Edouard thought about this for a moment. “The effects of alcohol and heightened religious mania are well-known, Henri ... but tobacco?”
Henri shook his head, yes. “My studies have concluded, beyond all doubt that excessive intake of tobacco often leads to bouts of violent behavior due to increased adrenalin.” Henri’s eyes gleamed with fervor.
Edouard thought about this for some time. The silence bore down on them like molasses in winter. “Not everyone who smokes turns to violence, Henri. Both my parents smoked ... they were caring, loving people.”
“I am concerned only with the certain type who is attracted to violence. I have discovered they all smoke, drink heavily and progress to stronger drugs.” Henri insisted with a stern glance. “Perhaps the violence is secondary to their addictive personalities, but deep down I am confident there is a certain type that is attracted to addictive substances.”
Edouard had never heard such idealistic claptrap. “Be careful, Henri, you might upset the apple cart and bring the full force of the authorities down on you. Not all crimes can be attributed to addiction.”
Henri grimaced. “That is a risk I will have to take. If no one took risks, we would still believe the world was flat.” Henri sipped his brandy, looking contemplative.
“Is this how you interpreted your aversion therapy cases through religious mania and addiction?”
“Indeed it is, my dear fellow. One particular case sticks out clearly above all others. A patient was brought to me in a straightjacket. She was quite delirious. I cannot give her name for obvious reasons, but she is a well-known actress of the stage and screen. After a brief session she correctly answered my failsafe question … what is the meaning of The Princess and the Pea?” Henri saw the perplexed look on Edouard’s face. “Ah yes ... well I have determined that there are two types of females … those that are tough enough to survive life and those who have absolutely no idea what really goes on in the world … what I call suffering from Cinderella Syndrome.”
“But why that particular fairytale?” Edouard asked. He answered his own question. “I understand ... those that see the story for what it is … a spoilt princess who will never be satisfied, versus those that think it’s just a sweet, little tale of a princess and a pea.”
Henri continued, “Exactly ... anyway, it was determined she had an opium addiction, leading to a split personality. Apparently, she lived out her days in the persona of a character she was playing, believing herself to be that person. I decided to wean her off opium. The delirium tremens were violent in the extreme. She had hallucinations … the full works. After several months of therapy she was a different woman … gentle, calm, happy for the first time in God knows how long.”
“What happened to her?”
“Alas, without her addiction, she could no longer function as an actress … she lacked creativity. She retired to the South of France.”
“You link addiction to creativity?” Edouard asked looking incredulous.
“Look at our famous artists, almost all have such vices.”
Edouard was about to continue when he heard Eternal scream his name as if her lips were to his ear – “Edouard my true love!” It was a desperate plea for help. He blanked out for a moment in time.
Chapter 29
NAKED HANDMAIDENS HUNG by their feet from rafters, their blood pouring from ripped necks. The demented creature feasting upon them was Erzsebet Bathory. Her long hair soaked in virgins’ blood, the Blood Countess begged for something better – no, she insisted upon Eternal’s vintage as these pathetic bags of blood were of no use to her. Eternal refused the Countess’ command for more blood. She sensed the end was near. The tempest that followed was a sight to behold. The Countess screamed a storm, smashing all mirrors reflecting her ravaged skin.
The Countess disrobed and stepped into a marble bath of warm blood. She demanded Eternal’s essence direct from the source.
Eternal’s fangs gleamed with an irresistible need for vengeance. She had no further use for this defiler of all things good and demure. Using her hypnotic allure, Eternal partook of the Countess’ royal vintage, replenishing her own depleted stock.
Once Eternal had taken what was rightfully hers, the Countess became insane with her addiction. She begged Eternal for more blood. Eternal refused the Countess, and instead, watched her wither and die like rose petals in autumn, to fall from grace upon a cold stone floor.
