Second Half of Chapter One of "Dark Shadows"
“Dark Shadow, calm down. It’s me, Katie.” The voice said. Her face appeared next to him and a sad little smile was upon her lips. He looked at her for a moment. “I found you by sensing your aura, my darling. Oh, what have I become, Shadow? What have you let me be? So wicked and worn…I’m as unforgiven as you are! We are both unforgiven for our sins against this society! Shadow! What have you made me into?!” Katies’ voice was on the edge of tears. “I have seen a vision in the night as I was running from my parents to try to find you. I can tell you about it, but you probably have already seen it as well, darling. Oh, I’m so scared now. I have tasted that of which I should never have wanted. The blood of the immortal life…I have sinned and now I shall never get past the gates of heaven! You bastard! You made me do this! Why, darling? Why?” She broke down into tight-wrenched sobs, too tired to say more, too ancient at the age of sixteen to do anything but cry away her life and drown in her own stupidity and foolish crush of the boy that he loved whom was now the man that she feared and yet still loved too deeply to let go of. Charles lay a hand on her head and pressed her gently to his body, holding her tightly yet gently so as not to crush the life from her. He could not answer her lamentation. He could only help her get through the hell that she was clearly riding upon now.
“I can do nothing to help you darling dear. I can nothing but make you further what you have become. I did not force you to become what you are now. You made that choice by yourself. You made that choice and I only helped you. You are what you are and you a Vampire…you are human as well, but you are a Vampire and you will always be one. You are not quite immortal, though you have all of the abilities of such creatures of the hellish blackness that is called the night. Exit light, enter night. Take my hand…we’re off to never never land.” Charles said to her in a hoarse whisper. She continued to cry, though the tears burned her less and less and then they stopped altogether.
“Then do it. Make me what you are. I want to be like you so that we may suffer together. Let that sweetness enter my body and take my soul and lay claim to everything it touches.” She said and then lay back on the ground and silently waited for the end to come. Charles moved over to her and looked into her eyes. They didn’t have much time left before they’d have to move off again. Katie would now be on the cops’ hit list of hostages and Charles, by now, was on the number one enemy of the public lists with a bit of money to his worthless head as well. It was the same thing back in California…
He bent down to her and looked sadly into her eyes and she into his. She smiled and then nodded. The morning sun found the two of them clothed only in the shadows of the tree that they had spent the night in. Katie was the first of the two to awaken and she silently dressed herself in the shadows. She smiled to her sleeping lover as she looked upon him sad eyes of the life that she would live with him. They were now no more than animals to the rest of the world. The dried blood her on her breasts and over her heart only served to remind her of that little painful fact. One last tear shed itself of her eyes and then no more would come to her and offer her its stinging bite of comfort at the loss of the life she had known before. She let her mind wander for some time. She thought mostly about the past. It was the past that she had known long before she had met Charles and become a shadow of the night. She thought of the boyfriend she had had at that time and of how he had physically and mentally abused her. She remembered the sixteen months spent in and out of mental health institutes because of her fear of going anywhere and getting beaten and raped as had happened to her. But then she thought of Charles and how he had loved her the night before. When she had been rapped by her other boyfriend, whom was dead now, it had hurt emotionally and physically, but this time with Charles, she enjoyed it all. She felt no pain before at school, nor while they had made love during the darkness of the night. She knew then that she had found the one for her. Charles, though cruel and dark and filled with evil to the core, was her soul mate and they were destined to be together forever. She loved him deeply and she knew he loved her just the same as she. She crawled over to him and slipped her small frame into his arms and lay against his cold body hoping to warm it up slightly. He was out cold, as he had told her while they had made love that he would be when the sun arose.
“Odd that I don’t feel that tired right now,” She said to herself as her lover slept in the shadows. They were fairly well protected from discovery. The tree was old and rotted out and the hole into which they had climbed didn’t show that well in the light. It had taken Charles three hours to see the hole just by looking dead at it. Even at an angle of any degree or height, it still could not be seen. They have time to slip away into the forest if they were found. Katie slipped her hand into Charles’ shirt and felt the scab that had been made when she drank his blood and he drank hers as they made love. She smiled and then closed her eyes. It was nearly night when she awoke. Charles was quietly stroking her cheek as he looked down into her eyes and watched them open. He smiled to her for a moment, but it soon faded.
“Look, we’re gonna haffta get outta here sooner or later, Chaos. We can’t stay here forever. If we do then the police and the humans will surely kill us. Actually they’d kill me and toss you into a mental health home for a while but it’s still the same damned thing. The only way to save us both is if you tell the cops where I am. I’ll keep them off your back for as long as I can…give ‘em something to chase so to say. We must start today, okay?” Charles said rather sadly. Katie reached up and pulled his head down hers and then they kissed each other again for the millionth time in their short lives. Then they got up and walked outside. Katie looked to Charles and he to her. He nodded to her and she slipped away from him and was soon lost in the shadows of the woods. Charles waited for most of the day until he heard the dogs barking and then began the chase. He raced off into the shadows and seemed to blend in with his surroundings. The dogs soon picked up his scent and the chase was on. Katie had made it back to her home and had called the police. She had told them everything that she knew they’d want to hear and she asked that they not kill Charles; only capture him so that she could press charges and then see him walk into prison forever. After she had gotten herself cleaned up and fairly looking as if nothing had ever happened, she then walked to school.
