Vampire’s Revenge

BY DR. AGONSON

A man sat outside begging, his unwashed stench sometimes wafting in with the summer breeze through the open window. He sat holding a little tin cup in one hand, stretching it out as passersby passed by. Some, seeing him, with worried looks crossed the street, avoiding the threat of contracting his company, but most ignored the impertinent soul. No one paid much mind to beggars.

The smell of the man arose, the proverbial fly in the otherwise ideal ointment of a summer evening. The sun had finally descended past the horizon, but still the rolling waves of its warmth filled the streets. Night did little to offset the oppressive heat; no cool breeze flowed in as the darkness settled over the city. But, a servant of that darkness, a vampire, awoke.

Through the paralyzed half-awake daylit hours, he had been hounded by the visions of a rotting corpse. Recognizing the smell which had, in his sleep, foreshadowed this revenant’s vengeful appearance, he sought some cruel reprisal of his own against the beggar outside. Gazing down from his window, the vampire studied the transient.

His clothing was a quilt-work of odd patches, a worn out suit that had once belonged to a gentleman. By the dirt and grime, the vampire wondered if a gentleman had not worn it after all, worn it and been buried in it, and if this tramp had not taken up with the resurrection men to get it. Crowning him were the sad remains of a crushed top hat, something which, in its prime, might have adorned the head of a ballet attendant; what was once meant for honor was here rubbish tossed into the street.

The wind picked up, and a less than refreshing blast of air refreshed the vampire, his planned vengeance of sucking this man’s blood made moot as he failed to even stifle his gagging from this distance. Some other course would needs be sought. Wanting free of the growing stench, and finding his mind too muddled to think without a bite of the evening’s offerings, the vampire leapt from the window, his transmutable body liquefying, reshaping, and finally gliding through the air in the clichéd form of a bat.

The forthcoming supper provided the vampire a moment of clear thought away from the smell. Alone in the room of his latest victim, he sat upon the bedside gently running his finger along the defined jawline of the young girl. A foolish creature who, even at the threats and warnings of her doctor and parents, opened her window to gaze upon the lit city through her restless nights. She lay there, lovely and pale, pale as he, her face finally at ease now that she had passed.

It always touched him, the last visit. At the beginning he’d find them, he knew not how, but boys or girls, old men or children, he found their pining souls dying alone. Their longings were like beacons, lighthouses, guiding him to their harbor. She loved her baby brother, had played his nurse, and was ultimately helpless when his little lungs finally failed. He could hear it in her dreams, the haunting sound of those little breaths struggling for life, and so he eased away her pain. Now the hurt was all gone; it only took five nights.

He would leave the window open; she would like that. Rising, he spared one final glance at the corpse. Be free, he thought, and falling backwards reentered the night, gliding upon Nyx’ familiar winds. Full, his flight home sluggish, he sailed over the city’s enchanting play of light and dark. The lulling scene moving him into a meditative mood, his mind wandered into the dredged up memories of his diurnal visions. That corpse from his dream he knew. Von Ham . . . Hamburger? Houdini? Von something or other.

Even after ten years he felt the hairs upon his bat’s body standing up at the thought of Von Humbug. Hamilton? Hosea? Was it an ‘H’ or not? Suddenly veering a hundred and eighty degrees, he changed course, his wings beating the air and driving him toward the countryside. As the dense interconnected apartments and mansion estates gave way to the sparse huts and their flowing fields of grain and luscious spreading vineyards, he saw his shadow upon the ground cast in the brilliant glow of the moon.

Darting through a field, it glided out over the still waters of a lake, a black mark passing through the illuminated reflections of heaven.

With a sigh, he contracted his wings, sending himself plummeting like a dart toward the gentle waves below. Studying the ever approaching lake, his eyes, in a thoughtless moment, searched for his reflection. With a laugh, he reminded himself in those last few inches before hitting the incompressible fluid, I have no reflection. Striking the water, his body exploded, the little bits disintegrating into smaller and smaller fragments, until, hovering over the famers’ reservoir, the curling wisps of a miasma form.

