A vampire tale.

By Ami E. Bowen

The room was dark save for the faltering illumination of the small candle burning in a dusty corner. The floors were stone and small mossy plants had crept up through the cracks and had taken over during the lengthily passage of time.

The walls, inlaid with thick cryptic writing, housed the pallid shells of the dead, resting within alcoves within alcoves, each grave marked with a silver plaque cemented into the wall bearing the name, age, birth and death of the tomb's possessor.

Amily ran her fingers across the smooth surface of the wall, marveling at how clean it had been kept throughout the ages and at the warmth at her subtle touch. A chill ran down her spine, a feeling of complete ecstasy which was as alien to her lately as was the dread orb which rose each morning. When she withdrew her hand she was faintly surprised to find her fingertips a'tingle with sensations she was not aware she could still experience.

She felt something, suddenly, an insect maybe, crawl across her bare feet and up her right leg. She brushed at it with her hands and felt the sticky-dryness of a spider's abandoned web. She absently ran her hands across the wrinkles in her silver chemise and noticed vaguely how the black lace trim was becoming torn from wear. She shrugged and mentally decided it was time for new clothing. Although she had other things, now, to think of then what to wear.

She leaned down to swipe at the cobweb and her hand brushed against something soft and wispy. She pulled up a scrap of clothing. A piece of red silk, it's long length fluttered down her hand as she raised it to her nose and inhaled the scent of the dead, musty and cold and strangely soothing to her overabundant senses. She also caught the scent of fear, and loathing, and terrible, terrible hunger. It was subtle, as the feel of a long, lost love for something or someone burning within one's soul, forgotten, yet still there.

A feeling of dread loomed up into her heart as a vision came to her with the scents. A place, maybe a house of some kind, she was not certain. She did know where that location was, however and she planned on going there just as soon as her strength was up to the task. She had a debt she needed to pay...and something she needed to find.

"So that's where you are..." She breathed deeply of the scent, the essence of the bearer of the silk, which was woven into the fabric deeper than anything could ever be, and tucked it into the pocket of her black, slightly faded, leather jacket. She wrapped the silk about her fingers inside the pocket, feeling the smoothness of it as the back of her hand brushed against her deck of tarot cards which she carried at all times.

Her voice, as she spoke, was barely above the timbre of a whisper, a soft breeze in the evening yet filled with hatred so clear and dense as to be untouchable, "I shall track you, my dear old beloved friend, I shall follow your blood-trail until I find you...and then I shall destroy you as you would have destroyed me."

She shivered momentarily at the thought of meeting him once again, and the trembling within her self was not due to the fear that she might fail in her mission, but at the memory of what those passionate green eyes engulfed with an abysmal hunger and frigid mouth had done to her senses in a time gone by.

Would she be strong enough now, to withstand the temptation and to carry out what she knows in her heart of hearts she must do? It was a question Amily neither wished to dwell upon nor answer at the moment. Best to leave such bridges uncrossed lest they burn down around one's ears before the time has come to set foot to them.

She exited the tomb, her resting place for as many days as she had fingers and toes, and wandered across the graveyard of her hometown, a place she has lived within before she became...other...and stepped onto the newly paved road, which, in her youth as a mortal, had been nothing more than an untamed forest.

The town below, which she could see clearly from the vantage of the hill on which she stood, was bright with it's electrical lights all aglow and the random smoke from a few houses mingled with the few stars which peeked out from beneath the grayish-dark storm clouds. Her heightened vision allowed her to glimpse though windows that, to the average human being, would have looked as small, pin-pricks of light, and see clearly what and who occupied those windows. She saw a family of three sitting down to dinner in one window, two children playing checkers in another, a pair of lovers engaged in that age-old ritualistic dance of the species in yet another.

Amily breathed deeply of the smells the living let seep from them. Each person she saw had his or her own unique scents, and they were all so, so lovely to the noses of the undead. She could almost taste the blood she could feel as well as scent, and her stomach contracted with eagerness.

In spite of her growing hunger, Amily wished she could stand upon that paved, dark road forever just gazing down at her birthplace breathing in the sweetness of the life below, of the somehow sane and insane thoughts of others which swirled as vertiginously as the smoke from the chimneys to reach her mind as if it were a lighthouse to guide them somehow, though the night. Amily laughed aloud. No matter what he's done to me or what he will try to do to me, I will find my way back. I will!

