The alarm woke me before I could finish. It was a little past noon. I tried to sit up, but found that I was too weak. I felt sick to my stomach, and the sun coming through the blinds was burning my eyes. Forcing myself up, I fought my way to the window and closed them. I made it back to bed just before I passed out.
I awoke a little after eight that evening. I felt spent, exhausted. The dreams were taking their toll on me. If I didn’t get control of them soon, I’d end up in the hospital, I was sure. I was debating whether or not to try another pot of coffee when there was a knock on the door.
Jacob Waters was standing there, one strap hanging loosely as always. I had just gotten the door open wide enough to see him when he placed the palm of his hand on my chest and pushed me backwards.
“Ain’t you got no better sense?” he asked, slamming the door closed behind him. “Damn! What’s wrong with you?”
I opened my mouth to ask him what he was talking about, but he waved his hand.
“Just shut up and listen,” he bellowed. “First of all, I don’t like even being in this house, especially now. But dadblameit, you musta lost yer mind completely. What were you thinking?” He wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes, but the anger he was feeling was coming off him like heat waves off a blacktopped road, and there was fear too. I could sense it; I could smell it.
“Jacob,” I said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why don’t you calm down and start from the beginning.”
“Start from the beginning?” he asked, puzzled. “How damned much time do you think we have? You best git yerself together, and I mean now.” He looked around nervously, like he expected someone to be hiding behind the drapes. “I told ya t’other day, I’m running down…gettin older, whether you or me likes it or not. How much do you want from me? How much do you think I can do and still keep goin? How much more do ya think I can clean up for ya?”
“I still don’t—” He cut me off.
“Yeah, yeah. You still don’t know what I’m talkin about. We’ll ya better start rememberin and fast. Things are comin to a head, I can feel it. And what you done…Christ!…what the hell were you thinkin?”
I grabbed him by the shoulder, dragged him into the study and pushed him down in a chair. The minute I’d touched him, I could see the fear swim across his face.
“Now you listen to me, Jacob Waters. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And as far as I know, I didn’t do anything today except sleep. I was starting to think that I was loosing my mind, but I’m thinking now that you’re the one on the edge.”
He pushed himself up out of the chair and pointed a bony finger at me. “You listen to me,” he said, emphatically. “I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t know how you lost your mind or your memories or whatever. But I do know that if you don’t git em back soon there’s gonna be hell t’pay. And that ain’t no spression.” Again, he looked around and I could see his discomfort in his face.
“I gotta git outta here,” he went on. “You gotta figure things out.” He turned and went to the front door. As he pulled it open and stepped outside, he shot me a quick look over his shoulder. “Start out back. Start where it all ended. Start at the prison.” He hurried off the porch before I could say anything, got in his truck and took off.
I stood there watching his taillights fade into the darkness of the night. As soon as the door latched, a booming laughter filtered through the house and I knew who it was. More than that, I knew where he was.
When I got upstairs to my office, my enemy, the dark figure in my dreams, and the one I had thrown out the other night, was standing in the middle of the room. It was a faceless shadow of a man. Solid but not solid.
“Who the hell are you and what do you want?” I asked it. “No more games!”
It just laughed, a thunderous bellow of a laugh.
“Enough!” I cried.
“You poor pathetic thing,” it said, maliciously. “I told your mother you’d be trouble. I told her that you were nothing more than an experiment gone wrong.” It laughed again. “Did you really think you could defeat me? Did you really think that curs-ed tree could hold me forever?”
My memory was clearing as my rage took hold of me. The floodgates burst open and everything flowed in.
“I killed you,” I yelled. “I killed you for what you did to my mother.”
He laughed again. “You didn’t kill anybody. Even that you couldn’t do right. Did you really think you were stronger than me? My experience spans millenniums. I shall be free…soon. And my retribution will be swift and merciless. Just like it was for your mother.”
“What did you do to my mother? Where is she?”
