by Lee McGeorge
----- X -----
Stillness, like a photograph. Paul sat in the chair at the centre of the room staring at the story panels. They were messy, like graffiti on toilet walls, but those scribbles were all interesting fragments, splinters of glass from shattered stories that were building in size. Soon he would be able to slide them together to create interesting mosaics. Narratives of interest, born from his imagination. But to the casual eye they were nothing but scratches of ink on a wall.
Ahead of him was the laptop, opened to the image of the white cross at the shrine. It was still planted in the earth, before he’d stupidly pushed it over and broke it. He toyed with the small silver cross fastened to his wrist.
Things were different now. His batteries of imagination were charged and primed. He’d seen Bran, the castle and the forest. He’d met John and learned of strigoi. He’d visited the grave of a vampire. He even wore the cross on his wrist he had grave robbed from a corpse.
It was time to meet the vampire for real.
“Show me.”
The wall dissolved to become a window into the forest. The shrine stood in frozen air, the cruciform hung from the entrance. Nothing moved. No breeze swung the cruciform or rustled the trees. There was nothing but dead silence.
Paul settled back into the chair, watching the forest, feeling the outline of the cross on his wrist.
“Show me the real vampire.”
The first movement came from behind bushes, a leading edge of what was perhaps a man some distance away. It was instantly recognisable as the person who had stalked him, the one camouflaged, sneaking up on him and chasing him. That wasn’t a hunter it would seem. Rather he had laid eyes on the elusive strigoi.
“You can come out and be seen.”
Like a film director positioning an actor, the strigoi slowly stepped from behind cover to be revealed in the icy winter daylight.
The strigoi of his imagined mind wasn’t a vaporous ghost or spirit.
It was a man. And he was magnificent.
His skin was marble white, bleached and colourless. He was naked, stepping cautiously through the forest, stepping forward with his toes, touching them into the snow before resting the heel down. Something about him was beautiful, pure, understated yet majestic. He was a statue, like Michelangelo’s David, perfect in size and form. His muscles were toned and cut, his posture was precise and natural. To the casual eye he looked like a naked man coated in white paint; but it went way beyond being just a man. This strigoi made flesh was the most perfect being imaginable. The muscles of its arms and shoulders bulged with visible strength, the skin was taught across its back and abdomen to show lines and ridges of muscle tone. He was the most perfect specimen of masculinity with a physical perfection to rival any athlete or gymnast, but there was an extra dimension to the perfection in that he looked strong. On this frame of skeleton and muscle was a visible power. The vampire was in some ways a super-hero from a comic book, with strength and talent that went beyond what mere humans could do.
The vampire stepped through the forest until it entered the shrine and stood with its back to Paul. It was right in the centre, where the cross should have been. A single spot of light fell through the tree branches to illuminate the creature so precisely it looked as though he was glowing from within. Angelic. It raised its arms out to the sides as though in the shape of crucifixion and Paul noticed the small silver cross hanging from its wrist. Subconsciously, he took hold of the cross on his own wrist.
“What did they do to you?” he asked.
Paul’s eyes drifted to the point on the vampire’s spine between the shoulder blades. The scar was clear.
“They put the cross in you. They buried you face down in the earth and then hammered that cross through your back and into your heart.”
The vampire turned its head to look across its shoulder and make eye contact.
Eyes.
It was the first time Paul had noticed its face. A strong jaw line and proud handsome features, it looked every bit as statuesque as the rest of him, but there were two things that brought it to life. First, the expression was blank, or rather, saddened but not showing. Something about the face was angelic and calm but the underlying emotion was one of sadness as though the man had lived his life and was not angry or upset to have died, but just sad that this was what had happened. But inside the face were the eyes, glowing, rubies of light. They didn’t shine like lights, rather they were made of a deep red glass and they reflected or refracted an unseen source of light. They were dead, lonely eyes. Against the white marble skin, these glassy red eyes were striking.
Pathos. It was the only word Paul could find to describe the strigoi. There was suffering to this character, but being dead there was nothing that could be done about it now. It was as though an acute sadness had coalesced into physical form; and this, this was his vampire.
“They did something unforgivable to you, didn’t they,” Paul asked as a statement, not a question. The vampire turned through one hundred and eighty degrees to face him.
“You are a spirit, a strigoi, you were inside a man that was killed by the locals and bound to the earth.”
Paul realised just what it was he could see. This was a human soul. He’d been told it infected a man and turned him evil, but the soul itself was without conscience or desire to commit evil deeds. There was nothing inside the vampire except sadness.
“You infected someone, didn’t you. You went into the body of a man whose family then killed him. They didn’t understand that their man was sick. Instead, they saw you. They killed him, buried him in the forest because they didn’t see sickness, they only saw their own misguided fears.”
The vampire did not respond.
Paul stood and unwound the twine from his wrist and set the small silver cross back down beside the laptop. The wall had returned with story panels. The forest was gone, the vampire was gone. The only thing that remained was stillness.