***

Sometimes...just sometimes, the memories are clear and she can almost touch them, reach them, grasp them and hold onto them tightly, and then, suddenly, though she cannot think how much less why, the memories seem to become as fish to slip though the tangled nets of her mind and flop back into the murky waters of her subconscious.

When this happens, she retreats into herself and becomes nothing more than a savage huntress during the night, killing and feeding and not taking pleasure in the chase and the task as she once had, but devouring only enough to keep up her survival and during the day she finds places suitable for her to retire.

She kept on throughout time as nothing more than a shell of what she once was, of what, in the back of her mind, sometimes, she knows she must find and so, despite her plunge into her more base, animal self, she was always hunting for the one who could gave her back what was lost, give her back her memories, help her to retrieve and paste together the shreds of her mind.

***

In spite of what others, those who do not, cannot know, insist; Vampires do indeed exist and they do indeed have hearts and minds and souls. They can love and dream and hate with as much vehemence and yearning as any mortal, perchance moreso.

They are always alone, even as they sometimes dwell within packs within packs of others like themselves or mingle with the mortals, the living of the world, they are alone and most of them have come to accept that, choosing the loneliness and dull, throbbing ache which comes with it to the mindless rush and senselessness of the short-lived and shortsighted ones who have no vision and have no passion and no inkling of what real love, hatred or dreams are or could be.

A vampire knows, has always known, even as it knows the thoughts, memories and essence of that which made it as soon as the taste of the blood, sweet like honey, bitter as vinegar, soft and hard and reckless and oh, so tantalizingly ardent as to the most powerful of wines, touches the other's lips and slides passed the tongue and down the throat, burning like all the fires of hell and caressingly loving as whispers from Heaven.

***

Amily knows that the worst enemy a vampire can ever have is not one who hunts vampires, for they are most often mortal and more a hindrance than a threat, but another vampire. She knows this not because of logic's teachings, but because of what she, herself has been through and has witnessed throughout time.

She stares blankly at times up into the sky though the red haze of blood lust and claws at her mind with invisible talons, seeing the visions behind her eyes, of places and people she once knew and who she once was...a vampire and whole, not this female thing with a warped and shattered mind that seems so lucid at times as to be frightening.

One thing remains constant within her mind, though the memories and faces and words of others swirl about on rivers of darkened chaos, She must find him, she must or all shall be lost and she will have to retreat into herself and never emerge until such a time has come in which her existence is lost for good. She only hopes she shall not be too late.

***

All is lost. All is lost. All is lost. The voices echoing in his skull will not still their fear-addled cries! I must flee! He thought frantically, clutching at the coffin's interior with talon-like hands, clawing until the pale skin near the fingertips break and redness leaks out of those wounds.

His breath came in great gasping sobs as he saw before him in the darkness of that pit-like casket, her face, looming over him as a ghost. He watched, terror-stricken and unable to do more than scratch wildly at the fabric above him, his hands transparent through the loveliness of her ashen skin.

What am I doing here? He asked himself for the fifteenth time since awaking in his prison of red lace and satin.

She seemed to hear his thoughts and a smile of such alarming charm spread across her features that he was taken aback as he stared into her dark brown eyes. He noticed the flecks of gold mixed with the brown, the dark curling lashes which framed them as perfectly as an artist frames a masterpiece. She gazed down upon him with those hypnotically beautiful eyes and whispered something against his face.

He did not hear her words, but as he felt her body appear, somehow, above him and her arms encircle his waist, he thought that he could feel her words. The kiss did not last long. Cold lips pressed firmly against his own and he felt as if something was trying to inhaled all of the air from his lungs. He struggled to release himself from her grasp, but it was as if he were nothing more than a lemming in the jaws of a mighty tigeress.

She held him firmly, the top of the closed coffin giving her more leverage, as if she needed more. When she finally withdrew, he thought, with a gasped sob, that she would leave him there, that she was finished with him as he would lay there and die, suffocate to death in that box.

She sighed, long and fluttery, as if her strength were fading and she needed something more, something to sustain her. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth swiftly, yet to he who watched in rapt fascination and horror beneath her, it seemed to last eons. He saw her long, pointed white teeth, the incisors slightly longer and narrower than the others. He also noticed how berry-stained they were under the white, how berry-stained her full lips were as she brought them down, close to his face and at the last moment, leaned into his throat.

