The House on Blackstone Moor (The Blackstone Vampires) (34 page)

My senses were alive as they had never been before. I smelled the wildlife that called the moors their home; birds and rodents—and all manner of insects.

I heard sounds I had never heard. And it was all
mine
to share with those I loved.

How Louis wept.

And what of my undead children?

At least they had not seen their friends destroyed. At least they had been spared that.

Eco left us then for he had accomplished his purpose.

And so we took our friends’ mangled corpses—Dr. Antor and the sisters, Joan and Belle Lodge, and we burned them. Louis said the flames would cleanse their bodies of Eco’s vile touch and I was glad.

We left then. We left Blackstone Moor never to return.

So what of Blackstone House? Louis tore it apart as he would have liked to tear Eco asunder.

“Mama, where is the house?”

The children asked this and I answered: “It is no more. It is gone forever.”

And Louis nodded for it was true. Its sinister power would no longer haunt me.

I have survived much, Louis has always said so. I have survived madness and murder. The madness was in the guise of my lunatic father who stole my innocence over many years and then murdered himself and our family.

I did not emerge unscathed from such horror. No I did not. There were madhouses after that, two in fact.

And then there was Dr. Bannion, director of Marsh Asylum, a supposedly dedicated doctor, a doctor I trusted but one who was in league with Satan and who called Eco friend.

Yes, I have survived much.

*

The children were ill, though they both tried to hide it by pretending they weren’t. Still, Louis and I both knew they were weak; we could see it in their faces and in their dull eyes and their ashen skin.

The fever started within a day of our leaving Blackstone Moor. First Ada was struck down by it and then Simon.

“We will go to a doctor I know…” Louis’ words and I was relieved to hear them.

There was a coven in north Yorkshire. Louis knew the master; he had been a doctor in his living life. Now he tended his coven as their protector and friend.

Each one of Louis’ friends is like he is: selfless and kind, untainted by the forces of evil, although vampires vary as human beings do. There are good and bad; those riddled with sin or not.

He told me of his friend’s living life as we journeyed there.

“Edward was a good doctor, kindly and caring. He perished in the Great Fire. I tended him but he passed away. It was better for him too for his burns were terrible, his agony intolerable. Still, when I raised him he was free of the physical pain but not the pain of his new existence.”

Edward, another of the deserving undead.

I liked him right away. He reminded me of Louis but he was older looking, for he had been created in the winter of his living life.

His face was badly scarred, his ear disfigured. Those marks would be forever upon him; the signs of the fire which ended his life.

He welcomed us and embraced Louis.

“My friend, it has been too long.”

When his eyes fell upon me I had the feeling he knew. He took my hand and kissed it. “You are most welcome and all your kin.”

Then his eyes beheld Simon and Ada. He sobbed for he knew them and saw how weakened they were.

“They will recover,” he said. “But they need rest.”

He made them a poultice of wolfbane and herbs. The children hardly stirred and he smiled. “It is good they sleep, for it will speed the healing.”

The women of the coven were kindly too. They varied in age. That is, the time of their living lives when they were created varied. Some were elderly looking and others looked quite young.

There were sisters and a granny and children, too; children who had grown old before their time, ancient before their death and
raising
up.

Edward introduced them. “They are a family. They were and still are and always shall be.”

He would tell us later they had perished in a cholera outbreak.

“None of the factory owners did, just them. They like it here among the rugged dales and green hills, and it is here they shall dwell.”

This, their dwelling place, had been a farm. The outbuildings were still used as stables and there were chicken pens.

They were not regular imbibers of blood as we are not. Though when we sicken, and we do sometimes fall ill, all but Louis that is, we do require fresh blood.

“When the children wake,” he said. “They will take a broth. It is a mixture of herbs and animal blood. I am afraid it smells awful but it is what they need. I have given this
to
many who sicken.”

I was worried as vampires have been known to perish from disease and the effects of attacks.

“They were staked,” I said. “They nearly perished.”

“Eco,” Louis said.

The doctor nodded. “Yes, his name is a curse upon the lips of all vampires, and those who do not curse him are his servants in Hell.”

*

We were there for some time. The children were ill as the fever lingered. They were delirious too and that was the worst. They hadn’t spoken of their mother very much. But they did then. They spoke of Eve and of that terrible time when the vampire killers came and destroyed Louis’ coven.

Louis destroyed the killers. But if he killed them, Eve first destroyed herself. Poor Eve, she was truly her own worst enemy.

I tried to comfort the children for they were moaning and looked to be in great distress.

Edward said they could not hear me. “It is different than if a living person was delirious. They really do see those they knew, those other undead like themselves.”

I wondered then if they saw Eve wherever she existed. Edward was not surprised she had destroyed herself.

“Yes, poor Eve—there was a tortured being.”

I asked him if he thought the children might see her now, the way they were.

“They will only see her in shadow, in the shadowy realm she now inhabits.”

Louis said he had prophesied that Eve would bring about her own dark destiny upon herself and those she loved, and so she had, but she had only destroyed herself.

Days and weeks passed and I watched the children, relieved that the delirium passed and with it the fever.

“They have passed the crisis,” Edward said.

