The vampire lay sleeping in his deathly trance, his quiet face empty of all expression, a fertile canvas for the imagination to infuse any meaning whatsoever. What one saw there was more an expression of the seer’s than the bloodsucker’s.
What did I see? It was a pale face, cold, lifeless. It was a dead face. Whatever animated his corpse by night had left. Was he aware? Where did that spirit go, and did the soul linger under the colorless skin? Did it cling to his bones? Was his mind here or in some other place?—or the other place?
Tale Told 