The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires)

by Carole Gill

  “We will bury the ash and put our friends in the cottage; they would have wished it so. Then we shall burn it all down, for there is purification and dignity in those flames, Rose.”

  He poured kerosene all around the beautiful cottage and lit it. There was a boom and a great burst of flames as a conflagration came to claim those we had loved.

  We had the children with us, for they were witnesses too. And when the cottage was nothing but a blackened ruin we knew it was time to move on.

  Ada looked tired and Simon little better, as they were still in a much weakened state, but their chests were healed for my blood had done its work.

  “I shall put them in the wagon and cover them,” Louis said. And I heard him ask them to please close their eyes and so they would dream. “Dream of love, children, for you do remember it and always will.”

  I, for my part, could not wait to hurry from the smoky place.

  Louis put his arm around me and pulled me close. “We will soon be past it, Rose, you will see.”

  I was glad for I could not stand the smell.

  “Everything is so different now…”

  He knew what I meant. “Yes,” he replied sadly. “It is very different for you for your senses are far sharper and always will be.”

  I recalled then that other sojourn of mine, that brief time when my senses were this sharp. “Yes, I remember.”

  “You will see it is not unpleasant,” Louis replied and I smiled for indeed it wasn’t. The world was different now—I picked up the scent of animals and birds and bats, too. I heard insects as they flew and buzzed. I heard the sound of their wings, the quiet hum of their very being.

  I heard the sound of every creature that called the moors home. I could detect the sounds of life I didn’t even know existed and if I once had an inkling of this great power, it was nothing compared to what it was now.

  Louis kissed the top of my head. “You will grow accustomed to it, Rose.”

  Where we were bound we did not know, though Louis assured me if one place was not suitable then we would go on, wanderers forever, travelers always seeking a new haven—a place to rest.

  “We shall not go back to Blackstone House, Rose.”

  I must say I quite expected that. “It is an accursed house on haunted soil. I have torn it down. It is gone now as Eve is and all of her evil. It shall never be our home again.”

  “But I should like to see it one last time.”

  We passed it then and I saw it was but a pile of broken mortar and little else, a ruin to stand for an indeterminate time, until oblivion removed any trace that it ever existed at all.

  “And what of the altar stone on the moors?”

  `Louis nodded. “That is gone too, smashed into dust as well it should be.”

  I nodded. “Will we see Eco again?”

  “Evil never dies, Rose. It hides itself only to come back with what seems to be greater potency.”

  I understood that as I understand all that had been.

  And now I ask a favor of you, so please, stay with me just a moment more. I will not trouble you much longer. Remember when I said I would tell you my tale first?

  This I have done. You have heard it from my lips.

  So I ask you—what do you think of me now? How do you judge me? I leave it up to you for now you know everything there is to know.

  But before you answer I shall leave you with one thought only and that is my belief that destiny is the sentence of every man and woman, a sentence that cannot be overturned for its power is irrefutable.

  We are our fate, and I have become mine.

  top

  Bonus Material. The first two chapters of Unholy Testament, book 2 in The Blackstone Vampires Series available from

  http://carolegillofficialauthor.blogspot.com/

  Part one

  Rose

  Chapter one

  I am what I am for I have become a creature of the blood; a being who dwells in the world of the undead and always shall.

  He knew I would make the choice to save the children who are also creatures of the blood. He knew it for he had orchestrated it, like the maestro that he is, Eco an immortal like my own beloved; both of them born of fallen angels and human women. But whereas Louis is good, Eco carries the seeds of Hell within him—Eco our worst enemy; Eco the destroyer of our friends, the fiend who had ravished me and would have married me in Hell, before Satan himself; Eco who haunts my dreams and always shall.

  He had staked the children, my children now for it is my blood that flows within them. In order to save them I opened my own veins that they should drink.

  “Drink, my loves, for it is the only gift I have for you.”

  I gave up my living life for them and gladly, too. But because of my act I saw the flames of Hell and felt Hell’s horrific heat.

  Yet, Hell left no mark on me. I passed through it and was raised. The one who loved me drew me forth. No demon touched me, although they tried. Hordes upon hordes of them reached out to pull me back, back into their master’s domain.

  Yet just as they reached for me, I felt myself snatched away. They shouted in rage as I was pulled still further and further away.

  And then, I heard a voice, a voice I knew. A voice, it seemed, my heart always dreamt of.

  “Rose, I command you to rise from death for death shall not claim you!”

  His voice called to me, summoning me forth—the voice of my love, my Louis.

  And then, like a baby being born, I emerged into the bright light. I know now it was sunlight. Someone touched my hand. It was Simon. My child now for I had perished giving him my own life force.

  And so I was reborn. My transformation was all embracing. All secrets were revealed as the truth of all worlds was shown me. Every question I ever had about God or heaven or humanity was revealed.

  I knew God was good and people were supposed to do with their lives the most that they could. I knew about damnation and loyalty to Heaven so that I better understood exile from that kingdom of light. Though undead, I still did know what truth was.

