‘Oh – it startled me. Before you go on, I was wondering about consecrated ground. It’s not a myth then?’
He shook his head. ‘When I entered that cemetery I never gave it a thought; fortunately it was not blessed. I once put a foot on hallowed ground, long after this time, to test the claim – not to immolate myself! It’s often said that should someone in my predicament step one foot on sacred soil they would combust. It is not literally meant however. My foot became locked down as if the ground were magnetised and I was forged of metal. My mind flooded with fire! It was my conscience alight with every sin I’d committed over my entire existence. That, as I understand it, was an experience of Hell. I burnt with every feeling of suffering: dread, pain, hopelessness, with my own guilt the cherry on top. And when I say cherry, I mean the red-hot ember on the grate, as opposed to the sweet fruit of life! The extraordinary pain kept me there, a prisoner, unable to move. After some time and using a great deal of strength I was able to prise myself away.
‘The man in the unblessed cemetery mourning his loved one knelt over her freshly sealed grave. This called to me and I contemplated ending his deep sorrow as he grieved. Giving him what I desired for myself. Something changed in the air and I was aware of a presence I’d never felt before. Then I saw it for the first time, approaching the grief-stricken man in the image of a woman. I knew she was not of any substance! I was thinking more of ghosts. – He repeated her name with the question “Are you real?”
‘She nodded and spoke his name affectionately, then did nothing more than stand in front of him. I moved closer for a better look, at which moment I saw a boy enter the cemetery. He was about fifteen. He snuck up to the man, paying no attention to the woman, and the woman paid no notice to him. The man shook his head at him, as if to say he had no money to give. The boy very suddenly withdrew a small blade and ended the man’s life in a frenzy.’
‘What– he killed him? What did you do?’
‘Nothing. Alex, he was a kid. I didn’t imagine he’d do that. As the boy ransacked his pockets, I realised what the woman was as she faded into nothing before my eyes. Death! Death wearing the face of a woman, his woman, in order to take him. I’m convinced the dying know what’s coming days before. It’s as if they’re sensing the approach of their own end. That often makes me wonder, since Death doesn’t recognise me, if it senses my presence at all.’ He paused, seeing my confusion.
‘I’ve no soul, Alex. The demon replaced it, that monster now a part of me. Death cannot see me or know I’m there. I’m no longer on Death’s list. It’s important you understand this, Alex. Look at me. When Death is on the trail of someone, that someone will die. Don’t confuse Death with Fate. Their paths may cross from time to time but they’re not the same thing, and they work to different agendas. The clocks and calendars here do not measure out their schedules. Time is measured very differently for that purpose. I only take a life that is about to end, just before Death brings it. I believe for some, I give a more painless exit than what was in store for them. I’ve had many occasions to study it, in the last moments when Death personifies a human, just as it’s about to collect their soul. I wait until it takes form, to be sure, before I move in to seize my chance. You’ve seen me use my shadow, as if it had a life of its own. I can move only by shadow and occasionally drink by shadow, if I wish. I’ve found this best practised during the gloaming, just after the streetlights come on. It is therefore my favoured time to feed.’
He paused and ran his eyes over me. I realised I was clasping my neck, from listening to his description of how he feeds. I released myself.
‘Perhaps that’s enough truth telling for now. You seem–’
‘I’m fine,’ I demanded. ‘I’m pretty sure this is all a dream but I want to hear this. All of it.’
‘Very well.’ He straightened up. ‘It’s also easier on the dying not to see me in their last moments. Sometimes Death lurks after them for days, weeks, or even months, waiting for their time, I suppose. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I’ve often raced that omnipresent Reaper to one portion of its work. It never takes form before the final visit, and I imagine it’s a loved one, like the woman in the cemetery, to ease the crossing. Now I find, occasionally, after so many years chasing Death, I’m drawn to the dying before it begins to stalk.’
I had to ask Thom to repeat some of this, where the mental gymnastics I was doing prevented me from absorbing it all. It was too incredible, too surreal for me to process. – A vampire stalking Death; Death in turn stalking a human; and respectively each cannot see nor hear their pursuer.
