VROLOK (13 page)

He awoke the next day; he couldn’t move. He was imprisoned in his final resting place. He started to struggle but the earth started to pour in on him from between the cracks in the lid. The air around him quickly started to turn sour. He yelled out for help but he knew no one could possibly hear him.

The two women woke the following morning. Isabella looked at the girl she had helped kill her attacker. She looked sad. Isabella was afraid was she feeling remorse

“Are you feeling guilty?” she asked.

Lia looked up at her inquisitively.

“You look remorseful.” Isabella continued.

“No, I am not remorseful. Far from it. I am sad because I think I am pregnant and the gratification I felt while killing that man was nothing compared to the happiness I once shared with the family he helped destroy. I will always miss them, but I do not feel anything for him; he was beyond my pity. I hope he rots slowly in his grave.”

Isabella recognised the dark look that came across Lia’s face. For, like Isabella, she had been touched by malevolence and it had poisoned her.

Lia and Isabella never spoke again of the events that had happened the previous night.

The following months were spent in the house Isabella had acquired. Lia stayed with her. Isabella was happy during this time, as happy as she could be. Lia was a woman who did not pass judgement on Isabella. She knew the cruel things Isabella was capable of and did not think badly of her. Lia understood Isabella and Isabella understood her. The two women were now bound to each other.

Isabella wished she could keep this woman with her forever as a constant companion. She often tried to discuss this with Lia, but all Lia ever told her was that she did not want to hang on to this life any longer than she had to. Life had brought her nothing but pain and she did not want to prolong it.

The pair spent their nights together wandering through the streets hunting for Isabella’s next victim. Isabella had also started stealing from her victims. She was running out of money and she wanted to live in the manner that she had become accustomed too. They were becoming quite skilled at picking the right sort of victim and they were both acquiring quite a fortune. During the day Isabella slept. Lia would sometimes visit the graves of her father and sister, or visit the more distant members of her family.

One day in the autumn she invited Isabella to a family party. Isabella laughed at the very idea but she went anyway out of respect for her friend.

From the moment she entered the house Isabella felt out of place. Love and warmth filled this place. Lia was going round all her family in turn, laughing and enjoying herself. In the time she had known Lia she had never seen her so happy. Isabella had never seen anything like this. She had only been close to her grandfather and had never had or even seen a family party before. For the second time in her life Isabella felt totally anonymous until an elderly gentleman came over and sat beside her.

“My name is Matteo Bandello. I am a distant cousin of Lia’s,” the elderly man introduced himself.

Isabella smiled at the man. She had promised her friend that she would be polite and also most importantly that she would not kill any one, unless Lia said she could. So she tried to remember the manners her grandfather had taught her so many years ago and answered the friendly-looking old gentleman.

“I’m Lia’s friend.”

“I know…I thank you for looking after Lia. She has been so melancholy since her father and sister died. Her happiness has been forever marred by that tragedy.”

“I know. It is good to see her smile again,” Isabella answered.

“Yes, it is. Maybe there is hope for her yet,” Matteo answered. “You look sad as well. You are a melancholy pair,” he said.

Isabella smiled slightly.

“What makes you so sad? Why should such a beautiful young girl not be happy?”

“Beauty doesn’t automatically bring you happiness. If anything, quite the opposite,” Isabella responded.

“You are quite correct but with such a beautiful girl surely the odds of being happy are definitely in your favour.”

“I thought so once. I thought my beauty could bring me happiness and it did, it got me everything I wanted, but later, it also took everything from me.”

“You speak so maturely for one so young,” Matteo commented.

“I am older than you think,” Isabella answered.

“You cannot be any more than eighteen,” Matteo said, laughingly.

“I am considerably older than that,” Isabella said. Isabella thought she had ended the conversation, but Matteo was very persistent.

“You say you were happy once?”

Isabella looked at the man. He was being too inquisitive for her liking.

“I am sorry; I am a writer—I like to hear people’s stories,” Matteo explained, sensing Isabella’s slight reluctance to his persistent probing.

“A writer. I should have guessed. No one in this city is anything else but a writer or an artist, and yet I see you are all selling your wares during the day, but none of you seem to admit to being merchants.”

Matteo laughed. “You are being quite churlish. Maybe I should not have sat beside you!”

“I know, and I promised your cousin Lia I would be good,” Isabella commented sharply.

“You don’t have to be good on my account,” Matteo replied. “People who do not speak their mind hold no interest for me. So you are not impressed by Florence, then?”

“Not really,” Isabella answered.

“Have you ever looked around you?” Matteo asked with a look of confusion.

“Not really,” said Isabella.

Matteo then in a matter-of-factly way replied, “Well, you should. There are many beautiful sights to be seen.”

“I take it you like it here,” said Isabella.

“This is the place where dreams come true,” Matteo responded.

“I don’t have any dreams and certainly not anything that can come true here,” said Isabella.

“You are a cynic. You need a little romance in your life, a little love,” Matteo laughingly replied.

“No, thank you. That is one thing I do not need any more of…I have had my fill of it,” Isabella replied.

