But the man in the shadows found her easily enough. He stalked her for fifteen minutes, making sure that no one else made it down that secluded pathway between the streets. He approached her, “give me everything you’ve got.”
The young woman was too far gone to understand his request. She could barely hear him over the clouded thoughts in her head. She stumbled to the side and fell onto the concrete.
“Okay, if that’s the way it’s gonna’ be, why not,” he began to unbuckle his belt.
A loud thud rang from a nearby trashcan. Something small and fleshy had hit it. The woman and the man looked over to see what had made the sound, but nothing was there under the bright moon.
“Look harder,” a dark booming voice commanded from the distance.
He walked over to the trashcan slowly. The woman still didn’t understand what was going on, she was in no hurry to leave, yet. He scanned the area. He looked down. There was something on the ground. It was small, and bloodly. It was fleshy. He picked it up and instantly understood what it was. The horror shocked him beyond words.
“Do you recognize it now?” the demonic voice echoed. This time it was closer. It was behind him. Its cold breath on his stiff neck.
There had been no pain when it had happened. Nothing to indicate he had been attacked. It had only happened. But he realized it now. As the fear welled up inside him, the pain came with it.
The woman looked over to see the creature behind him and shrieked. It was cloaked in black plates and holding a large curved staff with a blade at one end.
He turned around to no avail. The blade pierced his stomach and bored in. His member fell to the ground as he grasped the blade with both hands. He couldn’t even scream.
The woman was hysterical. She called out, “What are you doing? Oh my god! What are you doing!?”
The creature began to walk to her. It drug the body of the stalker behind it with the end of the long scythe. It took her hand and forced her to stand upward and face it. She was inches from its wet black face. Its touch was cold and hard.
Its voice boomed again, “saving your life.”
In an instant, it was gone. The body of the stalker was nowhere to be found. All that was left was a trail of blood and a lone piece of torn flesh that would not be missed.
The creature reappeared at the edge of a rooftop a mile away. The stalker in his hand, held only by his neck. It plunged its hand into his chest and pulled out the barely living heart. “To think, at the time, I saw him as the monster,” it sank its fangs into the heart and let the refuse fall.
“Looking back I remember Marin’s life. The hardships he faced before and after we met,” the demon’s voice bellowed out into the night. The creature disappeared from the vacant rooftop.
Chapter Thirteen
The Simpleton
In the winter of 1902, an odd young man was born on the northeastern shores of Virginia. His name was Del Marin. Growing up, he wore his hair short and black. He had a light skin tone, pale from birth. His father was French, his mother American. The father traveled to the states in the hopes of raising a proper family. As a child he was focused. He actually enjoyed laboring.
As time passed he shoveled horse stalls in an effort to provide for his sickly mother. During this, his father drank what little money they had left. He didn’t seem to care. His mentality was to keep working, to provide for his mother. He was perfectly happy to accomplish the job at hand. There was something about farm life that suited him. Every morning he got up, did the same couple of jobs all day long, and went to sleep on the same beaten down wooden bed. The next day he got to do it again. It was straight forward to him, something he came to know well as he repeated them year after year.
By 1921, he had grown into a handsome man. He had been employed for eleven years as a farm hand. Little changed, except for the things his older taller body was able to let him work on. His face had elongated. His eyes had become piercing atop his defined cheek bones. He had a face that made most women hold their breath when looking for the first time. He had grown to six foot one. From the years of labor, he was lean and highly toned. He still kept his hair short, only slightly longer than when he was a boy. He was the model of health and attraction in a simple package that wished for neither.
The prior year, his mother had finally perished from the red death, tuberculosis. His father had left on the night of his nineteenth birthday. Shortly thereafter, he was informally adopted by the farmer he had been working under since the age of eight.
He had begun to see the changes in the world around him. There was a boom across America. Cities were expanding, automobiles and suits were becoming the new precedence instead of horses and straw hats. He was figuratively left behind by everyone in town. The few people that were ever nice to him either moved away or stopped talking to him altogether. Not one to conform, he continued his position at the farm that he was accustomed to. He didn’t care what others thought. Shoveling, cleaning, wrangling, feeding, fixing, and building were his everyday chores. It was simple straight forward work. He had found a sense of calm in what he did. He was proud of what he could do with his own two hands.
Six years passed. He was now twenty-five. He had built a reputation in the newly expanded town as a strong worker. He was very proficient with his hands. He was trusted by everyone that knew him and most that didn’t. His good looks led to attract many women in the local area. Stories of their intentions spread and were the talk of many late night conversations among young women. Despite the vast number of takers, he had begun to court a single young lady named Demy McHugh.
She was an heiress to a nearby tobacco plantation. She was slender yet curvy. She had curly long brown thick hair. She had big deep brown eyes. Her face was soft. She was the catch of the town. Even with all of her suitors, Demy fancied Del. She liked his surprising wit during their encounters just as much as his firm grasp of her body when he embraced her. They quickly and frequently found the time to express their desires for one another throughout the week. Eventually, she became pregnant.
