by Alison Fish
Chapter 22
Amy rose to the same dark filthy church basement lair she had shared with Ruthie for several weeks. Nothing could be heard from the church above. She lit candles on their table and saw the shadowy image of Susie sleeping peacefully in the coffin from which she had just risen. She turned slightly to see Ruthie's coffin still closed and still. Amy generally rose earlier than Ruthie and used the time for extra primping and caring for her precious dresses. Tonight, however, Amy was too anxious and excited as she waited for Ruthie and Susie to awaken to be able to concentrate on her usual waking activities. She carried one of the candles to her coffin and gazed happily at Susie as though she were a proud mother watching a beloved child sleep. She was excited to have brought a new vampire into their lair and was looking forward to explaining Susie's new life to her and taking her out into the night to teach her how to hunt and feed.
Susie's eyes slowly opened to find Amy smiling down at her. Exhausted and confused, Susie showed no sign of recognition of Amy and without rising, scanned the dust and cobweb-ridden ceiling above her. Finally moving her hands and turning her head, Susie deduced that she was in a padded box in a cellar.
"Welcome to our home," Amy smiled.
"Home?" Susie asked and sat up staring at Amy.
"Let me help you up," Amy held Susie's arm as Susie climbed out of the coffin.
"How did I get here?" Susie asked finally remembering Amy, "You're the girl I met last night," With horror the memories of the previous night caught up with her groggy mind, "You're the one who killed that man. You and your friend took me away. We were in the cemetery," Susie put her hands over her face, "I don't remember anything else."
"Why don't you sit here at our table and we'll have a nice talk," Amy led Susie to a chair at the table. "Ruthie will join us soon."
"Have I been here all night?" Susie was concerned, "I have to take care of my children."
"All night and all day," Amy replied, "you're safe from the men who are undoubtedly hunting for that repulsive man's murderer."
"I can never go home, can I?" Susie asked knowing the answer, "what will become of my daughters? I can only shudder to think what will happen to them without me to protect them."
Never having been a mother, Amy couldn't empathize with Susie. Her childhood memories of having been a privileged daughter of one of the city's most affluent men left her unable to comprehend what dangers might await unprotected daughters of a working class family.
"Don't worry," Amy tried to comfort her new friend, "I'm sure someone will take them in."
"Good Lord," Ruthie exclaimed as she rose from her coffin behind Susie and took a seat at the table, "three daughters left alone unprotected. How old are they, Susie, honey? I think last night you said the oldest is six?"
"Yes, the oldest is six, the middle one is four and the youngest is three years old," Susie was consumed with worry and anxiety, "and they've been alone for at least twenty four hours. Who knows what may have happened to them already."
"My goodness," Amy didn't understand the need for such anxiety, "what could possibly happen?"
"The oldest was used to fending off her drunken father," Susie replied, "but the others are just babies. They'll be put out on the streets and starve to death or fall into the hands of the predators that use orphaned children for profit, either in the mills or on the streets as prostitutes or thieves."
"Prostitutes!" Amy exclaimed in disbelief, "but they're only children."
"That doesn't matter to some," Susie explained to the two horrified vampires, "and to some it's a preference."
"Good Lord!" Ruthie said again, "Amy, what have we done now?" Ruthie became as distraught as Susie.
"What are you talking about?" Susie asked, "maybe they won't blame me for the murder after all. That's my only hope."
"I'm afraid you've got more circumstances to adjust to than defending yourself against a murder charge," Amy spoke softly and glanced at Ruthie, "we need to explain something to you."
"Explain quickly," Susie demanded, "I need to see to my children."
"Susie," Amy solemnly looked Susie in the eye, "the reason you don't remember last night and how you arrived here with us is because I rendered you unconscious."
"How? Why did you do that?" Susie asked impatiently and with anger.
"We believed we were helping you to escape being blamed for the murder I so carelessly committed," Amy paused, "we inducted you into our little family so as to give you the power to escape your difficult life."
"I never asked the two of you for any help," Susie was insulted, "I've always taken care of myself without asking for anything from anyone, especially strangers," After a short pause she asked, "what power? What are you talking about?"
"That is what we need to tell you," Ruthie explained.
"Well, then, tell me," Susie demanded.
Amy and Ruthie together bared their vampire teeth to Susie whose anger and impatience melted away into a look of surprise and fear. She stood up knocking her chair backwards into Ruthie's coffin. For the first time since rising, Susie took a good look around the room and saw the two coffins and realized she had been sleeping in one of them, "Good God, what are you and what did you do to me?"
