Tag: fanfiction

A Duet In An Unholy Place

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

He slowly approaches the Orthodox church: a dilapidated white ruin, crumbling in the setting sun. Before this, he had supped at the sotnik’s1 manse. The Cossack chief Zupanski , the so-called Gospodar2 of this meagre plot of land had reached out, had written to him of his grief and loss. Of his daughter’s last wishes.

As if he, the Graf von Orlok, had not been first reached by her.

The shadows gather around him as he enters the church. It is a monument to a broken arrogance, a decaying vanity. The Cossack soldiers and villagers give his large, lumbering form sway. Even those nobles at the sotnik ’s table felt uneasy by his presence, as he barely sipped at the wine proffered to him by virtue of his station. Perhaps, once, his people and theirs were enemies, or allies against other lost city-states. But here, he is a nobleman offering his condolences and vigil to their pannochka .3 Her father, aged premature by his loss, had said it was a pity that she had not lived so long, that she had been taken so foully, that he could not avenge the grievance of her having been taken from him so soon. Perhaps, the Cossack had said, he and the Graf could have been family had his beloved daughter survived.

The Graf almost grins under his moustache at both of those lies.

Katerina Zupanski lies in her coffin, surrounded by the dimmed portraits of saints, blackened by time and neglect. This place, supposedly sanctified, had been left for too long to the elements, and the forgetfulness of its builder to hurt the Graf nearly as much as it once could have. Most places founded by blood only strengthened and hailed one such as himself. This site, however, is not what he plans to ward himself against.

He had told the grieving father that he had brought his own holy text to read the girl’s last rites. The Graf von Orlok did not lie. In one large, long fingered hand he holds his book, inscribed with the seven-pointed star of a heptagram. He hears the doors close behind him as he reaches into his cloak, and takes something from his pockets with his other clawed hand.

The Graf sprinkles his grave soil around himself into a circle. He watches the young woman’s body, pale in her white funeral gown, her hair the colour of night, her nose bold, and proud high-bone cheeks making him wonder how she could have come from such lowly stock as her forebears. The long candles with their branches of bright red kalina4 bathe her face in an unearthly light. He reaches one hand towards her – as though the shadow of him lurches to possess her – and stops. No. Not yet.

He can wait three nights.

He takes one talon, and slices his palm. The Graf sprinkles his grave soil around him, murmuring an incantation from his book. Then, he settles down. He sits, his bulk still tall from the floor. And he waits.

*

She rises from her coffin. Somehow, she is more beautiful now, as her anger overcomes her corpse. Thwarted in life, trapped by her temporal beauty, Katerina walks slowly, silently, out of her resting place. Her feet do not disturb the dust of the ancient church as she stumbles towards him.

The Graf watches, his dark eyes glimmering in fascination as this ethereal creature approaches him, sensing him from her deathly state. Her footsteps become steadier. More sure. There is no power, beyond what she has put upon herself, past what fights to become free. Her eyes are blank as they stare directly and sightlessly at him. But the Graf knows she can see him. That she wants him. Of course she does. One appetite recognizes another.

She explores the space around him, her puppet-body examining the length and breadth of his power. He smiles at her as she seems to dance around him more sedately than St. Vitus ever could. Eventually, with almost disappointment in her somnambulist body language, she glides back to her coffin. Then, she lies back down and crosses her hands peacefully over her breasts again. For a few moments, the Graf thinks he can see her breathe. Fascinating. Then, she is still again.

Eventually, he gets up, breaking the circle with his feet. The cock has not yet crowed, and there is no virginal blood to help him sleep forever this morning. He considers her spell. He thinks about how they have taken the measure of each other.

The Graf looks forward to what she offers him the next night.

*

When the Graf comes to the church the second time, he considers Katerina. The little lady. He thinks about her last moments, the ones that her father and her people had not seen.

As the people avoid his presence, with him not bothering with the peasants, and the sotnik’s retainers noting how he barely ate their bread, or drank even vodka, he can still recall the night he sensed Katerina’s death. 

Katerina’s resentment had allowed her to treat with the entities of this land, and below, as his ambitions as a Solomonari5  let him bind his soul back to his own corpse. In the form of an old woman, she embraced the Old Ways as she rode the backs of the human beasts that always dominated her. The priesthood supported men as much as any noble or soldier did. Unfortunately, she challenged the wrong man that night, a young man in the cottage she used to lure her prey.

In the deep darkness of his slumber, he had felt her calling out for someone, for anyone, who could understand her pain as she lay dying, beaten, and broken. And his black heart found hers. It gave her just enough succor. Just enough time.

It had been hard to journey to this so-called Little Russia, to Kiev, but young Knock had proven his use. Orlok’s servant, an aspiring rechtsanwalt für grundbesitz,6 used his contacts to transport him this far, into a land not unlike his own. Orlok will remember those other qualities, perhaps to cultivate his devotee a little further. But Knock’s mind, while fanatical to their contract, his slow but steady temporal growth a testament to some level of ambition, paled by the loneliness and despair, and the absolute hatred embodied within this gorgeous porcelain of womanhood before him. 

Outside his circle of blood and grave soil, she hisses at him spitefully. Her voice rumbles and crackles like the depths of the Pit. Winds buffet the dust around them, making the walls tremble under their power. She practically hovers around him now, almost flying. The Graf admires her imperious, commanding fury as she tries to get close to him and seize his power. To conquer another man.

Yet as she claws the air with an electricity almost an echo of lightning, her own spell fails to overcome his. His deep voice reverberates like the Pit itself. He has been dead longer. She has only had three nights. She only has three nights, if he understands the ritual of her kind. There is a desperation in her words and movements. Her skin is blue now, yet her eyes seem more alive than ever. These burning pinpricks of fire only accentuates that feeling of darkness calling darkness. Like communing with like.

Eventually, she grows tired. She retreats, slowly, back to her resting place. And it is just as before. The Graf takes it all in. He knows this is not over. In fact, he is counting on it. There is one night left. One final moment. This is where she will be at her best. At her zenith. At her end.

And he will be there, to see what the being once called Katerina Zupanski can do.

*

She does not disappoint him.

He is glad of this. He traveled all the way to this small place at great cost, had awakened himself from his Castle, to see and feel in the flesh what he had experienced from the dark of his tomb.

Her wrath is both terrible and glorious. The winds are vaster now, her influence over the elements as tempestuous as her deathless, vengeful soul. Her teeth chatter and each curse is a spell created to destroy him. The windows of the church shatter. The icons of saints fall. And creatures fly down from the rafter. They crawl across the dusty floor. The Graf observes it all and marvels.

Upiór, spirits controlling the bodies of the lesser dead try to claw at his protections. Wurdulac, fanged creatures that usually feed off the people they loved most in life, are forced to assault him. And so many more lelkek, spirits of the trees and stones themselves, under her thrall come to her.

He would find it insulting not to match her, as he summons his own hosts. Bats, rats, and wolves leap through the windows her power destroyed, tearing at her creatures as they face each other down. His face twists into a death rictus as his spells match this little girl’s – this pannochka’s – own.

Then, the Graf has had enough. He tires of this child’s tantrum. He toes his circle, smudging the edge, as he comes forward. Katerina flies at him, and they wrestle in the church. He is larger, stronger, but she has the fury of her last night in her, and her natural place of power. She flings him into her own coffin. Somehow, it fits him, holding him as he sits up.

She floats over him, staring down at him in triumph. When she stands over him, and on him, he knows. He knows what she is about, and what she is going to do. He watches as she straightens the hem of her white dress, revealing her stocking. She smiles as she smashes her foot down into his groin. The Graf gasps, with air that he no longer breathes. Then she smiles wider, and stomps on his manhood again. 

He grabs her, suddenly, by the throat. He holds her up as their creatures rage around them. She chokes out a word. A name. The creatures, both of their forces, grow quiet.

But nothing happens.

She suddenly looks at him. It’s as though this dead witch truly sees him for the first time. One hand, a dainty blue finger, traces his thick eyebrows, his large eyelashes.

Viy.

The Graf’s stolen blood rages in his living corpse body. Katerina slides out of his grasp and around. She circles herself on top of him. Onto his back. She cries out, shrieking with glee from dead lungs, as she rides him. He sees her beaming joy. Her triumph.

And then, he starts to change.

He lets his power warp and twist his body. Bones break and reassemble into a four-legged position. His hair, on his head, his face, and his palms grow out. Even his talons elongate. All around the room, upturning more disused pews, and books and artifacts, the corpse-witch rides him, a giant wolf. Rats and scattering things flee in terror. The dead back away from their betters. 

The being once known as Katerina also changes. First, she folds into herself, and becomes a dog, as the wolf grapples with her. Then a cat, to escape him. But he holds her by her nape. Seizing her in his jaws. She changes back into herself as he bites her throat, mounting her, on her coffin. Her eyes flash with rage, but also lust as she runs her dead, blue fingers through his hair. The Graf von Orlok claims her, shooting his dead man’s seed into the cold unliving thighs of his new bride. Now she is free. Now she is his.

*

A plague hit those who came to the church the following day. Those that survived, fled in terror at the rats and the bloated corpses of their fellows, surrounded by the ossified statues of terrible monsters caught in the sunlight. 

The sotnik, Zupanski, fled to his estate. He locked himself in his room. But in the wavering candlelight, a shadowy hand reaches forward, holding him in place. He can’t move. The old colonel struggles against the unseen grip. He sees the portrait of his naked daughter, made to pose for him and the artist he hired, unveiled. Then, he looks at the portrait of his wife. His late wife.

The vastelina7 Zupanski, the dame of Katerina, stands before him. Not lost in the darkness. Not roaming the cabins of his land, or the corridors of their manse. Dignified in her finest dress, her dark hair greying, she looks down on him and the portrait of their daughter. He does not seem to notice the familiar gleam of fire in her eyes, so much like his Katerina’s, as the shadow holds him in place, as she reaches out towards him.

Afterwards, the manse is burned. The bodies of the dead are lost. The painting of Katerina Zupanski, once beloved property of her father, is lost in the flames.

*

Toma the Philosopher is left by his fellows in the barn. That was the agreement he and his other fellow seminary peers made with the hoary old babushka of this place. They were lucky. He is warmed by the drink left to them, and he settles down into the straw as he thinks about the seminary and the sickness that broke out in the village. It hit while they were gone on errands, and quarantine was swift. They were not allowed back in, and left to fend for themselves.

After being exhausted, they found their way to this cabin. He tries not to think about the last time he stayed in such a place. He vowed never to do so again. Not after the evil he faced, the temptation he barely kept from consuming him.

So when he sees the old woman in the moonlight, and realizes it is the same one. The same witch. The one that he thought he killed. The one, by God in Heaven, he tried to forget. It’s as though his heart’s blood has frozen into ice. Toma does not even scream as she comes forward. A dark claw almost seems to pin him in place. Rats come out of the straw. So many, just like the village outside the seminary. No. There are even more …. They screech around him hungrily, biting, clawing, and hissing.

The old woman’s face melts away, her shawl and dress vanishing, turning into white linen and revealing the terrifying beauty of the witch that has haunted his nightmares, that he thought he had killed without consequence. 

The being once called Katerina, her mortal life now fully mourned, stands over the young man’s body. Her groom uses his power to hold the seminary student in place. She smiles down at him, as she lifts up her skirt hem, revealing her garter, before plunging her foot down.

Pop Toma won’t die, she decides. For killing her, for freeing her, he won’t die for some time.

*

A plague begins to spread throughout Kiev, and the rest of this place that some called Little Russia. Then further. The krayina8 suffers as the Rus blame a ship that came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire for carrying rats into the land.

As city-states begin to rattle sabers, and corpses burn, in the night a cat and wolf run together through the grass. During the day, they will retire to a carriage that always seems to follow them. For his own part, he feels as though he may have returned to this world, prematurely, but there is much more to be consumed. And she, her life extended, feels like it is only just beginning; their danse macabre continues. 

  1. a military rank among the Cossack starshyna (military officers), the Russian streltsy and Cossack cavalry, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the Ukrainian Galician Army, and the Ukrainian People’s Army. ↩︎
  2. Slavic term for “lord” or “master” ↩︎
  3. a young unmarried lady or mistress in Ukrainian and Polish ↩︎
  4. a Viburnum opulus shrub, often called the guelder rose or snowball bush. Its bright red berries are a powerful symbol of love, beauty, youth, and femininity, and also represent home, blood, and family roots. Kalina also appears in the context of the Kalinov bridge, which connects worlds in Slavic mythology ↩︎
  5. a wizard believed in Romanian folklore to ride a dragon and control the weather ↩︎
  6. a German real estate lawyer ↩︎
  7.  interpreted to be a Ukrainian term for “landlady,” “lady of the manor,” or a feminine form of “owner” or “proprietor” ↩︎
  8. Slavic term for “land” or “country” or “a region or province” ↩︎

Red Lips in the Castle of Blood

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

“I loathe that portrait.” Julia Alert says, her elbow locked with her companion’s, her nose upturned, the scowl on her perfect face all too clear.

Valerie looks up at the framed painting on the wall, inclining her white blonde hair slowly, glacially, in deliberate consideration. “It is a beautiful piece of art. The artist captured, at least, the surface feeling of you. Your forbidding look. Your tempestuousness. Your passion.”

Both women wear fine lace gowns, low cut, their skirts billowing out at the ground like flowers. Julia’s dress is made from a fine black material, while Valerie’s is white. Julia regards her companion, and her dark eyes seem to smoulder almost as much as that of her likeness in her painting. “Flattery.” She pats Valerie’s hand. “I’ll admit,” her eyes narrow, “that is the first time someone had assumed that this was my portrait, and not that of an ancestor’s.” Her eyes narrow. “Or an ancestor of Elisabeth’s.”

A faint smile forms on Valerie’s lips. “Interesting. It seems as though we have been both defined by an Elizabeth in our lives.”

Valerie’s pronunciation of the name comes out as a drawl, a dactyl vanishing in the shadows of the torchlit castle hall. Julia inclines her head, a resigned but amused smile acknowledging the other woman, as though noting that detail as well. She runs a hand through her dark golden hair as she turns back to look at the painting. “Do not misunderstand, Valerie. I used to love this portrait. It is well done. It has lasted years. Even decades. It was made to capture my beauty. To celebrate it. That is what they tell me.”

“But it is just so still. So … static.”

Julia stares, directly. The latter woman, for her part, keeps her eyes on the painting above them both, looking down at them all. “Yes. Precisely.” She regards her companion with as much intensity and focus as Valerie had the painting, before looking back at her facsimile and shaking her head. “I am tired. Of being here. Of being stuck here. In this place. In that time. Never changing. Never moving. A pretty good little thing to entertain, but that is all the meaning there will ever be. Just a bauble to be admired in an old house always having the same parties.”

Valerie takes Julia’s arm more firmly, inclining them away from the painting. They start to walk. Slowly. Languidly. It’s as though their gown hems are gliding on air. Julia takes one last look at her picture before moving full step, side by side, with Valerie. “I’m sorry.” She says, after a time. “I used to enjoy these ballroom parties. These celebrations. But I forget myself. There is nothing that can be changed. That is what I said. That is what I told her –” She sighs, and looks down for a moment, a rueful quirk forming on the corners of her mouth.

“You mean, to your Elisabeth.”

“Every time.” Julia says, without hesitation, caught in her own inner momentum as Valerie steers them onward. They move through the corridors, away from the music, away from the conversation, the sounds becoming more distant, ethereal, lost to time. “But it seems, at times, as though I’ve trouble heeding my own advice.”

Valerie moves her head, slowly back and forth, a bemused expression on her face. “If only our portraits could rot from our excesses and debauches, showing the marks of our years and experience, while we celebrate our lives, young and whole, eternally.” She sees the blank look on her companion’s face. “I believe that came from the work of an Irish author, of your Commonwealth?”

Julia rolls her eyes. “Probably after our time. Though it does sound familiar. Perhaps one of our other guests mentioned it in passing.”

“And imprisoned as well. Broken by it, at the end.” Valerie looks out into the darkness around them. “Perhaps you can only celebrate, only flout life, so many times before the walls of your bower become your fortress, become your jail, and then your only company. Your tomb.” Valerie stops, suddenly, her white dress standing out in the gloom. She places both hands on Julia’s shoulders, leaning in, conspiratorial, smirking. “And so, you continue. You defy that end. You escape those walls. That fate. A coward dies a thousand deaths, but a traveler lives a thousand more.”

