One Foot in the Grave - The Halflife Trilogy Book I

by Wm. Mark Simmons

  “Well, I was attracted by his beauty, too. We’re all tied to that prejudicial first glance. It’s the second look and the third that weighs us and our value systems.”

  “Was it difficult? Loving someone who was old before you were young and would remain young long after you were old?”

  “We never had the time to find out. A few years: what is that in the scheme of human lifetimes, much less those of immortals? He tried to bring me over. . .”

  “Over?”

  “I asked. I wanted to live forever. Who wouldn’t? But it wasn’t just selfishness on my part. I wanted us to be together. I didn’t want him tied to a woman whose body grew older and more infirm as the years passed. And I wanted to share his life, his world. . . .”

  “You wanted to become a vampire,” I said.

  “More for him than for anything else. And he agreed, even knowing it might well mean the end of passion for us.”

  “The end of passion?”

  She worked on my shoulders before answering. “A coldness sets in when you become undead. Not just a coldness of the flesh, though that is particularly evident, but a more subtle coldness, as well. Sexual gratification becomes a pale substitute for the gratification of blood and many male vampires become impotent unless they couple while in the act of feeding. They—male and female—are drawn to us for the warmth of our flesh as well as the nourishment of our blood. It is rare that the wampyr experience real passion with one another. Marriages or relationships that predate their transformations rarely survive as anything more than intellectual alliances.”

  “But Damien was willing to make you into what he had become and risk that.” I didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “He felt it would be best for me, if not for us. He was willing to risk that wonderful intensity that we had found in one another. . . .”

  “But he wasn’t able to—to—bring you over.”

  “No.

  “We tried everything.” I felt the shrug of her shoulders telegraphed through her hands. “For some it is enough to be bitten just once. Others do not change until there have been many feedings. An exchange of blood—once thought to be foolproof in passing the condition—isn’t. Damien gave me his blood many times. It came to nothing. The only other possibility was that life was too strong to permit the unlife to take hold: that he would have to drink of me until life was no longer a barrier.”

  “You would have to die.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And he wouldn’t permit that. There was no certainty to the theory and he refused to risk losing me for all time.” She gave a short, sharp, bitter laugh. “He was worried about losing me!”

  There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound trite or banal, so I lay there and let her work her fingers up and down my back. Impotence now joined insanity on the list of potential deficits to my transformation. But the skill of her fingers and the weariness of my own not yet recovered body conspired against any further contemplation.

  My mind drifted and, to my shame, I dozed.

  * * *

  “I need your help!” he says.

  So focused am I on the bloody knife that he has to repeat himself, shouting the second time.

  He tugs on my arm with his other hand and pulls me into the growing puddle of blood. The cow struggles weakly, producing crosscurrents to the feeble tides that are clocked by its failing bovine heart.

  There is something else, now; here, in the darkness, beside the dying beast. A dark shape surrounded by a lake of red and the spangled beams of slotted sunlight, huddled in the darkest part of the barn. It shifts and hisses. And smells of woodsmoke and burned pork.

  “Take off your shirt and lie down!” the man commands. A beam of sunlight bounces back from the blade of the bloody knife and dazzles me. Though he loosens his grip upon my arm I can no longer see well enough to evade him.

  Something shifts on the ground, near my feet, and the cow bellows fearfully.

  A miasma of death and terror rises up from the blood, thick and choking. I do not want to be here, to do this thing!

  I am afraid for my life! And for more than my life. . . .

  But gall and bitterness and dread have seized my heart, my mind, my limbs, and I cannot find the ability to do anything beyond what I am told. I do not remember taking off my shirt. I can hardly bear to think about lowering myself into the visceral stew that clots the earth, here. But I am sitting now, staring up at the dark silhouette of the man with the bloody knife. I put my hand out to steady myself and something cold and wet and hungry comes up out of the blood-spattered ground to grasp my arm in an iron grip!