When she went into the building those around her seemed as if they were trying to avoid her. A few people said that they’d kill Charles if they ever got their hands around his neck. She smiled in spite of herself. She knew they’d never do that to him. No one could touch him. No one could touch her and survive long enough to brag about it. She made her silently to the “A” wing locker section and then walked into the section of it that wasn’t tapped off. She paused in front of the tapped section of the lockers and looked at the blood on the floor, lockers, and back wall. She grinned mentally and thought that she had never seen such a sight as beautiful as that of which she had just looked at. It was art to her. Pure art. She moved off to the add-on section of the lockers that had been put in place until the mess in the original set of lockers could be properly taken care of and stowed her bags and books in her “locker” which was really just a large metal basket with a tin lid and combination lock on it. For the entire day nothing pretty much happened to her. It was like every day since before she had met Charles: dull and boring. The bell rang and she made her way outside to go home when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and was horrified to see that the three seniors whom had witnessed the fight two days ago and had been apart of it in their own horrid ways, had surrounded her. She had no where to go…no where to run and hide. She had to stay and fight or be hurt, possibly killed.
She looked at the three boys, each a full head taller than her and weighing a little over twenty pounds of pure muscle than she did. “You’re the bitch that freak was in love with, aren’t you?” One of the seniors asked. Katie nodded. She wasn’t going to show them her fear of them. They’d only beat her up even more…
“Yes, that is me. Is something wrong?” She said coolly. Her eyes reflected the colors of the seniors’ eyes and they were cold and harsh and filled with a darkness that was awesome to behold. The senior smirked and then sneered at her.
“Damn right bitch. You’re gonna pay for what you did to my friend!” The boy said and his face turned to a mask of rage and hatred. One of the boys surrounding her tried to slink off so that he wouldn’t have to see what was about to happen. He made it to the door of the school and then was spotted and called back. He grinned and called that he was leaving to call the cops so as to draw out their real victim so that they would know where he was and then be able to deal with him. Katie stared back at him coolly. She had nothing to fear from this person. She knew that, if she remained calm and kept a cool head, she’d be okay. The third boy slipped into the building quickly and was soon out of sight from the glass windows. The leader of the small group balled his hands into tight fists and then landed a firm solid punch on Katie’s jaw. She was taken by surprise for she didn’t see the blow coming. She hit the ground with a cry and thud and then felt dozens and dozens of blows raining down upon her. Within moments she had entered the bliss of oblivion.
Soon after the two boys that had beaten Katie had left her broken and shattered body, the police arrived. They found her lying in a pool of her own blood, her shirt torn and rent, the cloth of her bra exposed in several places, deep cuts over her left eye and on her chest. Blood spilled forth from her right breast because it had been severely cut open by a switch blade that one of the boy’s had used. She was still breathing, but barely. In the shadows, a figure watched the proceedings with tears of anger and hatred in his eyes. He had arrived too late. He had heard her cry for help, somehow…he had felt it. He knew she was in danger and he had raced like the wind itself back towards the school only to discover his beloved girlfriend lying in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by police and paramedics. Katie’s beaten and shattered body was rushed to the local hospital where she was immediately placed into the emergency surgery room and was stitched back up and then placed into intensive care. Her parents were at hospital as soon as they had gotten word.
A doctor came slowly out of her room and faced her mother and father. “Well? How is she?” Katie’s father asked as soon as he saw the doctor. He was wearing a green plaid long sleeved shirt and dark blue jeans. His face was that of a forty year old man with dark black hair and piercing green eyes, but it seemed to have aged to almost sixty in a matter of moments when the young doctor looked into those torn and sad eyes. The soul of the man before the doctor seemed to by crying out in agonizing pain and fury that his only child would be rapped and beaten nearly to death. His thick brows were knotted together tightly and fear, melancholy, terrible wrath…all were reflected within the mans’ deep green eyes. He could only wait and hear what the doctor had to say about his daughter. He was bent. Crushed beyond all hope. His spirit was broken; he pride lying in a bed at death’s hand…
“I have bad news,” The doctor said. His sharp hawk-blue eyes shone forth with great sadness for the news that he would have to tell to the parents of the child he had just seen. The mother of the young girl within the room he had come out of wailed out.
“Oh please! Not my baby! Not her! Don’t take her! I beg of you. Save her if you can. You’re a damn doctor…man of miracles and medicine. You have to save my daughters’ life! Do something! Please, just try to save her life! Oh Lord, don’t take her from me!” She cried to the air around her. It was as if there was no one else there other than God and her and she seemed to beg that God, if God it were, not take her only child. She wore a white tear-stained blouse with a fringe-like collar and a dark black full-body skirt. She was held tightly in the arms of her husband, whom was helpless to comfort his wife just as he was helpless to save the life of his only offspring. Her light brown eyes were red-rimmed and filled with the stinging terror of the tears that she willingly let fall and stain her white blouse. There was nothing she could do either for her child. Her only child lay in a bed not more than twenty feet from where she stood and she could no go to see her. To disturb Katie would be to invite Death upon her soul. The doctor looked into the eyes of the woman he faced and was nearly torn to lie about what was really wrong with Katie. He wanted to help her. He wanted to reach out with his very soul and offer it up to the very god he believed in so that it might only be enough to purchase the child he had taken care of for the last twenty minutes another day of blissful life without the pain of rape and a knife blade. He knew he could do no such thing. He could not lie to this woman nor to this man that he now turned to face.
“I have bad news about your daughter, Mr. Blake. She has suffered severe trauma to the right lobe of her brain and it is swollen badly. I’m not sure if the surgery she will have to undergo will be enough to save her life, but I can only hope that will be so. Her right breast has been slashed openly deeply, but will heal in time. She has lost a lot of blood on the way here and so thus has to cling to life as if it were a thread of which may break at any moment. She has severe damage to her left lung due to a puncture inflicted by her ribs. Her right eye socket has been surgically rebuilt as it was completely crushed and broken in eighteen places, so she may quit the sight from that eye. Her right arm has been cut open, but will heal in time, and has also been severely broken in ten different areas. Her back is badly bruised and I’m not sure if she will live long because her left kidney has been beaten and rupture badly. I have done the best I could to stitch it back up. There is nothing else anyone can do for her now. You should go home and get some sleep. I’ll call you both the first sign of any change, good or ill in your daughter. Go. There is nothing we can do. She is in Gods’ hands now.” The young doctor said. Katie’s mother wailed louder and clung to her husband as if he were the only thing left to her to cling to. Tears of rage and pain hit his eyes as she clung to him. He wanted to see his daughter, but knew that he could not do so. With effort that belied the man of his current state, he helped his wife to their car and then drove home. They niether ate nor slept that night.