  I understood that to be separate from God for whatever purpose was not to be desired, yet one great and fundamental truth was this—that evil exists because good exists. It is the great balance to everything.

  And so I left one world to enter another—the world of the undead, that place where I would dwell forever.

  My senses were alive as they had never been before. I smelled the wildlife that called the moors their home; birds and rodents—and all manner of insects.

  I heard sounds I had never heard. And it was all mine to share with those I loved.

  How Louis wept.

  And what of my undead children?

  At least they had not seen their friends destroyed. At least they had been spared that.

  Eco left us then for he had accomplished his purpose.

  And so we took our friends’ mangled corpses—Dr. Antor and the sisters, Joan and Belle Lodge, and we burned them. Louis said the flames would cleanse their bodies of Eco’s vile touch and I was glad.

  We left then. We left Blackstone Moor never to return.

  So what of Blackstone House? Louis tore it apart as he would have liked to tear Eco asunder.

  “Mama, where is the house?”

  The children asked this and I answered: “It is no more. It is gone forever.”

  And Louis nodded for it was true. Its sinister power would no longer haunt me.

  I have survived much, Louis has always said so. I have survived madness and murder. The madness was in the guise of my lunatic father who stole my innocence over many years and then murdered himself and our family.

  I did not emerge unscathed from such horror. No I did not. There were madhouses after that, two in fact.

  And then there was Dr. Bannion, director of Marsh Asylum, a supposedly dedicated doctor, a doctor I trusted but one who was in league with Satan and who called Eco friend.

  Yes, I have survived much.


  *

  The children were ill, though they both tried to hide it by pretending they weren’t. Still, Louis and I both knew they were weak; we could see it in their faces and in their dull eyes and their ashen skin.

  The fever started within a day of our leaving Blackstone Moor. First Ada was struck down by it and then Simon.

  “We will go to a doctor I know…” Louis’ words and I was relieved to hear them.

  There was a coven in north Yorkshire. Louis knew the master; he had been a doctor in his living life. Now he tended his coven as their protector and friend.

  Each one of Louis’ friends is like he is: selfless and kind, untainted by the forces of evil, although vampires vary as human beings do. There are good and bad; those riddled with sin or not.

  He told me of his friend’s living life as we journeyed there.

  “Edward was a good doctor, kindly and caring. He perished in the Great Fire. I tended him but he passed away. It was better for him too for his burns were terrible, his agony intolerable. Still, when I raised him he was free of the physical pain but not the pain of his new existence.”

  Edward, another of the deserving undead.

  I liked him right away. He reminded me of Louis but he was older looking, for he had been created in the winter of his living life.

  His face was badly scarred, his ear disfigured. Those marks would be forever upon him; the signs of the fire which ended his life.

  He welcomed us and embraced Louis.

  “My friend, it has been too long.”

  When his eyes fell upon me I had the feeling he knew. He took my hand and kissed it. “You are most welcome and all your kin.”

  Then his eyes beheld Simon and Ada. He sobbed for he knew them and saw how weakened they were.

  “They will recover,” he said. “But they need rest.”

  He made them a poultice of wolfbane and herbs. The children hardly stirred and he smiled. “It is good they sleep, for it will speed the healing.”

  The women of the coven were kindly too. They varied in age. That is, the time of their living lives when they were created varied. Some were elderly looking and others looked quite young.

  There were sisters and a granny and children, too; children who had grown old before their time, ancient before their death and raising up.

  Edward introduced them. “They are a family. They were and still are and always shall be.”

  He would tell us later they had perished in a cholera outbreak.

  “None of the factory owners did, just them. They like it here among the rugged dales and green hills, and it is here they shall dwell.”

  This, their dwelling place, had been a farm. The outbuildings were still used as stables and there were chicken pens.

  They were not regular imbibers of blood as we are not. Though when we sicken, and we do sometimes fall ill, all but Louis that is, we do require fresh blood.

  “When the children wake,” he said. “They will take a broth. It is a mixture of herbs and animal blood. I am afraid it smells awful but it is what they need. I have given this to many who sicken.”

  I was worried as vampires have been known to perish from disease and the effects of attacks.

  “They were staked,” I said. “They nearly perished.”

  “Eco,” Louis said.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes, his name is a curse upon the lips of all vampires, and those who do not curse him are his servants in Hell.”

  *

  We were there for some time. The children were ill as the fever lingered. They were delirious too and that was the worst. They hadn’t spoken of their mother very much. But they did then. They spoke of Eve and of that terrible time when the vampire killers came and destroyed Louis’ coven.

  Louis destroyed the killers. But if he killed them, Eve first destroyed herself. Poor Eve, she was truly her own worst enemy.

  I tried to comfort the children for they were moaning and looked to be in great distress.

  Edward said they could not hear me. “It is different than if a living person was delirious. They really do see those they knew, those other undead like themselves.”