Knowing Demy’ father would not allow such a simple farm hand to marry his beloved daughter, Del walked to Mr. McHugh’s personal estate the day they found out. It was located on the far outer reaches, opposite his residence at the farm. He made his way at the eye of dawn, treading past the stores which had come to know him. The milk company, the slaughter house, the corner store at the heart of it all, the owners all knew him by name. They waved and greeted him as he came near. Everyone knew what he was doing that day, what he was trying to accomplish. As he crossed the streets, hordes of small children watched. They were anxious to see what was going to happen, and were far more nervous about it than Del. He exited the edge of town with the McHugh estates in the far distance. As the sun lowered in the sky, he climbed the steps beside the cobble stone driveway leading up to the main gate.
The white three level house was visible from the outer property wall, a distance of more than two miles. He slowly made his way down the path to the front door. The grass lawn was wide and well kept, without the slightest sign of wear or damage. Every fifty feet there were two three foot standing stone place markers, each one adorning a lavish ‘M’ representing the McHugh name. He smiled as he remembered the time he spent working to dig the holes for their placement. He had never actually seen the pillars themselves. He was happy that he was able to make each hole level and tight for them to rest in.
At the end of the road was the McHugh house. White siding with brown balcony accents for each of the floors was the decorum of the house. It had been built in 1870, when the McHugh family came to Virginia. The former plantation house was given to the workers manning the fields, a glad gift for the several dozens of low paid laborers tending to the fields that helped pay for the house. Mr. McHugh had a philosophy that a paid worker is a happy worker is much faster and more productive worker than a one that is not.
He stopped at the
front steps. He kicked his shoes together to remove the mud and dirt from the long walk. The hardwood floors on the house porch were pristine. He was timid in marking them up. He sat down on the lowest level and took off his working shoes. In only his socks, he approached the large red double doors.
He knocked twice on the heavy red paint.
A tall, thin old man with an almost pure white complexion answered, “yes? What business do you have here young man?”
“I’ve come for the master of the house,” he spoke up.
“Who may I ask is calling?” the butler asked him.
“Del Marin,” he smiled. He was confident, having all the time of the walk to build his nerve for this moment.
“Wait here, outside. He will be with you soon,” the butler closed the door.
He waited and stood diligent for almost an hour. To him, the time was nothing. It passed much quicker than the trip there. The lights in the house were fully lit by the moment the butler reopened the front door to face him again with a reply.
“The master is not available,” the butler said with pomp and disdain towards him.
He said nothing.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said the master is not available. You can go home,” the butler instructed firmly.
“Yes, I heard you clearly,” he responded.
“Then please leave. You can no longer carry on your endeavor here,” the butler said while attempting to close the door.
The door stopped abruptly on his right foot. He said nothing to the pain it caused. The sound of crunching flesh and bone rang into the open silence of the moment. He wouldn’t admit it, but the door had broken two of his toes.
“No thank you. I’ll wait.” he smiled, masking the swelling in his right foot.
“I’m sorry you were unable to understand what I was trying to tell you with your underdeveloped farm-boy mind. The master is not home. Come back tomorrow,” the butler was being blatantly rude now.
“No. You said that he was not available,” he took a deep breath and continued, “if he is unavailable at this time, and you had to confer with him for an hour to determine this, then he is obviously on the premises. Therefore, he is home,” he stared into the eyes of the now irate butler. “And therefore I will wait for him to become available.”
The angered butler gave no reply. He simply peered down to refer to Del’s foot that blocked the doorway.
He removed his broken foot. A small streak of blood trailed under his sock.
“The master will be out shortly,” the butler slammed the door, rattling the red wood frame.
Chapter Fourteen
The Meadow
A bright sunny meadow contrasted the bus Zack was just on. A tall rolling field of wheat painted the landscape of the scene with complete peace and a flowing breeze. It was fall. The clouds were thick in the sky. There was a stonewashed tone over everything in sight. A soft chill filled the air. He felt something was wrong.
He walked. His hands brushed the tips of wheat. The serenity of the moment was so beautiful that he had to gasp to catch his breath in the brisk weather. In the distance, slightly up a hill, there was a depressed section in the pasture. It was darker, redder than the rest. There was someone there, sitting, collapsed in the center. He ran up the hill. The wheat had been tamped and beaten down by something unnatural.
There was a trail of blood leading to a girl. It was ‘K’. She was slumped, surrounded by a few tall sparse stalks. Her throat bled. The choker was ripped. The right side of her neck was torn out. The veins were exposed, the skin rendered. He had to fight an overwhelming nausea. The smell of dead, rotting flesh wafted in the air. Terror set in. His hands covered his mouth.