The window to Katies’ room was on the first floor. It was the last one that Charles would be bale to get to. He peered inside and gave a sigh as he saw the person laying on the bed. It was Katie. He then quickly and silently picked the lock on the window and pushed it open. He crawled inside and walked silently over to Katies’ bedside. He took her right hand into his and knelt down next to her. Her eyes were closed and seemed to be masked in pain. He looked at her with melancholy in his deep blue eyes that seemed as if it were not his eyes that shone that night, but his very soul. A soul that cried for something, yet did not know what the something was. A soul that wished with all of its might that it could give itself up and leave the lonely existence of a Vampire and be offer to all the gods that ever been and ever will so that it may purchase the girl that it now looked upon a life a bliss and sweet happiness away from the mortal world. Away from hell and away from heaven…but he knew he could not kill himself. That would solve nothing and he knew it. “My darling, please awaken and face the night with me,” he whispered to Katie in a tender voice cracked only by emotion and love for her.
“Please. Open your eyes and tell me you’re gonna be okay. Wake up Katie. It’s time to awaken. Please wake up. I can tell time by the moon. I can tell time by the sun and I tell you your day has just begun. It has just peaked over the mountains’ edge and has dawned full and bright. You have the light. All I have left is the night. My day is nearly over. Yours has just begun. Please wake up. Wake up and face your golden moment in the brightness of the sun! Please wake up! Just open your eyes and look around you. You’ll have nothing to fear. You have the light. I have the night. Come on Katie. Come on. Wake up. Your day has just dawned…mine has just begun to end.” Charles froze his next line before it began. He was too worked up. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks and he ignored them. A noise outside of the room had drawn his attention and he looked over to the door for a moment and then back to Katie. He leaned over her for a moment and then pressed his lips lightly to hers. In a moment he was gone. The window closed with a light thump just as the door opened and the doctor walked in.
Charles walked out into the starry night air and faced the shadows with cold hatred in his eyes. “Because of you, you have let her get beaten and then rapped and nearly stabbed to death. She hangs on the verge of death because of you! Damn your soul to all of hell! Let that thing that you call the human soul burn in hell for all time! Fuck this life! Life sucks! I swear I shall fine the men that did this! I swear it to you Katie! I will not let you down like this ever again. My life is shadowed to help you…but that shadow has cast you into an abyss of pain and death! I will find a way o make it up to you! I promise! The ashes fall on stone…to break this curse I reach through you…I believe I am not alone, but tell me can you heal what father’s done? I take this world and shake it! What kind of god lives within this heart? No god and no goddess does! I am evil and my evil has seeped into that which I have tried to protect! Her death will be my fault!” His eyes glazed over and he seemed to wander the woods aimlessly. When the sun arose the next morning, Charles, stiff and sore, found himself lying in the tree that he and Katie had made love in. He smiled sadly to himself and pressed his right cheek against the section of rotting bark that Katie had pressed her body to while they had made love. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks. There was blood on his mouth, in the lower left corner. He must have hit something or something may have hit him, but he didn’t remember and he didn’t want. All he could think of right was how to find the people that had nearly killed Katie. He walked out into the bright light of the sun, put his sunglasses on and then moved off into the shadows. After sneaking back home and showering and then changing his clothes, he made a stop by at Katies’ room in the hospital. He saw that there had been little change since the night before. The damage done to her body looked small, as if there hadn’t been much done to her. But Charles only felt the flames of hate and anger rise when he looked into her closed eyes from the window. He moved away with a grimace of utter indescribable emotions. He soon reach his destination, which was the school. He walked back behind it into the swamp and waited there in the shadows of the trees for the final bell to ring. He had all he needed with him. His sunglasses, his fighting skills…that was all he’d need.
The bell rang and he smiled coldly to himself. He then moved towards the school and seemed to blend in with everything around him. Mostly it was an open field, but no one saw him approaching the school. He was calm, as if nothing had ever happened in the last few months that he had lived in Forest Lake. His face showed no sign of pain nor anger nor hatred. His glassed-eyes searched the crowd in silence as he moved in among them. He soon found whom he was looking for. The group of seniors that had attacked him a few days ago in the locker bay…
He approached them in cold, swift silence of both voice and movement. They niether saw nor heard of his coming. He then stood right next to the boy that had stabbed Katie and looked into the mans’ eyes from behind his sunglasses. He saw an aura that was flecked with black and green, signs that meant something had been done to shame the man’s soul to the utter darkness of hell itself. He then looked into the eyes of the other two boys and quickly picked the two that had done the crime he was there to confront. He waited to make himself known to the group so that the rest of the students around the school had some time to leave. They were soon alone and the group still had no idea of the man they had harbored into their reach of death. Charles then chose this time make himself known.
“You should have seen what I did to that bitch, Paul!” One of the seniors said. He grinned a moment and then went on: “I stabbed her twelve times and then had a little fun playing with her upper body! You should be there the next time we do this to that bitch. You’d have fun.”
The boy by the address of Paul smiled half-heartily and then looked away. Charles knew that he had not been present when the beating and rape had taken place. He must have been the one to call the police.
“That’s right!” Said the other senior. He punched Paul lightly on the arm and grinned. “You ever wanna have fun with a girls’ body, just tear ‘em apart and then fuck the hell outta of them!”
“I think you two should reconsider that.” A dark voice said next to one of the seniors. They all looked towards it and were aghast to see Charles standing there silently looking at them all with cold hatred in his eyes.
“So the coward returns, eh?” said one of the boys. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a switch blade out of it. The blade appeared in his hand in a flash and he was ready to cut apart Charles, whom merely grinned at the blade coldly.