There is a sour look, almost a pout on Julia’s face as she stares into Valerie’s, though it does not match the fire in her eyes. “You almost sound like Elisabeth’s journalist companion, misquoting the Bard at me.”

Valerie smiles, pushing back a strand of hair from Julia’s face. “My friends will be at the ball for a while?”

Julia leans her own face into Valerie’s, running her hand through her soft hair the colour of platinum. “You mean the young couple you brought with you?”

Valerie nods, resting her forehead against Julia’s. “I know that, especially to this fine … how do you say … Victorian -themed ball of yours, it is customary when visiting another’s home to bring gifts. A part of guest right.”

“It is very Continental. Or Old World as the Americans say.” Julia’s arms wrap around Valerie’s waist. “But it is also the duty of a hostess to provide party favours.”

“Well, Lady Alert.” Valerie’s lips brush the other’s, the ghost of a kiss. “I have enjoyed these appetizers. Shall we come to the main course?”

“Mes chambres.” Julia’s stringent tones have become quiet, husky. “Elles ne sont pas loin. Les autres seront occupés avec leurs nouveaux… millésimes de bourgogne.”1

“Bon.” The two of them regard each other for a long moment, with a whole other kind of hunger before separating, and holding arms again. “J’ai vraiment hâte de goûter au mien, ma chère.”2

“De même.”3 Julia replies, before inclining her head and her body towards another direction, another set of stairs. “But before my chambers, another detour. There is something else. Before midnight.” Her eyes are deep. “Something that I would like to show you.”

*

They lie together under the drapes of the canopy bed. The room is a gentle, but pervasive red. Valerie traces a finger tip down Julia’s exposed neck, a lazy, amused smile forming. “I cannot hear your heartbeat.”

Julia lies on the mattress, her hair, once neatly in a bun now completely down but not hiding her one thousand yard stare into the shadows made by the candles in her room. Finally, she turns towards Valerie on their pillow and smiles back. “Then you have done your job, Lady Chilton?”

Valerie laughs. A crystalline tinkling sound. “What fire. I am glad that it remains. I hope that we can appreciate this night. We have survived the time between the commemoration of Saints, and the place of all lost souls.”

“Your hair, gliding across my chest, my skin …” Julia strokes Valerie’s collarbone absently, “it certainly elevated me from any Purgatory where I might have been. I can understand, even remember now, why Elisabeth seeks such solace in the sensual. The ultimate escape. I would, and I will, do anything for that.”

“For you.” Valerie gets up, and begins to put on her dress, red this time, and a long, feathery white boa.

“Red becomes you.” Julia drawls, resting her chin on the palms of her hands, her elbows in the pillows.

“And you have become the red you were always meant to be, long ago.” Valerie straightens her garb. She smiles down at the other woman. “Are you ready?”

“Aren’t you scared?” Julia inclines her face. There is a defiance there, but her eyes are distant.

“My dear.” Valerie leans forward, and holds her face in her hands. “Look at me. A letter-opener, a book-knife in the heart. I have seen death more times than you can imagine. You are more than just art for men to admire, and for your Elisabeth to disdain and take for granted. This is an opportunity. Death is the first part of the greater journey. I am honoured to have seen the start of yours. Now is the time for new cycles. New dances. New stories.”

“Of course, Lady Chilton.” There is a reverence and, perhaps, a bit of playful mockery in Julia’s tone as she gets up to get dressed herself. “You know, having known the Blackwoods and the other families, I must confess that you do not look like a Chilton.”

“Only by marriage.” Valerie shakes her head. “Or so I thought.” She smiles at Julia’s questioning glance. “Let us just say that my husband was a bad little boy, titillated by young blood spilled in Bruges, but too cowardly to take anything in Ostend, or in your Mother Country. The Elizabeth I knew, she was the real thing. Far more than the ‘Mother’ that he left behind. So no, my dear Julia, I might be a Chilton, but in name only. And not in deed. If anything, I come more from a Countess ‘ line than from where I had ever been solely with him.” She straightens out her shoulders. “Now then, the hour is late. It is almost morning. Come, Julia. I will take you from this place, and we will continue our journey together.”

Valerie holds out one hand, waiting for Julia to take it. There is a wistful smile on her face, but an imperious mien to her gesture. Julia laughs, bowing her head, slightly but visibly.  She takes the other’s hand, letting her come to her feet. “You have a lot of confidence, my Lady.”

“Only in you.” Valerie responds. “You know the way out. I have only secured it. For the both of us.”

“And the others?”

Valerie looks lost in thought for a moment, her blood red fingernail tapping at her lip. “My friends are already permanent guests by now, yes.” Julia doesn’t answer, but that is a reply in and of itself. “I am sure they will remain entertained, and for entertainment. As for your friends, well you know the wager.”

“The reason you are here at all, yes.”

“The attorney made it clear to me.” Valerie and Julia step towards the doors. “One night. A … carriage, or conveyance will be waiting for us. This place, your prison, will become mine. My property. And I will raze it, to the ground, on your behalf. No more exhausting dances. No more deaths. No more men to compete with. No more Elisabeth. Just as I escaped from the shadow of mine, so you will yours. Only the voyage. Only the limits of Oceanus. Only the Night, for the two of us.”

Julia takes this in, and she smiles. “Yes.” Her face twists into a grimace of hatred for a few moments. “They have made their choices.” She turns back to Valerie, her benefactor, and so much more. “Now, we can make new ones.”

*

The castle walls and passageways warp and shift. But Julia, obediently, leads Valerie onward, knowing the way, seeking their final destination out of this place. Julia opens the passage in the wall, directing them both into the darkest chamber. They descend deeper, and deeper down until they finally come to the basement.

“Just a little further, my Lady.” Julia intones. She guides them, through boxes and tables. Mists, swirling at the edges of the chamber, begin to grow, obscuring the visibility of everything else in their way. Her cloak, the one she brought with her to the castle in the beginning, settles around her shoulders. There is something … familiar about some of the objects that they pass. This place, it looks like catacombs, older than the castle itself. She closes her hand over something in her cloth that she took with her as they move farther inward.

“What is this place?” Valerie murmurs. “They remind me of a family crypt … I sense much death here.”

“I believe,” Julia says, her own tone absent, “that Elisabeth’s grandfather, the first Lord Blackwood, meant it to be a family plot. But for some reason, his family never chose to inter their remains here. You saw the gravestones outside when you came in? That is where most of them … most of us lie.”

“Then what … or better yet … who is here?” Valerie’s grip under her cloak tightens, just a bit. “Tell me, my Julia. What should we expect here?”

Julia comes to a stop. The mists begin to rise higher. Two objects, in front of them, strangely enough become more definite. “You are a connoisseur, yes my Lady?” She peers back at Valerie. “The Blackwoods had another name, before their founder was given this land and title. Before he chose to build his castle here. I don’t think you would have enjoyed the taste of them, my Lady. They were called … Blackbloods.”

Valerie chuckles at that. “Blackbloods. You told me their founder was a Hangman? If they’d only known the Countess …”

“It’s true.” Julia nods. “Elisabeth’s grandfather was given this power for his executions. Her brother, from what I was told later, Thomas is worse. Yet it all started here. At the foundations. I imagine that Blackblood did more than just kill criminals and dissidents to the Crown to get this privilege. I think this is where he held the … other bodies. I am sure you can understand such things. Personally.”

That is when the objects in front of them come into focus. Two boxes. Oblong. One of them has a face inscribed onto it.

“Doesn’t that seem familiar to you, my Lady?” Julia asks, pointing at them. “They are not quite Iron Maidens, but …”

“Iron Maidens.” Valerie’s eyes narrow at Julia, at her impertinence. “How would I know of such things? They were before …”

“In a way, wouldn’t that be you?”

The figures materialize from the mists. There are so many of them. Most of them are garbed in nineteenth century clothing, but others wear clothing from different ages of England, and across the world. Valerie’s chin tightens. “I see that many others made the wager, then.”

“That is one thing I understand about gambling,” Julia says, stepping right to Valerie’s side. “The House always wins.”

The figures walk closer to the two women. Valerie remains tall. She does not flinch.

“Julia.” She says in a low voice. “I order you. I command you to see us through this.”

“I will see us through this, Valerie, if that is your real name.” Valerie turns to see Julia smiling at her. The other has let go of her arm. “You know, something occurs to me.”

“Julia.” Her name in Valerie’s mouth is iron. A warning.

“It’s just … well. I suppose traveling all across Europe, all over the world even, costs you a considerable amount of money.”

The apparitions of the castle loom closer. 

“Julia.”

“I mean, truly. You benefited from the good graces of your wards at first. I imagine the Chiltons did not give you the money you seek. And judging by your existence of wanderlust, of not being able to stay still, you must have run out of your original funds long, long ago. Let me guess? If you were to get out of here, you would raze this place to the ground, sell the land, and take all the money for yourself?”

“Julia, you are my –“

Julia laughs. It is a mocking, scornful sound. “Did you mean anything you said, Valerie, or whoever you are truly? Would you have let go with you?”

Valerie lunges forward, suddenly. Julia’s mouth widens into an O. A slender blade pierces through her chest and out of her back, where her heart would have been. Valerie withdraws the blade, as Julia staggers back, and crumples onto the ground. In the mists. But her laughter doesn’t end. It rings on, and on.

“Oh come on now, Valerie! Stabbing me in the heart, at this point, is a little on the nose!”

Suddenly, Valerie is surrounded. There are two men. One of them is in frilled finery. The other is topless, and heavily muscled. They hold both of her arms. She struggles, but it is no use. Julia steps out of the mists again, in front of the other figures, completely unharmed, her gaze piercing into Valerie’s with a sly smirk on her face.

Valerie’s face twists into shock and rage. “I turned you. I could not feel your heartbeat! You were mine!”

“My heart never beat, Valerie.” Julia says, with sweetened venom, as she comes closer. “And I never felt yours.” She leans in closer to her as the two spectral men hold her in place. “And I was never yours.” She turns to the men. “Thank you, William. Herbert. You know what to do.”

Then the figures surround Valerie. Their hands, their fingers, scratch at her. Their teeth find themselves in her flesh. Valerie shrieks Julia’s name until they, all of them, are swallowed by the mists and the darkness.

*

Julia Alert stands in the basement on her own. Her hands are folded in front of her as she regards one particular object. She looks at it almost as intensely as she had the painting of herself in the hallway of the castle. After a moment, she speaks in the direction of the object.

“Dr. Carmus finds you fascinating, you know. He believes that we are, in his words I believe, ‘localized’ versions of what you are. We’ve had so much time here, in this place, that we read a few of his works. I suppose that is one more way in which we could be related, you and I.”

Julia sighs, running her fingertips up and down the object in front of her. “Usually, we can only consciously exist one night once a year. The good doctor told us that human beings have three forms of life. Our bodies, that die quickly. Our souls, that we never truly understand … and our senses. I know our senses can continue a long time after we’ve died. The sensual life is long, and majestic. Blood is the best way to keep it going. I think, perhaps, that is how you have kept yourself going .. though you have been able to move, unlike ourselves. Blood feeds the five senses after we’re gone. And violence, well, it makes it feel all the more poignant. I am sure you find this very familiar.”

She moves around, her skirts twirling. “The young couple you brought us are new. But you are different. You always were. You weren’t exactly subtle, my dear Valerie. Even your voice sounds much older than how you look. Frankly, if anyone deserves to exist in a Castle of Blood, it is you, Countess .” 

She shakes her head, splaying her fingers out on the object in front of her. “Oh, I know who and what you are. I know you’ve killed many people. You like little girls, if I recall the stories. Alan wouldn’t understand. He was always such a do-gooder, even now. And poor, sweet Elisabeth is too squeamish for that sort of thing. Do not worry. We will not kill you. We are after all, all of us, murderers. By necessity. Lord Blackwood, Thomas, feeds us blood once a year to keep us in existence. To give us company. And I have it on the good doctor’s authority that we can use your blood to extend our existence for another year. To increase our sensual life. And we, darling, are nothing if not sensual. But with your blood in particular, even more than that of your darling couple, we could have longer. We might be able to even leave the Castle and its grounds. That is what you promised me, even though I suspect you never believed it would work. Just one more pawn discarded for the Countess, yes? But who knows?”

Julia shrugs her shoulders. “We might even be able to go as far as paying Thomas himself a visit. To … repay him for his generosity in keeping us existent. But you needn’t worry.”

Julia walks away. “Alan was a journalist before he joined us. He interviewed Poe. He likened your situation to ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ you know? I think he almost feels sorry for you. It is a pity. I once thank you beautiful. Like a worldly Galatea. But really, I think you remind me more of a Ligeia than anything. Yes. Legends. Your fate, right now, reminds me so much of that legend of how you spent the remainder of your days locked in your room in your own castle for your crimes, slowly starving to death. How that must have driven you mad. No wonder you could never stay, willingly, in one place.

“But it is all right now, my dear Countess. All you have to do, now, is lie back, be still, be beautiful. And be useful. Yes. Close your eyes, and think of … well, not so much England, as we are already here, but Hungary perhaps. Yes,” Julia slowly grins. “That should be appropriate.”

Julia leans down, and kisses the sarcophagus in front of her. She gazes down at it, her gaze filled with transfixed contempt. There is a determination in her eyes as she rises fully to her feet. She takes a piece of cloth in her hands. It is Valerie’s cloak. She looks, meaningfully, at the sarcophagus and drapes the cape around her shoulders. She pushes back her hair from her face. Then, she walks away, leaving the sarcophagus and the other coffins in the darkness and blood. Beautiful. Marble. Still. 

  1. My chambers. They’re not far away. The others will be busy with their new… burgundy vintages. ↩︎
  2. Good. I really can’t wait to taste mine, my dear. ↩︎
  3. Likewise. ↩︎

How I Did It

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Dedicated to Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, My apologies.

Vith thiz roating I Hanz Vilhelm Friedreich Kemp, vill quyotely, unt vith gret purpoz, rekort mien accunt ov how I von. Ov ou I dit it. 

Ugh. Shit. Pardon my English. Or German. No one in Transylvania can tell the difference. I said, with this writing I Hans Wilhelm Friedrich Kemp will quietly, and with great purpose, record my account of how I won. Of how I did it.

Vater and Mutter were at it again in the tower, making like Act Three of Die Walküre. I was a quiet child, practically a mute. Vater had no patience for it, lost in his cognac, or his work. Mutter was kinder. No. Not kinder. She was nice. She played for us. I still remember the smell of her cigars, and the thrum of her violin. But, like always, they tended to forget about me. They left me with their manservant. Fritz. A mean, nasty sort of fellow. Always furious at me for staying in the bathroom for too long. It was the only place I had to myself. I could barely speak, child that I was, but Mutter and Vater were proud of me for using the pot. Der Großvater, never der Opa, never knew. Vater told me he did not know of me, but would see me when I had grown more. I was a big boy. I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t understand. 

One day, in our cramped home that I loved, but was too small, Fritz tormented me again. He liked to see how close he could get with his matches. He knew I’d say nothing. I couldn’t say anything. Vater trusted Fritz, though he had reason to be angry with him. 

Once, when I was born, Fritz insisted he’d found the right person, one Abt Üblich. 

He read worse than I write, and Vatter flew into a rage, choking him until Mutter pried him off. Fritz. Always fidgeting with his tie. On his suit. It was always crooked. A man has to be presentable, was what he told me when he didn’t go on about how awful I looked. It wasn’t my fault. I was a sickly kind, as my parents knew. 

But that day, Vater and Mutter were working, and I could hear them. Vater calling her name over and again like she was lost, and it was a miracle to hear anything. Even now, I still hear the sound of the William Tell Overture, and The March of the Swiss Soldiers to this very day. 

It made Fritz mad. Fritz was always mad when Vater was with Mutter. I think he was jealous, and he growled like a dog when he flashed his matches at me. I kicked them away, while he laughed. But we were in my room, and while Fritz talked about needing a roll in the hay, I don’t think that is quite what he meant. But I saved him. I pulled him up to the rafters. I even straightened out his tie. 

I think he stopped working, then. And I was scared. So I took the secrets of life and death with me. The book. I took The Secrets of Life and Death with me. Shit. Vater lent it to me, to help me learn to talk. To read and write.  My handwriting is so messy.

And then I fled. 

