Rising to darkness

by Lucia Guglielminetti

  When she walked into my room that night, then, I welcomed her with a smile, even though it was forced, and waved. She wore a beautiful emerald green dress and, like all her other clothes, looked like it just came out of the Middle Ages, which all the more highlighted her flaming red hair, long and wild.

  "You're very beautiful tonight," I told her.

  "What is it that you want to ask me, Raistan?"

  Some days before I revealed to her my true name and she seemed enthusiastic, I wonder why.

  I must confess that there was something about her, about all of them, which I found disturbing. Perhaps I was guided by the same unexplained survival instinct that drove Hammerfall people to keep their distance from them; it was as if I continuously held my breath when I was with her, unable to relax. Small details came to mind at night when I laid in my huge bed, sometimes alone, sometimes with her at my side. The first time she came by my side I tried to object, but she silenced me by pressing her finger on my lips. "I don't want anything from you, just to lay beside you. You smell wonderfully," she had said, and I could not argue. What could she have gotten, anyway? Everything was dead, down there.

  She used to lean her head on my shoulder, holding me, and sometimes she spoke to me, sometimes just silence. There was, however, one indisputable fact: she never slept! One night, I was terrified because when I woke up, unbeknownst to her, I felt her presence beside me, against me, and I could not hear her breathing.

  "Shibeen? Are you all right?" I asked her.

  She giggled. "Of course. Why?"

  "Nothing... I... nothing."

  Another giggle.

  "Sleep, Raist. Sleep peacefully."

  However, I am digressing again.

  I was telling you when she made her way into my room and she cut off my attempt to flatter her with that simple question.

  "Well, as we're talking about that, I feel much better now and I'd like to go home, really. I'm very grateful for all you have done for me, but, as I told you, I have a wife and a person whom I consider to be my mother probably worrying to death about me. I must go back to them."

  Her answer made my blood run cold. "They're no longer anguishing over you. I told them that you were dead."

  For a moment, I thought I did not understand. Her accent was very strange. Sometimes a few seconds would pass before my brain could decode the meaning of her words.

  "What?"

  "I told them you were dead. I went to your coal store ten days ago pretending to be someone from St. Martin's hospital’s humanitarian organization, and I told them you died in the fire of the tavern where you had been spending your time. I also lead them to see a burnt body in the cemetery chapel... Poor things, they were inconsolable, especially the old woman. Now, you have a beautiful tomb and two less loads to worry about. You're free, my love."

  I was staring at her in horror, incapable of processing her words.

  "You... you're joking. You couldn't have done such a thing!"

  "You still have no an idea of what I'm capable of doing, my dear, but I'll show you in due course. We have plenty of time now. You're mine."

  "You, fucking bitch..." Bad words were rapidly forming, burning my lips, but I had no time to say them: with speed that even shocked myself, the same one that I’d eventually master a little later, I had her next to me, her cold hand clawed at my neck, her face just a few inches from mine.

  "Don't ever try to insult me, again, you human wreckage! If it weren’t for me, you'd be in some filthy alley rotting, just as you were thinking before. I saved you and I will save you again, if I want, so don't ever dare to disrespect me another time. Are we clear? "

  I grabbed her wrist to loosen her grasp on my throat which was surprisingly strong, but I could not budge her an inch. Then, she let me free and burst out laughing.

  "You're puzzled, aren't you? You're wondering what it is that you're dealing with, you're terrorized. You hate that your legs are preventing you from escaping, yet you're also curious. Didn’t my words disturb you? Don't you want to know what I mean? Don't you want some answers to all those questions you haven’t yet dared to ask during these past few days? It's now time for the truth, Raistan Van Hoeck, because there won't be any other besides the present. Ask and I'll answer you sincerely. And I want the same promise from you too.

  "I won't promise you anything, I don't believe a single word that you have told me! It's a trick, a lie to fool me so I would stay here with you, but it won't work on me. I swear, I'll crawl, I'll do anything, but I'll succeed in leaving this house, even if I die doing so. I will never submit to you, you will never get anything from me, if not only hate."

