Descent Into Madness

by Catherine Woods-Field

  Aksel spoke often of returning to his mother country – as if it would be a simple feat for me.

  "And do you think you would find tolerance there, Aksel?" I would ask him each time. "Acceptance?"

  He never answered me.

  "Wesley forced me from the convent; you chose this." I explained to him as gently as if I were speaking to a child.

  "The loss you feel for those you knew and loved, for your home land, it will never go away. You must now accept change, Aksel. Change will happen at a rapid pace now that you are immortal. You have to witness this for yourself! Time is nothing anymore. A century is but a decade and a year is but a moment. Life, my love, is nothing but a flash. Can you not see this?”

  “The ones you loved when you were human, they have all passed this world. The ones you know now will be gone in the blink of an eye. It goes by that quickly with us, and we must treasure every second of it. Hold yourself not to one place, not to one moment, but be open to the change. It is going to happen, with or without you." However, he would not heed my advice, and resentment swelled within him. It ate at him like a cancer. He became a mirror for pain and despair, reflecting blackness; and I had no cure for his ills.

  It was winter, 1470, and we were now in Buda, traveling along the Carpathian Mountains. Buda was the capitol of Hungary until the Ottoman Empire captured it in 1541; it later merged with the town’sỚbuda and Pest to form Budapest in 1873.

  Everything stunk of paprika in Budapest; it lingered on its peoples clothing, in their hair, and even in their blood cells, which we greedily drank. We slept in caves, abandoned mines, and fed off fattened villagers. I still left my prey dazed but alive, but occasionally Aksel would drain his, knowing too well that this would cause unwanted attention from a superstition people.

  Buda, Hungary…

  There was a cabin in which a couple resided on the outskirts of a tiny village, and we found ourselves there one night, about to feed. We had watched them prepare their meal, and observed the violent aroma of paprika and garlic wafting from the cabin.

  Our senses, more acute than before the transformation, revolted against these pungent aromas. They stung at our membranes, burned our eyes. Merely odorous nuisances, they did not work as apotropaics deterring our entrance.

  Yet as I approached the house, I turned my head to see Aksel still in the bushes a few yards back, carefully concealed in the shadows. He turned and walked a few feet before vanishing into the dreary night. I let him feed alone that evening, a night that became one night after another until they all blurred into one.

  On that particular evening, a night where the mist was a warm glove clinging to your skin and only worsened by the stifling lack of wind, I had fed from the fattening couple in their sweltering cabin. Drenched in sweat and smelling of burnt pig, I wandered into the village expecting to find Aksel along the roadside, sulking on the outskirts of town. Having not found him, I entered the only tavern this miniscule village kept and decided to wait for him there. In a village this size, I had surmised, it could not take him long to find me.

  A broad stone fireplace graced the farthest corner, warming the tavern with its raging golden flames. A long bench, wooden and worn with knots and cracks sat in front of it, and I removed the hood of my fur-lined, emerald-green cloak before sitting down between two burly, stinking men.

  Both reeked of sweat, and the second one, the nastier of the two, with filth; his hands, saturated with fresh dirt, his fingernails splintered and jagged, and his hair –wild, and flaring at the temples in winged patches of blackish-grey tufts, tipped in debris.

  Both men were past their prime, wilting examples of the men, they once were. Their thoughts revealed that they had been hunters, prosperous before the gout ate at the first ones toe and before the wild cat attacked the second. They were now legends with a fading story, the kind that dies slowly over time.

  Silently, I fed from these men and left them slumped together - peacefully asleep on the bench.

  It was nearing dawn when I left the tavern. The sky was growing ashier as the sun threatened to erupt from its horizon-bed, and birds in their tree top slumbers were beginning to wake and make their morning calls to the god of sunshine. Knowing I had not long to get to our hiding spot in the cave not far from the village, I flew into the sky only to look down and see him in the distance.

  He was not a few miles from where the tavern sat, sitting near a brook. He had pulled his cloak over his shoulders, the hood covering his head, but I knew it was Aksel. The amber hide of his leather cloak was creased and rippled from wear, and all I could see slither out from beneath the massive piece of fabric was a red leg and black shoe pointed at the edge of the brook.

  Even though my landing had been faint, I knew he would hear me. Still, he did not move to acknowledge my presence.

  “Your sullenness of late is troublesome, my love. Let us talk of this, please, and be done with it!”

  "Perhaps," he replied remaining fixed on the flowing waters of the brook that flowed effortlessly in front of him.

  "We will talk tomorrow then, dawn is approaching. We will deal with your hurt, your pain, your anger, Aksel; and then we will never speak of this madness again."

  I left him and walked to the cave. He followed behind shortly after and took to his slumber without a single word spoken to me. The tears, the blood tears, which he had hastily wiped from his face before he returned, spoke louder than words ever could. I could not ignore his pain, his sadness, any longer. Nor could I do anything to relieve it.

  When I awoke the next evening, he remained asleep on the uneven earthen floor; a vision of a man I once knew who had walked along the beach on moonlit nights and captivated me with his wit. He had dug a ditch and concealed himself behind a pile of rubble. I had done somewhat the same, and was now dusty and filthy and needed the brook to cleanse me; to make me appear the unblemished phantom survival required me to be.

