by Alan Jansen
A closer view revealed that the figure before us was none other than the very same I had seen six years ago when Uncle first visited us. Its golden and glimmering scales shone magnificently in the early night light, and it looked like it had twice the strength of Uncle, besides being at least half a foot taller. It laughed scornfully at the shrunken oak as it entered through the gate. Then it spat on the tree, uttering a good many invectives – or at least its utterances did sound like terrible invectives – none of us understanding the language it spoke. The creature was beautifully formed, the tiny golden scales covering its body like a second skin stretched out smoothly without a wrinkle. Yet despite the impression of beauty, it projected a feeling of utter horror. Its face and eyes were human-like – the eyes glowing with a fiery red that burnt brightly – but everything else about it was frighteningly inhuman. Opening its mouth to laugh at the shorn and shrunken oak, it showed several rows of strong yellow teeth that looked capable of wrenching the head off Uncle or any human, even a powerful beast. Increasing the horror was the smoke-like breath that seemed to emanate from its nostrils, making it look like a dragon breathing out smoke instead of fire. It also had a long tail reaching to the ground that swished about threateningly. Inky rushed out to the attack but was sent flying a few feet away by a mere flick of the beast’s tail. Stunned and momentarily winded, Inky lay where he fell. The shimmering golden entity immediately pounced on Uncle with a speed akin to lightning, hell-bent on killing my relative. We stood paralyzed, rooted in our positions – comatose witnesses, unable to intervene, and even if we could, we knew it was futile to come between the warring duo. I saw a shocked Pop rushing back into the house, fully intent on fetching his always loaded rifle …
Uncle and the entity locked themselves in battle. The beast had Uncle immediately on the back foot, trapping him helpless in a grip of iron. The creature was pressing Uncle’s head so far back that I expected it to snap off at any moment due to the intense pressure. It looked as though the horrible thing was definitely going to break Uncle’s neck in the vice grip it had my relative in, and by the looks of things, it was going to do it slowly to enjoy its kill and make Uncle suffer even more. Just as I thought Uncle was finished, an extraordinary thing happened. Somehow, and despite the grip the beast had its victim in, Uncle managed to free a hand, pluck out the necklace he wore around his neck, and then direct the red stone in the pendant towards the beast. A powerful beam of light immediately emitted from the stone and struck the entity plumb on its face. The light expanded and covered the creature’s entire golden body, dulling its golden hue and turning it an ordinary brown. At that moment, I saw the beast screech in horror and fear as the rays of whatever was in that pendant hit the monster like a laser, causing it to loosen its grip on Uncle and fall down upon on the ground, a huge cloud of smoke emitting from its huddled figure. It wriggled and struggled in desperate throes, as if performing a dance of death, as the light continued to shoot upon it from the pendant. Its death throes suddenly stopped as it shivered spasmodically a final time, never to rise again. In its last struggles, the beast’s body shook so powerfully that a small brown-golden scale loosened and went flying through the air directly in my direction. It hit me plumb on my neck. I felt the shock of the impact and then the warm blood gushing out from my wound as I fell to the ground, almost paralyzed by shock, my body seemingly shutting down its vital functions. Uncle rushed over to me horrified, and in a flash had his mouth on my wound, sucking the free-flowing blood. I felt the flow cease considerably, his saliva mixed with my blood seemingly acting as a natural coagulating substance. Before the watching members of my family could react and see exactly what he was doing, he stuck a long manicured nail into his mouth, pierced his tongue, and kissed me, forcing his blood into my mouth, which I had no alternative but to swallow. He sucked on my wound again and kissed me again, forcing more blood into my body. Pop, Mom, and Ben must have thought he was performing artificial respiration of sorts, as they feared I was dying, which I probably was. Uncle then tied his scarf around my neck and carried me inside the farmhouse, where he laid me carefully on the living room sofa. He didn’t say anything to my shocked family, just keeping a silent vigil beside my injured body. As I was carried out, I saw obliquely that the spot where Drakenwund had fallen was a charred black hole and that the beast’s body had evaporated completely. I passed out completely then, immediately entering some sort of dreamworld …
In my ensuing vision, I was in the company of a score of very nondescript-looking men and women who were standing on a dark plain within a circle of tall stones. Inside the circle my completely immobile body, paralyzed from head to toe, had been laid on a rough stone altar. Some of the men were dressed in modern-day suits; others wore plain jackets over shirts and trousers; and a few wore ordinary jeans and flannel shirts. The women were dressed similarly, either in formal dress and jackets or casual jeans and shirts. It was pitch-dark, but the centre within the circle was aglow from an invisible light that burned brightly. As I gazed upon the gathering around me, they slowly changed form. Before me stood tall, wiry-looking beings shed of their clothing, fully naked and bearing no genitals. They were extremely thin with green-blue bodies, big heads, and the biggest and brightest eyes I had ever seen. Then one, obviously their leader, spoke in a clicking yet echoing voice.