Screams of the dying forced Delicate Rose out of her slumber, only to be confused by her alien surroundings, not knowing if the dream had continued into the real world. She was perplexed by daylight filtering through the blanket. The redness of sunburn on her arms and feet stung her to distraction. How long had she slept she wondered. It must be the following morning. A stomach-churning panic rose from her belly and rushed out of her throat. She gagged on her fear and convulsed with doubt and uncertainty.
With a mind-ripping scream, Eternal took hold of Delicate Rose’s brittle soul and summoned all her otherworldly powers for Edouard to come to her aid – “Edouard my true love.” Eternal was frantic. She sprang from the cot and paced the tiny room. Had the eternal hour passed? Was it so close she had mere moments to prepare? She marched back and forth, stopping less than an inch from wall and door.
“I am Eternal. I am Eternal. I … am … Eternal.”
Eternal’s legs buckled. Sickening hunger gnawed at her stomach. She doubled up in pain, the rage trying to free itself, but there was no supply of blood to sustain her. Collapsing across the bed, she curled up tight as a rose bud and just as fragile. She swiftly succumbed to exhaustion, drifting off into another disturbing nightmare, only to scream awake again. A shuddering memory took control.
Eternal glared with pure hatred at her imagined prison of rough stone. The window was now a thin slit in the wall, and although no bars prevented her from escaping, the window was too narrow and too high. The bed was a mound of straw. From beyond the window came the eerie squawks of ravens, a sound she somehow found comforting. It was a sound from a distant memory – of a different life.
Cleopatra was draped across a bed of rose petals, lulled by the gentle rocking of her barge. Her muse, Eternal, refused to give her blood and clung to her true love, Drusus, personal surgeon to Marcus Antonius. Cleopatra screamed. “I must have your blood!”
Marcus Antonius rushed into the bedroom with sword in hand, his eyes glowing red with hatred. After a brief scuffle, Drusus lay on the floor, his green eyes dulled with death. Marcus slashed Eternal’s arm and he and his lover drank their fill.
Eternal laughed at their folly. “I can see your navy defeated at Actium for I am no longer your muse. That which you need the most I now refuse. By all that is Luna Sanguis my poison will drive you to suicide.” Before Marc Antony could react, she leapt overboard and was presumed drowned.
Eternal wept for Drusus, Paris and all her other true loves so cruelly defeated by The Count. She could not tell the difference between the waking world and the dreaming world. Both offered little comfort for respite from her inner demons or outer ones, if they were real at all. A chasm of ice chilled her soul with the terrible thought that the evil Count had indeed imprisoned her for the rest of her miserable life, as he had promised – to drain her of her life’s blood. That’s it! Her blood! She looked around the cold, stone room, curling up into her comfort position on the damp straw and awaited her destiny. She slept.
Delicate Rose awoke from another nightmare, bathed in sweat with that word Eternal filling her mind. Images of fleeing villagers running before her in blind terror enthralled her and filled her soul with an undeniable strength. They were clutching desperately to their necks, hot blood pouring between their fingers. Eternal’s fangs ripped out their throats, cutting off their screams. Her mouth filled with sharp teeth drooled sweet gore. Could she be this cruel? She held her head in bloody hands and cried away the images.
Delicate Rose jumped with fright. A dark figure loomed over her. She could smell its
sickly sweet, lemony breath and the wetness on her face where its tongue had licked. The thought caused her to convulse. A shudder of revulsion sent a trembling shock wave through her, feeling a groping hand probing between her legs. Her hospital gown had been drawn up to her hips. In abject terror and disgust, she scurried to the corner of her bed where the wall abutted the window.
Eternal watched, as if not in her body, the dark figure grinning at her. The room once more became the circular turret room of damp stone. She recognized the stench of the demon. Its rotting flesh, putrid dripping pustules and drooling saliva all told her she was in the presence of pure evil.
She jolted with utter revulsion when the demon’s fingers tried to part her labia, but she could not back away any further. She was trapped and defenseless. There was only one thing she could do. Fight back! She raked her long nails down the demon’s arm and screamed for all she was worth into its ugliness.