Then he felt it. He sensed a wet warm liquid running down his chin. Something was wrong here. Slowly, he removed his hands to reveal a cascade of blood that ran from his lips. It poured over his fingers and down his chest. It was warm, soaked with life. He had done this. His hands were covered with her blood, her extinguished life.
A dark voice spoke with calamity from the sky above. Its message struck fear into his mind, “rip, tear, rend, and swallow the blood like milk. This is what you are. Taste the nectar and devour it. You will not deny me for long.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Illusion and The Gilded Blood
“Wake up kid!” the old bus driver nudged Zack on the shoulder. “Come on kid, this is where you got on before. I know you don’t want to ride back to the station with me. So get up already.”
He had fallen asleep on the bus. His eyes slowly opened as the old man continued to jostle him awake, “where am I?” He was groggy, still attempting to settle back into his head and get his bearings. The dream he had was startling. Too visceral, too real. He could still feel the wetness from the blood on his chin, his lips. He could smell the scent of cherry and lavender in his nostrils. It made his mouth water.
“We’re at your stop, kid. You’ve been asleep for at least the last hour. I was getting worried,” he looked at Zack. He helped him down the steps.
“What time is it?” It hadn’t felt like an hour. He opened his eyes further. The dream had finally vanished.
“11:27 pm. Don’t you have a curfew, son? You should get home,” the bus driver said.
“Of course. Thanks for getting me up,” he waved slightly.
“Sure kid,” the bus driver pulled away as he waved and closed the folding door.
He headed up to the third floor. He ran up two steps at a time through the flights of stairs. The elevator had been broken since last summer. Apartment 310 was his place. He came up to the door and placed his hand firmly on the handle. The door was already open. It swung with the weight of his arm. Something was different.
He smelled a rich thick tomato sauce wafting in the air. John didn’t cook. He approached the scented doorway with caution.
The door flung inward. A somewhat young brown haired woman in a pink cooking apron stood and stared at him. She was genteel. Her face was small, her chin broad and cute. She was on the shorter side, thin, and very petite. He could swear she smelled like cinnamon cookies.
“Can I help you?” the woman spoke with a light North-Eastern accent. She was prim and upright, she was unlike anything he was used to seeing.
He wiped the dust off the door and checked the number on the front plaque. 310. This was his apartment. “Who are you?”
“Zack! You’re home!” John ran up behind this mystery woman and ushered him inside before she could reply. He closed the door. He positioned himself next to the woman. He placed his hand on the small of her back, “this is Diane. She’s my new-“ John was cut off.
Diane finished John’s sentence, “-his date.” The awkward silence in the room was palatable.
He heard the floor creek. It broke the tension as he cracked a small grin in the silence.
Diane continued, “you must be John’s son, Zack. I’ve heard so much about you. It’s very nice to meet you,” she formally curtsied. “I need to finish up dinner. We’ll all talk later,” she left for the kitchen.
John guided him back to his room.
He knew what was in store.
“Now I know what you’re thinking. So no, I told her everything about you and my past this time. She knows I was married,” John ducked into his room a little more. He put his back to the door as he whispered, “and I really think she’s a keeper.”
“Glad to hear it,” he sat down on his bed and thought about the dream again. His fingers still felt cold and wet.
“Thanks,” John lowered his eyes, “so I take it you know what tonight means?”
“Of course. I’ll be in here while you make it with the Betty-Crocker girl,” he knew the drill. He was supposed to be quiet and put some music on while his dad was busy in the other room.
“You’re a good son. Try to get some sleep,” John backed out.
He didn’t say a word in ret
urn. He only gave an affirmative nod as John stepped away and shut the door. He was tired. His eyes were heavy. The ice helped him more than he realized, John hadn’t noticed the black eye because of it. The swelling had nearly disappeared. He checked his face in the mirror on the wall. It was almost healed. He felt parched again. He was heavily thirsty after he sat back down on the edge of his small bed. His stomach was empty. He was craving something new, something richer than he was used to. Something thicker.
Then it happened. His face went flush, faint. He blacked out. He fell back onto his bed, cold and silent.
The dream was coming again.
Chapter Sixteen
Failing Memory
“Are you sure you gave him enough?” a young man’s voice spoke. It was completely unfamiliar to Zack. He sounded upset.
“Yes, I gave him twice the regular dose. I have done this before you know. Don’t worry. It won’t kill him.” He recognized the second man’s voice as the bus driver. But his tone was different. He sounded somehow younger than he was. It was the same voice, only quicker, lighter.
He couldn’t open his eyes. All he was able to make out were blurry shapes and a faint red light coming from above him.
“Did you test the sample? Does he have it?” the first man’s voice was impatient and charged. He wanted a quick answer.
“It will take time to know. These tests aren’t instant. We’re talking more than 300 years of latency with this one. It won’t emerge until after the thirst has become a biological need. Even then, it might take some time. Be patient. You’ve waited this long, haven’t you?” the voice explained.
He could feel a pressure on his mind. There was something different about this. It wasn’t a dream.