“You really think that that tooth pick will hurt me?” He said. He faced them coldly and waited. The boy with the knife made a lunge towards Charles, whom moved to the side and then kicked the boy hard in the groin, whom fell to the ground with a groan. Charles grabbed the hand with the knife and pointed it sickeningly back towards the boys’ throat. “Thou shalt nae kill nor nae rape another again!” He spat into the boys’ face and drove the blade homeward. It pierced the throat and he let go of the knife. The boy’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to the ground dead. Charles felt a stinging blow on the back and rolled to diverse the pain over the rest of his body. He then got up and faced the senior attacking him. He waited for the next attack and it came, which was a front kick to the face and a punch to the gut. Both attacks were avoided quickly and effortlessly. Charles attacked by punching the boy as hard as he could in the throat. There was loud cry of pain, a gasp for air and the man fell dead to the ground. Then Charles turned to Paul.
“Get out of here while you still can run, boy!” He said and Paul broke into a dead run of shear hellish terror. He was soon gone from sight and then Charles walked over to the dead boys and yanked out the knife from the throat of the one he had stabbed. He hand it blade pointing towards the boys’ pain filled face and then slashed open the skull across the eyes and bent forward to him and supped thereon of the blood that welled out of the wound. He then cut open the throat and jammed his hand into the hole he had made and sat down upon the chest of the dead boy and pulled with all of his might. The flesh and cartilage of the neck and throat tore like paper in his hand and he yanked a thick strip of flesh from the body, which he began to feed from. He sighed and peered into the gaping long gash of a hole he had made. He reached into the hole and pulled forth the heart of the boy which still throbbed lightly in his hand. He grinned.
Then he squeezed. The organ exploded in his hand and bits of it fell with a light plopping sound around him. He silently licked the blood and small pieces of the heart away from his hand and reach into the body again and this time pulled forth the small intestines and began to tear through them as if they were merely cardboard in his hands. He tore off another section of flesh and saw that he had exposed with that flesh, the lungs, liver, stomach, and the colon. These he tore through separately with his bared teeth and consumed the flesh of the organs into his body. Pure pleasure and ecstasy shone in his dark blue eyes. He laughed for the pleasure he felt in ripping apart his hatred’s body. Within moments, he had started to work on the on the neck and head. He had nothing left within the main portion of the dead boys’ body to rip apart. The rest of organs he found to be tasteless and in no need to be consumed, so he simply tore them apart. He hacked off the head of the dead boy and then, with much effort to keep it in one piece, he pulled forth the brain from the skull. This he bounce a few times back and forth between his hands, testing the weight of it and then he hurled it at the doors of the school, where, upon impact, it erupted into a mass of tissue and blood and slowly made its way down the doors of the school, leaving behind an oozing trail of brain tissue and blood. He did the same to the other boy and then left the grounds. The eyes of each boy he had hacked out of the skulls and carried with him in his pockets.
He faded into the shadows of the trees of the woods around him. Three days passed before he had ventured out of the woods. He walked to the hospital that Katie was sleeping and again entered her room the way he had the first night he gone to visit her. He closed the window silently and then walked in the darkness towards her bed and knelt down next to her. He took her hand in his and then kissed her lightly on the lips. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and she squeezed his hand back. “Charles? Is that you my love?” She said in the darkness.
“Yes, darling. It is me. I am here.”
“Oh, love! Please. Show me your face. I can’t see you very clearly. My sight is somewhat blind. Hold me in your darkness and never let me go.”
“I will. Katie, I swear I will.” He stood and sat down on her bed and then held her close to him as gently as he could.
“Charles, will you do something for me please?” Katie asked.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Take me out of here. I want to be with you in our home one last time before anything else happens to me.” He heard Katie sob lightly.
“I shall do that.” He said softly and then picked her up in his arms and carried her to door. “To hell with what others say. You and I are gonna right out those front doors.”
Katie reached out with her left hand and opened the door of the room. Light flooded the room and she squinted in the brightness of it. Charles, somehow, managed to slip his sunglasses over her eyes and she smiled to him. No one saw the two of them leave the building. He carried her all the way until he could safely enter the woods and then set her down on her feet. “Can you walk at all, Katie?” She took a step to test her legs and then feel towards the ground, but was caught in the strong arms of her lover. She looked away as he picked her up and then back into his eyes. She had knocked off his sunglasses and they were now lost in the darkness of the night.
“I’m sorry. You must think of me as weak that I can not stand on my own two feet and that you must carry me to our home.” She said softly.
“Don’t say that again please. I think that not of you nor of anyone…I love you Katie and I will never once think that of you. Ever. I promise you that.” Charles said. He moved off into the shadows and Katie laid her head against his chest as he moved silently among the trees. She fell asleep for a moment and awoke to find that they were in the tree where she had been turned into a Vampire. Charles was sitting next to her, waiting for her to wake up. She smiled to him and he to her, though his was sad and lonely. It was a distant sort of smile as if he already knew what was going to happen and yet was trying to bravely lie about it. Katie pushed herself over to him and then lay in his arms. He held her close to him and hot tears spilled down his cheeks and onto her face. A tender hand rose and brushed them away from his eyes.
