A Different Kind of Monster

He is the stuff of legends. But then they all are.

By rights, they should not exist. That could be said about every species on this planet. Life is a precarious nonsense that fascinates me and appals me in equal measure. 

I’m a fan though. How could I not be? My master waxed lyrical about William, and my master was not one for praise. I should know. I was a constant disappointment to him and he was quick to tell me so. I was his Grand Mistake. After me, he avoided making another for fear that he might double down on the folly that he considered me to be.

My master spoke of William with a reverence and awe that is seldom heard. I was not blind to his using William as yet another stick to beat me with. William was like the elder brother that I never had. I missed out on his companionship, but suffered under his shadow all the same.

William was made by one of The Elders. The Elders seldom create. They seldom do anything these days. Old age creeps up on everyone. Even monsters. So old are The Elders that they have seen civilisations rise and fall. Empires expand and then crumble. It would seem that witnessing so much of the history of this world has slowed them down. I doubt their heads can contain anymore memories or information. They have become watchful, grey statues and it is a wonder that any of them could make another of their kind. 

I should be careful what I say. Respect for The Elders is an essential survival strategy, if half of what I have been told is true. They hear my thoughts, let alone my words. They are connected to everything. 

To hear what is said about them, you would think that they have transcended the mundane aspects of being and moved upwards to a higher state of being. As if a monster can do such a thing. 

Legends get out of hand far too often. I take most of what I hear with a pinch of salt, but when it comes to William, I am intrigued. I have been intrigued for decades now, and that is why I have dedicated myself to hunting him down.

I had to.

I had to know.

Hunting a vampire is a tricky business. Vampires are precious creatures. They don’t like to be challenged. They don’t even like anyone knowing that they’re a vampire, not unless it’s that time of an evening and they’re playing with their food before devouring it. They’re very much like cats. They corner the mouse and then they pin its tail with a paw. Letting it go so it can make a bid for freedom before slamming that paw down again. Come to think of it, vampires are a so very like cats. They’re in it for themselves and they don’t give a tinker’s fig for anyone else. When it comes to who is more selfish, a cat or a vampire? Mr Tiddles has some fierce competition and the deciding factor is likely to be that the vampire would despatch the poor moggy rather than lose to the purring furball.

Vampires don’t do pets, unless you count familiars as pets that is. Not that I’ve encountered that many familiars on my travels. If familiars were ever a thing, they seem to have gone out of fashion a long time ago. My theory on that one is that authors use familiars to pad out the story. I reckon authors get carried away and familiars are as a result of something they would like to be. After all, that’s why they write isn’t it? Authors are as solitary as vampires, so they get it into their heads that maybe they could strike up a friendship and house share with a vampire. Writing during the day as they kept an eye on the sleeping vamp’s coffin and catching up on the vampire gossip in the early hours upon the return of the sated monster.

As if a vampire is going to trust an author.

That’s about as ridiculous as it gets. Vampires trust no one, not even themselves. They are especially mistrustful of other vampires. It takes one to know one, and vampires fear any contact with another of their kind. They are deeply uncomfortable with that eventuality.

I’ve never quite got that one, but then my master always told me I had a lot to learn.

So, who better to learn from than William? William, the darling of the vampires. William the best of vampires. William, the bane of my second life.

For all the talk of the connectedness of vampirekind, I have found no way to detect fellow vampires. They elude me and this is deeply frustrating. I know vampires can hide their presence from all but the strongest of vampires, but I never learnt the trick. My master taught me precious little when it came to all matters vampire. I found this to be unfair. One moment he was moaning about what a disappointment I was, but the next he was ignoring me and failing to teach me to be! Some parent he turned out to be.

William will be different.

William is different.

These past thirty years I have tracked him down, and now I am close to meeting William. At last I have found the one vampire who can help me make sense of my existence. I will bide my time and find the moment that I can introduce myself and then I will become his apprentice. I’ll even become his disciple if he wills it. Whatever it takes. I will learn from the best and then I will be the best!