  I wondered then if they saw Eve wherever she existed. Edward was not surprised she had destroyed herself.

  “Yes, poor Eve—there was a tortured being.”

  I asked him if he thought the children might see her now, the way they were.

  “They will only see her in shadow, in the shadowy realm she now inhabits.”

  Louis said he had prophesied that Eve would bring about her own dark destiny upon herself and those she loved, and so she had, but she had only destroyed herself.

  Days and weeks passed and I watched the children, relieved that the delirium passed and with it the fever.

  “They have passed the crisis,” Edward said.

  And they had. They looked better and stronger although I knew they would never be entirely right.

  “They have been through so much. I don’t think they could have taken much more,” Louis murmured. Those words chilled my heart.

  But it was truth and truth must always be acknowledged.

  Louis looked tired and worried. If he wasn’t worried about the children, he was asking me if I felt alright.

  I smiled as reassuringly as I could. I think he sensed my desire to go to Marsh, for I wished to put flowers down there for all those who had perished in the fire Bannion had set; my friend, Grace, among them.

  If Eco was from Hell, Bannion was destined to burn there for he used his position for evil and for sin. But he was no more, and the evil that was within him was gone now, too, as he was.

  I began to recall him. I hadn’t thought of him in the longest time but now I did. Bannion, my own personal demon; Bannion, the debauched and evil Bannion who turned his own madhouse into the flames of Hell.

  Louis saw I was troubled for I could not hide it. “What is it, Rose?” he asked. I told him what was in my heart. I said the name of the place I swore I would try to forget: Marsh Asylum.

  “Please, Louis, I should like to go there to see my friend’s grave… When the children are well might we please visit there?”

  He tried to dissuade me, but when he saw he could not, he agreed. “Yes, Rose. If that is what you really want we shall go there. Though mind, I doubt if there are graves as such…”

  As such. I understood what he meant. Grace had been an inmate in a lunatic asylum. As I was.

  As I was…

  That phrase has often gone though my head countless times. I had been there and she was my friend.

  “We will go if you wish it Rose, so that you may honor your friend.”

  I did wish it, for I had to speak to Grace one more time.

  Chapter two

  I did long to speak with her for I longed to tell her what had become of me. I never forgot her, nor did I ever stop missing her. I knew she worried about me, poor Grace. Grace Poole who had befriended me in the terrible darkness that was Marsh Asylum. Grace, a kindly woman—a woman who bore her own sad destiny as bravely as she could have.

  How kind she was, taking a half-crazed girl under her wing. Soothing me during the worst time of my life, comforting me when I wept, feeding me when I was hungry, treating me as though I were her own child.

  Truly, she was more mother to me than friend. Poor Grace who must have died an agonizing death so Bannion could collect on the insurance.

  As for Grace—why had she been admitted? They had put her away because of the fits. She was a two year old with brain seizures, I told that to Louis.

  “Yes,” Louis agreed. “The so-called enlightened medical profession didn’t think to do anything else with her. They were happy just to wall her up in a stone sarcophagus.

  Yes, I thought. It was like being buried alive—sent off, sent away—anywhere but where she was.

  We were discussing Marsh with Edward and he recalled it.

  “Oh yes, that place burned down, didn’t it?”

  I saw him flinch
when he said it. Fire would haunt Edward in the course of his undead existence.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I wasn’t there then…I had already left…”

  He took my hand. “Many people shouldn’t have ever been there either. Most, I’d venture to say. Still, that is the way of the world.”

  The living world has its darkness, too.

  He had guessed we’d be leaving. “I am sorry; I had hoped you would stay a while.”

  I cried when he said that, as I could have imagined staying there for a long time. I liked the coziness of the cottage, the beauty of the surrounding area, as well as the friendship of Edward and the others.

  Yet there was something in me urging me on. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t wish to stay in a coven. Not yet, not then. Perhaps my memories were too raw.

  Those I had grown to love, Louis’ own coven, had all been destroyed. I would never forget it. How could I ever forget the sight of the vampire, Dora, trying to protect her undead baby and failing miserably?

  They called it a monster from Hell, but it wasn’t as she wasn’t; as none of the coven members were.

  Still, there was Eve, evil and wanton, yet Eve was a loving mother to her children.

  Yes, I did mourn them as I always would.

  And I knew also that Louis would raise more unfortunates up and have more covens; Louis, the dark’s avenging angel, seeking justice for the dead.

  Louis understood me as he understands everything. So much passes between us, for our love is there always whether it is spoken or not, for it is felt deeply and is always understood.

  He knows my thoughts and my fears, my memories, too. I think sometimes we are part of the same being. What I feel he feels and so on, and if that is so I know he felt my need to leave, for he took me aside. His eyes … soft and loving and so understanding as he smiled.

  “We will go if you wish…”

  We did leave. We left after the last frost melted and the sun shone for longer on the hills and the coming of spring was more than a promise.

  The children had rallied; they seemed more themselves then they had been in ages. And those purple scars looked less angry.