  I sobbed and sobbed, trying to purge my heart, my very soul of the sludge of terror and shame. The gory mud of that barn floor still seemed to cling to me here, more than a year later and a half a continent away. Chilled to the marrow, I clung to the warm softness as if my life depended on it.

  But my lungs needed air and, at last, I had to lift my face from the folds of warm terry cloth to catch my breath. I looked up into an angel’s face: compassionate blue eyes and perfect features with radiant skin, framed by hair the color of holy fire.

  Deirdre.

  She was kneeling on the bed, holding me as I wept against her shoulder.

  I struggled to compose myself. To pull away. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It was just a nightmare.”

  She refused to release me from her embrace. “Is that what you still think it is? A simple nightmare?”

  “I’m okay now,” I said, trying to reassure myself more than her.

  “You’re not okay,” she whispered, bringing her cheek to mine. “You’ve been to the grave and back—not just once, but twice. You’ve not only lost your own life, but the lives of those you love.” Her arms tightened around me. “I want to help. I’m here for you.”

  I embraced her in return, as much to keep my balance as to reciprocate her kindness. That’s when I noticed that she was wearing my robe.

  And that someone had replaced the lamplight with candlelight while I slept.

  I turned my head to look at her. Her face turned to mine. Our lips met.

  We kissed.

  I should have enjoyed it. I understood enough about death and loss to know that we sometimes seek oblivion in physical distraction. That we hold back the darkness with life-affirming acts of procreation.

  And that, as Harry Chapin used to sing, “loving anyone was a better place to be.”

  Still. . . “Why?” I asked, as she released my lips.

  “We can help each other,” she whispered. “Maybe heal each other a little.” Her hand came up and caressed my face. “You need me. Need what I can give you. What I can do for you.

  “And I need you. I need you to need me,” she continued with a look of desperation. “Let me stay with you. Let me do this for you.” She reached down and pulled the sash on the robe. It fell open and I felt my protests die on my lips.

  My mind schismed: it had been a year. Jennifer was dead. . . .

  Is she?

  She must be. The dead don’t—

  Don’t what? Come back? Sunder their graves? Rise from their coffins?

  If she’s alive, why is she hiding in the shadows? Why doesn’t she come to me?

  I don’t know, the old morality monitor whispered, but God wouldn’t like it. . . .

  The fear, the uncertainty was washed away on a sudden flood of anger.

  God lets my wife and little girl die in an awful car crash and spares me so I can slowly turn into a monster: do you think I really give a damn what God likes?

  I slid my hands from her arms to her sides, felt the splay of ribs beneath silky muscles, the warmth of human flesh. I opened my mouth to speak and she leaned forward, parting her own lips again: I felt the inquiry of a tongue. The tension building in all of my muscles.

  I experienced a curious heat flush throughout my entire body as she fell back and pulled me down with her. Now I was on top, pinning her down to the bed with the weight of my body, my han
ds grasping her wrists. I stared down at her, taking it all in: the throbbing pulse at the base of her creamy throat, her breasts now slightly flattened and lolling indolently to either side, the rise and fall of her stomach, the warm, firm feel of her flesh, waiting, anticipating. . .

  “Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,” Donne penned in “The Ecstasy,” “But yet the body is his book.”

  Harlequin, take me away.

  “Take me,” she murmured.

  “No.” I said it without conviction.

  “Don’t you want me?”

  Oh God, yes! I wanted her like nothing I had ever wanted before. But. . .

  “It isn’t sex,” I said hoarsely.

  “I know,” she whispered. “Sex is just foreplay for the real thing.”

  It was a lust worse than concupiscence. It was appetite beyond lust. It was the Hunger.

  “Bite me,” she commanded.

  And I might have. Surrendered right then and there. But: “I can’t.” I had not grown the necessary fangs. I came up on my knees, gasping for air and for need.

