A vampire, dear God, it’s a vampire. Ardeth put her head down against the dirty blanket and tried to think clearly. Abandoned in the cell, dizzy from blood loss and shock, she had crawled onto the cot against the wall and kept her eyes resolutely from the presence in the next cell. She had not as much luck keeping her mind from it as well. It’s not a vampire, her rationality said. It’s a lunatic who thinks he’s a vampire.
Vampires do not exist, except as metaphors. The voice of the professor in her undergraduate Victorian fiction course echoed in her ears. She remembered regurgitating the phrases for a subsequent exam: “Vampires represented the repressed libido breaking out to wreak havoc, causing both death and unfettered sexuality.” She had no dreams of darkly handsome midnight loves (are you sure? very sure? the little voice asked) though she remembered passing a movie poster and Sara’s laughing voice saying that the spiky-haired lead “lost boy” could bite her neck any time he wanted.
We all say things like that, she thought suddenly, because we know it can’t come true. Because it’s just a projection of our own subconscious minds. Because there are no such things as vampires.
But metaphors did not cast shadows or leave darkening bruises on the veins of your inner arm.
And human lunatics did not have teeth that could pierce skin without tearing it or eyes that refracted red.
So she was back where she started, trapped between the impossible and the inconceivable.
Her mind gave up then, unable to organize chaos or to categorize all the levels of her fear. She closed her eyes and let the dark shadows hovering all around take her in.
She drifted back into wakefulness much later, blinking into the dim light that glowed in the centre of the room. She had just begun to wonder where she was when a movement to her left caught her eye.
The vampire was standing in the centre of his cell, staring up at the door to the cellar. As Ardeth’s drowsy, disoriented mind tried to explain him to itself, he flung back his head and closed his eyes, mouth opening in a long, soundless howl.
This is a dream, Ardeth thought vaguely. I’m sure that in the dream this all makes perfect sense. Then she went back to sleep.
When she woke up again, there was no denying reality. Her stomach was cramped in hunger, her bladder aching, and the arm that had twisted under her while she slept was numb.
She sat up slowly, shifting her shoulders to ease the stiffness from her neck. What time was it? she wondered, peering at her watch. Sometime during the abuse of the previous night, the hour hand had snapped off. It was twenty past something. It must be after noon or else she wouldn’t be so hungry.
The thought of hunger reminded her of the silent presence in the cell next to hers. Carefully, she glanced to her left. That’s funny, she thought absurdly, I always thought they were supposed to sleep in their coffins, flat on their backs, with their hands crossed. The vampire (may as well call him that, she told herself, it doesn’t mean you believe it) was sleeping on the cot, face to the wall, half-curled into a fetal crouch.
She stood up carefully, keeping a wary eye on the sleeping figure. The leg-iron she could see circling one ankle did not reassure her at all. She knew that the chain was long enough to allow him to reach the edge of her cell. Her legs felt heavy and stiff and she stood still for a few moments before braving a step forward. Her knees did not give out and the vampire did not stir. Ardeth walked to the edge of her cell and looked around her prison.
The walls and floors were of unevenly cut stone and it looked, in the light of the one bare bulb that hung from the ceiling, as if both had once been whitewashed. Now there were only cracks of white tracing their way through the greyness and the dirt. On the wall behind the cot where the vampire lay, she thought she saw the suggestion of dark stains. They looked old; she hoped they were.
The stairs were not quite as treacherous as they had felt last night but there was no railing. In the alcove beneath then, she could see the vague bulk of machinery and furniture, some covered in cloth as well as shadows.
There were eight cells, five in her row, three on the other wall, starting just past the alcove. All but hers and the one beside it were empty. There were no mattresses on the bare metal cots bolted to the walls.
What was this place? Ardeth wondered. An abandoned prison perhaps, someplace outside the city. She inspected the lock on the door. It was new, the metal shining mockingly against the rusted bars.
She turned to lean against the door and stare back into her cell. There was a covered plastic pail and a roll of toilet paper under the cot. Curiously, she crossed the cell and crouched to pull them out. She lifted the lid of the pail carefully. It was empty but the unmistakable odour of urine emanated from inside.
Wonderful, Ardeth thought, I haven’t used a chamber pot since I was three, at Grandpa’s farm. She stared at the roll of paper for a moment. The last sheet had been pulled off unevenly and the remaining edge was ragged.
