Faith in the Atmosphere - Part 3 (A Dark Shadows Story)

[lovesrain44]

Mid-morning came too early, the sky a color of grey that always made him want to go back to sleep. But the chores wouldn't wait, and didn't, and after the fire and ash, the candles and wax, towards mid-afternoon, he headed into town to try and find Wesley. Who would, surely, be nursing a hangover as big as the state of Maine. Especially after falling off the wagon so hard he would attack Willie in the street. He couldn't really blame Wesley, if Wesley truly thought Willie had told Laura about seeing him drinking at Butcher's garage. No, not really. He knew the kind of rage that too much beer could give rise to. When you felt dead-ended, with no way out.


The streets of Collinsport, as he drove his truck around the edges of town, past the garage, the Blue Whale, and right up to Wesley's neighborhood, were damp and running with water. As though they had been sluiced with a hose and were still draining away. His wheels made a hissing sound over that of the engine as he pulled to a slow crawl in front of Wesley's bungalow. There were several newspapers in the drive, melted away for the most part, and some notices stuck in the door.

Willie made a full stop, tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, casting his eyes up and down the street. It was obvious that no one was home, nor had been for some days. But whether it was Wesley's drunk or Laura's leaving that had left the house abandoned, he did not know. Only that he didn't feel overly comfortable banging on a neighbor's door, asking if they knew what had happened to Wesley Dale and his wife. Their kids, for that matter. Even if someone did know where they were, they would not take too kindly to Willie Loomis, town scatabout, standing on their front step.

There was a car turning into the little street, and the welts from yesterday's whipping had been whimpering at him for a full hour. He pushed in the clutch and popped the truck into gear. It wasn't his neighborhood, and, other than the missing Wesley, he had no excuse to be there. No sense loitering in town and having someone call the sheriff. So he wheeled the truck down the street and up the hill. Towards the Old House as the evening came on and turned to falling damp, the kind that made streaks on the wind-shield and the chill grow up suddenly through the floor-boards of the truck.

Barnabas was just up, he knew, as he pulled into the driveway and parked the truck under the port-cochiere. He could feel it, somehow, his heart pumping several extra hard beats. He could explain his absence from the Old House in any number of ways, if Barnabas was distracted by his evening's plans, or had a book in his hand. But if he was in the kitchen as Willie walked in, it would be a close call. Just as long as he didn't know, didn't know any of it, the part that mattered. And he could never find out. Or maybe he already knew, and didn't care. You desire this, the vampire had said. And then had been awfully quiet as he'd told Willie to go to his room.

As he opened the kitchen door to see Barnabas lighting candles on the mantle over the fireplace, Willie felt as though he'd been socked in the gut. Barnabas looked liked he was already mad, and what simmered through the cool air towards him as he closed the door behind him convinced him of this. The taste in his mouth was bright silver, and catching his breath made him feel dizzy.

Sure, Barnabas, loose your cool. Let's pick it up where we left off last night.

His whole body tightened up at the thought of it.

"Where have you been?" asked Barnabas, setting the box of matches on the mantle with a snap. "Your duties are here, unless I send you elsewhere."

"Just in town," said Willie, his voice tight in his throat. "Picking up stuff."

"Stuff?" asked Barnabas, eyebrows arching. "What stuff?"

"Um...." Willie's hands hung at his sides like dead weights, empty. "That is, I went into town for things, to pick them up, only they weren't there, so-"

"Is that the best you can do, Willie?" said the vampire, his mouth curved down in his displeasure. "Your attempts at lying, with little finesse and even less skill, have gotten so tiresome of late, it is painful to watch you even try."

In the dark of the kitchen, Barnabas' eyes had taken on a glitter that matched the one in Willie's stomach. He could not imagine that the vampire was playing the same game, the dangerous, twisted one where Willie pushed Barnabas to the edge of his temper, and then Barnabas pushed Willie against the wall, and-

It was a bad game and he should not be playing it. Had promised himself he would not, but as the vampire walked closer, he was crumbling inside. His mind tumbled the ideas about, quickly, what to say to send the vampire over the edge, to make him mad enough to grab Willie by the collar and pull him up real close, white-tipped fangs at the ready.

"I ain't lyin'," he said, boldly, "an' you know it."

His eyes glazed as he watched in a dream as hands hauled him up close, as he felt a silent scream of cool air around his neck. The slap that rocked his head and the blood that he tasted on his tongue. And the anticipation of pleasure that felt like a faraway caress coming closer.

Then there came a not-so-far-away sound of a knock on the front door. It echoed the ratting pound of his heart, framed by the sudden stillness of the kitchen.

