Vampire "Untitled" (Vampire "Untitled" Trilogy Book 1) (22 page)

A new and sinister thought occurred to him.

There were things he knew as fact. He knew that Nealla
had attacked earlier and he had instantly fought back; that was unusual.
Normally he would have run away or curled in a ball. That was a change in his
behaviour. He was up for a fight, ready for violence. He also knew he was
obsessing over hurting women when he had never entertained such a thought in
his head in his life. He’d never hurt a fly yet he was obsessing over hurting
Ildico and Nisha for no discernible reason; in Nisha’s case it was becoming an
obsession. He was also forgetting things and unable to recall events of only a
few hours ago with any certainty. In less than a week he’d gone from mild
mannered and peaceable to suffering obsessive violent thoughts and losing his
grip on reality. Plain as day. It was happening.

And he knew what had happened to trigger this.

He had gone to the forest despite being told not to by
John and Ildico. They called it the devil forest, they said there was a dark
spirit there, the strigoi, that infects men and makes them crazy. Jesus Christ,
Jesus Fucking Christ, had he become infected by something? If not the strigoi
then some kind of illness that was playing tricks on him, screwing with his
mind, making him forgetful. Perhaps it was causing encephalopathy, a swelling
of the brain that was pushing him towards violence and causing forgetfulness.

The vampire on the balcony was real, or Ildico was
dead, or he was infected by the strigoi. The strigoi didn’t even have to be a
spirit, it could be a virus or a bacteria or some other pathogen. The
superstition called it a vampire but it could be an illness. The day he fell in
the stream, he became sick, feverish, started having violent nightmares from
that point, became forgetful, unable to tell where his imagination ended.

The vampire was real. Ildico was dead. He was infected
by something nasty.

Whichever story was true, Ildico may have been...

Oh Christ...

“When did I last see her?”

It was that night he kissed her, or she kissed him.
Think back, what really happened? They had talked, he had shouted at her for
having stupid beliefs. Why did he shout at her? That wasn’t like him at all. In
fact, he’d never raised his voice to a woman. Then she tried to leave and he’d
stopped her. He’d tried to kiss her and she’d resisted... No. That wasn’t true,
she kissed him. Then she stayed and left during the night.

She had left during the night... vanished without
trace.

But who had kissed who? She kissed him... or did she.
He’d shouted, she was upset and wanted to leave. How had they ended up in bed
together? He shouted at her, made her cry, she was leaving. Then, according to
his recollection, she had decided to hop into bed with him, suck his cock, then
leave during the night. On a scale of one to impossible, how likely was that
story?

Amnesia?

Imagination?

There was a blank spot; and it was rapidly filling
with images of blood in the sink and stabbing her in the forest. In fact, he’d
had that vision twice, once now on the sofa, and once when he’d imagined her
running naked through the trees and discovered her with the vampire eating from
her throat. That was a dream, or a fantasy, it had...

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck off, this isn’t true.” That was his
imagination; and it had happened like a dream whilst she was supposedly giving
a blowjob.

His logical mind was telling him that Ildico was fine
but he couldn’t reconcile the forgetfulness. A terrible imagined scenario was
looking very real. These were very dark things he had imagined; dark things he
may have made real.

He couldn’t discern the truth. He couldn’t separate
fact from fiction. He was ninety percent certain he hadn’t hurt Ildico, but
under any normal circumstances he should be one hundred percent. Ten percent of
doubt of his own memory was enough to demand proof. Take nothing for granted.
Verify.

Paul ran back to the bedroom. He grabbed the little
slip of paper with Ildico’s telephone number. He put his coat on so quickly it
was twisted and uncomfortable. He checked his pockets for coins for the
payphone, grabbed the torch, his keys and slammed the door on his way out
praying she was fine.

----- X -----

Looking
out from the front door he could see nothing but darkness. Pitch black on a
moonless night. He turned on the flashlight; its beam cut a powerful cone of
light into falling snowflakes. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Snowflakes like
cotton balls fell profusely through the beam. Tonight there were no dogs
barking, no engines rumbling. There was no sound at all.

