The trip to England gave me a stronger sense of purpose when I returned to America and from then on, I focused all my energies on amassing a great deal of wealth. I now had two families to care for, Luna’s and my own. So I acquired land all over America and in England, not necessarily by honest means. I also established businesses, managed for me by others. Mama advised me greatly in these matters, her intuition over which ventures I should pursue proving to be right time and again. I soon became an extremely wealthy man and provided for Luna and my own family when needed. I also gave generously to abolitionist movements, hoping I would live to see the evil of slavery, which had destroyed so many, come to an end.
So life went on around me and I continued to walk among men.
I tried to forget Luna, and time was supposed to be the great healer, but instead of decreasing the anguish I felt at losing her, the pain deepened as the years wore on. There were other women during those years, but many did not last more than a few months. Perhaps my interest could be captured by beauty, or a seemingly quick mind, but no one could compare to Luna, and I quickly lost interest. Luna was simply unique. There was no one who could ever replace her, so I continued to yearn for her and all I had given up.
In those years my friendship with Mama Akosua deepened. I discovered her refusal to be freed had nothing to do with ill feeling toward me. She had merely not wanted to leave Ebenezer, a little boy on the plantation who had become like a son to her. But she was eventually freed and I had a small house built for her not that far from Luna’s home.
Every Wednesday I arrived at her home and the front door was always left open for me.
“Good evening, Mama Akosua,” I said when I entered.
“Wɔfa Avery, what have I said to you about calling me Mama?” This was an argument we’d had on many occasions. “How can you address someone who is younger than you as Mama? In my culture we must show our elders respect at all times. How can I let you call me Mama?”
“Mama,” I insisted. “Your wisdom has earned you the term. It would not be right for me to call you anything but Mama Akosua.”
She grumbled and scolded, but could not get me to stop calling her Mama. But I sensed it pleased her somehow.
She told me everything there was to tell about herself and Luna, and she no longer bothered to keep her thoughts hidden from me, although I kept her mind shielded from mine as a matter of respect. But occasionally, something slipped through as it did one night when we were playing Awore, a game from her native land.
It had been my turn to play, but I stopped and glanced up at her in consternation.
“What happened?” I asked.
She looked up, puzzled for a few seconds, before she realised what I was referring to.
“Ah, Wɔfa Avery. It is only now you realise Luna is angry with me? I thought you had seen that long before now.”
“But it has been years. What could cause her to be angry with you for so long?”
“She knows you come and sit with me. She feels betrayed.”
I leaned back in my seat, deeply worried. “But does she not know that—”
She waved my words away. “Wɔfa Avery, that is the least of my worries when it comes to Luna. I had always believed the powers of our ancestors were lost when it came to Luna, but I am beginning to see I was wrong. She is an incredibly powerful witch, much more so than I am.”
“Go on.”
“You remember something blocked me when I tried to find you. I believe it was Luna.”
“But she would have told me this.”
“That is the frightening thing. I do not think she is aware of what it is she has done. You see why I am worried?”
I nodded.
“The power she has is such that has never been heard of among my people. It is dangerous for someone to have that kind of power, so much so if they use it without even being aware of it.”
“I see. So what should we do?”
“If there is anything that can be done, I do not know of it.”
We lapsed into silence again. She had successfully steered the conversation away from their disagreement, but it worried me.
Although living without Luna was like living with an incurable wound, I was relatively content during those days. But the grim spectre of death had begun to stalk my waking moments. It first reared its head with Julia. She had been with me for many years now and I treated the horse almost as if it were a child that was to be pampered and indulged every moment of her life. But I still could not keep her with me. Time had begun to prey on Julia and old age soon laid claim to her.