“Did you think you could come back here after all these years and undo what’s been done?” He laughed again. “My powers are growing again, and I shall soon be free.”
“Never. You will never be free. I will finish what I began two hundred years ago. I will finish you forever,” I yelled.
This time there was no laughter. The shadow-shape in front of me dissipated. I knew everything now. I remembered everything now. I flew down the steps, out into the back yard and pushed through the bushes that led to the stone building in the back. Inside, I knew I was too late. I knew I was years too late, but I had to try.
I grabbed hold of one of the corner stones, my nails digging into the cement joints as easily as if they were made of sand. I ripped out one stone after another, tossing them into the woods. Behind me, I could hear the rumbling begin. It was like thunder and the whole ground shook.
Lifting myself into the air, I could see over the bushes. The Weeping Willow was beginning to crack. Its bark was flaking off in great chunks and the trunk was twisting itself into a spiral. Large plugs of grass and dirt sprang upward into the air. I did not have much time.
With a snarl of anger and determination, I grabbed a corner of the stone roof and pulled upward as hard as I could. As I lifted the roof, the odor of death and decay came wafting out. I swung it to the side. The grating sound of stone sliding across stone echoed through the darkness, competing with the thunderous sound of what was happening behind me.
Inside the building I found her remains. No more than a skeleton now. My mother had been imprisoned here when I had been too young and too weak to help her. My rage boiled over.
I flew over the bushes and settled on the ground beneath the willow. Great spans of earth were being uprooted as the thing that had been my father struggled to free itself.
I thrust my hand down into the shaking ground, just under one of the willow’s thickest roots. My aim was perfect. I grabbed the thing by its jacket and yanked it upward in one motion. It let out an ear-splitting cry, its bony hands clutching and pulling at my wrist. Its breath was foul and its flesh hung from the bone like dripping cottage cheese. There was no hair left on its head.
In a burst of energy, it drove me backwards. We sailed through the air, bouncing off tree trunks and through bushes and branches. We held each other tightly. I could feel its razor sharp fingernails digging into my neck as we tumbled to the ground.
It snarled at me, baring its yellow, rotten and pointed teeth, hissing and spitting its anger. As its grip tightened, I could feel the flow of blood running down my neck. Pushing myself upward with all my strength, we lifted off and shot straight up through the overhanging branches. The wail it uttered would have frozen any mortal’s blood. It kicked and screamed as we drifted closer and closer to the little stream that ran along side the willow.
“No,” it hissed. “You can’t. It’s not possible.”
“What’s not possible?” I asked, dragging it closer to the water. “That I’m truly stronger than you? What did you think, father? That I would never come into my own? You made me, remember. I was the product of your lust for a human woman. So here I am, grown…and angrier and stronger than I was when I fist buried you beneath that tree. The Willow Tree that my mother had loved so much. Your time has come.”
“No.
You can not destroy me,” it bellowed. “We are the same. We belong to the night; we are kindred.”
“No, father. We are not the same. I have my mother’s compassion. But none of it is for you. It is time I finished what I started.”
As I plunged him into the running water, I pushed down on the stake that I had buried in his chest two hundred years ago. A piercing wail rose up and then died away beneath the water. His flesh and bone began to decay and the water around him started to boil. I could feel it burning my arm, but I would not let go. Not until what remained of him had dissolved completely. Not until it was finished forever.
10
When the thing I held beneath the water, my father, was completely gone, I moved over to the bank, just watching the water calm itself. When I turned, she was there, standing behind me. A translucent shape dressed in white. She was as beautiful as I remembered her.
“I can be free, now,” she said. “I knew you would come back.”
“Mother—” I began, but she silenced me.
“I don’t have much time. Listen to me, my son. Jacob is my brother. He has been your guardian for all these centuries, but he’s growing weak. When you gave up your life as a vampire for your wife, Ronnie, you weakened him and yourself. You must correct that. You must be what you are. Give him your strength and protect him as he has protected you.”
