by Lee McGeorge
The vampire was real. Ildico was dead. He was infected by something nasty.
Whichever story was true, Ildico may have been...
Oh Christ...
“When did I last see her?”
It was that night he kissed her, or she kissed him. Think back, what really happened? They had talked, he had shouted at her for having stupid beliefs. Why did he shout at her? That wasn’t like him at all. In fact, he’d never raised his voice to a woman. Then she tried to leave and he’d stopped her. He’d tried to kiss her and she’d resisted... No. That wasn’t true, she kissed him. Then she stayed and left during the night.
She had left during the night... vanished without trace.
But who had kissed who? She kissed him... or did she. He’d shouted, she was upset and wanted to leave. How had they ended up in bed together? He shouted at her, made her cry, she was leaving. Then, according to his recollection, she had decided to hop into bed with him, suck his cock, then leave during the night. On a scale of one to impossible, how likely was that story?
Amnesia?
Imagination?
There was a blank spot; and it was rapidly filling with images of blood in the sink and stabbing her in the forest. In fact, he’d had that vision twice, once now on the sofa, and once when he’d imagined her running naked through the trees and discovered her with the vampire eating from her throat. That was a dream, or a fantasy, it had...
“Oh fuck. Oh fuck off, this isn’t true.” That was his imagination; and it had happened like a dream whilst she was supposedly giving a blowjob.
His logical mind was telling him that Ildico was fine but he couldn’t reconcile the forgetfulness. A terrible imagined scenario was looking very real. These were very dark things he had imagined; dark things he may have made real.
He couldn’t discern the truth. He couldn’t separate fact from fiction. He was ninety percent certain he hadn’t hurt Ildico, but under any normal circumstances he should be one hundred percent. Ten percent of doubt of his own memory was enough to demand proof. Take nothing for granted. Verify.
Paul ran back to the bedroom. He grabbed the little slip of paper with Ildico’s telephone number. He put his coat on so quickly it was twisted and uncomfortable. He checked his pockets for coins for the payphone, grabbed the torch, his keys and slammed the door on his way out praying she was fine.
----- X -----
Looking out from the front door he could see nothing but darkness. Pitch black on a moonless night. He turned on the flashlight; its beam cut a powerful cone of light into falling snowflakes. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Snowflakes like cotton balls fell profusely through the beam. Tonight there were no dogs barking, no engines rumbling. There was no sound at all.
Paul checked his watch, 9:15pm. He figured in the circumstances it wasn’t too late to call Ildico. He just wanted to hear her voice and know that she was alright.
The fresh snow underfoot crunched as he stepped on it. It was the only sound. He walked around the block and into the courtyard. The payphone was approximately three hundred yards away, an easy five minute walk in daylight and fine weather, but as he looked across the courtyard it seemed to be on the other side of no man’s land.
Other than the flashlight, the only illumination came from coloured squares of windows flickering with TV glare. Mostly they weren’t visible through the snow. The snowfall was surprisingly intense. With wind it would be a major blizzard, without wind it was like being in an ornamental snow globe.
He began walking.
He reminisced about that first dream of seeing Ildico killed in the forest. She had been undressing as she ran, teasing, enticing him. He’d found her clothes and heard her giggle. When he found her the vampire had her pressed to a tree and had eaten away part of her throat. This time, although he saw the vampire in his mind’s eye, he was struck by the sensation that he was the one who had killed her. The vampire was a mask, an illusion to cover the reality. He could see the blood running down her naked body from the wounds to her neck and mouth. The bloody mouth was common to each recollection. Whilst he had slept on the sofa he had imagined biting off her lips and seeing blood run down her body from her mouth. Then in those brief flashes of stabbing her in the forest, he had plunged a knife into her abdomen and blood had spurted from her lips.
Was that the truth? Had he stabbed her and seen blood come from her mouth? Had he imagined the vampire eating her and seen a variation on the theme?