"That is what we've been trying to tell you," Amy stood and helped Susie back to her seat after Ruthie righted the chair, "you are now one of us."
"What is that?" Susie demanded as she put her fingers to her mouth to feel her own teeth. She sat in shocked silence as Amy and Ruthie explained all of the benefits of being vampires, such as the immortality, the extreme physical strength, the ability to vaporize and the end of being victimized, unless discovered and beheaded or staked.
"Well," Susie whispered after a few moments digesting the news, "I suppose I won't be tried and hung for murder."
"No," Ruthie answered, "that is why we chose you."
"How am I to raise my girls now?" Susie said aloud as she turned the problem over in her mind.
"Do you have any relatives nearby?" Amy suggested, "or a trustworthy neighbor?"
"No," Susie answered, "that's why I had to leave them home alone."
"Don't worry, Susie," Amy promised, "we will find a solution to your problem."
"Yes," Ruthie agreed, "we caused your problem, so we'll do whatever we can to help you."
"But right now," Amy continued, "we must feed and we must teach you how to feed as well. We'll show you how we feed without being discovered. In other words, how to get away with murder."
Ruthie gave Amy a scornful look, "We still believe that murder is a sin, even though we need to kill to survive. I prefer to feed on animals, but have killed either on my own or as Amy's accomplice."
"I," Amy added, "on the other hand, despise feeding on furry animals and prefer the blood of drunken sailors, vagrants and confused newcomers."
"How do you keep suspicion from falling onto you?" Susie asked, "There are plenty of superstitious people in this town who believe in vampires, werewolves and other monsters."
"We attempt to make the murders look like animal borne diseases or accidents," Amy answered proud of her ingenuity.
Susie's eyes opened wide in realization, "The two of you are responsible for all the mysterious deaths in Widow's Row. You killed my husband."
"Yes," Ruthie answered, her eyes lowered in guilt and shame, "that's another reason why we felt obliged to help you by making you one of us."
"Oh," Susie's mind was absorbing and sifting all of this information. Amy and Ruthie watched her face as she processed everything they told her waiting for a reaction of some kind. Finally, she said, "Is there anything else you need to tell me?"
"I think we've given you enough for you to accept for now," Amy rose from the table, "we need to feed and find you a casket of your own before solving the problem of caring for your children."
The two vampires, now being three, extinguished the candles and made their way out into the night.
Dark and still the evenin
g air was foggy and motionless as the three young women passed silently through the churchyard toward the main street and the waterfront. Smoke and dust hung in the fog as the mills pumped out pollution as well as products.
Looking around to orient herself to her new surroundings, Susie scoffed, "We spent the night in a church?"
"Yes," Amy answered, "our lair is the cellar of a church. Isn't that ironic?"
"I still think it's sinful," Ruthie remarked.
"Sinful?" Susie said, "I think it's fitting."
"Fitting?" Ruthie was surprised, "How so?"
"All those holy men preaching to us about morality and sin and saving our souls," Susie replied caustically, "while we're trying to stay alive from day to day. Trying to feed our families and keep them safe and healthy. Husbands demanding from us all the time and hitting us and knocking us down and threatening to kill us because they had a bad day or too much to drink or both."
"What does any of that have to do with churches?" Amy asked.
"The church people don't want to hear any of that," Susie replied, "they think praying and reading the Bible is going to make life better even if it only gets better after we die."
"You have to have faith in Jesus," Ruthie said solemnly, "you have to believe that if you live by his teachings, you'll live forever in the kingdom of God."
"And his teachings tell me to be a good slave to my husband and go to church every Sunday as though I deserve to be beaten by my miserable husband."
"He'll never beat you again," Amy said.
"No, he won't," Susie said, "because you killed him. Yes, I think the church deserves to have vampires living in the cellar. It only proves that the so-called Christian teachings and holiness is all false."
"No!" Ruthie exclaimed, "I cannot believe that."
"Pardon me for interrupting and changing the subject," Amy lowered her voice and slowed her pace as they neared the waterfront, "we need to find a victim and we need to be very discreet."
Ruthie was very unnerved by Susie's hostile attitude toward Christianity and worried what kind of vampire Susie would transition into without the fear of God in her. At least Amy, although not a devout Christian like herself, had strong morals but believed it was normal for her to sin because she is a vampire. She rationalizes that murdering is part of her nature and, therefore, not really a sin. How would Susie respond to the scent and taste of blood?
