All Katelina wanted to do was run out of the God forsaken house, climb in her car and drive back to a gas station where she’d be surrounded by electric lights and Twinkies and motor oil and all of the mundane things that proved the difference between reality and fantasy; between waking and nightmares. Either Jorick was insane and there was no one there, or else he had Patrick’s murderous brother held prisoner in a smelly basement. Neither option was good, and she knew it was time to run.
Despite that knowledge, she followed him through the cluttered basement. Just like entering the house, she was unsure even as she did it why she wasn’t running away. It was as if some outside force stopped her from escaping and propelled her forward through the darkness.
They crossed the room and stopped before a door set into the farthest wall. As Jorick carefully unlocked it with yet another key, she noticed other doors along the walls, leading to who knew how many secret passages and storerooms.
“Through here.” He ducked through the doorway and she followed uncertainly. She found herself in what appeared to be a narrow corridor. Dark, damp walls seemed to close in all around her. She clutched her phone in her pocket, and reminded herself that a lifeline was only a second away.
They walked maybe twenty feet through the passage before they stopped in front of another locked door. Something moved inside and terror sliced through her. What if Jorick was only slightly delusional and Michael was really there? What if they were partners? Visions of her body chopped up and wrapped in garbage bags flashed through her mind again as Jorick unlocked the door and pushed it open.
“Let me out of here!” a voice roared.
The candle’s feeble light tried to brighten the stone room and revealed the single restrained occupant. The “thing” was connected to the wall by heavy chains shackled to its wrists and ankles. Pictures of the concentration camp victims or the starving in Ethiopia didn’t compare to the twisted, skin and bones figure. Discolored flesh cleaved tightly to its frame and made it look like a living skeleton; a monster who snarled and pulled the heavy chains taut with his struggles.
Despite his appearance, there were vestiges of a human being. The thing's eyes were wide and blue – blue like Patrick's. Its hair was also a lot like Patrick's had been: thick and blonde. It hung in snarled tendrils nearly to his shoulders.
Jorick leaned against the doorjamb and stared critically at the thing. Katelina stood in the corridor and stared, her feet unwilling to cross the threshold. The scene left the bitter taste of disbelief and fear in her mouth
“Let me go,” Michael bellowed, his hollow face contorted in rage. “Claudius – ” He stopped as those eyes, so like Patrick’s, landed on Katelina. He hissed and bared his teeth, long inhuman fangs that shone in the candlelight.
A strangled cry escaped her lips and she hid behind Jorick. This could not be real!
Jorick seemed oblivious to the horror of the ghoul chained to the wall, unaware of the monstrosity of it all as he introduced them like dinner guests. “Katelina, this is Michael, and Michael, I assume you know who Katelina is?”
Michael snarled a reply, his voice dry and raspy, “What are you up to now, Jorick? Damn Patrick for saying we could trust you!”
At his words Katelina forced her eyes open and peered around her black clad shield, watching as Michael continued to pull at the chains, murder glinting in his cold eyes.
“I‘m not up to anything, Michael.” Jorick said. “She’s come to see her lover's killer.”
“Then tell her to take a good look. I'll kill her next! If it weren’t for her and for you–”
Jorick cut him off. “I’ll never free you, Michael, and you know it. Even if I did what would Claudius do with you?” He sounded annoyed but she couldn't see his face. She barely dared to peek out around him, her eyes drawn in twisted fascination to the being in its shackles. She couldn’t reconcile the difference between what she was seeing and what she knew to be in the feasible realms of reality.
“He'll come for me,” the demon hissed, a malevolent smile on his face, his thin lips pulled back from his fangs.
“We shall see.” Jorick looked over his shoulder at her. “Have you seen enough?”
She nodded, unable to speak. The thought of a brightly lit gas station full of reality seemed very far away.
They stepped out into the hallway and Jorick pulled the door after them. “I apologize for the shocking introduction, but it seemed the best way to make you believe me.” He stopped suddenly, his body rigid, as if he was listening.
