Colin stood from the sofa and smoothed his jeans. “I told you I heard a voice,” he said and then walked out onto the balcony.
“What voice?” Wesley asked, following him. He peered over the railing and then turned his back to the hustle and bustle.
“From the hospital.” Colin watched the traffic below. “The female voice I told you about; the woman who was with Bree when she turned me.”
“Dad, there could not have been anyone else with you two,” Judith said, easing her way out. “We have been over this.”
“You were not there,” he replied without turning.
“Neither were you really,” Wesley reminded him. “You were on death’s bed.”
Colin dropped his head, letting his chin graze his chest. His hands clutched the railing.
Judith reached for his shoulder but he shrugged her off. “Bree wrote that the woman was there. Sr. Veronica! She called her that, yes?”
“Yes,” Wesley whispered.
That name seared through the pages held against his chest, through his ecru polo, and into his ashen skin. He had suppressed the memories of Sr. Veronica helplessly dying and longing for her friend. Surrounded by her betrothed kin, in her heart Sr. Veronica was alone without his sister. He remembered hearing Bree’s name and rushing to the convent, hopeful. There lay this face, a face from his childhood, clothed in a black veil. She had reminded him of Bree before he had tainted her with the curse. Sister Veronica’s soul was ready to escape, but her heart yearned for comfort. He had provided that. That – after all these years – was his secret. That was his curse.
“Death, grief, it is a trickster, Wesley,” said Aleksandra from the Study door, her jean bottoms soiled from the previous night’s journey. She had slept beside Bree, unable to leave the matriarchs side. She smoothed her twisted auburn hair and loosely piled the strands in the back of her head. She secured them with a clip from her pocket as she walked onto the balcony.
“We are all tricksters, are we not?” Aleksandra asked. “That is what we do? We paint ourselves, walk amongst the living. Parade and prance for them, adore them. Then we slay them.” She walked to the ledge and peered over it, staring at the smooth ribbon of traffic trickle past.
“Watch the river of ants, Wesley. Watch the self-centered, mindless herd scurrying about their finite lives, always fearing what they cannot see. They worship money and nothingness, beauty and pride. They pray to hypocritical gods. They are puny and worthless.”
“Where is this coming from?” asked Wesley. “You have always cared for humanity. We all care for humanity.”
“We are monsters!” She howled as a summer breeze blew through her hair. “We hunt them and feed from them.”
“My love,” Wesley whispered. His head drooped and his fingers wrapped tighter onto the iron railing until they appeared to merge – flesh and metal, married together. “I never thought this day would come, not for you. Not to us.”
“Wesley, what is wrong?” Judith asked from the opposite side of the balcony. She edged closer to Colin. And Colin edged closer to her, the one reaching out for the other.
“Aleksandra is slipping into the veil. Just as Bree did,” said Wesley. He reached forward.
“You are wrong, my love,” she hissed. “So wrong!”
“Losing Bree and then reading her manuscript, it has been too hard on Aleksandra,” Wesley said, turning to the others. Crimson tears pooled in his eyes, and his voice quaked. “We have no other choice.”
Wesley and Judith made preparations while Aleksandra holed up in Bree’s room. Two weeks passed and Aleksandra remained, unmoved and unfed. Wesley watched from the doorway as she spoke and sang to Bree. Nights belonged to her voice, and Judith began leaving at nightfall to escape Wesley’s maddening pleas and incessant humming.
“Do not despise me,” Wesley would beg from the doorway, but Aleksandra’s eyes never turned from Bree.
“My love,” he would whisper, always edging closer until the singing ceased. He would leave when the sobbing started, though – her pain gnawing at him. She never glanced his way. Not once.
And it ruined him.
“I cannot do this,” he finally told her, storming into the room as she sat stroking Bree’s arm. “Aleksandra, you may not speak, but please listen. I cannot watch you fade; I love you too much to see that happen. I no longer know if you can love, if you… feel. And I no longer care. It does not change how I feel about you, how I have always felt about you. I remember when Bree first brought you to our house in Russia. You were so young, so bright and blunt. Such a spit fire,” Wesley said as he slid to the ground, reclining on the door jam. The door creaked as his legs stretched past and out into the hallway, but Aleksandra’s sight remained fixed on Bree.
