Descent Into Madness (3 page)

              Uneasiness strangled my throat, as the knot grew tighter.

              "It hurts,” I told him. My hands clenched my stomach and I crouched to the cool earth. 

              "You need to feed. Those first hunger pains are the worst, Bree. I promise," he told me. He knelt down and placed a hand on my shoulder.

              "It gets easier. Come, I will show you how to feed." With this, he motioned for me to follow. I glimpsed the convent once more as I walked back up the cliff. Just once. Then I turned away and never looked back.

THREE

F
eeding. The biting into living flesh, savoring the warm, metallic essence tickling his tongue – this was a sport for him. I detested the idea of partaking in such a vile practice. There had to be another way, I insisted. I had hoped. I could be a parasitic mosquito leaching Wesley’s leftovers, participating, but never fully playing his game. This could satisfy me. This could help maintain my innocence, or some pathetic mirage of what my innocence had been and would never again be.

              However, this would not do. Wesley said the hunger would consume me. The animalistic need to succumb and devour would taunt me, bringing me to the brink of sanity, until I was helpless to submit. I would wander in bloodlust, and then having given in to temptation, having fed, would lose everything of my former self. 

              The scenario he painted slowly became reality. The hunger ate at my mind, ate away at my soul, leaving an abysmal craving that threatened to erase everything I had been and so dearly struggled to retain. I resigned to the temptation in an effort to avoid becoming a slave to my bloodlust, and to survive.

              Had I known how the blood would make me feel, how the need for it would consume me, I would have fought the cravings with more earnest. Yet, I willingly bent to the vampiric will of this curse. I allowed it to pull me in, to call to me from the shadows, to lure me with its promise of nourishment.

              One sip was all it took. One tiny, metallic drop falling gently onto my tongue and the animal inside, the animal growing from this curse, purred with delight.

              With every drop, a hypnotic song played brightly in my ears. He had promised this ecstasy. He had known I would eventually be powerless to resist it. Just as he knew that once I tasted the blood, it would own me as it owned him.

              I remember standing there watching the man I would later dispatch from this life. The craving distanced me from the act, and I saw this turning point as if watching a play unfolding before me. Locked inside, deep but still there, was my former self. She struggled with this. She argued. Yet, the blood controlled the body – the will.

              As we stood there watching my prey, Wesley reassured me of what was to come. "You will become accustomed to it, I promise," he said. “And soon the drops will be ecstatic beads of joy sliding down your parched throat.” It was the bluntness of his words, how they stung with a truth the curse living inside identified, that widened the distance between my conscious and my hunger.

              Caving to the bloodlust is what I feared. This animalist appetite for blood could drown the last remaining shards of humanity left, and I could not allow that to happen.

              The man, a baker from the neighboring village, had supplied the convent with wheat the years our crop had poor yields. I knew him, his family, his daughters Rebecca and Hannah. He was an elegant man despite the time spent toiling in the field and the dirt caked beneath his thickened nails.

              We watched as he read by the candlelight, and the memories I had of him bringing wheat to the convent, of his daughter’s gifts of bread for the orphans faded away.  All I could hear was the rhythmic pounding of his heart. The smell of his blood – oh, the rich, buttery aroma – was a siren’s call.

              It led me to his door, which opened effortlessly. Entering, I found him slumped in the chair, the book lying in his lap. His throat throbbed, the veins bulging and pulsating, singing to me.

              “I cannot do this,” I told Wesley.

“You must,” he said. Wesley placed his hands on the man’s head and angled the neck for my access. The man’s plump artery quivered beneath his tanned flesh.

              Disgust mingled with lust as I watched the artery pulsate. I could hear the blood rushing, a raging river waiting eagerly for me to drink.

              “This first drink will be the hardest thing you will ever do,” he whispered, “but you must do it.”

              He was wrong. There were harder things in my future. But without this blood, without this act of defilement, I would have no future. I had no choice.