  I then soared into the clear night that was ablaze with the twinkling of a billion stars and sought refuge on a high tree branch. The admiration of the universe, its magnificent brilliance alive in that moment surrounding me - existing eternally with me - was all I had the energy to acknowledge. I wished not to fight with Aksel; to argue, to be in eternal discourse over pointless matters, always dancing around what really mattered but never grasping it, never pulling it to us and tackling it down.

  Buda was not the beginning of our parting, though. The moments awaiting me that night were long in the making. That night, the air clung to me – a wet blanket reminiscent of a time and place, not too far back in our history, when a chasm began to grow between us. The stale sky had shown the same dulled constellations that night, too.

  The first time Aksel had left me, he had been away nearly a week before returning. That was shortly after we left Norway while in Paris.

  I had been standing on the Le Pont Saint-Michel overlooking the Seine, watching a wedding procession advance down the river beneath me. Their barges of merriment were aglow with bulbous torches and shimmering silks, emanating an erotic aura of rippling waves that trickled out from the inanimate objects and even from the people. Perfumed sachets adorned the pillows that the women clung to their bosoms as men, ripe with cheap wine, threatened their decency; and the women, who were drunk from spirits and intoxicated with lust, gave in to their lovers' desires. Barge after barge, the same one after the other, floated beneath me until the final barge passed before my eyes of the bride and his groom; a couplet swathed in a tent of silks and shimmering satins, lying atop a bed of virginal white. They appeared asleep, enveloped in each other’s arms, lost to where one began and the other ended.

  "A festive party," a voice behind me remarked.

  “I have been to this bridge before and watched processions like this one,” I remarked.

  “And wedding processions will continue for ages to come,” he replied. “They will sail under this arc, blissful and ignorant.”

  “Perhaps it is best to b
e ignorant,” I said. “The world’s evils cannot touch you if you do not know of them.”

  “Gaze upon their faces, Bree,” he remarked, pointing to their sleeping, drunken forms. “The women believe love and bravery will conquer all, while the men see only a rich purse. Absurdity.”

  I watched the lovers float past. Their candlelit faces were smug with merriment and wine. "Where have you been all week?" I spat while fixing my eyes on the barges below.

  "Soul searching," he replied. He moved next to me putting his arms along the edge of the wooden railing, peering down into the water.

  "Did you find what you were looking for?"

  "I believe I have."

  "Are you going to…" but I could not finish the sentence. I could not ask him if he was going to leave. I was terrified of the answer. "I have already fed. Do you need to feed?"

  I quietly rejoiced that he did not question me, that he did not prod me. We had left the city three nights later for Italy.

  He kept secrets now, since leaving Paris; and left for weeks at a time. But even if Aksel was intent on changing, I could always rely on the sky to be an unchanging force in my life. The moon and the stars always remained steady in the sky, the same as they were that night as I sat on the tree branch in Buda waiting for him to awaken. Yet, I did not know what it was I was waiting for. Would he remain with me, travel with me, continue to be my companion; or would we part as friends? Or as two who had been lovers but are no more?

  If he left, would I ever again behold his face? Did I have time to memorize every line, every imperfection? A week without him, I could endure. But eternity… I was not so sure.

  Then a whisper came forth from the mouth of the cave and it startled me from my silent musing. "Bree?" he whispered into the night air. I was apprehensive, hesitating on my branch. "Bree!" he called louder. I slowly glided down from the branch, landing softly in front of him. He stood not two feet in front of me, yet his mind was miles away.

  "Let us talk." He took my hand and guided me toward a rock slab, but I refused to sit with him.

  "What is it, Aksel?" I asked, snatching my hand from his grasp and stepping away from him. I turned to glance out over the brook, not wanting to see his face.

  "I...I am returning to Norway."

  "Without me?"

  "With or without you; I am going home." He slumped forward; his elbows pressed firmly against his knees and his heels digging furiously into the dirt. "I am done with this life: city-to-city, living a farce! I cannot do it anymore."

  "Then you will be going without me."

  "Is there no way I can convince you to come with me?" he asked as he rose from the slab and walked toward me.

  "No." I turned to him. "Is there no way I can convince you to stay?” I struggled to form the words, to shout, “Nothing but danger greets you there. Nothing but death!”

  I wanted to tell him that if he left my heart would break into a million pieces and would never mend, but I knew this was not true. I knew it was in our nature, a natural progression that forever did not exist with our kind. Mortal marriage has its natural expiration and so did ours. With time, we gravitate away from each other, both having morphed into completely different creatures than which we were when we were human. With Aksel, he had changed completely from when I turned him. He was full of melancholy - prone to fits, and would go off on his own. Just not the man I had known sixty-one years ago.

  "Bree, if I do not go now, I will only grow to resent you more." His voice pulled me out of the fog of my own thoughts.

  "Then you do resent me?" Facing him, I could see the turmoil in his blood-shot eyes.

  "I resent leaving… not you," he stammered.

  "But it was my decision to leave, Aksel! You followed. Have you held it against me all these years?"