“You were a child, this red-headed braniac. That was all,” Wesley remarked. “Then suddenly you were breathtaking. You were everything – intelligent, witty, and gorgeous. I had lived a lifetime to find you. Now I’m losing you.”
He clutched the bottom of his shirt and wiped the blood tears from his face. Then turned to see she had still not turned to face him.
“I see, my love, that I have already lost you.”
Aleksandra grew weaker the longer she refused to feed. Weakness inflamed the bitterness and desperation betraying her resilient façade. Her arms – once entwined with Bree’s – became fixed until she wished to move them. Judith tried moving a settee in for Aleksandra to recline, but it went unused. So were a chair and cushion.
While Aleksandra bled tears for her mother, Wesley wept for his lover. He ached for moments to come, and longed for the tender moments of the past.
“I reminisce on England now,” he told Judith one night, as they sat discussing the particulars. “After reading Bree’s manuscript,” his voice quivering, each syllable bubbling slowly to the surface, “These memories of Aleksandra and me, before Bree discovered our affections, they are vivid once more.” His eyes closed, resisting the tears, “And now I’ve lost her. Our past has reawakened, and those memories are all I have.”
“She won’t sleep forever; Bree eventually woke,” attempted Judith, pushing aside the map to the Norwegian safe house.
“Not everyone wakes up, Judith,” admitted Wesley as he traced his fingers over Bree’s name on the manuscript below. “And those who do are never the same.”
“We have to move her tonight.” Wesley stood, walking to the door.
“We can leave another night, Wesley,” Colin offered.
“No, the longer we avoid this, the harder it will be in the end,” Wesley admitted.
Aleksandra’s torso laid slumped over Bree’s stomach, her arms clutching to the matriarch’s garments. Wesley entered – catlike and precise – grabbing her waist, trying to pry her off Bree. Aleksandra moaned weakly and thrashed her head side to side. He tried again, clutching her shoulders. He pulled back, but she did not budge. The moan turned into a piercing wail, which rattled the windows three rooms away.
“Let go!” He hollered over the screeching, but it continued.
“Let go!” He commanded. His grip on her shoulders tightened as he tried pulling her again. Despite her emaciated state, she was still unmovable, but the wailing ceased.
Wesley’s bloodstained eyes beheld Aleksandra’s auburn hair cascading down her back. He bent down and brushed a stray lock behind her ear – as he always did before they fell asleep. He could not imagine the turmoil existing in his beloved’s mind, but he knew it was his duty to protect her. Wesley leant forward and kissed Aleksandra’s forehead; she winced in her weakened state. “I am sorry for this,” he said, leaving the room.
Aleksandra moaned as Colin and Judith entered.
Judith barked, “Centuries of emotion does not weaken our strength, Aleksandra.”
“We have recently fed and are stronger than you,” replied Colin, wrapping his arms around Aleksandra’s waist.
July 9, 2013
Midnight
“The air tastes of,” Ale
ksandra’s raspy words pierced the silence. She raised her head, stiffening against Colin’s back. “No,” she howled, fighting with the wild Norse waves crashing against the coastline for attention. “Wesley,” she pled, “please, do not let this be!”
The moon hung high in the Norwegian sky that night. A spattering of clouds haunted the sky, their wispy tendrils snaking grey fingers around the moon, dimming its brightness. Each wave below smashed into the shore, carrying Aleksandra’s turmoil with their salty crescendos. The breeze blew, carrying the aroma of smoked stockfish and gasoline from that day’s whale watching tour.
The Lofoten Island inlet had changed little since Bree’s internment. Bree spared no expense maintaining this dark secret. She owned the inlet and structure, and hired a man to restore the outer façade to its original condition, despite her reluctance to return.
The others had promised not to return either. The memory of forcing Bree to sleep, of leaving her here to face uncertainty alone, was unbearable. For Wesley, though, entombing his wife, his lover, was proving impossible.