And they had. They looked better and stronger although I knew they would never be entirely right.

“They have been through so much. I don’t think they could have taken much more,” Louis murmured. Those words chilled my heart.

But it was truth and truth must always be acknowledged.

Louis looked tired and worried. If he wasn’t worried about the children, he was asking me if I felt alright.

I smiled as reassuringly as I could. I think he sensed my desire to go to Marsh, for I wished to put flowers down there for all those who had perished in the fire Bannion had set; my friend, Grace, among them.

If Eco was from Hell, Bannion was destined to burn there for he used his position for evil and for sin. But he was no more, and the evil that was within him was gone now, too, as he was.

I began to recall him. I hadn’t thought of him in the longest time but now I did.
Bannion, my own personal demon; Bannion, the debauched and evil Bannion who turned his own madhouse into the flames of Hell.

Louis saw I was troubled for I could not hide it. “What is it, Rose?” he asked. I told him what was in my heart. I said the name of the place I swore I would try to forget: Marsh Asylum.

“Please, Louis, I should like to go there to see my friend’s grave… When the children are well might we please visit there?”

He tried to dissuade me, but when he saw he could not, he agreed. “Yes, Rose. If that is what you really want we shall go there. Though mind, I doubt if there are graves as such…”

As such.
I understood what he meant. Grace had been an inmate in a lunatic asylum.
As I was.

As I was…

That phrase has often gone though my head countless times. I had been there and she was my friend.

“We will go if you wish it Rose, so that you may honor your friend.”

I did wish it, for I had to speak to Grace one more time.

I did long to speak with her for I longed to tell her what had become of me
. I never forgot her, nor did I ever stop missing her. I knew she worried about me, poor Grace.
Grace Poole who had befriended me in the terrible darkness that was Marsh Asylum.
Grace, a kindly woman—a woman who bore her own sad destiny as bravely as she could have.

How kind she was, taking a half-crazed girl under her wing.
Soothing me during the worst time of my life, comforting me when I wept, feeding me when I was hungry, treating me as though I were her own child.

Truly, she was more mother to me than friend. Poor Grace who must have died an agonizing death so Bannion could collect on the insurance.

As for Grace—why had she been admitted? They had put her away because of the fits. She was a two year old with brain seizures, I told that to Louis.

“Yes,” Louis agreed. “The so-called enlightened medical profession didn’t think to do anything else with her. They were happy just to wall her up in a stone sarcophagus.

Yes, I thought. It was like being buried alive—sent off, sent away—anywhere but where she was.

We were discussing Marsh with Edward and he recalled it.

“Oh yes, that place burned down, didn’t it?”

I saw him flinch when he said it. Fire would haunt Edward in the course of his undead existence.

“Yes,” I answered. “I wasn’t there then…I had already left…”

He took my hand. “Many people shouldn’t have ever been there either. Most, I’d venture to say. Still, that is the way of the world.”

The living world has its darkness, too.

He had guessed we’d be leaving. “I am sorry; I had hoped you would stay a while.”

I cried when he said that, as I could have imagined staying there for a long time. I liked the coziness of the cottage, the beauty of the surrounding area, as well as the friendship of Edward and the others.

Yet there was something in me urging me on. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t wish to stay in a coven. Not yet, not then. Perhaps my memories were too raw.

Those I had grown to love, Louis’ own coven, had all been destroyed. I would never forget it. How could I ever forget the sight of the vampire, Dora, trying to protect her undead baby and failing miserably?

They called it a monster from Hell, but it wasn’t as she wasn’t; as none of the coven members were.

Still, there was Eve, evil and wanton, yet Eve was a loving mother to her children.

Yes, I did mourn them as I always would.

And I knew also that Louis would raise more unfortunates up and have more covens; Louis, the dark’s avenging angel, seeking justice for the dead.

Louis understood me as he understands everything. So much passes between us, for our love is there always whether it is spoken or not, for it is felt deeply and is always understood.

He knows my thoughts and my fears, my memories, too. I think sometimes we are part of the same being. What I feel he feels and so on, and if that is so I know he felt my need to leave, for he took me aside. His eyes … soft and loving and
so
understanding as he smiled.

“We will go if you wish…”

We did leave. We left after the last frost melted and the sun shone for longer on the hills and the coming of spring was more than a promise.

The children had rallied; they seemed more themselves then they had been in ages. And those purple scars looked less angry.

How many times had I looked at those scars? But now I lightly touched them and smiled for I was comforted.

“They have healed nicely,” Edward said, but he added they would always be there to mark the signs of that dreadful attack. “It will mark them forever. Eco’s taint will always be upon them.”

How I hated those words as much as the name.

Edward took me aside before we left. “Go and find your destiny, Rose. And fear not for it is a good one. For you have your love and your family now.
This
family.”

My eyes filled with tears and he saw. We embraced and he
bade
us farewell. “You are always welcome here, always.”

Always is such a great promise to a vampire.

We said our goodbyes and gave our thanks and soon started on our way, down toward Huddersfield and across the great green
valleys
toward Marsh Asylum, which was no more.

*

After Marsh, our destination was Whitby, which is on the Yorkshire coast. Louis told me about it.