Nanowrimo - 10

Looking around the house I frame the disarray in a whole new mindset. The furniture and possessions thrown around the room, holes punched in walls, it’s all the mark of a once-born high on freshly consumed life blood. Dammit! I had sensed another one drawing nearer. I should have started taking precautions. But, I’ve never encountered another on of us and had it go so badly. “Mummy…” Could it be?

Skeptical, the sergeant at the scene orders the body lifted. “The blood pools underneath the body if the wounds were inflicted while it was lying down. Those fang marks are some stupid prank! Vampires! Of all the god damned stupid things you’re talking like a bunch of school girls! But BE CAREFUL! Don’t destroy the evidence! Gently! I’m only letting you do this so you shut up!”

He’s trying to bring some calm to a room where the faces of his most hardened officers have turned to paper white. These tough guys think they’ve seen everything after a few traffic accidents and domestic disputes. “You lot haven’t seen anything until you’ve lived in a culture without a television in every house to pacify the mob.” I think to myself.

Two rubber gloved officers lift Jones body ever so slightly in pursuit of said pool of absent blood. Idiots. Jones is a skinny man, his body would never be large enough to conceal 3 liters of liquid. And with those wounds this room should be spattered and red.

“Sir there’s no blood underneath him!” They drop the corpse and leap back.

“Dammit! Be careful!” He bellows, wiping the sweat from his head. “Dammit!”

As much as I don’t believe in doing this, I start to perform the task I was called here to do. I open my Bible to the spot in the New Testament where Jesus casts a legion of devils out of a man. I close the book, repeating those words out loud. I then walk from room to room sprinkling my (supposedly) holy water and saying a blessing, finally rubbing the water all about the entire frame of the back door, the smashed in point of entry for the murderer. Some of the officers come up to me, asking to be anointed so that the evil spirits don’t catch them, too. I do. I bless them. And then I tell them to make sure they are never alone.

“Jones didn’t have anyone here with him. He was an easy target for whatever or whoever did this. Stay together.”

The sergeant corners me asking “Do you REALLY think that this was really done by some demon-crazed monster? Some vampire?”

“I don’t know. But I do know that history is littered with tales of secluded townships gone mad with fear. Whatever nut did this we have to make sure that fear doesn’t keep the rest of us from doing the same to each other. If people feel safer and closer to each other with holy water and exorcisms, then that’s what I’ll do. They’re less likely to feel afraid if they are in a group. Look at Mr. Jones circumstances, old, alone, feeble. For their own mental safety we must make sure people take steps to see that their lives look nothing like his.”

“I’ve got enough on my hands investigating this! I can’t run around holding everyone’s hands so they don’t get scared of the dark!”

“How many monsters do you want to have on your hands? Fear is that powerful.” I turn to leave and pause in the kitchen. This is one area of the house not crawling with police. The blue ceramic plate upon which I served his dinner on is smashed on the floor, chicken bones scattered about it. Thanks to the window left ajar, a chill runs through the place.

The window. I look up at it, I look over to the smashed in back door, then back to the window. I replay my memory of the corax. Did Jones, ever loving soul that he was, open the window to talk to that bird and welcome in his own killer? Did that clever raven pick the latch?

“I thought you’d left.” The sergeant says from behind me.

“This window is open.”

“So it is.”

“Why would a skinny old man who can’t pay his heating bills and who always wore long underwear, flannels and coats to stay warm, even while indoors, during the winter – leave a window open in February?” He just frowns at me. “Listen, I was here this afternoon, I left about 2 pm. Before I left I emptied that garbage can because it was brimming over with empty, dirty soup cans. After I was done I washed my hands at that sink, right by that window. And that window was closed up tight.”

“That window is eight feet off the ground outside and it’s small!”

