The Journal of Edwin Hale (Silver Thorn Book 1)

by Gene Baker

  “It really isn’t necessary to have this conversation now if you don’t want to.”

  “Ask me and I will tell you.”

  Hale turned onto his side and stared at the back of his beautiful vision’s head. As wispy clouds move slowly over the face of the moon, its cold, lifeless light gave the illusion of her hair moving in coal-black waves on a fathomless ocean.

  “Are you alive . . . or dead?”

  For what seemed to be hours to Edwin, the only sound he heard was the chirping of crickets and the crying of a whippoorwill. When Merrilee finally answered his question, the sadness in her voice made the night birds seem absolutely joyful.

  “I am…a little of both. I am dead during the day, and come back to life at night.”

  Hale turned over onto his back again and closed his eyes. After a minute to let the storm of thoughts and emotions subside, he spoke with a quivering, high pitched voice.

  “None of the rest matters to me now. I will learn it all as we go along.”

  In a flash, Merrilee flipped over and Edwin found himself nose to nose with her.

  “No, Eddie, your life depends on having as complete a picture of what to expect as possible!”

  “Okay! What about that blood drinking thing then?”

  Merrilee rose up and positioned herself to sit cross-legged beside Edwin. Her face turned in the direction of the Blue Light Cemetery among the thick forest near Howard’s house. One of the azure orbs from which the burial ground gets its name rose up out of the low underbrush and quickly faded away.

  “Vampires must drink human blood at least every three days. Much longer, and the hunger takes over and we become particularly dangerous to any human we come in contact with. Even the ones we care about. No love is strong enough to fight that need. After feeding, we Nocturnals are almost feverishly warm. The longer we go before drinking again, the more our body temperature falls and begins to match the ambient temperature around us. We become pale and, if you will, corpse-like, for lack of a better description.”

  Edwin heard little of what Merrilee said after her description of “after feeding, the vampire is almost feverishly warm.” The heat of Drahoslav Vrana’s hand as it gripped his. Then there were Merrilee’s lips as they found and caressed his and the taste of blood on them when they had first kissed in the attic. Fighting the urge to vomit, Eddie looked into the face of the girl he had come to love. She was everything he could have hoped and prayed for in a friend and lover. Finally, he croaked out the words.

  “Did this get forced on you or did you willingly accept it?”

  Another ball of blue luminescence rose out of the forest before it was enveloped in a low fog rolling in from the small valley formed by the hills in the distance. It seemed to linger longer than the others before it, too, winked out.

  “Despite what you have read, a human has to willingly choose to become one of us. I was angry, Edwin. I was angry and tired of always being a victim! I asked Master Vrana to turn me and, reluctantly, he did as I requested.”

  Feeling betrayed and deceived, Hale put a sharp edge to his voice with his next question.

  “Is your life better now that others become . . . victims?”

  Merrilee’s head slowly turned towards Edwin’s and he was able to see her eyes had changed. They were now glowing amber, with catlike slits for pupils.

  “You judge me, sir?” she returned with an equally edged question of her own. The Paregoric and whiskey had worn off, and Eddie’s nerves fired off as fight or flight set in. He needed to quickly swallow his injured pride and anger to allow his heart to do the talking. It took several moments but, when he was able to speak again, it was much less harsh.

  “No, sweetheart! I know what you mean when you said you were angry and feeling like a constant victim. I can definitely relate to that! Especially after what I saw you go through in Vicksburg.” As the eyes of his love returned to normal, Edwin continued. “I guess I can honestly say that I would make the same choice if given the same circumstances.”

  A glimmer of understanding shown through the dark void between vampire and human, and Merrilee reached out to place her hand over Hale’s.

  “There are ways of acquiring our sustenance that does not make any human a so-called ‘victim.’ There are actually some humans that volunteer their services to feed us. And then there is always war. Since humans are always finding some reason to slaughter each other, vampires are able to conveniently hide their predations among the savagery. Whatever it takes, I have always endeavored to not let the hunger force me into doing something I can’t control. When I was first turned, I learned very quickly what it was I needed to avoid!”

