Descent Into Madness (2 page)

TWO

S
omewhere – between the night descending and the searing pain coursing through my body – I realized life was no more. My eyes had closed. My breathing stopped. Then my eyes reopened and Heaven denied to me.

I felt hollow and cold.

              Alone.

              That night haunts me still.

              Why had this happened?

              I knew my life in the hallowed convent grounds was no more. Instinct invaded me, urged me forward.

              That life of sanctity and peace is a past I often find as a place of reclusion. Its images, odors, the names of my fellow sisters, flood my mind at least once in a century. No matter how far I travel, or the years that distance me from them, they are there. When the memories come, I am lost. The feelings, the smells, the love, suck me in, and pull me down and add to the gaping, murky chasm that replaced my beating heart.

              That existence - with its future – with its finality - was shattered the night he took me from them. And I now long for my lost innocence. 

              He had taken my body, spent from the transformation, to the moonlit sky and secured us from the day’s sunlight. While the sisters searched the surrounding hillsides, I slept in an abandoned castle's ruins that overlooked the ivy-covered convent walls. We slumbered, safe from the golden rays, in the castle’s dank cellar, in dusty alcoves. I awoke the next night unaware of my true form, unaware of the monstrosity I had become.

              The world had changed when I found him sitting near a piece of wall, its brick slowly eroding into the earth. He had been anxiously gazing into the night, avoiding me.

              “How is it that I can see the candles so sharply, Wesley?” I asked, walking to his side. “It’s over a ten minute walk to the convent from here.” He did not answer. "I can see through the shadows, even,” I whispered. “The shadows, Wesley, are misty and no longer dense. I no longer fear them. What have I become?"

              The flame light brilliantly wavered in the convent’s windows, the red and orange flames weaving shadows on the brick. Their brightness was clear and crisp, as if I were standing close enough to touch them. I could almost feel their heat against my cold skin.  

              He merely stared into the distance, ignoring me.

              I turned away from him and watched the amber flames licking at the tiny candlewicks. I averted my eyes heavenward where the stars were diamonds – delicate, sparkling jewels in an ebony pool.

              Near the bank of the river Avon, moonlight reflected off the yellow Monkey flowers – wee buds twinkling like crystal. The world was renewed, a magical playground of sight and sound and color.

              “You have the gift now, Bree,” he finally said. “Just accept it.”

              “What gift?”             

              “Bree,” he began, "you are a vampire."

Vampire.
My heart sank, along with my knees as I dropped to the riverbank, my reflection in the water betraying my angst.

              This was not the first time I had heard this word.

              Orphaned female children found safety behind the convent doors during the darkest days of the plague. They were malnourished and lost, in need of salvation and love. They whispered that word – vampire – in stories and through feverish, nightmare-riddled sleeps.

              The creatures haunting their dreams were dead but walking amongst us, spreading a putrid curse. These tales began when a German child came into the convent’s care shortly before her mother passed. She told the children horrific stories of a creature named “Neuntöter”, a plague-spreading, vampire-like fiend that haunted villages. Each child, it seemed, had their own versions of the vampire myth to share, and their own names for the horrific monster that fed off the living.

              “Pamgri”, “mullo”, “upir”, the names for the wicked beasts were plentiful, but the one I remember most came from a quiet and comely child. "My father traveled the country," she had said, "and he spoke often of the vampires. He would say, 'always carry your wild rose and wear your crucifix, for you never know when the vampire may strike with cunning force in the night.'"

              Her mother had succumbed to the sickness, so had her sister. Her father, a tradesman eager to leave before he met the same fate, abandoned the child at our gates. He left her prepared, though, tucking a sprig of wild rose and a worn silver crucifix into her satchel. A few sisters began carrying the same with them, but I thought it superstitious and childish. 

              How could it be so that I was now this myth - a monster haunting the dreams of innocent children!

              "I am an undead fiend?" Those words slipped through my lips, and I shuddered with the reality they contained.

              "You make it sound so… terrible."

              “It cannot be true,” I whimpered.

              “It is,” Wesley replied, “but it’s not so bad, in the end.”

              “You took the only thing, the only pure thing left in your life, Wesley, and tainted it with... with this curse. Why? Why could you not have let me be?"

              "I was lonely," he stood. His lanky legs began trotting toward the crumbling castle. 

              "Lonely?" I called out. “Lonely!” 

              "You will understand in time,” he mumbled. “You will crave companionship as the centuries wear on. You will need humanity, to be like them again. This need will make you take desperate measures, as I have done by making you." 

              "Wesley, you should have left me alone. That life – my life! – it was peaceful. It had purpose. Where will my soul go now?" Unable to sustain my tears, I allowed one to roll gingerly down my cheek.

              "Your soul," he began, "that is between you and your god."

              Silence fell as we stood atop the hill looking over the convent below. My soul wept for my former life. It had been naïve of me to think I was impervious to harm behind those hallowed walls. Since the first moment I stepped through the enclosure gates, I felt safe. The wild heather invited me in with its pleasing scent, and the sun - safely warming my cheek - welcomed me home.

              Now, I knew I had never been safe. Not from the evil this world bred in its dark underbelly, and especially not from him.

              "In time you will forgive me, Bree," he said, the silence breaking between us.

              "Perhaps in time, but for now I cannot imagine that time coming."