“Charles, I must thank you for helping me be what I am now. I shall never forget that. I love you and I don’t want you to forget me nor my love of you, okay?” She said. She reached into her hospital nightgown and then drew forth and removed a gold heart locket from round her neck. Charles had slipped it around her a few nights ago and now she was returning it to him. Inside was picture of them both before the hell had started…
He took the locket and draped it around his own neck silently. Then he again held Katie in his arms. No word passed he between the two of them for a moment. Charles, feeling something in the air about him, leaned over Katie and kissed her French style on the mouth. She kissed him back and they stayed that way for several long moments. Then Katies’ breathing slowed and her heart beat began to fade. She closed her eyes slowly, always looking into the deep blue eyes of her boyfriend as her eyes slowly closed. They kissed again and then her heart and breath stopped. Charles sat where he was and held her still body close to his chest and stroke lovingly the cheeks of Katies’ face and smelled the perfume in her hair. Tears spilled down his face. He then gently laid her head on the ground and walked outside. Once there he threw up his guts and then faced the tree in melancholy silence. He then knocked over another dead tree and positioned it so that it covered the hole in the truck and thus concealed from view the precious body inside. The tree would be the grave of the person he had loved. She was dead now…like everyone else he had ever known. He then turned and ran into the darkness. His only thought was to keep on running…
“I can do nothing to help you darling dear. I can nothing but make you further what you have become. I did not force you to become what you are now. You made that choice by yourself. You made that choice and I only helped you. You are what you are and you a Vampire…you are human as well, but you are a Vampire and you will always be one. You are not quite immortal, though you have all of the abilities of such creatures of the hellish blackness that is called the night. Exit light, enter night. Take my hand…we’re off to never never land.” Charles said to her in a hoarse whisper. She continued to cry, though the tears burned her less and less and then they stopped altogether.
“Then do it. Make me what you are. I want to be like you so that we may suffer together. Let that sweetness enter my body and take my soul and lay claim to everything it touches.” She said and then lay back on the ground and silently waited for the end to come. Charles moved over to her and looked into her eyes. They didn’t have much time left before they’d have to move off again. Katie would now be on the cops’ hit list of hostages and Charles, by now, was on the number one enemy of the public lists with a bit of money to his worthless head as well. It was the same thing back in California…
He bent down to her and looked sadly into her eyes and she into his. She smiled and then nodded. The morning sun found the two of them clothed only in the shadows of the tree that they had spent the night in. Katie was the first of the two to awaken and she silently dressed herself in the shadows. She smiled to her sleeping lover as she looked upon him sad eyes of the life that she would live with him. They were now no more than animals to the rest of the world. The dried blood her on her breasts and over her heart only served to remind her of that little painful fact. One last tear shed itself of her eyes and then no more would come to her and offer her its stinging bite of comfort at the loss of the life she had known before. She let her mind wander for some time. She thought mostly about the past. It was the past that she had known long before she had met Charles and become a shadow of the night. She thought of the boyfriend she had had at that time and of how he had physically and mentally abused her. She remembered the sixteen months spent in and out of mental health institutes because of her fear of going anywhere and getting beaten and raped as had happened to her. But then she thought of Charles and how he had loved her the night before. When she had been rapped by her other boyfriend, whom was dead now, it had hurt emotionally and physically, but this time with Charles, she enjoyed it all. She felt no pain before at school, nor while they had made love during the darkness of the night. She knew then that she had found the one for her. Charles, though cruel and dark and filled with evil to the core, was her soul mate and they were destined to be together forever. She loved him deeply and she knew he loved her just the same as she. She crawled over to him and slipped her small frame into his arms and lay against his cold body hoping to warm it up slightly. He was out cold, as he had told her while they had made love that he would be when the sun arose.
“Odd that I don’t feel that tired right now,” She said to herself as her lover slept in the shadows. They were fairly well protected from discovery. The tree was old and rotted out and the hole into which they had climbed didn’t show that well in the light. It had taken Charles three hours to see the hole just by looking dead at it. Even at an angle of any degree or height, it still could not be seen. They have time to slip away into the forest if they were found. Katie slipped her hand into Charles’ shirt and felt the scab that had been made when she drank his blood and he drank hers as they made love. She smiled and then closed her eyes. It was nearly night when she awoke. Charles was quietly stroking her cheek as he looked down into her eyes and watched them open. He smiled to her for a moment, but it soon faded.
“Look, we’re gonna haffta get outta here sooner or later, Chaos. We can’t stay here forever. If we do then the police and the humans will surely kill us. Actually they’d kill me and toss you into a mental health home for a while but it’s still the same damned thing. The only way to save us both is if you tell the cops where I am. I’ll keep them off your back for as long as I can…give ‘em something to chase so to say. We must start today, okay?” Charles said rather sadly. Katie reached up and pulled his head down hers and then they kissed each other again for the millionth time in their short lives. Then they got up and walked outside. Katie looked to Charles and he to her. He nodded to her and she slipped away from him and was soon lost in the shadows of the woods. Charles waited for most of the day until he heard the dogs barking and then began the chase. He raced off into the shadows and seemed to blend in with his surroundings. The dogs soon picked up his scent and the chase was on. Katie had made it back to her home and had called the police. She had told them everything that she knew they’d want to hear and she asked that they not kill Charles; only capture him so that she could press charges and then see him walk into prison forever. After she had gotten herself cleaned up and fairly looking as if nothing had ever happened, she then walked to school.
When she went into the building those around her seemed as if they were trying to avoid her. A few people said that they’d kill Charles if they ever got their hands around his neck. She smiled in spite of herself. She knew they’d never do that to him. No one could touch him. No one could touch her and survive long enough to brag about it. She made her silently to the “A” wing locker section and then walked into the section of it that wasn’t tapped off. She paused in front of the tapped section of the lockers and looked at the blood on the floor, lockers, and back wall. She grinned mentally and thought that she had never seen such a sight as beautiful as that of which she had just looked at. It was art to her. Pure art. She moved off to the add-on section of the lockers that had been put in place until the mess in the original set of lockers could be properly taken care of and stowed her bags and books in her “locker” which was really just a large metal basket with a tin lid and combination lock on it. For the entire day nothing pretty much happened to her. It was like every day since before she had met Charles: dull and boring. The bell rang and she made her way outside to go home when someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and was horrified to see that the three seniors whom had witnessed the fight two days ago and had been apart of it in their own horrid ways, had surrounded her. She had no where to go…no where to run and hide. She had to stay and fight or be hurt, possibly killed.