Barnabas' eyes did not look at him as the vampire let him go.

"You will attend to that."

"Barnabas-"

"You will attend to that."

Willie told himself that the vampire was not shivering, that the room was suddenly freezing, the candles on the mantle guttering themselves out. The nerves under his skin fired anew, pleasure and desire crystallizing to barbs of glass in his veins. He was like a junkie coming down from a bad high, too sudden, too soon, soaking his system with a potion too powerful to be sluiced out. He slunk out of the kitchen, down the hallway toward the front door and the single candle lit on the console by the stairs. A knock sounded again, and Willie flung the door open, trying to swallow his hard breathing, knowing the shadows of the Old House would be as forgiving as any saint in not distinguishing blood from darkness as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

It was Victoria Winters standing there in the hollow of the front porch. And startled, it seemed, by the suddenness of the door opening. Of Willie standing there in silence. He knew he was glowering at her, but couldn't stop.

What the hell do you want?

But she could not hear his thoughts, and her eyes shifted to the sound Willie heard coming up behind him. The slow, measured tread, the slight rustle of linen against wool as the vampire came to stand at Willie's side.

"Why Miss Winters, I had thought-"

"I had to see you Mr. Collins," she said, almost breathless. "And Willie, too. To make sure he was alright." Her eyes tried to catch Willie's, but he wouldn't let them. Her sympathy was as unwanted as water in a flood.

"As you can see," said Barnabas, "he is quite well, though I am much chagrined at the thought of him having a fight with his supposed best friend. In town, no less." Barnabas spoke in that haughty, disparaging tone he liked to use when pretending to feel at loose ends with the problem of his only servant.

"Having a best friend is a good quality, isn't it?" Vicki, in her turn, standing firm to get her point across. As if she were in a classroom, talking to a stubborn pupil.

And Willie also heard something in Victoria Winter's voice that he'd heard once before. It reminded him of the time when he'd first come to Collinwood, when he'd been ill after meeting up with Barnabas. Her sympathy for him had been limited to an acknowledgement of his remorse and nothing more than that, expressed with iron, pounded a thousand times in hot fire. He could not understand it, why she would now talk to Barnabas like that, in Willie's defense.

"Yes, I suppose," said Barnabas as if pondering this serious statement with all the weight it deserved. "But Wesley Dale is only a common worker, what you would call blue collar, I believe." This was followed by a smirk, delivered as only Barnabas could, head tilted back, proud of himself having delivered this valuable opinion. "A mere drudge of the village."

An expression flickered across her face, maybe it had been the shadows from the candlelight, maybe some-thing else. But the shadows that could fool a saint, that could disguise blood, could disguise emotion as well, it seemed, so he could not be sure.

"Do come in, Miss Winters," said Barnabas with a half bow, the sweep of his hand indicating the welcome of her entrance. Vicki stepped across the threshold, gripping the collar of her coat hard with one hand. Her hair had been swept by the wind and curled by the dampness, though Willie could not appreciate this as the seam of his shirt rubbed hard against open welts.

He did not hiss. Found Barnabas looking at him any-way, sending a wave through Willie's body that was akin to shock, laced with heat. Barnabas flicked his eyes away, as though disgusted.

"Willie," he said, in his weary, dismissive way, "you are excused. I'm sure you should clean yourself up before you go to bed, though that shirt, I fear, has seen better days and is good only for the rag bin."

"No," said Vicki. Her voice sounded thin. "I mean, please, Willie, stay. Mayn't he stay, Mr. Collins? I have something . . . well, I have something that I need to say to the both of you."

Willie's eyes caught Barnabas'. The vampire had no more of an idea about what she was going to say than he himself did. It was an odd moment, sharing the confusion, waiting for her to speak again, when only a moment ago desire and denial had arced through the air between him-self and the vampire.

"Would you care to come into the Front Room, Miss Winters? Willie has not yet, I fear, built a fire, but it would only take him moments, and then you could warm your-self by its light."

She shook her head, looking at the floor, her hand easing off from the collar of her coat. Her shoulders remained stiff beneath the cloth, and she squared them, as if preparing to plow through difficult seas.

"Willie was in a fight yesterday," she began. "I saw it from the sidewalk. His friend jumped him, and Willie tried to stop the fight, to get away." Looking up now, at Willie only, taking a deep breath, she seemed to be cataloging something in her mind.

"After the fight, he walked away, almost unscathed. Wet, but not hurt, at least not visibly. Now I see that his shirt is all rucked, and his chin is cut open. And he limped as he stepped back from the door."