He felt her tongue slide across the inside of his neck, as cold as ice, and slippery, like a slug inching it's way across his skin. He recoiled but it was too late, for the next thing he felt was the teeth. She held them against his flesh for a moment, relishing in the texture of the living one's skin and the blood which coursed through each tiny vein seemed to call to her needs.

It was fortunate that this one had been the victim of someone's strange prank. He had been knocked over the head with something hard and buried alive in the cemetery on the hill. He was young, dark, and oh, so fresh! She had caught his scent almost as soon as she had risen that evening. Caught it and held it, and followed it. Easy prey. Easy love. She bit down hard and swift, awaiting the pleasure, the rapture of the blood in her mouth and down her throat. It did not come. It did not come.

Instead she felt as if all of her limbs were being torn from their sockets and her skull was screaming out as a wild drumming began behind her eyes.

No! No! She cried within herself, she may have shouted it aloud too for all she knew, she withdrew, drawing the coffin lid up with her back and buttocks against it. The deadly fingers had began squeezing at her gut and she doubled over the boy in the coffin, the dying boy in the coffin, his life's blood issuing out though a large gape in his throat, the lid slammed down hard on her shoulders and back, shoving her down farther.

I must get out! She thought wildly, as her stomach felt it was being tied into knots by some invisible assailant. I must get out! She lashed out at the boy in the coffin with her hands hit him with her fists and scratched him with her claws. Screaming, "You filth! You bastard! You've tricked me!" and any number of obscene words and phrases.

The boy just moaned and tried to speak for he knew nothing of what she was screaming about. All he knew was that he just wanted the death to come to him now, so he wouldn't have to witness the raving woman who threw herself about in her attempt at escape. He wished he could let her out. He wished the death would come. Come now.

The blood, was the first thought Amily had after finding her way out of that coffin, something was in the blood. That was why I got sick. That was why....A series of visions played across her mind, she saw herself, maybe seven or eight years ago, and someone she knew that she should recall, but the face seemed covered in mist, suddenly the sight was gone and she was left standing near the tombstone of her great-great-great grandmother's final resting place with the moonlight shining down on her.

She did not know or understand just what it was in the boy's blood which had made her ill, but she did understand that it was a large clue to regaining all of her scattered memories. It was the light she needed to guide herself halfway home.

***

"How are you feeling?" Melissa Sinclare shrugged her narrow shoulders and gripped the rust-hued wool blanket tighter about herself. She sat, propped on all sides with wine colored throw pillows, on the large, overstuffed burgundy sofa in her friend's house shivering from more than the chill weather outside. She wondered how she was going to tell him. She wondered more about how he was going to take it.

She looked up at her friend, Douglas Ryder, a carpenter of sorts, dressed in a faded blue sports coat and matching slacks. His thinning blond hair barley covered the shiny pink flesh of his scalp. He was thin and tall, but not in a gawky sort of way. His face wasn't what could be called handsome, but it did have a softness to it, a tenderness that many women found attractive.

She speculated on why he'd never married. Now that he was nearly forty-eight, he should have a family of his own to keep him company. She would have married him, had he ever asked her to.

"Better, I guess," Melissa said, taking the cup of tea he held out for her.

"Careful, it's still hot," He warned and retreated to sit across from her in one of the chairs, "Do you think you can tell me what happened now?"

She looked at him over the rim of the small, dainty tea cup, and saw concern and fear in his light blue eyes. Old eyes, She thought, sad eyes.

She nodded and placed the cup, it's contents untouched, on the coffee table near her legs. She curled her legs up under her and took a deep breath.

"It won't be easy, Doug," She said, and felt her heart contract, "Not at all."

"It's all right, Lissa," He said, calling her by the name she's used as a kid, when they used to play baseball together and watch old westerns on TV, "Just go slow and start from the beginning..."

"The beginning, huh?" She said, running her fingers through her short dark auburn hair, which was matted to her head from the rain she'd recently came in from, "I don't know how to explain it, Doug. It was just...so...horrid....I was lost again."

Douglas nodded. He was one of the few people around town who knew about Melissa Sinclare, how she sometimes blacked out and stayed out for days. Where she went, only Melissa and Douglas, the one friend she trusted enough to tell, knew for certain. Most of the time, when she blacked out, Melissa told Douglas that she was floating, weightless, in some kind of dark...pit. Melissa said that she felt she was lost and that the panic would take over in a few moments.