She looked at the three boys, each a full head taller than her and weighing a little over twenty pounds of pure muscle than she did. “You’re the bitch that freak was in love with, aren’t you?” One of the seniors asked. Katie nodded. She wasn’t going to show them her fear of them. They’d only beat her up even more…
“Yes, that is me. Is something wrong?” She said coolly. Her eyes reflected the colors of the seniors’ eyes and they were cold and harsh and filled with a darkness that was awesome to behold. The senior smirked and then sneered at her.
“Damn right bitch. You’re gonna pay for what you did to my friend!” The boy said and his face turned to a mask of rage and hatred. One of the boys surrounding her tried to slink off so that he wouldn’t have to see what was about to happen. He made it to the door of the school and then was spotted and called back. He grinned and called that he was leaving to call the cops so as to draw out their real victim so that they would know where he was and then be able to deal with him. Katie stared back at him coolly. She had nothing to fear from this person. She knew that, if she remained calm and kept a cool head, she’d be okay. The third boy slipped into the building quickly and was soon out of sight from the glass windows. The leader of the small group balled his hands into tight fists and then landed a firm solid punch on Katie’s jaw. She was taken by surprise for she didn’t see the blow coming. She hit the ground with a cry and thud and then felt dozens and dozens of blows raining down upon her. Within moments she had entered the bliss of oblivion.
Soon after the two boys that had beaten Katie had left her broken and shattered body, the police arrived. They found her lying in a pool of her own blood, her shirt torn and rent, the cloth of her bra exposed in several places, deep cuts over her left eye and on her chest. Blood spilled forth from her right breast because it had been severely cut open by a switch blade that one of the boy’s had used. She was still breathing, but barely. In the shadows, a figure watched the proceedings with tears of anger and hatred in his eyes. He had arrived too late. He had heard her cry for help, somehow…he had felt it. He knew she was in danger and he had raced like the wind itself back towards the school only to discover his beloved girlfriend lying in a pool of her own blood, surrounded by police and paramedics. Katie’s beaten and shattered body was rushed to the local hospital where she was immediately placed into the emergency surgery room and was stitched back up and then placed into intensive care. Her parents were at hospital as soon as they had gotten word.
A doctor came slowly out of her room and faced her mother and father. “Well? How is she?” Katie’s father asked as soon as he saw the doctor. He was wearing a green plaid long sleeved shirt and dark blue jeans. His face was that of a forty year old man with dark black hair and piercing green eyes, but it seemed to have aged to almost sixty in a matter of moments when the young doctor looked into those torn and sad eyes. The soul of the man before the doctor seemed to by crying out in agonizing pain and fury that his only child would be rapped and beaten nearly to death. His thick brows were knotted together tightly and fear, melancholy, terrible wrath…all were reflected within the mans’ deep green eyes. He could only wait and hear what the doctor had to say about his daughter. He was bent. Crushed beyond all hope. His spirit was broken; he pride lying in a bed at death’s hand…
“I have bad news,” The doctor said. His sharp hawk-blue eyes shone forth with great sadness for the news that he would have to tell to the parents of the child he had just seen. The mother of the young girl within the room he had come out of wailed out.
“Oh please! Not my baby! Not her! Don’t take her! I beg of you. Save her if you can. You’re a damn doctor…man of miracles and medicine. You have to save my daughters’ life! Do something! Please, just try to save her life! Oh Lord, don’t take her from me!” She cried to the air around her. It was as if there was no one else there other than God and her and she seemed to beg that God, if God it were, not take her only child. She wore a white tear-stained blouse with a fringe-like collar and a dark black full-body skirt. She was held tightly in the arms of her husband, whom was helpless to comfort his wife just as he was helpless to save the life of his only offspring. Her light brown eyes were red-rimmed and filled with the stinging terror of the tears that she willingly let fall and stain her white blouse. There was nothing she could do either for her child. Her only child lay in a bed not more than twenty feet from where she stood and she could no go to see her. To disturb Katie would be to invite Death upon her soul. The doctor looked into the eyes of the woman he faced and was nearly torn to lie about what was really wrong with Katie. He wanted to help her. He wanted to reach out with his very soul and offer it up to the very god he believed in so that it might only be enough to purchase the child he had taken care of for the last twenty minutes another day of blissful life without the pain of rape and a knife blade. He knew he could do no such thing. He could not lie to this woman nor to this man that he now turned to face.
“I have bad news about your daughter, Mr. Blake. She has suffered severe trauma to the right lobe of her brain and it is swollen badly. I’m not sure if the surgery she will have to undergo will be enough to save her life, but I can only hope that will be so. Her right breast has been slashed openly deeply, but will heal in time. She has lost a lot of blood on the way here and so thus has to cling to life as if it were a thread of which may break at any moment. She has severe damage to her left lung due to a puncture inflicted by her ribs. Her right eye socket has been surgically rebuilt as it was completely crushed and broken in eighteen places, so she may quit the sight from that eye. Her right arm has been cut open, but will heal in time, and has also been severely broken in ten different areas. Her back is badly bruised and I’m not sure if she will live long because her left kidney has been beaten and rupture badly. I have done the best I could to stitch it back up. There is nothing else anyone can do for her now. You should go home and get some sleep. I’ll call you both the first sign of any change, good or ill in your daughter. Go. There is nothing we can do. She is in Gods’ hands now.” The young doctor said. Katie’s mother wailed louder and clung to her husband as if he were the only thing left to her to cling to. Tears of rage and pain hit his eyes as she clung to him. He wanted to see his daughter, but knew that he could not do so. With effort that belied the man of his current state, he helped his wife to their car and then drove home. They niether ate nor slept that night.
