* * *
I rose from my chair in my study where I had collapsed the day before, newspapers and brandy bottles scattered in my wake. In my previous life, my happier life, I had been a meticulous man in my living habits, my work ethic, and in my health. Those days are far behind me. But I find that I can call on these qualities when it involves solving this riddle.
I walked to my wall where a picture of Lenore hung. Next to her picture, also hanging on the wall, were a series of newspaper clippings of sickness and obituaries. Beneath the picture and articles was a map. I attached the articles to the map so that I could discern clues.
I adored Lenore’s picture for several seconds before my eyes were drawn to the space next to it. I had to understand this puzzle. On the map were a series of red strings leading from an obituary of someone who died unexpectedly to the epicenter of the infestation—a distillery. So when I stood back and admired my work, I saw a pattern of sickness and death in the shape of circle 50 leagues wide that took more than two years to complete. I think I was starting to understand.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, to which I grudgingly responded. A cold breeze greeted me as I opened the door. In the gray dark I saw a hooded male outline. A second figure stood off a ways.
“Yes, may I help you?”
“My carriage broke down just outside your home. May we come inside and perhaps warm ourselves by your fire while it is being repaired?”
I hesitated though I did not know why. Maybe it was his voice or the way I could not see his shrouded face. But I nodded and moved aside for him. As he passed, my back stiffened and the hairs on my arms raised which I mistook this as a shiver from the cold. When she passed me I was left in a cloud of perfume reminiscent of my Lenore’s. I stilled the thought before it gathered momentum and grew unmanageable. There would be no children. There would be no grandchildren. Lenore is dead.
They stopped in the hallway waiting for me. I closed the door and took them both into the sitting room where he thrust back the hood on his cloak back and revealed a very good-looking middle-aged man. He was gray at his temples. His nose was V shaped but his chin was square. Both pointed downwards which gave him a bird-like appearance. He was so very pale as to a corpse.
The woman standing by his side made no attempt to reveal her face and I felt it rude but I also did not care. I felt a thirst that water would not satisfy. The embrace of the brandy called and while I knew it would not fill that empty space within me left by Lenore, I knew it would ease the pain.
Presently, we were seated around the low table in the sitting room. The brandy had been poured and I tried to restrain myself from drinking it down quickly. They sat on the couch while I sat in a wooden chair across from them. But then he stood and went over to the fire. He smiled at me while he warmed himself. The smile was nothing inviting. It was yellow and his teeth looked as though each tooth was a haphazardly placed tombstone. But most disconcerting of all was that the smile never touched his eyes. I saw all of this and chose to ignore it. My mind was on the brandy.
“I would like to thank you again for letting us into your home,” he said after our introductions had been made. Stephâne Choiseul gave a small bow as the fire made shadows on the walls dance.
“I welcome the company,” I said, although, it was a lie. I did not want others around. I was acutely embarrassed by being a drunk and had become a recluse because of it.
“Eleanor, please don’t be rude,” he said to his companion, smiling. I started at the name and my attention was drawn to her. Her hands twisted and turned the gloves in her lap as though she were agonizing over something I had no knowledge of. Finally, she arrived at a decision and she removed her hood and I saw that it was my Lenore! My Lenore that had been buried for more than a year! How could that be?
“Hello, Guy,” she finally said with a tremor in her voice.
I grasped the armrest of the chair in which I sat to steady myself. My heart thudded in my chest and my tongue felt thick and slow, too slow to respond to her presence; I was struck dumb.
“We’ve come back because we have left unfinished business behind—you,” Stephâne said.
It was with much effort I turned my head from Lenore to him. My mind was fuzzy and refused to accept the sight of her. She did not look at me. But he spoke to me. He demanded my attention.
“Eleanor begged me to spare your life and, in exchange, she willingly came with me. But you...you are unwilling to continue your insignificant life. You have tracked our movements and guessed our manner of moving from hamlet to hamlet. We are simple wine merchants that no one pays attention to.
Somewhere along the line we stumbled across you and your intended. We were invited in to fulfill your desire for spirits for your nuptials. Don’t you think it’s the height of irony that we were supposed to help bring happiness on your wedding day but we have done nothing but cause you pain?” Here his smile became wider and more predatory. The fire of my anger rose to dimensions heretofore unknown to me.
He continued. “We started to keep an eye on you just as a precaution and found you have mapped out our hunting grounds. And you know about our victims. But the worst aspect of this whole drama is that she…still…loves…you! We cannot let such effrontery persist!” These last words were said through clenched teeth as though every word tasted as bitter as burnt ashes and had to be not just spoken aloud but spat out.
Standing in front of the fireplace he grabbed fistfuls of his dark cloak and raised each hand just as two fangs slid down into place. The fangs were the only orderly aspect of that hideous smile. He looked like a dark bird, a raven with teeth and wings spread. And then he winked out of existence taking all of the light from the fireplace with him. In his stead was a blanket of darkness.
