Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2)

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Rising Dark (The Darkling Trilogy, Book 2) Page 10

by A. D. Koboah


  I let it float to the ground where it remained, the only speck of colour in this grim, grey winter landscape. I moved on into the bleakness, searching for signs of life and the blood that was my keeper.

  Was I aware of what was happening at the time? It was hard not to be, but somehow, my mind turned away from the fact that something extraordinary was happening. But what did it mean? Did she have the power to make me skip over the years, bringing me closer to the day when I would come across her? Did anything on this Earth have the power to do that? Or was it merely my mind that had skipped over that empty period of time, like anaesthesia, to numb me to those long, desolate years? I do not know. Not even she knows what or how she was able to do what she did. I only know that somehow she protected me during those years and caused me to skip through large amounts of time, bringing me closer to the day when I would see her face in the flesh.

  ***

  For many years, I did not gaze upon my reflection. But one night, after having attacked a young man, bringing him down off his horse and dragging him into the woodland to a small pond whilst he screamed and struggled in vain, I came upon the wretched sight I had become.

  I drank my fill from him and was alone once more, with not even his screams for mercy to remind me of the living here in the dense woodland. I shoved the corpse away from me and it fell into the pond, scattering the perfect image of the moon and the ghostly fingers of branches that seemed to stretch toward it. When the water settled, I was left staring at my reflection.

  To human eyes, the image would have just been a dark silhouette, but my enhanced vision concealed nothing and I stood aghast as I stared at what had become of me. My hair was well past my shoulders now and tangled, but it was the state of my clothing that caused the angst I felt now. The white necktie was now black, stained with dirt and blood and it was literally rotted. It disintegrated in my hand when I pulled it away from my neck. A large tear along the shoulder of my coat and the shirt beneath exposed most of the top half of my chest. It was also caked with soil and, of course, blood.

  I kept myself hidden and my appearance did not matter to anyone who laid eyes on me, for it was likely to be the last thing they saw. But I was aghast. It was the physical manifestation of the unfathomable moral decay into which I had fallen.

  With something akin to the grief that had consumed me when I left Julia in the earth and leapt into the wilderness, I slowly peeled off what was left of my clothes. What lay at my feet were little more than rags, but they symbolised so much more. It was as if I were giving up the last vestiges of my soul along with any hope I held regarding my fate.

  I was naked in the moonlight, and only the gold chain and cross Minny had urged me to take hung around my neck. I took it off and stared at it as it glinted in the moonlight. I wanted to throw it away, but in the end I couldn’t, the faded memory of her conviction as she urged me to take it staying my hand. The only option left to me was to either remain naked, or strip the corpse. Resigned to all that I now was—the wretchedness of my condition and whatever remained of the man I once was—I removed his trousers and coat. I had long ago discarded shoes so I left his, my indestructible body needing no protection from the hard terrain. I carefully placed the crucifix in the coat pocket. Perhaps I could touch it, but it no longer gave the comfort I had derived from it during my mortal years.

  With my hunger sated, the night lay ahead with nothing now to distract me from the endless loneliness and sorrow. I moved away from the corpse and the pool, darting through the trees swiftly and silently, the only constant in these endless nights the moon and my all-encompassing sorrow.

  ***

  It was a cold, dark, frosty night in Louisiana. I do not know how long I had been in the wilderness by that time, a decade maybe. Time had lost all meaning. I skipped in and out of the ether through a small town. Its streets were empty, completely deserted as people kept to the warmth and light their homes afforded. But for me the night, as every other night, was awash with eerie light my preternatural sight took from the elements, but everything remained bleak. The natural exuberant flora of the south had been decimated by the winter and the dark trees were naked and silent, defenceless against the harsh weather, the vegetation withdrawn in alarm at the unrelenting cold.

  I did not feel the cold I dipped in and out of as I travelled through the night on my endless journey to nowhere. The lack of feeling—numbness and immunity to the whims of nature—elicited a deeper chill within my soul and I yearned deeply for the world and a life that was forever out of my reach.

  It was in this state of numbness that I came across a lone mansion on the outskirts of the town. I paused outside it, its neglected forlorn appearance appealing to my soul and the inner decay that had long overcome me. Two large oaks on either side of the mansion leaned menacingly over it. Its aged rooms were empty bar the master bedroom on the top floor, its walls illuminated by a large fire before which sat an old white woman.

  I was kept from leaving the mansion by the profusion of her thoughts, which were like tiny darts spitting at me along with a deep-seated rage.

  Rage.

  This was something that had long ago died within me and I drifted closer to the mansion, stepping over a dead field of Queen Anne’s lace, longing to feel that anger, to feel something—anything—aside from the numbness, that emptiness which was only ever kept at bay when I fed the frenzied blood lust holding me prisoner.

  She sat before the roaring fire, angry at life and all it had stolen from her, leaving her a lonely old spinster.

  Her name was Helena and her life should have, and would have been, far different from the pitiful existence that was now hers. Hers had been a charmed life in the beginning, the birthright of someone born with wealth, beauty, breeding, and, most importantly, the inherent superiority of her race.

