Hocking, Amanda Letters To Elise (My Blood Approves 4.5) (6 page)

“Your parents…” I reached out to steady myself on the cart next to me. The wind had been knocked out

from my lungs, and my stomach twisted in knots.

Of course I’d known I would outlive my parents. Even as a mortal, I’d known that. It hit me so much

harder than I’d expected it to.

“Are you alright?” Joseph asked and put his hand out, as if to catch me in case I fainted.

“No.” I shook my head. “I mean, yes. I’m fine. I felt… a bit ill for a moment, but it’s passed.”

“Do I know you?” He leaned in closer to me, narrowing his eyes again. “You look so familiar to me.”

“I… no, I don’t believe I know you,” I said.

“Strange.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then stuck out his hand to me. “Joseph Monroe.”

“Ezra Townsend,” I said, taking Ezra’s name since I couldn’t very will give him my own. I hadn’t gone by the name “Monroe” since I’d been human, and it felt strange hearing him say it aloud. My own name

had become the name of a stranger.

I took his hand, shaking it firmly. His skin felt rough and calloused, the hands of a man in midlife who’d worked hard. My skin was soft and smooth as ever, the firm hands of a young man. He was my younger

brother, and he was so much older than I will ever be.

I left after that, wandering back to my flat in a daze. The streets felt winding, and I got lost several times.

I couldn’t seem focus on anything.

I hadn’t thought to ask of Daniel, and I regretted that. But Caroline and Joseph were fine. They were

thriving actually. They’d done well without me, as they should.

But seeing Joseph, knowing he’d grown old, that he would die in time, and I would not. I would not even change or age. These are things I’d known for so many years, but it was almost unfathomable to see.

Time moves so strangely. I think it moves just as quickly for mortals as it does for us, but we have the luxury of being timeless, of being untouched by it. Or at least that’s what I’ve always believed.

But now I’m beginning to think that it touches us even more than it touches them. It erodes, causing

decay as harmful as the humans, but ours isn’t visible. It’s hidden away, tucked inside our hearts, where all our memories eaten away.

I can never be sure if this life, this thing that Ezra bestowed to me, is a curse or a blessing. At times, I think it would be completely unbearable without you. I don’t think I could handle this on my own.

Even as I write this, I’m still shaken. Not just from the visit with my brother, but from the illness I had last month. It won’t go away – this strange feeling of doom. I wake up in a cold sweat most days.

Please, Elise, I need to hear from you soon. Ezra has tried to assure me that everything is fine, and I wish I could believe him, but I can’t. I won’t, not until I hear it from you. Tell me that you still love me, that we’ll be together soon, always and forever.

Do you remember when we were on our honeymoon, and we arrived in Prague? We stood on the

bridge, looking out over the Vltava flowing below us. The sky glowed blue as twilight came upon us, and the first star glowed brightly above us.

“Should we go back to the room?” I asked you, my arms wrapped around your waist. I nuzzled your

neck, my words muffled in the soft of your hair. “We could sleep…” I said sleep, but we’d slept on the train, and we hardly ever slept when we were in bed, at least on that trip.

“Sleep?” You laughed a little at that and turned to face me. Your hands went to my cheeks, stroking

them lovingly, and you stared up in my eyes. “To sleep, perchance to dream. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.”

In that moment, I loved you, and you loved me. I heard you say those words, and I thought you meant

death as in our lives, since we are truly the undead. You smiled as you said it, and I thought surely you must mean that we had been sleeping in this death until we met each other. Every moment we spent

together had been a dream come true.

I thought you had misquoted Shakespeare as a declaration of love. But now I wonder… were you ever

truly happy, my love? Did you mean the soliloquy by its true intention? Even on our honeymoon, had

the melancholy taken hold, so that you were thinking of suicide even as I held you in my arms?

Or am I thinking on this too much? Elise, my true, return to me quickly, and tell me what dreams may

come for us.

