Most of the soldiers here are fighting over land, even the ones on the Union side, but Ezra’s always been an abolitionist at heart. He spent almost a century as a slave, and though he speaks very little of it, I know it haunts him still.
He does an amazing job of rallying the troops. In the mornings, when we rise for battle, he gives elegant speeches about the evils of other men and what we must do to defend good. They fight valiantly for him, and we’ve done well because of it.
So much of our work takes place during the day, and that has been a struggle for Ezra and me. Eating is also difficult, at least when we’re not among the enemy. The time spent in the sunlight requires us to eat more to stay in control of ourselves. Ezra has been alternating between several of the nurses that are caring for the injured soldiers, but he doesn’t want to weaken them too much.
I prefer waiting until we find Confederate soldiers. Sometimes, that means I will travel at night alone, away from our base, until I come upon someone that I don’t mind gravely weakening. I don’t kill them - not unless we are doing battle, and then I only use my gun. Drinking blood until death has never sat well with me, and it reminds me too much of the time spent in Ireland.
The one good thing about the war is that we are all alone here. Every man here - boy, really, since most are hardly more than children - has left his family, his wife at home. For most, this is the first time they’ve spent away from their home.
When I am with them, I can pretend that you too are left at home, waiting by the window for my return. We can commiserate about our homesickness, and I feel something close to human. Something closer than I have since you were alive.
Last night, as I tried to settle in my blankets to sleep, Ezra came in. He was fresh from eating, full of life, and he lay down in his bed near me. The camp had gone silent, but sleep never comes easy for me at night.
“I heard you talking to the soldiers,” Ezra said, his voice low so anyone nearby wouldn’t be able to hear. I had my back to him, and I didn’t respond.
“You were speaking of Elise.”
“Am I not allowed to?” I asked, tensing already.
“You talk of her as if she is alive,” Ezra said, avoiding answering my question.
“I speak of her however I would like.” I pulled the blanket up more around me, even though it was warm inside the tent. “She is my wife. It is my right.”
“I’m not arguing that.” He paused, exhaling deeply. “I am only worried for you.”
“How is that anything to worry about?” I asked. “We are in the middle of the war, but words I choose to use to describe my wife are your concern?”
“This war is temporary,” Ezra said. “We are not.”
“Just because we are still here doesn’t mean we always will be,” I reminded him.
“Peter.” The blankets rustled next to me, so I knew that Ezra had sat up. “I don’t want you to get caught up in the stories you tell the other soldiers.”
“I know the difference between fact and fiction,” I snapped.
“Do you?” Ezra asked, his words gentle. “You still write to her at least once a week.”
I’d been trying to keep these letters secret from him, but Ezra sees everything. He has a way of knowing things I haven’t even uttered. Sometimes, when I’m thinking of you, he looks at me, and there’s something in his eyes, and he knows I’m thinking of you.
“What would you have me do?” I asked as I sat up. I tried to keep my voice low so others wouldn’t hear, but my irritation made it hard for me to keep quiet. “Would have me pretend she never existed?”
“Of course not.” Ezra looked appalled in the darkness of our tent. “I’m not asking you to forget her. But she’s been gone for over a year, Peter, and you still talk to her. I here you whispering her name all the time.”
“So what?” I asked, but my cheeks reddened with shame. “What if I talk to Elise? What if I pretend that she’s still here? What does it matter?”
“You have to heal. You have to get past this,” Ezra said. “I lost my wife and children a long time ago, and I know how terrible this pain is. You should mourn the ones you love, remember them, but move on with your life.”
“What life?” I hissed. “I’m the undead.” I sighed and shook my head. “I am only here for you, Ezra. I am alive because you want me to be. If I must live in my delusions to stay here, then so be it. Do not ask anymore of me. I cannot give it.”
“I was hoping this war would give you a purpose,” Ezra said at length. He lay down, watching the shadows on the tent from the fire in the center of camp. “Something to fight against, if not something to fight for.”
