I Now Know

I NOW KNOW

PAUL LITTLER

Carsten stepped ashore at Alesund.  The sun was already low in the sky, a late November afternoon and the air felt chilled.  It was good to finally find Honore, so close he could almost feel her, so close his slow heart beat faster as he thought about tearing her to pieces.

The hotel receptionist smiled a practiced smile at the thin, pale skinned man with a German accent, “Room 111, first floor, turn left, the lift is just off from the lobby.”  Carsten took off his sunglasses and gave the young man a brief glance with ice blue eyes before turning; expensive black crocodile skin overnight bag over his shoulder.  The youth reflexively lifted his hand to his neck.

The room was exactly what Carsten had expected; neutral, effortlessly stylish, everything at hand.  He hung up his heavy woollen coat, followed by a Merino wool rollneck of navy blue.  Standing at the window he watched as snow had started to fall, settling on buildings and cars.  It too was what he expected.  He hoped Honore felt him near; curious, shocked, afraid.

The young man at reception called out to Carsten as he walked swiftly towards the street exit,

“Sir?  Shall I make a dinner reservation for you?”

He stopped and gave the youth a smile, “No thank you, I’ll be eating out.”  Carsten stepped out into the swirl of the snow, hopelessly underdressed for a wintry Norwegian evening, leaving the receptionist to feel like a deer who’d been passed over by a prowling wolf.

#

Carsten walked through the accumulating snow, his prints barely discernible.  This was how he liked it.  Leave as little of yourself behind, no trace other than a fleeting memory and an unexplained disappearance here and there.  Honore, to her credit, had taught him well.  Over the last three hundred years she’d shared her knowledge, her passion, her hunger and her selfishness.  He was an eager student, born to marginal German aristocracy, charmed by the slender, elegant woman.  Carsten, used to people bowing and scraping, knew full well it wasn’t him but his social position they respected.  Honore had been different, diffident, confident in her skin.  It was a brief courtship.  She was gossiped about, some unknown woman, possibly some eastern European lineage?  Beautiful and enigmatic, people felt oddly terrified by her eye contact and self-assurance.  Carsten thought she was beautiful but unattainable, yet one chilly November evening in the grounds at his family’s castle she’d seduced him, then introduced him to his living death.

He'd disappeared, was mourned then forgotten, a younger son of a family already obsolete.  For Carsten it was a decades long initiation into Honore’s world.  She taught him how to entice and then consume; first woodland animals, where he fell upon them in messy, hungry slaughter then under Honore’s guidance how to draw in and feed on people, preferably those who wouldn’t be missed or wept over, somewhat like himself.  She’d taught him to travel where long winters would offer him protection from the sun; it wouldn’t kill, but burn with wounds taking years to heal.  She shared her tales of travelling over centuries, avoiding drawing attention to herself and finding companions, fellow travellers, sharing the loneliness of an eternal living death.

#

Carsten took a walk on the old harbour, the squat red painted lighthouse he remembered from a previous visit before the fire in 1904 had destroyed the town.  Rising from its ashes Alesund had prospered and was now a smart little town.  Honore had done the place a favour, he smiled, torching the old inn where a vampire hunter had trailed her and tried all the tricks he’d picked up from folk tales and penny dreadful papers.  He’d failed of course, a vampire rarely shares their Achilles Heel, and he’d been firstly fed upon then his withered corpse consumed by the flames as Honore took her leave of the town, watching the conflagration from the deck of a retreating boat.

They had been lovers initially, though Honore made it clear she could never remain with just one partner.  She took lovers here and there, as did Carsten.  They journeyed together, he believed they were in love, an eternally youthful couple, well connected and worldly, not knowing Honore’s tutorship had neglected some details.  

It was 1956, they’d made it through the war, nations doing a far better job at slaughter than any vampire.  He’d begun to feel fatigued, weary.  “What’s wrong with me?” he’d asked her, sitting in a window seat at a house they’d taken for winter in upstate New York.  He barely had the strength to move.

“You’re fading my love,” she’d whispered, running her cold fingers across his brow.  “We all disappear, even us.  Our bodies will wither and fail.”

Carsten had gripped her wrist, she was clearly surprised at his strength, “I thought we were immortal?  That’s what you told me in my father’s garden.  We live forever.”