  Her father was a lawyer and when he made the decision to purchase slaves with the idea to turn some of their land into cotton fields, life would only continue to throw the best it had to offer at her. Instead, becoming a slaveholder had ruined him because of one crucial element. He chose to see and treat his slaves as human beings instead of what they were: niggers. And he began to teach them how to read, write, and sustain themselves with the intention to eventually free all his slaves.

  This had not been received well by the rest of the town and people began to stop coming to his practice. Then Pierre, along with the rest of Helena’s suitors, stopped calling.

  All the luxuries she had taken for granted were gone as poverty replaced wealth. The beautiful clothes, even something as essential as sugar, became a scarcity. When her parents died she had been left with nothing, only this mansion, which had already begun to fall into disrepair. Of the slaves he had purchased, and then freed, only two remained after the death of her father. And they had continued to care for her all these long years out of pity for her and also loyalty to her father, the man who had ruined her life.

  She sighed, her anger diminishing for a moment. The years had been so long and so bleak that she yearned for death. She sighed once more.

  Oh, to be in the past dancing in Pierre’s arms once more.

  She sat staring morosely at the fire, her mind stuck in the past. Lulled by those images, she slowly slipped into sleep.

  I remained outside, at the door of the mansion, feeling all the more lost now her anger no longer burned brightly, entrancing me. Death was something I, too, had yearned for, since the night I was thrown into this wilderness. And I could give her that wish. It was a sincere wish, I knew, for the force which should have forbidden me entrance to her home was gone.

  I moved into the ether and entered the mansion, materialising in the bedroom. She awoke immediately when I moved to stand before her. She peered up at me, her gaze foggy and her mind clouded with sleep and the images of the past she had clung to all these years. I caught the strongest and brought it to life before her gaze.

  She was no longer in this room lit by the angry glow of the fire, but wa
s in the drawing room downstairs as it had been in her youth. But she took absolutely no notice of the room around her and merely stared ahead in surprise.

  “Pierre?”

  I held out my hand, but she saw Pierre reach for her hand, looking exactly as he had the last time he had been at the mansion.

  A smile lit up her face, pushing back decades from her features. She took my hand and got to her feet, staring lovingly into my face but seeing only the man she had been pining for all these years.

  “You’ve come back for that dance I promised you,” she said.

  A part of her knew what she was seeing couldn’t be real, but she grasped the fantasy anyway, holding on to it so ardently it took very little effort for me to maintain what she saw.

  When I held out my arms, she glided into them.

  It was a macabre dance, the old, frail, desperate woman clinging on to a fantasy of her youth. I waited for as long as she wanted the fantasy to play out. I had all of eternity stretched out before me and there was no need for me to rush this moment and its ultimate conclusion.

  Toward the end of the dance, as the fire burned low now, the deception wavered for a few seconds and she saw me instead of Pierre. She came to a stop abruptly, but there was no fear or anxiety in her mind, so I let it fall away completely, bringing her gently back into the dark room. As the brightly lit drawing room receded from before her gaze, she moved out of the circle of my arms but kept her gaze on my face, her expression one of complete rapture.

  “Oh my.” She reached for my face, gently holding it between her small, papery hands. “I don’t believe I’ve ever laid eyes on a man as handsome as you. There was no need to hide your face from me.”

  I didn’t answer, just let her continue to stare at me as if she wanted to commit every inch of my features to memory along with the others she had cherished for so long. Seemingly she had achieved this objective for she exhaled.

  “Now take me home...to...to Papa.” Tears filled her eyes. “He...he was a good man, and it’s only now, at the end, that I can see it and be proud of what he did.”

  I held my arms out again and she came into them.

  I held her for a few minutes, using my powers to lull her gently into a state of sublime bliss and contentment, and then a deep sleep. I bit into the soft, fleshy folds of her neck, tearing into the rigid carotid artery which released the warm, sweet gush of blood instantly. She was far away in her fantasy world and so felt no pain as I drew on her blood, consumed with that arousal and all the pleasures that the body yielded in a gushing, single flow of blood. I pressed her deeper into my arms, hearing her ribs crack from that faraway place. But she was long gone by then.

  I drowned myself in the crimson tide until there was nothing left and I was brought back into the room. The fire had died out completely.

  I placed the corpse on the bed and left the red velvet bedroom to return to the numbness and the night.

  I ran from that town, having no fantasies to take the edge off an existence that was nothing but bile. There was nothing for me but the endless hunger.

  I eventually left that mansion far behind me and came to a stop in the middle of grassland. I gazed up at the single shimmering eye of the moon, the only witness to my moral annihilation.

  Then I was standing in the clearing beneath the light of the moon and the chapel was before me. And beyond it, kneeling by the stream with her back to me, was the darky girl. She looked over her shoulder at me and my heart soared. I broke into a run.

  Her alluring smile and the way she lowered her eyes seduced me as nothing ever had. I ran, hoping that this time she wouldn’t disappear and the moment had come when I could be with her. As I neared, she met my gaze again and the smile faded. I saw sadness and her yearning was deeper this time. I felt it so keenly it was like a physical tug.

