Dark as the Grave

by Peter Dawes

  “That isn’t me anymore,” I said, but my voice sounded frail. Even the desire to hunt collided with the first pangs of guilt my actions as a vampire had managed to summon. Two deaths had already begotten a dozen others. In my mind’s eye, the crimson thickened and pooled, beginning to drip from my fingertips as the blood of my other nameless victims joined Lydia’s. “This is all her fault,” I muttered, rising from my bed and forcing myself out of my room so I might seek nourishment that evening. “Why should I feel guilty for any of this?”

  I passed by Timothy in the foyer without asking his permission to venture out alone. Michael I ignored as well, even when he watched me pass, his lips curled in yet another sarcastic smirk. “What is it, Peter the Blind?” he called after me. “Having a difficult evening?” I bristled and yet, could not be deterred on my way out the front door.

  Death, death; all around me was death. A frightful cold descended into my bones, my mind so preoccupied, I barely heard Timothy yell for me at the front doors. Mercifully, he left me alone. I needed to drown out this macabre enchantment running loose through my soul, while being tempted further into the abyss. Scouring memory after memory throughout the course of the night, I tried to determine how I started down this path in the first place, but my initial attempts were in vain.

  It was not until I remembered Sabrina that I finally found the answer.

  Chapter 4

  The man who became a killer started his dark dance with immortality in the most unlikely of places. It had been a coffee shop, situated a short walk from work, and a regular haunt for the hospital staff. As I mused on it, a clearer mental image of the café formed, from the arrangement of tables and chairs to the medical students filling in the crowd, either hard at work or mired in discussion. A more human me occupied one of those seats, and as I focused on the scene, I recalled the thoughts weighing on me the night I met Sabrina.

  While I could not remember everything, the vague sense that I had been melancholy filled my heart, as did the knowledge that I had been estranged from my girlfriend, Lydia, as of late. She and I had been dating for two years, though it seemed our once-close relationship had been slipping away, given over to busy lives spent immersed in differing pursuits. I had been brooding over the sands of time, watching something I held so dear slip away from me.

  It was the perfect timing for a vampire to lure her latest conquest.

  She sat across me, a vivacious-looking redhead with an air of distinction emanating from the way she held herself. Her lips pursed as she regarded me and as her eyes sought to unravel me, I could not help but to be curious. “Can I help you?” I had asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

  Lifting a hand to cradle her chin, she rested an elbow on the arm of her chair and crossed her legs. “I’ve never seen such a young man look like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,” she said. “I admit, I walked over here because you had me curious.”

  “I take it this means this isn’t a common practice.”

  “Engaging total strangers?” She grinned. “If I admit that it’s common, you’ll think you’re less intriguing than the people I usually speak to. So, let’s both agree that you’re special.”

  “If you insist.” A short, staccato laugh masked my unease, and before too long, even the fledgling smile I managed disappeared. When she refused to budge, I shrugged, lacking the energy either to shoo her away or lie. “Life,” I said, spitting out the best summary of my thoughts I could devise. “I’m just thinking about life. That’s all.”

  She chuckled. “That’s a weighty subject, Mr.…?”

  “Dawes. Please, call me Peter.”

  “Peter,” she said, allowing my name to roll off her tongue as if tasting it. Once she had satisfied this urge, she nodded, extending her hand. “My name is Sabrina. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” I said, reaching forward. We exchanged a handshake over the table before settling back in our seats. Something about having company had begun lightening my mood, making me apt to indulge her. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before. Are you from Philly or visiting someone in the hospital?”

  “Taking in the scenery.” An amused glint danced across her eyes as they met mine. “I live in a different neighborhood and felt a little wanderlust. You’re a regular, I take it?”

  The deeper her gaze turned, the less I minded, though a part of me wondered if I should have. “I’m a resident physician, so I come here often.”

  “Ah, a doctor.” Her lashes lowered with the trajectory of her eyes, studying my hands as she spoke of them. “Strong, steady hands,” she said before glancing upward again. “And eyes that see more than their share of death, I’m sure.”

  “More than you can begin to imagine.”

  Something about the way I spoke the words must have struck a chord with her. She examined me, brow furrowed. “Beyond the operating table?”

  “No, I’m not a surgeon. What I meant was…” I trailed off, debating for a moment disclosing something so personal from my past to a stranger. Why the most traumatic experience of my life decided to rush to mind in that moment, I do not know, but it matched my disposition, bringing out something darker within me. “My parents died in a car accident,” I confessed. “I was there, too, but I managed to survive just with a broken leg.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Were you young?”

  “Only thirteen. They might have survived, but…”

  When I trailed off, I detected the slightest hint of excitement emanating from Sabrina. She spoke before I could acknowledge it. “What happened?”

  I shrugged, more dismissive with the gesture than I felt. “I didn’t know how to help them, and it took an hour for the police to arrive. By that time, they were already gone. That’s why I became a doctor. I wanted to help people.”

  “And have you succeeded, Peter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you saved others from the brink of death?”

  Her melodramatic question provoked a soft chuckle past my lips. “From the brink of death? I guess so.” As I sobered again, I sighed. “Time catches up with you in the end, though. One way or another.”