Floating through the air in this gaseous manner, he slowly approached the old vicarage. He’d find the name. In this more spiritual form, he wafted over the earth, not touching the sacred ground, filling the graveyard as a dense fog. It wasn’t hard to find. The grave had been exhumed, an open sore in the soft earth. The stone read clearly, Von Hyssop—so it was an H—but it was false advertising. “Here lies,” it read. The earth was dug up, and there was no one there.

There was, however, a stench. A terrible odor emanated from the pit. Even as a gas, he could smell it. The fog rose into heaven, drifting over the moon. There condensing, darkening, the cloud became a pinprick, a small bat. The vampire flew to his home, wondering at the meaning of all this.

As he flew through his window, the smell assaulted him again. Hovering in his apartment, he slowly reformed, the figure of the bat stretching and contorting until he again stood there, a man, or at least shaped like one. The odor was everywhere, suffocating. It’s that bum, he thought to himself, that beggar. Stalking toward the window, he looked out over the street: There was no one there. The dirty little man had left, but the smell, the stench, remained.

He stood there a moment, his hard eyes surveying the deserted cobblestones. “No one,” he whispered. The sorrows of the city came to him like a distant melody; he could hear the longing, unspoken cries of anguished hearts. They were the ones who would open their windows to him, he knew. He closed his, but the odor overpowered him. Throwing them open again, he let the warm night air hit his face.

“Stinks, doesn’t it?” an all too familiar voice observed.

“Von,” he said, turning around. “Looking well.” The comment was not altogether true. The beggar stood; his crushed hat held in front of his face.

“Am I?” the guest replied, lowering his hat. The face was mostly gone, but maggots still housed themselves in the pockets of flesh which remained, their squirming white bodies at times nuzzling through and falling onto the floor. The eyes were gone, replaced by dark shadows.

“Looking . . . well, looking a little less dead than I’d hoped.”

“More dead than I hoped.”

“I didn’t think you went in for black magic sort of stuff.”

“I don’t.”

“Then, pardon me, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Got a drink?” the corpse inquired.

The vampire frowned, staring at the erstwhile hunter. Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “What do you think?”

Producing a flask, the revenant replied, “Don’t keep much company, do you?” Popping the lid, he threw his head back, pouring a dusty ash down his throat, a powdery substance which could be seen escaping the gaping holes in his flesh. After the flask was spent, the dead man sighed, and wiping his—he didn’t have lips—teeth, turned his shriveled face back toward his host. “They buried me with that,” he explained, little puffs of his ashen drink escaping his mouth like clouds.

“Seems to have gone bad.”

“Like the rest of me.”

“What are you doing here?”

The dead man laughed. “You only come to the houses you’re invited to—can only come, I should say. You listen to their calls, and you come. I’m afraid the rules are a little similar for me.”

“I didn’t invite you—” the vampire began.

“No?” the revenant interjected. “But I came. I came because I heard a call. My soul lay uneasily in my grave, especially knowing that you had escaped me. Then a voice said, ‘Get up,’ and I got up. Do you know who called me?”

The vampire shook his head.

“Neither do I, but I was called. Why the living can’t take care of their own problems is beyond me, but if the dead are the problem, maybe the dead are the solution.”

“I,” the vampire insisted, “reject that parallel. You’re disgusting, more so now than you ever were. I am an aristocrat; I rule this land; it belongs to me.”

“I’ve been to the realm of the dead, seen the registry. There’s many names on it, like yours, who have compounded their sins long after the lease as expired on their life or their kingdom. You’re right, there is a chasm between thee and me, and on your side, there is an eternal fire.”

“You hardly look like you’ve been to heaven.”

Chuckling, the former Von Hyssop replied, “On my way, mate, crawling through worms. But where is the way for you?”

“You couldn’t stop me when you were a man. What are you going to do now, stink me to death?”

“I’ve already done what I can on this earth, and what more I do I do as another’s agent. I’m not operating on my own authority or power.”