Eternal shivered uncontrollably sensing the vile demon’s arm withdrawing from between her legs. The blood rage came upon her. She lunged at the blood dripping in thin streaks down the demon’s arm.
A hefty slap across the face snapped Delicate Rose back into the conscious world to see Bonbon rush from the room. She glared at the vile orderly hastily slamming the door shut. The jangling of keys sealed her fate.
Delicate Rose curled up and tried to sleep, but awful screams and tortured memories of Erzsebet Bathory flashed across her mind. She shuddered at the thought of the agony those poor wretches endured. Hundreds slaughtered for vanity.
She looked around the room to see the drab grey walls were just that, as was the bed with sheets tangled in a knot and the blanket on the floor. She breathed a sigh of relief that her terrible nightmares were finally over, the remnants of which whispered – “I am Eternal.”
Delicate Rose noticed bright sunlight cascading through the barred window. She winced in pain – her arm burned bright pink. With eyes tightly shut, she gripped the bars with all her might and tried to bend them. They wouldn’t budge. She cried in defeat, picked up the blanket and covered the window with it before finally putting her head to her pillow. That was the moment she noticed the pewter jug of water and pewter plate containing cheese and bread placed on the floor.
Delicate Rose stared in horror at the jug and plate, realizing what their presence meant to her. There had indeed been an intruder while she slept. She sniffed the air around her and smelled the cloying sweetness of lemon bonbons. Frowning, she stared at the jug and plate with mounting dread. What did that lemon smell mean? She tried to remember. Had He been here? Had he tried to take her back to Paris to – to do – do what? Her terror had erased everything.
A scream of hideous torment ripped her mind apart. Eternal put her hands to her ears but it was of no use. He was in her mind. He was dreaming of her. This she knew beyond all reason as his hate engulfed her with its black cloak of death.
Eternal’s eyes seared with an image of a huge black horse upon which sat The Count grinning at her with bloody fangs. He opened his mouth wide to release his hatred. Thick black smoke poured from his blood-red orifice and engulfed Eternal with a putrid stench of death.
Chapter 30
LUCIEN, SAFELY ENTOMBED within the bowels of his car, mumbled incoherently while The Count comforted him with childhood memories.
“I am Eternal. I am Eternal. I … am … Eternal,” he chanted as distorted memories from that fateful year of 1919 flooded his insanity.
A fifteen year old Lucien awoke at dawn with the word “eternal” ringing in his head. He had experienced a vivid dream in which The Count warned him – “Beware of a vile bitch who will trick you with her womanly wiles.” Try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to hate his Delicate Rose. It was time for the eggs to be collected. His heart raced with the anticipation of adolescent love.
Lucien crept into the chicken coop and slipped into his secret hiding place of cleverly re-arranged nesting boxes. His very own nest. There he waited for his true love, now entrusted with the gathering of the eggs. Suspicions ran rampant since the full moon, when a chicken had been slaughtered by a fox. The Count knew better. Lucien had seen the full moon last night and couldn’t control his deep animalistic urges. The same urges that now pumped his heart and boiled his blood to fever point. He wiped his brow with excitement at what he would witness.
Through a spy hole he observed his object of desire approaching with a wicker basket. His heart pounded as if it might explode. His idle left hand fondled his erection inside his corduroy trousers. The dark music of eternal love filled his mind.
Thirteen year old Delicate Rose entered the coop. As always, she was completely covered from the harsh rays of the sun, that scorched her fragile skin bright pink in seconds. Even in the winter there was no respite from the sun’s penetrating needles, constantly pricking her fine alabaster skin. It was an affliction that worsened with every passing year. As if by maturing, she would live out her existence at night.
This thought fascinated Lucien for it fueled his sexual fantasies. He loved her all the more for her over-sized floppy hats, often tied down with a pink ribbon. And he adored her long, white gloves and liberal coatings of impromptu makeup – a mixture of water and flour smeared over bare skin not easily covered by clothing.
Lucien suppressed a gasp when the ancient music she carried with her hit crescendo proportions in his mind.