  “Yes, but the question is hardly whether it catches up with you. It’s what it finds when it gets there.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Sabrina hummed thoughtfully. “Some people cower in fear when death comes looking for them. Others overcome it. They scoff and subjugate it, rather than surrendering. I think I prefer that attitude, don’t you?”

  I perked an eyebrow. “I wasn’t necessarily only talking about death, though that’s an odd comment. No one can subjugate death, Sabrina. It happens to everyone.” As I paused, a peculiar thought entered my mind, though I could not determine from where. “Now, if you knew something about avoiding it, I’d be willing to listen.”

  Sabrina grinned and allowed my comment to linger, savoring it before offering a more philosophical response. With that offhanded confession, however, I had already sealed my fate. The next time I spotted her in the café, I sat with her again and once more, the time after that. In all, we shared several conversations, each deeper and darker, leaving me feeling in an odd state once they had finished. Each talk always wove its way back to the macabre – what sorts of things I had witnessed in the emergency room; the people who had arrived beyond help; the people who managed to survive. Her words consumed my thoughts the more I spoke with her, until the night I stumbled into the coffee shop feeling dazed and vulnerable.

  It set the tone from the start when she broached the topic of whether I had ever treated puncture wounds. I took a sip of my coffee and regarded her for a moment to ensure she meant the question seriously. “Like knife wounds?” I asked.

  “No, no, my dear,” she said. Sabrina smirked, her expression a dare for me to sink further into the abyss than she had ever led me. “I mean vampire bites.”

  I nearly choked on my beverage. Setting the cup down, I str
uggled somewhere between coughing and laughing until I had gathered my composure again. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Vampire bites?”

  “Yes, fangs and everything.” While I collected myself, her confidence never wavered, her gaze fixed on me with a slight curl to her lips. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that something like that does exist. Have you seen anything that could be considered bite marks?”

  “No, Sabrina, I can’t say that I have.”

  “You find the idea incredulous, don’t you?”

  “Of course, I do.” I cleared my throat, attempting to match her level of seriousness. “It’s hard for me to grant even their hypothetical existence. Vampires are horror movie creatures and bad fiction.”

  “Are you always such a skeptic, Peter?”

  The question impacted harder than even Sabrina intended. In it, I heard an accusation often handed to me by Lydia, and though I usually handled it with candor, in that moment I found myself pushed near to the edge of fury. ‘No, I am not,’ I thought to myself, though I could not determine if I should direct my anger at the woman seated in front of me or not. I could be convinced of the preternatural, I wanted to add, but nothing had ever given me the reason to believe. Not in God. Not in the afterlife. Not in anything beyond what my experiences had taught me. And they had been cruel taskmasters.

  Before I could give voice to these assertions, however, Sabrina leaned forward and a chill settled in the air around us. The tenor of her voice turned soft and sultry, bearing a hypnotic resonance which wrapped its bony fingers around me. “Think of it, Peter,” she said. “You were the one curious about how to avoid death. What if I told you the prospect existed?”

  “I would think you were crazy,” I said, though the words lacked conviction.

  “Am I, though?” She smirked knowingly. “You want to believe in it. It makes me curious as to what has you troubled. Once again, you’re wearing the weight of the world on those shoulders of yours.”

  “Immortality.” I muttered the word, in part recognizing the riddle being posed to me. My gaze turned distant, training itself across the room as all the aggravation – all the heartbreak and hurt I carried with me – coalesced. If only time was not such an obstacle, I thought to myself. If only we could abandon the nonsense of busy lives and the breakneck humdrum which kept me from being happy. Suddenly, I wondered why we could not. Fear ran through me, giving voice to the suspicions I had not dared to speak. “I would like something permanent, for a change. Not whatever this game is that she’s playing.”

  “Do you think she might be unfaithful to you?”

  “I don’t know.” The mere idea threatened to make my composure slip. I shook my head. “I only know that inevitably everything slips away from you. If immortality did really exist, I wouldn’t have to worry about…” I trailed off, lacking the right word to encapsulate everything.

  “The transient nature of life?” Sabrina offered. When I looked at her and nodded, she allowed a slight frown to tug at her lips. “Immortality can be as much of a blessing as it is a curse.”

  I scoffed. “I don’t see how it could be a curse. Everyone wants to live forever.”

  “But not everyone can handle the burden of being something more than human, though.” She leaned forward in her chair, eyes taking hold of mine in an unrelenting grip. “Mortals long for death without realizing it. If you think the transient nature of life is tedious, then being a fixed point can be even more so. Do you think you could handle eternity, dear Peter? Would you accept it if I handed it to you?”

  My voice turned queerly subdued. “If it meant life slowing down a little, then yes, I probably would.”

  “You can’t have it all, though.” Sabrina turned her head askew to size me up. I felt her drift closer, provoking a shiver to run down my spine. “You want what you once had with your beloved, but her affections are fickle. They’ll change and shift and leave you feeling like this each time she drifts away from you. You need to ask yourself a question – what do you desire? Permanence or the fear of being cast away by such a capricious girl. After all, if you’ve been together for so long, and created so many dreams together, should she be so distant?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if I could grant you your heart’s desire? Here and now, on a silver platter. What if I could give you immortality? Would you ask me for it?”