‘She is tainted! The blood of the powerful Druid – the one they called Merlin, whom we imprisoned here on this planet – runs in her body together with ours, as it does with the French one, the one we gave the gift to in the past. The French one has made the blood transfer with her hoping to save her life. She cannot be one of us, not a true one anyway. The Druid’s force is too strong in her.’
Another one spoke, saying, ‘Aye! Not one of us, yes, but a helper. Alongside us shall she be! Our powers she shall have, but they shall be limited, for she can never be told the truth until the time comes.’
‘So be it,’ said the leader. ‘Like the French one, she shall roam this world until the Great One decides the final fate of this planet. She can be useful together with her relative, and others whom we have made in this world. Through her, as with the others, we will know of matters concerning this world, for their thoughts will be as ours.’
I awoke a while later to the ministrations of Inky, who had wobbled back to his feet and was licking my face amidst small moans of pain he let out now and then. Uncle sat on the bare ground pressing on his red and purple neck that the entity had nearly torn off from his torso. When he saw me awaken, he rushed over and helped me sit up on our comfortable couch. Uncle then steadied Inky somewhat, and tied a bandage around my dog’s ribcage, judging that a few ribs had been broken when the beast had scathingly tossed him away. Luckily, this time around there was nothing seriously amiss with my dear dog. Doctor Darcy who attended to him later on didn’t find any broken ribs. He did, though, come in a few days that week to check in on Inky, for which I was most grateful.
Later on that evening, Uncle solemnly asked Mom, Pop, and Ben to join him in the living room. He didn’t ask me, informing me curtly that I was to stay in my room, where he would later speak with me privately. I was eighteen, almost nineteen, and could have disobeyed Uncle, but after the stupendous and grave event that had just occurred, I reluctantly complied with his wishes. I didn’t know what events took place in the living room, but later on, a good fifteen minutes after, Uncle knocked on my bedroom door. He came straight to the point.
‘Turtle, I have erased the memory of the past hour from the minds of your parents and Ben. It is for their own good.’
‘Erased how, Uncle? And why? What do you mean?’
‘I put them into a trance and hypnotized them using a powerful Druid spell that I’ve used just a few times before, for the reason that the spell’s power drains a lot of my own. They will never remember the beast you all saw, never again, not even in their dreams.’
‘And me? What about me? Are you going to erase that
memory from me too? I wouldn’t want that, Uncle!’ I said anxiously.
‘No. I want you to keep that memory, to know that strange beings walk this planet and that I am perhaps not the person I have projected I am, the one you have come to know. I am a Druid, with a mixture of something else, and I have strange powers that put me at an advantage – elevate me above other humans. I suspect you will obtain these powers too, Turtle, although I’m not entirely sure right now. That you are alive after my ministrations makes me inclined to believe you will. That’s why I need you to keep this special memory intact. I will be leaving shortly for France, where I have to attend to some important matters. As to your question of why I did what I did, it’s not good for your parents or Ben to know of monsters and such matters or of what sort of person I am. I might visit again one more time, and if I do, I will make things clearer to you then. I’m not sure when or if I will come, but I intend to do so.’
Uncle had a faraway look in his eyes when he spoke the last sentence, a look of profound sadness mixed with another emotion I couldn’t identify. I never guessed why Uncle looked so forlorn and sad right then, but I discovered the reason why long afterwards when I read his diary event for that day, which I am including in the penultimate paragraph of this chapter.
A few days later a letter came from one of Oxford University’s colleges confirming my acceptance in that great place of learning. I intended to study arts, history, and philosophy. To this day, I suspect that Uncle had engineered my acceptance in some mysterious way. True, I had all the necessary qualifications, but there were many other hopefuls like me knocking on the door of that famous university …
Uncle stayed on with us for another two months before he left again. I didn’t know it at that time, and neither did Mom, Pop, or Ben, but we would never see him again on the farm. It was later on that year that the news of his death came to us that fateful day via that awful telegram I have described in the opening chapter of this book.