I was shocked into inaction. The world went white with dark spots and I could feel myself losing the contest to stay conscious. After all of the preparation, all of the fevered dreams of retaliation, all of the anger, I did not move. The one or two whispers of vampirism I had heard, I totally ignored. I thought of it as a silly superstition of the uneducated, tall tales to scare children at night.
But the worst aspect of seeing my enemy in front of me was that all of my weapons, the knives, the guns were in my study, out of my reach.
Then I felt the wrongness like I had felt once before unfurling like some dark snake sliding over my heart, making it skip a beat and my skin grow cold. Next came the wind, the howling wind that did not slowly gain momentum but suddenly bowled me over as though a hand had hit me.
I held onto the chair like it was an island in rough seas but I was drawn inexorably toward him, toward the dark thing. First my feet left the ground and then the rest of me but I still held on to the chair. It was my anchor. Then the chair and I became airborne and one with the swirling madness. The chair that I held onto hit the low table and it splintered into a thousand pieces and I was left with a few shards of wood in my hands but in my panic I held onto them.
As I flew in the direction of Stephâne I knew I was dead. In my fantasies I had taken my pistol and shot him through the chest and obliterated his heart, annihilated all sign of the beating monstrosity with ball and powder just as he had destroyed my heart by taking my Lenore. But in the harsh reality of the here and now, under the bright light of truth, I failed.
I twisted in midair hoping to catch a glimpse of my beloved before the end came for me but I only saw the spinning room. I saw the darkness coming to me or rather I headed in the direction of the darkness.
Then I collided with something hard and as substantial as an oak tree and the world grayed for a moment as I slid down whatever it was that was there in the darkness. I was dazed but I held myself upright by clinging onto the “oak tree”. I finally made out what I had hit in the dim light. I had hit Him, not a brick wall nor tree, but Stephâne. The wind died and little by little the light of the fireplace came back into being as the darkness dissolved.
I stood f
ace to face with him, the thing that stole my Lenore, but he did not speak nor did he snarl as I imagined he would have. He did not move and his mouth was a frozen O of surprise. I stumbled backwards from him and that is when I saw the wood from the broken chair protruding from deep in his chest. I had accidentally impaled him.
I saw his eyes focus on me. His eyebrows pulled down in anger and disgust. He still did not speak but took a step toward me and I took a step back. His mouth worked, as if he were trying to form words, but nothing came out. Then it was as if his mouth and mind found a common island on which to stand and they cooperated.
“K-kill you,” he finally whispered.
Fissures opened on his face as his skin became like molten wax and flowed down his clothing. At first the cracks were small but grew larger, exposing the skull beneath and I found myself transfixed by the sight. And yet even as he was dying he took another step toward me. The feeling of wrongness was there again, but this time it came from the sight in front of me.
“K-Kill you!”
I stood there helpless, watching this horror just as his skeletal hand reached out and grabbed the lapel of my coat. My heart pounded in my chest as though it wanted freedom from this nightmare, freedom from me.
I saw his hand change in front of my eyes. His fingernails turned black and the skin sloughed off and fell loosely at first in small clumps and then in large watery rivers. But as everything hit the ground it turned to dust. And yet he pulled me toward him.
The other hand grabbed my hair.
“Kill you!” he said but it had a curious rough, guttural sound to it now and I imagined it was his vocal cords first liquefying and then turning to dust.
Then I saw what he meant to do. He wanted to thrust me onto the wood that protruded from his chest. He meant to take me to the grave with him. I quickly stuck my hand out against his chest to stop myself from being impaled and I felt not a heartbeat nor flesh but bones—sharp and unyielding. Still the wood shard crept closer to my eye. Even near death he was stronger than I.
His eyes shriveled and disappeared into a small stream of dust that fell down his face in a mockery of tears. His eyebrows flowed down his face. One sunk into an empty eye socket. I gagged and looked away as the gorge tried to rise.
My hands and arms started to shake from exertion. A trickle of sweat ran down my forehead and into my eye. But something within me started to grow and gain momentum. It was a part of me that had been nebulous and undefined since Lenore’s death. It was a part of me that I thought had turned brown and withered away like a vine that had separated from its roots. It was my desire to live.
Then the hand that held my lapel started to disintegrate into dust and his grasp on me slipped. It gave me the space to put my foot against his hip. With a kick, I separated us. He flew backwards, arms pinwheeling blindly as he tried to find something to hold onto. I saw that he had a skeletal handful of my hair but I did not care. I approached him again, my world boiling over with anger and I kicked him hard and fast into the fireplace behind him as his overcoat started to sink inward and his body turned to dust. I heard him say: “Ki-..!!” just as the flames rose higher and encompassed him whole as if the fire understood its job of purification.
I sat on the floor. Hard. In disbelief. Some of the dust—Stephâne—was on me and I furiously tried to get it off. I finally took off my jacket and flung it across the room rather than have his remains on me.
I sat there for several moments trying to comprehend what had just happened and I must confess I could not. I was stunned. I shook with fear and disbelief.
