Tales From The Belfry

sure whether or not I fully comprehended my situation even then. I only knew that I was hungry. Possibly, I was dead. I was also probably a vampire.

  I wonder if you can understand the inherent terror in that word, the unimaginable pain it causes me. I began to realize that my future would consist of an eternity of killing and drinking blood. I was—as you are, almost certainly—a reasonable person. The thought of killing, of violence sickened me. Fool that I was, on that first night of hunger, I thought only of food. Only later did I realize what I was actually hungry for.

  I left my place close to midnight. Keeping to alleys and the dark streets, I looked for ways to the center of town that were infrequently traveled. Instinctively, I longed for the velvet embrace of the shadows.

  As I approached the tenderloin district in which I hoped I could find a suitably darkened restaurant, I was suddenly overpowered by a nauseating stench, more evil and fetid than any I had ever experienced. It was cloying, hateful. I rounded a corner and came face to face with the odor, which had by now become tangible, a solid wall, through which I could not force myself to go. I looked at the open doorway that stood in front of me, the source of this vile smell. I recoiled in astonishment. Instead of the open sewer or slaughterhouse I had expected to see, there was only a small room with round tables, each covered by a red-and-white checked tablecloth. Candles flickered warmly on the center of each table, held by raffia-wound chianti bottles. A small man with a neat black mustache stared at me, a menu in hand.

  "A table, Signore?" he asked.

  I shook my head, turned and ran. Blindly, I sought out a darkened alley, and fled to the blackest corner. I cowered there.

  Garlic! It could only have been garlic! And I laughed. Laughed until I cried, because Italian food had once been my favorite.

  And I was still hungry. I sat in the alley, dreading the realization that I knew would come. I didn't need food. I needed blood. The thought revolted me. I remembered the feeling I had had when I ripped the sheets. I ran my tongue over my teeth. There was nothing unusual there now, but I knew that somehow, when the time was right, I would have fangs, sharp and hollow, like a snake. I was sick to death with the memory, but the hollow, hungry feeling in my gut was only partly fear and revulsion.

  I got up from the darkened corner, and walked to the square of light at the alley's mouth, and stopped at the verge of the shadows. Standing there like some loathsome beast of prey, I waited. Waited, like the ailing lion, for the young game, the sick or lame, the foolish, because it sickened me to think of hunting. To actively seek out another human being and drink his lifeblood.

  And they walked by, the humans, gaily, lightly, full of life, unaware that inches away in the shadows lurked that most obscene of predators, a vampire. Worse than a cannibal, because I wouldn't consume the flesh, just the Life. The Juice. Time and again, they passed, sometimes in pairs, sometimes singly, and all I could do was watch. The ache in my stomach grew more and more painful, until I thought I would scream from the agony.

  But I still couldn't bring myself to sink fangs into a living neck.

  As it drew near dawn, I grew almost faint with hunger, and I knew I would have to make my move. Suddenly, my senses were alert, sharper than I had ever known them. There was a tang in the air, an acrid scent of fear. I hear a wild yowl of abject terror, and then a screech of brakes, and a thump of metal on all-too-yielding flesh. I heard a door slam, a rush of unintelligible speech, and the door slammed again. I heard the truck start up, heard it wind through the gears, and it was gone.

  But there was something else in the air. And oh! the pulse in my gut. It throbbed now to a new beat, vaguely organic, growing fainter by the second. I knew it for the heartbeat of a dying cat. I knew what each faint flutter of that failing muscle was pumping, liquid and salty, into the street. In an instant, I turned around in the alley, toward the sound. I ran in the dark, the lust frightening me. I came face to face with a wall at least eight feet high. I looked around for something to climb on, amazed at my sudden obsession, and at the same time, a part of me, incredibly still rational, understood the whole thing.

  I heard impossible animal sounds, and whirled around for a moment, searching for the crazed beast that had made them, until I belatedly realized that it was me, after all. There was nothing to climb on: no ladder, no boxes, nothing. Beyond the wall lay Juice, and I knew it; knew I had to have it—knew that nothing would stand in my way.

  I reached out to the fence, and closed my hand on the timbers. I gripped. The fence splintered easily, like matchwood, and I laughed—a low, guttural growl—and tore a four-foot-wide hole in the fence.

