Vampires Don't Cry: A Mother's Curse

by Hall, Ian

  I’d miss the cigarettes though.

  Training Continues

  Theresa Scholes, December 1958, Miami, Florida

  On the first training day, we immediately found out how difficult it was just to get invisible.

  “The shimmer is primarily a vibration,” he said, shaking his hand in front of us. “But we keep the amplitude as small as possible.”

  That technique alone took days to perfect.

  Once we’d achieved a second of invisibility, we celebrated, but initially we could only perform the action for a few moments, Ivan could keep it going almost indefinitely. We practiced, timing each other with a stopwatch, looking for tell-tale signs of visibility as we did so. Slowly we built up the time to minutes, and then hours.

  The only downside to the whole process was the diminished visuals when we’d shimmered, the world seemed slightly out of focus, and I couldn’t see further than about thirty feet with clarity. Further than that, it all blurred into a hazy background.

  “You’re vibrating to keep yourself invisible,” Ivan explained. “I don’t think the brain and eye can quite keep up with the idea, so it seems like it’s blurry. It’s a disadvantage, certainly, but you’ll get used to it.”

  Kept on a low intake of a special herbal tea and a gross looking soup, we practiced daily, but it didn’t take away the antsy feeling of the need for blood. Under Ivan’s supervision, we hadn’t fed for over a week, and all through the first week I felt knotted inside most of the time.

  Of course, when we’d perfected the shimmer, we then had to learn to move doing it. That proved more difficult than I first thought. Having the coordination to vibrate one’s body at high speed, yet control your gait, took weeks to perfect, hours and hours of continual practice, filled with moments of intense frustration. And all the time, Ivan’s patient face, and Valérie’s permanent sneer, I didn’t know if it was directed at me or Ivan, or both.

  We practiced lifting objects and, transferring the vibration to the object, it would fall under our invisible mantle. We lifted papers, chairs, and eventually each other.

  “Most important,” Ivan explained. “We may need to rescue someone under the shimmer. We must be ready for anything.”

  We persevered, and by the end of the third week, I could walk slowly into a room, lift a document from a table, tuck a chair under my arm, and leave, all invisible and undetected.

  On the one month anniversary of the start of our training, Ivan drove us to the beach, where we lay on a large blanket in our swimsuits, sunbathing for a while. It wasn’t close to summer weather, but it wasn’t chilly either.

  “Valérie?”

  “Yes, Ivan?”

  “Go and feed.”

  Well, Valérie stood up in a flash, her face a picture of lust and hunger.

  “Feed well, but no sex,” Ivan said quickly. “Not even a grope. I want you as gorged as you can be, but no sex.”

  Valérie didn’t even answer: she gave a sharp nod and vanished.

  I waited my turn, but Ivan lay back in the sand. His chest had a downy covering of greying hair, and I longed to run my fingers through it. In fact, at that moment I would have jumped him then and there.

  “Don’t even think about it, Finch.” Ivan smiled and rose on one elbow.

  I scrutinized his expression, but it led to no eureka moment. “I never said a thing.” I protested.

  “I caught the change in your musk.” He lay back down on the blanket. “You must be far more careful with your emotions. If you are pretending to be a human amid vampires, your urge for sex may be the one thing that gives you away.”

  I relaxed back on the towel. “So the training continues?” I asked, “Even here?”

  “Oh yes, especially here. I promise you, Theresa, there will be no coitus within the training group. Nothing will interfere with your progress.”

  I lay back and ruminated for a while, letting the warmth of the sun relax me.

  “Lie still,” Ivan said, “eyes closed. What do you smell?”

  Ivan’s teaching methods often involved using our senses, testing us at odd times of the day.

  I breathed deeply, the air coursing over my nostril hairs. “The sea, obviously,”

  “Obviously,”

  “Your sweat,” I hesitated, “my musk. The sand here is dry and almost smells fusty.”

  “Try farther away.”