“I fear I’ll never have purpose again,” I said, laying back down.
“As do I,” he admitted.
Part of me knows that he is right. That this isn’t the best thing for me to do, but I don’t know what the best thing to do is. I don’t know how to survive without you.
Since I began writing you last fall, it’s gotten easier for me. The attacks, where I fall to my knees and sob or throw up, have almost completely stopped. I sleep better, although I still dream often of lying in our bed.
I am sitting in the shade of a tree, trying to escape the hot Georgia sun. We’ve stopped to rest for a spell, and many of the soldiers are sleeping, eating, or writing home. Ezra is smartly sleeping, but I am writing you. The way I do on every break. At every chance I get. As if I believe you will receive these letters.
The other soldiers tease me about you, about my devotion to you. When we have a chance to stop at taverns, most of them will bed local women if they can. But I never do. The idea of being with someone that isn’t you repulses me. I can’t imagine the prospect.
Elise, I swear to you, I will never love anyone but you. I cannot even fathom the idea.
But this war has given me some kind of direction. When I am fighting, I hardly think of you. My head is in the battle, even if my heart remains with you.
Being a soldier might be the only that makes sense to me.
It’s not that my life has meaning, but what I am doing matters. Because of what we are, Ezra and I have great advantages to help the other soldiers.
We can hear and see things before they do and let them know when enemies are approaching. We are stronger and much harder to hurt, so we can take bigger risks.
A lot of our time is spent protecting our battalion, as opposed to simply fighting the Confederacy. But I prefer that. I prefer to know I am saving someone than killing them. In my lifetime, I will see far more death than I can possibly imagine, but I would like to put it off for as long as I can.
We are moving on again, so I must cut this short. But I will write to you again, and again, and again. No matter what Ezra says.
All my love -
Peter
December 12, 1901
Oh, Elise forgive me. The mistake I have made feels too horrible for me to even write. I am drunk, and I know I am drunk. We came to Russia to get away, to hide in the cold and drink too much blood, and oh, how I have drunk too much blood. I simply couldn’t take it anymore. The life we’re leading felt so artificial, and I didn’t want to take Ezra along with me. I wanted him to stay behind, to keep running the business, but he refuses to leave me. I feel so much like Cain must have felt with Abel. Not that I want to harm Ezra, but this feeling that I am his keeper. Or he is mine. That we are meant to watch over each other, but Ezra is good and pure, and I am of evil and will drag him down with me.
Elise, Elise, Elise, what I have done?
We never should’ve left America. Ezra was doing so well in Chicago. He ran a factory and owned a share in the railroads, and we were doing well, it felt all too well. He’d even started to date a young woman named Abigail, and I’d never known him to actually court a woman. He’d only see them for a night and then move on, but something about Abigail struck him. And something about it struck me too. Seeing him happy and in love, building a life. It was raw in a way I hadn’t
expected. I told him to stay. I begged him not to leave, to stay with Abigail, turn her into a vampire, and they could live happily ever after. Without me.
But he refused to be apart from me. He chose me over her, and I think I’ve begun to hate him for that. He’s so dependent on me for his happiness, and it’s too much pressure. It’s too much on me. I can barely survive and make myself happy. How am I supposed to do the something for him I can’t do for myself? Why does he need me so much? Why can’t he let me go?
I don’t know what I’m saying or what I mean. I don’t want to leave Ezra. I love him, more than any man has ever loved his brother. But sometimes it’s unbearable. Loving anyone, being loved. It would so much better if I could simply be alone, if he would let me die.
But he won’t and I refuse to be the one to destroy him. I will not do to him what was done to me. Or at least that’s what I tell myself, what I’ve promised him. But I don’t know how much my promises are worth. My word means nothing.