The window to Katies’ room was on the first floor. It was the last one that Charles would be bale to get to. He peered inside and gave a sigh as he saw the person laying on the bed. It was Katie. He then quickly and silently picked the lock on the window and pushed it open. He crawled inside and walked silently over to Katies’ bedside. He took her right hand into his and knelt down next to her. Her eyes were closed and seemed to be masked in pain. He looked at her with melancholy in his deep blue eyes that seemed as if it were not his eyes that shone that night, but his very soul. A soul that cried for something, yet did not know what the something was. A soul that wished with all of its might that it could give itself up and leave the lonely existence of a Vampire and be offer to all the gods that ever been and ever will so that it may purchase the girl that it now looked upon a life a bliss and sweet happiness away from the mortal world. Away from hell and away from heaven…but he knew he could not kill himself. That would solve nothing and he knew it. “My darling, please awaken and face the night with me,” he whispered to Katie in a tender voice cracked only by emotion and love for her.
“Please. Open your eyes and tell me you’re gonna be okay. Wake up Katie. It’s time to awaken. Please wake up. I can tell time by the moon. I can tell time by the sun and I tell you your day has just begun. It has just peaked over the mountains’ edge and has dawned full and bright. You have the light. All I have left is the night. My day is nearly over. Yours has just begun. Please wake up. Wake up and face your golden moment in the brightness of the sun! Please wake up! Just open your eyes and look around you. You’ll have nothing to fear. You have the light. I have the night. Come on Katie. Come on. Wake up. Your day has just dawned…mine has just begun to end.” Charles froze his next line before it began. He was too worked up. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks and he ignored them. A noise outside of the room had drawn his attention and he looked over to the door for a moment and then back to Katie. He leaned over her for a moment and then pressed his lips lightly to hers. In a moment he was gone. The window closed with a light thump just as the door opened and the doctor walked in.
Charles walked out into the starry night air and faced the shadows with cold hatred in his eyes. “Because of you, you have let her get beaten and then rapped and nearly stabbed to death. She hangs on the verge of death because of you! Damn your soul to all of hell! Let that thing that you call the human soul burn in hell for all time! Fuck this life! Life sucks! I swear I shall fine the men that did this! I swear it to you Katie! I will not let you down like this ever again. My life is shadowed to help you…but that shadow has cast you into an abyss of pain and death! I will find a way o make it up to you! I promise! The ashes fall on stone…to break this curse I reach through you…I believe I am not alone, but tell me can you heal what father’s done? I take this world and shake it! What kind of god lives within this heart? No god and no goddess does! I am evil and my evil has seeped into that which I have tried to protect! Her death will be my fault!” His eyes glazed over and he seemed to wander the woods aimlessly. When the sun arose the next morning, Charles, stiff and sore, found himself lying in the tree that he and Katie had made love in. He smiled sadly to himself and pressed his right cheek against the section of rotting bark that Katie had pressed her body to while they had made love. Tears of pain ran down his cheeks. There was blood on his mouth, in the lower left corner. He must have hit something or something may have hit him, but he didn’t remember and he didn’t want. All he could think of right was how to find the people that had nearly killed Katie. He walked out into the bright light of the sun, put his sunglasses on and then moved off into the shadows. After sneaking back home and showering and then changing his clothes, he made a stop by at Katies’ room in the hospital. He saw that there had been little change since the night before. The damage done to her body looked small, as if there hadn’t been much done to her. But Charles only felt the flames of hate and anger rise when he looked into her closed eyes from the window. He moved away with a grimace of utter indescribable emotions. He soon reach his destination, which was the school. He walked back behind it into the swamp and waited there in the shadows of the trees for the final bell to ring. He had all he needed with him. His sunglasses, his fighting skills…that was all he’d need.
The bell rang and he smiled coldly to himself. He then moved towards the school and seemed to blend in with everything around him. Mostly it was an open field, but no one saw him approaching the school. He was calm, as if nothing had ever happened in the last few months that he had lived in Forest Lake. His face showed no sign of pain nor anger nor hatred. His glassed-eyes searched the crowd in silence as he moved in among them. He soon found whom he was looking for. The group of seniors that had attacked him a few days ago in the locker bay…
He approached them in cold, swift silence of both voice and movement. They niether saw nor heard of his coming. He then stood right next to the boy that had stabbed Katie and looked into the mans’ eyes from behind his sunglasses. He saw an aura that was flecked with black and green, signs that meant something had been done to shame the man’s soul to the utter darkness of hell itself. He then looked into the eyes of the other two boys and quickly picked the two that had done the crime he was there to confront. He waited to make himself known to the group so that the rest of the students around the school had some time to leave. They were soon alone and the group still had no idea of the man they had harbored into their reach of death. Charles then chose this time make himself known.
“You should have seen what I did to that bitch, Paul!” One of the seniors said. He grinned a moment and then went on: “I stabbed her twelve times and then had a little fun playing with her upper body! You should be there the next time we do this to that bitch. You’d have fun.”
The boy by the address of Paul smiled half-heartily and then looked away. Charles knew that he had not been present when the beating and rape had taken place. He must have been the one to call the police.
“That’s right!” Said the other senior. He punched Paul lightly on the arm and grinned. “You ever wanna have fun with a girls’ body, just tear ‘em apart and then fuck the hell outta of them!”
“I think you two should reconsider that.” A dark voice said next to one of the seniors. They all looked towards it and were aghast to see Charles standing there silently looking at them all with cold hatred in his eyes.
“So the coward returns, eh?” said one of the boys. He reached into his back pocket and pulled a switch blade out of it. The blade appeared in his hand in a flash and he was ready to cut apart Charles, whom merely grinned at the blade coldly.
“You really think that that tooth pick will hurt me?” He said. He faced them coldly and waited. The boy with the knife made a lunge towards Charles, whom moved to the side and then kicked the boy hard in the groin, whom fell to the ground with a groan. Charles grabbed the hand with the knife and pointed it sickeningly back towards the boys’ throat. “Thou shalt nae kill nor nae rape another again!” He spat into the boys’ face and drove the blade homeward. It pierced the throat and he let go of the knife. The boy’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to the ground dead. Charles felt a stinging blow on the back and rolled to diverse the pain over the rest of his body. He then got up and faced the senior attacking him. He waited for the next attack and it came, which was a front kick to the face and a punch to the gut. Both attacks were avoided quickly and effortlessly. Charles attacked by punching the boy as hard as he could in the throat. There was loud cry of pain, a gasp for air and the man fell dead to the ground. Then Charles turned to Paul.