Katelina strained, but she couldn’t hear anything except Michael’s sudden coarse laughter.
“I told you they'd come for me!”
“God damn it,” Jorick cursed. “Shut up, you foul creature!” He slammed the door with a loud bang and pulled Katelina close enough to hiss into her ear, “There is someone here. It may be nothing, but it could be Claudius come to find his servant. You must stay here, do you understand?”
“No!” She stared at him helplessly. She hadn’t comprehended anything since the words “Patrick loved you”. From that point on the conversation had taken on a surreal quality and now it had descended into the depths of madness. A coven of witches was supposedly attacking the house. How did they know someone was there? She hadn't heard anything. Maybe Jorick was a lunatic; maybe he really had kidnapped some guy off the street and hung him up in his basement for years. Still, she’d rather be with him than alone in the damp corridor with that thing on the other side of the door.
Her tongue tried vainly to articulate her thoughts as Jorick shoved what was left of the candle into her hand and pulled away from her and back towards the main room of the basement. She gripped the damp wall for support and tried to follow, but as she reached the door he shut and locked it loudly.
The hallway seemed to shrink in on her. The darkness became a tangible object that might reach out and strangle her at any moment. Fear choked her and sweat ran down her spine in a thin, chilling trickle. She backed against the stone wall and stared into the blackness. She tried to ignore the cries from inside the locked room they'd just left.
If that thing had once been Patrick’s brother, then something had happened to him; something to make him not human, because he wasn’t human anymore. She could feel that in the very depths of her soul with a sickening certainty. Her skin crawled at the very thought of Michael’s nearness and her whole being cried out silently that he was something no one was ever meant to see, something never meant to walk the earth at all.
“Not real, not real, not real,” she whispered to herself, screwing her eyes shut. She was an assistant to a newspaper editor in the world of paper and glass and plastic; a glorified gopher that made coffee and fetched things and talked on the phone! She was not the heroine in some horror movie! The newspaper, that was real. Her boss, Mr. Fordrent, he was real. Her apartment with the pink flowered curtains, that was also real. Jorick and this tunnel, that thing in the room and the smell of damp and earth and fear… none of those things were real.
She opened her eyes, but the darkness was still there, held back by the trembling rays of light from her nub of a candle. She stared around wildly, looking for some crack in the façade of dream she was trapped in. She thought of Sarah and her warning. Yes, this was how people died.
Suddenly she remembered her phone. Sure, she shouldn’t mention to the operator that there was a monster locked up not ten feet away from her, but that was okay. It really didn’t matter what she said. She’d heard enough 9–1–1 tapes on the news to know that she just needed to gurgle something that sounded like, “help.”
She dug the phone from her pocket and mashed the button. She waited for the ringing to start, but nothing happened; there was only silence. Panic filled her and she hung up and redialed. Nothing. And then she saw the symbol on the screen. She had no signal.
“You have to joking,” she nearly cried. “This cannot be happening. Oh my God. This cannot be – ”
A scraping s
ound interrupted the flow of her terrified words. She snapped her phone shut and bit her lip until she tasted blood. Some instinct told her that she must remain quiet. Even though it seemed impossible, this was real. The hallway, the creature, the sound; it was all terribly, incredibly real.
The scraping noise grew louder, and was soon followed by a crash as something heavy struck the floor. She slid down the corridor, her back pressed against the wall to keep as much distance between her and Michael’s door as possible. She stopped, raised the candle, and peered down the tunnel. A section of the ceiling had fallen in and, as she watched, a figure dropped down from the newly formed hole. She caught her breath and dashed the candle against the damp stone.
The noise in the room across from her increased as the thing that had been Patrick's brother yelled louder and louder, calling the newcomer to him. She pressed herself tighter against the wall, trying to be invisible as the footsteps drew nearer.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her and pulled her into the open. In her panic she let go of the candle nub and scrabbled one handed to free herself. A thick masculine voice spoke over Michael’s cries. “Well, well, it seems Jorick’s trying to hide a little treat from us! Wants it all to himself, does he?” The laughter that followed his words made her blood run cold.