              Acting as his executioner, I pierced the man’s tender flesh with my newly formed fangs. The metallic blood gushed into my mouth - a warm fount of everlasting life. I savored every drop until his heart stopped, licking the last bits from my lips.

              His blood was more than satisfying. The drops – each of them – shared with me his history, his feelings, his life. I realized, after having drained him of his essence, that we vampires needed this almost more than we needed the blood. The blood fed more than our bodies; it fed our loneliness. 

              Once it was finished, I looked about for Wesley. He came to stand near me and signaled for me to watch him. Carefully, he bit the tip of his index finger until it bled. With this, he smeared the liquid onto the bite marks, effectively erasing them. We left the man slumped as we had found him. Asleep… just now that sleep was eternal.

              Wesley and I were together for four years. We hunted nightly, even though he no longer required it, and I learned from him everything I could. In that short span of time, really an insignificant hiccup to us, we traveled the vastness of Europe.

              We held a residence in London, a rented estate near the Jewel Tower. Later, in Dublin, I would frequent Christ Church Cathedral in the hour right before dawn. My presence in the shadows fueled a rumor, a rumor that the angel of death haunted the chapel, waiting to collect sinful practitioners coming for morning vespers.

              It was our year in Paris, though, that Wesley cherished. Near dawn, he would sit on the banks of the Seine and imagine how the water looked bathed in the nearing sunlight.

              Being young in the blood, I still remembered the golden sky, afire with deep oranges and radiant reds. My favorite time of day, though, had been that moment just before the sun finally set in the evening sky. The crimson ribbons swirled with vanilla clouds, and plum and pink stripes weaved a symphony in the sky – a melody sung to a child at bedtime. This time of day seemed more magical to me than even the twinkling stars that replaced it.

              There had been St. Petersburg, Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, and even a brief week in Rome. Each city was a new adventure. I was living a completely new life with him, with new eyes with which to view the world. We had the finest attire, made new in each city. Jewels from St. Petersburg, perfume from Paris, dresses from only the most delicate imported fabrics. 

              With time, I grew more accepting of my fate. As the vampiric powers seduced me, I further suppressed my former nature. I delighted in posing as an English duchess and he, a gallant duke; we made fools of entire cities. It was effortless to weave our spell over their innocent minds. This became a game, something to distract me from this horrid curse.

              Eventually, the journey ended just as everything must end. Even eternity must have a final destination. I admit that I can no longer envision what this looks like.

              Making me, Wesley had craved loved; he only found companionship. He desired more than a best friend or sister could provide. Year after year, I saw this in his eyes. He would watch women, talk with them, and then walk away. With time, he did this more often. He repressed the need to be with a lover, not a sister.

              In Paris, there was a countess he spent nights with. He always came back just near dawn only to return to her night after night. The court grew suspicious of their activity and rumors grew. Once her father demanded a marriage proposal, we left Paris. Months passed after that before he was anywhere near his former, jubilant self, and I wondered why. I had no concept of love, or of loss. Having lived in the convent, I knew not of passion, of love, of being loved in return.  

              That was the first time I knew he needed more than I could give. He refused, though, to turn them. One after another, he would fall in love and then, in anguish, abandon his women.

              It was the night before I left him when he finally told me why he always resisted.

              After receiving the blood, Wesley had traveled only to find himself back in the city where we had grown up. Most of the people we had known perished with the plague. The city, he said, was a changed entity. Commerce struggled, no longer flourishing as it once did, and many of the plague’s survivors were relocating to the larger cities.

              The night before he left, he heard a familiar voice singing near the lake. It was there that he came upon Lady Abigail, his betrothed. She recognized him in the moonlight, called to him, and he took her as he had taken me. A week later, still in shock and unable to live with what she had become, Abigail lit her childhood home ablaze and threw herself into the fire. He vowed never to repeat that mistake.