I have seen him from afar several times now. Twice, I saw him with a human woman. This I had not expected. He sat there as bold as the day and he chatted to her. William is on another level. There is playing with your food and then there is sitting on a park bench and talking about the weather. The levels of my intrigue have risen to delightful heights and it is all I can do to await my moment. I do not want to rush things and ruin my one and only opportunity to befriend this unique and celebrated vampire.

I dared follow him to his resting place just last week. He took a couple back to his house. I observed him feigning a drunken or drugged stupor in order to lower their guard. Feeding on two humans in one sitting is impressive. People are unpredictable, especially when they realise they are in danger. When neither of them left the house, it was clear that he had fed well.

I figure a week is about right. The hunger is never far away, even in the aftermath of a hearty meal. There is something in us that is terrified of starving. A constant urge to secure the next meal. Leaving it too long between meals is unwise. The noise and pain that our hunger causes is beyond measure and it is maddening. It would be a terrible thing to witness a starving vampire, they would tear themselves apart well before they ever starved to death.

A week has given me time to select something suitable. Something that I hope is to his taste. And now I have done so, it is time. I approach the house. His house. The place that he rests. I find myself thinking of the word lair. I am encroaching. I know that. For a vampire to approach another is rare, and it is dangerous. I wonder whether it is tied in with that hunger of ours. A blood lust heightened by our need to protect our territory. To protect ourselves.

I realise that I have no clue when it comes to the etiquette here. I hope the gift I bring will signal my intent. Vampires have no need of the social mores and norms that so restrict humans. They may play along for a while, but there is nothing in it for them. They are in it for themselves in a way few humans could ever understand. There are few boundaries. We are almost limitless.

Knocking on the door, I feel exposed and weak. There is a tremendous presence here. I can feel William in a way I fancied I could from afar, but the intensity here, on the threshold of his abode is dizzying. William is possessed of a power that I can only dream of. I shudder at the thought of ever crossing paths with The Elders.

The door opens, but before I can peer in. Before I am possessed of an idea of the situation, I am launched backwards and somewhere along this rearward trajectory, I lose the gift that I had brought for William.

“What is the meaning of this!?” I hear his voice, but it is as much in my head as spoken. Those words pierce my mind and threaten to possess me.

“I…” I stammer and stutter, which is so unlike me. He has me gripped by the throat and an arm encompassing my waist. I am pinned and helpless. I have never been rendered so in all my days as a vampire, “I wanted to visit with you,” I manage to tell him.

He loosens his grip and fixes me with a stare that I cannot evade. I am given an insight into how a human must feel when I pluck them from their lives and prepare to feed upon them. He does not speak for a while, instead he examines me as though I were a sample under a microscope.

“Who made you?” he asks eventually.

I hesitate and hope that he does not read anything into that hesitation, “Samuel,” I say.

“Samuel should have known better,” he growls this and I wonder what he means by it. All the same my hackles go up as I detect the brother of Samuel’s disappointment in me.

“I brought you…” I begin.

“A mistake,” he interjects.

I should be chastened, but instead I am angry. I tried to do the right thing. He is not giving me a chance. William, it turns out, is rude. Just as rude as Samuel.

“I brought it as a token,” I tell him, wanting him to understand.

“It?!” he scoffs. 

“I came in good faith,” I continue.

Now he laughs, “you knock at my door with a half dead woman and you call that good faith?”

“I wanted to…” I say.

But he is not listening, “I bet you don’t even know her name.”

“Name?” I say, becoming confused at his reaction and the direction our conversation is heading in, “you bother with their names?”

He fixes me with a hard look, “come,” he says, then he grabs me and I don’t have a say in where we are going, or whether I would like to go or not.

Should it surprise me that we are sat on that same bench I saw him conversing with that woman? I don’t think it should, but I sense a sentimentality in William that renders him weak and potentially fearful. If I am right, then he is a conflicted soul, and we don’t have souls, not the likes of us.

William is an enigma, but he threatens to be a disappointment. He seems almost human, and the very thought of his humanity sickens me. This much vaunted vampire has the potential to be a damp squib, worse still a lie.

Did the sombre and dour Samuel deceive me? Was I the butt of a joke he constructed over the years? Or was he himself deceived?

“Tell me,” William says as he stares up at the moon, “why are you here?”

