The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires)

by Carole Gill

  When the bird flew toward me I screamed. “Get it away!” I cried, but it landed on my shoulder.

  “Don’t frighten it,” Ada pleaded, “please don’t.”

  At last the bird flew back to the boy and they both floated down to their places in the garden. I watched as they became statues again.

  “It was only a bit of magic, Rose. We’re sorry. Come to the moors! We shall think of it no more!”

  Before I could reply they guided me down toward the ground. They had spotted something.

  Ada cried, “Look, a hare! We shall have a feast, won’t we, Simon?”

  Simon laughed as he grabbed the animal with lightning speed, only to tear its neck asunder.

  I watched in horror as both he and Ada began to drink the blood that spurted like a great, black fountain.

  Now as I had seen once before, their faces changed just for an instant as something demonic revealed itself.

  I screamed and turned to run but Louis was standing there. His voice was gentle. “With acceptance Rose will come understanding.”

  I was surprised to see the others standing there too--Dora and Molly and Tom. “It’ll be alright, Rose You will see.”

  “You’re all insane!” I cried as I fled toward the house. The back door was open and I hurried inside toward the kitchen. There was brandy there to steady my nerves. As I reached for the cabinet, I noticed the cellar door was open. That door was always locked with a padlock.

  Something made me walk toward the open doorway. There I stood, gazing down at the dank, dark stairs. Then as if in a trance I picked up a lamp and lit it. Some force was urging me on.

  Go Rose. Go and see!

  I began to walk but recoiled for there was a stench of damp and rot but of something else too—the putrid odor of decaying meat. Yet still I went.

  I didn’t see it right away. That is, I didn’t realize what I was looking at immediately. At first they looked like sacks of flour or potatoes.

  It wasn’t until I got closer that I really I saw what they were. But then I stopped. I stopped because my brain was beginning to make sense of it all. At last I began to understand what I was looking at, for there before me were several corpses!

  What I had discovered were several bodies that looked as though they had been drained of blood.

  I turned to flee, but as I did, I realized I had come upon another gruesome discovery. For there, chained to a wall was Mrs. Sternwood.

  She was in a weakened state and called to me. As I began to move toward her to see if I could help I heard someone shout, “Don’t go near her! She is not yet destroyed! If you step too close she will kill you, Rose. She has enough power to.”

  Louis held out his hand to take mine, but I pulled away and began to run back toward the stairs, although without the lamp I kept stumbling and found I was sliding in some sticky substance which was all over the floor. It was, of course, blood.

  Suddenly I tripped over something, something that moved.

  “This is Imogene, the girl you saw on the moors, the one who lapped up the blood. We are making an example out of her…”

  He said more, much more but I could make no sense of it for my brain had shut down. It was all too much.

  The children had shocked me and then the horror of discovering the cellar had shocked me even more.

  I remember trying to run from the horror I had seen, but I fell hard and cried in pain.

  I looked up to see Louis above me, that anguished gaze of his pulling at my heartstrings. I crushed that feeling ruthlessly—that cursed feeling of love—because fool that I was I should have known that wanting this man for myself would have been my downfall.

  Chapter 23

  I think at first I thought the entire thing was a dream, the flying and the children—even the horror in the cellar—but as I began to get my wits about me, I remembered hearing Louis’ words…worlds within worlds and magical species… That was not a dream surely, or was it?

  Then I remembered the horrors I saw on the moors and realized it was all real. That image pushed a scream from my lips and Dr. Antor rushed in.

  “That horror out there…I saw it was all real, wasn’t it?”

  He looked so sad. Sad and judgmental as if he didn’t approve of such monstrous behavior. “Yes it was.”

  “Why?”

  “Rose!” Louis stood in the doorway. I turned away from him, for I could not bear to look upon his face. “Please, you must listen.”

  Dr. Antor stepped back as Louis sat down. “Rose, the children, Mrs. Darton and the staff too, they are all the undead. They are vampires.”

  I did look at him then and shook my head. “You’re trying to drive me insane. Is that what this is?”

  “No, of course not! It is time for you to hear all of the truth. You have been tortured enough.”

  “Yes! Yes!” I cried “I have been tortured!”

  “Please.” He reached for my hand. I pulled it away but he kept reaching for it. At last I relented and he took it in his own. “I will explain, but you must listen. It is as I said. They are vampires.”

  “Vampires?” I had heard of the myth, some nonsense about immortal beings that made up folklore—but surely it was only myth. “I don’t believe it!”

  “It is true, they were raised up.”

  “How raised up? You mean from death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who raised them up?”

  “I did,” Louis replied. “I raised each of them up, Rose. I have done it countless times in my existence…”

  This was all too much and I began to laugh but within moments that laughter turned to tears. I ordered both of them from my room for I needed to be alone.

  They didn’t leave me for too long. They returned within minutes. “Rose, please you must hear this.”

  I nodded and braced myself to hear what they had to tell me.

  When it began, it began with Louis.