              The next night, I left him. Not out of hatred, for I have never held anything but the deepest love for my brother – despite the curse he has placed on me. No, this time
I
needed more. And although he denied himself of it, he did too.

              With a note left on his writing desk and my belongings in bags and trunks on their way to a new country, I left as he hunted. I took with me the valuable lessons he had taught.

              Surviving on little sips was acceptable. It was not necessary to kill your victim. And to keep my sanity, I lived by this. Change your name, your residence, and anything identifiable at the first hint of rumors. Holding too tightly to a place or a person can bring your destruction. And the one he most stressed, love from a distance.

              Of all the things he taught me – to hunt, to survive – I would quickly forget the most important one.

FOUR

For that which has come, there is Urd

For that which is here, there is Verdandi

For that which will come, there is Skuld

M
emories remained after the change. They were faded whispers, with images softened yet real. Memories invaded my mind when I least expected them to, when I began feeling more like the monster I now was.

              The night I left, such memories slipped into my thoughts and veiled my eyes. My father, reclining on his favorite chair; his hand scratching over three-day whiskers; his eyes drifting, glazing over, lost and reminiscent.

              Always in December, when the snow fell on the pines, and there was nothing to see for miles but the white blanketed countryside, my father would bundle us in furs, plant us gently near the fire in the Great Room, and relay age-old tales of the Norns.

              The Norns, he would say, were supernatural women – masters of the seidr. Eagerly, and with great care, they tended the world tree Yggdrasil, spinning the Web of Wyrd. The fate of every mortal is revealed within their mystical patterns and woven strands. Even the skaldic poets heralded their influence over death and battle. 

              When a Norse child was born, the legend says, one of three Norns blessed the babe with its fate.

              Urd, the Keeper of the Past, my father said, was an old hag— her straggly, silver strands hanging past her shoulders, her mouth grimaced in a snarl, her eyes encircled in the lines of time, and wrinkles scarring her haggard face.

              Skuld, the Keeper of the Future, merely stands, her finger erect, pointing into the unknown. Her face stoically hides secrets of the future of which she will never tell.

              In the middle of the three stands the fairest, Verdandi. She is the Keeper of the Present. My father’s eyes twinkled and his voice faded when he spoke of her. Verdandi was breathtakingly beautiful, her golden hair drizzling down her back, its strands an endless ocean of rippling butter cream; her eyes, my father would say with a forlorn echo lacing his tongue, were warmly hypnotic.

              To some, though, the Norn’s presence was a curse. They were seen as witches and scorned. That was how my mother saw them. My father’s folklore was heresy to her Catholic ears, and his poisoning of my soul with false idolatry was a constant source of strife between the two.

              My father had wished to name me Verdandi, but my mother objected. Verdandi, after all, was not a proper Christian name. She felt a proper name would ensure me a prosperous marriage – and salvation. My father, though, was forever lost in the fairy tales of his mother’s homeland.

              His affection for Norse mythology extended to the mother country – to Norway. His mother had been a Norwegian Countess before marrying into English royalty. She had once taken him to her homeland when he was but a boy, and he always reflected fondly on those short months. Frolicking with anglers and playing with village children - those were adventures my grandfather would never have allowed him to have in England.

              My mother had been Italian, a Duchess, of equal standing in society as my father. He married her for her title and a wealthy purse, and they had never learned to love one another. Their marriage was one of acquiring property and amassing wealth, of bridging royal bloodlines and creating alliances.

              She came, of course, with the trappings of aristocracy: a palatial summer estate on the coast, a traveling staff, and a cache of jewels. Her jewels – what was left of my mother once she fell to the Black Death - came to me, and I deposited them with the family banker when I entered the convent. Through means, I wish never to know and only to assume, Wesley reacquired them for me after his transformation.

              When I left for Norway, I arranged to procure those jewels. I took with me my grandmother's diamonds; her sapphire and ruby tiara are all home where they were crafted.