One morning, I went down to the stables to check on her, as I did every morning before I retired for the day and found she could not stand. She had been suffering with pain for some time now and I numbed her mind to it. But seeing her crippled like this made me face the inevitable. She was going to be taken from me and there was not much I could do about it, unless I chose to curse the horse by turning it into an abomination. I knelt down and stroked her. She laid her head against me in a gesture of surrender and weariness that tore at my heart. Tears filled my eyes as I rose to my feet. There was only one course of action I could take. I went back to the mansion to get what I would need before I lost courage.
I took Julia with me into the ether. We materialised in the grasslands where I found her all those years ago. It was deserted, the sky a grey wasteland. She merely watched me steadily, as if she knew what it was I meant to do. When I pulled out the gun and aimed it at her head, she closed her eyes and brought her head down to the ground. My hand shook and I had to take a few moments to steady it. I pulled the trigger as tears blurred the scene before my eyes.
I wept as I buried her under the empty sky. I remained by the grave long after dawn drifted into morning. Then I went home. Anxiety gripped me along with my grief and I was not able to sleep that day. As the weeks wore on, it diminished, but did not leave me entirely.
It remained like an ominous shadow as the years continued to march on and I watched Mama Akosua age, the lines on her face deepening, her movements marked by the rigors of age as her body deferred to it. She had become a rock over the years and her wisdom had been invaluable to me. I did not know what would become of me once she, and then Luna, left this Earth and I would be alone once more.
One night, I arrived at Mama Akosua’s home as usual on a Wednesday night and found it empty. I was immediately uneasy, for it was not like Mama to be away from home for long in case someone should come calling in need of her aid. I sat outside, debating whether or not to somehow alert Luna to her disappearance, when I felt something. It was very faint, nothing more than an impression, like the remembrance of a taste of something on your lips. But it had been there and I was sure it was Mama. Uncertain of what I should do, or where I was supposed to go, I threw myself into the woodland. Only guessing at where I would find her, I headed for the only thing I knew of that was more powerful than Mama.
The chapel loomed before me, the night time shadows, rather than diminishing it, seeming to enhance its menacing aura with every slash of moonlight across its beaten form. Even now, after so many years, I hesitated to approach it, but I knew Mama was there, I could hear her faint heartbeat and her breathing, which was incredibly slow and shallow. That made me push past my fear. I hurtled myself through space and appeared in the chapel.
The sound of my feet against the ancient floorboards sounded like thunder in the unnatural stillness. Lying at the back, halfway through the secret trapdoor, was Mama. I was at her side in an instant. It appeared as if she had crawled up the stairs before collapsing and I smelt blood, though I was not sure where she was bleeding.
What on earth was she doing here?
I clasped her hand, too scared to pick her up, and drew her with me into the ether. We were outside moments later, the air no longer cloying, the unearthly chill no longer seeming to pervade my every pore. I saw now that the bleeding was coming from her nose and mouth and her chest was stained with blood, but there was no evidence of a wound. Her right arm was lying at an odd angle, no doubt broken. Anger surged through me at what the entity—and there was no doubt in my mind that the spirit in the chapel was responsible for this—had done to her.
For a moment, my mind grew completely blank and I couldn’t speak, battling my fear at the thought that she would die and I would lose my dear friend and confidant. There was only one course of action left to me, and although she would probably never forgive me for this, I could not let Mama be taken from me.
So I drew my nail against my wrist and held it to her lips, forcing her to drink. When I pulled my wrist away, my fear and terror increased, because nothing happened. Although her heartbeat seemed to grow even, her breathing stayed the same.
“Oh, Mama.”
I picked her up and moved into the ether, taking her away from the hateful presence of the chapel and to her home, where I lay her in bed.
My blood appeared to have had no effect on her, so I was going to have to watch her die. I pulled up a chair and sat down by the bed with her hand in mine. Placing my head against the bed, I wept.
I stayed with her for the rest of the night and an hour after the sun had risen, I was still at her bedside, holding tightly on to her hand and listening to her heartbeat and shallow breathing, praying to God to not take her from me. That is when I felt the fragile, thin hand in mine squeeze my fingers. I looked up. She was awake and staring at me through half-closed lids, a weak smile on her lips.