What about the sexual encounter? She was mad with him, angry, wanted to leave. Had she really stayed and slipped out during the night? Now he thought on it, he couldn’t differentiate between the oral sex he was sure had happened and the dream of her naked in the forest. Those two events seemed merged and dreamlike. He had believed that one had really happened and the other was a dream, but was that true? Was one of them true? Were either of them true, or had he imagined both things?
These questions proved one thing conclusively. He couldn’t trust his own memory. That was now a fact. Whatever had happened to him, or was still happening to him, the net result was his memory was not to be trusted. Something had caused this, an illness perhaps, or a dark spirit like the legend; regardless of the cause he had to recognise that something had happened to him and he was behaving strangely.
The snowfall increased. The flashlight had a maximum range no more than fifteen feet.
“Where am I going?” Paul stopped to check his bearings. It was virtually impossible to tell. The only guide was the obscured line of TV flickering windows along the length of the blocks.
Ildico had come to visit, her coat was ripped. He had gotten drunk, made an ass of himself and she had left. Then he’d slept, drunkenly, and dreamed of her in a fantasy of male egotism. She was his possession, he owned her, she sucked him to orgasm then he killed her in the forest. Dreams, all of it. It had to be. It really had to be. Because if it wasn’t just a dream then the consequences were too terrifying to contemplate.
“How did you screw this up, Paul?” he said to himself. “How can you not tell the difference between a dream and a blowjob?” He stopped dead in his tracks as that thought exploded in his mind. “You really are sick with something.”
It was the easy fit solution. He was sick. He had an illness that confused his thinking. That’s how you can dream of having sex and think it really happened, that’s how you can be forgetful. Rabies perhaps. Rather rabies than murderer. He had gone to the shrine and become infected with something, it had confused his thinking, he wasn’t a violent person, he couldn’t have hurt Ildico because it wasn’t in his nature. Then he thought of how easily he hurt her in the fantasies, he thought of how easily he had pushed back against Nealla in the confrontation today. In his imagination he had a sudden flicker of stabbing Ildico in the forest, her pleading with him, and him taking the cruciform as a souvenir.
He remained standing still in the snowfall. He turned the flashlight off for a second, just to give himself the feeling of being alone and isolated. He didn’t want to continue. He didn’t really want to call Ildico. It was an unpleasant chore, something he didn’t want to discover. Not knowing was bad, but to learn that he had hurt her was so stomach-churning he’d rather spend forever not knowing than discover he’d done something bad.
Snowflakes built up on his shoulders and head, one landed on his eyelid and clung to his eyelashes. Standing still made him acutely aware of how cold it was. Should he continue or go back? He looked over his shoulder. The way back was unclear. He was probably closer to the payphone now.
Reluctantly and without having a coherent reason why, he somehow managed to put one foot in front of the other to continue whilst feeling sicker and sicker.
“Please be safe, Ildico. Please be safe.”
----- X -----
His hands shook as the coins went into the slot of the payphone. He’d perched the flashlight across the top of the telephone and it seemed to reflect off every surface of the Plexiglas dome. This wasn’t a
kiosk, rather it was a post with a plastic bubble attached. It looked old and he hadn’t used a payphone in years, but when he picked up the receiver it made a dial tone. His hands could barely hold the slip of paper as he dialled. He was trembling all over, a combination of the bitter cold, the adrenalin, the stress and worry. It felt as though his entire life had pointed to this one point and in the next few moments he would discover his eternal fate.
Ring-Ring.
“Come on, Ildico. Please pick up.”
Ring-Ring.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.”
Ring-Ring.
“Please be alright, please be there and just...” There was a crackle on the line, a buzz and the ringing stopped. He was so nervous that time seemed to slow down and it took an age before a sleepy female voice spoke.
“Allo?”
It didn’t sound like Ildico. It was an older woman. He’d never asked who she lived with, perhaps it was her parents. The voice was sleepy, unhurried.
