He knelt down and gripped my head in his hands, looking me over for a few moments. I looked at him, captured in his grip, in his gaze.
“That is my curse. I walk the earth looking for blood and finding none. I could kill you, prevent you from knowing this hell that I walk from day to day, but my misery is in want for company. Soon you will join the rank and file of the damned, and when you do I pray that you never taste the blood of the innocent. Because the sweet aroma of hell's dominion is much more satisfying.”
He gently allowed my head to fall back to the floor and held his ice-cold fingers to my neck, counting the beats of my heart, presumably to the countdown of my own existence. Before I knew it, he was gone and I was once again alone, with the tickle of his flesh against my own at war with the decree of his words. They haunted more than soothed the ache in my body. I was aware that my fate was predetermined by a God who had felt the blade of this dark angel’s spear.
The bitterness caused me to bite my own tongue and taste the blood that I drew from the act. I was condemned to become the enemy, and I was powerless to stop it. I looked at the ghostly image of the cross and hated it, the image burned my eyes to tears so I closed them and clenched my teeth to hold back the curses that were building in my heart.
Blood-soaked, my hope run dry, I was prepared, but not permitted to die.
The hours past solemnly as I sat on one of the old pews that once was propped on its side near one of the windows. With each slight movement of the body, the dried wood creaked a sound of agony, no longer housing the strength of a freshly cut tree as it once was. The dust laid thick on the surface, almost like a protective layer that crystallized over the stained skin of the wood. The small Gideon’s Bible was held open by my thumb and I fanned the pages lightly, seeking out new discoveries held between the pages. I pulled a smell from the pages even, the tinges of black ink and highlighter fluid filled my nostrils. Still, the only thing worth noting was the small paragraph in the book of John, the moment just after Christ’s death where a soldier pierced his side and revealed that He was dead.
Was this a clue to who my maker was, or was it a symbol of my own death? I too was pierced in the flesh, effectively taking my mortal life from me and turning me into what I was today.
Maggie still searched the small church, eagerly looking for anything that could be of interest, the only thing still remained clasped in my hands. The accidental find, the small chance that resulted in an even bigger question, it was enough to make me wonder what the purpose was in all of this. Was this setup, predetermined as some kind of test? I did not hold any answers in this situation, only the burning desire to seek it out further.
Resolved I stood up from my perch and moved towards her, still bent over and pouring through the mess left by the rats and other rodents nested in this old building.
“I can’t find anything else,” she said in a huff. She dropped the things she had pilfered through and stood next to me. “Only a couple of hours until sunrise, what do you want to do?”
“I imagine we can head back to the cabin, maybe take a better look at this,” I said holding the Bible up into the purple light coming through the stained-glass windows. I dropped my hand to my side and left the church behind. Maggie followed, dragging her booted feet across the choppy gravel of the parking lot. We stalked past the sign for the church that read “Antioch” and a sudden feeling of déjà vu scorched my mind.
I remembered walking past this same spot, looking to my left to reveal the draping cloth of the man’s jacket whisking in the wind, his cold, dark eyes looking into mine. The sound of my own feet clumsily kicking the loose gravel of the parking lot in the rhythmic beat of my feet touching the ground. A small detail erupted in that moment; I realized that in his hand there was a hint of silver reflecting the moonlight, shining its haze into my own eyes. The pointed tip cut the air and sharply rose to meet the handle that was tightly gripped in his hand. He adjusted that grip and the shimmer of the blade danced in my eyes.
It was at that moment that I realized the significance of the highlighted portion in the Bible. The blade in his hand…could it be the same blade that pierced Christ’s side and heralded the dark scene on the hill of Calvary?
Chapter 18
For what must have been the thousandth time I looked at the water stain on the ceiling of the old church, imagining what images I could pull from it. I could remember seeing a face on several occasions, sometimes I could pull abstract art from the dark brown lines and cracks in the surface, other times the lighter shades of its destruction revealed something else, but always it brought me to the memory of the man who claimed to spare my life.
I had thought that he too was a vampire, but I couldn’t help but think that I was wrong, that there was something that separated him from that culture altogether. I remembered his eyes, the dark hazel irises in each eye that looked several centuries old, thought the lines in his face defied the age of his soul. He was immortal, that was a fact, but a vampire? I was not convinced. Still, could his story about piercing the side of Jesus Christ be true, and if so, what does that mean about the history of mankind? What does that say about the claims of god’s existence?
I was not ready to look intently at that answer, either I was afraid or ashamed to know the truth. I kept it buried deep inside, willing it to evaporate with the rest of my life, or at least what was left of it.
The image on the ceiling revealed the facial features that I had come to know over the last several months. I brushed my hand against the short beard that had grown on my face over that time. I could almost forget what I looked like if it were not for brief reflections in broken pieces of glass that had fallen to the floor of the old church. The past week had brought my body back to normal yet again, I was more lucid now, about to think about things in a logical matter, without the darkness of my soul superseding the truth, or at least what I perceived as truth.