I gave you my word that you were my one, my true, my only. You were to be my last. But here, in Petersburg, everything has gone insane. The cold has been lovely. The blood is divine. And we lost ourselves. Ezra heartbroken over Abigail, me drowning in guilt.
Was it right to make him leave? No, of course not. But I didn’t make him leave. I could not stay any longer. Should I have stayed? Should I have suffered in silence, watching him fall in love? If that is what happiness required, is that what I should have given him?
I do not know. Sometimes I feel he asks too much of me, but other times I feel it his right. To this day, my life belongs to him. Not in the way that my heart belongs to you. But something about me is still bound to him, and I cannot shake it. I cannot change it. We are for each other.
So we left, we came here. The vampire population in St. Petersburg is five times what it was in Chicago, or any other American city I’ve seen. The cold suits us all so much better. I don’t know why we don’t all move here. It’s marvelous. The nights are endless. The days are frigid. Everyone is so poor, but there is a majesty to the city that reminds me of Prague. You would love it here.
We drank. I’m not even sure how long we’ve been here. Maybe a month, maybe six. It’s all a blur. I’ve never been drunk on blood before, but I’ve been in a constant stupor. The blood is prevalent. They have bars here, and they sell blood in wine bottles. They have bloodwhores on hand so we can feed as often as we want.
We bought a place above the bar. I think it was meant to be a hotel. Ezra sold his factory when we left, and he bought the place, with its gold vaulted ceilings and chandeliers and lush velvet furniture.
We used to frequent the bar. As soon as we’d wake, we’d head downstairs, and stay all night. Then we began to have the bloodwhores and bottles sent up to us. We rarely stepped outside. Other vampires came to our place, and the maids couldn’t keep up with the mess. At least five different phonographs were broken from roughhousing.
The parties were out of control. The way we lived was beyond decadent. Even Ezra took up with bloodwhores in a way I’d never seen him before. It broke his heart to leave Abigail, and he must have resented me. I’m sure he did. But Ezra can never say that. He can never really say anything about how feels. So he took girls to his bed, two at a time, and barely spoke to me.
This was our life. It may have been the closest to being happy I was since you died, because I didn’t feel a thing. I even laughed. I laughed a lot. I laughed with tears streaming down my cheeks, and everyone thought they were tears of joy. But I couldn’t believe my life had become this.
When I sobered up, it was too late. I woke up in my bed with another a woman, a bloodwhore whose name I couldn’t remember. I’m not sure that I’d ever known it. The night came back to me in a rush, and I realized I’d gone to bed with her. In some drunken haze, I’d slept with someone that wasn’t you.
I promised you that you would be my last. I even promised you that when you were alive.
When I realized what I’d done, I lost it. My binge turned into something darker. I didn’t want to live anymore. I couldn’t do it. I was only ruining Ezra’s life, and my own, and everyone else’s. I’d done nothing good for the world in so long, and it would be better if I weren’t in it.
I went to the bar and started fights with anyone I could. With everyone. I finally found a taker in a vampire named Gunnar, only he’s unlike any vampire I’ve ever met before. I didn’t know that, not when I met him, not when I challenged him. If I was in a right mind, I would’ve sensed the evil in him.
He’s a monster, Elise. A true demon. When he came into the bar, the bloodwhores all scattered. When I had a moment alone with a girl, she explained that Gunnar always raped the girls when he fed, and sometimes he killed them. He’d kill one by ripping out her heart with his hands.
I didn’t know this, not when he eyed me up as he stalked across the room, and I made a snide remark to him. I was looking for trouble, but not even I wanted to be a part of the kind of trouble he brought. His eyes were dark and black. They reminded me of a shark I’d seen at the World’s Fair. Calculating and cold. He was only biding his time to kill me.
Or that’s what I thought. That he’d go after me. But he only watched me, studying me. I’d offended him, so he wanted to hit me where it hurt the most.
Ezra came down to get me just before dawn, as was his custom. If I would become too inebriated, Ezra would fetch me. I was drunk, but not too drunk.