The rest was a blur. People screamed when I went by. They said that a monster was on the loose. I was terrified. A monster? Where? I couldn’t see it. But it followed me. I hid. There was a talking doll near the lake. An old man that thought I was some kind of soldier, or mercenary. But then his family came, and the monster with them. 

And I wanted to go back. I wanted to find Vater and Mutter again. I wanted to tell them that I ran off. I wanted to say that I was sorry. I would be a good boy. A good kind. They didn’t come for me.

They didn’t look.

I knew why. The book Vater gave me told me everything. I handled it the best I could. But the villagers made a party. The rest. The windmill. The pitchforks. The torches. The marshmallows. Then it all came down. I thought I heard someone scream my name. 

By the time I woke up, I was under wood. Not waking up with wood, but it was on top of me. Not, not like that either. And I saw a big man beside me —

Again, not like that … Are you telling this story, or me?

Right. I growled. I could talk, but not well. And I was coughing. The villagers came. I thought this was it. But they pulled me out. They saw the man beside me. He was in pieces. I could have used some of those. They said the monster was dead. And he got me. 

Und ja. Die fiendje monsta dit ziz to me. Mien aye, und mien arm und hant. My apologies. My handwriting. And yes. The fiendish monster did this to me. My eye, and my arm and hand. The hermit gave me the idea. He thought I had more holes in me than Swiss cheese, but I realized that what I was was an Army Knife. I had options now.

They called me Kemp. And so Kemp I became. You would not believe how many drinks they gave me in the Beer Hall. How my new family doted on me. A survivor of the monster. A hero. Kemp must have been a big boy like me, before the fire and the wood got to him. Kinder, both of us, almost made kindling.

Almost forty years passed. Vater was gone, fled the land. I think he was on the rocks on a ship. I choose to believe he drank himself to death on a cruise. Mutter remained, working for Großvater until they pried his will from his bony fingers. I got a nice Prussian mustache, even though we are in Transylvania. I fixed my arm. I got a new one. From the lumber yard, I tell them. Sometimes both arms lock up, but the villagers never seem to remember which side is what. And fire doesn’t scare me anymore, after seeing it up close.

And I am not afraid of the villagers. These people accepted me. They look up to me. Many of them never even saw me when I first wandered off from my home. The high collars really help my neck. The hat I wear too covers my forehead. And my eye is fine. I just wear the patch for emphasis. Perhaps my German is too over-emphasized. It’s easy to lapse back into those growls. But they never notice that slip up. 

Riots are ugly things. Every once and a while, I stir them up before they can think of doing them themselves. The last great riot? That was when people got into a fight at the hall over whether Transylvania’s ruled by the Swiss, or the Romanians! Or if we are our own country! Fools! We are Transylvania. Where everyone knows each other, and little boys shine shoes, and men blow horns in their lederhosen. And where we brew beer, and brothels. Especially brothels.

And there are other little pleasures. I play with them. They see me. They respect me. They understand me more than they did their Baron. When Frederick Frankenstein came after the will, I wanted to have my fun. I hadn’t seen my home in years. Mutter wasn’t around. I heard the rumours, though. Just like that sweet music. They made another. Another monster. I went over to the Castle. These hands, even now, are hard to hold a pen. I could break this table if I wanted to. I did a few times. This time, I controlled that knock at the door.

I enjoyed Frederick’s discomfort. He asked me, when I flexed my stiff arm, like a toy’s, if I had a war wound. Pah. Nien, I said. It was … “It vaz ripped out of itz zocket,” I laughed. I had to. This was too funny. He had no idea, “by zi fiendish monster zat your grandfather created!”

Watching him squirm was the best part. I even got to play some darts with him later in the billiards room. I could never throw, not even when I lost that … doll in the lake. And if I did, I would have broken the wall. It was easy to distract him, and just place them there on my arm, and then the board. I couldn’t – I wouldn’t – reveal myself, but I was going to win.

And I did. I had my fun. I didn’t have it in my heart to hurt my cousin. My brother. My little brother. And when I saw what Frederick did for him, after playing some more with the villagers, I really did want to give them some sponge cake. I love sponge cake. But my hand came off. My cousin might be gentler, but he is stronger than I thought. That soun of a veetch. 

So off to the lumber yard. Ja. And then, to another time-honoured tradition. 

To the brothel.

But I, Heinrich … Henry von Frankenstein, will not need any timber for that.

Happy Halloween

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

For Diana Prince, Darcy the Mailgirl, of The Last Drive-In. Happy Belated Birthday.

From a shattered store window, a black and white television screen flickers with static. There is a picture on there, barely visible to anyone who might see it, who might remain. It’s as though a mashed pumpkin leers out from a space long dead, or alive not so long ago. 

Happy happy Halloween Halloween Halloween, the device chirps out, faded, stuttering, discordant, happy happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock …

It is the only sound in the silence that is Haddonfield now. 

It lumbers into the deathly quiet town. It had never left. Its breathing is laboured, muffled, from its exertions. The Shape tilts its head to the side, to look at the treats that another’s trick had made. It kneels down, bending on one knee, at one small form. It moves its mask off what’s left of its face. Just like the others, it notes to itself, filled with insects and snakes. They chitter and hiss in the growing darkness of the night, and the chill of autumn. The Shape sees them in the gloom and the dying street lamps, feasting on burned and rotted faces. Some of the masks have survived. Green warty witch faces. The leering facades of skulls. The visages of Jack O Lanterns. 

All these small shapes, their brains burned from the inside, boiling their blood, sizzling their nerve-endings, the ozone of electricity and elemental power unleashed, and then releasing compartments or using fragments of power to release the spontaneous generation of pestilence to swarm, and eradicate the larger forms nearby. The Shape feels nothing as it peels off those rubbery death masks, looking at the paroxysms of screams from the remains of the adults. It notes how some of them held the children, spilling candy and chocolate and apples all around them, offerings to a grim, arbitrary harvest that only The Shape can appreciate now, reluctantly. 

It looks at the remains of one of the masks, with its silvery component, its medallion and its piece of stone. For a few moments, it thinks it sees the rune of a Thorn on it. It pauses, and something shifts inside of it. Something deep in itself, in the place where its chest is, where it lungs are, and its heart resides. It can feel it. 

Nothing in this town is alive anymore. Nothing is alive anywhere. 

It can’t explain how it knows, even if it talked, even if there was anyone around to talk with about it. It looks at the knife in its hand, stained with chemicals instead of blood. There were trucks. After the televisions played the song, the endless cycle still reverberating through the town, through the country, perhaps even the world, it had made its way to those vehicles. They had been around the stores, the houses of families. These strange suited constructs, The Shape noticed they didn’t bleed or come apart like the others. Only chemicals and wires. Only plastic faces. One, if one still lived, might have believed The Shape to be disappointed by it all: to see these ends as anticlimactic. 

But The Shape doesn’t feel that way. Not at all. 

It feels … different now. These were all treats. And this was a trick. Something is lifting from The Shape, something it cannot name. 

It walks on. It breathes, more shallow, behind its own mask. It recalls finding it in a store, and even now it smells like devil’s rain. It considers going to another house. It pauses. It knows how far it would be. How easy it would be. But somewhere, deep in the void that it is, The Shape can’t find itself to bother. 

It knows that she is already gone. Perhaps gone while babysitting another child. Or hiding. It didn’t matter. Not anymore. 

There is only one place now. The Shape steps on crisp fallen leaves, scattered confections, slithering vermin, the burned and rotted corpses of parents and children, the scattered grains of broken dreams.

Until it finds the house. 

Its footsteps become heavier on the old floorboards. It closes the door behind it, more out of habit than any other purpose. It has been habit and instinct for so long, in any case. Blood, viscera, pain, killing has been the only thing it ever cared about. As it stomps slowly, ponderously, up the steps where a family used to be, long before this last Halloween, it remembers how disgusting it had been. Before it had been darkness, before it had been perfect. Before the doctor tried to mould an intelligence from it, before all of those experiments, before the fear, it remembered the revolting smell of skin and lust, and grossness of being. Of human bodily function. Flesh making flesh. It couldn’t stand it. The idea that something tied it by blood to blood. The knife had been cold and perfect. Then it moved on, it recalls as it comes to the room where it started, to the vessel that carried it, and the other thing that put it in that vessel. That girl. That woman. That man. 

Sister. Mother. Father. 

Little Sister. 

Ugly, there should never have been more than one of him. Stars and cycles. Blood. How much of it had been real? How much had any of it mattered? He stared that day into his own darkness, and knew that it wouldn’t stop until there was no one, and nothing left to kill. But it is quiet now. There is nothing. There is just the night. 

The knife drops from his fingers as The Shape loses cohesion, leaving him empty, possibly bereft. The mask feels artificial now, fake and dead. He slowly strips it off of him. The clatter of the knife echoes through his home. The cool fall air kisses his face almost unbearably, making him raw. Tears flow down his face. He kneels on the floor, near the window, looking for something. He remembers now. Before the doctor tried to kill him, before he tried to lock him away, before he experimented on him silent and helpless, before his parents locked him away, before he started all of this by ending it. 

He finds it in the floor boards. He sits down, cross legged, all of the force and momentum of what has kept him going now long gone. He has just enough wherewithal to put it on. And as he puts the old, small clown face on, he knows The Shape is gone. He smiles behind his old face to match it. He takes his treat. He sits against the wall under the window for a long time, before slowly sliding to the side, and slumping over onto the old, hard wood.  

And this is how Michael Myers spent his best Halloween ever.

Journal of an Olympian

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Yo, Chris. Like we said, they were going to wrap up that Armitage Racist Sex Cult shit faster than DJ Jazzy Jeff getting thrown out of a Bel-Air Mansion. I still can’t believe the depths of this evil, crazy shit. It’s almost literary levels of what the fuck. How I get these? Groundskeeper Grandpa’s shack built more solid than that fucking house of horrors. Damn, man. I told you not to go in there. And hey. I’m TSA, remember? I got friends. Just, Jesus Chris. This fucking title too. Made a whole fucking memoir. Like Mein Kampf. Kind of glad most of it got burned in your fire. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

— Rod

It won’t be long now.

I’m afraid, of course. Any sane man would be, even at the cusp of an achievement like this. If there is even the slightest margin of error, I …

Marianne is worried too, but I’ve assured her that I will be all right. We will be all right. 

I’ve taught Dean well, and he already has a fine family of his own. They know exactly what to do. I see all of the issues now, in retrospect. The mind has to be prepared for the process, both parties to form the Coagula. It isn’t just the host, but the brain — the mind — of the pilot as well. I am so glad that I detailed that video recording while I still could, before this vessel fails, and I can finally get a new one. I hope it will be comforting to those who will join our Order. Perhaps, even our family. That Missy, she is a fine woman for Dean, and the rest of us as well. 

There were mistakes, I will admit it. Perhaps some hubris on our part. On mine. The Doppelganger Experiment was supposed to make this process easier. After all, while they did fail to have any influence over the populace despite what we might have promised that Administration, I still think they would still stand to be fine donors for those of us who are more fortunate. It was a stepping stone, certainly, to gaining the resources that we’ve needed to make this Transmutation possible, and the friends and allies to keep us strong and focused. The poor coloured Doppelganger already lost his original counterpart. I still think it’s unfortunate that the initial process was messy, at best. I suspect that that brain had been too damaged, even with Dean’s brilliant hands and the teachings of our Order such as we established them. Again, we didn’t account for the psychology of the mind, or needing another mind as a foundation to bolster the parts of the brain required to function. Or Missy. We really needed a Missy, back then. Even so, the subject survived with a few of his memories intact, though not enough to grant us — or our allies — any other leverage. If only we could have told the world that we saved such a man, such a politician. 

I’m so sorry, Mr. President. 

That had been our first real experiment. And it was a long road. Up until my time, the Order had pursued Transmutation, immortality, the Holy Grail, through spiritual means. There were so many leads. We had people, family even, in all different branches of endeavour, especially our greatest and most prominent American institutions. We even had a family member in the Orne Library itself, at that University in Massachusetts. We regained so much lore from him, back when we were the Knights Templar. He did a fine job, keeping out the … undesirables, the riff-raff, the dilettantes, and the unclean, while leaving the choicest morsels to us, and our friends. Recommended scholars only. Unfortunately, he was never the same after the Late Spring of ’27. He’d already been a fierce opponent of miscegenation, but that business in that village of inbred hicks broke him. He couldn’t see what needed to be done. It’s a shame, what happened to him in the 1930s, but he’d already been a shadow of his former self. He’d have been horrified at what we’re trying to do now, at what we are transforming into out of pure necessity. But we never had time for short-sightedness. We had to move on.

The Manuscripts were too fragmented, and only hinted on ways to do what we had to bloodlessly. Transcendence and a simple exchange of minds would have been nice, but we are still not evolved enough. It would have been too wasteful to let those other minds, and their skills die. Or worse, allow them to exist in our old shells without proper guidance. No, the body is still the only thing we have to work with, and the more sophisticated, if crude the better. No, two things from the University encouraged us, and me once I took over. I’d heard the stories about the coloured boxer in Bolton, and it was easy for those doctors to revive him. Even if my time in Germany hadn’t happened, even if I didn’t see the future in blood and muscle overtake me, I already knew achievements like these would be possible. That strength. That endurance. That resiliency. But then, there were the records. From Pluto. To think the world doesn’t believe it is a planet anymore. If only they knew the extent of it. Those records were incredibly useful. Only, we don’t want canisters. 

Flesh and blood is the key. Flesh and blood are the tools to ascension. 

The coagula is the way, the merging of Lower and Upper Egypt into the body of an eternal empire. The gods knew this, in any culture. They could cleave themselves together. And like Aristophanes’ story, that is exactly what we will do as we find our other, better halves, and guide them into perpetual life. Adaptation is the key. It always was. Artificial selection, cultivation, and a gentle guiding hand is all that’s needed to shape the perfect form to marry towards the perfect minds. 

Dean and Missy are a part of that in a more metaphorical sense. Hands and mind. Jeremy is a little rough around the edges, but he will come around. He favours the body, just like his Grandpa. I can respect that. Hell, I will be able to keep up with him when this is all said, and done. But the true prize is Rose. My darling granddaughter. She’s saved me. In some ways, she’s saved me more effectively than her parents. She has a new friend. She’s bringing him here soon. And I can’t wait to meet him. 

I’m tired. It’s been a long couple of decades, and there were a few times that I doubted our path. That I doubted myself. I am afraid, but it is just a shadow of the adrenaline I used to feel when I ran those races. When I sprung down towards that finish line. It was the fear of failure, of being left behind, of collapsing under my own weight. It was the terror of being humiliated, shown up, used up as someone better than me took my place. Because I was too slow. Because I wasn’t fast enough. 

But soon all our hard work will pay off. Everyone: the Greenes, the Kings, the Wincotts, the Jeffries, the Waldens. Even Tanaka. They will all profit from the fruits of our labour, and the discoveries of our alchemy. Baser elements transmuted into gold and platinum.  From mud into marble. 

From Black to White.

And they will always remember that it was the Armitages that brought them these gifts. And we will always lead them, and the Order, well. 

I can’t wait for Marianne to feel my strong, dark arms wrapped around her, and a stamina that will never tire. And virility that will never end. And she will have her time as well. Rose already has a new friend for my darling. I am so proud of her.

And I feel so fortunate to you too, Walter. Hopefully we will get a chance to talk before the procedure. You deserve far more than just an impersonal video tape. You will be my new lease on life. You will be my ascension to a new space that was barred to me. Titans need to be protected, and restrained. Centimanes will guard our gates. And Cyclopes will create our lightning. And you will be my lightning, Walter. You will let me strike faster, and harder than I ever did before. I will be able to start again. 

Yes. Thank you, Walter. Thank you for volunteering to give me this new chance. 

Because I haven’t forgotten Berlin. I’ll never forget that day. I will finally do it. 

I’m going to beat you, Jesse. 

I’m going to beat you.

Holy supervillain rant crazy rants, Batman. Pretty sure fucker was talking about Cthulhu shit, bro. Cthul. Lu. Shit. And the Clones around America too. Damn, dude. Not sure what we’re going to do about that. Kind of above my pay grade.

But there’s a whole list of names here. All those old white families. Cocky sons of bitches. And a bit about what they were going to do to you. And what these asshole sons of bitches did to so many others. Don’t worry. We’ll find them, Chris. We’ll get them. One name at a time. 

Lost Cause

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

For Mia Chainsaw

I know what you did. 