  Hale’s sight went slowly dark, and he felt the same falling sensation that he experienced before.

  Merrilee was struggling to keep up with Dominic as they flew through the cold October sky, searching the forested land below them for the telltale signs of human prey. As the newest member of Vrana’s House, she was placed under the temporary tutelage of Dominic Chevrer. For the past two months, the young vampire had been bottle-fed at the Cajun’s home deep in the swamps of South Louisiana. Once she had come to grips with her new existence, it was decided that she should move on to the art of hunting living humans.

  Without warning, Chevrer dropped down into a clearing, forcing his protégé to almost bend double to follow him. Landing unceremoniously in a clump of tangled underbrush, Merrilee heard Dominic sigh loudly. Disentangling herself, she moved to stand beside her mentor.

  “Fold your wings, child. They will get in the way while we are on foot,” he said simply, looking over at her.

  The girl hesitated for a moment to comply with the senior vampire’s demand. It hurt terribly to sprout the flight appendages in the first place, and it was even more uncomfortable to draw them back in. As she emitted a painful grunt, Merrilee saw Dominic gracefully stride in the direction of a faint red glow in the woods several yards away. After a while, they came across a young black woman picking small bits of clay out of a hole she had dug in the banks of a dry creek. Suddenly the woman turned on the two intruders and lifted her shovel to defend herself and her dirt. Dominic, without taking his eyes off the woman, spoke to Merrilee.

  “Look at her lips, how pale they are. Taste her breath, it is lacking in strength. Listen to her blood flowing, it barely makes the sound of a gentle stream. She is too weak to provide any real sustenance. You would dine here only as a last resort. On the other hand, cast your attention to that little bundle on the ground nearby. It literally radiates with the soft warmth of a baby only a few months old. The child is relatively healthy and, although the amount of blood is not very much, it is rich and will more than enough.”

  The woman saw the attention being placed on her infant and immediately launched herself to cover and protect it. A blur of movement and Dominic caught her by the throat with his right hand, bending at the waist to roughly grab the child with his left. With a sneer, he looked back at a surprised Merrilee.

  “Such a human response is to be expected.” With unnatural ease, he tossed the clay eater like a doll in the girl’s direction. “She is for you tonight!” He then turned his head and pushed his face into the middle of the bundle. A tiny cry, imperceptible to the ears of a human, was followed by a gross sucking sound. Surrendering to the excruciating twisting and burning in her belly, Merrilee Anderson leaped on the woman, who was struggling to regain her footing in the soft sand. Without thinking about the process, she instinctively wrapped her long, clawed fingers around the woman’s head and lifted it in such a way as to provide clear access to the neck. Merrilee’s face felt as if it was being painfully split open as the teeth in her upper jaw made way for the elongating canines. She felt a sensation not unlike what she remembered as biting into a cooked breakfast sausage. Then, a warm, sweet liquid filled her mouth. She greedily started sucking when the beating heart didn’t provide enough pressure to allow the blood to effortlessly fill her stomach.

 
When the exsanguinated corpse fell to the ground, Merrilee looked up to see a grinning Dominic.

  “I see our cleanup crew has arrived so we can be on our way,” the elder vampire said as a group of feral hogs broke into the clearing. After a sideways, questioning look from the girl, Dominic elaborated. “Human minions are not always available. You will one day learn to summon, as I have just done, the local wildlife to take care of the evidence of our feedings.”

  The twisted voice of Bobby shouting out from the attic window painfully ripped into Edwin’s soul.

  “Ebbinale, you sumbeach! Wen I fine you, you be sorry!”

  A gust of wind blew across him and Edwin looked over in time to see Merrilee’s bare feet disappear over the edge of the roof. A loud, angry screeching was followed by Bobby’s terrified screams reverberating through the walls of the house below.