"I was lost," She said again, "Only this time...this time I wasn't alone."

"What...did you see?" Douglas asked slowly, afraid of what she would reveal, "Who...?"

Melissa nodded, she could see the tiny blue veins pulsating about Douglas Ryder's eyes,

"I saw him again," She said, as a wild shiver rode up her spine and made her damp hair on the top of her head stand on end, "He was there, Doug, calling me. He wanted me to go with him...some place...warm, He said, warm and dry and comforting...."

Douglas watched Melissa's face as she spoke. A calmness seemed to overtake her china-doll-like features, her eyes glazed over and she appeared to be staring though him into the wall behind him. She began to laugh as tears flooded her eyes and she began to rock herself gently back and forth upon the sofa babbling on about warm, safe places.

Douglas hurried over to the sofa and sat down beside her. He put his arms about her and pulled her toward his chest.

"Melissa, stop it!" He said firmly, while he held her arms bound at her sides, "Can you hear me, Melissa? I say, stop it right now!"

"Douglas?" She asked, when she'd calmed down enough to remember where she was and with who, "Do you know what it means? Do you know?"

"What?" He asked, "Lissa, your not making any sense...your in no condition to drive, I'll make up the bed in the guest room for..."

"Do you know?!" She screamed and jerked away from him, "The poison, Dougy...The poison...don't you even remember?!"

"Oh god," He sighed, placing his somehow heavier head in his hands, "Oh god, no. Lissa, no. That was fourteen years ago, for God's sake. No! You'll not open healed wounds, I won't let you!"

"We put the poison inside of her..." She spoke slowly, like an adult to a retarded child, "We left her alive and injected the poison into her blood. If he hadn't come and killed her, the poison would have, eventually. It was a good trap...good bait."

"Lissa..." Douglas moaned, shaking his head, "Stop it, I don't want to hear..."

"And then...He came," She continued, as if she were alone with her thoughts, "Like a dark angel, he was. He saw me. He knew what we had been about and refused the offering we gave. I saw him kill the girl by bashing her head against the side of a building, I saw him smile at me as he did so. I ran then. I did not wonder if he would catch me. I ran until my lungs felt like lead in my chest and at last I had to stop to puke up my dinner in front of my house. I was never so afraid in all of my life, and I was only ten or eleven then."

"I know all of this, Lissa," Douglas said softy, glancing at the clock on the wall, "You've told me this a long time ago. It's getting late..."

"He caught me, Douglas." She said, and the words were like a bucket of ice water throw upon his head. He stared at her in mute shock, "He caught me, the monster we have always fought against and I could do nothing while I was in his power. The crosses and garlic we've always thought would protect us proved worthless."

"Lissa...what are you trying to say...?"

"Look," She stood up, dropping the blanket to the floor, and unbuttoned her green cotton shirt just enough to slide it off one shoulder, "And tell me if I'm crazy."

Douglas stared at the two small puncture wounds near Melissa's collarbone and shrugged, "They look to be fresh, Lissa," He said, "Has some animal bitten you?"

"An animal?" She asked, "Yes, a very dangerous animal. I'm nearly gone, Douglas. I'm halfway between here and there. I only have a little time left....As soon as I drink his blood...."

"Don't, Lissa!" Douglas shouted, "You can save your self...save your soul...It is not too late... All we have to do is find him and end him...remember, like we had to do back then to those other ones...before they could rise."

"I'll find him, Douglas," She said, "But only when he wants to be found. As for ending him...A creature who's been around as long as he has must know all the tricks." She paused and then went on, "But, I need one favor from you. If we can't destroy him, if I die and come back...as...well, as one of them...promise me you'll do what must be done, so that I won't be like that forever. Please!"

Douglas shook his head and backed away from her, his thoughts all a'jumble. She's insane, He thought, She's just lonely...she needs attention...He tried to still his rambling thoughts, What if she's not crazy? "No, Lissa! You won't...I won't...No!"

"Promise me, Douglas!" She screamed at him, "Your the only one I can turn to...The only one! You know it's the only way! Now give me your word!"

"I..I...promise, Lissa," He said, soundly drained, tired, "I give you my word to perform the things which must be done if...you should die..."

Melissa sank back into the sofa and sighed, "Thank you, Douglas," She whispered, "Thank you."