She gave Carsten a patronising cold smile he’d learned was the precursor to bad news, “Carsten, my prince, it’s true, we don’t die, we just stop.  In a dream state.  Your awareness won’t fully leave you but your body will crumble and fail, your soul a ghost.”  Honore pulled her arm away, her face grown hard.

“Why didn’t you tell me this?  What’s to become of me?”  Carsten saw no pity in Honore’s face, only the same pragmatic and steely creature he loved.

“I will place you somewhere safe, where no one can harm what remains of your body as it rots away.”

“And you?” Carsten had shouted angrily, “What becomes of you?”

She’d given him that look he’d never forgotten, a memory to fuel to his vengeful anger, “My sweet, I am a source vampire; when my creations, my babies fade away I simply find another to sustain me.  Don’t look so hurt, think of the wonderful memories we created together and how they’ll sustain you long after your body has turned to dust.”

“And this is why you never allowed me to create my own vampire?”

“Of course my love.  You were so naïve and so unquestioning, that’s why I chose you.”

#

Carsten heard the repeated sound of someone singing a song in a droning monotone.  The snow continued to fall heavily, almost obscuring the light from the hotels and bars in the town.  A lumbering shape appeared through the blizzard, walking up the harbour wall, singing to himself, flapping his arms around his body to keep warm.  Carsten took a few moments to assess him; learning difficulties? Possibly, child in an adults body, a burden to an aging mother with her own aches and pains? very likely, he’d be doing everyone a good deed if this man-child disappeared?  Almost certainly.  The singing man stopped when he saw the tall, pale, thin man with grey green eyes watching him.  Carsten tasted the tang of fear in the air as it dawned on the man a predator was sizing him up; he could feel its heartbeat begin to race, sense its mouth growing dry; watch the flicker of its eyes searching for escape.  Carsten took a step forward and gave the man a welcoming smile.

#

At the hotel the receptionist was preparing for his shift change and was shrugging on his thick coat when Carsten appeared from nowhere. 

“May I ask, do you have a map of the town?”

The receptionist smiled and reaching under the counter for a tourist street map noticed a spot of what looked like red ink or blood on the back of the man’s hand.

“Have you cut yourself sir?  Would you like a plaster?”

Carsten’s eyes snapped back and forth from the young man to his hand and back, before pulling a pure white cotton handkerchief from his blazer pocket, “I must have caught myself on something.  It’s a slight graze, no need to worry.  Thank you for the map.”

The new shift receptionist threw her coat down behind the desk, puffing and panting, “I’m late sorry, get home, the weather is awful.  Have you heard about Anders?”

The young man shook his head, “No, what’s happened?”

“Missing.  Last seen in the harbour.  His parents are worried sick, thinking he may have slipped off the harbour wall in the snow.  Police are looking for him.”

As the young man crunched his way home, he nodded to friends and neighbours, dressed warmly, faces concerned, searching for Anders.  He couldn’t shake a nagging feeling about that strange man with the blood on his hand, or the map he asked for then left behind.

#

When Carsten had been too weak to move, his bones and muscles seizing, Honore had gently dressed him in a fine silk shirt and a beautifully tailored fine woollen suit.  She placed his Piaget watch on his bony wrist and in the pitch dark drove him to her old family home in southern France.  She always maintained a small number of staff who had prepared the catacombs for her.  With no need for candles or lightbulbs she navigated the rows and rows of lead lined coffins, each placed on shallow brick shelves with their own engraved brass nameplates and dates.  Some were clearly ancient, layered in the dust of millennia.  An occasional sound of whispered moaning came from the sarcophagi, leading Honore to whisper “sleep, sleep my loves, rest with your dreams.”

Carsten opened his eyes briefly as Honore laid him gently in his coffin, kissing him tenderly as he tried to turn away but didn’t have the strength.  He could hear the dull, muffled voices of the undead, imprisoned, whispering in desperation, a sound he couldn’t endure for an eternity.

“Sleep my beloved Prince,” she said quietly, “You have been so wonderful for me, I will miss you forever.”

“You are evil,” he said, “and I will have my revenge.”

“Of course you will,” laughing she lifted the coffin lid and carefully locked it in place.  She rested her hand briefly on the brass plaque bearing Carsten’s name and date of internment then walked quickly away, bidding farewell to her abandoned, cursed companions.

Carsten lay with his eyes open in the pitch darkness, listening to the weeping and cursing around him, recalling all that Honore had taught him.

