by Holly Black
CHAPTER 38
*This will be the last blog post on Bill Story's journal. He was drained by two newborn vampires only hours after this went up. Because I'm his friend, he trusted me with his password in the eventuality that he didn't make it back one day. He'd never intended to be a war zone journalist, but he took up the mantle with enthusiasm and dedication after he was trapped inside Springfield's Coldtown. And although his death is a terrible tragedy, I believe he would have been glad that he died as he lived-in pursuit of a story. Bill will truly be missed by his friends, by the community of truth-seekers to which he belonged, and by the world. -MG
Tomorrow I should have some really interesting footage to post. One of my neighbors, a young woman going by the name Christobel (perhaps for Coleridge's poem, Christabel, although the different spelling makes me doubt she knows it) asked to borrow some equipment. She has some new guests staying with her, including another young woman, calling herself Midnight, who wants to record her own transformation into a vampire. If I loan her what she needs and show her how to set everything up, she has promised that I can be one of the witnesses and even tape some footage myself. It's a rare opportunity-one that I'm surprised to find dropped in my lap after years of trying to find someone willing to let me record this very thing.
Why do I want to do it? For one thing, because there's very little footage of the change in the public sphere-although I am sure there are reels and reels hidden away in government labs. And, of course, it's likely to get this blog a lot of traffic. But I have to admit to myself (and to you, because I am a confessional sort of journalist) that what I am eager to try to see is the exact moment of change-the spark, if you will, of transformation. And I am eager to see it with my own eyes.
The big question of vampires, the question that haunts governments and individuals alike, the question that bugs me every night when I see their red eyes watching the citizens of Coldtown the way hungry cats watch fish in a bucket is: What are they? Are they diseased or demonic? Are they citizens who have become ill, deserving hospitals and care, as some have argued? Or are they the bodies of our loved ones animated by some dark force that we ought to seek to destroy? Living here in Coldtown, I've tried to observe and document our new world, but I have failed to be able to answer this one question. I have even failed to decide for myself.
Maybe it's crazy to think that I'm going to be able to tell anything significant just from watching a human girl become a vampire. After all, I will be far from the first to see it. Scientists have observed vampirism, even undergone it. But I still want to be able to look at this woman in the eye when she rises from the dead. I want to use something entirely different from instruments and monitors; I want to use my instincts. I want to see whether I believe I am looking into the same person's eyes.
There's something easy about the idea that vampirism is some kind of disease-then they can't help it that they attack us, that they commit murders and atrocities, that they can only control themselves sometimes. They're sick; it's not their fault. And there's something even easier about the idea of demonic invasion, something forcing our loved ones to do all manner of terrible things. Still not their fault, only now we can destroy them. But the third option, the possibility that there's something monstrous inside of us that can be unleashed, is the most disturbing of all. Maybe it's just us, us with a raging hunger, us with a couple of accidental murders under our belt. Humanity, with the training wheels off the bike, careening down a steep hill. Humanity, freed from the constraints of consequence and gifted with power. Humanity, grown away from all things human.
And so, dear readers, the answer I hope to have for you tomorrow will not be a scientific one. I hope to be able to decide for myself-when we turn, is there something shoved inside of us or is it more that something inside of us has been released?
