We close our week of short stories
with this piece by writer and film historian, Jim Nemeth. In 1993, Nemeth won 1st Prize in a national
magazine’s short story writing contest for which novelists Ray Bradbury and
Robert Bloch were judges; his piece was subsequently published in a special
issue. Winning held special meaning for Nemeth, as Robert Bloch remains his
favorite writer and main literary influence. Nemeth has had articles and
reviews printed in a variety of magazines, including Filmfax and Mad About Movies.
He is currently co-writing a book that will examine the literary origins of
numerous classic fantasy films.
Nemeth works as a business analyst/technical
writer in the biotechnology field. A long-time community activist, Nemeth is
particularly committed to the causes of cancer research and HIV/AIDS. He is
equally passionate about his involvement in animal rescue.
Old One
awoke from his trance-like slumber and rose from his coffin. Then, as he had
done every night for countless centuries, he walked toward the entrance of the
cave that was his home. The cave, set high in a tall, snow-covered mountain,
overlooked a populous village which the vampire nightly claimed as his feeding
ground.
Old One
smiled as he looked down on the valley below him. As he continued to gaze,
however, the smile quickly melted into a frown. Something is wrong, he thought
to himself. Something is not quite right. The village below looked the same to
him as it did every night, and yet something was…different.
A brief
moment passed before he realized what was troubling him. “No lights,” he
whispered into the night air. Here it was, nightfall, yet there was not one
torch or fire to be seen lit down in his little village.
“Where
are the torches?” he asked of no one. Any other night he could rise, look down
below, and see hundreds of little pinpoints of light burning within the huts.
They usually lit the night as if the village were visited by a plague of
fireflies. But tonight, there was…nothing.
Still
puzzled, Old One strained his vampiric senses to the limit. With his keen
hearing, he could hear that many of the peasants were outside of their huts.
Outside?
After dark? The vampire felt a vague uneasiness creep over him. But they always
lock themselves up long before nightfall, Old One reflected. They’re always too
terrified to go near their doors or windows until sunrise is upon them! Yet
here they are, abandoning the protection of their homes, the safety that the
crosses, the garlic, and the other hated items afforded them. Why?
“Could
they have finally mustered courage in numbers to try to track me down?” he
asked himself. Although he knew his location was quite unreachable by any
normal means, his question shot a momentary chill of fear through him.
Old
One’s acute senses next became aware of a strong scent, one reaching up to him
from the valley far below. It was a scent he was quite familiar with. It was
the smell of fear. The villagers were afraid of something. They were scared!
Their fear of the vampire had been replaced this night, but Old One did not
know by what.
The
vampire gazed out at the horizon as he tried to formulate answers to the
mysteries below. As he did so, the night itself gave him cause to wonder.
“It’s
lighter than it should be,” he whispered to himself. But just last night was
the first night of the time of the missing moon!” Having had centuries in which
to observe the lunar patterns, he knew that the moon should be gone tonight. It
should be completely dark!
Yet,
there was light of some sort! Very little, to be sure, but enough to cast an
eerie illumination over the entire valley floor. In all his years, Old One had
never seen such a strange phenomenon. It sent a shiver running through his
unliving body. No wonder the villagers were afraid! Old One wanted to see the
cause of this weird luminescence but sensed that the source was on the other
side of the mountain, out of his current range of sight.
A
quickening dread began to settle upon the ancient vampire. It had been many
decades since he had felt this unsettled. And here, tonight, there were too
many puzzles, too many questions for which he had no answers.
A moment
passed and Old One began to gain control over his racing mind. It was at this
same moment, however, that yet another question entered his consciousness. A
question that, coming upon everything else, sent his mind reeling into an
uncontrollable panic.
“Why am
I not thirsty?” he shouted into the cold night. Every evening, every night he
would wake and have the thirst upon him. The inhuman, burning thirst that could
be satisfied only one way. But now, he felt nothing. NOTHING! “It’s as if I’d
drunk but an hour ago!” he screamed, this time so loud that he was sure that
even the villagers below had heard his tortured cry.
Gripped
by fear, Old One determined that he had to take action of some kind. He
intuitively felt that his unnatural existence depended upon his finding answers
to the puzzles that were torturing him. He decided to go immediately to the
village. Once there, he would find a villager apart from any group and seize
him. Before taking the fool’s life, he would force the wretch to tell him what
the strange events meant. “They have to know what is happening,” he tried to
reason with himself. “They must know!”
The
vampire instantly transformed to his aerial shape and took to the sky. No
sooner was he airborne than he realized something was wrong. Very wrong. For
the first time since prior to becoming an Undead, he felt…warm. Too warm. Hot.
Burning! Almost as if the sun…THE SUN! But, it couldn’t be! It couldn’t…
Old
One’s consciousness ceased to exist, as did his body, as his fleshless skeleton
plummeted to earth.
The
villagers, being a simple and uneducated people, never knew exactly why the
vampire’s attacks stopped as of that fateful day. They simply assumed that the
vampire had fled from their midst on that awful day of terror. The day the
villagers thought that the world was coming to an end. For the villagers, like
Old One, had never experienced a total eclipse of the sun.
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