The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires)

by Carole Gill

  And then there was Antor, the neutral party who tried to make me understand. It was always the same—just his head poking in asking the same question. “May I have a word, Rose?”

  Certainly, why not? Do come in Dr. Antor and watch a freak who lusts for blood yet wishes to pray.

  And yet, that was no longer so, for I had stopped. Not because they wanted me to, but because I was ashamed before God. I felt it was sinful to pray and not be worthy to do so.

  “You’ve stopped praying, haven’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, I thought so. You see Rose, your soul is still with you even though you are nearly transformed—soon it will be gone altogether.”

  Indeed, I thought. It is pointless to pray when heaven is too far to hear one word, and even if the angels could hear anything, the prayers would have been sacrilege.

  So what did he want? Clearly he was in my room for a reason. I tried to gauge his face but Dr. Antor was more difficult to read than Louis.

  Now, looking at him, I thought he was going to ask me to do something. I think I guessed it before he suggested it.

  “Rose, I need to speak with you. It is about feeding.”

  This wasn’t the first time he said that. Mostly I cried when he did, but not now. Now I chuckled, mirthlessly. “Shall I fly onto the moors and capture my prey? Would that be to your liking?”

  “No, Rose.” He ignored the sarcasm and sought to address the question seriously. “I do not think you could fly. Your spirit is not strong enough for all of the attributes to—”

  I cut him off. “Attributes? Surely that is the saddest joke of all. Attributes, indeed. I suppose I shall look forward to it.”

  “For the additional strengths you will have, the extra things you will be able to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “You will be physically stronger and your senses will be sharpened.”

  I understood that for I had already experienced it when I was receiving Eve’s blood regularly. “I remember.”

  “The blood will be brought to you and soon.”

  “Will it be Louis’ blood?”

  “Very little. It will mainly be a mixture of other blood.”

  “But there is nothing in the larder—the cellar larder that is, or have there been newcomers, perhaps other vampire killers?”

  Dr. Antor shook his head. “No, they are not yet here…it is not something to jest about, Rose. They could destroy all of us, even the children.”

  I know I blanched but I did say, “Yes, all but not Louis, for Louis endures.”

  He nodded. “Yes he does, but it is not of his own choosing.” I looked at him sadly as he went on. “It is a curse more than a blessing, Rose—to continue to endure forever,”

  “Many would wish such a thing…”

  Dr. Antor shook his head. “I don’t really think so, and I think in time you will not think so either. As for the blood it will be from wildlife.” He moved toward the door. “I will bring you something you must have later. I shall come myself.” He implored me to understand, I could see it in his eyes. Yet I said nothing, for there was nothing I could say.

  I suppose if superficially I was accepting of it, I was still horrified by the entire thing.

  Was a person ever so torn? Torn by love… for I still loved the children and Louis.

  *

  I fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of death and life that was one, like two ill-matched things woven together. A crazy quilt of dreams and evil foreboding.

  I woke to find Louis sitting near me. His head bent, he looked as though he had been crying.

  He must have felt my eyes upon him. “Oh, Rose.” His voice cracked with emotion. “You do understand now… don’t you?”

  Did I? I wasn’t sure and said so. “I am confused. I feel dammed and I feel love also, your love and my own for you.”

  His lips moved as though to say something, but he shook his head. “I cannot, I am so sorry.” He began to cry then.

  “Louis.” I grabbed his hand and kissed it passionately for I did love this being, this demi-demon that was and would always be Louis and my dearest love.

  He leaned down and pressed his lips to mine, lingering there, then pulled back to look into my eyes. “Rose, I came because I wished to speak to you before Dr. Antor comes in.”

  Yes, I remembered. Dr. Antor was to return to me with a special beverage—not of something holy but something opposite, yet it was not done to further evil. That was what made it all the more horrible.

  But lying there and watching him, looking into his eyes and feeling the love he had for me, I could but say these words, “I am ready.”

  “I will get him!” He stood fast, for once his eyes dancing, and left

  He returned soon after with Dr. Antor. “You are ready then?”

  I nodded and held out my hand to receive my destiny and then brought it to my lips, tasted its thick, salty sweetness.

  I did not see much of Louis’ life, hardly anything at all. Instead I saw the moors. I saw birds and rabbits and field mice, overlooked by the night and day skies. I heard things too, the owl’s cry, and the shrieks and calls of all that dwelled within that moorland.

  “What was it from? A harmless rabbit or bird that thought the fox its worst enemy? Is that the source of this, my sustenance?”

  Antor didn’t answer; it was Louis who did. “It does not matter. Animals are killed for food, are they not?”

  I nodded, thinking Louis far cleverer than I had thought him before. “Yes, I suppose that is a good enough answer.”

  “So you will not feel revulsion then?”

  “No Louis, I suppose I will not.”

  If there was with this acceptance a brief peace, it was soon gone for it wasn’t long before the spirits returned.

  *

  They appeared suddenly, between one day and the next, grey swirls of icy mist that ebbed and flowed, yet moved toward me, ever closer.

  “Mother?”