  The absurdity of her question failed to deter me. Whatever trance she had locked me into, I had fallen under her spell and found a hunger I did not even know I carried. “Yes, I would.”

  “Then do it.”

  My eyes drifted shut. “I want you to make me immortal, Sabrina.”

  To say a shudder ran through me would understate the depth of its chill and how deep it afflicted me. I felt the marrow of my bones ache with longing, the skin on my neck prickling while the sensation of something passing through me forced my eyes open. My first glimpse of the world after making the request looked hazy and felt strange, like I had taken the first steps in ripping my soul in half. As my hands trembled, I realized how little I minded that.

  “Find your surety,” Sabrina had said, helping me to my feet. “Claim it for your own.” Without her needing to say it, I knew what was being ordered of me and excused myself to do it. That thought – of what was permanent and what was transient – played through my mind all the way to Lydia’s apartment, directing me to clear the air once and for all. And that I had, with the blade of a kitchen knife.

  I would never look upon the world with mortal eyes again after that night. As Sabrina watched me walk away, she had her own set of plans and was poised and ready to exact them. She found a searching, lost young man and rescued a murderer.

  Now, Sabrina would train a killer out of me.

  Chapter 5

  The sound of rain beating against the windows provided backdrop to my thoughts. I had parted the curtains for a glimpse into the night, but this time, found no comfort in the new world to which I had been reborn. Within the recesses of my mind, the flashbacks spilling forth formed a contradiction I could not reconcile.

  These were no mere shadows slipping out from behind the veil; full-fledged memories took flight within my mind. Animated glimpses of my mortal existence played out, forcing me to visit with the old ghosts of twisted metal and death. Not that it was the first moment I recalled my parents were killed in a car accident. I remembered telling Sabrina about it in the coffee shop, but it had lacked any depth of detail. Now it was vivid. John and Marjorie Dawes gained life and lost it just as quickly as reverie granted it to them. I was a petrified thirteen-year-old when they had died, and their death changed the entire course of my life.

  My father, a veteran of World War II, met my mother in England and they married within months. Home became a farm outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and together, my parents created an environment of discipline and faith, one that possessed the warmth found in television shows and wistful paperbacks. I was a headstrong only child, but never had cause to question my parents’ love for me.

  It all ended in a car accident, giving birth to the real Peter Dawes.

  The ambulance carried me, the sole survivor, from the scene with a compound fracture in my right leg. It left an indelible mark on me, even after I was sent to live with my father’s sister in the suburbs of Philadelphia. An uncertain future as an orphaned boy in the care of an aunt and uncle he barely knew left me scared as it was, but lingering memories of the accident also haunted me. The youth I once was relived the hell of watching two parents succumb to their injuries with crystal clarity even after the first of two surgeries to repair my broken leg. Tears were shed at the funeral, but no more after that. The rest of the time was spent ruminating on a fledgling form of survivor’s guilt.

  Had I been a doctor, the possibility existed that I could have saved them. After musing on this notion, my mouth opened with questions for my physician during my postoperative examinations. How did he come to practice medicine? What type of
schooling did he receive? The singular motivation to become a doctor possessed me and the humanitarian who emerged from the carnage of a mangled automobile held a near religious passion to mend bodies the same way ministers saved souls. Everyone I met from that point forth saw the would-be doctor and extolled my determination.

  Now, I murdered the lot of them with my teeth.

  Exhaling a sigh, I shook off the litany of thoughts, reminding myself I had not ventured out for sustenance in two evenings. When Timothy had knocked on my door the previous night, I had brushed him aside and drawn the lock before my decision could be challenged any further. He had looked off-put, perhaps even wounded, but any guilt I might have experienced was overshadowed by the turmoil in my soul. Rising to my feet, I fetched my coat, grateful the muscle memory of keeping up appearances had already taken root. Within moments, I found myself outside, seeking out would-be prey.

  Soon enough, the warmth of a fresh kill coursed through my veins, a small piece of sanity amidst the chaos. Hands buried in the pockets of my coat, my gaze jumped from one building to the next as a steady rain pelted me with cold drops of moisture. Walking had been a favored pastime as a human, and as I progressed farther into the city, I hoped it might clear my mind.

  Instead, I found myself pondering Lydia’s murder again – knowing this had been that act which birthed the being I was now. It seemed a macabre crescendo to what had been a two-year love affair. Try as I might, though, any memory of our happier times seemed purged, leaving me with an incomplete picture of a shattered heart. Swiping her necklace as she died might have been the bitterest act of all.

  Immediately, my footsteps ceased, right as the steady rain turned into a downpour. Strands of my hair dripped and my coat clung to my frame, but memory of that necklace proved to be more important. “Timothy mentioned my wallet,” I said aloud, furrowing my brow at the thought. Had I dropped the chain after ripping it from her throat, or shoved it into my pocket? Through the haze of trauma, I could not remember, but if there was a chance I still had it…