“Er...” Paul suddenly couldn’t speak, he wanted to say, ‘Hello, Can I speak with Ildico please?’ and be especially polite. Suddenly, not speaking the language seemed an insurmountable mountain to scale. “Er... Er...” He just couldn’t say anything. After a few seconds he managed to blurt out her name as a question. “Ildico?”
The other end of the line went silent and for a moment Paul thought they’d hung up until he noticed television noise in the background. Then another voice came on the line, “Buna, sunt Ildico.”
“ILDICO!” He shouted it. “Oh, Ildico...” Then he had nothing to say. She sounded fine.
“Paul? Is that you Paul?”
“Ildico... Hi, yes, it’s me...”
“Hi, how are you? … How is your writing? Are things good? … Paul?”
A flushing sensation of relief was washing over him, an overwhelming sense of pressure lifting that was leaving him so exhausted he could barely speak.
“I’m... Hi, Ildico. I’m sorry to call, I just wanted to see if you were OK after the other day?”
“If I am OK? Yes... Oh I see, yes, don’t worry I am fine.”
Paul’s happiness was short lived.
“What are you doing now? Can I come over?”
Very short lived.
There was someone out there in the snow about twenty yards from the telephone.
“Paul...” Ildico called sensing his mood change. “Are you OK?”
“I’m... fine, Ildico...” He was watching the mystery person, unable to quite quantify what he could see. Too dark, too hidden, but definitely there and moving around him, circling. “I’m sorry, I just... I had a bad dream and I thought I had hurt you.” His mind wasn’t on the conversation.
“Hurt me?” She asked sounding genuinely puzzled. “Shall I come around? Is it OK or is it too late?”
Paul wasn’t paying attention when he replied. “Sure, it’s OK.” Then he hung up without paying any attention at all. There was definitely someone out there in the snow and it had mesmerised him. Ildico could have been a million miles away. What was more important was there was a man standing in the snow just beyond vision. He couldn’t be seen clearly through the snowfall unless Paul turned the torch beam onto this man directly. Paul didn’t want to do it. This place right here, this state he was in now, was limbo. The fear of calling Ildico had been replaced by overwhelming joy; but that joy had just sunk when it looked as though a naked man, with marble white skin, was standing in falling snow only twenty yards away.
The phone booth felt safe; the thing in the snow wouldn’t move until he did, he felt sure of that.
“I’m not dreaming this, am I?” he whispered as a fact. He recalled seeing the vampire on the balcony and finding the crucifix there. He had concocted an elaborate story in his head that he had killed Ildico and had taken that cruciform. The reality was far simpler. The vampire had visited and left it there. The vampire was real. Paul was wide awake and looking at it and it was looking back at him.
Paul took the flashlight and stepped back from the kiosk. He shone the beam, holding it at arm’s length towards the vampire. It was just out of reach, obscured by the snowfall, but when the light caught its eyes they reflected back like a cat. Reflective beads of red eyes.
“Are you going to speak to me?” Paul asked in a murmur.
The vampire moved. It stepped forward in a single stride. Involuntarily, Paul stepped back. The vampire’s next stride was faster. It was going to run, it was going to attack. Something told him, somehow he knew, he just knew, it was instinct. This thing was going to kill him right now. It stepped, leaned forward, opened its arms, rested low on its haunches as though preparing to spring forward. He didn’t see it exactly, but Paul felt it snarl; and this time, it felt more real and more dangerous and more determined than ever to harm him. This thing was real and it was going to rip him to pieces.
----- X -----
He was running, sprinting. Part of his mind, the sane rational part was telling him that there was nothing there, that he’d imagined it, but when he’d glanced back across his shoulder he saw it running like a shadow through the snowfall.
Paul shut off the flashlight and ran with barely any illumination into thick weather. He could see the windows along the edges of the blocks and he knew roughly where he was, but there seemed no escape here. He couldn’t hope to get back into the block or up the stairs without being caught.