  The cat lay partly in the gutter, its hindquarters crushed into a pulp by the force of the blow it had received from the truck. It was still alive, however, and its chest heaved spasmodically in great gasping wheezes. A dark river trickled into the gutter, gleaming slickly in the lamplight. I walked over, purposefully, slowly. The cat turned its dimming yellow eyes toward me and mewed piteously. Then, as I came closer, there was a flicker of some deeper awareness in the dying eyes, and once again came that shrieking howl of utter horror. The animal scrabbled weakly with its front paws, desperately trying for purchase on the concrete.

  I knelt beside it. "Poor kitty," I said. I cradled its head in my hands, and it drew back, snarling, its eyes rolling up in their sockets. It gave out a low moan of terror unlike any I have ever heard since. Ants were already beginning to crawl into the fur.

  And still the animal tried feebly to run from me, moaning hideously in small gasps, its body racked with the effort of breathing.

  "Poor kitty," I said again, then crushed its head in my palm, and knelt to drink at the dark river.

  An hour later, it was daylight, and I crouched in the darkest corner of my apartment, trying valiantly to vomit. My hunger had been stanched, and now the revulsion had set in. I could feel the grainy crust around my mouth, and two of the fingers on my right hand were welded together by dried viscera. I was inconceivably ill.

  The next few weeks were a blur. I huddled in my apartment, dreading the light and equally fearing what I'd do in the dark. When the hunger became unbearable, I ventured out, looking for dying or recently dead animals, like the cat I had consumed earlier. They provided little sustenance, and I grew weaker and weaker. I could hardly lift my head from my pillow, and sleep was nearly impossible whether during the day or night.

  Eventually, I came to the realization that I had to have human blood to continue existing. And realizing that, I knew that I wanted to continue existing, despite the revolting nature of what my "life" might be.

  My landlord had slipped notes under the door, demanding the rent, which by now was severely in arrears. I had no means of earning money, of course, and knew I was in danger of losing my residence. Clearly, something had to change.

  The night of my transformation from pitiful creature to full-fledged vampire began like any other, with one exception: I resolved to finally seek out a human being for my meal. The question was, who? Who would I sentence to death? Who deserved to be painfully bitten, drained of blood, and left to rot on some deserted street corner?

  The answer? No one. No poor soul, no matter how depraved or vile, "deserved" such a fate—except, perhaps, me. My resolve nearly failed me, but my hunger drove me on.

  As in the previous nights, when searching for stray animals, I kept to the shadows, lurking in the half-light of deserted streets and murky alleys. I surveyed pimps and prostitutes, drug dealers and their customers, petty thieves and drunks. Who among them would be my choice?

  And then I saw him. He lurked, like me, at the mouth of a darkened alley opposite my vantage point at the head of another. His pale face mirrored my own, save for the sharply pointed nose and blade-like cheekbones. His bloodshot eyes roved the passing dregs of society, and the disdain for humanity in those eyes was chilling to see. Here was an evil being, someone as dangerous as I had become; by making a meal of him, perhaps I could rid the world of at lea
st one of the two of us.

  I emerged from the alley, keeping to the darkened side of the street out of the dim light of the streetlamps. My quarry had eyes only for his own prey, and never noticed as I sidled toward him, as silently as I could. My fangs sprouted, as always when near the point of attack. I had closed to within a couple of feet of the monster when he turned to face me, smiling. His face was transformed. Where before I had seen only a monster's visage, now I saw a gentle soul, warm and caring. What in God's name had happened?

  "Hello, Brother," he said. "Shall we share a Drink?"

  His name was Harvey Branson. He'd been a vampire for 15 years, and he was taking me to The Belfry—otherwise known as the back room at Gus's Barber Shop downtown.

  We arrived at the back door of the shop. Harvey tapped a "shave-and-a-haircut, two bits" knock on the door, and a tall, gaunt man with jet-black hair and steel-blue eyes opened it.

  "Harvey."

  "Gus. This is Gordon. He's new."

  Gus gave me the once-over, shook his head, and let us in.

  The room was small, but comfortably furnished with overstuffed chairs and loveseats. Five or six other people sat in them and eyed us curiously. There were movie posters on the walls, all from various vampire films: The