Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  Valerie didn’t help. She sat quiet for most of the journey, when I could have done with a bit of encouragement. A bit of ‘you’re-doing-the-right-thing’; a pat on the back.

  I felt so nervous, I started to blab my life history, my hopes and fears, but I’m not sure she heard me. Or if she heard my words, they never passed into her conscious thoughts.

  After too many hmms and yeahs, I decided that I wanted something more tangible. I mean, I wasn’t going to get a written contract or anything, but I wanted some assurance.

  “I need your word that they’ll be taken care of: financially and whatever else. I want my mom and sister set up good—set for life. You’ve got the resources, right?”

  Valerie said and did nothing for a very long moment, then she began to open a bag on her lap.

  “Your family will be well provided for,” she said, inclining the opening of the bag towards me. Inside lay the biggest pile of money I’d ever seen. I shifted my eyes quickly back to the road. There seemed no point in getting killed so close to my family being rich. “As long as I have your word that you’ll do exactly as I say from here on out.”

  “No problem, Valerie. I just need them cared for, you understand?”

  She nodded her head as the first sign of Oak Peak appeared in the salt-streaked windscreen. “You’ll be safe underground and your mother and sister will be fine.”

  I drove the last few miles in silence. I had my new ID in my back pocket; I hadn’t even looked at the thing. Valerie had meant it to be the key to my new life, but I had problems shaking off the old one.

  All the reassurances or money in the world couldn’t have prepared me for the wall of stench that hit me when I walked through the door. The house stank of rotting meat, coming from everywhere. I couldn’t pinpoint the source.

  Bubbling through the air of death, Cassie fussed her exuberant self, and suddenly the thought of not seeing her again made me doubt my commitment to Valerie’s plan.

  I kept a mantra going through my mind as they exchanged pleasantries; ‘Mom’s dying, the money will set Cass up for life’.

  “I’m Darlene,” Donny’s mom introduced, extending a shriveled hand out to me.

  “Valerie.”

  “Is that your girlfriend?” The girl, still clutching her brother around the neck, asked with a curious glance to me.

  “Mind your manners, Cass.”

  I’d never seen the devil-may-care Donny so uncomfortable; I decided to make the most of it. With a wink and a smile, “I don’t mind, hon.”

  The child giggled and wriggled down from Donny’s hold, coming closer to inspect me. Human children were so fearless; I instantly took a shine to little Cassie Kelp.

  “Are you staying for supper?” Darlene asked, emphasizing every other word with a cough. The cancer sat in her lungs; by the smell of smoke trapped in the walls, it came as no surprise.

  “Actually, Mom, I can’t stay long,” Donny started to tear up; I sat still for a moment, thinking I’d lost him. “There’s something very important I need to talk to you about. Cassie…go wait in your room for a few minutes…”

  Reluctantly, his sister grabbed a collection of dolls from the coffee table and trotted off down the hall. We all seated ourselves around the smelly living room. Before Donny could back out of our deal, I decided to appeal to his protective nature and his mother’s greed, dumping the mountain of cash out where the Barbie dolls had been moments ago.

  Darlene’s eyes widened and her cough picked up along with her pulse. “What’s all this?”

  “I have to leave town for a while, Mom…this money is for you and Cass – to take care of you while I’m gone.”

  “H-how long?”

  He looked at me, I nodded unperceptively as possible – my deal had been proposed as a lifetime commitment, sure to outlive both mother and sister. Far as I felt concerned, nothing had changed.

  “I don’t know for sure, Mom. Quite a while.” Donny picked up a rubber-banded stack and handed it to his mother. “But, you’ll have this…”

  “Bit lot of good that’s gonna do me when I’m in the ground,” she threw it back on the pile with the rest. “I’m dying, Donny…and we’re not talking years. It’s months at the outside. You need to come back home and look after Cass before I get to the point where I can’t.”

  Donny had made the connection between the odor and his mother’s health. I could see it register in his eyes.