Oh, it was clever. Those kids came in, on their fancy bus, with their millennial friends, and they were going to take away what was rightfully yours. Ssh. Don’t speak. You can’t speak now anyway. I always had a suspicion, you see, about this town. About Harlow. But I never had proof. I never had proof about this place, or the areas surrounding it. They came into that homestead, you know, to that window into hell, and they found all the toys. All the “art.”

But they didn’t find them. Any of them. 

That’s when this town started to die. Oh, I bided my time Ginny. Can I call you that? I feel like we are connected somehow, you and I. Viscerally. No no. They had you on that ambulance too long. I know the distances. The heat. We’re in Texas, and many people just die on the way here. This town never dreaded sundown, or maybe that’s not accurate, is it? No. See, this small place here? Right. This place, where you were born, where you grew up, and where you are going to die soon — very soon from what the doctors tell me — is more of a sundown town. I guess it makes sense. I had of time, and some contacts here: like the one who phoned me up. It figures your family came here from East Texas after the Civil War. None of you like outsiders, of any kind. 

I guess that’s why it took so long for people to go to that property when my friends, and my brother were slaughtered by your local heroes. Your unsung boys. Your glorious dead.

No no. I know. The time they got there, the whole family was gone. A regular old Sawyer Adventure, am I right? 

And Tom Sawyer is running around again.

You’re probably not one for liberal Seventies culture, right Ginny? My friends and I were. We just wanted to see if my grandfather’s remains were safe. The irony, or the poetry I guess, is that I did have family here. In this land. In this place. I took it over again. Refurbished it. I came all the way over from the old Hardesty place, from my land, and I waited here. I wanted you all to be nervous. I wanted to be patient. I was waiting you to slip up. 

The problem is, I found the others. Seventies counter-culture. One was an easy rider, but he got run over. The other, Sawney Bean, was a cackling, mean son of a bitch. Not surprised you don’t understand the reference, but he liked to cook too, and trick people off the road. And that old man .. you know, he was apparently one hundred and thirty-seven years old. It reminds me of a short story I read in college. “The Picture in the House,” even heard of it? By Lovecraft. No. You probably think he was a queer, but anyone was Grandpa, the character in that story would’ve been him while he was still up and about.

There were few other freaks, too. But I’m not interested in them. 

I want Tom Sawyer. I want Ed Gein. 

The Moonlight Killer had a sack over his head like some of your great-grandpappy’s friends, I’m sure. But that … piece of shit had many faces. I studied about him, after I got my mind back, such as it was, as it is. Austin University had a good Law Enforcement Program. I studied all kinds of killers too, and how they work. The problem is, Ginny, is that I never saw his face. He was large. Tall. I never doubted for a second he could still be a threat in, what his seventies, like us? He’s not like us. His whole inbred cannibal family of killers are mutants. His fucking Grandpa lived over a century. No. I know he’s going around, killing those kids. 

You told him to go into your room. 

They didn’t get all the evidence. He’s the only one that came back. He had no where to go, after his whole family was gone. I know. Between me and Lieutenant Boude Enright, my Uncle Lefty, we exterminated those sons of bitches. My uncle didn’t make it, but I continued what he started. 

And he is the only one left. 

I’ve been by the old place. Oh, I’m sure you never had a tacit deal with the Sawyers. You just looked the other way. It was silent. Implicit. Strangers came into town, or undesirables, and they’d just disappear. I don’t need to go into who they are, or were, right? I think it’s pretty clear. 

Your last boy. The one in the orphanage. I can’t believe how many teeth I had to pull, to find anyone who’d talk about someone so large. So easy to see. He was in that house. Wounded. You took him out. You brought him to town. Got him as your ward. Adopted him. The town found him “mentally incompetent,” or nowadays developmentally delayed. He was nothing without them. I remember that now. They always bossed him around. Beat him. Told him what to do. I’m sure he enjoyed it, but he couldn’t so much as take a shit without their approval. He played when left to his own devices. We went into his playground, and we had no idea we stepped into hell. And then his family unleashed him and hell on a DJ named “Stretch” Brock. She’s a hard-ass now, despite them. Told me a lot more about that son of a bitch than I knew. 

How long did you keep his chainsaw in that room? Oh when those kids came in with that deed, you were already planning it, weren’t you. How long did he have, to take those rusted pieces out, oil them, put them together again? Putting the gas inside? Does he have some kind of workroom under your house? 

It doesn’t matter, really. Because, you see Ginny, you did me a favour. Before all of this, he didn’t have his mask anymore. It, and the rest, probably rotted away ages ago like all the corpses of all his family’s victims that were left. He’s been killing those city kids, and anyone in his way. He’s fast now. Cunning. Playing. But he’d never do it himself. He’s just an empty, blank thing on his own. A whimpering animal. He was all docile and placid for you, for years, taking care of your kids, and you. No one knowing who he is, but suspecting. No evidence. No proof. 

But then these fucking kids come in. Poor kids. I knew their grandparents, too, you know. We all know each other here now, don’t we, around these parts. They should’ve listened to their grandma. 

I’m not a grandma, Ginny. I am the last Hardesty thanks to your ward. And he is the last Sawyer. And you are the last McCumber. You could’ve handed him into authorities. You could’ve avenged the lives he and his family had taken. You could’ve made up for all the people you turned a blind eye towards as they went to their deaths. You could’ve saved young lives. 

Oh I know. I followed the paperwork. They didn’t have the deed. Yes. They fucked up. You could’ve come here. Challenged them in court. Even won. They didn’t have a chance, even with that fancy city money. But you got angry. They threw your sweet tea right in your face. They disrespected your great-grandfather’s memory. They intruded into your home. Into his lair. They woke him up, out of that puppy docility, out of dormancy. They brought him out of hiding for me.

You brought him out of hiding for me. 

You know, I think he loves you. The sick thing is, I think despite you using him as a killer, you treated him better than his entire family ever did. I’d almost feel sad for him, pity if he weren’t a mad beast that needs to be put down. 

No. Don’t struggle. You’re done. Your heart is too weak. Broken. He’ll find out. He’ll know what’s happened. He’ll lose his cool, and he will rage like a wild animal. More people will die, like those city kids, I expect. But they were going to die anyway. But then he’s going to get sloppy. Careless. He’s going to want his “Moma’s” body. Sawyers honour their kin by mummifying, or wearing them. But I got you first. 

I got you, and I will play all Little Red Riding Hood but, this time, I will be the Big Bad Wolf. And that sick bastard is going to suffer a long time before I’m done with him. Maybe he’ll really know what it’s like when someone takes away the only people you love left. Go to sleep, Ginny McCumber. The South’s not going to rise again.

Doctor! Doctor! Come quickly! Her heart stopped! I don’t think —

*

Yeah, she’s gone right? I’m sorry to hear that Doctor. Yeah, this letter is legit. I have custody of her body, and I will take charge of the autopsy. Yes, it is part of the continuing investigation into the killings. Is the suspect her ward? He ran when the ambulance picked her up at the orphanage, yes? 

Right. 

I’ve been reactivated for this case. Thank you for your time, and cooperation. I will do my best to find this killer for the State of Texas. 

I promise. 

Farewell to the World

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 2 Comments

Dedicated to Fred M. Wilcox, Scott Derrickson, and Harry Bates.

“My poor Krell. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.”
— Dr. Edward Morbius

“Commander Adams. Ms. Morbius. Do you understand why you have been brought here?”

“Actually, Mr. Carpenter.” The young woman, small and diminutive next to John J. Adams. “It’s Mrs. Adams now.”

“Oh. I see.” Klaatu notes their body language, their closeness, and the band on the woman’s hand Even after all this time, he has to catch himself before missing any Earth customs. Perhaps it’s that cultural disconnect, or maybe his people did not reconstruct his brainwaves as well as they had hoped. Nevertheless, considering the circumstances, it is a swift development. “My apologies, and my congratulations.”  

“Thank you, sir.” Commander Adams nods. They sit in the briefing room, just the three and two other occupants. The dark-haired man is polite, in full dress uniform. He knows this is a briefing. The young woman is in a smart dark conservative business suit, complete with a short skirt. Humans have always had a strange perspective on both modesty and exposure. Mrs. Adams looks awkward in the fashion, almost as much as Klaatu once did in the suit he was forced to borrow from what seemed to be an eternity ago. Now he sees the ring on the Commander’s finger as well. “The nature of this inquiry, Mr. Carpenter. It is about Altair IV.”

“To the point.” Klaatu allows a small smile. “Yes, Commander. That is the nature of this debriefing. The United Planets has been clear on this matter.”

“With all due respect, sir.” The way Commander Adams says it, his words still formal, still manages to convey anything but irritation and perhaps an element of protective fear as he seems to sidle physically closer to his wife. “The C-57D has already filed its report.”

“Yes. I know.” Klaatu looks down at the papers, something this species still continues to utilize as documentation while others have already long since moved onto electronics. “Your investigation into the radio silence of the Altair IV Expedition, and the Bellerophon concluded that they were both destroyed by psychic phenomena on the surface of the planet, the same force that took the lives of Lieutenants Ostrow and Farman, Chief Quinn, and …” He looks up, feeling his sympathy written on his face. “Dr. Morbius.” 

Klaatu almost expects Mrs. Adams to look away. As it is, it’s Commander Adams’ brow that furrows: in sadness, or anger, or perhaps both. Mrs. Adams puts a hand on his, and keeps Klaatu’s gaze. He knows he must look strange to her. For all their species look alike, he is well acquainted with the human discomfort with his high cheekbones, and the overall asymmetrical physiognomy of his face. For some reason, however, despite her timidness there is a clear look in her eyes. For a few moments, he recalls his … he still thinks they are his … memories of Helen Benson, of her fear of the unknown being overcome by her determination to do the right thing. 

“My mother and father were the sole survivors of the expedition.” She says, her eyes level with his. “My mother, as you know, died of natural causes. My father was assaulted … by the phenomenon before we escaped the planet.” She sighs. “The power of the Krell was too much for him. It destroyed the mind of the Bellerophon‘s skipper, from what he told me, told … us.”

“And poor ‘Doc.'” Commander Adams rubs one thumb over Mrs. Adams’ hand as both an acknowledgement of her comfort, and his returning of it. “And Dr. Morbius. After we realized the nature of the phenomenon that destroyed the colony and the Bellerophon twenty years ago, Dr. Morbius faced his … Monster of the Id. He stopped it, but it cost him his life. He was mule-headed. Stubborn. Too smart for his own good, probably even before that ‘plastic educator.’ But he was a good man, and he died a good man.”

“And he detonated the 9,200 thermonuclear tandem reactors in the Krell underground complex, destroying the entire planet.” Klaatu confirms, shifting the papers, and putting them aside. 

“After his intelligence was augmented,” Mrs. Adams says, “My father couldn’t risk anyone, or anything, else potentially activating that power, releasing their … manifestations …”

“Yes.” Klaatu replies, looking down for a few moments. “The Krell civilization, in addition to creating a device that measured and augmented the intelligence of their young through mental exercise, also constructed machinery that could molecularly reproduce any material of which they have a sample.” Klaatu knows this, the rest of their confederation utilizing similar technology in more limited and controlled ways. “Your … friend over there is an example of some of this knowhow.”

“Robby.” Mrs. Adams smiles, looking up at the clunky, glittering automaton at her side. “My father made him after his own ‘education.’ He always said he tinkered him together with pre-made Krell technology. He always downplayed what he could do.”

“Your father was a modest man.” Klaatu says, not missing the look on Commander Adams’ face as he says it, remembering full well the report of the Doctor’s lack of cooperation, and the fear of what he learned being misused by any humans aside from himself, a self-fulfilling prophecy. “Pardon, but your name is Robby, yes?”

There is a series of clacks and the intense working of transparent circuitry as a voice booms in the room, reverberating. “Affirmative, Mr. Carpenter.”

“My apologizes again, Robby.” Klaatu smiles. “We, of course, have taken your testimony into account as well.”

“There is no need, Mr. Carpenter.” The whirl and clicks of the robot continue. “I simply reiterated the words and recordings of everything that had transpired, and what I had been monitored to explain during our previous briefing.” 

Monitored. A fascinating choice of word, in Klaatu’s mind. Perhaps “seen to” is the right use of that specific designation. “Yes, there is much we can learn from you. Our confederation, the United Planets and the homeworlds have a version of your replication process, but is it true that you truly duplicated — from one sample — an alcoholic beverage from one …”

“I replicated 60 gallons of rocket bourbon, simple alcoholic molecules with traces of diesel fuel.”

“It was … for Cook, ship’s mess.” Despite the situation, Commander Adams’ manages to have a combination of chagrin and amusement on his face. “Apparently he put the bottle in a slot. The robot … burped?”

Klaatu smiles. “Really?” He tries to think about Gort imitating the sound of biological flatulence, and fails. “Is this true?”

There is more clacking and seeing Robby’s dome move back and forth. “Morbius programmed some mannerisms into me. He had a … sense of humour.” 

Klaatu notes the humans in the room smiling, Commander Adams trying to hide it under one hand, and Mrs. Adams’ filled with a certain reminiscence. “He even duplicated the bottles for him.”

“That is impressive.” Klaatu leans forward. “I’ve read the reports. I suspect that Robby is capable of doing a great deal.”

“Well.” Mrs. Adams tries not to look nervously to Klaatu’s side. “He isn’t as advanced as other robots I’ve seen.”

Ah yes. Klaatu’s smile becomes tinged with a bit of sadness. That is why she has been focusing so much on him. As otherworldly as his appearance may be, though he hasn’t announced himself as “alien” by their standards, even though as far as Earth is concerned Klaatu died over three centuries ago after a “temporary revival” — and perhaps he had — he must be more reassuring than his constant companion. The poor woman had been on a world without any other people aside from her father and then the crew of the C-57D. And Robby the Robot had been something of overgrown toy, with slinky arms, bright lights in a glass dome, tottering steps, turning gears and wheels, and clamp hands. He is almost comical. But Gort …

Gort stands at Klaatu’s side. Commander Adams as seen Gort’s kind before, tall, silvered, silent, visored most times, and hoping that the visor would remain closed besides. There is nothing playful or amusing about him, even though Klaatu is used to him, and his general passive benevolence. But he is imposing, and by design. Gort remains by his side as every member of his “race” does with any high-ranking United Planets dignitary. And Klaatu knows that he himself has more notoriety among the homeworlds than most given the relatively recent — and controversial — inclusion of the human species into the confederation. He’d been the first injured — and even killed — for their message in centuries. He doesn’t like that distinction. It’s unseemly to gain renown from another younger species’ fear and ignorance. Frankly, it’s distasteful to him, as distasteful as … 

Klaatu has a mandate. And he needs to get to it. The sooner, the better. “Forgive me for being blunt,” he says, and immediately regrets it as they mirror his words from three hundred years ago. “But this is all information that we are aware, Robby’s sound effects not withstanding.”

“Right.” Commander Adams stares at him, and gives Gort a side glance. “Forgive me, sir.” He says, respecting the chain of command even in the relative peace-time in which this whole galaxy should be. “But why exactly are we here?”

“You already know about the power of the Krell.” Klaatu says, his smile gone, leaning forward intently. “They created a machine that could manifest any matter from thought, a vast underground planetary network that scanned the synapses of its inhabitants — already accustomed to replicating anything they desired from even a single molecule — to make creation beyond a sample, or a template.”

“Limitless power.” Mrs. Adams says, though her words sound like someone else’s, like her father’s.

“Yes.” Commander Adams affirms it, but his tone is impatient. “We recorded all of this in our report.” 

“We did not acquire this information in our report.” Klaatu sighs. “Our confederation already knew about the Krell, and their achievement.”

The two humans say nothing, but their faces express everything. It’s as Klaatu expected when his superiors gave him this authorization, and order. Shock on the young woman’s face, and the Commander’s but also a wariness to the latter, and a grim set to his gaze. His face becomes stone. “You knew … about the Krell.”

“Yes.” Klaatu says, knowing now that there is no turning back, wondering if the United Planets would always make him a messenger of ominous tidings. “We were there. When it happened.”

*

20,000 Years Ago

He can only watch, helplessly, as the glass spires melt in front of him. Winding stair cases, floating steps fall with their travelers still on them. The sight, from their ship, is unimaginable as vessels are disintegrated, and lives wiped out in a myriad of instants. 

And they are the fortunate ones. 