I wanted to hold her, to embrace her once more, but she faded. Standing there alone in the woods, I knew three things for sure. My mother was gone for good, as was my father; Jacob would once again be strong, and the dream I’d had about the couple in the car was not a dream. I had fed. After thirty-nine years…I had fed again, and would continue to do so.
THE GREATER THIRST, by Marilyn “Mattie” Brahen
The night will end soon. So few hours to write down my story. The Philadelphia police will record it, no doubt, as a grisly hoax tied in with a bizarre and unsolved murder. They will not see it as a tribute to Sarah, a paean extolling her final triumph over me, and as final proof of my love for her.
They don’t believe in vampires.
Nor did Sarah, until we met here in Philadelphia, in the halcyon year of 1965. Sarah was an art student attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. I had recently moved to the city of brotherly love, keeping my true name, Darien Longwood, but setting up a revised identity, purchasing a new set of legal records. I had financed the subterfuge, thickly greasing the palms of its perpetrators by privately selling a handful of my possessions which had long since become antiques. I then leased a beautiful, historic row house at 19th and Delancey Streets near Rittenhouse Square, a few blocks from where Sarah Cantrell rented a small apartment on 21st Street. In the evenings, she frequented a pleasant coffeehouse, The Gilded Cage, which was where I first saw her.
She didn’t strike me as beautiful, but rather as an alluring woman. She caught my interest quickly, as sudden lightning in a calm night sky would.
She sat, alone and apparently contented, at a corner table, sipping tea, and watching an overweight, middle-aged man hunched over his chair, picking and strumming a competent version of Debussy’s Clair de Lune on his guitar.
I sat at a corner table diagonally across from her. She appeared to be of average height, perhaps five feet six, her figure trim, but not slender. She wore a sleeveless, dark blue shift that hung lazily on her. The hem flowed around her crossed legs, ending just above her knees. Her feet were shod in black cloth, flat-heeled shoes. Her skin was coffee au lait-colored, a dark gold which I surmised was natural. Although unseasonably warm, it was still Spring, few people attaining full tans (I smiled as I thought this). This woman’s flesh was richly and evenly hued. Her hair was a sable brown, long, and sleek with waves. Her eyes, also brown, were lighter, nearly chestnut. She had a long nose, its base small, and high cheekbones.
I entered her mind. I found this ability, to read human thoughts, to be useful, but rarely pleasurable. Human minds can be grotesque or sublime, corrupted or pure, commonplace or unique, motives and intentions, hopes and disappointments spread out before us, as in a feast. We vampires cling to life, covet every morsel we can siphon in our mocking sojourn. If you fail to amuse us, you are in danger. Common wine. You unwittingly compound the boring trap we fell into when we became immortal. If you lengthen the evening interminably, a reminder of endless nights to come, it could well be your last.
If you challenge us, you may, unlike us, see the dawn. You have fed us in ways other than the blood and are therefore valuable alive. If you are rare and can touch our darkness, bringing sunlight at midnight…that, my friend, presents a quagmire. A thirst deeper than blood will expose our weak spot, where you can pierce us. Such human gems are never relegated to slavery, never chattel to our will. Their indomitable affection for their mortal path thwarts our control.
We seek them out for our new generation. They often resist us, while equally attracted to us. They deal with us gingerly, fluttering like moths near hot night lamps, keeping their distance to avoid burnt wings. We employ every ruse, every deceit, every gamble, to capture them, bringing their bright souls into our burning darkness for eternity.
Sarah’s mind swirled with music, colors, shapes, a vibrancy exceedingly rare in most people, raising that which she sensed to the heightened state we call art.
Sarah Cantrell was not merely listening to the guitarist’s rendition of Claire de Lune. She was merging with the notes, incorporating them into her mind, touching them, tasting them, encircling them as a musical whole. She was becoming Claire de Lune, and becoming Debussy, experiencing his composition’s birth and completion, as if she were the composer. She had heard its haunting melody many times before. Yet each rendition mesmerized her.