  Oh, where was my acceptance now, for I did wish her to answer.

  The mass began to change then, becoming more dense as the room grew unbearably cold, despite the fire.

  “Mother, please.”

  Why I said that I do not know; I think I wished to reassure myself that I was not hated—or regarded as something demonic.

  I think I wanted her forgiveness. “Mother?”

  But there was no sign or answer either, just a shifting of the mass into something else, into the image of my mother as she looked in life.

  I began to weep for I so wished to feel her embrace. She came closer, but just before she reached me she stopped and began to hover.

  I begged her to come to me, but I saw it was no use, for I could see her features. Her expression was hostile, her eyes even worse. “You are a demon, an evil creature from hell!”

  “No!” I screamed, “I did not wish it. I did not! It was not my idea.”

  “Demon!”

  The door opened just then and Louis came in. My mother’s spirit railed at him. “Monster! Monster!”

  I began to run toward my mother but Louis cried out, “No Rose! You are not as she remembers you.”

  “But she is my mother.”

  “She is only a shell; her hatred has tainted her soul. She will not reach heaven as she is now.” He pointed toward the spirit. “Why don’t you admit it? The hatred you took with you has consumed you and made you an evil vengeful spirit!”

  She began to change then, increasing in size until she seemed to fill the room.

  “It is her anger,” Louis said.

  And so it was for I could feel it.

  The others appeared then, my brother and sisters—and they joined the larger mass which was our mother. “You sought it, you wished it to happen. You became his!”

  So was their unanimous verdict.

  I began to scream for this was the truth I did not wish to hear. Despite my praying, I did in fact love Louis and knew I always would. “Yes, I
love him.”

  There was after that an odd sound like the cry of baying wolves. Another spirit had materialized.

  “It is your father,” Louis cried out. “Rose, he is there!”

  I turned and sure enough, I saw him clearly, moving slowly but steadily in my direction, holding out his arms to me like a lovesick suitor.

  Suddenly the other spirits rushed to trap him within their own freezing mass. “Get away from me!” he cried.

  Now they were warring, a war of the dead—as they spat and hissed and gave off an even deadlier stench.

  “They might do this for days. I have seen such things!”

  I began to think so too, for it seemed to be an unending battle, this merging and splitting apart.

  “Shout your hatred for it will weaken their strength.”

  At first I was too horrified to understand his words but then I did. “Leave, leave now—you are evil corruptions! You are fake!” This I shouted at my family, but my father only laughed.

  “I am not a corruption. I love you!”

  “Love? You call what you did love; you are the worst monster here!”

  I screamed and raged, and as I did my father’s spirit began to fade.

  When I next looked they were all gone, leaving peace in their wake at least for now.

  Chapter 27

  We enjoyed peace at least from the spirits. We did not see them for a while. There were other problems looming though, we just did not know it yet.

  However, there was also some peace for me, for I felt myself adjusting to this new existence.

  I saw the children and the coven too, Molly and Tom and Dora. And when she came in with her baby, I wept.

  “I am sorry,” I said.

  “I understand.” I could see she did which made it all the more tragic. “I raised him up, poor little thing. I raised him myself. The master said if he had been older, I would not have succeeded.”

  “He will always be your babe then.”

  “Yes, my own baby.”

  She excused herself and hurried from the room, for she was too tearful to remain.

  Molly and Tom too paid their respects. Molly said that the Mistress was close to death. “Frightful bad she is now, make no mistake.”

  How interesting, I thought, the undead too may know death.

  The children came in very often and I was glad. “Papa says you must still rest, Rose, but we do miss you.” Simon’s voice sounded as sad as his eyes looked.

  Ada, too, wore a mournful and worried look. But I expected this for Louis had prepared me, telling me Eve would soon be no more.

  Now both stood gravely before me, Ada nearly silent and Simon too.

  Suddenly Ada burst into tears. “Mother is dying, Rose. And Papa says there is nothing we can do.”

  She peered into my face, hoping I think for me to correct her and say her mother would be herself again. Instead I hugged her to me. “I know and I am so sorry.”

  They cried so hard, both of them—they made me cry. What an odd scene we made. The undead weeping along with the newly undead.

  I knew Louis felt guilty about me. It was obvious. It was in his manner and his tone. It was in every movement and expression.

  “Please Louis, I am resigned…”

  “I know you are and that is the reason I feel guilty.”

  “Please do not feel guilty, I am agreed at last. It was a long time coming, let us be grateful for it!”

  He wept then, and I tried to comfort him as much as I could. At last he settled down. “You know Rose, I think we will leave this place eventually. I do think that we should. I myself have always felt comfortable in this accursed place with its blood-soaked history, feeling damned as I was.”

  He would always feel damned. There was nothing to be done about that at all, but for me to love him as much as he loved me.

  Ah love, wasn’t that for another time? For now Eve still existed.

  I asked him about her then.

  “She is nearly gone. Each pain-filled moment is torture…”

  “Isn’t there something that can be done?”

  There was and I knew what it was. The only choice would have been to destroy her physically. And that was something he would not be able to bring himself to do.