Lenore rushed to me to help me but I shrank away. I saw the hurt in her eyes but I could not help it. My Lenore was supposed to be dead. Dead and buried. She sat down next to me and watched me.
“I am sorry,” she said, “but I couldn’t help you. I wanted to kill him but he was my master and I was forever bound to him as a slave.”
I was unable to answer her. My Lenore, my beautiful Lenore was here but I was too dazed from what had just transpired to speak. She touched my arm. Her perfume surrounded me and unlocked feelings and memories that I had cut off and barricaded inside of me. My heart had been under siege for the last year from anger, sorrow and guilt and now that she was here once again my warring mind could not come to grips with peace.
Her hands were still as cold as the grave but then I looked into her eyes and saw that it was really her and it sparked within me the warmth that was buried along with her. It lit itself again and grew to unexpected heights. I smiled at her. She smiled and blushed as much as alabaster could blush.
“I still love you,” she said, “but I cannot be with you.”
I was surprised and hurt at this. My heart had opened in one beat and then closed the next. To be given a second chance at love and have it snatched away was the cruelest joke of all and I guess it showed on my face because she looked away from me and into the fire. I gazed into the fire as well, my eyes picking out recognizable bits of Stephâne ‘s clothing.
I, absentmindedly, ran my hand through my hair where Stephâne had come away with a good portion of my scalp. When I examined my hand there was blood there. From the corner of my eye I saw Lenore stiffen but I paid it no heed.
For several moments there was silence between us and it was uncomfortable. I could tell that there were things that she wanted to say but wrestled with. I knew that there were things I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her how much I missed her and how my life had become a living hell without her. I wanted to gather her in my arms and breathe in her perfume. But I did none of these things. I, simply, sat there.
“I have done questionable things all in the name of survival,” she said breaking the silence, “and now I find that I cannot go back to the life I had before. I am no longer the person you knew. I am no longer that innocent woman.” There was a note of despondency in her voice that I had never heard before. A husband—a loving husband—will think of nothing but his wife’s welfare. Her voice stirred protective feelings deep within me and I wanted to soothe her pain.
“You’re my wife and nothing trumps that.”
She nodded and turned to look at me. “But there are others and they will hunt us. They are strong,” There was a hint of caution in her voice.
I did not care and I wanted to say so but as I stared into her eyes I felt something change. The room dimmed and looked distant. I saw the air between us move in a rhythm as though there were a heart beating in the space separating us, moving the air, connecting us. I saw everything from the farthest end of a tunnel and I did not, I could not look away from her eyes. Then the heartbeat expanded and deepened and for a time it was all I heard—that and my breathing sounding just above it. I felt as though I could fall into her eyes.
“I don’t care,” I finally managed to say. “Let them come. I still love you. I will always love you.” But as the words left me I felt as though nothing was real. I was a ghost separating from my physical form. I still felt Lenore’s cold hand, the floor beneath me, the air leaving and entering my lungs but all these things felt thin and inconsequential. I felt as though my words were being spoken by another person from a faraway place, the other side of the world. I heard the words but it wasn’t me. And it wasn’t me staring at my wife, falling into her dark pool eyes that offered me comfort and love as long as I did not look away.
I watched myself and my Lenore. She leaned in and kissed me and I felt the coldness of her lips and watched from high above as they left mine. I turned in mid-air and saw the moon and the night sky rotating slowly, majestically, making me feel small and insignificant.
Lenore pulled me toward her again, tilting my head just as her fangs slid into place, her eyes gleaming with hunger. Her mouth moved to my neck and kissed the area above the carotid where my pulse lay, where the blood pounded and beat against its imprisonment. She moved back slightly as if she were savoring the moment, feeling the excitement, the power. Then she fell on me like a predator on pre
y and that’s when my world exploded into a thousand stars that lit the night. Through the explosions, past the multi-coloured detonations I saw a small trickle of blood escape from my neck and follow a trail down my distended artery to my clavicle where it pooled.
The length between beats extended as I felt my heart struggle and slow, becoming quieter, sounding just above a whisper, like a leaf separating from a tree every so often. Or, perhaps, it was it the sound of my soul detaching itself from its mortal coil in a slow and methodical manner.
I saw her move her hand to my chest. She was feeling my pulse, feeling how close I was to death.
The moon and the stars above me dimmed, then turned black and I was back in my sitting room. I knew that I was close to the precipice.
As I lay in her arms, my eyes wide and focused on nothing, her hand moved to my face and she stroked it with loving affection. Then I understood. I understood completely. This was the only way. Reaching up, I grasped her body in order to draw her closer…
* * *
Lenore and I fight the others while hiding within the confines of rain and fog. We show no mercy. I learned war tactics when I planned my revenge, when I was human and I have gained strength from being made a vampire. But we fight only at night. We do not like the day and it is with good reason that we limit our actions within it. The day constricts our movements, enfolding us in its unwelcome embrace making us feel hampered and claustrophobic. The daylight bites and burns. We despise the day.
--Guy DeVere.
Elenore Page 3