I rose, crossed the room, and sat down at her table across from her.
“You appear to be an enthusiast of classical music,” I said. “So am I. May I join you?”
She stared at me briefly before replying. “Yes, I am. Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Tchaikovsky are my favorites. And I suppose there’s no harm in your sitting there.”
I laughed. “But I may be a very dangerous fellow, for all you know.”
“Not in a well-lit place.”
I smiled. “Are you a musician?”
“No. An artist.” When I waited, quietly attentive, she continued. “I’m a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. I graduate in June.”
“Really? What do you paint?”
“Oh, people, scenes from nature. I’m not big on still lifes. I tend towards realism and emotionalism, although I can appreciate the modern forms, the abstract and the cubist. I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned in my style and subject matter.”
“And your mentors? Who has influenced your artwork?”
She laughed. “You’re full of questions. Well, I originally studied the impressionists. I still love the works of Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh makes me shiver. He’s so intense! Do you know that his early works and his final works are filled with equal passion? There was this retrospective of his I was lucky enough to attend in Paris. It was my first trip to Europe and the Louvre had put together a showing of his paintings. Two of his canvases stood out intensely. I’ll never forget them.”
She fell silent, caught up in the memory.
“Which ones?” I asked her.
“One was The Potato Eaters, done when he was working as a minister among the miners. This impoverished family was seated around a table in a very dark room, lit centrally by candlelight, as they talked and laughed, and ate, of course, potatoes. But their faces, the light suffusing them in the darkness, made them appear almost holy, touched by God. The final painting was Vincent’s last before he shot himself, of blackbirds in a darkening sky. The blackbirds seemed to come at you, a storm of wings, cawing finality, the end of all things. Death.”
She had been gazing distantly off as she spoke. I had gone into her mind, viewing these works as she pictured them, seeing them touched by her fervor. Now she shook off the m
emory, returning to the present. “Lord, I’m sorry. I must sound morbid.”
“No, not at all. I have seen these paintings. They are as superb as your descriptions imply.”
She beamed. “Then you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes.”
She regarded me quietly. “I’m Sarah Cantrell.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Cantrell. My name is Darien Longwood.”
“Sarah, please. There’s no need for such formality in this day and age.”
I nodded. “Sarah, then.”
“Pleased to meet you as well, Darien,” she said. “And what do you do? What’s your claim to fame?”
“I’m a vampire,” I admitted in an extremely low voice, leaning close to her, “but a very cultured one.”
Not a muscle of her body moved. Her eyes flickered to mine, lowered and then rose to meet my gaze again. She smiled, slowly and uncertainly.
“You’re a darned good actor. I almost believe you,” she said, her smile stretching to a smirk.
* * * *
After much persuasion, mainly my assurance that I was not deranged, she allowed me to walk her home.
I probed her, rather egotistically, to see how she pictured me. She took me for a suave, rather controlled man of a few years older than herself, in my mid to late twenties. She believed me possessed of a droll, comedic streak and expected further antics from me, evidencing my wry, humorous nature. I did intend to stage a diversion, but one which would force her to confront my vampiric nature.
We continued up 19th Street, Sarah turning her head every now and then to gaze at me in a natural and relaxed manner. I knew she was curious about my “real” background, and wondering why I chose to act mysterious. I also caught glimpses of myself within her thoughts, and was pleased with the picture her mind rendered of me, a vampire’s mirror.
She liked my six-foot frame, the rich onyx shading and moderate cut of my hair, and the way one lock dangled over my forehead. She thought my square facial shape, strong nose and full mouth enticingly masculine, and found my dark eyes a complement to my fair complexion. She approved of my taste in clothes, currently black trousers, matching leather loafers, a white cotton shirt, and a brown suede tailored jacket. She thought it a happy coincidence that she preferred broad-chested men who were sturdy but trim. She wondered if I harbored comparable attractions between my legs, and decided that I must.
The Vampire Megapack Page 10