There was a silence in the foyer as she stopped. Her lips thinned, her eyes dark stones in her face. "I see that in addition to smacking him in the alley, that you've beaten him for it."

"Beaten him?" asked Barnabas, as astonished as Willie himself to hear her say it aloud.

"You said that you would punish him and I can see that you have."

Barnabas looked down at his hand, as did Willie. Both of them ducking out of the way of the accusing focus of her eyes. Both of them realizing with some shock that she'd heard the entire of their conversation in the alley.

"I grew up in a foundling home, remember?" she asked, her voice serious and low. "I know a beating when I see one."

Throwing aside any pretense, Barnabas said, "Very well then. And what else do you suppose I would do to discipline a servant?" Acquiescence without agreement.

"But you shouldn't beat them."

Jeezus, Vicki. You got the guts, don't you.

She was not backing down; she was facing the vampire, demanding, with the whole line of her body, that he hear her. And on Willie's behalf. He didn't feel quite right about it, not understanding why she would do it.

"I must keep him in line," said Barnabas. Simply, as if what he were saying were the most obvious of concepts. "That is I how I do it. How did you expect I managed, ere this?"

This stopped her. "Why, I don't know, I mean. I just assumed that you talked with him and-"

"Talk?" Barnabas almost snorted. "As if that would have worked." He seemed to stop himself from saying something far more scathing. Then tilted his head down to look at her. "I assure you, Miss Winters, it is the only way. Would you have him pulling a gun on Miss Carolyn? Would you have him engaged in backroom brawls every week? I am only doing what is necessary."

"Maybe it was necessary when he first arrived, but it isn't now. Is it?"

"I think it was, and it still is," said the vampire, his voice quiet, his head going back, assured. "Men like Willie always need a firm hand."

Feeling no more important than flagstones beneath the vampire's feet, Willie almost missed the catch in Victoria's voice as she took a sharp breath and stepped back-wards. The words forming in her throat seemed to pain her.

"Why do you object to this so?" The vampire asked this, leaning in close as if to close the distance she was creating between them.

"Because Willie is a human being," she said, almost soundless, breathing the words. Willie leaned in to hear her, his shoulder almost touching Barnabas'. Willie's body shuddered. "He deserves better than the home you have given him, the conditions under which he lives. And he deserves better," her voice stuck, a little ragged, and she had to hitch in a breath, focusing her eyes on Barnabas, somehow, as if that would help her continue. "Willie deserves better than to beaten for a fight he did not start."

Her breath sounded in the silence. Willie could hear the rain outside, feel the tension coil hot in his stomach. He was not used to anyone sticking up for him, least of all Vicki Winters, but he appreciated it. Barnabas, however, by his expression, darkening in the flickering candlelight, did not. And Willie had no doubt that the reasons as to why this was so would be explained to him in great detail. Later.

"Miss Winters, you startle me. That you hold such an opinion, I am quite astonished to hear of it. Whatever can I do to put you at ease?"

Tears sparked in her eyes, then. They looked like chips of diamonds against the grey there, and Willie felt his stomach plunge. This was not a misunderstanding. It was something far worse. To bring Vicki Winters close to tears? It was going to be a disaster.

"You cannot change. It seems you will not change. I asked you before to be kinder to Willie. Instead you have become more cruel. I saw the evidence of it. Last night. Please don't come see me anymore, or send anymore gifts."

Like shattering glass, the disaster exploded. Far worse. Far, far worse than anything else he might have imagined. Barnabas' face darkened, and he snapped his eyes in Willie's direction. Then back at Vicki Winters, whose tears flickered on a face as pale as iced paper.

"But Miss Winters, I implore you-"

She held up her hand to stop him. Clutched her coat to her neck once more and then opened the door.

"I cannot," she said, clear in the cool air of the Old House, "I cannot condone such treatment of another human being, and I will no longer accept your courtship."

She stepped into the night of the porch, thin shoes making almost no sound on the wooden planks, and then closed the door behind her.

Master and servant stood, for a moment, listening, it seemed, to the sounds of her steps. The whisper of rain-driven wind. The silence of the empty house, settling around them.

Barnabas turned to look at Willie. Slowly pivoting as if on a turning wheel.

Duck or run. Willie's mind came up with it in a second. But his body could decide on neither, and then Barnabas' body was too close for either. Coiled up. A spring. Of hard packed snow, and iron, and the smell of moldering flesh. Right there. Looming dark, hands coming up. And then the grab, which always managed to startle him even when he was expecting it. Spinning him. Slamming him into the wall by the stairs. Hard enough to rattle the spindles of the stair rail, send a litter of broken plaster and wisps of wallpaper into the air around them.