  “I don’t know how you came across this money, son,” Darlene’s tone sounded brutal with judgment, “but, this house serves Jesus, and whatever deeds brought you that worldly wealth…I just pray they haven’t cost you your soul.”

  Mrs. Kelp’s condemnation of Donny’s gift might as well have been a wooden stake. He trembled; I mean, a vampire, trembling. I took one final leap of faith that I hadn’t picked the wrong successor to Amos Blanche’s throne.

  “It’s not like that,” I cut in. “Donny hasn’t broken any laws or done anything immoral, Darlene. In fact, it’s just the opposite; your son is embarking on a mission of good. If he’s successful, many souls will be saved – including his own…and maybe even mine.”

  My words left the woman cold as stone. “All I know is I might not live to see Christmas morning and you’ve got a ten-year-old sister who needs looking after. No amount of money in the world’s gonna change either of those facts."

  The doorbell rang, and Cassie came bounding into the hall. “I’ll get it!”

  “Right, honey.” Darlene smiled at the retreating figure. “You have to protect her, son. In a couple of months, you’ll be all she has left.”

  Darlene broke off into a coughing fit so violent I never heard him approach. I turned to the door just as Amos Blanche walked through.

  “Don’t even think about it, Valerie.” His words cut across the room like a scythe.

  I’m not sure what she’d had in mind, but she sure stopped in her tracks.

  “And all this cash lying around.” Amos walked into the living room, the two familiar football jocks close behind him. “You’d think people would be more careful with their valuables.” He flipped a couple of the bundles. “This your whole life savings, Valerie?”

  She shook her head.

  “Tell him to stand still and say nothing,” Amos said. “Tell him.”

  Valerie reluctantly turned to me. “Stand still, Donny. Say nothing.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what to do, but when Amos took Cassie under his arm, I went for him. Well, my thoughts went for him. I stood exactly as still as before, while my mind raced across the room to my sister’s defense.

  “Such a nice child.” He crouched low, running his hands over her shoulders, her sides.

  NO! I screamed, but of course, I’d already been silenced.

  “Such a pity that I like my girls with more…juice.”

  With a twist of his hands, he twisted her neck painfully to the side. Then leaned into her and drank deeply from her extended throat.

  My mother screamed, throwing herself at Amos. His henchmen intervened; holding her, maliciously, just inches away from Cassie’s dying eyes.

  Amos rose from Cassie’s limp frame, and let her fall to the floor. He nodded to the jocks, who both tore into my mother like ravenous wolves.

  “I don’t eat rancid flesh,” Amos sneered. “But she’ll do for these two.”

  I stood in silence, as my head protested so much I thought it would burst.

  “Run, Donny,” Valerie said.

  I felt the shackles suddenly leave me, but to my surprise, run seemed to be the last thing on my mind. I grabbed a large brass cross from the dinner table and took a step towards Amos.

  The jocks had placed themselves between me and Amos, but they needn’t have bothered.

  Clutching the cross as an axe, I felt change wash over my immortal skin. Light shone on me – or maybe through me. I stopped in my tracks. Rage turned to calm, almost as if an invisible cloak enveloped me. All my life, I’d rebelled agains
t my mother’s beliefs; now standing, cross in hand, I felt as small as I’d ever been.

  And yet larger than Amos and his minions put together.

  I watched Donny’s transformation; it happened in the twinkling of an eye. The rage that had suffused him dissipated like mist. He looked down at the crucifix in his hand as if the little figure of the man nailed to it had animated and spoke directly to him.

  “You didn’t pick me,” Donny said to Amos Blanche, a wild, fearless smile overtaking his expression. “He did.”

  Donny laid the cross down atop the pile of money his mother had so fervently rejected. Without so much as a glance to me or his fallen family members, he held his arms out to Amos as if waiting for shackles.

  “There’s nothing you can do to me now, Amos Blanche,” he said. “In taking their lives, you’ve left me no reason to fear death. And you can be sure of one thing: I will never be like you, I will never take a human life, and I will never do your bidding.”