The three vampires slipped into an alley between two buildings along the waterfront as a small group of shipbuilders passed by apparently on their way home from work. Sawdust clung to the tar on their clothes as they trudged along the docks.
"Can you smell the blood, Susie?" Amy whispered to Susie as they watched the men walk by.
"Yes, yes, I can," Susie answered in amazement, "I thought that whole story about drinking blood was a joke, but now I see that it's real," She raised her fingers to feel her sharp teeth.
"I wouldn't be so cruel to lie about your future and your new life," Amy answered.
"Then what about the other things?" Susie asked, "the extreme strength and the immortality, and turning to vapor on a whim."
"Don't worry," Amy said, "we will teach you about all of those things, but first we need to feed."
They exited the alley and moved toward the docks where the fog hung like a blanket over the anchored ships and dimmed the lights on the main street.
Whether because of the fog or other circumstances, no victims could be found along the wharves, so early in the evening, which wasn't uncommon. The girls couldn't wait for the train so they left the docks for the main street hoping to find some loiterers in the alleys.
"I suppose the two of you spend a lot of time in alleys," Susie remarked as they sidestepped trash difficult to see in the thick fog, which rolled off the river and through the alleys into the main street.
"Yes," Amy replied, "Ruthie finds most of her rat victims in these alleys. I often find a human victim here as well. Sometimes I drag or carry my victims into an alley for privacy and self-preservation. We mustn't allow anyone to recognize us or discover what we are."
Amy's casual conversation about murder and corpse disposal made Susie nervous. She may not have been much of a God fearing woman, but she wasn't comfortable about murdering and hiding bodies as though they were eating a loaf of bread and sweeping away the crumbs. Even though Amy needed to feed to survive, her careless description of the process seemed unnatural to Susie. It seemed as though Amy and Ruthie had protected her from being hanged for a murder she didn't commit only to transform her into a being who must murder to survive.
Slowly exiting the alley, the vampires saw the two prostitutes they had seen earlier in the week across the street looking for work. Susie shuddered with disdain at the sight of them having so recently been treated as though she were one of their low and ruined kind. Ruthie was as repulsed by the blatant sinners as she had been the first time she had seen them and Amy reacted as unaffectedly as she had the first night they noticed them soliciting in front of the nearby hotel.
"Those wretched sinners are still looking to do some more sinning," Ruth remarked with contempt.
"I'm glad I didn't end up like them," Susie remarked, "I'd rather be dead."
"You got that, didn't you," Ruthie said, and then realizing the harshness of her remark said, "Oh, I'm so sorry, Susie, I'd die before selling myself that way too. I just meant to say that I know how you feel. I feel the same way."
Overwhelmed and confused with her new companions and all that they had revealed to her, Susie answered, "That's all right, I think."
"Since we all agree how horrible a life of prostitution would be," Amy said, "I think we should put those two hopeless sinners out of their assumed misery."
Ruthie rolled her eyes at Amy's suggestion as Susie froze, shocked at Amy's careless suggestion.
"You use any excuse to find someone worthy or unworthy to be a victim," Ruthie scolded, "I can't make one bad remark about someone and you decide to make a victim out of him."
"We have an agreement, Ruthie," Amy argued, "if we find a person who is a bad person in some way, he-or in this case she-is considered to be an acceptable victim."
Susie witnessed the vampires' argument with interest and confusion. Myths and legends described vampires as vicious beastlike killers unable to control their murderous instincts, but here were two creatures of the night having an argument involving morals and sin. Huddled on the sidewalk at the edge of the alley with Ruthie and Amy, Susie enjoyed the scent of blood as passersby walked within inches of her.
As usual, Ruthie gave in to Amy's persistent argument and they traveled further up the street to find a darker less crowded area to cross over to their intended victims' position. The prostitutes stood at the end of an alley that the vampires could enter from the opposite direction to approach the victims from behind.
As they made their way up the deserted alleyway, Ruthie detected the scent and movement of rats foraging in the mounded trash and wished she were stalking their blood which would leave her feeling guilt-free instead of the human blood which would reinforce her fear of spending eternity burning in the flames of hell.
Amy was fearless and thrilled with anticipation as she ignored the fragrant, yet not tempting, scent of the rat blood as she moved closer to her intended prey. Keeping her senses focused and alerted for the sight, sound and smell of the victims, Amy also remained alert to prevent the possibility of being witnessed and discovered during the attack. Her carelessness of the previous evening couldn't happen again.