              He gazed out, eyeing the convent. “I remember you once asking for forgiveness and it was freely given.”

              “Wesley, that was different. I was a child.” My shoulder touched his arms as we stood side by side. He grabbed my arm, calming my wavering body. Dizziness jellied my legs and blurred my eyes.

              “Slow your pace,” he said. “You’re faster now. Your steps are effortless.”

              “It sickens me,” I whispered, “this uneasiness; the unceasing buzz in my head.”

              “It will ease after you’ve fed.” My nature – the monster within – understood his words, yet I did not.

              My hand clutched his, its iciness now lessened by my own unnatural coldness. “I was sick then, too. I was dying.”

              “I don’t enjoy thinking of that day,” he said. His fingers intertwined with mine.

              “I know,” I admitted, my eyes meeting his. “But you forgave me. I didn’t think you would.”

              “Bree, I watched your body wretch upon the bed with that fever. Your brow was covered in sweat and your eyes were blood shot.” He released my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into him. “I would have traveled to Hades and back to heal you.”

              “But I should never have asked you to abandon Rosslyn.

              “It was my decision,” he said, releasing me. “I chose to stay, to break off the engagement.” He stood and walked to the ledge’s edge. “Leaving you for dead,” he began, “Bree, I could have never forgiven myself.”

              “But you stayed,” I said, my words a knife stabbing my back, “and then I left you for dead.”

              “And I forgave you,” he said. “After all, I was the one who commanded you to leave.”

              “If I had not asked you to stay, you would not be the monster before me, Wesley.”

              “We cannot erase what has been done,” he said. “Speculating on past events is a futile exercise.” He sat, letting his gangly legs dangle over the ledge. “You have forever ahead of you and I do not suggest you put yourself through that anguish.”

              With this, I left him. My feet descended the hill and followed the winding path that led to the convent. Candlelight still graced the spacious rooms. The closer I approached, the more I began seeing and hearing comfortingly familiar shapes and sounds.

            
 
The sisters gathered in the main chapel for evening prayer, singing "Agnus Dei." There was Mother Abbess at the lectern, her shrill voice as high as her upturned chin. There was Mary Elizabeth sitting in my usual spot in the front pew. She tightly clasped a handkerchief and rosary in her gnarled, aged hands. Everyone had a handkerchief and bloodshot eyes as I glanced about the room.

              Sister Veronica, my closest companion, was not there. An unquenchable misery filled her heart when she learned of my absence. She knew what the others did not. She understood I would not return; that whatever lulled me away was more powerful than what they offered
.
 

              She was the one person I thought I could never live without, and now I had to. Her vacant spot – fourth row toward the back – reminded me, again, of what this curse had already cost me. We had been friends since childhood, entering the convent when the Black Death annihilated our families.              

              Some girls our age sought solace and education within the convents hallowed walls. They waited for the plague’s end, for the return of wealthy men willing. We knew this future no longer belonged to us.

              Veronica was in her chambers, her head sunk into the straw mattress. She had long since succumbed to the deep sleep that comes with grief. So I watched in silence as the others said the Rosary. I wanted to speak, to call out – to scream – but found my voice mute.

              "I watched you do that last night," he said approaching from behind. “You sat with them, singing, praying. I thought I was seeing a ghost before me.”

              "I wish I could say good-bye to them. Look how distraught they are. I cannot even imagine where they think I have gone to, Wesley."

              "Your Mother Abbess," he said, pointing to her, "she thinks you escaped in the middle of the night, afraid to take your solemn profession. And that one," he pointed to Mary Sr. Anne, a portly postulant newly come to the convent from a prominent French family, “she thinks you have run off with a secret lover.”

              "Stop, please," I demanded. "I do not know how you are doing this, but I do not want to hear anymore. It is bringing me nothing but pain."

              "Listen to them, Bree," he said.

              I could hear their rhythmic and melodic chanting filling my ears, but nothing else.

              "Focus on one of them, try to single out what that person is saying, then stop listening to their words."

              I focused on Mary Katherine, a thin woman, mid-twenties. The sight before my eyes was a shame to see. She had been of noble family, but she came to the convent when her betrothed perished of plague. On that night, her weak frame crumbled in the pew. She squirmed on the cherry-wood bench, and her pew mates struggled to calm her. Mary Katherine bit at her nails and sobbed heavily all through her prayers.

              As I watched her, I heard her. Not just her voice whispering “amen,” but her thoughts were cascading waves of emotion crashing into my mind.
Lord, please just bring Mary Clare back. Please, God, please! I will give my life for her safety. This is torture, Lord. TORTURE! Lord, please, bring her back safely. Lord, hear my prayer!

              Hearing that name – my sacred name – pained me. I wanted to flee from my brother’s side, to run back to the convent and embrace my sisters. Alas, though, I could not.

The hollow space Wesley’s curse created now ached. This was the first time I felt different. I realized, standing there watching her – listening to her thoughts – that I was no longer
like
her. Like
them
. Warm. Untouched. Mortal. 

              They would never find out what happened to me – it had to be.

              I grew hungry watching them file from the chapel, heading to the dining hall. Bowls of barley soup and fresh baked bread sat before them on the stone tables. I could smell the spices, the pungent aroma of chicken stock emanating from the wooden bowls. None of it tempted the knot forming in my stomach.