Yours, forever and always, in this life and the next –

Peter

June 15, 1863

Peter-

By now you must know that something has happened, and that’s why I’m writing to you instead of Elise.

I’ve gotten all your letters, and I’ve read them all, even though most of them were addressed to Elise and not Catherine.

I pray you haven’t gotten on a ship to return back here, the way you said you would in the last letter.

Not hearing from Elise on your anniversary had to be a shock, and I am certain she would’ve written to you had she been able.

I should’ve written to you months ago, and I know that. I just didn’t have the words to say to you, and I was in mourning myself. You had Elise for eleven years, but I’ve had her for fifteen.

Peter, I love you as much as I loved my own brothers. There isn’t a person on this earth I cared for more than you, other than Elise. That is why it is with such despair that I have to tell you this, and in such an impersonal way. This is not how I meant for you to find out, but I have no other means to tell you.

Peter… Elise is dead.

I’m not sure if you’ll keep reading this after that, if you’ll even be able to. But I feel I should tell you how it happened, in case you have the strength to read on.

As you know, she was trying to close up the farm and sell it so she could meet you in America. We talked some of me keeping the land, but the townsfolk had become far too suspicious of us both, so I began

visiting villages farther north.

Elise went with me. She felt bad about leaving me behind, and no matter how I tried to ease her guilt, she insisted on helping me getting settled into somewhere new.

I know now I shouldn’t have let her come with me. I beg your forgiveness, knowing I will never receive it, nor do I deserve it. I didn’t think anything would come of it.

We stopped at a pub in a village far up the road. We didn’t know that it was already overrun with

vampyres, not until it was much too late. They’d claimed the town as their own, and thought we were

trying to take over their territories.

Elise and I tried to leave. She kept telling them she didn’t want their land. She even offered them hers. A vampyre grabbed her arm, meaning to throw her out of town himself, and dear Hamlet saw the brute

put his hands on Elise, so the dog rushed in to save her.

The vampyre reacted, lashing out the dog, and Elise wouldn’t stand for that. She would never let

anything happen to Hamlet. I swear she loved that dog more than me.

I tried to help. I tried to save her. Truly, I did, Peter, and they nearly killed me too. Somehow, Hamlet and I escaped with our lives, but just barely.

Elise…

I’m not sure how much I should tell you. How much you’d want to know.

She fought valiantly, Peter. You would be so proud of her bravery. She fought with a purpose I didn’t

even know she had.

But it was one move. A farmer’s pitchfork propped up against a stable that did her in. I pulled it from her chest, and I threw her onto her horse. I raced us out of town as fast as I could, thinking if I got her home, I could do something. I could save her.

Now I know that she was gone as soon as that fork pierced her heart. I tried to do everything I could for her. Anything I could think of, no matter how insane sounding, I had to try. But nothing would bring her back.

I buried her out in the garden behind the house. I know that’s where she’d want to stay. Hamlet has

hardly left her grave. He whimpers every night for her, but she never wakes up.

Oh, Peter, I am so sorry. I can’t even begin to express how terribly feel. You left me in charge of your wife. The last thing you said to me was to take care of her, and I have failed you in the worst possible manner.

It’s this shame that has prevented me from writing for so long. Elise died on the twenty-seventh of

March, and I’ve been unable to bring myself to tell you. I started writing a thousand letters, but they all came out wrong.

She loved you, Peter. Elise truly loved you. A darkness had settled over her these last few years, but that wasn’t because of you. She hated herself for feeling any sadness when she had you, and she was

grateful for every moment with you.

Elise wasn’t meant for immortality. Eternity had never set well with her, and the longer she lived, the more it seemed to eat away at her.

That is the one blessing in all of this. Elise never wanted to do anything to hurt you. She never wanted to leave you. But I think she might find some solace in death that she was unable to find in life.

I hope the opposite is true for you. I hope that you can find some happiness in life, even without Elise.

May her love comfort you in the years you have ahead of you. Her heart is always with you, of that I am certain.

With my deepest sympathies-

Catherine

November 12, 1863

My Elise, my love, my true, my only.

