing from one jagged outcrop of ice to another, but the pain seemed very far away. It seemed as though it was happening to someone else. It was tragic, yes, this falling man, his body breaking with each terrific impact, but it had nothing to do with me. That was some fellow named Thest and my name was Gon, son of Gan, husband of Eyya and Nyala and Brulde, father of Gavid, Den, Hun, Breyya, Gan, and Leth.
I do not remember when I hit the bottom.
When night came, an echoing crack woke me from my dreamless slumber. It was a sound like lightning, like a hundred trees being snapped in a titan's fist. I felt a million pounds of ice collapse suddenly upon me. A cry of agony escaped my lips as I was crushed flat. I saw my black blood burst upon the plane of ice, and then I saw no more.
At last! I thought gratefully.
Not the End
Of course, that was not the end of me. How could it be? I am here in this finely appointed suite in Liege, Belgium, tapping away on my sleek modern computer as we speak. But it is just as good a place as any to end the first volume of my memoirs. Probably the most fitting place, because it really is an end of sorts.
I spent the next seven thousand years or so in that glacier. Insensate. Inanimate. Dead but for my vampire dreams. Encased in a tomb of ice like an insect in amber.
The world swept on, revolving around and around and around the sun, adorning itself in a hoary mantle of ice before gradually thawing again. The Earth twirled, day to night and back again, approximately two million times while I slept. Mankind endured the terrible cold and was tempered by the ordeal. As the glaciers slowly retreated once more, what few men had survived that long age of ice flourished in the conquering warmth. Our species, Cro-Magnon man, was fruitful and multiplied while all the other thinking apes languished and passed away. When I was finally delivered from my frigid womb, mankind had blossomed. It had evolved, become a more sophisticated beast, a little crueler perhaps, but wiser, more robust. Yet despite its heady renewal, the world I’d forsaken had suffered a profound loss in my absence. Our cousins, the Neanderthals, were in decline. By the time I walked the Earth again, they had all but vanished from the world. Their extinction left a gaping void in our collective psyche. For the first time since we climbed down from the trees and spread across the face of Europe, we were the only sentient species on the planet. We were the last thinking apes left alive. We were alone, and you know how terrible it is to be alone.
Sometimes I think it is that loneliness that drove our species a little bit insane. Why else would we have invented such a vast assortment of preposterous characters, all those pantheons of mad gods and uncountable legions of angels and devils and supernatural dream-things, if not to fill the void our Fat Hand cousins left behind?
Of which vampires were only too eager to seek advantage. But that is a tale for another night.
As for this evening, I am hungry and I must venture out to feed. My cold white body ravens for mortal blood. The need for me is as strong as it ever was, a twisting knife in my guts, a relentless throbbing ache in every cell of my body. Blood! the beast cries. Give me blood! And I must move to obey it.
I bid you sweet dreams, my readers.
Be well and be good… or you may find my dread shadow at your window tonight.
Your friend,
Gon,
The Oldest Living Vampire
About the Author
Joseph Duncan is the author of thirteen novels, including the indie bestselling Oldest Living Vampire Saga. He lives in Southern Illinois with his wife, his kids, and all the voices in his head. If you’d like to contact Mr. Duncan, you may do so at [email protected]. You can also friend him on Facebook, or visit his blog Red Ramblings.
The Saga Continues…
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Be sure to read the next exciting volume of the Oldest Living Vampire series
The Oldest Living Vampire On The Prowl
“Your life will last only as long as our conversation,” I said gently. “You will share some of your life with me, and then I will share some of my life with you. If you lie to me, about anything, I will know it. My senses are a thousand times more sensitive than your own. I will smell the lie in your sweat, see it in the quiver of your pupils, and then I will kill you, more slowly, and more painfully, than you could ever imagine. Now… Do we have a bargain?”
So begins the second volume of the Oldest Living Vampire saga.
In modern day Belgium, the vampire Gon has kidnapped a ruthless murderer. Lukas Jaeger is a cunning sociopath, a monster in the guise of a man. Lonely and fascinated by his hostage's inhumanity, Gon strikes a deal with the seductive serial killer: his life story in exchange for the mortal's vile tales. So long as Gon is intrigued, his captive lives on.
As their Faustian bargain unfolds, the Oldest Living Vampire tells Jaeger of his rebirth in the icy steppes of Europe following the last glacial maximum, the creation of his first vampire companion, and their battle with the Elders of the Oombai, a burgeoning agricultural society... all the while, his thirst for the captive mortal's blood grows more and more irresistible.
A Kindle bestseller since it's debut in 2010, the Oldest Living Vampire Saga has been described as "lush and brutal", "a great new angle for vampires" and "a must-read for any vampire addict!"
Turn the page now to read the first chapter of The Oldest Living Vampire on the Prowl…
Liege, Belgium
12:30 am, December 23, 2010 A.D.
The Oldest Living Vampire Tells All: Revised and Expanded (The Oldest Living Vampire Saga Book 1) Page 25