  "Then, dear Dutchman, you leave me no choice."

  She removed her glasses, and I could finally see her eyes, two deadly shards of green ice with snaky oblique shaped pupils. Before I could recover from the shock and fear, she drew her fangs and I had her on me. I screamed and tried to resist with all my might, but her strength was frightening. I felt like Jack against the giant.

  Her teeth penetrated into the tender flesh of my neck on one side; it wasn't the pain that made me scream again, but rather the surprise of the unexpected attack. Her hands were crushing my arms, nailing me by the wrists against the headboard of the bed; she had straddled me and there was nothing I could do. Gradually, strength began to slip away from me, along with my blood; my resistance became weaker and weaker while the outlines of things around me lost their sharpness. It didn't matter. That was fine, actually. Half of a life, especially that of a cripple, didn't suit me. When I was about to lose consciousness as my heart started to beat much more slowly and randomly, she pulled away from me, panting, and stared at me with blood dripping from her mouth.

  "Do you want to live, Dutchman? Do you want to live forever and walk again or, more accurately, run like the wind? You have a few seconds to decide. Your heart is about to stop and I won't be able to do anything after that. Tell me, do you want to live?"

  Struggling with the darkness that was eager to take me away, I gave her my most instinctive answer, the one that would, in the end, determine my fate: I faintly nodded and looked at her. I saw her biting her own wrist, spilling blood from it, and finally resting it on my lips. "Drink my love, my beautiful breather. Soon you will be reborn like me and nothing will ever tear us apart. Drink."

  Keeping my eyes on her, I grabbed her wrist and took it to my mouth, sucking it. I saw her smiling with a dreamy expression, arching her back with a groan. While her blood invaded every fiber of my being, I felt myself sinking and, at the same time, levitating. Then, my whole body caught fire, even my legs, which I hadn't felt for days, a fire that came from within which I could not extinguish. The pain was awful, the worst that I had ever felt, and it seemed to have no end. I was not able to speak to ask for help nor could I scream. I was imprisoned within myself with this horrible monster ripping through me, tearing me piece by piece in perpetual torture.

  Minutes became hours. Hours turned into days: three, even though I was not aware of it.

  Then, when I started to think I was finally in hell and I had to endure that agony for an eternity, mad in terror, pain started to retreat like the tides on the shore.

  At first, I thought it was just a dream, a figment of my imagination, that would soon make way for the excruciating torment to come back again, but then I realized that some parts of my body were finally pain-free. In addition, I was starting to hear voices around me, broken phrases with no logical order, sounding like a radio station with interference.

  "Almost done..."

  "Not here alone..."

  "Hush..."

  Again that feeling of floating but, this time, in the opposite direction. If, at the beginning of that horrible torture I felt like I was sinking into a dark and incomprehensible place where all suffering lurked, now I was surfacing from it at a great speed. However, the pain did not seem to be aware of this new occurrence and decided that it did not want to let me go, even though now it was more s
uperficial. I myself was close to breaking the surface of a lake made of acid and fire. At least I could scream, and I screamed. Oh, I screamed so much... I stretched my whole body upwards; I could almost see those final few inches left to be able to emerge from the pool of suffering in which they kicked me in by force. With one last exhausting gasp, I managed to force my head out and the pain disappeared abruptly, almost as if it had never existed. As a sort of signal, my eyes widened and I thought I was dead.

  A wooden lid was secured above me. I could see every detail, every vein, and every shade of color. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen, a complicated pattern traced by a divine hand. My surprise to witness such vision and my awareness of being able to examine such marvel even in the midst of darkness kept me from going mad with terror.

  You know, I have never been able to withstand confined places. Being buried alive had always been my biggest fear and here I was, locked in a coffin. Instead of completely losing my mind, though, I was there, basking in the study of the intricate texture of the wood and its structure. Yet, how could I see it so well?