  “I will tell you of myself first, Rose. I am the son of a fallen angel. Yes, there really was a war in heaven—my father supported Lucifer. He regretted it immediately but it was too late. He had become fallen…”

  Needless to say, I did not just remain silent during this confession. I do recall saying, “This isn’t real! It isn’t happening. You are insane and so am I.”

  But it was real, and it was happening. And I began to understand.

  “You saw the children could fly, you flew too because you had changed enough to…”

  It all began to make sense. What I had seen had been real—the headless bird, the hare and even, sadly, the flash of something monstrous that lay under the surface of their being.

  “How were they raised up?”

  “Each is raised the same way, Rose. They are pulled from the jaws of hell, but each returns to the world differently.”

  “And you?” I asked, looking at Dr. Antor.

  “I was a doctor in the plague days. I had been murdered. They thought me infected but I wasn’t…”

  Louis interrupted. “He was the most gifted selfless physician of his generation. He studied under Heinrich Henkel, the world renowned physician.”

  Dr. Antor lowered his head shyly but Louis went on. “He was caring for those who had been left to die. But then he sickened, not with anything fatal but with catarrh—it had troubled him since childhood… they nearly split his head open Rose, but I raised him up.”

  “And Eve... and …”

  “Vampires all. The children and Tom and Molly and Dora, too. They will tell you their stories later if you wish it, and I shall speak for the children, for they cannot tell theirs.”

  “And I am that…?”

  Dr. Antor shook his head. “Your fall has pulled you away; you are caught between two worlds.”

  “But I wish to be human!”

  “It is complicated, Rose”

  I motioned for him to leave me then. And so I was left to consider all that I heard and to realize there were worse things than insanity.


  *

  I slept and heard voices too, muted this time. No longer audible but muffled and faint.

  My hearing had changed back.

  When Louis came in again I asked him where Mrs. Darton was.

  “She is in her room, Rose.”

  “You are angry with her…I heard…”

  “She broke her word about something and it cannot be forgiven.”

  I was about to ask him something but it seemed so ludicrous that I began to laugh. “Please! One more question, you left out someone. Dr. Bannion, is he a vampire too? Are they all creatures of the night at Marsh Asylum?”

  “No, he is not as they are not.”

  I was almost enjoying this. “Are you certain, not even one?”

  “No.”

  My thoughts darkened further when I suddenly thought of what I had seen in the cellar. “Tell me about the cellar, please. That is one horror that has not yet been explained.”

  “They are the remains of those who tried to destroy the children. They came here onto the grounds. They were in the house! Tom had found them.”

  “The intruders, so you killed them…”

  “Not right away. They were used first.”

  “They looked drained of blood!”

  “Yes, they were. But they had come to destroy. They deserved to die.”

  “Please, no more!”

  But there was more. “Rose, you must listen! Just before you came to the club we had been informed that one of our best clients, a deviant by the name of Hartwell, was blackmailing us. He was their leader, don’t you understand? A murderous hypocrite, immersed in sin and degradation, who then comes to destroy that which he sought.”

  “But the others? Mrs. Sternwood and the girl…”

  “Imogene, the girl who attacked you on the moors, yes… she is being made an example of and Mrs. Sternwood tried to kill you!”

  “This is insane, I can’t stand it. It is madness!”

  “No, it is not. It was all part of it all,” Louis sighed. “Of the transformation, the wine—”

  “Oh yes! The wine!” I had quite forgotten about that. Forgotten or had nearly pushed it out of my mind so that it lay like a moldering dead thing decomposing in my head. “Yes, the wine…”

  “I shall just have to tell you straight out for there is no other way. You had Eve’s blood in that wine and the blood from those you saw in the cellar.”

  “That explains the dreams I had! I dreamt of her and also the children.” I slapped both my hands over my mouth.

  “There are two ways to immortalize a person...”

  “To make them vampires...”

  “Yes, they can be raised from the dead or transformed. To be raised from the dead they go within the very reaches of hell—and depending how that affects them, they emerge differently… they of course forfeit their souls.” He was eyeing me carefully. “Before you say anything, let me finish please. It will be better. The way to avoid passage to hell is to be transformed and this is what was being done to you, although the soul is still taken. There is, after all, a price for everything. You were nearly created—your hearing and so on became more acute, and now...”

  “It is back to how it was.”

  He nodded. “You are in crisis now. That is why. I stopped the wine, I didn’t wish to—”

  “Make me a monster?”

  “Please.” He paused before going on. At last he did. “It was so you would live forever and be hers.”

  “Hers? And you went along with it? How could you do such a thing, Louis?”

  “I am damned anyway. What is more damnation for a monster like myself?”

  I felt sorry, and even as horrified as I was by all I had been told I still yearned to comfort him. How could I be such a fool?

  He was studying me. “How do you feel, Rose? It is important that you tell me.”

  “I feel dizzy, not strong.”

  “That is the lack of blood, Rose.”

  “So I have changed back, have I? Your sick plan failed, did it?”

  “Not entirely, but nearly.”

  “Nearly?”