Klaatu sees the Krell below. He sees them staggering through their wide archways, trying to get away from crackling, hoarse apparitions of pure energy. They are screaming. Crying. The event, Klaatu’s readouts tell him and the others, is localized to the planet itself. The Krell had done it. They’d completed their engine, and the vast machinery, all over their world.

This was the beginning of a new dawn. The long legged, broad, Krell with their magnificent tails, are … they have been, they had been, an inspiration to the confederation of worlds. They traveled the galaxy, perhaps even the universe, when the confederation was young, when they were just different planets slowly exploring the stars. Their automatons were legendary, wondrous, their offspring constructing them for just a lark out of single building blocks. Klaatu’s people, and the others, they made their police — their race of robots — used Krell design, among others, as inspiration while the Krell themselves had no need for them at all, striding peacefully among the stars, brining samples of life back to their homeworld, reconstructing them, hoping to show others what they have achieved through example. 

Klaatu watches as the arches fall on the Krell, burying them alive. They tried to help. They tried to warn them, to slow down. But they had achieved much in their millions of years of evolution. This had been inevitable. This final step. To make manifest their dreams. 

But what they didn’t count on, was their nightmares. 

As another shimmering spire falls, and all Klaatu can hear is screams, he senses Gort coming behind him. He and Gort exchange a look … and Klaatu steps aside. 

Klaatu knows that each species sees Gort, and his “race” differently. He is even known in different languages. Here, he is Gnut. Klaatu can see it, almost. A tall, angular green-tinged figure with a loin cloth — perhaps like the humanoids they liked to interact with, as they had apparently with Klaatu’s ancestors — with visible muscles. He moves seamlessly to the Krell, who see perfection in everything. He wonders, in their mindless terror, if they can see the beauty in their own destruction in this moment. Gort’s face, is this form, is usually sullen, or brooding. This is what Klaatu was told, and what he can even see through the art of the Krell … and their minds. But right now, as Gort observes the carnage, as a nightmare creature grabs a Krell by the tail and rips it off them, flinging them wailing into the sky, all Klaatu can see on Gort’s metal-muscled face — made clearer by the manifestation engine on the planet causing all of this chaos — is sadness. 

Then, his eyes open. Usually, Klaatu’s species among others, would see a beam of shimmering light from a visor. Here, they are just red eyes. But they glow. 

With fire. 

Klaatu watches. He makes himself watch. There is no way to help them. The nightmare manifestations will tear them apart, piece by piece. Their own fear and hate torturing them. There is no language — no conception — to even explain to the Krell what is happening to them. And the terror in their offspring’s eyes is too much for him. And possibly for Gort. 

It doesn’t take long, but it takes too long. Gort’s metal-muscles flex almost artistically around his neck and shoulders as his eyes continue to burn. Klaatu tried to disable the electronics on the planet, but their reactors are too advanced and deep, too synchronized to turn off the effect now. It is all up to Gort now. Gort and his grim sense of duty. 

“Gort.” Klaatu whispers, after a time, “Gort. Baringa.” 

By the time it is over, Gort closes his visor. The manifestation of Gnut, the familiar Krell depiction of him, is gone from Klaatu’s perception. He is a tall, metallic construct again. Gigantic. Expressionless. Faceless. Inscrutable. They are above the world, their synapses away from any field of energy that should remain. The planet’s demoniac nightmares have died with the last Krell. 

Klaatu’s will continue for the rest of his lifespan. 

*

“The Bellerophon had a mission two decades back.” Klaatu explains, meeting their eyes. It is the least he can do considering the circumstances. “As you know, the confederation allowed Earth to keep its weapons, and maintain colonies provided that no atomics or any other weapons of destruction — or acts of hostility — would be brought to any member world. Altair IV was to be a colony.” 

“Bellerophon.” Mrs. Adams’ tone is as faraway as her gaze. “He was the hero that tamed Pegasus, with a bridle he gained from Athena herself. Father told me that story. He rode Pegasus.”

“Yes.” Klaatu admits. “I recall that story.”

“Well, if you do.” Her voice becomes cold. “Then you will know that he tried to fly Pegasus to Olympus, only for the gods to take his steed away, and leave him to fall to the earth, in brambles, blinded, and dying.”

Commander Adams follows up on his wife’s words. “I’ve never heard that story, so you have me at another disadvantage.” The barb is clear, just shy of insubordination. “I know the one about Prometheus, though. And Icarus.” His eyes narrow. “You sent them there.”

“Yes.” Klaatu says. “Earth already found the planet. It was an Expedition sent to … find what might remain. We suspected that there were Krell archaeological remains. The Bellerophon was informed, and consented to excavating what they could find. Unfortunately …”

“They didn’t know that the machine was still active.” 

“I don’t understand.” Mrs. Adams turns, almost pleadingly to Robby. “Robby, why didn’t Father tell us any of this?”

The calculation circuits in Robby’s dome click hard, and fast. “Unknown, Miss Alta. My hypothesis is that he wished to have the perception of a space for you and himself. He did not wish to worry you about outside affairs.”

“Yes, Alta.” Commander Adams grips her hands gently. “Your Father sheltered you. He didn’t want you to know about …” He glares at Klaatu and Gort. “All of this.” And, somehow, his eyes narrow further. “Wait. You know, this whole time, about the planet.”

Klaatu closes his eyes. He knew how terrible an idea, this whole situation, had been. He told them, his superiors. But they didn’t listen. It seems to be a constant on every world in, or out of the United Planets, that one’s superiors don’t listen. “Yes.”

“Then that means.” And Klaatu can almost see the gears in Commander Adams’ mind turning as transparently as those in Robby’s cranium. “You had a ship nearby. With one of those.” He inclines his head at Gort.

Klaatu doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. 

Commander Adams’ bares his teeth. “All those lives. You sacrificed all those people for what? To get that power for yourselves? To use us to do it? Are you still sore at us after three hundred years? Didn’t we pay enough? That was supposed to be our colony! Our territory! Are we just expendable to you?”

“Commander …” 

“No. I get it now. You incredible hypocrites.” Commander Adams shakes his head. “You condemned us for the atomics we were making. You barely begrudged us our weapons: pistols and laser cannons, nothing to you. Nothing to you, and that tin can. And you put us on a planet where our worst nightmares would come true! Where we’d spread it to the universe! What did you think, Mister! That you could control what the Krell failed to do? That we –“

“In all honesty.” Klaatu feels the disgust in his mouth as he speaks the words. “Your minds, even augmented, are nowhere near those of the Krell. You, and your nightmares, would never have gotten off the planet without our police force neutralizing you.” 

“You know my Father had augmented himself.” Mrs. Adams murmurs. 

“Yes.” Klaatu says. “It was … a remarkable achievement. He accomplished much. You said it yourself, Commander.” He turns to the fuming man. “He will be remembered. I won’t …” He tries to find the words. “I won’t pretend to know, or even agree with the decisions of my superiors, but something has to come from this tragedy. From several millennia of tragedy. And it has.”

It takes them a moment. “Robby.” Mrs. Adams replies. “You think Robby can help you with your research.”

“He can.” Klaatu turns to the automaton. “Robby, is it true that Dr. Morbius recorded inside of you all of his research on the Krell?”

“Robby?” Mrs. Adams’ eyes widen. “Is … is that true?”

“I am not monitored to grant that information.”

“Robby.” Mrs. Adams’ voice becomes flat.

“I am not monitored to …”

“Dammit, Robby!” Mrs. Adams’ face turns red. “Archimedes!“

“Alta, what in god’s name has gotten into –” Commander Adams grabs her arm, but immediately lets go as he realizes, it is all out in the open now. All too late.

The robot pauses for a moment as everyone looks at him expectantly. His globe glows temporarily with expended energy. 

“Affirmative.”

Klaatu nods, slowly. “We thought as much. Robby is integral in our research of the Krell, and their sciences. In using their science and technology responsibly. But he is not the only one we need.” 

“No.” Commander Adams gets up from his seat.

“Commander Adams.” Klaatu says. There is only so long this insubordination, even though completely understood, can be tolerated. “You need to remember yourself.”

“Are you threatening me, sir?” 

“No.” Klaatu looks at Gort, who still hasn’t moved. “I am warning you.” 

“I don’t care. You are not taking her. Her, or Robby. I am tired of this –“

“You have no choice, Commander.” Klaatu says. “You will, of course, accompany them, with a promotion –“

Suddenly, before Klaatu can react, he sees Commander Adams throw himself across the table. For the first time in hundreds of years, Klaatu finds himself rough-handled again, the Commander’s hands bunching up his uniform. “Like hell we’re going anywhere!”

“Stay back, Miss Alta.”

“Robby, stop!”

Klaatu feels his airway blocked by the human Commander’s hands. He wonders, briefly, if they can retrieve enough of him again from the audio tapes. He recalls telling Helen that resurrection was beyond even his species’ — beyond this confederation’s — power. And it technically wasn’t untrue. They can only, at best, make copies with as near perfect memory engrams as they can from sonic impressions. From radio waves. Will Klaatu truly be the one that returns if he dies here because of this entirely unnecessary exercise? This one last waste of life? 

But then he sees Gort step forward. His visor is beginning to lift.

“John, stop!”

“Gort –” Klaatu gasps out. 

Then, Klaatu feels his windpipe fill with air as Gort tears Commander Adams off him. He holds him, in the air, with one arm, as he begins to scan him. As he …

Something knocks into Gort. It doesn’t move him, but it dislodges Commander Adams from his grasp. The Commander falls to the floor, red-faced, shaking, angry or terrified, or both. Robby and Gort wrestle. Sparks, negating energy, comes from Robby’s ridiculous but strong vacuum tube arms. His appendages are pincers. Gort, however, remains still and his eye-slit is burning. It’s crackling with power. 

“Robby. Stand down.”

“Negative, Miss Alta.”

“Robby, that is an order.”

And that is when Klaatu realizes it. The report he read. Robby has been built with a command by Alta’s father, by the late Dr. Morbius. Of course the Robot, if entrusted with the Doctor’s secrets, built with a command not to harm humans, would also have an imperative to protect his only daughter, from any threat, perceived or otherwise. 

Klaatu and Mrs. Adams regard each other. She is at her husband’s side, holding him to her, his arm around her. For a few moments, he sees Helen again, in her expression if not her resemblance. She nods. Slowly. 

“Robby, Archimedes.”

“Gort.” Klaatu rasps, trying not to remember the last time he uttered these words with regards to the Krell. “Baringa.”

Sparks, red hot, purple lightning, forms in the dome of Robby’s head. Then, slowly, the robot lets go off Gort. Gort, for his part, scans everyone in the room. His gaze falls on Klaatu for a second longer, before his visor lowers back onto his eye slit. Klaatu attempts to get onto his feet. Then, he feels someone helping him up. Gort. He always forgets, even after all this time, how fast the automaton can move. He nods at him, thankful. Just how many times has the robot saved his life? Or remained by his side throughout the hardest decisions he’s had to make? He doesn’t know, but he hopes the other knows how grateful he is, how safe he feels with him, this being that could snuff him out like a tiny flame, his age-old protector …

“I apologize, for my part in this getting out of hand.” Klaatu says, finding his voice again, wanting to sit, but remaining standing. “We –“

“We will take this assignment.” Mrs. Adams says. 

“Alta –” Commander Adams says, but she cuts him off. 

“No. My Father … he died for this knowledge. It was his life. And if it can help … can it help others, Mr. Carpenter?”

Klaatu almost forgets his assumed name. He slumps his shoulders. “With time. With self-consciousness. With conscience. What I was going to say … what I should have said, to my shame, is that while the Krell were more advanced than humans, possibly than almost anyone in our confederation, they forgot their baser instincts. Their fears. Their subconscious. We have not. We are not that … elevated. Clearly. And you, humanity, you know yourselves. We were impressed by what Dr. Morbius did, despite …” Shame fills Klaatu again, at what that discovery cost, at what he is forced to condone. What would the late Professor Barnhardt think of this accomplishment? Or Helen? “With time, and perhaps better minds, a better mindset, this could eliminate the need for any violence. Any threat of force.” He looks up at Gort, his face apologetic. “For peace without any fear of ultimate sanction.” 

Gort remains still. Mrs. Adams, for her part, has a thoughtful expression on her face. “Perhaps with a modified plastic educator, that’s how it can start.”

“Alta?” Commander Adams touches her arm.

“Oh, John. We could help people. All of this doesn’t have to be a curse. It –” She turns to Klaatu. “I agree. On a few conditions.”

Klaatu is quiet, taking in the words. The situation. “And those would be?”

“First. We have a station, to ourselves. A space station. You have those?”

“Yes.” Klaatu readjusts his suit. “We do. We have been constructing one, for just such an occasion.” 

“Alta, we don’t have to do this …”

“We do.” A pained expression forms on her face. “And you know it, John. I …” 

Klaatu sees it. She spent her whole life on a small planet, isolated, alone except for a few others. “I …” He says. “I’m sorry for the sacrifice we are asking you to …”

She turns to him. Her eyes are firm. Set. She’s made her mind up. “We will do it. As long as you meet our conditions. We get the station. John gets his promotion. And we set the litmus on the research. We determine what is safe.”

Klaatu’s brow furrows as he watches Commander Adams come to his wife’s side. “You are asking a lot. To trust you, even with the best of intentions, with what you will uncover …”

“Just as you did with a bunch of human colonists that you expected to fail, and have to sterilize?” 

Klaatu doesn’t say anything. His silence says everything. Mrs. Adams shakes her head. “We’re not asking you to not have … one of those, Gort or whatever he is nearby. You’ll do it anyway. But you will defer to our judgment. On what you get. Can you tell your superiors that? Are you authorized to do that, Mr. Carpenter?”

Klaatu takes a moment to consider. They won’t be happy, but their confederation wasn’t made in a day. They had the patience then, to see it through. They can have a little more. “I will tell them. It is the least I can do.”

“Yes. It is.” Mrs. Adams’ eyes soften. “Thank you, Mr. Carpenter.”

“Thank you, for your service Mrs. Adams.” Klaatu turns to the others. “And you, Commander?” Klaatu asks. “And Robby?”

“I will obey Miss Alta.” Robby says, nodding his bulk to her direction once.

“I will go to my post.” Commander Adams replies, his face overtaken by his glower. 

“For what it is worth.” Klaatu says, as they begin to adjourn. “You have …”

“What? Have we passed your test, sir?”

Klaatu nods, knowing he deserves that. “The parameters of the confederation. Of the United Planets. Your probationary period is over. Your world, and colonies — your civilization — will now be an official member of our union, with all of its privileges and responsibilities.”

Commander Adams’ facial expression doesn’t change by a margin. “I’m sure the rest of the brass will be happy. But I’m not doing it for you.” He puts an arm around Mrs. Adams. “This is for my wife.” 

There is nothing more to be said as the arrangements are made, leaving nothing but paperwork and records to be dealt with. As the humans leave, their own robot in tow, Klaatu moves away from the conference table. He goes up to the grey non-descript wall. Slowly, it opens, revealing a night sky filled with stars. Somewhere, out there, Altair IV is still burning, the planet now another star. 

“The Almighty have mercy on us, Gort, old friend.” He says, feeling the robot at his side, as always. “The Almighty forgive us.” 

No More Yielding

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Even now, her father’s ghost haunts her. 

The footstep booms through the chamber, on the small space station Eureka. Or perhaps its the strike of a large clawed hand on the doors of the observatory. Alta holds the blaster pistol in her hands. Her husband’s. She’s surprised that her grip is so tight, that it isn’t shaking. 

Boom.

The doors dent, just a bit. Alta breathes out, closing her eyes for a few moments, trying to find that centre. Trying to rediscover that calm. That old happiness. The little wooded brook where she used to bathe. The personal zoo, the little menagerie, her father kept for the two of them. The ornate couch where she studied physics, mathematics, geometry, and the rest of her academic assignments. Her father reading her stories. Her father. Her father …

Dr. Edward Morbius, who rediscovered the Krell of Altair IV.

Boom.

The impression left in the doors is more pronounced. A little more red. 

Alta shakes her head slowly, from side to side. No. That won’t do. All of those memories: her tiger that turned on her, poor Lieutenant Ostrow, or “Doc” dead on the couch, and seeing her father — seeing Dr. Morbius for the first time in her whole life … No. She needs to not think about that. She needs to …

“Miss Alta.”