“Wesley!” Aleksandra called. Colin held Aleksandra’s arms behind her back. She thrashed against him but was too weak to pull away. “Colin, let me go!”
“We have no other choice, Aleksandra,” said Judith, placing a soothing hand on Aleksandra’s shoulder. She quickly withdrew it when Aleksandra bucked against the touch.
“My love,” whispered Wesley as he walked closer to her, cupping her face. “Oh, my love!” he lamented. His eyelids quivered, closing; his brow furrowed. When his eyes finally opened, a misty, rose veil covered his sight.
Wesley gestured for Aleksandra’s release, and her limp frame fell into his arms. He held her; he reveled in her coldness, and smelled the orange blossom perfume in her hair, holding on to the scent as if he could ever forget it. He ran his arms down her back, the spine’s ridges bumpy beneath his touch. She collapsed into him, melting into his cotton polo. Her cheek rested against his neck, her lips softly kissing his chin. This moment was perfect, he thought – perfect and bittersweet. How many such moments had they lived, had they squandered, he wondered, and would never have again.
“If there were another way,” he began, his voice teetering, “I would clutch it.”
“To think of a future without you, all I see is a bleak, foreboding blackness. When I read Bree’s pages, of that life before you existed, it was surreal. To think there was a time before we existed, before I loved you, even before I needed you. I can no longer fathom that, Aleksandra. Loving you has completely erased my past. Nothing before you is worth remembering. Yet still, I do not see that I have another choice, my love.” He held her tighter, inhaled the aroma of orange blossom and held it, savoring it, before releasing her essence into the night air. “As much as it destroys me, I must let you go.”
“Please, don’t,” Aleksandra whispered, her tears soaking his cheek.
Wesley brushed aside tears as he lifted Aleksandra into his arms. Her fragile body clung to his as her eyes stared up. He fixed his eyes ahead, into the darkness. Colin and Judith fell back and sat along an outcropping of tree stumps.
They watched in a stupor as Wesley carried Aleksandra toward the cabin’s outer door. The creaking wood severed the silence as the door opened, and Judith wept. Colin stared in horror and disbelief, watching Aleksandra’s limp arms fall away from Wesley’s shoulders as the two disappeared inside.
“You bring me to my death,” whispered Aleksandra, her head rolling back to watch the candles light as they descended the stone stairs. “You know this.” Her warm auburn locks cascading over Wesley’s hands.
He glanced down and relished how the candlelight caught the vibrant pumpkin and fiery sienna highlights. The vampiric blood played a nightly symphonic masterpiece in her precious hair. It was the first image he woke to, and the orange blossom lured him to sleep. Now the vile sickness of time was stealing this from him, too. He averted his eyes, focusing on the room coming into view. “I do,” he finally replied.
“And still you do this?” she asked as they stepped off the stairs and into the chamber.
One by one, the candles flickered, circling the room with light. The room had remained unchanged. Shimmering dust clung to the bedding, to the walls.
“I was hoping you would accept the alternative,” Wesley resigned, carrying her to the bed. He laid her down, placing her head on the pillow. A puff of dust exploded and settled in her hair, muting the vivid redness. He reached over and smoothed away what little collected on her face, but she reached for his shaking hand and held it to her bosom.
“We have discussed this,” she began. His lips parted as he moved to interrupt her, but she continued. “We agreed.”
“But you may recover,” replied Wesley. “Bree returned; it can happen.”
“You read the same pages, my love,” Aleksandra spoke gently. “She was never the same. It was a new madness, a new melancholy. She existed inside herself, having woken in a time that was not her own. Unfamiliarity surrounded her, everywhere she looked, and the only people she still knew were you and I, and Aksel. Everyone else was dead. Wesley, streets had changed. People had changed. I do not want that. If you think I am mad now, there is no way you will control me later.”
Wesley walked to the other side of the circular bed and crawled in beside Aleksandra. He edged his body closer to her, and took her into his arms.
“I do not want to leave you, either,” she admitted.