For the first time in years, I gave a considerable thought to the existence of love, of God. I felt shamed by the thought, not for wanting to believe, but for daring to believe after all that I had done, all that I would do as the hunger for blood competed with my humanity. A humanity that was flawed and flailing about as the world turned. I touched the bite marks on my neck and felt the raised temperature press against the pads of my fingers. I had a fever, and the overall numbness of my body told me what was coming. There would not be much more sunrises in my life before I stepped over into the darkness.
If only the dark angel had taken this life away from me and preserved my soul for God’s judgment before it was too late if it wasn’t already. I dropped my hand back to the ground and looked up into the familiar face in the ceiling again. She had no name, but I knew her image none the less. She was as much a part of me as my mother was, though more so as I prepared to enter the next life, born in the blood of my future victims.
They say that fear is only in our minds, that simple statement rang no truer for me than this moment. I had never been one for visions in my mortal life, and I highly doubted that it was something that triggered during my dark rebirth of reanimated flesh. I was caught in the rapture of the vision, taking in the gaze of the man who might be responsible for creating me, his dark hair billowed out and formed a dark frame for his long pale face. The ages had been kind to him, but the eyes gave him away.
The vividness of this false reality was mesmerizing, I felt as if I could count the hairs on his head from a short distance away. Everything else fell away and I was left with just his presence. The slight thump of a heartbeat and the warmth that fell from his breath told me that he was human, left unchanged by the poison that had turned me to this state. A smile crossed his lips and dimples formed in his cheeks as the wind blew his scent over me, something ancient and musky. My nose twitched at the two distinct flavors that surrounded him.
“Who are you?” I asked, but the sound did not escape my lips, it felt as if I were trying to speak under water, the muffled baffling of forci
ng the air away from my mouth just to have it rebound in my direction and choke the sound away entirely. I tried to ask it again to no avail. This seemed to amuse him. He lifted his hand just above his waist, the one holding the blade, and pointed it towards the Bible in my hand. He shook his head, not as an affirmation and seemingly urged me to open the pages once more.
He did not speak as I pulled apart the pages and found the highlighted words once again. I read them to myself and looked at the mysterious man, bewildered by the sense of dread, the lack of knowing. He maintained my gaze for a moment and then closed his eyes gently. Upon opening them I saw the flames of hell leap out at me and I winced, afraid of the scorching torrent to come. I fell over into the rough gravel landscape and felt the cool, damp ground catch my fall.
In a flurry, I turned around to look back at the man, but he was gone. I fumbled around trying to find my grip on this alternate reality, which vision was real? Maggie was at my side, holding my shoulder with her hand and looking in the same direction I was. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, possibly scared of whatever had driven me to this point.
“Did you see him?” I asked, searching the perimeter.
“See who?”
I swore through clenched teeth, I could not believe that this was happening to me. There were too many occurrences happening to me to be a coincidence. My awakening with no recollection of the last one hundred years, the strange clues left for me to find, and now these visions. I did not know if someone with my ‘gift’ could lose their mind, but I was certain that if it was possible then I was patient zero.
I wrapped my arms around my bent knees and held myself in the cold, not shivering from the temperature, but from the fear of what was happening. I no longer welcomed the dark, the mysterious. I was aware of the condemnation waiting there. I could see the small book lying a few feet away, probably dropped from the fear of burning in those flaming eyes. I grabbed it and clutched it in my hand as Maggie rubbed my back with her hand trying to sooth me.
“We need to get out of here,” I said coldly. I stood to leave this place behind, I wanted nothing to do with the ghosts who dwelt on these grounds.
Chapter 19
Three days, that is how long I was kept captive in the darkness, in the finality of death’s throws. There was no longer a beating heart, an exhalation of breath, a twitching of nerves, yet still, I was aware. My life flashed before me during that time, it sped by from beginning to end in rapid succession.
I could see images that I was much too young to commit to memory play out before my mind’s eye. My birth, my first steps, my first birthday, the warmth of my mother’s arms, the sound of my father’s voice, all of it was experienced for the first time. Had I been able to, I would have cried at the beauty of life, separated from the bad and reveling in the good of it. This was the exclamation point of my life, and it was something that I would never get back.
I longed to tell my loved ones that I loved them one last time, that I would remember them for always. It was a promise that I would instead have to make to myself as I ceased to exist in this life, alone.
Three days, the darkness kept watch over me, holding me in its rapture, cocooned in the walls of the old church that had been my prison for a time that I could never truly calculate and reclaim.
Three days, there was a significance to that number throughout history. It had biblical connotations, but the mythic powers of the number predated Christianity, it even predated Judaism. I wondered in the blackness of my mind if the power of three was a residual legend that existed because of the children of the night, the vampires of history? It was a possible truth, or it could have been a coincidence that my mind quickly put together to justify my new awakening.