"I-I'll fix up the guest bed for you now," He said, feeling suddenly like a cup of tea just wasn't strong enough now, "I'll be in my own room, should you need anything, Melissa."

He did not await a response but left her sitting on the sofa with an untouched cup of cooling tea in her hands, staring into the cup as if she could read all of life's answers in the dark liquid. It made him sad and angry to see her as so.

Damn it to Hell! He raged within as he located the extra sheets from the top shelf of the hall closet, She's so young! Why does she have to die now!? He slammed the closet door shut and marched to the guest room carrying the sheets and blankets under his one arm. He continued to rave in his mind about the unfairness of it all as he took out his frustrations upon a helpless mattress as he made up the bed. He refused to dwell on his vow to Melissa.

He could not endure the thought of purposely mutilating her poor corpse when he could not even save her life. He sunk down onto the made bed and held his aching head in his hands, his migraine was starting in again as it did whenever the stress of a situation got to be too much for him to bear. His doctor had gave him some pills to take whenever the pain became too hard to endure. He reached into the breast pocket of the sports coat he had shed and thrown onto the chair in the corner and pulled out his bottle of pills.

The pain was getting worse faster than it should. A throbbing pain became as sharp as a knife's edge in his skull as he fumbled with the bottle, dropped it on the carpeted floor, watched it roll under the bed, and dropped to his knees to grope under the bed for it. His head was hurting so much now, that it was difficult to keep from crying out.

He must have screamed though, because his throat was feeling raw and he thought he heard his voice in the air a moment ago.

"Douglas?" He looked up from the floor and saw a woman standing over him, she appeared upside-down in his line of vision and he wondered about that, but only for a moment, the ache allowed him little time to wonder about things, she was calling him name and reaching for him,

"Douglas? Are you all right? What's wrong?" He stared at her though red and black pain-hazed eyes and thought, vaguely, that she seemed nice, and yet...something was not...

"...right, Douglas? Are you all right?"

"Me-lissa..." He gasped, although how he knew that to be her name, he couldn't have said.

She nodded and smiled. Smiled. He was certain of the love and tenderness her saw in her face and eyes a moment ago when she sat, shivering from the cold, wrapped in a blanket, looking for all the world like a drowned cat, upon his sofa.

Now he saw only a vague curiosity and what appeared to be passion of such intensity he cringed, forgetting the pain in his head for a moment.

Do not fear...The voice came to him in his thoughts, past the pain, past the wonder and the horror at what he saw in her face, The pain is all...the waiting is all...now we begin again. She placed her hands on either side of his face and tilted his head back, the headache grew at such a rapid pace that his body could not take it any more and he fell into the blackness of slumber.

Passed out as he was, he did not feel it as her mouth came down upon his throat, nor did he feel the bite of her teeth as they tore into the tender flesh there. He recalled asking just one question to himself before he passed out. Why? Melissa? Why?

And she answered him, I've changed my mind, Douglas. I've changed my mind.

***

The pains had ceased an hour, or perhaps a night ago, She wasn't certain. Amily sat behind the first house she had come to in her trek down the hill towards the town. She paused to read the entrance sign, as if she really had to, she'd seen it a million times over.

"Welcome To Weston, Oregon," She read aloud, "Population...too small to credit."

Laughing internally at her own jest, Amily sighed and continued on. She stopped at the first house she saw with the lights burning from within and knocked on the door. She waited, aware of the blood drying on her clothing and skin, for someone to open the door.

Amily growled under her breath in anger and frustration and kicked the door once impulsively before she turned to step off the small wooden porch. She could smell the blood of the living beings within the house and her dead heart beat faster at the thought of tasting, nay, feasting upon that gore.

She heard the door creak open behind her and a gust of warm air from within the house shot past her sensitive nostrils, carrying with it the scents which were nearly driving her insane.

"May I help you?" The voice was small, light and childish. Amily could feel the girl-child's emotions as they swirled about the air between them on invisible currents. Amily could sense the child's curiosity, confusion and willingness to give aide to a stranger who appeared in need.

Amily turned and beheld an angel-like thing in a light blue nightgown. Her waist length hair was the hue of the newly cut wheat as in the fields surrounding the little town. It was straight and fell over her shoulders and back cascading like a pale waterfall.

Amily nodded at the girl and saw that her eyes were large, blue and luminous in the faint light of the lamp over their heads above the porch.