  “You are closer to immortal existence, but you will need my blood—”

  “No! I would rather die!”

  “In agony? For that is what would happen.”

  “Yes! Yes, in agony.”

  I wished him to go. I wished him to leave me alone forever, but then Dr. Antor came in. “It’s the children, they are pleading to see you.”

  *

  They hurried to me and kissed me and although they laughed and tried to be merry I could see they looked deeply troubled and far more pale and fragile than I had ever seen them.

  “You’re not ill, are you?”

  “No Rose, we are never ill.”

  “No, I should think you are not,” I replied.

  Ada put her head down on my arm. “Please Rose, do not leave us. We should not wish to exist without your love.”

  I broke down then, so hard I did cry that Dr. Antor had to come and aid me.

  When I was alone, I knew the truth. I would stay with the children; I would remain with them, for I could not bear to live without them.

  And whether I could ever love Louis Darton again, I was not certain. Yet, I suppose I even knew the truth of that, despite myself.

  Despite everything.

  He’d told me I needed his blood. But he couldn’t guess how much he was already there, in me, coursing through my veins.

  Chapter 24

  I would stay for them, how could I not?

  “So you wish to remain?”

  Even as he asked this, he looked miserable.

  “Don’t you wish it?”

  He took a step toward me, his hand already reaching for mine, but stopped when he caught my guarded look. “Rose for myself, I should wish to have your love forever—and beyond. Yet I am so guilty and ashamed for what has been done, what I was party to. It is all part of my unending damnation. One evil is connected to another, don’t you see?”

  I did actually. “And it all began with Eve…”

  A shadow crossed his face. “She is a creature of her own corrupt cravings. Make no mistake. Eve had you designated for the house to be close to her. Oh yes, she did that deliberately, flaunting you before me, to tantalize me with her catch.”

  “You mean—”

  “From the moment she saw you she knew what she intended to do. Don’t you see she wanted me to see what she reeled in?”

  I was aghast and it was some moments before I could think straight. But then at last I remembered what I had seen that terrible night. “I saw something else on the moors, a goat and Eve—and the goat turned into a man or at least that was how it seemed.”

  He looked away for a moment. “Yes, that was real. She did summon something…”

  I was incredulous. “A man?”

  “No, not a man, an inhuman creature and my immortal enemy, Eco. He is like I am—with one exception. He is Satan’s loyal servant.”

  He began by telling me Eco was fallen angel spawn as was he. “But unlike me he is evil incarnate. He has been at the forefront of every act of terror or outrage there has been. He shouted for Barbaras over Christ, he cried out for Caesar at Pilate’s court, he rode with the Crusaders, turned people over to the Inquisition. He is more like Satan than Satan!

  “Eve has always sought to have illicit relations with him, knowing how much I hated him. That was one thing I forbade her to do. I have not forbidden her much but that she could not do, even for the sake of the children. Yet she did summon him and couple with him. She did this to spite me, for finding us together! Rose, I have gone along with whatever she wanted—and it has affected the children. I am sad for that! But I have never permitted her to summon Eco. She could practice her infernal rites, but summoning was out of the question. That was agreed upon, she swore to me. Ah, but what is the word of a vampire?”

  “So what will happen to her now?” I asked.

  “She is no longer
taking tea or blood.”

  “The tea?”

  “Yes, the tea you hate. Dora has told me. It has wolfbane in it. That is the blue flower now in bloom that you saw in the garden. Mixed with tansy and brewed into tea it permits vampiric creatures to be resistant to sunlight and water and anything else that is detrimental. She will be destroyed shortly; it is her fate for she has sought it.”

  “So she can do this—die, you mean?”

  “Vampires can be destroyed, but those such as myself, sons of fallen angels, we cannot. We endure…”

  I understood at last as more truths were revealed.

  “My mother was human. She and my father mated on an ancient beach—her people killed her, such was their reaction to her sin.”

  “So you are half human?”

  He nodded sadly. “Her blood flows through my veins, yet—it has become that which is immortal—I am vampiric, although not a vampire.”

  “Do you drink blood?”

  “On occasion…” I began to sob then but Louis reached out to comfort me. “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry, but you do drink it!”

  “But not by choice.”

  “And the others?”

  “They are my coven. Molly and Tom, Dora, Eve and the children…”

  “And what of those sisters?”

  “Yes, the Lodge sisters perished too in Antor’s living time. I raised them up for they died nursing the ill no one else would go near. Yes Rose, they are all my coven.”

  We stared at one another for what seemed like an eternity. “Rose, you have decided to remain for the children?”

  “Yes,” I wept. “For the children.”

  With that last statement, he handed me some wine with an added ingredient. “Please, it is what you need, it is my own.”

  I raised the goblet and tasted the liquid. And as I did, I saw his life, that is, his existence.

  I began to see images that represented the eons of time he had lived through, yes lived, for I could not think of it differently. Battles and plagues, kings and knights and paupers. I saw every single period of civilization that Louis had witnessed.

  “Will I see more?”

  “Perhaps, it depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how much you wish to know.”