His neck snapped back, and the vampire pressed harder. His fingers dug, sending Willie's muscles screaming. But it was worse looking the vampire in the eyes. Pitch black now, darker, even, than the blackness beyond the candle's light. So close.

Willie felt it. Then his brain registered it. His jeans were tight, and heat pulsed out from his groin. One step closer, and the vampire would know.

Are you insane?

He was. Wanting it. Insane with that. The shimmer. The closeness. It had been days since the last time. Eons since the promise. A game of chase, come here and go away. And now here was the vampire, stepping close, his hands circling Willie's neck. The fangs showing against the inside of the vampire's mouth. Promising more than words could be put to.

Then the vampire's nostrils flared, taking in the scent. As pure as air filtered through a salt fog, it must be. Willie's cock pulsed. They both knew it.

Willie tried to stop it. One last attempt. He tried.

"You promised," he said.

"You will not like this, I assure you," the vampire replied.

Within a second, Barnabas shifted forward, his hand over Willie's mouth. Iron fingers pushed his neck to one side, and with out even a breath, Willie felt the rip of fangs. Not silver sharp. Not cool, like the almost-pain that ascended before an orgasm. Instead, cold, unsharpened bolts, pushing into him. The scream came, tearing out of his lungs, only Barnabas' hands held him there. He felt the scream echo back into his body, with nowhere to go, it could only ricochet through his heart. Tearing muscle. Then the vampire pulled out his fangs. They felt like thorns, razor sharp, now, shredding as they went. His scream continued. He couldn't breathe, and still he was screaming. Barnabas' mouth latched onto the tattered flesh of his neck as hard as a lamprey. And began to suck.

With his hands Willie reached up, contacting the unmovable bone of Barnabas' jaw. Fingers brushing the sucking lip. The hot blood that felt like acid coming out of him, slipping past the ice of the vampire's face and soaking into Willie's shirt collar. A hand clamped around the back of his head, holding him still as his throat rattled with a scream he could find no breath for and still the vampire sucked. Hard. Willie shook with it, legs beneath him starting to buckle. The white shroud was nowhere. Only blackness descended above him, with no kindness or softness.

He heard the smack as the vampire's mouth broke suction. Felt the breath against the open wound that still bled. Then the hands let him go and Willie tumbled to the floor. His head hit the stone of the foyer with a crack, bone and muscle bound together, pushed by the rush of gravity. His eyes were wide open but he could see nothing.

"Miss Winters," said the vampire from somewhere above Willie, his voice thick, "wishes to entertain no more of my courtship, and for this I blame you entirely."

Willie's head spun against the hard flags of the foyer. He wanted to pick himself up, but the vampire's voice was too loud. And it was too dark, never-ending layers of darkness came at him from the ceiling.

"If you had not been so late in town, engaging in an altercation with your so-called best friend, then she would not have seen you. And you would not be where you are now. And I would not be-"

Willie's hand found the edge of the vampire’s trouser leg.

Please.

Barnabas kicked his leg free. "No. I kept my promise, is this not enough?"

Blood pounded out of Willie's heart and onto the floor. Not like the other times, his heart wasn't stopping. It was speeding up.

"If I cannot win her back, Willie," said the vampire from somewhere above him, "then you may consider yourself shark bait."

Now his heart was thundering. The layers of darkness had become blankets, thick. Smothering him. A lake was forming behind the back of his neck, he could feel the edges of it pulling at the hairs there. Blood, he knew, did not soak into stone. From somewhere inside of him, another scream was forming.

"B-Barnabas." It came out a burble. But he sensed the vampire stop and focus that gaze upon him as though from a high tower.

"It won't stop bleeding, is that it?"

Willie managed to swallow, but no sound came out. The floor beneath him was starting to feel very far away.

"Ah, that is a problem."

Make it stop.

He felt the flagstones move as the vampire stepped closer. He tried widening his eyes, but there was only blackness there. And his heart was a runaway horse. Blood flew from its hooves.

"Why," he managed. It was a whisper. The vampire seemed to understand the question.

"It hurt because I wanted it to. And, in anger, it will kill. You will bleed to death inside a moment."

The warm lake spread, and he felt it puddle around his shoulders.

