Mysteria Nights

Its silvered light caressed her silken face

Like a dove’s soft wings colored gray and shell

Shadowy thoughts frozen in time and place.

He watched her breath like silver mist depart

And he longed to join her murderous sleep

But truth rare listens to the wounded heart

Hence even hero souls must sometimes weep.

Now love’s pinions can never more take flight,

Entombed forever in grief’s endless night.

“They’re mine,” Candice whispered. Her stricken voice didn’t carry above the sobs of the people around her. She tore her eyes from the window and looked frantically back at Godiva, who was standing at the edge of the crowd crying softly. She raised her voice so that her friend could hear her. “They’re my poems, Godiva. I wrote them.”

“Who said that?!”

Heads swiveled to the tall gaunt figure standing in the doorway of the gallery. Barnabas Vlad (a name everyone in Mysteria knew he had absolutely, beyond any doubt, not been born with) was swathed head to toe in black, holding a small lacy black parasol, and wearing huge blue blocker reflective sunglasses.

“Who said that she is the poetess?”

“That would be me,” Candice said reluctantly.

All the heads then swiveled in her direction and Candice heard weepy murmurs of Oh, they’re so wonderful, and They break my heart, but I love them, and I have to have one of my own and the art that goes with it!

Barnabas pointed one finger (fully covered in a black opera-length glove) at Candice. “You must come with me at once!” The vampire turned and scuttled through the gallery door.

Candice couldn’t move. Everyone was staring at her.

“Let’s go!” Godiva pushed her toward the gallery door, ignoring the gawking crowd. Then, still sobbing softly, she added, “And no way are you going in there without me.”

Candice had been in the gallery before. It was decidedly on the dark side—walls and floor black instead of the usual clean white of most galleries. It was never well lit, and it was always too damn cold. But she liked the art exhibits, especially the gay pride exhibits Barnabas like to have. She could appreciate full-frontal male nudity, even if it couldn’t appreciate her.

“Back here, ladies.”

Barnabas called breathily from the rear office. Godiva and Candice exchanged glances. Both shrugged and followed the vampire’s voice.

“You’re sure it’s your poetry?” Godiva whispered, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

“Of course I’m sure,” she hissed at her friend. “How could you even ask me that! They’re the poems about heartbreak I wrote a week or so ago for that poetry class.”

“Well, it’s just that . . .” But they’d come to Barnabas’s office so Godiva clamped her mouth shut.

“Ladies, I’m charmed. Come in and sit, s’il vous plaît.” Barnabas fluttered his long fingers at the two delicate pink silk Louis XIV chairs that sat regally before his ornately carved mahogany desk. When they were seated the vampire launched into a breathy speech in his trademark poorly rendered French accent. “Do pardon my abruptness out there, but it’s been wretchedly stressful since I put up that new display. That is no excuse for moi rudeness, though. It is just such a shock—such a surprise. Mon dieu! Who would have imagined that such a magnificent discovery would have been made at my humble gallery? Oh! How rude of me. Introductions are in order. I am Barnabas Vlad, the proprietor of this humble galerie d’art.” He peered at Godiva for a moment, squinting his eyes so that his iridescent pink eye shadow creased unattractively. Then his expression cleared. “Ah, oui oui oui! I do know you. Are you not Godiva Tawdry, one of the Tawdry witches?”

Godiva looked pleased at her notoriety. “Oui!” she said. Now that she’d stopped crying she was able to appreciate the humor of the undead guy’s foppishly fake Frenchness.

He turned to Candice with a smile that showed way too many long, sharp teeth. “And you are our poetess! You look familiar to me, madam, but I’m sorry to say that I have misplaced your name.”

“I’m Candice Cox,” she said.

The vampire’s pleasant expression instantly changed to confusion. “Mais non! It is not possible!”

“Okay, this is really starting to piss me off. I wrote the poems a week or so ago for an online class I’m taking for my master’s. I can prove it. I turned them in last Friday. Now I want to know how you got them, who this artist is who has illustrated them, and why you all”—here she paused to glare at Godiva—“think it’s so impossible that I wrote them. I may be a high school teacher, but I do have a brain!”

“Madam! I meant no disrespect.” The vampire definitely looked flustered. “It is just . . .” He dabbed at his upper lip with a lacy black hankie before going on. “Are you not the English teacher whose magic is nonmagic?”

“Yes,” Candice ground from between gritted teeth.

“Then that is why it is impossible that you have written the poems.”

“What the hell—” Candice sputtered and started to get up, but Godiva’s firm hand on her arm stopped her.

“Candice,” Godiva said. “The poems have magic.”

“Exactement!” Barnabas said, clearly relieved that Godiva had stepped in.

“Magic? But how? I don’t understand,” Candice said.

“You saw the people. Your poems made them cry. They made me cry. When I looked at the paintings and then read your words, I thought my heart would break with sadness. It was awful—and wonderful.” Godiva teared up again just thinking about it.

“That is how everyone has been reacting,” Barnabas said. “Since I put them on display this morning. Weeping and blubbering, blubbering and weeping.”

“But where did you get them?” Candice felt as if she’d just gotten off a Tilt-a-Whirl and couldn’t quite get her bearings.

“They were in a plain brown package I found by the rear door to the gallery this morning. I opened it, and my heart began to break. Naturellement I instantly put them on display.”

“So who left the package?”

He shrugged. “It did not say. There was only this note in the package.”

Candice snatched the paper from his expensively gloved fingers. Typed on a plain white piece of regular computer paper it said:

If the poet would like to work with me again I would be willing.

Tell her that I will meet her here at the gallery tonight at sunset.

“But there’s no signature or anything,” Candice said.

“Artists.” Barnabas sighed and rolled his eyes.