              The journey there was arduous, for I took great care in transferring my belongings to my new home. I sailed most of the way, only traveling by land when it was of the utmost necessity. I was still in my infancy and not in full command of my vampiric powers. I greatly coveted Wesley’s ability to raise me into the sky. When the clouds tickled my cheek, the misty vapors moistened my skin; it was bittersweet. He had always assured me that my powers would eventually come, but each time he displayed a power I did not have, my frustration grew.

              Once, when I was unable to fly onto a tall tree branch, I rushed over to a tombstone, pulverizing it with a flick of my toe against the marble. The rubble scattered, leaving a marble stump stuck in the hard earth. I had fallen onto the ground and begged for forgiveness at the sacrilege I had committed; Wesley openly mocked me from far above. His laugh echoed in the silent cemetery, shaking the surrounding stone monuments and skittering the loose soil beneath my knees. 

              But I had fled to Norway to separate myself from Wesley, to leave the blood-sucking monster that was leaching my humanity, my purity and my sanity, behind. I needed humanity, to reconnect to a world I had lost when he took me from the convent.

              I had a cabin built on one of the Lofoten Islands without Wesley knowing. It was nestled safely in a fjord, surrounded by rugged coastline and a nearly impermeable mountain range. I took every precaution I knew. It was far enough from the villages, yet not too far. It was a barren plot, but still habitable.

              The anglers found the choice odd, but not suspicious. That I was a lone female drew more speculation than where I settled an estate. I only wanted to live beyond suspicion, beyond fear of discovery and to exist – to make peace with what I had become.

              The men who built my humble cabin and painstakingly dug my cellar through the frozen earth, were disposed of. I fed off them, one by one, and allowed their bodies to slip into the frigid waters. Their lives flashed in Technicolor glimpses before my eyes; their inner thoughts whispering to me as I drank from them. Their souls plead as I leached the life from their hearts.

              I had pity for them, I truly did. But I had to secure my survival. I made concessions with the corpses, slipping their bodies into the icy waters. The moon was my sole confessor; its silvery haze falling on the tide absolved me.  

              I stood at the shore and watched the moonlight fall on the tide. Those rippling Norse waters caught the moonlight; much like the small convent pond near the statue of St. Anne once did, where the willow trees swayed in the sticky summer breeze. It was between the apple orchard and the vegetable garden, the water adopting a mystical haze whenever the grey light graced it.

            
 
Sister Veronica and I had been sitting on the bank the last time those waters mesmerized me. Our feet dangled in the cool water, our naïve minds blissfully calm. We were alone during a time of quiet, religious reflection, and while we were supposed to be silent, we were not being faithful in this task.

              Sister Veronica and I had grown up in the same inner circle, when she was but Elizabeth, a duke’s eldest daughter, and I was simple Bree. Her father had hunted with my father, our mother’s took tea together, and that was how one socialized then, within the confines of society. When her mother began showing signs of the Black Death, her father sent her to the convent and her brothers to France.

              She complemented me nicely as a friend. When we were children, our friendship seemed easy. We laughed, we talked, we made merriment. It was effortless, and our friendship was invaluable in that convent.

              Behind those hallowed walls, days stretched into eternity. I struggled with contemplation, with silence, with obedience. Days passed where I tightly shut my eyes and envisioned my arms were wings, outstretched eagles wings, and I would see myself soaring high above the convent wall only to see an unfamiliar world beckoning below.

              Then there were days, other days that would linger for weeks, and often times months, where I felt comfortable and at home in my surroundings, in my decision.

              But that night, I was consumed with boredom as I stared at the reflection the moon cast on the water. Its silvery hue shone atop the waters vibrating ringlets, my foot dipping below the surface, its toes twirling in the tepid water. I was wondering about the outside world; how life carried on since the last remnants of the plague swept through the area; since I had locked myself away behind the enclosure gate and stone walls five years ago.