After the three days, I opened my eyes for the first time, no longer experiencing the world through closed eyelids. The dark world was brighter with my eyes opened. The shadows were distinguishable, the lights were brighter, the darkness was brighter, the world outside was brighter.
I rose on dead legs and carried my lifeless body to the chained door that had held me captive for so long. The chain was no longer connected to the door, instead, it laid as lifeless as I now was in a heap on the floor. I pushed the oak doors open enough to allow my form to cross over the thresh hold. There he stood in all of his stoic glory. At the bottom of the crumpled steps of the church stood my maker, his face grim, but his eyes were afire. I no longer felt afraid, I stepped forward and he welcomed me into his arms.
Caught in the throes of my own selfish wonderment I laid out on the love seat in the cabin, numb to the world and yet very sensitive to what I felt at that time. I could feel Maggie's eyes digging into me, trying to uncover the silent torment that flooded my mind. I could not believe what my vision had shown me. I was not convinced that the man with the silver blade was even real, but either way, what was the significance of the vision and the words highlight in the palm-sized Bible?
I could not be sure, but I thought that the answer might lie buried in the same words that were highlighted. I read them close to a hundred by this point, both aloud and silently. Each read through brought me no closer to the answer. I held the thin pages of the Bible up to the lamplight. I could see the fibrous texture of the paper with my keen vision, it was almost like viewing an x-ray, but still I found nothing.
"I know you are deep in thought, Noah, but did you think that there may be another way to find the answers that you seek?" Maggie's voice cut through the silence of the room like a knife, it drew my attention to her and momentarily away from the strain that I placed on my own problems.
"How do you propose we find them?" I asked; weary from the evening's expenditures.
She sat in the lamplight and looked at me curtly, he hair dangling in strands on the side of her face while the bulk of it was pulled back in a hapless ponytail. "That's easy," she said as she pulled a small tablet from a pocket on the side of her recliner. The screen came to life in bold colors and illuminated her cheeks in its warm glow. She ran her index finger across the pad and manipulated it so that a search engine was made available. I was never a technologically savvy person in my mortal life, but I could see that this device was very similar to the tablets available in my day.
This device had been translucent when she initially picked it up and I could see the electronic components of its hard drive and inner workings spring to life as it powered up. She finger-texted a set of keywords into the search block with rapid strokes of her fingers.
"Pierced side of Christ," she said as she pressed the search icon and within a blink’s time a series of links scrolled along the page. She clicked the first one which was a database containing many of the prophecies concerning the divinity of Jesus Christ. One of the links fell upon the five wounds of Christ.
I could read the words even looking at them upside down, my brain reformulating them in my mind. The wounds included the pierced hands and feet as He was nailed to the cross, finally, the last wound was the pierced side, the confirming wound that marked His death. According to the text they did not have to break His legs like most crucifixions of the time, this was another prophecy as told in the book of Psalms.
"It says here the Roman soldier's name was Longinus," she said looking up to meet my gaze. "It also says that in some traditions he is regarded as a saint."
"What does that mean?"
"I imagine it means he is right up there with the Peter and Paul figures in Christian history," she answered, brushing a strand of hair behind her right ear.
"So, my vision was of this saint figure?" I asked.
"It would appear so," she said. "Or, whatever triggered the vision could make you want to believe that he is a saint."
I looked at the cold expression on her face knowing that she was not trying to play coy, but the grievous thought of this disillusionment was actually a real concern of hers. There was something to be said for her unsettled nerves, perhaps the feeling that led to her statement was warranted.
&
nbsp; "And what if that's the case?" I asked.
"Then we are dealing with something much worse," she said as her eyes fell back onto the screen at a rendering of Jesus hanging from the cross with the Centurion's blade dug into his flesh. I wondered what could be worse than a man who helped kill the son of God. It was not a thought that death could comfort as the fear of what was to come crept into the forefront of my mind.
Chapter 20
“My newborn child, you walk into the night, strong and hungry, yes?” his words were strung together but lapped in elegance and sophistication.
“Yes, I am hungry,” I answered with the craving for blood stabbing at my stomach and spreading out through my body. I was like a newborn calf standing for the first time, barely able to stand. He kept his distance and allowed me to support myself, like a father allowing his son to climb for the first time. The danger of the fall at the forefront of his mind, but the necessity of allowing the child to fall, to learn, still loomed in his mind.
“Come with me, we shall feed.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, steadied me, and led me down the gravel road, escaping the compound that had been my universe until this very night. I noticed the stars and the waxing moon overhead, their details shown more with my new vision. The gentle swaying of the trees nestled against my ears and my body felt their bend to the will of the wind.
We walked for miles before seeing the lights of homes pierce the darkened sky. It was early in the night and crowds were gathered on the porches of their neighbors, chattering and gossiping about the latest news or lack thereof. We hid out of sight but never lost our connection with our prey.
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