  I lay quietly, listening for anything out of the ordinary. The wind blew from the sea, and I did notice a faint odor of diesel fumes. “There’s a diesel motor boat out there, maybe half a mile off shore.” I sat up, and squinted against the light; on the horizon, a small boat bobbed, surging against the wind and waves.

  “Well done, Finch.” Ivan’s face beamed with delight, and I wallowed in his praise. Then a spray of sand over my legs announced Valérie’s return. Her recent blood-letting washed over me like a pall of sickly cigarette smoke.

  “Stand up, Finch,” he said, “Smell her everywhere; her feet, her breath, her crotch, her armpits. Everywhere.”

  I did, and to be honest, the odor of blood felt almost overpowering, but her breath smelled of two different blood types, and I could detect something clearly in one, a sickness, a deep sickness. Her swimsuit was pulled hard into her crotch, and I could tell she’d been aroused recently.

  I reported my findings to Ivan.

  “There is more,” he stood and approached us, then edged me aside. Keeping his nose no closer than an inch from her skin and suit, he carefully sniffed all over. “You first fed from a woman. A young, attractive one. The second feed was older, Hispanic, perhaps Puerto Rican. Their diet leaves traces in their blood.” He stood up straight. “Now, Valérie, how do you feel?”

  “Top of the world.” She grinned and licked her lips.

  “Everything very vivid?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Now you smell Finch in the same way.”

  It felt quite weird to have someone sniffing around me, but I oozed superiority when she rose to her feet, her face blank. “I can’t smell anything.”

  “Exactly!” he chanted. “I demonstrate the moment of a vampire’s highest vulnerability.” Ivan nodded, lying back on the blanket. “The exuberance of feeding causes a false high in your senses. You think you are over sensitive to everything, and your senses are at their most penetrating. But in actual fact, your senses are dulled by the blood-rush. You think you’re super powerful, almost invincible, but actually a vampire is at his most vulnerable directly after feeding.”

  I let his words flow over me like a tidal wave. Valérie, too, looked thoughtful.

  “Finch?” Ivan turned his head to me and squinted into the sun. “You may feed now, but no sex.”

  I didn’t need to be told twice.

  Valérie Lidowitz, January 1959, Miami, Florida

  After Theresa had left, I plopped down into the sand, coming to terms with my inebriated condition. The tiny granules were gritty against my bare thighs, irritatingly so. The breeze off the ocean layered me in a second skin of salt. I even felt acutely aware of the goose flesh rising on my limbs as the water evaporated off. It itched like a son of a bitch. In response, I scratched at the nuisance, leaving thick, red lines down the length of my arm.

  “So much for deadened senses,” I complained.

  Ivan rescued my assaulted appendage, “Another side effect of engorging. Our wits are diluted, leaving one at a lower tolerance level for petty annoyances.” He blew a cooling breath over my arm and the red lines turned to pink then faded altogether. For a time we sat, looking over the water, each choosing not to notice that he had not relinquished possession of my arm back to me.

  I don’t know if it was the blood rush to my head that forced the words from my tongue or that ever-present fear of getting too close that I had fostered all my life, but I pulled my arm free of the cradle of Ivan’s hand.

  “I’m not her, you know.”

  The shallow crow’s feet about his eyes, stretched and deep
ened, “I’m well aware of who you are, my dear girl, and who you are not.”

  Heat rose in my face, and I knew I’d embarrassed myself. I could not disguise a bite in my tone meant more for myself than for Ivan, “Good. I would hate to see you get the two of us confused.” I said, trying to save face.

  “One thing I’ve learned over the better part of a century is that my Constance cannot be replaced, not even by her very lovely daughter.” Ivan shifted quickly to a crouch and pressed his lips against my forehead. “But you too are a very special person.” It felt as close to a father’s embrace as I’d known in many a decade. To my surprise, something inside snapped, like the popping of a balloon, and I felt an affinity with a man that had nothing to do with sex. A common bond from across the centuries made me aware of how fragile my current friends lay.

  Ivan.

  Georgie.

  Even Finch.