  Drahoslav Vrana felt an unfamiliar wave of alarm wash over him as he saw in his mind’s eye Merrilee’s attack on Bobby. Instantly, he connected with his daughter’s angered consciousness.

  “Ease yourself, little one! Now is too soon. Let me in to help you.”

  Merrilee’s claws gripped the sides of the house man’s head and penetrated through the flesh until resistance from solid skull bone stopped her. A vibration travelled from the deep recesses of her brain and into Bobby’s. Once again, she felt Master Vrana speak.

  “That ringing noise you hear is a bit of metal in his head. The influence you put there may not take hold completely and you will have to revisit this situation again.”

  Howard was waiting like a child at Christmas when Merrilee arrived just a half hour before sunrise.

  “Well, did Drahoslav Vrana’s head explode?”

  Merrilee glared with feigned anger at her underling.

  “No, he actually took it better than I expected.”

  “Was Dominic there?”

  “Of course, it is his territory after all.”

  “I bet that pretty boy had to go change his panties. I wish I had been there!”

  “You like to live dangerously?”

  “What’s the use of having an artificially extended life if you don’t put it on the edge now and then?”

  “Master Vrana asked about you.”

  “I always knew he had an especially soft place, real deep inside, for me. What did he ask?”

  “Just if your little friend had become able to resist the drugs and if I needed to replace you yet!”

  “What a sweetheart!”

  16

  June 26, 1954

  I have never been so happy in all my life! My first real date. I did not sleep a wink all night because I am so excited. Mister Howard will take me and Merrilee to the movie in Silver Thorn. I have heard that Mister Walt will sometimes let people dance to the music in his jukebox. Maybe Merrilee would like to do that after the movie.

  Penny’s long and tearful silence finally ended with her dropping to her knees and clasping her hands together so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her heart had jumped into her throat and was pounding so hard it almost choked her. Still, she managed a whisper.

  “God, our Father, your power brings us to birth, your providence guides our lives, and by your command we return to dust. Lord, those who die still live in your presence, their lives change but do not end.”

  Why she chose to pray the Prayer for the Dead, Edwin didn’t know. In his mind, he was in love. The fact that Merrilee needed to take human lives to continue her own existence shouldn’t make any difference. Penny had always distrusted Grant and his “niece” and had now been made terribly aware of the reason.

  Hale put his hands in his pockets and turned towards the open door. He knew in his heart the reason he was so sad in what could be the happiest of times. He was leaving his old life behind and Penny was going with it.

  “I’ll see ya’ later, after the movie.”

  As he exited Penny’s room and closed the door behind him, he noticed Bobby standing at parade rest at the end of the hall. When Edwin came to exactly ten feet in front of the house man, Bobby shouted.

  “Ten-hut!” Bobby snapped to attention. “What are your orders, sir?”

  After learning the truth about Merrilee, Edwin thought that little could surprise him anymore. Under her influence, Bobby’s speech had returned to normal and he was now reliving his past as a proud soldier, with a long barreled .22 caliber “varmint pistol” in a worn and ragged leather holster strapped to his side. For the first time in his fifteen years, Edwin actually felt a strange mixture of pity and respect for his enemy. Going along with Robert Hutchins’s fantasy, Edwin replied to the wounded man’s question.

  “Corporal Hutchins, you are to stand guard here and not let anything bad happen to Miss Penelope!”

  “I will guard her with my life, Captain!”

  Merrilee had literally squealed with delight when she saw Howard’s gift hanging on the bathroom door. He laughed the hardest he had done in his entire life. All the sadness and loneliness of ninety years was swept away from the little girl by the simple treasure of a full-length mirror.

  “It is plated with aluminum instead of the traditional silver. That is why you can see your reflection in it.” Grant gingerly peered through the narrow space between door and jam and he continued. “There are some fashion magazines for teenagers on the back of the toilet. Also, there’s an assortment of makeup near the sink, and some dresses for you to pick from hanging on the curtain rod. The lady at the store said those were the most popular for girls your age these days.”