  “You can.” She sat up and fumbled in the pocket of the robe. “Here.” She handed me a familiar box. I opened it and stared at the dental appliance with its gleaming, razor-sharp fangs. “Put it on.” She handed a small tube of dental adhesive to me.

  It was silly.

  It was sick.

  “Put it on.” Her voice was thick with need. “Now.” Her tone, insistent, commanding. Pleading. “Please!”

  I was without the will to resist her. I did as she bade me, trying to bury the likeness of other memories—other times, other occasions, when I had to suspend passion and fumble to put something on. . . .

  She shrugged the robe from her shoulders and leaned toward me. “Please,” she whispered. “I need this as much as you do. More!”

  Her hand was behind me head, pulling me down and toward her. Her shoulder rose to meet my lips. “Bite me!”

  Had I been more experienced, less reluctant, I would have done it quickly. Instead, I opened my mouth as if to kiss the smooth flesh over the trapezius muscle, catching her collarbone with my lower jaw. As I felt the points of the teeth meet the resistance of skin, I hesitated, then brought my arms around her, my right hand cradling the back of her head. She stiffened, tilting her head back as the fangs dimpled her flesh. As the points broke the skin, she sighed. Tilting her head back, as I eased deeper into her shoulder, she shuddered. I could tell now that the slowness of the penetration was more painful, yet she seemed glad of it, welcoming the hurt.

  As the blood welled up into my mouth she pushed against me with a languid movement. “Harder,” she breathed into my ear. “Suck me. Drink me.”

  The heat of her flesh was like the sun, warming me, driving the winter from my bones. I could smell her, the perfume of skin and fragrance of perspiration and secret things filled my head like an olfactory intoxicant. The press of her breasts against my chest carried the stroke of each heartbeat into my own flesh with a maddening, rhythmic caress.

  And the blood. . .

  It filled my mouth like warm, meaty honey. I swallowed and it poured down my throat like boiling wine, sizzling and bubbling and burning a path to my very core. A furnace opened deep within me, filling me with divine brightness.

  “Harder,” she hissed, clinging to me with a frightening strength. “Bite me again. Harder, deeper.”

  I pulled back, tearing the wound a little. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

  “I want you to hurt me! I need you to hurt me!” She arched her back and pulled my head lower. “Bite me! Here!”

  I pressed my face to her glorious flesh; became blind.

  And obedient.

  There were no dreams this time: I slept like the dead. The nightmare came when I finally awoke.

  Blood.

  I came to myself lying in a pool of red. But there was no barn, no dying beast, no knife-wielding madman. I was in my room, on my bed.

  Deirdre was beside me.

  She lay in quiet repose, face tranquil, eyes closed, lips locked in a gentle smile. Her ivory skin seemed all the whiter, now, marked with red blooms where she had urged my kisses and surrounded by sheets, stained the color of her lips and hair. One arm was tucked up under the pillow, the other plunged beneath a corner of the bedclothes that lapped at her side like a tide rolling out at sunset.

  There had come a moment of lucidity in the midst of the passion, the madness, when I had paused, my mouth dripping, to ask, “Why?”

  “I told you that I came to nurse you back to health,” she had gasped. And then pulled me back to her breast to do just that.

  Perhaps I had known the answer to my question even better than she. But all I could think of was the heat of her flesh, warming me like a hearth fire.

  I reached down to cover her the rest of her nakedness, touched her shoulder.

  It was cold.

  And I knew.

  Perhaps I had known in that moment when she first came to me. But I went through the pantomime, anyway: I searched for a pulse at her throat, pulled back eyelids, prodded pressure points. She was cold, lifeless. An empty husk, its former contents drained and flown.

  The warmth that she had so recently gifted me was suddenly gone.

  As I reached down to reclose her eyes, I tried to recall the passage from Endymion.

  But all I could remember were the words of Archibald MacLeish:

  Beauty is that Medusa’s head

  which men go armed to seek and sever.