“Robby.” Her voice is quiet, as she recalls the large robot at her side. He’s so … she’s always thought he was cumbersome, awkward. Like a giant, wind-up children’s toy with helical rubber arms, and spinning, whirring gadgets. It was as though, when her father tinkered around with the knowledge of the Krell, he unconsciously thought of Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz, a children’s book from the beginning of the twentieth century, almost three hundred years ago. He was supposed to have comforted Dorothy as she’d found Oz fallen to ruin and darkness around her. She is so glad that he’s here now, despite this. “We need more …”

Boom. 

 “Those doors are composed of Krell metal.” He reminds her, a chill streaking down her back as she remembers her father saying almost exact same words to John, in an eerily similar situation. “It will not hold.”

“I know.”

“Miss Alta.” The echoing tone, less monotonous despite being recorded on vocal tapes, somehow manages to resemble concern, even if she knows better. 

“It’s all right, Robby.” Alta says, putting her hand on the automaton’s shoulder, her father’s words about him just being an object be damned. “It will buy us some time.”

They’d bought themselves a lot of time, these past couple of years, Alta admits to herself now. After John found them, after they’d left on his ship C-57D to watch Altair IV erupt into a beautiful sphere of blue destruction, they reported to the United Planets: to the interplanetary governing body centered around Earth that Altair IV and its deceased colonists — including her father — were supposed to be a part. Robby, and as it turns out she herself, had much to offer and with John at her side they’d made a life for themselves. 

“Robby.” Alta says. “Is she safe?”

Robby’s censors whir and buzz, the clacking of his internal circuits filling the tenseness of the room as she braces for the percussion on the other side of the doors to continue. “Affirmative, miss.”

“Good.” A part of Alta relaxes, despite the fear, in spite of the grief she hasn’t processed yet. She looks down at her hands, with the pistol, smudged in …

It’d been so quick. The force fields hadn’t stopped it, just as they hadn’t succeeded in doing so six years before. Six years. But it let them see it. It’d been subtle, at first, as it had with the colonists as her father told her, as it did when it attempted to sabotage John’s ship. It resembled a giant behemoth with the face of a gremlin from hell. But before that, it was just a whisper. Just a few coils gone missing. Just an accident in the control room that took a few lives of the skeleton crew they had here. 

That’s not what this is. John told her, as she remembers his strong hands on her shoulders, his square fingers settling in her uniform firmly. She’d come a long way from the girl that wore thin clothing, to conservative dresses. She is a crew member now. She works at the station. It died. He says. It died with your father. 

It did. She remembers. She recalls similar doors bending and burning, liquifying as the presence, the psychic storm of energy of rage made incarnate came for her and the Commander that would take her away from her father. But she sees her father, Dr. Morbius again, in her mind’s eye. His dignified mien, his stern yet gentle face accentuated by his goatee, broken in anguish, distraught, his hair a tangled mess, despair and a fierce protectiveness warring in his eyes. 

And she sees John. She sees John jump in the way. He didn’t even hesitate. She saw his face, with that dark curl of hair, greying a bit, over his blue eyes: his expression every bit as passionate as her father’s, the grim set of his mouth, the love in his gaze towards her. 

When Dr. Morbius, when her father died, she didn’t even have the chance to mourn him. Not the person she realized he hadn’t been, not the being who had so callously dismissed the lives of “Doc” and Farman for his research and his space, not the force that always kept her from going out to Earth to be with other people, to the stars to explore and further expand her mind … and not the human being that sacrificed his life against his literal demons to save her own. She couldn’t even hold him. She’d been too busy clutching John, having John hold her as agony filled her entire being. 

And John … she had even less than that. She grabbed his back, burying her fingers into his uniform, as the … thing ripped and burned him into … 

Into nothing. 

Ashes stain Alta’s hands like the sins of her father revisiting her now. She ran. She and Robby had separated, and for a reason.

Perhaps Robby should have remained on the planet when it detonated. It would have been safer. 

They agreed to help the United Planets reverse-engineer what they could.

“And I have come to the unalterable conclusion that man is unfit, as yet to receive such knowledge, such almost limitless power.” 

She remembers her father’s words, however, even now. Alta agreed to help them on one condition: that she and Robby — and by extension her husband as the commanding officer — would have a scientific space station to slowly, and carefully, unravel some of the secrets of the Krell. That had been her official stance, backed up by John. And they got it. It helped that Robby’s ability to reproduce a sample of any material given him was a microcosm, a sliver of what the Krell had been originally capable. It said a lot about her father’s ego that he considered Robby to be an oddity, a hobby, or a toy that allowed them to make other automatons, smaller ones, drones that could assist in their research and limit the amount of other humans around them. 

And Alta had been to her father’s study. She’d learned some lessons from him. And she was no slouch. She knows she is an intelligent woman. 

“My poor Krell,” her father’s voice laments six years ago from an orbital thermonuclear grave. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.”

Dr. Morbius, the first Dr. Morbius, hadn’t been so fortunate. Neither is the second. 

John hadn’t been either. 

Boom. Hiss. 

The doors are red hot now, with a white heart causing their metallic layers to gradually buckle. She can’t ignore it. It’s staring her right in the face. She can feel it.

At first, she’d been delighted to be on Earth, to be surrounded by so many people, with their customs, their practices, and every kind of endeavour open to her. Her husband had been at her side as well, married at the United Planets Headquarters, grounding her in a living, breathing existence in flux, not the placid, static, dead world left long destroyed behind her. But then, the whispers started. The missing items. The mechanized locks on their home always breaking down as though from the inside. Almost always, they would have to stay elsewhere, and the little incidents would stop. 

For a while. 

If they had been in more superstitious times, the couple might have thought themselves haunted, or cursed by the events on Altair IV. It’d been the impetus to encourage the leadership of the United Planets to let them actually begin their research in a contained setting like the station, though not fully disclosing the true reasons on official channels. Unofficially, they were to monitor the phenomenon. 

Hisssss …

Alta tries not to flinch as the rent in the doors grows. She knows she did good. Between her and Robby, they made miniature versions of the machines that replicated substances on the molecular level. Nothing too complex, nor dangerous. Eventually, they made mechanisms that could generate repair parts and, more importantly, food. No one need ever go hungry again. They were just in the process of finishing their touches on allowing their inventions to create complex medicines, some not even discovered by humanity yet, when … life became complicated again. 

For Alta. For John. For the both of them. 

She wonders, even now, as the creature on the other end of that door comes inexorably towards them how her father — with his intellect vastly increased by the Krell’s “plastic educator” — couldn’t figure out how to save her mother from death, from what he called “natural causes.” Perhaps there had been some complications beyond the skill of the Krell to repair, that even they in their highest state couldn’t save an organism from the cessation of life: from death itself. Certainly, they hadn’t escaped their end. But maybe it had been her father who had failed, who by his own admittance had been the equivalent of a developmentally challenged young Krell. But did he fail? Didn’t Dr. Morbius survive the plastic educator’s rigorous routine? Didn’t he expand his own field of knowledge beyond philology — the study of words and language and their intersection with literature and philosophy — into the hard sciences to make a construct like Robby with the technology he had at his disposal? Didn’t he create her animal friends, including the tiger that she loved, that nearly killed her if not for John? 

Didn’t he always generate a small simulacrum of herself with his mind? Wasn’t she always in his thoughts?

The door and the wall around it rumbles, seemingly shaking the entire station from where Alta stands. She feels the anger fill her veins, sadness turning into rage and fear, her heart beating hard. What if it had all been a lie? What if she had been just another creation of his? Another generation? Another construct? Maybe she never had a mother at all, and somehow she exists beyond even the good Dr. Morbius’ demise. Is she the child of Altair IV in makeup as well as soul? The Eidothea to its Proteus? The Athene to his Zeus? Or perhaps, her mother had existed, and her father and his experiments — his attempts to raise his IQ — had other effects, had become genetic, had … 

He never let her use the machine. It’d been too risky. One look at what happened to “Doc” had been enough to show her that much. And the demon that came after them … She dreamed of it. She dreamed of it killing Farman. Yes, he’d taken liberties with her. She knows that now. John tried not to speak ill of the dead, especially a comrade and a friend, and she knows he wouldn’t have gone too far, if she had said no, but she didn’t know what it was like to be with others, or why her body didn’t react the way she’d read about to those kisses. She’d had so damned few experiences, trapped on that world with her overprotective, brooding, lying overseer of a father …

Hisssss … 

The tear is small, but visible now. 

But Alta doesn’t care. She bares her teeth. She’d enjoyed that freedom. Those embraces. But what she felt with John had been a hundred times that, even though she’d been angry at him, desired him … But he had been all she knew, almost as much as her father. Both meant well … But she wanted to travel. To experience life beyond her books, and data. To live. 

And she saw it. She saw how it pained John to always be around her, all the time. And even more so on the station, virtually isolated. And they still needed that skeleton crew of human beings. Not now. Not anymore. And she saw … she remembers how he looked at those young ladies, recalling what Jerry, poor Jerry said about John’s roving eye and how girls and women shouldn’t be alone with him, even though a part of her even then knew he was just projecting what he was, that John was a fine, upstanding man, firm and loving, but she was keeping him from life … she took his life away from him. 

She’s killed him.

“Miss Alta.”

Alta finds herself blinking back tears, and failing. The hole is larger. Soon, the doors will melt and collapse altogether. She’s seen it before. She’s experienced it. But not from this angle. The terrible truth. She doesn’t need a “plastic educator” to see the greater picture. She understands that the psychic manifestation, the psychokinetic maelstrom, the nightmare made material without the machine or the lost planet of her birth, doesn’t belong to her father or the absent Krell. Not directly. It’s different. She can almost visualize it now. More sinuous than bulky. The foot isn’t a claw or tail, but a head. She hasn’t seen the face, though. She can’t bear to, even now. She wonders, when the Krell’s nightmares destroyed them and their civilization, if their psychic constructs obliterated all physical traces of their species, of their physical likenesses because for all their near-enlightenment, those subconscious impulses, those little resentments and hatreds, they just couldn’t bear to see themselves — their very uglinesses — in the mirror anymore. 

This is why she wanted the skeleton crew phased out, to maintain just the machines like Robby to watch her … just her. And John, John would never leave her. He was always there and she … she … 

And the two of them. 

And the three of them. 

That’s when she remembers. That’s when Altaira Morbius — Alta Adams — recalls what is truly important. 

The door is almost down now. She knows what’s coming. She turns to Robby. Her father was a philologist before being a scientist. He read her just as much poetry as he helped her study organic chemistry. And he loved his stories too. She wonders, looking at Robby, about the early twentieth century again, how Robby wasn’t so much influenced by the word robota, a Czech word for enforced labour, or rab — slave — though that is where the word robot is supposed to have been first derived. That word had been attributed to Karel Čapek, its creator, to his brother Josef, just as the Three Laws of Robotics hadn’t been solely created by Asimov but John W. Campbell. But Asimov had made a “Robbie,” a robot accepted by his assigned family after saving the life of their child. 

Regret with nostalgia mingles in Alta’s heart. “Robby. Remember your orders.” She releases a shaky breath, drawing on her resolve. “Maintain reports to the United Planets. Don’t inform them of what occurred on this station. Continue work on the plastic educator. She will need it. Guide her. Slowly, as I outlined for you. She will … she will need it.”

“Yes, Miss Alta.”

“Thank you, Robby.” She smiles. She turns, and puts the blaster pistol in one hand, wiping at her eyes with the other. “Thank you for everything.” She braces herself. “And now, your final order, Robby.”

The robot doesn’t say anything. 

“Robby.” She says. “Protect her. Protect my daughter. Protect Miranda.

“Archimedes.”

She remembers what John did with the door combination back in the Krell Lab. The two of them had Robby hide their girl. This … thing won’t find her. It might destroy the machines and drones around it, but Alta doesn’t plan for it to go that far. No. This manifestation, this monstrosity. It ends. It ends here.

She looks at Robby. She recalls looking up at the big machine. It occurs to her that the robot has seen her ever since she was a baby, making food for her, creating emeralds and diamonds for her dresses, at her whim, patiently blasting non-lethal beams to ward away her pets from the fruits on the kitchen table, creating medicine when she was sick, faithfully there for her father … for her. The dials on either side of his cranium almost look like eyes. She wonders if the automaton feels anything. If he is even capable with what her father programmed into him for a lark. 

The sparks in his glass cranium crackle for a time, even with the override. Even as she reaches out her hand. And gives him the pistol. 

“Robby.” She says again, as the creature on the other end of the door screeches and roars out its hatred of a life wasted, of being deprived of its illusions, its comforts, of destroying what it coveted so much. “When it comes through. Only then. I want to look at it. If I can. I want to look it right in the face. And then … kill it. Do you understand?”

“Affirmative.”

Alta gulps, a sense of relief almost overwhelming her. “T-thank you, Robby. You … thank you.”

There is a pause. “Farewell, Alta.”

The door collapses completely as heavy breathing, always in the background, now fills the room. Dr. Alta Adams, nee Altaira Morbius, stands her ground in the observation deck of the Eureka, surrounded by stars. She remembers her father telling her, when he showed her the Krell Lab not to look into the eyes of the Gorgon. But right now, she recalls another myth: of Odysseus tied to his ship as he forced himself to hear the deadly songs of the Sirens as his crew rowed onward. These are her thoughts, thinking about sitting at her father’s knee, at her husband’s side, her daughter on her lap as she faces her darkness in the eye, and doesn’t even hear the quiet hiss of a blaster pistol’s measured violet disintegration discharges. 

Nostalgia

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Mamiya Ichirō wanders out of the room, his face smudged with paint.

He’s just begun the fresco for his family. For his newborn son. It will be just theirs, unlike the rest of the work he’s shown to Nihon, and the world. It will show every step of his son’s development, from infancy, to childhood, his adolescence, and his adulthood. One day, when he inherits their ancestral estate, he will see it and show it to his family. Or maybe his brothers and sisters will have other rooms. 

It’s chilly in the house now. Most old families, even modern ones, would simply bear it with blankets on futons and stringent tea. But Ichirō’s work has paid dividends: not only are his works world famous, but neither he nor his family will never want for yen in his life. His family had been well to do even before this, and he’s upgraded the furnace they had installed here decades back. He’s left the room to turn it on, but he can feel the house beginning to warm up. He smiles. His wife must have turned it on already. It does take a while to kick in, or to ventilate through an old, drafty house like theirs. That’s why he’s taken a break. The furnace and incinerator for the garbage sometimes break down, and he just wants to make sure they are all right. 

Sometimes, he gets lost in his own work. His wife, his beloved, she has to remind him to eat. And it’s different now that they have a child. He has to keep pace with his time. Painting his child growing up is one thing, but seeing him grow, and being there is another. He has to remind himself to take more breaks. 

“Tōsan!”

His wife comes across the hall. Usually, she is composed and serene. Always a gentle word, and a smile. With her long straight dark hair, and her pale skin she wouldn’t look out of place at a Heian court. Their families were said to have survived from that time, even the Mamiya that were a minor clan of craftspeople elevated by one of many courts. His wife’s family were minor nobility, and he never forgets it when he looks at her manners, and her temperament, and the beauty that she represents. They managed to even survive the Second World War through ingenuity on his family’s part, and then the frescoes he’s made from his family art and the serenity he so desperately sought and found in himself during that time. 

“Kāsan?” He takes his wife gently by the shoulders, her white yukata soaked with sweat, the same moisture glowing from her flushed forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“Thank goodness you’re here.” She holds him, then breaks away. “I can’t find find our son.”

“Oh?” Ichirō smiles wearily. “He’s … he can walk?”

“He’s been to walk for a while now, Ichirō.” Her dark eyes turn stern. He knows he’s made a mistake now. He knew even before he asked the question. Of course his son can walk. He’s learning. It’s been some years now, and it’s about time. How can he track his son’s progress with his art if he keeps getting sidetracked like this. 

“I’m sorry.” He bows. “I … where is he?”

“I don’t know.” There are tears in Mamiya Fujin’s eyes. “He likes to play on the lower levels. That’s where the servants find him too. I’ve been calling him for a while after turning on the furnace. It’s tea time.”

Something in Ichirō turns. It’s as though his centre of gravity has reversed. “Pardon?”

“It’s tea time. I turned on the furnace, it’s been chilly …”

Ichirō feels the blood drain out of his face. She looks at him with concern. “Koishī? Ichirō?”