  As his Mistress lowered the toilet lid and sat on it, Howard saw her place the stack of magazines onto her lap. The sight squeezed a long held back tear from his eye as the scene reminded him of the Norman Rockwell painting, “Girl at Mirror”.

  The theatre in Silver Thorn was a small one and very rarely showed new releases. A rerelease of the movie, The Toast of New Orleans, was a seemingly appropriate occasion for Edwin and Merrilee on their first official date. The loud laughing and talking of the unusually large crowd suddenly ceased as the couple went to stand in line for tickets. After a few moments, from the front of the gathering of mainly older teens and some adults, the familiar voice of Mark Taylor boisterously shouted.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, if it ain’t Eddie Hale!”

  Peeking out from behind the tall and lanky nineteen-year-old was Odette Lewis. Odette had acquired a bad reputation for sneaking out of her house at night to surreptitiously meet the much older man. “When did ya get back from France? That ain’t Penny I see ya holdin’ hands with! Did ya bring her back with ya?”

  “This is my date, Merrilee Anderson, and she is from New Orleans!” Edwin proudly announced to everyone who was now listening. For dramatic effect, as well as to be able to be heard clearly, Hale allowed the murmuring to die down before continuing. “How ya’ll doin’ tonight?”

  Mark moved to leave his place in line, but his date grabbed his arm.

  “We are at the front and the ticket counter will open soon!”

  “Oh, don’t be an old stick in the mud, Odee! How often do ya’ get to rub elbows with a world traveler?” Mark reprimanded Odette.

  To put his most chivalrous foot forward in front of almost the entire town, Eddie shouted back.

  “Don’t worry about that, Mark! Just go ahead and get your tickets, and Merrilee and I will join you inside. Save us some good seats okay?”

  “Will do! And just because you’re the son of a rich man, don’t mean I can’t pay for your trip to the snack bar tonight! My treat!”

  As Edwin turned a questioning glance at Merrilee, she put an even heavier touch to her already thick Mississippi inflection as she responded to Mark’s proposal.

  “That is a really sweet offer, sir, but, with my condition being what it is and all, my dietary requirements are pretty strict!”

  “Mother loved listening to Mario Lanza and would sit and play his records over and over.” Edwin told Merrilee as the tenor sang, “Be My Lo
ve” with Kathryn Grayson. “I guess Mother listened to him wishing it was my father that was singing to her?”

  Merrilee heard the wistfulness in Eddie’s voice while she watched Mark Taylor and Odette Lewis fondle and grope each other when they thought no one was watching. She tapped on Edwin’s shoulder to get his attention, and began to mimic Odette and Mark in an exaggerated fashion. Eddie tried to stifle a loud laugh in vain and was angrily told to hush by the people behind him.

  When she saw her date occasionally glancing at the couple and not really watching the movie, Merrilee reached over, took his right hand, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Edwin sat staring straight ahead at nothing. After a moment, to see if Eddie would start breathing again, she reached up with her left hand and gently placed the tips of her fingers under his chin. Turning his head to face hers, she whispered to him.

  “I know that you saw what happened to me in Vicksburg, before I was turned. I just want you to know that I’ve had a very long time to put that behind me. It is a distant nightmare from my previous existence, and all that matters is what is between us right now. I love you, and what we have now, at this moment, is precious, beautiful, and all there is. I guess what I’m trying to say is…we can be as much like other couples as you want us to be.” Even in the flickering half-light of the theater, Merrilee could see Edwin blush.

  As Merrilee laid her head on his shoulder, Eddie lowered his face and buried it into the silk softness of her hair. He inhaled the calming aroma of lavender and tasted the mustiness of dirt after kissing the top of her head.

  “You can kiss me on the lips if you like. It has been a while since you did that.”

  “Yeah, and I remember what happened when I did.”

  Lifting her head so as to look Edwin in the eyes, Merrilee smiled.

  “You took me by surprise back then. I wasn’t prepared for what would happen, but I am now.”