  I struggled to speak, knowing she would soon be gone.

  Your name. Tell me your name.

  She smiled sadly, her eyes filling with tears so they appeared luminous in the silvery light cast by the moon. Instead of answering, she merely lifted her head to look up at the moon.

  Then she was gone, and I was alone in the wasteland with only the mournful eye of the moon.

  I sank to my knees and wept, my anguish was so complete. So, so many years had passed. Would I never see the end of these dark, lonely nights?

  I sat in the grass for the rest of that night staring at the moon until the sun claimed the land and I was forced to flee from it and below to darkness.

  I passed the mansion numerous times over the years. It stood abandoned, slowly decaying, the foliage that the two Negroes had tried to keep from devouring the place gradually rising up to dominate the area. No one ventured near it or the surrounding area now. And it lay as a grim reminder of the desolation and social ostracism that befell those that tried to go against the social order as the lawyer had done when he chose to let his conscience, and not his wallet, direct his path in life.

  ***

  I did not see a vision of Luna for many years and it seemed all hope was lost. So why did I wait? Why did I continue to exist in that fashion year after year, page after page of this never-ending book? Because I had seen salvation. It was there in a pair of mysterious dark eyes and in those three simple words:

  Wait for me.

  It was like the siren’s call of long ago which led many a hapless sailor to their doom. And whether it led to life or death, I would continue to follow it for as long as it took for me to find her.

  But after so long in this wilderness, this Lodebar I had been exiled to, I had all but lost hope. That was when I began to regret my harsh judgement of Auria, Onyx, and Emory. In my loneliness and despair, I longed for companionship, even if it was theirs. I did not know if Auria and Onyx had survived the fire, but I began making my way periodically back to the chapel in search of them. The plantation had new owners now and was once more home to many slaves who would be worked from morning till dusk for as long as they lived.

  Auria would probably kill me if I came upon them, but at that stage it didn’t seem to matter so much. At least I would be free of this irrational belief in the vision of the darky girl and the love she seemed to have promised me. So I searched for Auria, but deep in the recesses of my heart and mind, I held on to the image of the darky girl and hoped that one day I would see her face again, if only for a moment. I would exist, wandering in this wilderness for all eternity if only I could see her face once more.

  Chapter 11

  I continued my directionless wanderings completely without hope. The man I had been had all but disappeared, the world around me seen through a veil of shadow aside from those brief moments when it was awash with the crimson tide that enveloped me whenever I fed. I had returned to what used to be the Foster plantation and stood in the trees looking out on the clearing beneath a blood-red sky as the day made way for twilight. Although older and scarred by the fire I had started, the malevolence that emanated from the chapel seemed stronger, the darkness I had observed all those years ago when I first entered the clearing, deeper now.

  There was someone in the chapel praying, a battered green Bible held in her work-roughened hands. It was a female slave, her prayer and the harsh realities of her circumstances, a tale of woe that was like that of so many I had passed along my lonely travels. When I heard the rustle of her clothes as she stood and moved toward the back door, I felt the welcome pressure along my gums as my incisors pushed through and lengthened.

  A shock passed through me when she stepped out of the chapel. She moved toward the stream with an innate grace, her presence like a small candle that beat back the evil that swathed the chapel. But it remained, curling around her steps as she walked to the stream and knelt before it.

  Trembling, I sank to my knees in the undergrowth and merely stared at the beautiful Negro in the faded purple dress as she knelt down at the stream. It was her. She was real. I searched her thoughts quickly. And if I needed any proof she was the one, i
t was in her name.

  Luna.

  Luna, the goddess of the moon, and she had finally answered my prayers.

  But although light appeared to be pushing back the darkness that had swathed me for so long, I hung back in the trees, my heart thumping painfully against my chest, afraid to move. This girl—Luna—she was human, but the woman I had been seeing wasn’t human. I didn’t know what she was, but I knew she was powerful. The other confusing thing was that the girl before me was a slave.

  Then anger shot through me. She was a slave. Someone had dared to enslave my goddess. I slowly got to my feet, my hands clenched. I had never felt this much rage since that dark evening when I massacred nearly every living thing on the Foster plantation. The men who had caused her suffering would drown in their own blood.

  Caught in that tight knot of rage, I did not realise what she meant to do when she dipped a hand into the stream and picked up the rock. Its sharp edge glinted in the weak light that was fast disappearing, the sun almost gone now as night reigned. When she brought it up to her face and closed her eyes, her intention came through to me on another wave of anguish. She meant to disfigure that beautiful face. Anxiety tore through me and I reached out mentally and stayed her hand as she brought the rock to her face and pierced the skin on her forehead. A thin trickle of blood ran down her forehead to her nose and the scent almost drove me wild.

  I moved her hand, and the rock, about five inches away from her face. But she resisted.

  Her anguished thoughts reached me again, the intensity of her emotions almost overcoming me. She was desperate to blight the face that delighted her master so, and thought it would keep him away from her. But I had seen into the minds of hundreds of men like her master and I knew that ruining that beautiful face would not stop him.

 

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