Anxiety and hunger clouded Susie's mind as she followed Amy and Ruthie through the alley. She didn't know what to expect and still wasn't wholly convinced that what Amy and Ruthie had told her was truth or some insane delusion shared by them both. Was she about to become accomplice to two more murders and surely be hung or did they truly need to drink blood to survive? The entire story seemed impossible, yet she developed fangs and her senses seemed affected, somehow reset for the dete
ction of blood. She was sure she smelled a delicious unfamiliar aroma wafting from beyond or within the accumulated trash toward the rear of the alley.
Susie watched as Ruthie and Amy, with split second speed and unbelievable strength, skillfully and silently extended their arms from the alley and lifted the prostitutes up and into the darkness sinking their teeth into their throats before the unsuspecting victims had a chance to scream. In those few seconds Susie realized the truth and enjoyed not only a feeling of empowerment and satisfaction as she followed her two mentors' lead and sunk her own teeth into the throat of Ruthie's victim, but the sensation of being at one with herself which she had never experienced or even came close to experiencing before. The feeling was powerful, liberating and intoxicating.
"Susie," Ruthie's sense of urgency pulled Susie from her new found sensitivities. Susie reluctantly raised her head from the depleted prostitute, blood clinging to her lips before licking it away, "we have to hide these bodies so no one knows they got vampires in town and start hunting us."
"Yes," Amy agreed as they stood looking down at Susie who still knelt beside her victim, "lingering over our victims is a luxury we cannot afford. You've done very well, Susie, but now we must hide the bodies."
Rising slowly as though awakened from a wonderful dream and wishing it could continue forever, Susie helped the others lift the bodies, surprised and pleased with her new strength. Amy and Susie, draping the corpses over their shoulders, pressed their backs as close to the alley wall as possible while Ruthie peeked out into the street to judge the possibility of carrying them across the main street and into the alley across the street from which they had watched the prostitutes earlier. From there, the walk to the docks would be safe as long as they were as deserted as they were earlier.
After draping her cloak over Susie's shoulders to help hide the body she carried, Ruthie helped Amy with her own cloak and after determining the street was too crowded led her two accomplices back through the alley and they returned to the opposite side of the street by retracing the same route they had taken during the hunt. Walking to the edge of the water they discreetly slipped the bodies out from under the cloaks and into the river while Ruthie said a prayer for the souls of the murdered and the murderers.
As they walked toward Susie's home to tend to her children Amy asked, "Susie, how do you feel after your first kill?"
"Like a sinner?" Ruthie asked hopefully.
Susie hesitated a moment before answering, "It's hard to find words to describe it. It was all so incredible."
"Yes," Amy said, "it is overwhelming at first, but you will become accustomed to it."
"I don't think I'll have trouble getting used to it at all," Susie smiled. "I've never felt so powerful! This must be what it feels like to be a man."
"Oh!" exclaimed Amy, "we are much more powerful than any man."
"The only part of being a vampire I'm not happy with," said Amy regretfully, "is having to hide away forever. I would love to live in bright rooms in a spacious house instead of hiding in dark cellars and attics."
"That's the only thing?" Ruthie asked incredulously, "what about all the killing? That's the only thing I'm unhappy with. All the sinning and killing and having nothing to look forward to except burning in hell for eternity."
"You need to do whatever you must to survive," Susie stated.
"That's the attitude I favor," Amy agreed with Susie, "those morals were created for humans who have no good reason for murder. We are not humans. We need to feed on blood to survive. Therefore, in our case, murder is not sinful."
"That reasoning seems logical to me," Susie said as they entered the familiar old neighborhood of poverty and destitution.
"Good Lord," Ruthie muttered.
"And another thing," Amy suddenly remembered, "I deeply regret not having a reflection. It's so difficult to know when I have my hair and my skirts just so without being able to see myself."
Ruthie chuckled to herself at Amy's vanity, "Now that's one of the things I like about being a vampire. My looks only got me a lot of trouble. It got so I hated my reflection. Seeing my reflection just reminded me of how much people hated me. I would look and look and look at myself trying to figure out what it was about my face that caused people to have such a bad reaction to it."
"It isn't your face, Ruthie, it's the color of it," Amy replied, "and you know it. Remember how Michael loved your face? There is not a single reason for anyone to think badly of you. You are the sweetest person I've ever known. Besides Robert, of course."
"You're going to have to tell me about this Robert and Michael," Susie said.
"We'll be happy to," Amy answered enthusiastically.