  I looked out over the ocean, spotting her bobbing head beyond the surf, “I know of somebody who’d like to help you forget my mother.”

  It seemed to be Ivan’s turn to blush, “Oh, I’m sure Theresa is more enamored by my lessons than by me.”

  “Riiight. That is one school girl who’s just dying to be teacher’s pet.”

  Ivan’s eyes fixed on mine, any trace of some old friend of the family had gone. There was no amusement left in him.

  “And what is it that you desire to get from me, Valérie?”

  I fumbled for an adequate response, “I want to learn your ways.”

  “To what end?” he demanded. My gentle and dashing mentor had become the essence of vampire. Though my senses were still under the influence of the recent feed, I could smell his potency. For an instant I felt that Amos and all the other vampires combined could not match Ivan at his most ferocious. Fear so deep and foreboding gripped me and only then did I appreciate Mother’s instinct to distance herself from this man and settle with father.

  I could barely think let alone articulate a response. It took every bit of my one-hundred years of vampire experience not to wither away at that moment. I looked away to the stumbling Finch, making her way drunkenly up the beach, just to avoid his stare.

  “To destroy Amos Blanche,” I said, knowing little conviction lay in the words.

  As Finch approached Ivan’s mood seemed to ease. “An acceptable response,” He replied with a thin smile.

  As Finch blustered and dried herself, I looked out to the waves, taking solace in their dependability. I had shared a moment with the ex-lover of my mother, and it had brought me closer to him, but in a manner I’d not felt before.

  I felt my brows fall heavily over my eyes as I searched for some form of clarity.

  But it did not come.

  Theresa Scholes, January 1959, Miami, Florida

  Ivan sat on the edge of one of the tables. “What’s your favorite human meal?”

  “Apple pie,” I said, “with cinnamon.”

  He turned to Valérie.

  “Meatballs with spaghetti,”

  Ivan laughed.

  Ivan smiled and rang a small hand-bell by his side. Almost immediately, Sylvia, the Matron, entered.

  “We’d like meatballs and spaghetti, and apple pie to be on the menu tonight, Miss Sylvia.”

  She gave an old fashioned curtsey. “Yes, sir,” she said as she left. It all looked very Victorian.

  “The shimmer has given us the ability to walk and operate invisibly; this is a far greater skill than the fast-dash most vampires use. The object of the first part of my training is to incorporate guile and cunning into your repertoire, we are trying to elevate you above what is normal in vampire ranks.” He pushed himself from the desk and began to pace slowly. “This all very well when we’re around humans, their sensed are dulled, addled, and we take advantage of that fact. But if you used the shimmer amongst vampires, even though you’re totally invisible, they’d sniff you out in seconds.”

  “So part two begins.” He slapped his hands together. “And don’t worry, this part is easy. To become less obvious as a vampire, we need only curb our emotions.” Ivan looked from me to Valérie and back, as if waiting on a dumb question to stomp all over. “Vampires live their lives governed by emotions; it’s partly the reason we cannot work in large numbers, the subsequent emotional charge forces reason away, and carnage ensues. Humans will always be superior to us in one way; they can force emotion aside and use only reason in a conflict situation.”

  “A thirst for power makes vampires feed, and I’ve already shown that it’s after feeding we’re most vulnerable. A desire for sexual release is strong in most vampire cultures, but in the act of feeding, in coitus, we are so defenseless, focused on one thing, oblivious to the world spinning around us. Rage makes us take rash decisions; when we let ourselves be consumed by rage, reason is pushed aside, and again, just as you think you’re invincible, just as you think you’re at your highest! Bam!” he slammed the table in front of me, making me jump. “You, the mighty vampire, is at your most helpless, susceptible to attacks from all areas, because we see through the red sunglasses of rage.”

  I hung on his every word.

  “The second part of the training is to curb your emotions. Take your outward thoughts, and turn them inward. We’ve perfected the shimmer, now it’s time to learn the push.” He clasped his fingers together under his chin and began to move them slowly downward. “The first way to use the push is to quell your hunger for blood. Let’s face it, if vampires don’t eat we don’t die, we just get weak, right?”