Paul checked his watch, 9:15pm. He figured in the
circumstances it wasn’t too late to call Ildico. He just wanted to hear her
voice and know that she was alright.

The fresh snow underfoot crunched as he stepped on it.
It was the only sound. He walked around the block and into the courtyard. The
payphone was approximately three hundred yards away, an easy five minute walk
in daylight and fine weather, but as he looked across the courtyard it seemed
to be on the other side of no man’s land.

Other than the flashlight, the only illumination came
from coloured squares of windows flickering with TV glare. Mostly they weren’t
visible through the snow. The snowfall was surprisingly intense. With wind it
would be a major blizzard, without wind it was like being in an ornamental snow
globe.

He began walking.

He reminisced about that first dream of seeing Ildico
killed in the forest. She had been undressing as she ran, teasing, enticing
him. He’d found her clothes and heard her giggle. When he found her the vampire
had her pressed to a tree and had eaten away part of her throat. This time,
although he saw the vampire in his mind’s eye, he was struck by the sensation
that he was the one who had killed her. The vampire was a mask, an illusion to
cover the reality. He could see the blood running down her naked body from the
wounds to her neck and mouth. The bloody mouth was common to each recollection.
Whilst he had slept on the sofa he had imagined biting off her lips and seeing
blood run down her body from her mouth. Then in those brief flashes of stabbing
her in the forest, he had plunged a knife into her abdomen and blood had
spurted from her lips.

Was that the truth? Had he stabbed her and seen blood
come from her mouth? Had he imagined the vampire eating her and seen a
variation on the theme?

What about the sexual encounter? She was mad with him,
angry, wanted to leave. Had she really stayed and slipped out during the night?
Now he thought on it, he couldn’t differentiate between the oral sex he was
sure had happened and the dream of her naked in the forest. Those two events
seemed merged and dreamlike. He had believed that one had really happened and
the other was a dream, but was that true? Was one of them true? Were either of
them true, or had he imagined both things?

These questions proved one thing conclusively. He
couldn’t trust his own memory. That was now a fact. Whatever had happened to
him, or was still happening to him, the net result was his memory was not to be
trusted. Something had caused this, an illness perhaps, or a dark spirit like
the legend; regardless of the cause he had to recognise that something had
happened to him and he was behaving strangely.

The snowfall increased. The flashlight had a maximum
range no more than fifteen feet.

“Where am I going?” Paul stopped to check his
bearings. It was virtually impossible to tell. The only guide was the obscured
line of TV flickering windows along the length of the blocks.

Ildico had come to visit, her coat was ripped. He had
gotten drunk, made an ass of himself and she had left. Then he’d slept,
drunkenly, and dreamed of her in a fantasy of male egotism. She was his
possession, he owned her, she sucked him to orgasm then he killed her in the
forest. Dreams, all of it. It had to be. It really had to be. Because if it
wasn’t just a dream then the consequences were too terrifying to contemplate.

“How did you screw this up, Paul?” he said to himself.
“How can you not tell the difference between a dream and a blowjob?” He stopped
dead in his tracks as that thought exploded in his mind. “You really are sick
with something.”

It was the easy fit solution. He was sick. He had an
illness that confused his thinking. That’s how you can dream of having sex and
think it really happened, that’s how you can be forgetful. Rabies perhaps.
Rather rabies than murderer. He had gone to the shrine and become infected with
something, it had confused his thinking, he wasn’t a violent person, he
couldn’t have hurt Ildico because it wasn’t in his nature. Then he thought of
how easily he hurt her in the fantasies, he thought of how easily he had pushed
back against Nealla in the confrontation today. In his imagination he had a
sudden flicker of stabbing Ildico in the forest, her pleading with him, and him
taking the cruciform as a souvenir.