“This window is how the killer got in, not your back door. That pile of matchsticks is just plain theater. I can feel it.” I step closer to him, hoping to make a dent in his ridiculous ‘hard boiled cop’ persona. “In my line of work I come in contact with a fair amount of criminals. It’s part of my job. I’ve been into prisons to talk to killers on death row and some of their escapades do near the humanly impossible. I’m telling you that in my gut I know this window is where the crime started.”

“I see a lot of criminals in my line of work, too.” His head rocks back in a skeptical gesture reminiscent of ‘the Lone Wolf’. Except this wolf is more of, well, a pig.

“Check the area.” He tells another officer. “Thank you Miss Durat, excuse me, Reverend Durat, we’ll call you if we need any further testimony.” He delivers this with a ‘you can leave now’ in his voice. He doesn’t like someone meddling in his investigation. He doesn’t like exorcism or advice. And I’m probably his number one suspect, to boot.

As I step gingerly around the house. Avoiding wreckage to exit the scene I hear the officer in the kitchen exclaim “Morton, there’s drops of blood on the floor.”

Oh but something tells me that this is not where the crime started at all. Not really.

“You must go now, something comes for you. Something evil.” Fr. Agnoletti, a once born living as a monk, makes this breathless announcement, slamming the wooden door of his hovel behind him. His chubby frame heaves with his attempts to catch a breath. “I was just crossing the fields, returning from the abbey and these great, black birds came upon me. Chased me on the ground they did and flew down real close to me, like so!” He mimics a winged creature flying in close proximity to his skull.

“Perhaps they could smell some bread in your pockets?” I venture an explanation. I’ve escaped France, Napoleonic wars and revolutionary insanity for Campania and only just recovered some health and feeling of normal.

“I have no bread! This is terrible! Dios mio this could draw attention to me and I can’t have that. I have a good life in this abbey, nice and quiet. I keep to myself and study and I like it here. These birds, whatever they bring I could end up on a pike! I tell you these are not normal birds. Someone is looking for you and I don’t have the strength to fight off whoever it is! Go! You must go!”

“Where am I supposed to go to now? Everywhere I go there is war.”

“The war will be here soon enough, too! You go to Napoli and get you onto a ship. Go wherever it take you. Maybe across the ocean to New Spain. Go!”

And so I fled again. Always I seemed to be running from something. In Naples I found a ship to Portugal, which seems to be leading me back into Napoleon’s jaws. Damn that little man! I find a ship heading across the ocean. The urge to feed is unstoppable whilst in transport and I dispatch of some rope monkeys. It’s dangerous to do in such confined quarters. There’s nowhere to run. I cannot drink of the lifeblood in safety at all but the cravings are uncontrollable. I make a bit of a spectacle, a woman traveling across the ocean alone. Every other passenger comes with a huddle of children and clutching spouse attached. The decks are packed as few ships make the trip now. Another factor for which we can all thank Napoleon. Many passengers have sold their entire world’s possessions to afford the journey. I had to employ a great amount of my remaining gold jewelry plus what Zoltan had gifted me to afford passage and food for the journey.

For weeks we float about over the turbulent sea, unfathomable is the blue deep spreading for as far as the eye can behold. Finally, to the west a thin strip of land appears along the horizon. Everyone, from passenger to ship mate, pushes to the edge of the vessel in anticipation. At long last we set land in Baltimore. We pull into a harbor bright with a haze filling the air, giving one the strange sense that we have landed in a city of light. Baltimore is a port city, but its size more nearly resembles that of a town. Most intoxicating is the air. I breathe and the scent of many trees, each contributing its perfume to the wind as it flows over land, greets my grateful senses. The streets are far from the cramped affairs of Europe with their fetid odors and gutters of filth. Instead I have the sense that I stand on the edge of a land vast, wild and ripe with possibility. At long last there is someplace to go unpremeditated by the confines of church and empire.

I thought of the ship I had just disembarked. More will come, filling this land with their families and bodies. I had to go into it, take it in and taste it before it was gone entirely. Finally, perhaps, fate had handed me a chance to be truly free.