It’s a premonition. He grabs her hand, and runs. They run. The boiler room is close. Adrenaline seems to fill Ichirō’s veins. His heart is pumping furiously. By the time his wife realizes where they are, at the door, she breaks away from him and tries to open it.

“No!” He draws her back, as she struggles with the door. 

“Aisoku!” The gentle affection behind that word is gone, replaced with panic. “Aisoku!” 

“My love.” He pushes her back. “Get the servants!” He wrenches open the door. “Get them to turn off the heat!” 

“Ichirō …” She tries to come back. 

“Get them, I say!” He roars as the heat blasts him. “Aisoku! Aisoku!”

He leaves her behind, hoping she will do as she’s asked. It is hot. Everything is blurred. He can’t breathe. But … but as tears come into his eyes, he sees … a shape on the ground. He runs over, staggering, and picks it up. He picks him up. His son. His son is breathing shallowly. But he’s alive. He’s all right. Tears stream down Ichirō’s face as he holds his son in his arms, as he walks slowly, and painfully away from the boiler, towards the door. 

“Papa …” The boy whimpers. “Papa …”

“Aisoku.” Ichirō sobs, burying his face in his son’s damp hair. “My Aisoku. You’re all right. We are all right.”

He sees the door. The red hot light is dimming. Ichirō feels his skin burning. He hurts. But he has his son. His son is alive, and unharmed. He can see him. There are soot smudges on his yukata and his face to match the paint on his. They’d been nearby. They got here just in time. Primal terror fills Ichirō when he considers that he could have still been painting that room, or his wife could have been upstairs. No one knew where his son had gone! He hadn’t known. He’d been so busy with the business, and his work. He realizes he hasn’t particularly spent as much time with his wife. He has something for her. An amulet he bought from a merchant. Something old. Perhaps a Buddhist artifact, or even a talisman from the early days of Shinto. But a trinket would have meant nothing without their beloved son. 

“I have you, Aisoku.” He says. “I have him, Kāsan!” He calls out, as the cooling shadows grow. It is the end of a long, arduous day with one terrifying moment. But it is all right. He staggers out, his carrying his son in his arms, and his wife is there, her own arms wide, ready to encompass them. He smiles. He did it. He …

*

“Emi!” 

The man, who died a long time ago, staggers out into the darkness. The halls are cool and mouldering. But he is burning. His flesh is seething. His power of concentration is waning so much now, the strength that allowed him to crush that bottle of sake gone for what seems like ages. 

He drops the girl. He can’t help it. The others … Kazuo, and Akiko rush forward to pick Emi up. Without her in his arms, he is burning in agony. The boiler still leaves its mark on him. It is charring his skin, as it had the man incinerated in half upstairs, and the woman melted on the wheelchair in another room, and Mamiya Fujin, and those children, and … and the child … 

He focuses. He has to have some concentration left. They need him. “Run!” He rasps through burning lungs. “The shadows are coming!”

“But Mr. Yamamura …”

The stupid man. So indecisive. So caught up in his work. He didn’t pay attention! He didn’t pay attention! Not to this house, not to his loved ones, or his own flesh and blood. He needs to listen. He …

“Don’t worry about me!” The man, calling himself Yamamura Ken’ichi, growls. He hurts so much, and there is no time. It is too late. It’s always been too late. But not for them. Not … “Get out quickly!”

Then, it is just the agony. They take her. He registers that. They call out her name. They call out his a few times. He feels his flesh liquefying, and his bones charring from the flames inside of him. The woman … Akiko. She is crying out for him. For a few moments … he sees her again. She is pale, like the grave, like Izanami no mikoto herself, with part of her beautiful face burned away. He is Izanagi-no-mikoto, who ran away. He thinks about the flames now, how she suffered, how the child burned, how he lost them, and the children that are now forming on parts of her neck. All of his sins, of neglect, come back for him. Yes. The man calling himself Yamamura deserves this. He is just as guilty of killing those children, and the people that came here after despite the memorial and the warnings …. these people, and those poor devils Akashi, Etsuko, Shogo, and Kenji … the servants that refuse to leave, in terror of their mistress, and the child … and Kāsan … Kāsan … 

I’m sorry. He says to her, in his mind. And for a few moments, he thinks he almost sees some sadness there on the face of the woman who killed children, because she had been abandoned in his own grief too. He reaches out with one crumbling hand. Then, it’s just Akiko and nothing more as his eyes run down his face. Just darkness. That woman. Perhaps he was wrong about her. Nothing is stronger than a mother, or a mother that has lost her child. Gods only know a father’s love only went so far. Concentration. Prayer. Regret. Redemption. 

Love. Akiko feels love for that girl. Yamamura contents himself with that, realizing in his last moments, he still feels love as well, that it’s all he has left, as the remnants of the person he used to be finally disintegrate into ashes. 

Son of Shadows

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Dedicated to Harry Kümel’s 1971 film Daughters of Darkness

Stefan feels nothing.

He sits in the King-sized bed, now empty aside from himself. And he doesn’t count. The honeymoon suite is a mess. After he and Valerie talked, after she left … he must have destroyed the entire place. All the blankets, his clothes, the ornaments, even the bathroom toiletries are strewn everywhere.

And the phone. The phone is in pieces on the floor, against the wall. The same phone that he called …

Stefan notes his hand. His belt is the only thing he’s kept on him, wrapped around his hand. Pins and needles prickle across it as he realizes he must have blacked out with the strap around it, gripping it into a tight fist.

His chest feels tight, as the events from hours ago fully materialize back into his conscious mind. He sits up, maneuvering his legs so his feet can touch the cool wood of the floor. He puts his head in his hands. The leather of his belt, and the metal of the buckle keeps him grounded. All that volatile emotion that he’s tried to avoid, and all he feels now is hollow. Of course Valerie is gone. His wife. As if …

He lifts his head out of his palms, and blinks. There is a figure, standing near the window. So silent …

“Valerie?” His heart leaps into his throat, with many other feelings that are harder to define.

She steps away. The woman isn’t Valerie. She has short black hair. Red lips. White skin. So pale … so …

“Ilona.” Her name comes to his mind, as does her smile at him from the stairway from what seems to have been a thousand years ago. Stefan’s fingers are inches away from where the lamp used to be, until he realizes that it’s one of the things he’d already smashed in his earlier rage. He lowers his hand. Ilona is at his side, sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Why are you here?” He asks her, suddenly feeling incredibly exhausted.

He can see her a little better now, in the dark. It’s foolish that he mistook her for Valerie, showing him just how foregone he really is. He can see her black dress, her clothing not like Valerie’s lighter colours. And the pearl necklace stands out around her neck and chest like a string of small full moons.

“I’m so unhappy.” She tells him, tracing a hand across his cheekbone. “Unhappy.” Her fingers trail down his chin, and rest in her lap. In the darkness, she is an eclipsed silhouette, a silvery outline of a ghost. Stefan doesn’t say anything. What does one say under these circumstances? It’s not the first time he’s heard a woman say these words, directed at him, or no, far from England, in a Continental hotel room. But perhaps it’s the first time they really hit home, in the moment.

Instead, seeing this vulnerability that he can somehow feel, he touches her cheek. He looks her in the eyes. “You’re as white as a sheet.” He murmurs, remembering his own terror.

Ilona turns away from him. “No, no.” She whispers. “I’m frightened.” She pauses for a second, as though letting that admission sink in. “I don’t know what’s going to happen … to any of us.”

It is such a bizarre thing to say. But Stefan has no witty rejoinder. Nothing clever. Nothing dismissive. He thinks back to the events of the evening, and the phone dashed against the wall of their honeymoon suite, feeling the old, oppressive tide of helplessness rise up inside his throat again, no longer enraging him, merely threatening to choke him and take him down with it into its depths of self-loathing. “Neither do I.”

They sit that way for a time. He feels something cool and soft on his hand, on his fist wrapped in his own belt. He realizes it’s Ilona’s hand. He feels her other hand stroking his hair, bringing him closer to her.

He shouldn’t. It’s a bad idea. It’s not good to look up at her right now. It’s bad enough that he’s naked. Because if he does look up at Ilona, if he meets her gaze …

Stefan does it anyway, another terrible decision in a series of awful life choices. There is some consistency in that much. Ilona’s eyes are dark, and they reflect no light. But they are deeper than the unlit room, and there is both a sadness that makes her seem a lot older than what she is, and a hunger beyond a simple midnight rendezvous. For some reason, they make her red lips seem more crimson, less of a pout and more of the orchid that … Stefan doesn’t want to think about.

“I know.” She says, softly. Her lips are inches away from his own. “You didn’t understand anything yet.”

“No.” Stephen also admits, more to himself than to her. “I’m afraid not.”

“How could you?” Her gaze is the equivalent of a sad shake of the head as she lowers her hand again. “Anyhow, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“No.” Stefan says, thinking of his own circumstances and the bed that he unmade in which he must lie. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

Her hand keeps circling on his own, over the belt. Somehow, he can feel her fingertips trail across the veins underneath. Slowly, imperceptibly, his hand begins to unclench, to let go. All that’s left is that one emotion in Ilona’s eyes.

Loneliness.

And as she strokes his hair, with a combination of fondness and despair in her gaze, her generous lips brushing against his cheek, as she gently but firmly pushes him back onto the bed, her mouth on his collarbone, his chest, and trailing wetly lower, Stefan gives into that loneliness as well.

*

Ilona’s mouth tastes of both Stefan and Valerie. She knows they’d made love, before the telephone call. Before their argument. Before Valerie left. It’s the closest she’s come to having either of them. She remembers her orders, as much as she would nothing more than to discard them, and slake her thirst.

But she has done this. She can no more disobey Elizabeth than leave her. Yet it is the smaller things. The little moments under her. Away from her. They are victories. That is what Ilona tells herself. After sampling the other precious substance that Stefan had to offer, to distract him, to become diverted herself, her core contracts within herself, and around him as she moves slowly, sinuously, contorting her body in the way that he needs. That she needs.

Ilona Harczy knows what she’s doing. She’s done this for a long time. She doesn’t know if she does this for her own enjoyment, or Elizabeth’s, just as much as she’s forgotten the fine line between loving her Countess, and hating her. It is same with this young man. She isn’t blind. And neither is he. In the darkness, at least he won’t see the red stain on the side of her throat. Not that it matters. It’s too late for them, one way or another.

He’s so callow, and venial. So weak. And yet, there is anger inside of him — a profound unhappiness at his life’s circumstances — and a concurrent fear of leaving those elements that so confine him. The truth is, for all she sees the seeds of what Elizabeth finds amusing in the man while lusting far more for the girl — the traits that attract her like for like — she sees a scared youth: trapped in more ways than one.

And Ilona can relate to that sentiment. For deep down, as she folds herself back and moves, and he loses himself in her, and as he gives her the means to take the edge off her red hunger for a time, her red lips parting at their temporary solace, Ilona knows that the person she despises more than Elizabeth is herself.

This is something else that she and Stefan have in common: this, and this momentary, sweet sensation of blissful, unthinking oblivion.

She lies with him for a while, in the dark, watching the rise and fall of his chest. The sound of his heartbeat against her ear makes her feel alive, gives her a sense of anticipation, of having something other than more cold nights with Elizabeth with which to look forward, if only for a little time.

Ilona unwraps Stefan’s belt from around her neck, from where she forced his hands around it, which she inevitably took from his grasp. She touches the imprints left in her flesh, and smiles.

This. This much, right now, is hers.

*

“Do my questions upset you?”

Valerie looks out into the sea, at the dark grey sky, and the turbulent waters. They mirror her heart like some brooding form of romantic cliché. The Countess’ … Elizabeth’s dulcet tones are soft. Inquisitive. Once, that same whispering voice entranced her, just as much as it repulsed her in the lobby of the hotel with what it promised her, with what it shared with Stefan.

Stefan …

“The answers …” She replies quietly, bitterly, realizing yet again in the fog of confusion and pain that Elizabeth’s stories from the hotel lobby, and Stefan’s conversation with her that night aren’t, in their very nature, that dissimilar after all.

There is a chuckle. Faint and throaty. “Not always pleasant, eh?” The Countess sighs. Valerie is mindful that she’s still holding her carryall, having intercepted her at the train station so fast.

The dead travel fast, she thinks to herself, and wonders of the truth of it, especially of the girl in Bruges. Valerie tries not to shudder in the cold winds of the night. Elizabeth, however, continues speaking as though reading her mind of that afternoon. “But as I always say, one must never be afraid to look deep down into the darkest deeps of oneself where the light never reaches.”

Valerie turns to look at Elizabeth. “But you cannot imagine what —”

The Countess smiles. Her hair is wavy, and golden. There are laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. Between her and Stefan, they believed her to be in her mid-thirties, but as Valerie looks into her eyes she sees a wryness, an old amusement. Her smile makes her cheeks dimple, her cheekbones more prominent. There is something glamorous about the Countess, obviously regal, and incredibly worldly.

“Oh, yes.” Elizabeth says. “I can.” She puts an arm through hers and Valerie, again despite her best judgment, allows her to do so as they walk. “It’s not so difficult to see through your Stefan.”

The jolt of her words hits Valerie, as she remembers Bruges, and the Countess’ arms around him in the armchair, and the phone call. That damned phone call …

“Tell me, Valerie.” Elizabeth says, smoothly interjecting over the trembling storm inside her heart. “Didn’t you already know?”

Valerie suddenly feels tired. The fury, the hurt, the way his dull, flat tone hit her harder than any belt ever could, leaving a numbness inside of her that reminds her of just how young and idealistic, how stupid she really was: that she still is. “He said the same thing to me.” She murmurs. “On the bus, back to the hotel.”

“It began in Bruges.” Elizabeth prompts quietly, her question more of a gentle statement, a lingering on the skein of her mind.

Valerie finds herself shaking her head, feeling herself hurting again. “No.” She blinks back tears. “It was before. On the train. In the bed. Our words to each other.” The two of them walk back into the darkness as she allows herself to full her resignation. “Deep down, that was when I knew.”

*

“You’re both so young.” Elizabeth Bathory tells Valerie as they head to her rooms after walking a few hours through the deserted city. “You can’t give up after a few days.”

“I —” She watches the young woman, barely out of girlhood, her blonde hair a white-gold, her sky-hued eyes keenly poignant, not like the faded disenchanted blue of Ilona’s gaze. “I don’t know if I can face him. Right now.”

“It’s all right.” Elizabeth tilts her head, and attempts a smile. It’s hard, sometimes, to remember how to make a facial expression that is so reassuring. “You may stay with us for the night. I will join you shortly.” She turns and pats Valerie’s hand, holding it in her own for a few beats. “Trust me, Valerie. I meant what I said by the sea.” So many changes, the prospect of it fills her with a warmth she hasn’t felt in a while, not with Ilona, not even in Bruges, and Nice, and Monte Carlo. She realizes the name for this feeling. It’s genuine excitement. Elizabeth doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, and she adores it, almost as much as the woman she is putting into her room. “You do understand Stefan, if you truly think about it.”

“I …” Valerie finally looks down. “I’ve tried. I can’t help it. He … frightens me. He needs help. And I …” She turns her face. “I don’t know.”

“Does he?” The Countess asks. “Or is that what he said scared something within yourself? Are you truly frightened of your own feelings?” She shakes her head at the younger woman’s silence. “Don’t trouble yourself with this right now. Get some sleep. I will …” She pauses, considering her next decision. “I will send Ilona to check in on you.”

“I …” Valerie actually meets her gaze. This pleases Elizabeth a great deal. “Thank you, Elizabeth. I don’t know what I would have –”

“You would have left.” Elizabeth sighs, deciding on honesty. “And you would have regretted it.” She leans forward, and gently kisses Valerie on her pallid cheek, the colour and texture of warm marble. She smiles, a little more truly, at the red mark that she’s left there, the Dionysian upon the Apollonian. Such a symmetrical, Grecian beauty. “Have a good sleep. Tomorrow evening, we shall speak further.”

She hands Valerie her luggage, and gently but firmly pushes her through, past her threshold. Then, when the door closes behind her, she lets out a faint huff. Right. This is a … complication. But if time has taught Elizabeth Bathory anything, it’s that for all things change the right amount of patience will allow everything to fall into their places.

This is her thought as she walks towards the honeymoon suite, and lets herself in.

*

Ilona watches Stefan bathe under the shower. She doesn’t care, at this point, if he sees her looking at him. Her lips are parted, and her teeth are exposed. In the light of the bathroom, he can probably see her, if he just turns around.