  Both Valérie and I nodded.

  “No!” he roared. “We don’t! I last gorged on blood three months ago.” He stopped, and looked at us in turn. “I don’t feel sick, ill, tired, weak, nothing.” He continued to watch us, but we remained silent. “I’ve convinced my mind that I don’t need blood. Now, that’s a lie of course, I do need blood, but I certainly don’t need to gorge on it. And certainly not as often as you’d think. Now, each week since my gorging I’ve taken blood, but a very controlled amount. It is the very control of my blood intake which allows me to keep my vampire musk at a minimum. Right now, today, I could walk through a convention of vampires, and no-one wouldn’t be able to detect me as a vampire.”

  “Now, just like the urge to feed, there are other vampire and non-vampire seemingly pre-requisite emotions that we can control. I will teach you to conquer them all, and much more.”

  Over a period of days, Ivan took each emotion in turn, and taught us to figuratively push our emotions down from our head, down through our neck, through our pelvises to our feet. It took me just an hour to curb my need for blood. I stood amazed.

  “Each morning, you just do the same,” he said, “and repeat for all other emotions you’re having trouble with. Imagine a river and its tributaries,” he said, “flowing from our heads down and out of our toes. Every small tributary is an emotion, each one is a barrier to our vampire non-logical thought, and must be overcome. As we break through the tributaries, the force increases, until, at the wide river at our feet, we wash the emotion away.”

  As he made motions with his fingers, demonstrating the image, I pushed my sex drive downwards this time, and to be honest it felt quite weird, a nice weird, certainly, but weird all the same.

  “Do you feel it working?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Valérie said immediately, looking quite amazed at her new self. “I felt jealousy towards you for knowing my mother, quite illogical, of course, but I did. So I sent it down through my feet, and it lessened. How did you learn this?”

  “I have been an Elder for over two hundred years; I have studied under many of the best in Europe.” He turned to me. “Theresa?”

  I nodded. “My libido. I pushed it away.”

  “Good, both of you can become blank slates with this knowledge. But you can also heighten your emotions too. Take your jealousy at me, Valérie, and instead of pushing it away, run behind it, and push it upwards, filling your head with anger at me, pushing the smaller
river downwards, forcing the water to the large river, then away from you.” We both watched her face as it began to scowl, then she jumped from her chair.

  “You bastard!” she brandished her fist in front of his face, the muscles sprung out in her neck as she roared through gritted teeth. “You know what I’ll never know! I’ll never know her touch, her words… I fucking hate you!” Then her face calmed, and she smiled.

  Ivan watched it all with a passive expression, then raised his hands. “Good, that was wonderful control, not only to channel the anger, but to keep it in check.”

  Valérie panted, out of breath. “It doesn’t mean I don’t resent you.”

  “But why do you bear this grudge?”

  She kept her voice calm, obviously still pushing. “You know her. I only have her memories. I’ll never know her.”

  I saw Ivan’s face go pale. For the first time since training began, I saw emotion surge through his body. He walked forward, and sat next to Valérie, folding his arms around her.

  “Valérie dear, why are you certain you’ll never know her?””

  Valérie shook her head, exhausted, her words were quiet and patronizing. “Because she’s dead, of course.”

  Ivan managed a smile despite her rancor. “My dearest Valérie,” he said softly, softer than I’d ever heard him speak. “Your mother is very much alive.”

  Valérie Lidowitz, January 1959, Miami, Florida

  For a moment I couldn’t speak. My throat seemed to swell and all passage of air stopped. Tears welled in my eyes, and I’m pretty sure my mouth gaped open. I saw Theresa slink away, her expression in the ‘oh shit, I’m outa here’ category.

  Mother was alive.

  I determined to bring myself under full control before asking further questions. I used Ivan’s principles, and when I turned to face him, I had myself fully in check.

  “How can this be possible?” I asked, “How can she be alive?”