I’m not even sure why I’m writing this. It’s not that I believe that you can get letters in heaven. I’ve been unable to stop talking to you, even though I know that you’re no longer there. I spent so long telling you all my thoughts and hopes and fears, and a little thing like death won’t stand in my way.

Catherine sent me a letter, telling me what happened, and I didn’t even read it through. As soon as I

opened it, I knew something was the matter. My hands trembled so badly, I could scarcely read it. When I saw the words Elise is dead, the world fell away from me. Everything went black.

Then I heard screaming. This horrible, tortured yelling so loud it hurt my ears. It took me a moment to realize that it was coming from me.

My vision blurred so badly from the tears, I couldn’t see anything at all. I knelt on the floor, my hands clutching my sides, and I’m not sure how long I stayed that way. I might still be that way if not for Ezra.

“Peter, it’s alright,” Ezra said, and he wrapped his arms around me.

I fought him, though I’m not sure why. I hit and kicked at him, but he wouldn’t let me go. He held me

tightly to him, without saying a word, until my wailing and fighting had stopped.

Eventually, after a great while, my body simply gave up. I lay limply against him, unable to move or think or cry. A numbness had settled over my body and my brain, and for that I was grateful, but I wished it had reached my heart.

My heart had been torn to shreds. Nothing even compared to the pain I felt, to the pain I still feel. It’s a gaping wound inside my soul, a horrible burning torture that never ceases.

It’s strange because I’ve grown fond of the constant pain. It’s the only thing I have left of you, like I am carrying you inside me.

There are moments even still where I think that I’m alright. Not alright in the way I was before, but if another person saw me, they would think that I was alive. I can pretend at least to exist, even though there’s nothing inside me.

I’ll be doing something menial, like washing my clothes or helping Ezra with paperwork, and then it will hit me. This sudden realization that you aren’t alive, that I won’t ever see your smiling face, or touch your soft skin again.

The hole inside me is ripped open anew, and my knees give out. I collapse to the ground, sobbing

uncontrollably. And there is nothing I can do to stop it. It comes in waves, whenever it pleases, and it only fades when I became too weak.

Many nights I awake with fresh tears on my face, my throat raw from screaming. I don’t remember it,

and I suppose it is better that way.

Ezra watches me constantly and almost never leaves my side. He fears I will do something rash,

something to end my own life, and he is right to worry that way. I want nothing more than to be with

you in the next life, or at the very least, end the loneliness of this one. How can I be if you aren’t?

But it’s the look on Ezra’s face, the broken terror simply thinking about a life without me that keeps me here. I am still bound to him. The small part of me that didn’t belong to you still belongs to him. He is my maker, my friend, my brother, and I cannot leave him, no matter how much it pains me to stay.

The first month without you was a horrible blur of blackness. I did nothing. I couldn’t. I lay in bed, refusing to eat, to move, to breathe. Ezra sat by my bedside. When I’d gone too long without eating, he poured his own blood into a goblet, and forced me to drink it.

I could taste his love, and his terror over what had become of me. It was that that pulled me out of bed.

I died when you died, Elise. I feel that absolutely in my heart. I even know the moment you left this

earth. When I was walking on the street, my heart ripped in two, and I threw up on the cobblestones.

That was the moment you died. I know that now.

Every moment since then, I’ve existed. I do the things other living creatures do – I talk, I breathe, I go about my day. People see me, and they think that I am live. But it’s all an illusion, a parlor trick. I am not here.

Once I began to function again, at least on a physical level, I knew I had to come back to Ireland. I had to see you. As horrible as I felt, as much as I knew you were gone, I had to see it for myself, or it would always just be a nightmare.

I would want to believe it was a nightmare, that you were wandering the world somewhere, and it

would only be a matter of time until we were reunited. At times, I thought it would be easier that way, to simply pretend you were waiting in Ireland to join me.

But I needed to know that you were gone. The possibility of you being alive would haunt me much