Last Extract from Uncle’s Diary
Drakenwund’s demise came suddenly and unexpectedly. For years, this powerful beast had been waiting for the right opportunity to strike, but I had always thwarted him. In France, by the entrance to my chateau gate, two huge oak trees prevented any predator Druid from entering. Additionally, oak trees grew in fifteen-metre spaces around my entire property, and inside my home many protective charms and amulets in various forms lay about in key places to ward off evil of any sort. Despite these measures, I was not really safe in my chateau on account of the thick forests that grew nearby that could harbour any rogue Druid and other potential enemies. … I was safe as long as stayed inside my house, and only vulnerable when I travelled, and that too only after the sun had set. When travelling, I’d always kept a special amulet set in a gold chain on my person. I only wore it around my neck when I sensed danger. Nobody knew of the amulet, not even Julia, for I never wore it when we made love or otherwise. The amulet is made of bloodstone, which I suck upon now and then, and was caught in the act one day by Turtle when I visited the farm in one of my earliest visits. The bloodstone gives me blood to drink so that I didn’t have to prey on humans or animals. With Julia, I had only drunk her blood and exchanged mine in an effort to make her ageless and semi-immortal like me. How I lament that my efforts did not succeed! It appears that she was rejected in some way by the ancients who had given me this great power so long ago in the woods outside my village. The bloodstone was a final gift from my mentor Akawander, a true benevolent vampire I had met in my travels to the East of France – Luxembourg to be exact – before he went into the fire, tired of living on and on and on. … Starving for company, I often met with Akawander, the only person I could trust at that time. Akawander claimed the stone once belonged to Niviane, the woman who had caused Merlin’s death. How Niviane got the stone, I don’t know, for she wasn’t a sorceress, but Akawander said it was found inside the sacred grove of Bel, which Merlin once succeeded in gaining access to. The stone had since been passed on to various important Druids and finally somehow made its way into Akawander’s hands. When I saw Drakenwund that night, I fully intended to flash the stone at him at once before he could pounce on me, as the oak by the gate had lost most of its power thanks to Jim’s decapitating pruning. However, Drakenwund’s mega velocity caught me off guard; I couldn’t find the time to pull the chain out from my shirt. I thought I was surely going to die, as I was no match for the beast’s immense strength, but Drakenwund’s obvious and morbid desire to give me a slow death caused his own. While my neck and body were being stretched back inch by inch, I was able to slowly pull the chain out from around my neck and direct the bloodstone’s deadly red laser direct upon my enemy. Thus died Drakenwund. Later on I removed the memory of this horrible event from the family’s minds, except for Turtle, whom I deliberately left out. I don’t know if the accidental blood exchange I performed with Turtle will give her the qualities I have. Time, I suppose, will tell. … I was forced to give her the blood to save her life, for I was too fond of the girl to let her bleed to death. Besides, the girl’s death would have devastated Julia. I had tried to ‘turn’ Julia by drinking from her and then spitting my blood into her mouth so that she was forced to swallow it (I put her into a hypnotic trance in these instances, and she was not aware of what I did) several times over, but I had a more than a sneaking suspicion that I had failed in my quest. Why Julia was rejected by the ancients, I don’t know, but it was a terrible and devastating blow. … I knew for certain that my days of love and bliss with Julia must now come to an end. Julia was over forty now, and although she is still splendidly beautiful, the small crow’s feet under her eyes, the greying at her temples, and other signs of ageing that I’d noticed before were now increasingly visible. I, on the other hand, hadn’t changed an iota and would remain unchanged. I was, and am, still in possession of the same features that I’ve had for a long, long time now. I couldn’t bear to see Julia get old while I remained young. It would be too cruel. I had to break off our relations. I don’t intend to visit the farm again after I leave this time for France. Although I told young Turtle that I might make one more visit, I do not intend to do so. This would be my last visit. I vowed that I would somehow make Julia forget me for good. I will see to it that Julia is well provided for, as well as the others at the farm. I had inherited my dear friend Akawander’s enormous wealth, and together with my own I had more money than any known oligarch. I know now that my future life might be unbearably lonely, but I am not like Akawander, who as a vampire was forced to be a loner – the chief reason why he killed himself. I will grieve terribly for my darling Julia – isolate myself for a decade or two perhaps, and hope that later on I might make at least a few friends here in France …
Reading Uncle’s startling last entry after he had ended that eventful visit, I now know at least one thing about him. If the diary was true – and I had no doubt it was – then Uncle was centuries old, and probably immune from wounds, sickness, and death, although prone to attacks from rogue Druids like Drakenwund. Why Uncle left behind his diary, I really don’t know (I’ve said this before and I say it again). He was about to leave for good, and maybe he left it hoping that I or my mother, Julia, would one day find it and read its contents. Pop and Ben would have hardly bothered to read it if they had found it – Pop had given up reading books and anything much else years ago, and Ben had absolutely no sense of curiosity besides confining his reading to the daily newspaper’s sports pages, and occasionally reading a few articles in the local farmers’ magazine. If Uncle hadn’t meant us to find his diary, then the only logical explanation is that he had forgotten it given the turbulent events that marked his last visit.