She didn’t think Wilkens or Roias had brought the pail and paper with them, so it must have been under the cot already. It had obviously been used more than once as a chamber pot. Which meant that she was not the first person to be kept in this cell. Someone else had been imprisoned here, someone else who had probably had her (she knew, somehow, that it was a woman) arm thrust through the bars to let the vampire feed. Someone who wasn’t here any longer.
Shaking suddenly, Ardeth thrust the pail and paper back to their resting place and scrambled onto the cot. She pulled her knees in tight to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs and wished desperately that she could just faint again. She settled for the momentary release of tears.
She was still sitting there, though dry-eyed, when the door at the top of the stairs opened. Wilkens appeared at the top, and as he descended the stairway, Ardeth realized that he was carrying a tray. “If you want to eat, get over here,” he snapped, stopping outside her cell. Ardeth got to her feet and walked carefully to the door, watching him uneasily.
Wilkens thrust the tray through the horizontal slot in the bars and she barely had time to grab it before he let go, backing away. As he turned, Ardeth opened her mouth. But she had no idea what to say, so she let him go.
The door upstairs slammed behind him, and she thought she could hear the snap of locks closing.
Retreating to her bed, she examined the tray. At least, for now, I won’t starve, she thought ruefully, surveying the ham sandwich and jug of water on the tray. Her stomach cramped and complained, but she ate as slowly as she could, not trusting that her captors’ largesse would continue.
When she finished, she knew she could no longer ignore the ache in her bladder. Ardeth glanced towards the next cell. The vampire had not moved. At least it . . . he . . . is a sound sleeper, she tried to console herself. Of course, he’ll probably wake up at the most inopportune moment.
Still, there was no way around it. It was an awkward process, but she managed. The vampire stayed asleep.
In fact, he stayed asleep the whole of the longest day of Ardeth’s life. It became evident quickly, once she had eaten, and explored her surroundings, that there was nothing to do in the cell. For a while she found herself glancing compulsively at her watch every few minutes. But, with no hour hand to mark the passage from one hour to the next, she seemed to be trapped in an endless cycle of repeating minutes. She also found herself subject to crying fits or attacks of panic that sent her stumbling to the cell door to clutch and tug at the bars, as if the lock might have somehow answered her silent pleas and unlocked itself in the time since her last futile attempt. She paced the short diagonal length of the cell, tried to sleep, desperately attempting to hold off the soul-curdling fear that she could feel prowling around the edges of her mind. She thought more than once that she might willingly put her arm into the next cell, if only someone would bring her a book to read.
When her watch read ten-to-something, Wilkens reappeared with another tray. He retrieved the old one in silence and again, she did not dare to try to talk to him.
He paused at the vampire’s cell. “The sun’s down, monster, so I know you’re awake. Time to get up. We’ve got work for you to do soon.”
The vampire turned and sat up slowly. He focused on Wilkens for a moment, then his eyes shifted to Ardeth. She froze, clenching the tray between trembling fingers. Then the dead gaze dropped to stare, unblinking, at the floor.
“Jesus,” Wilkens muttered and stamped up the stairs. Ardeth withdrew to the farthest corner of the cot and ate her dinner, barely tasting the tinned spaghetti and packaged cake desert. When she finished, she set the tray down slowly, and huddled back against the wall.
If you keep still, stay quiet, maybe he won’t notice you, she thought desperately. She dreaded the weight of his gaze, the memory of the avid hunger she’d seen there the night before. Still, she couldn’t help the careful glances she stole at him. He held a dreadful fascination for her, like the perverse human desire to stare at death that manifested itself at traffic accidents.
He was not as inhuman as he had appeared the night before. The face that seemed like a skull was, in profile, rather fine, with pale, translucent skin stretched over arched, Slavic cheekbones, a straight nose, and a narrow jaw unshadowed by beard. His hair was long over his neck, ears and brow and was an odd shade of grey that was not the colour of age, or perhaps of age so great it was beyond reckoning. He was wearing a white shirt and dark pants, but the fabric of both was fraying and decayed. His feet were bare but he did not seem to be bothered by the cold stone beneath them.
The vampire shifted a little, head coming up, and Ardeth hastily looked away, fearful of being caught by the hot gaze, transfixed like a rabbit before a snake. She closed her eyes and willed herself not to look at him again.
For a moment, she was almost relieved when the door opened and Roias bounded down the stars. His entrance at least broke the empty stillness and interrupted her aching awareness of the thing she was trying to ignore. Then she saw the anticipation in his sudden grin and her stomach churned, as the fear edged hungrily closer.
“Come on, Alexander,” he called. “Time for the show.”