  Like Jesus being led to His crucifixion, Donny surrendered himself peacefully to the guards barring him from Amos Blanche. Even knowing the fate that awaited me in Amos’s torture chamber, I smiled as I watched him go.

  Donny Kelp had gone off to die; I only hoped that the new identity in his pocket, Jackson Cole, would one day rise up in his place.

  I began to cry. But not tears of pain, tears of joy.

  I looked at Amos and his henchmen; Valerie included, and knew that I stood above them and their petty earthly dealings.

  I raised no objection when they led me away. They drove me back to Amos’s house along the snowy roads at a frantic pace, but fear never entered my mind.

  I raised no hand in defense as they punished me that night, or the subsequent others.

  They tried to force me to drink human blood, but I refused. They even poured it down my throat by force, and I threw it back up at them. The beatings were so bad, I thought I’d die, but vampire bones fix much quicker than humans’. Every morning, I’d be whole again, ready for another round.

  Every night for two months, Amos drank of Valerie’s blood, vampire feeding from vampire. And every night, he did it right in front of me. For the first week she stood defiant, then she gradually became quieter, sullen, until at last, she lay little more than a husk. On the sixty-first night, Amos fed from her supine form for the last time. As he sunk his teeth into her throat, Valerie finally died, crumbling into dust onto the cell floor.

  At her death, I felt nothing, but I rose from the room, and slowly walked to my room.

  I knew enough about vampire ‘beholding’ to know that technically I’d been freed.

  Donnie Kelp had been released from Valerie’s spell.

  The next morning, darting past the usual football guards, with my new ID still in my back pocket, Jackson Cole ran.

  And I ran as a vampire, blinding speed, the towns passing by me in droves.

  At first I could hear the jocks behind me, their panting echoing my own, but they didn’t have my incentive, my will to survive.

  After an hour of running, I found no pursuit in sight, but I kept going. The country passed as a blur, until I realized that the landscape had completely changed.

  In place of the chilly February Pennsylvania morning lay a desert sunrise. I felt the warm sands under my blistered feet.

  I had run until the soles of my shoes were worn away.

  I looked at the colored desert sands and distant mountains, and knew Jackson Cole was never going to be bothered by Amos Blanche again.

  The First Helsing: Howard Weeks

  By Ian Hall

  My name is Henryk Wojciech.

  I was born in the free City State of Kraków in 1836.

  Kraków had the strangest and most fractured of histories. It had been the Polish capital until 1569, and the subject of many takeovers and sieges; it lay a city with a violent past, and destined for an equally turbulent future.

  After Napoleon’s exile to St. Helena in 1815, Poland got divided between Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Controlled by its three huge neighbors, the small city state of Kraków nestled between the three huge empires, defenseless against any and all of them.

  The Congress of Vienna dictated many such changes in Europe, but it dealt Kraków a cruel blow. Due to its ‘free’ status, the Jagiellonian University in Kraków was allowed to accept scholars from all three countries. Subjugated and intolerant Poles from all over converged on the University, and for many years it festered as a melting pot of dissent that plotted and conspired against the foreign rulers. The free city and its huge University thus became a center of Polish political activity. The conspirators strategized, debating for many years the future of the territories of partitioned Poland.

  But the city state of Kraków had an artery to the outside world; the River Vistula. Cutting Poland in half, it flowed past Kraków, heading north for hundreds of miles until eventually flowing into the icy waters of the Baltic Sea. Arms and ammunition were smuggled up the river and through city of Kraków into the Russian occupied part of Poland. Even the strong walls of the Jagiellonian University could not withstand such mounting political pressure; the dam burst in November 1830.

  Polish officers in Warsaw attempted a coup against the occupying Russian army. The old Polish army rallied in tens of thousands to the red and white banner, and civil war began. The battles against the Grand Army of Russia were frequent and bloody, and their brave fight for freedom lasted almost exactly eleven months. Finally, rather than face submission to the Russians, in October 1831, the ragged Polish army crossed the Prussian border and surrendered to the assembled Prussians.