Paul walked to the window and looked to the mountains beyond the tower block. “People here are foolish.” He whispered his words softly to the vampire that was no longer there. “They murdered you and buried you for no good reason. They were stupid and superstitious and they murdered you for it. This isn’t fair. This is not right... It’s evil. But evil isn’t even a strong enough word for what they’ve done, it’s worse than that... What they’ve done,” he pictured the sad vampire’s face in his imagination again. “What they did to you was a sin.”
----- X -----
It was close to eight o’clock and his nerves were getting the better of him.
He felt like a teenager again and was enduring the nervous energy he experienced the first time a girl had taken him to her bedroom. He was just a kid really. He’d been invited to a girl’s room under the pretence of doing homework. It was all plush pillows of pink and peach, teddy bears on the bed, a hint of perfume in the air, a musical jewellery box with a revolving ballerina figurine. All those details of a young girl’s room had set his heart fluttering and that was what tonight felt like. This girl, this naive and clingy Romanian girl who had held his hand when she was scared, then again when she thought he was feeling sick, was coming round to socialise. There was nothing to do here. No TV to watch, not even a movie on the laptop. There were no bars or restaurants in Noua or anything else of interest. She knew this and she’d still agreed to come and visit. Did she need help with her homework too?
When the bell rang Paul almost leapt out of the seat. He paced the room quickly, composed himself, pulled his clothing straight, took another sip of wine and then ambled to the door as casual as he could to look through the spy hole. Ildico was there.
“Hi, how are you?”
Ildico barely looked up from her feet. She was holding back tears. Paul motioned her into the hallway.
As she stepped forward he took hold of her coat to help her take it off. It was a white puffer jacket and as he eased it off her shoulders he realised he was holding it by the synthe
tic filling that had spilled from a burst seam. “Oh, you’re coat is ripped, did you know?”
She said nothing verbally but her body language spoke volumes.
“Was it Nealla?”
Ildico nodded, keeping her face away from him. “Yeah, he introduced himself to me again the other day.” Paul struggled to find words to say. “He’s an idiot.”
“I hate him,” she mumbled. “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure, it’s just this door here.”
As Ildico moved away Paul noticed that her eye makeup was smeared through tears. She was dressed to impress again, in a silky figure hugging top that showed how slender she was. The perfume was there again as was the makeup and lipstick; but right now it was all wasted.
The bathroom door closed, the lock clicked shut.
He leaned against the wall and tapped the back of his head against it a few times, symbolically rather than literally banging his head against a wall. He sipped his wine and refilled the glass, pouring a second for when Ildico emerged.
The sound of running water and a little splashing came from the bathroom.
Whilst she was in there, Paul examined the tear in her coat. He could hold the seam with the safety pins from his first-aid and sewing kits. He always had a first-aid kit when he travelled; be prepared as they teach the Boy Scouts, always be prepared. He was prepared for a cut finger or a loose button. He even had condoms in his backpack which were now under his pillow in the ultimate preparation, but the Boy Scouts hadn’t taught how to prepare for a crying girl locked in the bathroom. This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go.
Fucking Nealla. The guy is a cunt and he should be fucking burnt alive. Perhaps I should just stab the fucker. Here I am trying to get off with Ildico and this shit-head is ripping her jacket and making her cry. What am I going to do about it?
What indeed.
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Except avoid him.
Paul was unsure how much time Ildico stayed in the bathroom. He drank a whole glass of wine and was about to refill when the power cut out.
“Just a minute, Ildico, I’ll get some light,” he called more jovially than intended. It was the first thing he said to her since she’d gone into the bathroom. She didn’t respond.
At least the candlelight was romantic. Perhaps she would feel more comfortable hiding her tear-streaked makeup in semi-darkness.
He tapped on the bathroom door. “Ildico, I have a candle here.” Then more assertively, “Ildico, don’t stay in the dark. Come out.”
There was a shuffling from inside and the sound of the lock disengaging. She peeked around the door as it opened, defeated, embarrassed and humiliated. “Come on,” Paul said softly whilst wrapping his arm over her shoulders. “Come and have a drink, put it behind you.”
----- X -----
“What is your story about?” Ildico asked as she looked at the story panels. She was squeezing herself against the very edge of the sofa. Paul sat in the middle with an uncomfortable gap between them. A single candle lit the room.
“The story isn’t formed, but at the minute it is about a master thief who is locked in an underground prison like a dungeon but very big, almost like the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Except, instead of the minotaur, the church uses this prison to keep vampires they have captured and the thief is dropped into the labyrinth to be killed. But because he’s a clever guy, he escapes. Unfortunately, so do all the vampires.”
“Oh, that sounds so cool!” She made it sound like it really was.
Paul laughed, “No, it’s complete shit. It’s not what I’m interested in writing but it fits the brief. It’s never going to be a bestseller. I may not use it as the first book. I’ll keep it for something later in the series.”