I’d gotten in a small bar fight with a vampire called Petra, but I’d won easily. It left me restless and on edge. I sat on a velvet couch, drinking blood from a goblet, and watched the bloodwhores pick up vampires.
That’s how Ezra found me, and that’s when Gunnar pounced. He leapt at him with a glass bottle, breaking it over Ezra’s skull. Then he sliced open his throat. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it spilled his blood all over, staining everything around us.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed and tried to defend us against him, but I was weak and slow. Gunnar hit me, throwing me back against the wall.
“All his blood will drain from him, spilling all over the floor,” Gunnar said, and he sliced Ezra’s throat again, since the wound had begun to heal. “And then I will make you lap it up like the starving dog you are.”
Ezra kicked at Gunnar’s legs, and he slipped in the blood and fell to the ground. Even as weak as he was, Ezra’s always been strong and a remarkable fighter. But what saved him was the fact that he owned the hotel that we lived in, that the bar was located in. So the bouncers were there to protect him, and as soon as Ezra got Gunnar to the ground, they hauled him away.
Ezra wasn’t even mad about any of it, at least not at me. Still holding a hand to his throat to keep his blood from leaking out, he walked over to make sure I was alright. He’s now lying in the next room, resting with a bloodwhore.
I don’t know who I am anymore, Elise. I don’t like who I’ve become. My mourning has turned into something horrible, something that’s selfish and whining. I love you, Elise. And I have sinned against you. Not just by sleeping with someone else, but by dishonoring your memory as I have. I have become someone you would never love.
Ezra almost died because of me. Because of choices I made out of self-pity and jealousy. I won’t let my love for you turn into something grotesque, something that’s holding me back and making me cruel.
I have to let you go, Elise, my love, my one, my true. It is the only way I can truly love you and keep your memory alive, the way it was meant to be. I have to move on and stop writing you these letters.
I love you. I will always love you. No matter what dreams may come, you will always be the only dream I’ve ever truly had.
Goodbye, my love,
Peter
June 24, 1958
Elise,
I haven’t written you in over fifty years. I’ve thought of you, often, but I refused to put my pen to paper. Ezra deserved a brother again, and I promised him that I would be one, t
hat I would finally allow you to stay in the past.
I think that’s a promise I’ve kept. Since the turn of the century, I’ve begun to prosper, as has Ezra. He went back to being a business man, something he always thrived at, and I helped him when I was around. I went off to fight in both Great Wars, but this time, Ezra stayed behind. He let me go alone, which I think is progress for our relationship.
Being a soldier is still the only thing that truly makes sense to me. The battlefield is the only place where I feel at home in my skin. That sounds horrible, with all the death and terror around them, but it’s because of that that I can focus on being alive and keeping those around me alive. It allows no time for introspection.
I’m between wars now, and Ezra has set up home in Minnesota. I wanted to move back to New York, but Ezra prefers the Midwest. Something about it appeals to him, and I don’t understand what, but I am starting to believe he was drawn here.
The winters are nice, and the lakes are lovely. We built a house on a lake this summer. It was wonderful. Ezra made the plans himself, and we actually built it with our own two hands. It ended up being more work than we anticipated, but it was worth it. It’s a shame we’ll have to move in a few years.
I even got a dog, the first since Hamlet died all those years ago. He’s a Giant Schnauzer, and despite his name, I hadn’t expected him to be as large as he is. He’s even bigger than Hamlet, and I’m certain Hamlet had Irish Wolfound in him. He’s black, and nearly the size of a horse, so I named him after my father’s horse, Lysander.
Ezra hasn’t dated in years, not since Abigail. I don’t think he’s bedded a woman, not since St. Petersburg, but that whole mess spoiled the experience for us both, I think. He’s been chaste and quiet. Not exactly depressed, but something sated.
Letters To Elise: A Peter Townsend Novella (my blood approves) Page 6