"How old are you, child?" Amily asked while she glanced beyond the girl into the darkness of the entry-way, "Are you here alone?"

Instead of answering right away the girl squeezed her eyes narrow and asked in a serious, adult-like fashion; "Have you been in an accident, lady?"

Amily was taken aback by that for she had momentarily forgotten the crimson which stained her garments, "Yes, I have been. Could you help me?"

"I don't know," She said, backing away, "Maybe I could call someone for you."

"Allow me inside, child," Amily said softly, gazing into the girl's eyes with tenderness befitting the Holy Virgin Mother and felt the child weakening, "And I'll use the telephone myself."

"I don't know," She said, "I'm here alone and I'm only seven years old. My Momma told me I shouldn't open the door to..."

"But, dear," Amily said, deciding to play her role of the nurturing, caring female to it's highest potential, "Haven't you been fed? Allow me inside and I shall fix you a healthy meal. I need to come in, you must let me inside for your own welfare as well as mine. I have been hurt...see this blood? It dries upon my clothing even now and I need new ones...new clothing. I think you want to help me, I know you do. Please, child!"

The last words were delivered with such agony that the child was frightened and gasped. Before she could shut the door, Amily grabbed the child by the arm and yanked her forward. She knelt down on one knee to look the girl in the eyes and felt her resolve to trick the child into allowing her inside the house, so she could attack those she knew to be asleep in their beds without the fear of any weapons the living ones may have against her, diminishing swiftly.

"I am losing what little patience I have with you, girl," Amily growled into the child's face as she held her by her arm, "You do not understand the pain I am enduring. I need your help, child and I don't have the time to stand here and argue with you. If you had allowed me inside I would have let you be and taken only one of your sleeping relatives, but now, you give me no choice but to take you instead. Come!"

Amily stood up and jerked the child forward by her arm. She felt the girl's terror and resistance.

"No! No!" The child cried and screamed with such volume that Amily was certain every person this side of the Mississippi were bolted straight out of bed from their slumber, "Let me go! Daddy! Daddy! No! I won't go with you! Daddy, help me!"

Amily glanced around and lifted the kicking and screaming child into her arms. She began to run just as she heard the shout of a man from behind her and the scream of an elderly woman.

"Karen!" The woman cried, "It's Karen! That woman from the cemetery...She's got our Karen!"

And little Karen cried, "Let me go! Let me go! Daddy! Gramma!"

"Hush you little louse!" Amily hissed, "Your people cannot save you."

Karen screamed in Amily's ear and did something which even Amily was not excepting out of fear and the need to protect herself.

Amily screamed and dropped the child on the road which led to the cemetery. She raised her hand to her throat and felt the cold stickiness of the blood as it seeped out the small opening the child the made with her small, strong teeth.

"How could you?" Amily cried, "You..you've bitten me! Why?"

Instead of answering, little Karen was gazing up at Amily with eyes full to the brim of fear and horror boarding on worship.

"Is that what you are...?" She whispered in awe and fright, "I tasted something...in your blood by accident...is that what you do?"

"No!" Amily shook her head in denial of what she feared was happening, "No! You were meant to die cleanly! Oh, Cursed Day! What has happened!?"

"I am not afraid of you anymore," Karen said, "I think...I love you. I want you to be my mother now."

Amily shook her head and shoved the child from her. She closed her eyes and ears to the girl's voice, yet she could not close her mind to the splinters of memories washing upon her at that moment.

I was only seven or eight, She found herself recalling, No, I was eight, I had a party to celebrate last week. I remember it now. The monster came to the house and father let it in, thinking that it was nothing more than what it appeared to be, an elderly gentleman collecting for the church. I read the writing on the tin he was holding. It was not any church I had ever heard of.

I watched it kill my father and then it ran from our house like the devil was after it, although I knew somehow that it was most likely friends with the devil, or any other such evil it comes upon. Mother screams at me to go get help as she kneels beside her dead husband. I see the last of my father's blood as it slowly drips out the gape in his throat to puddle on the floor.

I am stricken with horror and know not what to do, so I run. I run past my sisters, awake now in their cribs crying for the attention which they will not receive. I run out the door and onto the street.

Somehow I ended up at my cousin's house. She opened the door and let me in. She was older than me. Eleven she was and she had her boyfriend over. If you had asked her, she would have denied having a boyfriend.