I’d heard stories about people who knew they were going to die days before it happened. Did they sense the presence of Death? And if so, could Death sense the vampire?
Twenty-five
DEAD RINGER
‘May he be rooted, where he stands, for ever; his Eye-Balls never more, Brows be unbent, his Blood, his Entrails, Liver, Heart and Bowels, be blacker than the Place I wish him, Hell.’
– John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, Oedipus
A question soon emerged from me –
‘You say you never saw Death before he came for the man in the cemetery? But if you’d killed people already, why didn’t you see him then? Didn’t he come for them?’
‘Death is ignorant of the soulless. It – not he, Alex – cannot direct our demons to kill, or know that we will. It’s not prepared when those deaths happen. I’ve interfered with Death’s work! Just as Johan still does. It’d be a lie to say I don’t know what happens with their souls, because I do: we create ghosts. Beyond this, I don’t know. Perhaps those lost souls transfer to some limbo, or Death cleans up later. I could only guess.
‘As I said,’ he went on, ‘I tried other ways to survive without harming anyone before I chanced upon Death. That man in the cemetery, his lifeless body lying on that grave, having died by Death’s orders – yes! Death causes the demise! Then carries the soul to that place I’ll never go! – His body was still warm though his heart had stopped. I thought I could survive that way. I drank deeply and ignorantly, and although it tasted strange, I began to feel revitalised. Shortly after, I knew it would end me. I would have welcomed it if my new overly alert instincts didn’t take command. The fury of the demon instantly possessed me. I found the only cure to be in living blood. It dilutes the poison. I killed again at random, which left me sickened once more.
‘After regaining control, I contemplated revenge on my maker. It was all that hung on my mind. I would travel back to America to avenge my own death and put an end to his murderous rampages. I intended to be cunning and gain his trust. I would defeat him in strength and agility. I had something on my side, that passion, a true hatred, which would give me the upper hand. I hatched a plan to drain the blood of a fresh corpse and force him the poison. Then while he was weak I would have–’ His hands clenched into fists. He shook his head.
‘But he’d moved on. Each time I went back I found little or no trace of him. For a while it seemed he could have been anywhere in the world. Then I found evidence he was still in the States. Meanwhile, I’d been studying that Angel of Death. The way it moved from one place to the next. This kept me occupied. At first it proved near impossible to track, passing through energy as just that. I lingered in places with a high mortality rate, trying to attune my senses to it. I stalked it as it stalked the dying, letting nothing faze me while on its scent. Now I feel its energy bending all the time, distantly, and can track its target. – You look very stern, Alex, as if you don’t quite agree that this is a more righteous, or at least sinless way of doing things.’
‘Not at all, Thom. I was absorbed in listening, and– and remembering a man who was killed in St. Martins Woods during a storm last year. I suppose he was one of your… targets?’
He hardly looked at me while recollecting.
‘Death hung around him for only two days,’ he said finally. ‘Timing is everything to that Pale Rider. People’s deaths are scheduled. It was his t
ime to die and I took advantage of that. I waited until Death took its form, of a child this time, a small boy. As he approached so did I. Since Death was there and the man’s time was at an end in this world, it took his soul, as it should. I’ve deviated again,’ he said quickly.
It was clear that the example was too close to home and too recent. He had wanted to avoid it.