“Then just sleep,” he begged. “Sleep and when the madness passes you will wake, and I will be here.”
“We both know I cannot do that, and I am far too weak to fight the inevitable,” her words leached into his heart. He knew what would come next. “Help me.”
Wesley pulled away and peered into her eyes, and then pressed his lips to hers. They were salty from her blood tears, and cracked from lack of feeding. But he held his lips against them until his own were numb.
“I will be eternally in love with you, Aleksandra,” he said, withdrawing from the bed. He watched as she returned her head to the pillow.
“And I you,” she smiled, weakly, closing her eyes.
He descended the stairs backwards, stopping two steps up. He could still see her on the bed; the candles surrounding the room were still aflame.
“One day I hope I can forgive myself for what I now do,” he whispered, his hand reaching into the room. Wesley snapped his fingers toward the bed and flames sprung up at the coverlet’s edging. A trail of fire snaked its way around the room’s edge, and laced its way up the wall, crawling like an insidious weed. Smoke and flame ate the dust, and devoured the ancient, worm-eaten fabrics. Aleksandra lay motionless on the bed, awaiting the flames. Wesley turned and started walking up the stairs, the smoke following him.
“Wesley,” Aleksandra’s haunting voice screeched through the crackling. “Wesley!” He rushed back down the stone steps, halting at the fire’s edge. “Wesley,” she called. She remained laying on the bed, unmoved.
“I’m here, my love!” he screamed over the fire’s rage.
“Good-bye,” she cried, sitting up, her eyes glaring through the flames.
Wesley watched as Aleksandra collapsed onto the bed, the fire creeping closer to her body. Fire covered the floor, the walls, and it was nearing the ceiling.
As a wall of smoke pushed past Wesley, he turned and fled, rushing up the stairs and through the secret door. He did his best to bolt the passage and conceal it, but he did not know how the fire below would affect the building up top.
“We must go,” Wesley called as he approached Judith and Colin. “Now!” The two held each other. They had not moved from the stumps.
“Wesley,” Judith walked toward him and Colin followed.
“We will talk about this later,” he assured her. “For now, we must leave.”
“Who is that?” asked Colin, pointing to the cliff overlooking the inlet. “Hello, there!” Colin called out to the shadowy figure. “Come down!”
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“If we were watched, then Aleksandra’s safety is compromised, Wesley!” said Judith. She peered into the darkness.
Wesley stared at the shadowy cliff, its rocky surface littered with earthy debris. A dead, rotting tree lay against a large boulder near the cliff’s edge. And smaller boulders were scattered about the forgotten surface. The cliff was unreachable and inhospitable.
“There is no one there, Colin,” noted Wesley, his eyes turning to the sea.
“You do not see them?” asked Colin, his eyes straining against the night. “It was a woman.”
“Grief takes many forms, my friend,” replied Wesley, his voice shallow and flat. “Let us leave this place.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
July 11, 2013
5:00 am
The muggy staleness covered the trio as they walked into the quiet State Street apartment. Wesley had not wanted to return, he wanted to flee, to hide from this hellish reality he had help create. The body of his sister lies in wait, tucked away in a room, its unnatural heat frightening him. His wife – his amour – turned to ash on foreign soil – in a forsaken chamber built for nothing but destruction, it seemed.
Aksel, Bree, and Aleksandra: madness and destruction surrounded him. And he feared it.
Wesley dropped his keys next to Aleksandra’s on the door-side table. His fingers grazed the multicolored DNA strand on her keychain. He fondled the coils and let his fingers slip over her keys – the one to the front door, the one to the car no one drove. Their harsh smoothness felt removed from that moment, felt wrong. Wesley dropped the keys as a tear fell on the metal, marring its sparkle with crimson honesty.
Wesley kept his gaze on the lush Berber as he walked toward the bedroom. There was the bed he and Aleksandra shared. The covers on her side were still turned back, the depression in her pillow still present from the day before. He could still smell her Hermes Eau D’Orange Verte perfume on the bedspread, on her pillow, in the air itself.
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