              That evening, I sat along the water’s edge, staring at the moon, wishing it were my eyes so that I could see the world for one brief moment.

              "There is something bothering you, Sr. Clare," she whispered.

              Sr. Marie St. John and Sr. Mary Catherine sauntered past, their habits swishing against the garden walls. I pressed my finger to my lips as they glanced our way. Laundry duty had been our punishment, for a month without reprieve, the last time our talking during contemplative hour was discovered. The laundry water blistered my hands; unsightly large, red, itchy splotches that peeled, and that stung as I dipped them into the lye bucket.

              "Do not worry about me," I said, once they were out of sight.

              "You have that look in your eye, Bree."

              "Do you want to get us into trouble?" I whispered, glancing among the shadows. "Someone may hear you call me that!" She knew using my birth name was forbidden; I dared not imagine the punishment that would ensue.

              "No one’s out here now. Calm yourself. Why are you so paranoid tonight?"

              "I am not sure," I explained. "I feel on edge. I have been so since the sun went down. It almost feels as if I am being watched."

              "You are troubling yourself for nothing, my friend. Nothing and no one is watching you." She moved closer to comfort me and placed her arm around my shoulder.

              "I know!" I replied. "Elizabeth, I have this... urge to open the front gate and run out; to leave! It has never been this strong before."

              "Do not be foolish. Mother Abbess has the key."

              "I have even thought of going into her office and getting it. I know where it is. I have seen it myself!"

              She placed both hands upon my shoulders and looked into my eyes. I remember the look in her eyes; the frightened look of a friend terrified of losing someone they loved.

              "Listen to me, Bree. Don’t do it. Do not leave here. Please?"

              We sat like that, in that embrace for several minutes. Her eyes moistened with tears as she waited for my answer. In the distance, we could hear the shuffling of feet in the cloister, and soon followed the hollow ringing of the dinner bell.

              "What will it be, Bree? Are you staying here with us or flying away?"

              "I could never leave you, Elizabeth. You are my best friend in the whole world and this place, with God - this is all I know now. I do not know what has come over me. I do not! Perhaps I am just unwell."

              As we embraced, our tears mingled and blended, dancing and shimmering upon each other’s cheeks, before we erased the evidence of friendship and made our way to the evening meal. Shortly after prayer, an inexplicable pain seized my head. Thunder crashed against my skull while my stomach twitched and twisted. Once excused, I returned to my cell, saying good night to no one.

              Wesley came for me that night. Whenever I remember that evening, my agony returns. I seldom regret promises I could not keep, because I’ve made them with little intent on keeping them. However, I greatly regret making that promise to Sister Veronica. I never sought to cause her anguish, and especially not pain. Not my dear friend, who sat by the pond with me, basking in the moonlight before the dinner bell rang, reminiscing about a long-gone life we once lived together outside the convent walls.

              The Norse breeze wasn’t as warm as it had been on the night Wesley took me from the convent. It blew icy on the island as I stood watching the bodies float out to sea, my thoughts slipping from the past.

              I finished preparing my house while the moon still held its fixture in the sky. I prepared my bed in the earthen cellar, dug deep under the house and secured with a mechanism I had acquired from a learned man in Italy. It required three keys with which to secure it, and all from my side of the cellar door. No one could enter from the outside when locked, and I had a separate key, a single one, on the outside, that locked the room when it was not in use.

              An ordinary root cellar – that is how my sleeping chambers appeared to visitors. To me, it was a return to the bed: a staple for mortals, but often not for vampire kind. Tradition, folklore, call it what you wish, but the stories are true. Vampires take respite in the dreariest of places: coffins, sarcophagi, crates, caves. The darker and heavier, the better.

              Wesley had felt that cumbersome marble sarcophagi assured our safety. He had taught that marble was impenetrable to mere mortals, but posed no hindrance to our kind. Our strength, he would say, was stronger than ten men were. Even in my first hours as a vampire, my strength had surpassed that of three mortal men.