‘Back in Ireland,’ he continued. ‘Even though I’d found a way to keep the beast quiet, and my conscience eased, I was growing restless in my choiceless subsistence. I was desperate. Do you remember when you spoke of not fitting in? I knew it would always be that way. Nobody would ever know me, recognise me, or understand me. It would go on for eternity. I was utterly different and completely alone. There is no captivity so appalling, so dreary, as isolation! It’s torturous. What lengths would you go to, to fit in, Alex? Because that part of me that was still human – that will always be human – longed for normality. I ached for acceptance, for sympathy with another. I longed for a purpose. I gave myself different names and backgrounds, trying to get work, just to fit in. Nobody would take me on. They saw me immediately as a danger – I was too different, and as you so accurately pointed out, people fear different. I was lonely to the point of insanity, utterly without another soul to empathise. I was going out of my mind moving from place to place, walking around as a restless spectre. For over a century I travelled the globe to no end, a nomad, just tracking Death for pitiful survival – for control of my killer instinct. It was an endless, joyless, repetition of tedious routine. My cup for Hope was empty, with a hole in the bottom. I had to’ – he sneered – ‘get a life! What else could I do? It was useless to go on as I was. I had to find a way out of it. A way to live an everyday civilised life with an official identity, a job and a home – these being the foundations of it. It became my fuel for the reward. I didn’t know how I was going to do it yet. I hadn’t formed any plan. That is until I tracked Death to a young dark-haired man, a little farther east of the country.
‘He lived in a small wreck of a cottage, with no electric, on some abandoned farmland. A smashed TV collected rain on the empty gravel drive. I didn’t pay too much attention to him at first. I only visited when Death did. My mind was busy elsewhere, having grown well used to the routine of my meals. It was hard though not to notice the place surrounding the victim, which looked as though a bomb had hit it. I watched as Death watched; too distracted by my worries and miseries to notice anything particular about him. At one point I did notice him; the day he shaved his face, which he hadn’t done for a while. He was clearly into drinking and looked haggard most of the time. I had thought his features were similar to my own. As soon as I saw him clean-shaven, here stood my double, so absolutely my doppelganger! We could have passed as brothers without a doubt. Here –’ Thom moved across the room to the writing desk, picked up his wallet and brought it over to me, unfolding it meanwhile. ‘That’s his picture on the licence, not mine. Is he not my genetic copy?’
I took the photo-card with a shaky hand. I looked back and forth between their faces.
‘Yes, I would think this is you, easily.’
‘Everybody has a look-alike in the world, so I’ve come to believe.’ He put the licence back. ‘Seeing him properly for the first time, it gave me ideas while Death stalked him for a week. I could become him; assume his identity, and take on his life just as it ended. It would give me the starter I desperately wanted. His end was certain; it would be a gunshot wound to the chest.’
‘How– how did you know that?’
‘Because I watched him load the thing, Alex, and take aim.’
‘Oh, I see. But then he didn’t kill himself, because–’
‘I killed him. Yes. I drank his blood until his heart stopped. He would have died with or without me there. I could do nothing for him; you must understand that! But he could do something for me. I believed it was fate. I would study him, gather every piece of paper about him, and know everything I could. In short, I did it. I gave him a decent funeral in the countryside, but in such a way, no one would ever find his body. The vocation of curator came with the identity I took, and it suited me well. He was then thirty-three, which wasn’t far off my age when I was turned. The man had been out of work. I took that opportunity to start afresh in England where I’d always wanted to live, and where nobody would know him. My predecessor, George, interviewed me over the telephone for this job. He would never have given it to me had he met me in person. It was the perfect way into a perfect situation.’
‘And this was just a couple of years ago?’
‘Though it feels like last month.’
‘How is it you don’t have an Irish accent?’
‘Because I grew up copying my father in speech, and not my mother or anybody but him. Bronagh went the way of our mother’s enunciation. Though I’m more than capable of imitating it, should someone recognise me and ask what I was doing in England. Though the real Thomas Rues was no Irishman by birth, like the Saint, he certainly possessed the voice of an Irishman.
‘My subsistence however is never without irony! As you’ve observed, Mrs Evans is far from fond of me. Now you’re wondering if she saw the demon in the mirror as you have done. It’s actually simpler than that. The identity I took on had a criminal record for involuntary manslaughter. Befitting if not wholly typical! It’s the reason my twin was so clearly depressed: he’d unintentionally killed his girlfriend and served a suspended sentence. I don’t know when or how Mrs Doreen Evans learned of this, but following the disappearance of Tess, she gossiped about me to the other shop girl, Rebecca, and between them suspicion fell on me. To Mrs Evans my conviction was as good as first-degree murder. No doubt she frightened Rebecca out of her wits because she left that same day. This taught Mrs Evans not to do it again, as it caused her grief to find a replacement quickly. She told Frances too of my past, but she didn’t judge me. She’s a sweet soul that one! Good fortune often comes in the guise of bad luck, because if that interfering Evans woman hadn’t have gossiped then you’d never have come to work here, and I may never have known you.’ He edged closer. ‘Alexandra, what are you thinking?’
