On the third day someone walked up to the guard and though I strained I could not make out the words of their conversation as they smoked. Once they’d tossed the butts, they both walked off and I was left unguarded. Apparently after my brother had had me drained and left in the frigid cabin to recover either felt that he had no further reason to distrust me or that I was so powerless that he had no cause to worry. I stepped out into the lane. A cold light mist was falling from a thick gray blanket of dismal clouds that covered the sky from end to end. The mist had settled over the camp covering everything, yet I could make out the hut at the end of the land with a crispness that defied the environment, yet their color had been subdued. Whereas before a shack had had a wall made of faded red boards, now it appeared as little more than tinted wood. Despite the fog I could hear men on the hillsides, women in the camp and children playing along the riverbank. The scent of humanity welled up from all sides, almost knocking me back against the wall with its strength. I licked my lips and felt my stomach growl. A growing sensation sat in the back of my mind gnawing at my sensibility and I felt as if it were somehow an extension of my stomach, as if my stomach had invaded part of my brain and were threatening to conquer it entirely. Beyond the human smell I could smell all the other aspects of the camp and even the decomposition that took place in the shady parts of the forest, under the pines sagging with moisture or under the bare branches of the hardwoods. There were other scents and sounds that I could not make out or understand. Everything felt very clear like pristine pencil marks on white paper, yet muted and any movement appeared slow and sounds elongated. The smell of a human dampened from the rain appeared and I inhaled deeply before I could stop myself with a choking gasp. Then I could hear the heartbeat of a child, fluttering as it came to me, followed by its splashes through the muddy morning and I dashed back into the cabin. The child ran happily by unaware of my existence as I lay on the bed, my face contorted into a gruesome parody of someone about to cry but who can’t produce a tear. I’d momentarily warmed but soon my body was just as cold as I’d been before. The slow breaths that returning to my nostrils from the bed reeked of musty decay.
I sat up and looked at my hands. They had grown wan and cold, bloodless therefore lifeless and when prodded sprung back slowly like foam. Death seemed necessary yet unattainable. A gunshot through the head would have done it but I didn’t know if I’d be able to pull the trigger. I wondered how I’d get through the hundreds of years of undead existence I would have to suffer. Then I passed into a sort of joyless reverie where I pursued question after question. Would I age? I had no idea. Vampires had only existed for a couple of hundred years at best, so perhaps they simply had not had time to age and would all die of old age in a few millenniums. What did the bottom of the ocean look like and could I now walk along it for days admiring the fish, the crabs, and the lobsters? How long could I go without blood and could I survive off animal blood? Would I always have my human memories, or would they fade leaving me permanently and irrevocably vampire?
I was in this disassociated state floating in a whirl of the metaphysical when the preacher entered my shack alone. I didn’t notice him. He stood in front of me for a while eyeing me and fingering a pistol at his waist. Eventually he cleared his throat and I snapped out of my thoughts. As I saw his fat face and unsightly jowls, I realized who stood in front of me and anger surged up my throat. I felt a tingle in my fingers as if they were signaling their desire to strangle his throat. Instead I controlled my anger and remained completely still which meant to him that after my eyes had flicked to him, I remained as still as a statue. Being alone in the same room as a vampire didn’t unnerve him as much as I would have liked but he had lost his air of cool superiority and his right hand remained near the butt of his pistol. I was not surprised to see him. I had had many visitors as I’d lain on the cot writhing and spewing, my burning up with the thrall sickness and I could not say with any certainty which ones had been real and which ones had been the product of the searing of my mind. The preacher had appeared with his two sons, all wearing pistols and he had laid a bible on my chest and said a