  He tried embracing me, but I pushed him away. He tried to grab my arm, but I jerked back.

  "You do resent me, admit it. At least be a man and admit it!" He turned and began walking away.

  "Do not walk away from me, Aksel!" I shouted, but he continued to walk and then he looked back at me and took to the air in flight. In a panic, I followed him.

  The higher he flew, the higher I flew. The faster he flew, the faster I pushed through the clouds. I followed him until he realized I would not relent in my pursuit; then he landed in a meadow. He had his back to me when we landed, but I quickly seized upon him.

  "I will ask you one more time, Aksel; one more time. Do you resent me?"

  He faced me and, for the first time in our sixty-one years together, he looked terrified of me. His eyes searched mine before answering in a whisper, "Yes. Yes, I do."

  My hands reached up and secured his vest in my fisted palms. He remained fixed on my eyes and did not struggle against my strength as I picked him up into the air, flinging him into a nearby tree. He smacked into it, the impact ratting the top branches. Birds flew into the darkness, their wings beating noisily against the wind.

  "Go," I said to him, as he lay there at the foot of the tree unfazed. "I am done with you." I walked away, not glancing over my shoulder to see if he wept for me.

  .

  EIGHT

  Buda became my home, my solace, for the next thirty years. Rumors of vampires and werewolf-like creatures were spreading, and I found I could not escape them. It did not matter where I was— these tales, these folklores existed. I learned to conceal myself behind people’s ignorance. From these fictitious legends, I had nothing to fear, for not even one was true. Yet they gave nations a false confidence, while I strolled merrily among them.

  Through the tradesman, I heard the folklore of many lands. The people of Moravia claimed a vampire could only attack while naked. Bavarian vampires slept with one eye open and thumbs crossed. I wondered how these legends took shape and grew roots.

  Then I heard of the atrocities these people were committing against their own dead in fear that they had become vampires. They defiled newly buried graves, staking corpses or removing the newly deceased’s hands and feet. Other cultures removed the head, or they would remove the heart and burn it to ash, making the supposed victims drink of a concoction containing the ashes to break the "vampire's curse."

  These rumors followed me everywhere, but no one ever suspected that I was a vampir. That is what they called my kind in Buda – vampir. I first heard the term from a man during a Gypsy celebration held in the summer season. Hearing it for the first time sent had chills down my neck.

  "It appears that Miklos Tomas was a victim of a vampir," he had whispered to me, as he twirled me around the bonfire. “Stay inside and bolt your door tonight, for a group of us strong men will be slaying the demon at midnight.” His pálinka-laden breath was warm against my cheek. The liquor’s sweet scent – from Hungarian fruit – wafted violently past my nose.

  “Why midnight,” I asked as his grubby hands gripped my waist. Against

  “That’s before the creature rises from its grave. We need to strike between midnight and the witching hour to send it to the nether world, my beauty.” He leaned toward my cheek, desperately pressing his filth covered lips against me as I pulled away.

  Miklos Tomas had not been a victim of a vampir, though. Men from the village and church had exhumed the poor man's corpse as I watched. The corpse displayed the usual signs of decomposition - the long grown fingernails, hair growth, peeling skin, bloated body, the presence of blood at one corner of his mouth. And the men were convinced these natural signs were evidence of a vampiric curse.

  They had burned his remains and scattered the ashes. How could his soul find rest now? It would have taken considerable restraint not to leave a scrap of evidence when I descended on the huddle of soot-covered men. It would have been easy to conceal the fang marks in their fattened necks after I ripped into their jugulars – the smug looks of self-importance wiped clean from their faces. But the marks were there, though, for those with a head intact. Some corpses I left with their heads lying next to the feet, or with a stak
e jammed snuggly into their lifeless heart.

  In that moment of anger, I had broken my vow not to kill.

  I fled the villages; their nescience showed me the depths that humanity can sink. Instead, I enjoyed my time among the elite of Buda, disguised as a widowed Countess. My marital status and lack of familial connection in Hungary was often a topic of courtly gossip. There was much speculation as to why I had not remarried- when I would marry and to whom I should be married. Suitors played the game nightly, making my hand – and the supposed purse it contained – a prize to be won.

  I fed off these men, each one. I stole their essence while luring them in with the promise of riches and the ability continue their lineage. How short and insignificant their lives really were. They wanted nothing more than for someone to be theirs, to have something to possess, to devour completely. It was such a shame, a real pity that I could not return their devotion.

  But my heart hardened after Aksel. I was resolved not to fall in love. Nor would I ever again plague those I loved with this curse.

  I spent years fending off suitors, attending balls, and enjoying what I could of a solitary, restful life in Buda. Existence carried on smoothly without Aksel, and I was at peace with myself. I came and went as I wished, kept a modest house, and answered to no one. I was not missing his sulking for a minute.

  A majority of my time while alone, though, was not spent in fancy balls. Elaborate gowns – Italian silks, French ribbons and Persian lace - I laid aside for simple cotton garments, while biding my time in the Royal Library of Buda's Royal Palace. My candle and I submerged in the stacks, lost in the library’s vast literary treasures until the birds began to wake.