Chapter 7
The Song of Akawander
Oh death! Where is thy sting?
1 Corinthians 15:55
I, Akawander, once centuries ago a Roman and now a vampire, am the loneliest being in this world. I claim this title. Without doubt, it is
surely mine and mine alone. I have been alone ever since I, then a human, survived the great sea battle between my lord Antony’s fleet and that of Octavian admirably led by the great Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa off the coast of Actium in AD 31. I will not dwell on history, but I will add here that I was a high-ranking naval officer in Antony’s fleet, serving directly under Gellius Publicola. A lot has been written about the brilliance of Agrippa, which eventually won the day and defeated the fleet of Antony and Cleopatra. I know that the defeat was not just the result of Agrippa’s brilliance but was a combination of other factors that held sway at the sea battle. I was not seriously wounded in the fighting, but a sudden fall from a shockwave that hit the vessel I was in when it was rammed by one of Agrippa’s galleys caused me to hit my head against the ship’s outer frame near the bow, sending me tumbling into the water. There was a lot of debris floating around, and although I was semiconscious, I still managed to cling to a solid piece of floating wood and slowly lift my heavily armoured body upon it. Thus I floated, sometimes conscious, sometimes semiconscious, and at times even totally unconscious. When conscious, I saw distinctly burning ships around me and heard the cries of the wounded and dying. I must have floated for more than a day, for when I awoke fully conscious for the first time and rubbed my hand over my chin, I felt an almost two-day stubble upon my face, which had been clean-shaven at the commencement of the battle. I must have floated far out in the sea, a long way from Actium. I woke up with an enormous thirst. The seawater looked quite tempting, but I knew I had to refrain. I dipped my hand into the calm sea and splashed water over my head several times to ease the throbbing from a deep wound that I noticed just above my forehead, which had probably taken the full brunt of the force of my fall and caused my semiconscious state. As I lay there on my wooden float, I watched as the sky changed, dusk and then night coming in quick succession. The sea, thank goodness, was still calm with hardly a noticeable ripple. Gradually I found the strength to sit up on my float. Knowing the Mare Nostrum [Mediterranean Sea] quite well, I wasn’t surprised when my float drifted close to a little island. I paddled with my hands on both sides of the float and managed with some difficulty to bring my rough craft close to the island. It was tough trying to half float, half swim to the shore in my weakened condition, but I was a strong man, so with some difficulty, I managed to finally get to the sandy shore and from there crawl to some sparse shrubbery, where I lay down exhausted. I must have passed out, for when I awoke again, I found myself in a cave of sorts that was roughly furnished with a great many furs and solid-looking chairs with small tables scattered around. In a far corner, a rough couch made of driftwood and other hard material had been fashioned out. The couch or bed had no linen, just a rough top of flattened wood covered with thick furs of some animal, probably bear. Even thicker furs were piled on the bedhead, forming a large pillow. There was no light in the cave except for a great fire roaring in a corner that gave off a good deal of warmth that permeated the entire cave. By my side lay a clay jug of water and a bowl of a steaming hot stew of sorts. I didn’t know how I came to be in the cave or who had put the food and water beside me, but I was grateful for it all. The water especially was so welcoming to my parched throat that I drank almost the whole contents of the jug. I attacked the stew with vigour and rapidly polished it off like a hungry wolf. As soon as I had finished my meal, I sensed for the first time that I was not alone in the cave dwelling. From a chair faced away from me, directly facing the great fire, a voice called out in a strange sing-song sort of intonation.