  It is most deadly when most dead,

  and dead will stare and sting forever.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You need to sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep.” I was irritated that I hadn’t heard Suki come into the library.

  “It’s been three days. Abusing yourself like this isn’t going to bring her back.”

  Maybe not, I thought. But maybe I can hold back the nightmares just a little longer. “I’ll sleep when I’m damn good and ready!”

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “It was something that she wanted to do and we had given her our blessing. No one thought she’d take it that far.”

  “We’ve already had this discussion.” I moved the scanner down another page, the LEDs seeming to devour the text in a greenish glow. “By the way, the equipment’s great. The optical character recognition software interfaces perfectly with the scanner and the word processing program. And where did you find a notebook computer with a two-gigabyte hard drive?”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “We have our resources and you are avoiding the subject.”

  “And you are stating the obvious: I already told you that I have no intention of discussing this further. Case closed, thank you again for the equipment, and get out.”

  She went, slamming the door behind her.

  I finished scanning a translation of M. Philip Rohr’s 1679 treatise, Dissertatio de Masticatione Mortuorum, and set it aside. The stack of tomes left to be scanned was definitely dwindling and I would soon be done with this phase of my research. I opened a copy of Sir Richard Burton’s Vikran and the Vampire or Tales of Hindu Devilry. This was an original first edition and I had to be careful of the pages as I began the scanning process anew.

  They told me that I was completely healed.

  My neck was smooth and unblemished and I felt strength and energy coursing through my body in unprecedented amounts.

  Dr. Burton confirmed that I was obscenely healthy—in the physical sense, anyway. He was worried, however, about my unwillingness to sleep or talk about what had happened. After I told him that it was none of his damn business, the Doman paid me a visit.

  “I want to show you something,” Stefan Pagelovitch said. And, as he looked into my eyes, I felt the full force of his will leeching my resistance. I accompanied him without protest.

  We walked down a corridor I had never seen before. It led to the room that served as the morgue. He opened one of the door
s set in two of the four walls and pulled out the drawer. There was a plastic body bag on the slablike shelf and he pulled down the zipper. “Come here,” he said.

  I came and looked. It was the body of the woman who had distracted me in the parking lot a week before. The woman who had provided the switchblade that had opened my throat.

  “This the one?”

  I nodded, swallowing. The expression on her face suggested that she might have been glad to die.

  He opened three more drawers, three more body bags. “Recognize any of these?”

  I shook my head. “It was dark.” Not that it made a hell of a lot of difference for two of them: the only way anyone was going to identify their remains was with dental records, and that would be a dicey chore, at best.

  “A war has begun, I think,” he murmured.

  “What did this to them?”

  “And why were you spared?”

  “I lead a charmed life,” I said bitterly.

  The Doman opened a fifth drawer and pulled out the rolling shelf. “Here.” He opened the plastic bag and pulled out an arm. “Look.”

  I looked from where I stood, too far away to see any real detail.

  “Look!” the Doman repeated, commanding me this time.

  I shuffled forward on reluctant feet. It was a pale, slender arm. A familiar arm. I did not look down: I did not want to look at the rest of her.

  Pagelovitch turned and displayed the wrist. The flesh was torn and gouged in a deep trench from the base of the palm to nearly halfway up the forearm. “The other arm is the same.”

  I turned away.

  “These are not bite wounds,” he said, behind me. “You didn’t do this to her. She did it to herself.”

  “I was there,” I said, trying to remember, trying to forget.

  “She waited until you were asleep and then removed the partial from your mouth and used it to do this to herself. Christopher, it wasn’t your fault. She was unstable. After Damien died she didn’t want to live. You should be angry that she used you in this way!”

  “You’re right,” I said, turning away. “I am angry.”

  But it didn’t do any good.

  I was still being used.

  She stood up, clasping her hands together nervously; a thin, wisp of a woman with mouse brown hair, wearing a floral print sackdress.