It was too warm, and cooling too quickly, as if his blood had been put on ice. As if he were on ice now, a shear, thin sheet of ice, floating and melting and soon he would be sucked under into the deep blue. He tried to move his arms, tried to swim out of it, but all he could feel was the hard press of damp, iced stone beneath his shoulders. Wanting to beg, not wanting to beg, his body struggling to stop even as part of his brain insisted that he speak.

Stop it, please stop it, please, please....

His mouth was moving, he could almost feel it, could sense it, but doubted there was any sound to it at all. Was there any sound anywhere? Was everything wrapped in cotton wool?

He tried again. Wanted real air coming into his lungs, real air instead of dead vapor.

Please stop it.

He felt the stones tremble beneath him, saw the light waver.

"The only way to stop it is to give you what you want, the very thing which I have promised never to give you."

Willie struggled. Somewhere in his mind, eyes unseeing, he saw the smirk on the vampire's face.

"No...." It came out a moan. Low, but one of denial. Of resistance. He did not want to want what he wanted. But was death preferable? He could feel his heart, so fast, but lighter. Hummingbird's wings. Pumping only air now. Felt warm vampire hands as they lifted him up, and he was pressed close to a wall of fine wool.

"You don't want to sleep with the devil. But would you rather sleep with God?"

Willie's neck muscles stiffened. He didn't care who he slept with. He just wanted to sleep. Feet so cold. Arms like lead. He could not even hold on to anything. The air, rocking around him.

"Though why I should consider breaking my word of honor on your behalf, I will never know."

Willie's head slipped forward. Came to rest on the solid ground of Barnabas' chest. The curve of a broad shoulder, steady and still beneath his forehead. He pressed into it. Letting it hold him, wanting only to sleep and to let the rock carry him there.

"I should make you beg."

The sneer in the vampire's voice came to him as through a curtain of velvet. He could hear nothing else now, not even the beating of his own heart. Or feel the roll of the vampire's arm muscles as they pulled him closer.

"Live or die, Willie. Only decide now, will you? I have other things to do this evening."

Live.

I want to live.

He could not do it. Could not say it. It came forth, though, issued as if by thought alone, the whisper as if from another boy's throat.

"Please...."

There was no movement from the vampire who held him. Only the slow thudding from a faraway heart, and somehow the sigh of the ocean, the deep blue, that did not want to give him up.

"Please," he said. And then again, his voice breaking, "Please t-take me."

A breath. A sigh.

"Please, Barnabas." Willie's voice trailed away, and the silence, now complete, took him over. He could not know if the vampire heard him, or, if he did, whether he would set things aright. There was only the blackness, smothering, like sharp ringing waves as he sank to the bottom of it.

"Then bend to me now."

He could not feel the vampire's fingers curving around his skull, but he knew they were there.

Some ghostly reply echoed inside of his head.

I will. I will.

And he did. Wanting his neck to fall forward, to arch and press himself against the hardness of the vampire. To feel those cold hands on his back, and the sweet, silvered kiss lance into him. Barnabas' mouth on him. Again. Soft. His blood flowing over those lips, suckled gently, pain floating away as foam on a morning's spring tide. The pleasure was a distant veil of light when it happened. There was not enough heat in his body, it seemed, for it to produce more than a long away throb of pleasure that couldn't even begin to shift away the cold. But he could feel it. Gently. An old-fashioned love affair, and Barnabas' courtship as only he knew how to do it.

Willie's arms tightened. He could feel them do it, and beneath his bare skin, he could feel the edge of Barnabas' collar. He sank into it.

Now the white shroud, cloaking him. Setting him back and away from the blackness. Bringing him to the light. But gentle. Slow.

The smell of his room hit him, and then the unbalanced feel of being placed in his bed. His fingers were pried open and shoved away, his body pressed back, blankets left to fall over him. Like a mother with a child in a nursery.

"Sleep now, Willie," he heard Barnabas say.

The scent of his own blood on the vampire's lips swept across his nostrils. Which was odd, since he couldn't smell anything else, could barely feel the rush of air across his own skin as the vampire stepped into the hall and closed the door to Willie's room.

He didn't even need the courting candle. Didn't want to open his eyes to see if it had been lit. For somewhere deep, wordless thoughts came together.

He broke his promise. For you.

A deep, thumping sigh kicked through his lungs. He rolled over on his side, starting to feel the rough of woolen blanket, the rasp of oft-washed, cheap cotton. The thrumming soreness on his neck. His cock, uneased, still tense inside, his spine too limp to care.

That won't happen again soon.

But what the price would be to pay for it, he did not know. The darkness of sleep carried him off even as he reached for the shadow of wool-clad shoulders in his mind.

***

Faith in the Atmosphere - Part 4
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