  It proved a dark day indeed for Poland.

  As a consequence of Kraków’s part in the outbreak, Austria invaded the city state, and a new police force entered the city. Free in name only, the city state of Kraków groaned under the weight of its dissidents.

  Into this political upheaval on the 15th November, 1836, I came forth; a brand new Polish baby, under the jackboot of Austrian rule.

  My father, Henryk Wojciech, had worked at his trade of cabinetmaker for many years, and as the first born, I became another in the long line of Henryks. Before I reached four years old, I had a sister Alijca, and younger brother, Wilhelm. My mother died bringing Wilhelm into the world, and my father’s sister, Aunt Sophia, took over the duties of our mother.

  As young as six years old, to allow Aunt Sophia time to nurse my siblings, I went to work with my father. I recall the five years working with father as wondrous time. My father worked for the chief of Austrian police, at the new constructions on Wawel Hill. As the Austrians tore the old Wawel Palace apart and built a new barracks and a hospital, we’d work inside, planning, cutting, and fitting the grandest woodwork. Every day, he’d walk up the hill to the new constructions, his heavy toolbox on his back, the river Vistula to one side, the still waters of the lake to the other. As he walked, I’d hold his hand, and he told me stories.

  Every day, I’d get it drummed into my head that my nationality was Polish, not Austrian, and that the oppressors were to be respected, but never feared. In public, we talked in hushed tones, but in private, we conspired the downfall of the foreign police force, and the return of Kraków to a free city again.

  As a small boy, I had freedom to roam inside the growing complex, and often carried documents and papers between father and his ‘friends.’ No one suspected me of anything beyond boy mischief, and my passage totally overlooked. I waltzed through barracks and cathedral, from the university to the hospital.

  This continued for many years, and the military complex on Wawel Hill became my second home.

  In January 1846, the messages suddenly became more polarized; I constantly ran between father and a philosophy lecturer called Michal Wiszniewski at the Jagiellonian University. Letters were passed sometimes three times per day, and even at ten years old, I knew that something important brewed.

  Then one day in February, the snow still deep at the side of the ro
ad, for the first time I could remember, my father went to work without his toolbox.

  His hand clutched mine on the climb up the hill, and despite the cold, his grip felt sweaty and clammy.

  “Is it going to happen today, papa?” I asked.

  He did not pause in his gait. “Today we rise, Henryk.”

  I grinned, not really knowing what he meant, but assured that I stood at the crux of a new beginning for Poland.

  But father’s revolution proved short-lived. Early that morning I gripped another letter to Michal Wiszniewski at the University and set off at my usual fast walk. I had only just left the building when I heard shots behind me. Fearing the worst, I ran back to the rooms where father worked, but I arrived too late. Several policemen stood over his body, their calls of ‘revolution’ and ‘traitor’ resounding around the tall-ceilinged rooms.

  Shutting out the image of father’s bloodstained leather apron, I took off for the University as fast as my feet would carry me. Confusion reigned all around the complex; I doubt if anyone gave me a second look. Troops rushed in all directions, and police units formed up in formation in every square.

  Quickly donning his overcoat, professor Wiszniewski read my letter with a grave expression. The news of father’s death caused him to gasp. Outside the window, we could hear the sound of horse’s hooves on cobbles, as the police began storming the University grounds.

  “We must depart, Henryk.” He grabbed his hat, leather satchel, and cane, and pulled me out of the room. We stopped by a closet from which he retrieved another heavy satchel. To my surprise, he thrust it into my arms. “Guard this with your life.”

  For hours, we crouched in doorways and ran between buildings; my arms began to ache with his constant pulling and the weight of the satchel. It wasn’t until we were in the seedier parts of town that we caught our breath and I found the courage to ask where we were going.

  “Warsaw,” he said. “I have relatives there.”