“Mama?”
“You came.”
I nodded. “But I barely heard you. What were you doing there, Mama?”
“Trying to right a wrong. But it was too strong for me.”
It was all she would say and her mind was closed to me as she looked off into the distance, lost in her thoughts.
“Help me get up,” she said after a few moments. “I have to go back. I have to finish—”
“No!” It was a shout in the small room. “No,” I said again less forcefully this time. “You’re too weak. I...I had to give you my blood. I am sorry,” I added quickly, expecting anger at this trespass. “But I do not think you would have lived if I had not.”
She stared carefully at me for a few moments. “Help me up,” she said again.
I reached over and helped her to her feet. Although her right arm was no longer twisted, it still seemed to hang stiffly.
“Your arm is still not healed.”
“No,” she said, glancing at it absently. “It will not let it heal, to serve as a reminder to me to never enter the chapel again. But I have to go back.”
“Mama, I cannot let you leave here.”
She glanced at me again, the same way she had only a moment ago, and then she seated herself on the bed and gestured for me to sit also.
“Wɔfa Avery. What you fear, what you have feared for so long now, you cannot stop it. For someone who will never see an end to the days that stretch before him, you must know that death is not to be feared. It is a release. It is not to be feared.” She placed her hand on my shoulder.
“I know that, Mama. I know that.”
“You are like a son to me in so many ways. I will always be with you, in some way, so do not think I will ever abandon you, or Luna. It is why you have to let me go back. I have too many wrongs to right. I cannot let that spirit grow. It has tasted my blood now so it will haunt us all if I do not banish it.”
“You have to rest, Mama. Please.”
She nodded and let me push her back against the bed. She was fast asleep a short time later. She slept for most of that day, waking for short moments. It was a week before she was well enough for me to be able to leave her side and return to the mansion. But she appeared extremely troubled as she stood at the front door watching me, and she made sure her thoughts were carefully hidden from me.
“Thank you, Wɔfa Avery. You have never let us down. I promise I will find a way to return what I took from you.”
I was not sure of exactly what she meant, but I was just relieved she had recovered and I would have a few more years with her.
***
I thought I would be ready when she finally left this world and that I would have time to say goodbye, as I’d had with Philip. But it was not to be so. She left suddenly, and it was nearly a week after when I arrived for my weekly visit that I discovered she was no longer on this Earth.
The home, which had always been open to me, was empty, all her furniture cleared away. The shock was like a strong gust of wind that blew against me when I entered her home, and I had to grasp the door to steady myself. The night was young but I did not want to see the world. Did not want to embrace the pain. The loss cut to my very soul, the core of my existence as a vampire. This life would always be one of death. I no longer meted out death, but it found me anyway.
With desolation creeping into my being, I ran, actually ran away from her home, seeking the darkness and silence of the woods. Once there, I went to ground as had been my way before Luna, and the humanity she helped awaken in me. This night there appeared to be nothing left for me in the world. Only Luna. And before long, a day like this would come when death would claim her too. Then I would be completely alone.
I fell into a grief-stricken sleep. As the sun began to rise and a dull ache crept into my bones, I began to dream.
I was with Mama in her home. It was the night I returned from my trip to England. She reached over and placed her hands over mine, sorrow marking her features.
“This is the same promise I made to Luna,” she said in the dream, the grip on my hands much stronger than it had been that night. “You will always have my devotion. Whether it is in life or death, it will always be yours.”
I was awake.
It was real, there was no denying that. Her death had left a huge void that couldn’t be filled. I already felt adrift, anchorless now my weekly visits with her had been taken away. But she would never completely leave me as she had promised.
I repeated those words, a mantra to ward off the evil of grief. She would never leave me, there was comfort in that. I dreaded the day Luna would disappear from the Earth, but that would not come for many years. I could go on. I could continue to watch over her, her descendants, and my family in England. I could go on.