“Don’t be so hasty. I promise you will want to love again,” Matteo said.

“I am afraid you are very wrong, I do not ever want to love again.”

“Ah, but that does not mean you won’t.”

Isabella could not help but smile at this man. He was an old romantic, an optimist in a cynical world.

“Love is what keeps us alive and what brings us together,” he continued. “I’m writing a story now about two young lovers from warring families. The love that the two people share brings their families together. Love unites them.”

Isabella laughed out loud. “Love doesn’t solve anything. It certainly doesn’t heal any old wounds; it makes them fester. It brings nothing but jealousy, bitterness and reproach. I have never heard of anyone who has been made completely happy by love alone.”

“Something or someone must have hurt you very deeply,” Matteo observed.

“No, it is just simply observation. Can you honestly tell me that you have known anyone who was made happy by love? I mean real love…the type that when it happens to you, you can’t stand to be away from that person? Then when you are torn away from him you can‘t stand to be without him? The only thing that can end your misery is your own death! Believe me, your two lovers in your story would be better off if they both died.”

“Which is better? Being alive and miserable, or to die without knowing misery?” asked Matteo, with much confusion.

“Death is better. The sweet oblivion that it offers is always better,” Isabella answered.

Matteo replied in sympathy, “You say that as if you know it to be true.”

“It is true,” said Isabella. “Let your two lovers end their family feuds if you want to, but it won’t happen because of their love. That wouldn’t be true. Let them end it by their deaths,” said Isabella. She then got up and left the old gentleman sitting by himself, pondering. He was baffled by the young, beautiful woman who was so obviously miserable.

A few months later Lia came home to Isabella’s with a short story written by her distant cousin and gave it to Isabella.

“Matteo insisted that I gave this to you. He said you inspired it. It’s quite a tragic story. He has named one of the characters after you. Did you tell him your name was Juliet?” Lia asked curiously.

“I did, for it seemed as good a name as any,” Isabella said with a smile. She liked the story and decades later she took it to England with her.

The next several months passed pleasantly for Isabella, more pleasantly than any time she could remember since her death. She believed herself to be close to sixty years old, but she was not sure.

Isabella sometimes would go down to the alleyway beside the house where the two women lived. Once there, she would wait in the darkness for unwilling victims to pass by. The alley was getting quite a reputation among the residents of the city.
People used to run through it, daring what lurked in the shadows to grab them as they ran by. Some got out alive; some didn’t. At first, when the killings began, the authorities would send men to investigate, but somehow they never seemed to return home. So Isabella was left alone to kill as the mood struck her.

Isabella when she was happier regained some of her human compassion and sometimes even considered who she was to strike before she did. On a night in midwinter she was waiting in the alley for sustenance to find her; it came in the guise of a woman. This woman was crying, begging quietly for her death. Isabella wondered why such a young girl should be so unhappy and want to give up her life quite so willingly. Isabella resolved to ask her.

“Why does someone so young ask for death?”

The girl was frightened by the voice but answered. “Are you a ghost or are you death itself?”

Isabella smiled but she made no obvious sign of her mirth.

“What would you prefer?” Isabella asked.

“Death itself,” said the woman.

Isabella replied, “I suppose I could be called a sort of ghost.”

The woman in desperation asked, “Then you can kill me?”

“What sort of a ghost can kill the living?” asked Isabella.

The woman again in desperation replied, “I want to die.” The girl begged Isabella to kill her.

Isabella, now very curious, replied, “If you tell me why maybe I will grant your request.”

“I want to die because this morning I had a child and it died in my arms,” the woman said through her tears.

“You can have another child,” Isabella said. She rarely had the patience or the inclination to comfort any one.

The woman responded with “I can’t—this was my only chance.”

This peaked Isabella’s curiosity and she asked, “What about the father?”

“He is too grief-stricken,” the woman sadly replied.

“Do you love him?” Isabella asked.

The woman without thought and very lovingly stated, “Yes with all my heart.”

“Does he love you?”

“He tells me he does,” the woman replied with some uncertainty.

“And you think the day after he loses his child he wants to lose his wife as well?” Isabella scolded.

“No, but I can’t face him, I feel responsible,” the sad woman said.

“You are not responsible,” Isabella stated firmly. “I had a family once and my father would rather have lost me than his wife. You have lost your child and that is a tragedy, but you have to keep living. You and your husband must comfort each other. Go back to your husband and be with him. Death will not find you here.”

The woman left; still sobbing. Isabella had an odd compulsion to follow her. She felt sorry for the woman. She wanted to make sure her husband was worthy of her and something in this girl’s story reminded her of her own loss.

The woman wandered slowly home ahead of Isabella. She paused before she went inside; there was a candle burning in the window. Isabella crept forward and stared in at the couple. When her husband saw her coming in through the front door he ran towards her and embraced her. He held her face in his hands and kissed her tears away. The pair sat down together in the darkness holding each other and comforting each other. The scene made Isabella pine for Nicolae and a single blood-red tear hit the dusty street below her feet.