“I came here to learn,” I tell him.

He chuckles, but there is no merriment in him, “did you really? What would you learn from me?”

“I want to be a great and powerful vampire,” I say.

Now he turns to me, “do you have any idea what that entails?”

I nod, “I have an idea.”

He shakes his head, “you have no idea.”

“Why are you…” I begin.

But he raises a finger of admonishment that silences me, “you gave Samuel what he had desired for an age?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I say this, but there is something stirring deep in my mind. A dawning realisation that I would supress, if I could.

He’s nodding now.

“You know?” I ask him.

“I do now,” he says, “your presence here tells me all I need to know.”

I smile despite myself, “I did what they said cannot be done.”

“You really believe that?” he says.

That’s when I feel the icy shard of doubt. It pierces my brain. It pains and confuses me.

“I don’t know what he told you,” he shakes his head sadly, “but you were used by him.”

“He told me that you were the best of vampires,” I say.

William’s eyebrows shoot up, he seems surprised for a moment, then he relaxes and smiles, “yes, I suppose that he would.”

“Why did he hold you in such high regard?” I ask him.

He shrugs, “I struggled to let go of who I was. And then I didn’t let go at all.”

“Really? Samuel considered you to be better than the rest of us because you attempted to remain human?” I cannot keep my contempt for such a thing from my words.

He nods, “what value do we hold if we have no values?”

“Oh puhlease!” I grimace at the pathetic figure before me, “we are far more powerful than these sad little humans! None of them are a match for us. We can do so much more than they can. We can be so much more.”

“And yet here you are…” he is looking back up at the moon now. Sitting back and relaxing as though he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“It seems I have made a mistake,” I tell him.

He nods slowly, “a series of mistakes.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He turns to look at me, “you are a strange little man. Have you not seen those who hold disdain for others who are exactly the same as them? Samuel chose well when it came to finding someone to end him, but he could never have turned you. You don’t have the… capacity for it. But then, he sent you here to me, so you are my problem now.”

“Problem?” I guffaw at William’s arrogance, “I will become a powerful vampire, with or without your help.”

William stands, “no. No, I’m afraid you will do nothing of the sort. You were a means to an end, and now you are a loose end.”

“But I did what could not be done!” I stand too, “I ended my master! I am already a powerful vampire!”

William looks sad now, “you still do not understand do you?”

I nod, “Samuel tricked me into killing him.”

“A vampire cannot kill its maker,” William says this and looks expectantly at me.

I laugh, the very idea of what William is attempting to convey is ridiculous, “you can’t mean…”

William nods.

“But what about…” I begin.

“What about what?” William asks me.

I feel my mouth working, but no words will come forth.

“It’s all gone hasn’t it?” William says.

He sits back down on the bench and sighs. I follow suit. I have nothing better to do.

“What about…?” I begin.

“A self-induced delusion,” William says.

“None of it was real?” I ask him.

“Now that is a question that would take forever and a day to answer. Suffice to say, you’re not a vampire and you never will be,” he sighs again.

“But why?” I ask him earnestly.

He turns and looks deep into my eyes, “your lack of humanity,” he tells me.

Then he leans in and I know what is coming, but I cannot stop it. I do not even fight him as he bites down and he begins to feed. I have been tricked. Only I tricked myself. I blinded myself to what was real and I lived out a dangerous and impossible fantasy that was always going to end like this. 

I disappointed Samuel so much that he could not make me into a vampire.

I disappointed him with my naked arrogance and greed. He knew my ambition would lead me to end him and he played on that so that he had a way out from an existence he had come to loathe. He told me stories of William and led me right to him.

William with his frail, human heart and sense of justice. 

William, the vampire who only preys on what I regarded as the strongest of the humans. Predators themselves. I thought he tested himself on the best and always came out a winner. 

I was wrong.

William has a code.

William is more human than I could ever be.

Samuel understood this and he sent me, a murderer, to William’s front door. 

There was only ever one way that this would end.

I hated humanity and made myself into something as far from human as I could. I hated myself and I became nothing. Worse than nothing.

As the light of the moon fades, I wonder whether my blood tastes as bitter as I feel.