“No, it is amazing. I think it will be a big success and it will be a best selling and you will be famous.”
Paul smiled and sipped on the wine. “I doubt it. But it’s my dream to write a bestselling book. What about you? What’s your big dream?”
“My dream?” Ildico wondered. “I don’t know. I want to go away from here. Before my dream is I am famous like a pop-star or a model and travel in the world. I earn lots of money and travel to many places in the world.”
“You want to be rich and famous?”
“Not famous. I think I just want to make money to look after my family and then they can be proud of me. I want money to take care of them.”
“I understand that.”
“But I never was a pop-star,” Ildico softly added. “What does this mean?” She pointed to the panel under the painting of Jesus. In big letters it said ‘anti-religion’.
“That is the thematic message of the book. I want when people have read it to understand that religion, organised religion like Christianity or Judaism is very bad and foolish.”
“But church is good,” Ildico said with an air of authority. “Why do you want to turn people away from church?”
“Because it’s not true and it hurts people. There is no God, no heaven or hell or any kind of afterlife.”
“So where do you think you go when you die?” Ildico asked.
“You don’t go anywhere. At death, the human brain switches off like a light switch and that’s the end of it. Some people find this idea so terrifying that they cling to the desperate fairytale that their thoughts, memories, knowledge and emotions somehow become a ghost that comes out of their body, then travels to a cosmic courtroom where it is judged by the creator of the entire universe who will decide where it should be stored for eternity. They cling to this idea without any proof out of fear. It’s nonsense. It’s religious and superstitious bullshit, created by lunatics and spread in churches to gullible and pathetic fools. Churches are an abomination against mankind.”
Ildico sipped her wine and noticeably looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t think you should try and turn people away from their church.”
“Religion is a really bad thing and it deserves to be treated with the disrespect it has earned.”
“Do you really...” Ildico paused as though trying to understand the question in her head. “You really don’t believe in God?”
“There is no God.”
“I don’t understand how you can think like this?”
“Two reasons. I’m intelligent and I’m independent. The more intelligent you are the less likely you are to believe in God. But intelligence isn’t everything, there are a handful of intelligent Christians out there.” Paul suddenly snorted with derision thinking on that dichotomy. “And there are no doubt a handful of stupid atheists, but by and large, the more intelligent people are, the less religious they are. But the real kicker is that independent people don’t need strong social connections. I’m very independent, I don’t need many real friends to feel comfortable, so why the hell would I need an imaginary one?”
“And where did the universe come from if not from God?”
Paul groaned. “I could tell you. I could tell you how that first energy coalesced into sub atomic particles then coalesced further into hydrogen and helium. More importantly, I can explain how we know this. I can explain how stars turn hydrogen into the ninety two elements that make everything around us...” Then with a totally unexpected air of superiority Paul said, “But there’s no point in trying to explain that to you!”
The word ‘you’ was spoken as though she was lower than shit.
Ildico’s only retort was to reassert her argument. “You shouldn’t try to turn people away from their church. Church is good.”
“Good for who?” Paul snapped. “Do you know what a suicide bomber is?”
“Yes,” then darkly, “but they are Muslim. Most people know it is wrong to kill.”
“Most Muslims know it is wrong to kill. But some Muslims believe they go to heaven with seventy two virgins if they die whilst killing Jews.”
“But that is stupid,” Ildico said.”
“Christians are just as stupid. Christians h
urt people because of their beliefs. There are Christian witch hunters running around in Nigeria dismembering children and burning people to death because they believe in witchcraft and sorcery.”
“This is in Africa, not here.” Ildico said.
“Oh really? Well in Romania, here in Noua, people murder schizophrenics or those suffering from rabies because people believe in bad spirits, strigoi and devil forests.”
“Strigoi is true.”
“No, it’s not true. There is no such thing as a vampire. You need to be stupid, Ildico. You need to be fucking brainwashed and idiotic to believe someone is a vampire to such a degree that you actually participate in murdering them.”
“Please, we talk about something different.”
“And do you know how you personally hurt people? You hurt people Ildico because you know someone was murdered and buried in the forest only a short walk from here. But because you believe this bullshit so implicitly, you refuse to stand up and say it’s not true, and if everybody refuses to talk about it then it will happen again. I mean... you even go so far as to tell me I shouldn’t talk about it. You’re such a stupid cunt. We’re talking about murder, do you fucking understand? People killing other people because they believe in ghosts? Yet you refuse to talk about it which means it will go on and on, killing and burying. Killing people who need hospital treatment because you believe in a strigoi? It’s a fucking disgrace. You’re a fucking disgrace.”
Paul was oblivious to the look Ildico was giving him and a moment later he was continuing his rage. “I tell you Ildico, there’s one hell of an easy way to get rid of someone in this country. And I can’t believe that you’re so fucking stupid you would actually tell me I shouldn’t talk about it. Why is that?” He spoke in a mocking but sinister bogeyman voice. “Do you think the strigoi will get me?”