A cool hand touched her face and slid towards her lips. Thoughtlessly she sank her teeth into it. As he cried out, she jerked her knee upwards and caught him in either the groin or the stomach.
When he released her she did the only thing she could think of – she ran. She didn't run down the hall because she knew that he'd come from the yawning hole, now invisible in the black, and he'd have friends waiting to back him up. Instead, she ran the few feet to the locked door that led into the basement.
She reached the door and banged on it with a clenched fist, shouting for Jorick. She didn’t know of anything else to do and her mind screamed too loudly for her to think.
A cold hand closed around her throat and pulled her backwards with almost inhuman strength. She heard herself scream, but it sounded foreign and far away. She gripped her cell phone tightly in her hand and tried to use it like a rock to hit her attacker about the head. He caught her hand and squeezed it until she cried out and the phone slipped from her fingers. She heard it hit the floor, followed by a sickening crunch as he stomped on it.
Before she was able to wail a sorrowful, “Nooooo!”, he stabbed her in the shoulder with something sharp. A burning sensation shot down her arm and she cried out both in surprise and pain.
The door jerked open and Jorick stood in the doorway, framed in a glaring blaze of light. His black hair was wild about his face and blood splattered across his pale features; his dark eyes were filled with anger. As if to make the scene more surreal, he brandished a long silver sword that was stained with blood.
He pulled her from her attacker and threw her behind himself. The intruder lunged and Jorick lashed out at him with the sword.
Katelina’s screams had stopped, replaced by someone else’s. She looked around to find the basement bathed in the brilliant light of flames. The pile of wooden crates looked like a miniature bonfire, as did a screaming man. He danced around and tried to beat out the fire that engulfed him. Two bodies lay slumped some distance from him, face down on the basement floor. Dark puddles spread beneath them.
A new cry sounded and Katelina looked in time to see the attacker in the corridor fall. Jorick paused indecisively over his body, and then quickly turned away.
“Come on!” He grabbed Katelina’s arm and tugged her after him. The wooden beams above their heads began to catch fire and the thick smoke rolled against the ceiling.
“The stairs,” she cried and pointed desperately to their only escape.
“No. There are more of them upstairs. This way.”
He pulled her to another padlocked door. Though he didn’t bother with his keys, he only kicked the door to shreds in one smooth motion and dashed though it. The darkness quickly swallowed them as the tunnel twisted and turned, going ever upwards. Katelina glanced over her shoulder time and again, eyes scratching the darkness for signs of pursuers, but she saw nothing.
At last Jorick stopped. He released her hand and threw open a trap door above them. Cool moonlight spilled down into the corridor and she shrank back from it.
Jorick pulled himself through the opening. He motioned for her to stay where she was, then disappeared from her sight. He was back in a moment, crouched at the edge of the opening. “It's clear, come on.” He held his blood stained hand to her and she took it, too numb to care. He pulled her up into the night where she collapsed on the dewy grass and gasped in mouthfuls of fresh air.
“We must not linger; we may yet be followed.” He slammed the trapdoor shut quickly and busied himself locking it from the outside.
Katelina sat up and nodded mutely, all of her limbs shaking. She tried desperately to catch her breath and gasped out the question, “Who... who were they?”
Jorick sighed. The moonlight made his skin gleam white and turned the blood splatters into splotches of black. “Vampires,” he said quietly. “They were Vampires. Just like Michael.”
Katelina stared at him for a moment, waiting for the punch line. When one didn't come she threw back her head and laughed. “Of course they were!” In that moment it seemed the slender thread that separated waking from nightmares had snapped, and she suspected she’d never see a Twinkie again.