"What is it, Amily?" Melissa asked as her boyfriend, Douglas stood behind her. He was older than she, but I did not know how much older.

I struggled with the story, my heart was pounding in my chest and I never felt so much like hiding beneath my bed as I felt at that moment.

Melissa hushed my cries and ushered me into the house. At the oldest of five children, my cousin was more grown-up at eleven than some women are at thirty. She took me into her bedroom and put me to bed. I asked her where my aunt and uncle were.

"Don't worry, Amily," She said to me, "Mommy and Daddy are sleeping, we don't want to wake them."

"But..my father is dead," I cried in a subdued tone, "A monster came who looked like a man and he..."

"Sh...sh...I know, Amily," Melissa said, "Douglas and I will take care of everything. You just go to sleep and in the morning, the monster will be no more."

"But...Dad..will still be dead..." I sobbed, "Won't he Melissa?"

Melissa glanced at Douglas as she were afraid to answer. Douglas said to me kindly, "Yes, Amily...he will be."

I turned away and heard Melissa say softly to Douglas before they left the room; "As long as we make sure of it."

I fell into a restless sleep then, not knowing what my cousin and her boyfriend were planning to do.

"No!" Amily cried at the string of visions came to an end, "No! It's not to be this way! Ever!"

Amily knew what she had to do. She must kill this child quickly and suffer the pain of severing the bond she now shared with the girl.

I can't do it! She cried within herself as she wrapped her hands about the girl's thin neck and squeezed, I must! Another voice cried as well, as the child's face became crimson, I don't want her to end up like me! She should be older...wiser...not a helpless child. I must end her now, when the bond is so weak now...later it shall be strong and I shall have to finish what has begun.

I shall never allow that to be!

As she went about strangling the child, Amily heard the girl's voice in her mind, beseeching, sweet and clear; "Why do you hurt me, Amily? You know that I love you like a daughter? Why, Amily? Why?"

Another fragment of memory came to her then, of her cousin, Melissa, as she sat upon the bed and stared down at her....

Melissa's eyes looked strange, I thought as I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my own. I looked at her again and felt something was wrong with her. Suddenly I knew it was not my sweet, little mother of a cousin, but something else. Something trying to be my cousin. But I could see through the disguise, into the essence of the monster beneath.

She opened her mouth and I could see two golden lights shining from within that darkened, moist maw. I backed away and heard myself ask; "Why? Your not my cousin! Where is Melissa?! Why did you hurt my family?"

And she or it or whatever it was who was pretending to be my cousin said to me; "Because...I..."

"...I changed my mind," Amily said to Karen, "I changed my mind. He let me go that night, Karen. He knew that I would come for him one day...so he let me go."

She released the child as she sank to knees in weariness.

He kissed my lips before he left me and all of my memories were washed away. I still can't recall the time between my father being killed to the time I grew up and became what I am now. My mind has been in such turmoil these past years, All I know is that I must keep searching for him. I must! He will give me back my mind...all of it...and I shall end his existence once and for all.

"Karen..." Amily said softly as she looked down at the girl who was laying so still on the roadside, her breath and heart ceased by Amily's hands at her tender throat, "Oh, little one...forgive me..."

Amily walked a little ways, looking upon the ground until she found what she was seaching for.. She carried the stone in one hand. It was long and on end had been chipped to represent a point. It would be messy work, but Amily decided that since she had lost her knife sometime ago, this would have to do.

She used the pointed end of the rock to cut the child's throat and sever the head from the shoulders. It was messy and it took a lot of work to do. Amily was glad that the throat was as thin as it was, it made it a bit easier to do.

Amily stood up and tossed the stone in the wheat field to her left. She knew that the job was only half finished. She looked around for anything to aide her in the rest as she heard the sounds of people yelling and cars being driven up the road. She would have to act swiftly, she knew, and then retreat into the shadows where she belonged.

*** A little note from Ami E. Bowen:

There is more to this story than what is written here, yet I do not know it. Neither Amily nor Melissa wish to contribute more. I suppose the pain of what they have endured it too much and they wish to be silent now, but I promise you, when and if they wish to speak again, I shall record their words faithfully for you, the reader, to ponder upon. For now, I shall leave you with the puzzle which is only half-way completed and allow you to wonder.

I shall not write "The End" for as Amily would say; "Every time something ends, something more begins, and we are forever."

***