“I’m to be hounded by geists and their stench just to hear the impotent boasting of heaven?”

“My message is of fire,” spoke the decayed figure. “Do you remember how I died?”

“Humph,” the vampire replied. “I ought to. It was one of my more creative efforts.”

“There are creative people in the next world too. I look forward to introducing you.”

“Go to hell.”

“Hell’s always close by,” the dusty corpse replied. He wandered toward the open window, “For instance,” and touching the frame, the portal was transformed, and the scene of that sleepy city was suddenly exchanged for some Boschian terror. The image was one of consumption, of an infinite feeding, the pattern of the ouroboros expanded in immeasurable degrees.

Great, monstrous mouths swallowed up the fleeing souls of the damned, and in the deeper darkness of those dreadful bellies, new mouths waited. The vampire saw the half-digested remains of a criminal recently hanged, his body melting away into the flesh of some froglike demon.

“I don’t know,” the vampire gulped, “what you’re trying to prove.”

“I don’t have to prove anything,” the corpse replied. “You can believe or disbelieve what you will. Hell doesn’t care.”

“Hell isn’t real,” the vampire protested.

“Neither are you nor I, far as most folks are concerned. We’re just fables, stories to scare children. But we exist, and we come when we’re called. And I was called here.”

“Not by me!”

“Then by who? Whose dreams did I hear coming out that window as I waited in the streets?” He pulled his hand away, and the nightmare was gone. The quiet city stood glowing in the night, but the vampire’s eyes remained fixed upon the window as if still studying that devilish scene. “Perhaps some part of you remembers what you were. I remember.”

The vampire turned away from the rotting face.

“I remember,” repeated the corpse. “You loved beauty. It was all you lived for. You were too afraid to give it up, to give up the beauty you knew for something more.”

“More?” he spat with a sneer.

“Look,” was the answer.

Trembling, the vampire found himself turning until he again faced the window. The corpse’s hand touched the frame once again, and a bright, overpowering light streamed in. The vampire was blinded in a second, but in that second he had seen marvels indescribable. He fell to his knees, clutching at his ears as a great and awesome song filled his mind with rapturous pain, filled and over filled, like some balloon about to burst. He felt his flesh disintegrating, and he cried out in one piteous moan. Darkness filled the room.

He wasn’t sure if it was moments or hours later, he wasn’t sure of anything. Crawling to his feet, he blinked until the world resolved itself into discernable shapes. The corpse was gone. The vampire looked all about his chamber. He was alone. Trembling he approached the window. There in the street below sat the beggar.

Leaping from his window, the vampire landed beside the transient. The smell was awful, but not so awful as what had been in his room. With a kick, he woke the dirty man.

“Hellfire and damn you!”

It was a man, the face red with drink. The vampire looked down at this creature, studying him for any sign of a connection, for any evidence of a façade. He seemed real enough, whatever else.

“Move along,” he was about to say, but the words caught in his throat as the music of heaven rebounded in his mind like a migraine blurring his vision. Clutching his temples, the vampire stooped and groaned.

As the vampire tried to focus his eyes, the voice of Von Hyssop came softly in his ear:

“There is one more thing I must show you.”

A hand took his arm. Stumbling, he felt himself led down the sidewalk. The heat of a new day was building in the air, but the hand would not let him go, would not let him flee to the shadowed safety of his room.

“Look,” the voice commanded.

The vampire found that he could look. His eyes focused in on the image. He was face to face with another corpse whose long white hair seemed to be made from the whisps of cobwebs. The skin was all there, pulled tight like leather around the bone. It was white as the hair. The eyes were bloodshot, colorless, cruel, evil; the vampire hated the eyes gazing at him.

“Who’s this?” he asked, but in asking, he knew. He watched the face’s mouth move as his moved.

“This is what you are. Ugly, despicable, a ruin of a man.”

The iron grip around his arm let go.

“The sun will rise soon,” proclaimed the corpse of Von Hyssop. “You can either meet it or flee, but if you truly wanted beauty, if there is anything left in you of the man you were, come and see.”