**********
Chapter Four
When her laughter had subsided, Katelina stood wearily and touched her burning shoulder. She pulled her hand back in surprise and eyed her bloody palm. She was bleeding. She knew she was lucky to be alive, unlike her poor phone. But it was sarcasm, not gratitude that bubbled out, “So, let me guess, Claudius is a vampire too?”
Jorick kicked the bloody sword into a stand of weedy grass, then placed his hand on her neck and tilted her to one side to examine her wound. “Yes, he is. They all were, except Patrick, of course.”
“It's too dark out here to see anything,” she objected quietly, preferring to ignore what he'd said.
“I can see well enough to say that you’ve gotten quite a bite,” his voice was far too calm – like this was an ordinary thing.
“Bite? You’ve got to be kidding...” her voice faded as she recalled the many vampire movies she’d seen. She didn’t know that she’d accepted his explanation yet, in fact she wasn’t even sure what she’d really seen or heard. But what if it was true? What if they were vampires? A lump of cold dread formed in her throat and forced her silent.
“Yes, you've been bitten.” He peered so closely at the wound that his breath brushed against her skin. “It doesn't look like he tore any muscles,” he murmured absently. “You'll have a scar of course, but you shouldn’t need stitches.” He released her and took a step back. His eyes strayed to the dark trees surrounding them; the trunks close together to form a wall of blackness. “We should get moving.”
Jorick started to move away, but Katelina hung back, her mind spinning. If those were vampires – if – and she’d been bitten…
“Does that mean I'll be a...a...”
Jorick turned back to her. “A vampire?” he sounded amused. “No, that’s only myth. It takes a lot more than that to become a vampire.”
“Oh.” She felt an odd relief. “He doesn't have any power over me or anything, right? I read that in a book once.”
Jorick shook his head to the negative. “The one who bit you is dead, but even if he wasn't he wouldn’t have control over you, it doesn't work like that.” He glanced from the trees to her immobile form. His dark eyes seemed to see past her brave front, to the scared little girl inside. “We need to get moving.”
She flushed at the imagined intrusion and moved quickly to join him. “Of course, sorry.”
Nighttime noises sounded around them. They made Katelina uncomfortable, so she talked over them “How does someone become a – ” she hesitated, “ – a va
mpire?” She whispered the word, afraid that saying the name would conjure one of the monsters from thin air. Despite her logical disbelief, she still wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t. Though she’d seen Michael and felt the inhuman strength of the man who attacked her, it seemed so absurd.
“It's complicated,” Jorick answered. He shrugged his shoulders casually but his tone made it clear that the conversation was over.
They reached the trees and plunged into them. Katelina shivered as the word replayed in her mind.
Vampires.
She glanced around at the darkened land and thought to herself that at this moment there was a good possibility that vampires existed. Somehow, the night made everything a little less real and a little more fictional. It turned everything to muted shades of gray, like an old Boris Karloff film, and cast shadows that hid unspeakable things in their black depths. Tomorrow, when she returned to the world of sunshine and plastic and shiny chrome, it would be a ridiculous impossibility, but at that moment why wouldn't there be vampires stalking the earth?
“Maybe you should have brought the sword.” Her voice betrayed some of the fear she felt.
“It wouldn’t do a lot of good here in the open. Besides, it would be hard to explain should we be observed.”
“Of course.” Yeah, a guy running around with a sword would look a little out of place, to say the least. In fact, a guy who lived in an abandoned basement and owned a sword was weird enough. It was all weird. Weird and creepy.
She tried to think of something else to say, but her mind was conspicuously blank.
They’d walked for some time before she suddenly came to a halt and cried out, “My car!”
Jorick stopped and looked at her as though she was having a fit. “What?”
“My car! It’s still back there! I have to get it! I can't just leave it abandoned in the middle of the country over night! What if they steal it or, worse, vandalize it?” She imagined explaining to the insurance company what had happened and trying to reason with them that the damage should be covered by her insurance plan. After all, vampires were not an act of God.
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