“Get out of here while you still can run, boy!” He said and Paul broke into a dead run of shear hellish terror. He was soon gone from sight and then Charles walked over to the dead boys and yanked out the knife from the throat of the one he had stabbed. He hand it blade pointing towards the boys’ pain filled face and then slashed open the skull across the eyes and bent forward to him and supped thereon of the blood that welled out of the wound. He then cut open the throat and jammed his hand into the hole he had made and sat down upon the chest of the dead boy and pulled with all of his might. The flesh and cartilage of the neck and throat tore like paper in his hand and he yanked a thick strip of flesh from the body, which he began to feed from. He sighed and peered into the gaping long gash of a hole he had made. He reached into the hole and pulled forth the heart of the boy which still throbbed lightly in his hand. He grinned.
Then he squeezed. The organ exploded in his hand and bits of it fell with a light plopping sound around him. He silently licked the blood and small pieces of the heart away from his hand and reach into the body again and this time pulled forth the small intestines and began to tear through them as if they were merely cardboard in his hands. He tore off another section of flesh and saw that he had exposed with that flesh, the lungs, liver, stomach, and the colon. These he tore through separately with his bared teeth and consumed the flesh of the organs into his body. Pure pleasure and ecstasy shone in his dark blue eyes. He laughed for the pleasure he felt in ripping apart his hatred’s body. Within moments, he had started to work on the on the neck and head. He had nothing left within the main portion of the dead boys’ body to rip apart. The rest of organs he found to be tasteless and in no need to be consumed, so he simply tore them apart. He hacked off the head of the dead boy and then, with much effort to keep it in one piece, he pulled forth the brain from the skull. This he bounce a few times back and forth between his hands, testing the weight of it and then he hurled it at the doors of the school, where, upon impact, it erupted into a mass of tissue and blood and slowly made its way down the doors of the school, leaving behind an oozing trail of brain tissue and blood. He did the same to the other boy and then left the grounds. The eyes of each boy he had hacked out of the skulls and carried with him in his pockets.
He faded into the shadows of the trees of the woods around him. Three days passed before he had ventured out of the woods. He walked to the hospital that Katie was sleeping and again entered her room the way he had the first night he gone to visit her. He closed the window silently and then walked in the darkness towards her bed and knelt down next to her. He took her hand in his and then kissed her lightly on the lips. Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and she squeezed his hand back. “Charles? Is that you my love?” She said in the darkness.
“Yes, darling. It is me. I am here.”
“Oh, love! Please. Show me your face. I can’t see you very clearly. My sight is somewhat blind. Hold me in your darkness and never let me go.”
“I will. Katie, I swear I will.” He stood and sat down on her bed and then held her close to him as gently as he could.
“Charles, will you do something for me please?” Katie asked.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Take me out of here. I want to be with you in our home one last time before anything else happens to me.” He heard Katie sob lightly.
“I shall do that.” He said softly and then picked her up in his arms and carried her to door. “To hell with what others say. You and I are gonna right out those front doors.”
Katie reached out with her left hand and opened the door of the room. Light flooded the room and she squinted in the brightness of it. Charles, somehow, managed to slip his sunglasses over her eyes and she smiled to him. No one saw the two of them leave the building. He carried her all the way until he could safely enter the woods and then set her down on her feet. “Can you walk at all, Katie?” She took a step to test her legs and then feel towards the ground, but was caught in the strong arms of her lover. She looked away as he picked her up and then back into his eyes. She had knocked off his sunglasses and they were now lost in the darkness of the night.
“I’m sorry. You must think of me as weak that I can not stand on my own two feet and that you must carry me to our home.” She said softly.
“Don’t say that again please. I think that not of you nor of anyone…I love you Katie and I will never once think that of you. Ever. I promise you that.” Charles said. He moved off into the shadows and Katie laid her head against his chest as he moved silently among the trees. She fell asleep for a moment and awoke to find that they were in the tree where she had been turned into a Vampire. Charles was sitting next to her, waiting for her to wake up. She smiled to him and he to her, though his was sad and lonely. It was a distant sort of smile as if he already knew what was going to happen and yet was trying to bravely lie about it. Katie pushed herself over to him and then lay in his arms. He held her close to him and hot tears spilled down his cheeks and onto her face. A tender hand rose and brushed them away from his eyes.
“Charles, I must thank you for helping me be what I am now. I shall never forget that. I love you and I don’t want you to forget me nor my love of you, okay?” She said. She reached into her hospital nightgown and then drew forth and removed a gold heart locket from round her neck. Charles had slipped it around her a few nights ago and now she was returning it to him. Inside was picture of them both before the hell had started…
He took the locket and draped it around his own neck silently. Then he again held Katie in his arms. No word passed he between the two of them for a moment. Charles, feeling something in the air about him, leaned over Katie and kissed her French style on the mouth. She kissed him back and they stayed that way for several long moments. Then Katies’ breathing slowed and her heart beat began to fade. She closed her eyes slowly, always looking into the deep blue eyes of her boyfriend as her eyes slowly closed. They kissed again and then her heart and breath stopped. Charles sat where he was and held her still body close to his chest and stroke lovingly the cheeks of Katies’ face and smelled the perfume in her hair. Tears spilled down his face. He then gently laid her head on the ground and walked outside. Once there he threw up his guts and then faced the tree in melancholy silence. He then knocked over another dead tree and positioned it so that it covered the hole in the truck and thus concealed from view the precious body inside. The tree would be the grave of the person he had loved. She was dead now…like everyone else he had ever known. He then turned and ran into the darkness. His only thought was to keep on running…