She shuddered, gently stroking a chicken, cooing to it with the sweetest of voices as pure as the flutter of angels’ wings. The music screamed like a flock of ravens while she savagely plucked the chicken by the neck and bit off its head with her under-developed fangs.
She squeezed all the blood she could down her throat, smacking her lips with satisfaction before turning to stone. A look of confusion shadowed her face. She looked all around in a perplexed manner with blood dripping from her mouth.
The birds erupted in a clucking frenzy.
She smiled at the frantic birds and shushed them quiet with a finger to her lips. The chickens settled down, but were still a little skittish.
Lucien was shocked into a block of ice as she whirled around with a snarl and stared right at him with her head cocked to one side. A chill wind of death brought a shudder and froze his rampant heart. And just like the chickens, Lucien backed away in fright. She crashed through the nesting boxes and gripped him by the throat. He thought this glorious vampire would drain him of his blood, but instead she simply smiled showing her bloody teeth.
She sneered in his face like a demonic angel of death then kissed him.
Lucien gagged on the blood that she regurgitated into his mouth. That strange, dark music, a raucous flock of ravens, filled his mind. He went weak at the knees feeling her power envelop him. Lucien wanted more. He hugged her to him and nudged his erection against her. In moments he ejaculated.
She pushed him away with such strength, Lucien was momentarily stunned. A sudden look of pure revulsion distorted her face. She dropped the basket and ran from the coop, crying hysterically while wiping blood from her face.
Lucien was at a loss. With a stricken heart, he watched his Delicate Rose burst into the kitchen. What had he done? Had he tainted the love he felt for his Petite Fleur?
The Count laughed in his face. “You’re nothing but a suckling, a little pig begging for mere drops before the inevitable slaughter.”
Lucien shook his head to rid The Count, but he was there to stay, to taunt and cajole.
Lucien noticed the telltale hole had not been made in the wire mesh fencing. With a heavy heart, fit to break in two, he leaned down and ripped a hole in the mesh pushing the broken edges outwards. Lucien sniggered at his superior intellect. He sauntered over to the kitchen with his usual story ready for his mother. That damned fox had gained entry to the coop again, but it couldn’t take the dead chicken through the hole.
Lucien entered the kitchen and gave up his story to his angry mother. He received a smack across the head for not killing
that bloody fox in the first place.
Lucien’s mother turned and stared at the female servant’s niece with a peculiar look on her face. She gasped in shock at the blood smears on Lucien’s and the whore’s lips.
She slapped Lucien across the face and said, “I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at that one.” She pointed to his Delicate Rose. “And if I ever catch you with her, doing you know what, I’ll make you a permanent choirboy with the garden shears.” She glared at her terrified son with a malevolence he had never seen before.
Lucien backed away from her demented anger.
The Count ridiculed him with cruel laughter and taunted. “You are so pathetic, Master Lucien. You don’t deserve to become eternal.”
“Shut up you stinking piece of shit!”
His mother gasped and slapped him again.
“That’s more like it!” The Count said.
When his mother left the kitchen, Lucien begged his Delicate Rose, “Please forgive me.”
The Count sneered and said, “What a pathetic weakling.”
Lucien was astonished when Delicate Rose replied.
“Forgive you for what, Lucien ... the headless chicken scared me, that’s all.”
His heart soared to the heavens. He gave her an awkward kiss on her full lips. The taste of chicken’s blood immediately activated his rampant libido.
At that moment, Delicate Rose’s Aunt Francine entered the kitchen with a bundle of washing in her hands. She paused uneasily to see her niece and Lucien’s lips parting.
Lucien saw the righteous disgust on Francine’s face.
She dashed from the kitchen and across the yard to hang the washing.
Delicate Rose trembled with fear.
All seemed lost.
“Leave her to me,” The Count promised.
With the following dawn, began Lucien’s little game of catch the imaginary fox in the coop. He repaired the hole he tore in the fence, which had obviously been made from the inside. He wondered if his mother suspected the truth for that hole wouldn’t fool anyone
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 193