She observes his shoulders straightening, his posture under the running water becoming still. His neck is rigid. When he turns to look at her, she closes her lips. There is a new light in his eyes. He’s grinning. They are just separated by their naked bodies, and water.

“Come on.” He says, his tone lighter than when she first came upon him. She can see him eyeing her, her flesh, and the marks that he’s left on her.

“No.” Ilona says, her skin crawling away, instinctively, from the running water. One of her first lessons that, in her eagerness, even now she sometimes forgets.

“Come on in.” Stefan invites her, his smile almost matching his dead set eyes.

“No.” Ilona says, a little more urgently, fear of another kind creeping into her heart.

Stefan smiles. It’s as though he’s sensed this spike of terror. He comes out of the shower. “You’re not afraid of a little water, are you?”

Stefan’s arms are around her. He grabs her, forcefully. Their liaison has woken something inside of him. She can see the fire in his eyes, but it is the water and not the figurative blood in it that scares her far more. Suddenly, she is reminded of just why Elizabeth has her eyes on this couple. She thought it was just the girl, but …

“Ilona. There you are.”

Thinking of, almost literally, the Devil. Ilona turns, in Stefan’s grasp, to look at her Countess. She’s alone. The girl is nowhere to be seen. Did she think she was going to take him? Even now, Ilona knows better. There is a faint amusement in Elizabeth’s eyes as she takes in the scene. Stefan, for his part, tenses. His assertiveness, his aggression, leeches out of him as he looks from herself, to the Countess. And back. For some reason, Ilona finds herself putting a hand on the small of his back.

“Now —” Ilona isn’t sure whether Stefan is about to issue a demand, or an excuse.

It ultimately doesn’t matter. It never did. Elizabeth shakes her head. “Come now, Ilona.” She says, her voice melodious, drifting. She tosses Ilona’s black dress and pants to the ground. The white pearls stare up at her like sightless eyes from a dark shroud. “We have a guest in our rooms. I need you take care of it.”

It is clear to Ilona to whom Elizabeth is referring.

She stares into Elizabeth’s eyes. It’s strange. She’s noticed, over time, that her Countess merely runs through the bare minimum of emotions beyond her strong appetites, a dance or pantomime of social behaviour barely recalled. Even in humiliating her right now, though this is not even close to the worst of it. She turns back, to look at Stefan. She can feel him breathing hard, his wet body rigid, his face full of fury and passion before slack and speechless.

“Now, please. Ilona.” The Countess brings up her willowy arms, and delicate fingers like she is wearing her boa and dress, and not her simple white sweater. This is Ilona’s summons.

Ilona turns back to Stefan. A smile curls on the side of her red lips, as crimson as Elizabeth’s. She reaches up, and grabs the sides of his face. Then, she crushes her lips against his own. She trails her lips down, to Stefan’s neck, letting them linger against a faded scar from the nick of a razor, allowing Elizabeth to see it. It had been good to feel like a desirable object again as opposed to a detached entertainment, an echo of both being the lover and the ardently beloved. There is a defiance in her heart, for a second. A thank you. A goodbye.

Ilona turns, and bends down to pick up her clothes. She doesn’t look at Elizabeth in the eye. She’s done enough. She’ll probably pay for this later. But it’s worth it. Just for that moment. As she walks past Elizabeth, putting on her slacks, pulling her blouse over her head and chest, she wonders wonders if her Countess would be jealous that she got that taste of her lovers together — of the complete set — first.

This what Ilona uses to fortify herself as she returns to their rooms.

*

Stefan can barely process what’s happening. He feels Ilona’s lips on his skin, on his neck. She’s so pale, even after what they … what they did together. And that emotion in her eyes when he came for her, to drag her into the shower. It was genuine fear.

He recalls the bed. The coolness of her body against his. The way she slowly moved, the position she fell towards, what he did to her, what she made him do to her. Even her hands in his own felt like … and the way she remained so utterly still.

The weight of what happened before, with Valerie, hasn’t left him. But something that had been building inside of him — coiled — ready to pounce, ready to explode has, for lack of a better term, unfurled. It thrums inside of him, even now, at this strange scene. He watches Ilona’s perfect, porcelain buttocks retreat into the shadows of the room, thinking about how she instinctively sucked on the part of his neck that he cut, the sight of blood making him feel … behind the Countess who, idly, strokes her dark hair as she passes. It’s a detached gesture. A possessive one. It’s like the way a girl would play with one of her dolls.

And suddenly, the reality of what has happened, what he has done, all of it, hits Stefan. Hard. He tries to recall what he was trying to say to the Countess before she’d interrupted, but the words don’t come out.

“Your wife is staying in our rooms.” The Countess tells him softly, her gaze never wavering.

It occurs to Stefan that he’s still naked. “Oh.” He replies, then takes a step back, sitting on the rim of the bidet.

“You are having troubles.” She says. Her face seems sympathetic, but Stefan can tell there is something hard about it, an effort, like the muscle memory doesn’t entirely recall the motions.

“She …” He stops himself, thinking about their time on the train, on the bus, on the boat. “She doesn’t want to see me, anymore.”

The Countess almost glides. She sits on the edge of the bathtub. It occurs to Stefan that both she and Ilona match the ivory material. “Do you wish to talk about it?”

Slowly, Stefan shakes his head. “If my wife is with you, surely you’ve already talked. And …” He waves his hand, at the room, at all of this. “I think I’ve done enough.”

“Have you?” Unlike Ilona’s sad eyes, or the heavens in his wife’s, the Countess’ are a darker, almost steely grey. “Tell me.”

“Countess —”

“Stefan.” She trails her hands over his, folded over his lap. “Remember our talk. We are friends now. You may call me by name, yes?”

Her touch is faint. Ghostly. But muscles in Stefan that he didn’t know were tense begin to loosen. “Of course, Elizabeth.”

She smiles. It is a radiant smile, almost tentative in the manner that he’s observed. “Come.” She puts her arms around his shoulders. “Let’s go back to your room, and talk some more, yes?”

Stefan nods, once. He lets her help him up. They walk across the tiles, and the mirror, and he is so lost in his thoughts he doesn’t particularly see anything other than the outline of himself, wandering through the fog on the reflection. A part of his mind registers, distantly, that his razor isn’t on the basin. It must have fallen in, he supposes. Instead, Stefan focuses on the Countess’ movements, and her form leading now him by the hand. Whereas Ilona reminds him of a flapper from the Roaring Twenties, Elizabeth is akin to a ghost of an actress from the era of Silent film, ethereal white and faded gold. A queen from a bygone time.

He finds himself seated on the bed, still rumpled from his time with Ilona, from his rage, from his time with Valerie. She sits beside him. Their feet almost touch. A part of him wonders if he should cover himself. He can see his clothes on the floor, his white shirt, his black pants, his red sweater …

“We wear similar colours, you and I.” Elizabeth laughs softly.

Stefan recalls her attire when they first met, and realizes she’s right. He decides to give up, that it is far too late for modesty. She’s seen enough of him tonight. It seems as though everyone has, at this point. “Great minds.”

“Yes. With great expectations heaped upon them.”

He looks up at her, his eyes scrutinizing. “How much do you know?”

She shakes her head, the look on her face distant, musing, mulling something over. “You are so sad. So tense. I can see it.”

He feels her move up behind him, folding her legs until she has them on either side of his, her feet hanging again from the bed frame. Stefan doesn’t know what to think of this. He’s just, he’s so tired. Her hands are soft, but firm on his shoulders as her fingers begin to knead the muscles underneath.

“She wouldn’t let up.” He explains, her hands finding the knots in him, unkinking them. His mouth opens and closes almost of its own volition. “She wanted it to be known that we were married. I tried everything. And I thought that maybe …”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He knew what the result of that call would be before he even made it.

“Family.” Elizabeth drawls out, silvery, behind his ear, making goosebumps crawl up the bare flesh over his back. “It is the first love. Obligation and Duty are unto it like Sin and Death to Satan.”

“Paradise Lost.” For a few moments Stefan allows himself a crooked smile, losing himself in the voice of the Countess. “I wonder if it is possible to lose something that you never had.”

“Lucifer had no choices. You never have a choice.” The Countess says, her fingers moving towards the sides of his neck. Perhaps it’s just Stefan’s imagination, but there is a lilt to her tone that hadn’t been there before. “That has nothing to do with love. That is what I told Valerie.”

He stiffens under her touch, hearing his wife’s name again, recalling that night. “What do you know of that, Bathory?”

The absolute venom in his voice startles even him. The Countess’ fingers stop in their massage. Stefan breathes in, and lets out a long sigh. “Of course you know. A stupid question.”

“You told her.”

“Yes.” Stefan says. “After the call. I felt it welling up inside of me. That helplessness. I thought — I thought she wanted to know. About me. I thought that maybe …”

Elizabeth starts to probe the back of his neck with her fingers, her clothed body against his spine.

He bows his head. “I told her everything. All of it. The Manor. The Continental trips. Being alone. I thought maybe if she understood that, realized that, she might know where I came from. She might … know me.”

“You went to the only place that could understand you.” Elizabeth’s words flow through his mind like smoky molasses. Rich, and elegant, and deep. “It’s all you’ve ever known.”

“But it wasn’t enough!” Stefan hisses. His fist tightens as he clenches his jaw, looking away. “I needed more! I need more. I …”

“You wanted to hold her down.”

“Yes.” Stefan murmurs.

“You want to have power over her.”

“Yes.” Stefan feels Elizabeth’s fingers splay out on his chest.

“You wanted her to feel what you have felt, all these years.” Her hands roam around his ribcage, her lips in his ear, her legs wrapped around him.

“… yes.” Stefan closes his eyes.

“You wanted to take that belt, the one you didn’t use, the one you thought about using on her, and thrash her with it within an inch of her beautiful life.” Elizabeth’s hands roam downwards.

“Mmph.” Stefan groans, his eyes clenching shut, his body betraying him under her hands.

“You wanted her to be like the girl from Bruges.” A pair of lips husk as they kiss his earlobe.

Stefan’s eyes flutter. “Oh god …”

“No.” Elizabeth murmurs. “We are talking about love, remember? God has nothing to do with it. Or everything to do with it, if Family is the first love as is to Satan. You told her all of that, didn’t you?” She continues stroking him, idly. “Just as we talked about those things back in the lounge.”

Stefan’s throat is dry. Something is tensing up inside him, a massive knot in his chest. In his lungs. In his heart. “I can’t …”

“It’s all right, Stefan.” Elizabeth tells him, one hand stroking the side of his face. “That is why you love her. Valerie. It’s what you dream of making out of her, what every man dreams of making out of every woman — a slave, a thing.” Her lips drone into his eardrum. “An object of pleasure.”

Her other hand lets go of him, and scrapes her nails up his inner thigh. “It is understandable.” She tells him, his senses everywhere, his body trapped between the state of animation and stasis.

“It sounds …” Stefan says, his mind almost back into his body from Elizabeth’s caresses. “It sounds like you want this as well.”

“Mmm.” Elizabeth’s hands spread across him again, going lower. Stefan finds himself thinking about Valerie again. Valerie. If Ilona is a doll, and Elizabeth a femme fatale, then Valerie is a nymph. Playful and coy. The answer to that age-old question as to how something so innocent can be so lustful at the same time. And she knows. She knows what he is.

“They are fantasies.” Elizabeth says, teasing him again. “Fun. Little things to spice up a dreary life. All to make a show, like that week in Bruges.”

“Is that what you are …” Stefan sighs, his mind coming back to him. “Like in the stories? Erzsébet Báthory tormenting young women, the only thing she’s known her entire life … in a life of Obligation, and Duty? Sin, and Death? And Satan as her Family …”

He looks to see Elizabeth staring at him, her eyes misty but gazing right into him. “And what if I were?”

“Hm.” He lets himself become distracted, by the thought, entertained by it as she is amusing him now. “It would explain a lot. After all, if she still lived, she wouldn’t want to be stuck in one place. She’s always been stuck, hasn’t she? When she was born, when she lived … and when she died. You’d feel trapped. Claustrophobic.”

“You make me sound like some kind of ghoul? A vampire?”

He laughs. “You can’t stop. You could have a mansion, an entire Castle, to feed to your heart’s content. Why travel against the edge of the sun to do so?”

“Why don’t you stay and enjoy the garden in England? After all, who understands a boy better than his own Mother?”

Stefan’s heart jolts as Elizabeth’s grip tightens. He finds that he has nothing to say.

“No.” Elizabeth murmurs into his neck, continuing her movements. “Just as Dracula is not Vlad Tepes, I am not my ancestor, the Blood Countess. I am even less than that, Stefan. I’m just an outmoded character, nothing more. You know, the beautiful stranger, slightly sad, slightly … mysterious … that haunts one place after another.”

“W-who are you?” Stefan grits his teeth against the growing sensations in his body. “Are you even real?”

“Are any of us real?” Elizabeth asks. Even her breath smells red. “We all make stories of ourselves over time. Little artifices. Fictions. Am I the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, for instance? And are you really Stefan of Chilton Manor?” Stefan opens his mouth, and he is past the time for words. “Come.” Elizabeth purrs, wrapping herself tightly around him, as he loses himself in her embrace, as he lets her let himself grant him permission. “Let us make a new story together.”

*

Stefan stands on the boat in the night. Everything after their time in the honeymoon suite moved so fast. Elizabeth explained to them that it was like this: time moving slowly, in increments, and then all at once.

He remembers Valerie’s screams as they came into the bathroom of Elizabeth and Ilona’s suite.

Poor Ilona. Stefan finally figured out where his razor had disappeared. In the end, she found the water after all, and turned it red. Their favourite colour. Valerie, her white sweater covered in blood, like the spot on Ilona’s pale neck grown and turned large. Stefan keeps the image of Ilona’s body in his mind’s eye.

Elizabeth assured Valerie that it hadn’t been her fault. That she didn’t suspect her, despite the implications. Of course it hadn’t been Valerie’s responsibility. A part of Stefan wanted to rib her further, as he had with the Belgian newspaper, to rankle her, to probe that place, to enjoy her squirming. But restraint. Elizabeth teaches restraint. And patience.

Stefan decided to dig the grave, in the mud, in the darkness, though it’d been Elizabeth’s plan. He hadn’t forgotten how quickly she’d come to that decision, to deal with Ilona. He’d laid a kiss on Ilona’s lips, so pale in death, that when Elizabeth threw the earth on him, and he’d become tangled in the corpse’s limbs, it’d taken him aback. He wondered then, if this had been her plan all along, to bury them together … until a hand reached down …

And Valerie pulled him up. Despite everything.

Then, the Countess’ red bed. And the two of them, as she explored them, and the violet boa around her shoulders. Seeing Ilona’s body, being entwined in it, terrified but … excited him. It helped make that night even more memorable. He wishes he can thank her for that. The last thought he had, of his old life, was seeing Elizabeth’s boa, its feathers reminding him of a bird in a gilded cage, and he couldn’t help recalling the orchid: the Laeliinae, Cattleya violacea. 

Stefan doesn’t think of flowers anymore. Instead, right now he stands on the deck of their ship, wishing it called the Demeter or at least the Persephone, crossing, in Elizabeth’s words, the River Oceanus. It is much calmer now than in those early nights. He turns to his side. Valerie stands there, a stoic, white statue from another time.

“Tell me.” He says, also from another place, another era. “Do you love me?”

Valerie inclines her head. “Don’t you know?”

Her mouth moves, her pouting naivety now become a calculating Galatea. “No.”

Stefan nods.

There is the pause, of a breath that neither of them need anymore.

“And you?” She asks, her eyes far away, the firmament in there as dark as the night that they have led her into, that they were destined for together.

He remains facing away from her, all of his lies now laid bare, now knowing every sordid part of each other. Now knowing, and reveling in, what truly he is. “No.”

Valerie also nods, curtly, hiding her face under her platinum bangs. “That’s good.”

And as their fingers reach each other’s, before Elizabeth can call for them again, Stefan thinks about Ilona’s necklace. She must have dashed it to the floor when she entered the bathroom. He imagines it, in her haste, in her stride as Stoker might have said, snapping, spilling every glorious, ivory bead, each one rolling away, released into the shadows and the crimson tide lapping around them. He considers what kind of newspaper article that would have made, back in Ostend. Stefan grows hard.

Their fingertips almost meet even as Elizabeth comes in from behind, languorously stretching out her arms under her black raincoat, sheltering them, her presence looming over them all.