  “She brought this on herself. She was always interested in the Occult. That was so odd for its very association had doomed her and the children, causing their deaths, yet her passage through hell is what has caused it,” he said. “I know that now. Whatever taint it can leave, it left. It is something I could never understand. But she was adamant from the start. She summoned Satan himself, Father Satan as she called him, and as time went on it became worse, more like a fever…and then she incorporated it with other things…”

  I was incredulous. “To do what?”

  “She wished to summon Satan to her blood-soaked orgies in order to offer up sacrifices to him. Naturally I forbade it. I warned that if she ever did that, I’d destroy her and not care that the children will no longer have her as their mother.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She swore it would never happen again. She promised, she pleaded.”

  “And it didn’t?”

  “No, but then she switched to another active interest of hers. She gave into her relentless need for sex with men, with women, in orgies. She was insatiable.”

  “And you went along with it?” I said it quickly, for I knew if I hesitated I shouldn’t ask him at all.

  “Yes, I did. Frankly, I felt as long as it didn’t involve anything really satanic—you understand the reason for that, as my father fell because of his misguided support.”

  I nodded.

  “I never had a high opinion of myself Rose, feeling cursed as I was—and frankly I just let her get on with it, giving my attention to the children instead.” Here he looked at me sadly. “Those orgies were wild and Eve enjoyed every second of them.” His voice trailed off thoughtfully. “Of course, I knew Eco was always heavily involved with satanic practices. And bearing in mind I had warned my promiscuous and devil-loving Eve not to indulge herself in any sort of union with Eco, I felt she did. I never caught them—nor did Eco ever let me know, but I am certain they did. And then it stopped as Eve became more involved with the clubs—this was about the time she started a torrid affair with Mrs. Sternwood—yes, she had been raised up too, not by me I hasten to add, but by another. I always suspected Eco had a hand in it.”

  He was staring at me then, I quite had the feeling he had more to tell me. At last he began. “Let me fully educate you on the subject of Eve now as we have come this far. Dr. Bannion was also involved with Eve. But he had ulterior reasons. He wished her to help him make a pact with Satan. Lately, some years ago—I had given way a bit. Eve could hold these devil worship rites if they were incorporated with the club but she was not to summon Eco or Satan. She could though promise someone’s soul to Satan. Oh yes, Satan always makes it easy for his followers to do that. And so Bannion’s soul was promised. Dr. Bannion is evil, Rose. He is corrupt and rotten to the core. He signed a pact, there are such things you know.”

  It was incredible to think of, but I knew it must be true.

  “And what of Dr. Sutton, I have heard of him—a friend at Marsh you see told me…”

  “Yes, Dr. Sutton. He was Bannion’s superior. Marsh was his special project. He was a good man—and they killed him. Bannion wanted it fast, so he prevailed upon Eve to summon a demon. She summoned Eco and he saw to the whole thing—within a short time, Bannion had what he wanted.”

  “But you said she could not summon him—”

  “Yes, I nearly destroyed her for it! But the children rushed in when they heard the screaming. They begged me not to do it.”

  We all cried, even me—despite the fact that I had and still wished to destroy her for summoning Eco. “I won’t ever do it again, she swore.”

  I remember what my response was. “Eve,” I said. “Despite the children—I will destroy
you if you ever summon that monster again, do you understand?” She said she did.” Louis paused here and looked at me. “She is being destroyed, but it is by her own actions, Rose. The reason being, it would be easier for the children that way. They would not ever hate me or hold me responsible for her destruction. You see, for whatever she is and has been, she has always been a good mother.”

  *

  He left me then, and I was glad of it for I needed time alone, time to think and feel. There was so much to consider. Now I understood fully the significance of Alice Mott’s journal… ‘union with those people....’ it was Eve and the devil cult Alice was writing about!

  It was the shock of hearing about Dr. Bannion that was the most troubling because he was human.

  *

  Louis came to me when I was not expecting it. I was sitting by the window when I heard the door open. I often gazed at the moors now. I enjoyed sitting there and listening with my heightened senses to all the sounds of night.

  It was a serenade no human can appreciate. The sweetness of the air, sullied with a boggy scent was like perfume to me and I breathed it in and savored it, so glad that I was able to enjoy it.

  He came in then. I had heard his steps coming closer to my room and knew it was him.

  Louis was close to me now, his hand on my shoulder. “Rose, I needed to see you.”

  “Is it Eve?”

  “No…”

  He sank to his knees and put his head upon my lap. “I am disturbing you.”

  “Never,” I replied as I touched his fine, black hair. How smooth it was like heavy silk.

  “Rose, I cannot be alone.”

  We were in each other’s arms in a moment, loving one another—sweetly and with our original passion but with something else. For we had come to know one another more in this short space of time that had passed. We knew each other’s thinking and what lay in our hearts, for only one of us had a soul and that soul was nearly gone. Yet we knew love!

  “Rose.”

  I gave myself to him completely and he murmured happily as he swore his too. “We have forever, don’t we?”

  “Yes, of course. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  Although there was another presence, for Eve still existed, that was the only thing about this encounter that was wrong.