He remained standing still in the snowfall. He turned
the flashlight off for a second, just to give himself the feeling of being
alone and isolated. He didn’t want to continue. He didn’t really want to call
Ildico. It was an unpleasant chore, something he didn’t want to discover. Not
knowing was bad, but to learn that he had hurt her was so stomach-churning he’d
rather spend forever not knowing than discover he’d done something bad.

Snowflakes built up on his shoulders and head, one
landed on his eyelid and clung to his eyelashes. Standing still made him
acutely aware of how cold it was. Should he continue or go back? He looked over
his shoulder. The way back was unclear. He was probably closer to the payphone
now.

Reluctantly and without having a coherent reason why,
he somehow managed to put one foot in front of the other to continue whilst
feeling sicker and sicker.

“Please be safe, Ildico. Please be safe.”

----- X -----

His
hands shook as the coins went into the slot of the payphone. He’d perched the
flashlight across the top of the telephone and it seemed to reflect off every
surface of the Plexiglas dome. This wasn’t a kiosk, rather it was a post with a
plastic bubble attached. It looked old and he hadn’t used a payphone in years,
but when he picked up the receiver it made a dial tone. His hands could barely
hold the slip of paper as he dialled. He was trembling all over, a combination
of the bitter cold, the adrenalin, the stress and worry. It felt as though his
entire life had pointed to this one point and in the next few moments he would
discover his eternal fate.

Ring-Ring.

“Come on, Ildico. Please pick up.”

Ring-Ring.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

Ring-Ring.

“Please be alright, please be there and just...” There
was a crackle on the line, a buzz and the ringing stopped. He was so nervous
that time seemed to slow down and it took an age before a sleepy female voice
spoke.

“Allo?”

It didn’t sound like Ildico. It was an older woman.
He’d never asked who she lived with, perhaps it was her parents. The voice was
sleepy, unhurried.

“Er...” Paul suddenly couldn’t speak, he wanted to
say, ‘Hello, Can I speak with Ildico please?’ and be especially polite.
Suddenly, not speaking the language seemed an insurmountable mountain to scale.
“Er... Er...” He just couldn’t say anything. After a few seconds he managed to
blurt out her name as a question. “Ildico?”

The other end of the line went silent and for a moment
Paul thought they’d hung up until he noticed television noise in the
background. Then another voice came on the line, “Buna, sunt Ildico.”

“ILDICO!” He shouted it. “Oh, Ildico...” Then he had
nothing to say. She sounded fine.

“Paul? Is that you Paul?”

“Ildico... Hi, yes, it’s me...”

“Hi, how are you? … How is your writing? Are things
good? … Paul?”

A flushing sensation of relief was washing over him,
an overwhelming sense of pressure lifting that was leaving him so exhausted he
could barely speak.

“I’m... Hi, Ildico. I’m sorry to call, I just wanted
to see if you were OK after the other day?”

“If I am OK? Yes... Oh I see, yes, don’t worry I am
fine.”

Paul’s happiness was short lived.

“What are you doing now? Can I come over?”

Very short lived.

There was someone out there in the snow about twenty
yards from the telephone.

“Paul...” Ildico called sensing his mood change. “Are
you OK?”

“I’m... fine, Ildico...” He was watching the mystery
person, unable to quite quantify what he could see. Too dark, too hidden, but
definitely there and moving around him, circling. “I’m sorry, I just... I had a
bad dream and I thought I had hurt you.” His mind wasn’t on the conversation.

“Hurt me?” She asked sounding genuinely puzzled.
“Shall I come around? Is it OK or is it too late?”

Paul wasn’t paying attention when he replied. “Sure,
it’s OK.” Then he hung up without paying any attention at all. There was
definitely someone out there in the snow and it had mesmerised him. Ildico
could have been a million miles away. What was more important was there was a
man standing in the snow just beyond vision. He couldn’t be seen clearly
through the snowfall unless Paul turned the torch beam onto this man directly.
Paul didn’t want to do it. This place right here, this state he was in now, was
limbo. The fear of calling Ildico had been replaced by overwhelming joy; but
that joy had just sunk when it looked as though a naked man, with marble white
skin, was standing in falling snow only twenty yards away.