Then there was a moment as though none of this was happening.
Paul eased down to a jog, still keeping the flashlight switched off. He looked behind and saw nothing. He stopped and turned, deliberately marking the turn so as not to become disoriented.
Through the snowfall he saw movement.
Paul crouched down and tried to quiet his breathing. The naked man was easier to see. His skin was as white as the snow they were walking on and even though there was nothing but starlight, it was enough to give him an iridescent glow. He was walking, not running, but the bearing was off and if he didn’t change direction the vampire would pass by to Paul’s left.
There was something magnificent in the image like it was a scene from a classic movie. This man was naked, powerfully built and fierce, but he was walking through the snowfall with a peaceful, almost angelic demeanour. By heading in the wrong direction it made him look blind and somehow innocent.
The vampire stopped and tilted its head skywards. Snow drifted down around it.
Paul slowly backed away, keeping the thing in his sight until it had almost vanished into the weather. He recognised the communal bins behind him. The bins were surrounded on three sides by a rough, concrete wall. If he could get around that, he had some cover from the vampire and he could get away silently.
With careful steps and even more care not to lose his bearings, Paul edged back along the wall. He stopped to scrutinise the vampire that was almost entirely obscured by the falling snow. It was still close, perhaps only twenty yards away. If he were to switch on the flashlight he would see it perfectly, but he wasn’t prepared to give away his own position.
It was moving again. He could see the outline more than the figure. It was moving and... Oh, fuck. It was coming towards him.
Paul turned back and ran in a crouch as fast and silently as he could all the way to the block. He didn’t look back until he got to the door. There was nothing behind him but that didn’t mean the thing wasn’t just around the corner, following from the courtyard.
As he stepped into the block Paul’s hand instinctively reached for the light switch but stopped short. The stairwell was as black and unlit as the deepest coal mine except for a tiny blue bulb inside what must be an emergency light by the entrance. Paul had never noticed it before and for a few seconds he had the terrifying thought that he’d entered the wrong block. He switched on the flashlight and recognised his surroundings. With the beam lit, he leapt up the stairs two at a time to the first landing and shut off the light.
He couldn’t move until he was certain it wasn�
�t following.
For a short while he felt as though he had the situation under control. He was here on the stairs, ahead of the game and only a few seconds away from the apartment. But then he remembered Ildico. A sudden recollection that she had invited herself and he’d agreed. That meant she would be coming here in the snow, walking through the courtyard where that thing was lurking.
The big metal door to the block made a squeaking noise as it opened.
Paul held his breath as he tried to see. It was impossibly dark other than the tiny power-on indicator of the emergency lamp.
The door opened and a figure stepped into the lobby. The door closed behind them. They did not turn on the light.
Ildico would have turned on the light.
As quietly as he could he began up the stairs, backing away slowly without moving his eyes from the lobby. He went as far as he could before he lost sight. He had to get up these stairs and lock himself inside, keep the vampire outside on the staircase... Ildico was coming. Oh, fuck. She would walk straight into it!
No time to think on it. He ran on tiptoes to the apartment, doing his best to keep quiet. The keys jangled with an inordinate amount of noise as he got them into the lock and twisted them. The door opened. He stepped inside and closed the door almost fully except for the last few inches.
When he looked out behind him onto the stairwell it was almost entirely black. With the door only inches from closed he had the confidence to turn on the flashlight. It would take a tenth of a second to slam the door.
He turned on the beam.
At the bottom of the last set of stairs to his front door, the vampire was walking. It was looking straight at him. It was walking, not running. It didn’t have to run. He’d cornered himself. It knew exactly where he was.
Paul watched the latch click shut as he closed the door. He examined it closer, it was a piece of shit lock that wouldn’t stand up to much force. He moved to the kitchen and shut the flashlight off, he put it on the counter and grabbed the big knife to defend himself.