  Deep down, I was not even that scared; it was as though my initial fear was a result of a habit. I felt protected, safe. I was not cold, I was not hot, and I no longer felt an inch of pain. I was just sleepy. Soon my eyes closed and I sank into a calm and dreamless lethargy, my first slumber as a vampire.

  At this point, dear reader, I must interrupt this tale about my past in order to dedicate more to the present. I greatly cherish my relationship with Sophie to neglect it, but do not worry: the history of my life as a vampire has just begun and I will keep on telling it, trying to fill in the gaps, notwithstanding my efforts, that are a bit garbled.

  Now, would you be so kind as to leave 1700 and follow me to more recent times, which are more familiar to you.

  SOPHIE

  Interlude 2

  I was describing my first meeting with Sophie: about that first night with my new friend, I will add only that I had to kill poor Marie, the house cleaner, when the next afternoon she took me by surprise inside my hiding place. I became aware of my killing only in the evening, however, when I woke up in the closet with her body on top of mine.

  A vampire's sleep consists of two distinct phases: the first, the longer one, is in all respects similar to death. We are cut off from the world, you could even tap dance on our coffins and we would not notice it at all. A couple of hours before sunset, on the other hand, our functions slowly begin to wake. This is the time for dreams and thoughts in the state of unconsciousness, the only stage when noises from outside, like the phone ringing, have a chance to wake us up. It is also the most dangerous instance for an unwary human to find us in our hideaways. At this point, our primal survival instinct leads us to attack and often kill the person who had bothered us without the slightest cognizance. This is what had happened to my unfortunate maid, unknowingly guilty of having opened the wrong door at the wrong time.

  Nowadays we must be careful about who we kill. Police meticulously investigate missing persons; many inquiries are made. In short, I had made a big mess.

  I called upon the Master of my Clan, Vincent, so that he could help me get rid of the corpse without leaving a trace, only to suffer his fits of anger due to my idiocy and recklessness. He was not wrong, so I did not reply and waited for the delegated people to solve my problem.

  Vincent is famous for his inflexibility and his deep sense of the law: our law, I mean. In a nutshell, mercy does not exist in his vocabulary. With me, over the decades, he has shown a great deal of tolerance. I was not surprised, therefore, when one of his envoys told me that he wanted to talk to me in private.

  He is very old and very wealthy and owns beautiful houses all over the world, the one in Paris being no exception. Three armed guards stand sentinel at the entrance of his property, as lycans would pay large amounts of money to put their filthy paws on him.

  A silent butler led me into a luxurious library where I waited with some trepidation for the arrival of my boss. When he came in, I saw a furious expression on his smooth and timeless face, and my anxiety turned into serious concern for my fate. I bowed and kept looking down, waiting for him to speak.

  “Raistan Van Hoeck, you'll lead us to ruin! Don't you know that one of our most vital rule is not to kill our servants so that we do not attract the attention of humans? By the way, what the hell were you doing in a closet?! I want an explanation, a convincing one or I'll nail you in a coffin and leave you there starving for ten years! And do not lie; you know I'm as proficient as you are in reading minds!"

  I didn't lie then, I couldn't, and at the end of my pathetical defense I waited for his sentence, staring at the ground.

  "What can you say to justify this unpardonable imprudence?"

  "Nothing. It’s just that I still do not feel well after the attack I had suffered. I find it hard to be able to focus, to hunt, sometimes I feel like I am disconnected from myself. I know it's not an excuse, especially for a vampire of my age."

  "No, it's not. Do you think you deserve a punishment?"

  "Yes, I do. However, please no more pain. Not after what I had endured all those weeks."

  "You're not in a position to ask for any favors, Dutchman. I don't give a fuck about your age. Three of our most valuable warriors died that night so that you can live. Three! And how are you repaying their sacrifice? By behaving like a newborn not once but twice, you idiot! First, you aren’t conscious of the sun rising, then you don’t even ensure the impenetrability of the hideaway you had chosen. Don't dare to look up while I'm talking! How the hell could you be that mindless? I am disappointed, terribly disappointed, and, most of all, I am pissed off!