‘A million things. You’re not who I thought you were, right from the start.’
He went to speak, but I cut him off –
‘How is it I hit you with the jeep?’
‘Alex,’ he muttered slowly, ‘I am still me.’
‘Whoever you is. Answer me, please. Was it deliberate? Well, was it?’
‘Yes!’ he said with his eyes closed. ‘I saw you in the house that day, wandering around, half in this world and half in another. Nothing particularly different about you, physically I mean. Coppery hair, modest looking girl, a bit on the short side. You walked straight past me after an innocent glance at my face. Your calm and collected expression didn’t alter, despite being nearer to me than you are now. You hardly noticed me. If I’d been an ordinary man, I might have taken it to mean you weren’t meant for me.’ He smiled and it quickly fell away. ‘But I’m not an ordinary man. And I never met anyone who didn’t edge back, flinch, or flat-out runaway on first encountering my face. You’ve seen how strangers react, Alex. I was in awe of your fearlessness. I wanted to understand why you differed from everyone else. I watched you from the landing window as you left The Jacobus. You waved goodbye to Stacey and got into the jeep. I’d overheard your interview. I knew it was likely you’d work here, but I couldn’t wait to find out. I wanted to test you. I wanted you to look directly at me again, to see if your mettle was constant. You were about to leave. I got in the way to make you stop – to make you look at me. Not the most heroic way to go about it, but I wasn’t thinking romantically at that point. How you first looked at me–’ He went to approach me and then thought better of it. ‘I had to then act the role of the injured party. And what if I grew a little annoyed with you for running me down? Would you shiver then? Would you jump back in the car and hurry to pull away? No, you didn’t! You became audacious. Bu
t I had no idea then you’d come straight from the loony bin. Alex, I’m so used to people immediately backing off. All people do it, even those like Frances, who have no sense of danger.’
‘But it appears I’m the same.’
‘No. You’re different. You have no sense of fear.’
‘I think you’ll find I do. I fear lots of things.’
‘You don’t fear the inevitable. You don’t fear the truth. I had to work so hard to gain the trust of Daniel and Frances after introductions. – Alex, imagine a ferocious looking dog – name one for me?’
It was easy. ‘A Rottweiler.’
‘Right, a Rottweiler. Good choice, they’re none too pretty when agitated. Imagine you were introduced to a fierce Rottweiler without warning, and this Rottweiler was bigger than you – which isn’t saying much, considering most things are bigger than you! But you also had a very bad feeling about that hound.’
‘I don’t quite follow.’
‘My point, Alex, is that the Rottweiler might be playful as a pup, and just can’t help its outward appearance or indeed the signals it gives off. Everybody sees a ferocious Rottweiler when they meet me.’
‘Eloise didn’t.’
‘A small child doesn’t understand danger. Kids often look at a dangerous dog and automatically see a playful one. They’re habitually injured because of that misconception. Some adults overcome their fears and pet its head, forgetting later how it terrified them at first. Others don’t want to overcome their fears and they simply avoid it. Mrs Evans and a handful of staff here are those others. They would never give me an inch, always seeing the Rottweiler. But you! You didn’t even see it, you saw me. Then you tried to make me out. You treated me like anybody else. You weren’t afraid to show it when you were annoyed with me, even before you heard any rumours. I admit I enjoyed teasing you afterwards. The way you tried to hide how it bothered you. I had so much trouble staying away from you. I didn’t realise how much I liked you until that Mark showed up and drove you home. I never felt jealousy like it!
Halton Cray (Shadows of the World Book 1) Page 28