  I had seen Vincent this furious just on one other occasion in the three hundred years since I've known him. He certainly still holds a grudge for those centuries I had kept myself away from the Clan and the battles, which, after having fought so many, became nauseating. For him, a life outside of the Clan is unthinkable and he certainly does not take kindly to those, like me, who decide to try other roads. I thought it was wise to place one knee on the ground and wait with humility for his judgment to be pronounced. Meanwhile, two guards dressed in black had made their entrance into the room, taking their place behind me like gloomy guardian angels. I realized that the verdict would not be merciful.

  "Thirty minutes of midday sun, tomorrow! Stand up now. Look at me."

  I obeyed.

  "I want to forget that you exist for the next fifty years unless, of course, I decide to employ you in matters regarding our race. Am I clear?"

  "Yes, Vincent…crystal."

  "I hope so. I am sorry, Raistan, you know I love you like a son, but sometimes sons need to be punished. Take him away and strip him from his waist up.”

  He left the room as if he was gliding on ice, disappearing behind an inlaid door while I was led up a steep staircase to a room that was quite anonymous, completely empty with only a heavy metal door and a glass ceiling which was shielded at the moment. One of the thugs tried to rip off my jacket, but I deterred him with a snarl, flashing my canines. "I'll do it myself, don't dare to touch me."

  I handed my clothes over to them and was then left alone in the room that would soon become my own barbecue pit. It was a terrible night in which I did nothing but walk back and forth like a caged wolf, checking my watch every five minutes and sometimes wishing for time to pass more quickly in order to put an end to my torment. Although not even a glimmer of natural light filtered through the glass, I felt dawn approaching and, with it, the irresistible urge to sleep. I fought against that desire for I didn't want to be found disoriented when they came for me to serve the sentence. Despite my strong willingness, I could do nothing against nature. I looked at my watch for the last time at 8:52 and then I collapsed in that coma-like sleep that characterizes us, holed up in a corner like a trapped animal.

  When I opened my eyes, I was staring at the blue sky above me and at the sun, which I have been fo
rced to flee for the past three hundred years. I still wonder how they had managed to wake me up since I had been sleeping for less than three hours. They had chained me to the ground with my arms wide open using hooks sprouting from the floor, but there was no one in the room with me.

  I swore to myself that I would not let even the slightest moan escape from my lips. I have been through worse, I kept telling myself, I endured a week of exposure to the werewolves, half an hour is nothing. Then all of a sudden, I just stopped thinking. When the sunrays fully hit me, my body felt like wilting. Every bit of energy I had left me instantly, I could not even turn my head or blink, as if a giant hand was squeezing out from me everything that had made me a living being and was chasing me around in the realm of the dead. It was not painful, not yet at least, still it was the scariest sensation I had ever felt. If I could, I would have crawled, I would have begged on my knees to make it all stop. I felt something dripping down my cheek and realized that I was crying, in complete silence. How could I have forgotten such an experience, though multiplied by a thousand, which had occurred more than one hundred and fifty years ago? How could I not go mad when those few minutes were now tearing my brain into pieces? I didn't even notice that a stream of blood streamed down from my nose as I kept staring at the wall, hypnotized by it.

  What happened after the cover on the roof was finally closed seemed to have no logical explanation in my mind. I think I saw Vincent bending over me; I believe I heard him telling me to rest, that his men would bring me back home, but it could very well have been a figment of my imagination. It was midday for him too, after all; he was supposed to be asleep in his sumptuous coffin. In fact, when I woke up, I was at home within the darkness of my trunk. I recognized it from its smell. It could all have been a nightmare if it wasn't for the exhaustion still tormenting me. I closed my eyes again and let myself sink back into that sleep I was so much in need of.