#

After changing clothes, his quarry having put up more of a fight than he’d anticipated, he trotted crisply outside.  The town was on alert, the flashing lights of emergency vehicles through the ongoing snowfall.  The young man at reception was gone, replaced by a healthy and capable looking young woman.  A keen wind had picked up too, faces were pinched as groups moved here and there calling, “Anders!”  He orientated himself, walking out of town towards the steps leading to the view point.  A subtle prickling in his thumbs and forefingers alerted him to a presence, Honore?  The drifting snow caused him no problem as he walked lightly past the crowds to the steps leading him to the viewpoint over town.  

The prickling pins and needles in his fingers and thumbs intensified as he mounted the steps, growing a little tired.  She was near, he knew, and she would be waiting, calm as a cat, purring whilst planning her attack.  Everything he knew, she’d taught him, apart from her sucking the life from him to fuel her existence.  His mind took him back to the catacombs.  The smell of damp earth and decay, loneliness, just him and his companions all sharing their hatred of Honore’s abandonment.  He’d spent so long thinking and plotting.  He remembered that whilst still a fresh vampire, unbeknownst to Honore, he’d taken a young man under his wing, transformed him but pathetically unsuited to his new existence he’d thrown himself into a furnace, leaving Carsten saddened but vibrating with stored energy.

Then came the day several years ago when he’d been unexpectedly freed by a carelessly lost English couple, curiously peeping into his coffin.  With what little strength he’d had he managed to feed and the hunt for Honore began.  Carsten knew how she operated, her winter habits, having trained him well, he knew how to track her down.  He briefly selected an older woman on a cruise ship as his companion, saddened and disappointed by life, willing to be wooed and charmed by this strange young man.  He’d freed her to use her rebirth to study art, architecture and antiquities, feeding only on those in her social circles she felt were undeserving of their privilege.

#

He found a route branching into a street of impeccably neat houses set back from the road, each with large lit windows looking across the snow blanketed town and fjord.  He stopped, a single flickering candle set in a storm light on a window sill.  There she sat, calmly, her head tilted to one side, watching with emerald eyes, hair long and tied into a single ponytail.  There was no greeting.  Carsten didn’t expect one.  The incessant needling in his hands was now almost unbearable, how wonderful to finally feel something after these deadening, desensitising centuries.  As he approached she stood, nodding to someone in the room with her, her front door opening and an imposing figure appearing.  She stood behind the shape, her arms wrapped around her body as if she now felt the cold.

“Carsten, my prince.  You have risen from your grave.  I’d invite you in but that is always a bad idea with vampires is it not?” 

Carsten thought her voice was faltering, “Honore.  It’s your time.”

“My time?” she laughed, “oh how melodramatic.”  He took a step forward and the massive figure approached, shielding Honore. “Why did you do it, Carsten?  Why couldn’t you rest quietly?  Did you really have to destroy so much?”

Carsten guessed she’d learned what happened, “I was what you couldn’t be.  Compassionate.  I fed on your servants, I built a fire in your beautiful home then burned each and every one of those poor desperate creatures you abandoned.  I released them from their suffering.”

Honore looked old, a little afraid, “They weren’t my only sources of energy.  I’ve had others since you.”

“I know.  All gone, I saw to that.  New?” he nodded at the hulking figure.

Honore simply shrugged her shoulders, “Just staff.  And you?  One little old lady is hardly going to provide you with an eternity of possibilities is she?”

She knows that too, he thought, felling the guard, leaving him in the snow.  Flashing lights were making their slow way towards Honore’s address.  He strode into Honore’s living room, gripping her, closing the door, “You look ill, Honore.  When did you last feed?”

Pulling away she perched on the back of a sofa, he was shocked to see she had aged to the point of frailty.

“I rarely eat.  I haven’t the energy, thanks to you.  I can’t set foot outdoors, occasional household pets are a poor substitute for humanity.”

He almost felt pity, “I’ve had years to think on what we did, who we hurt.  I’m not proud.  You gave me another gift, time to reflect.”  He cast his sharp eyes quickly around the room, noting the precise, unfussy gas stove burning in the corner. “You feel the cold?  Me too.  My companion died a week ago.”

“You?”

He smiled, “No.  She chose to finish it.”

Honore opened her eyes wide, “The apartment fire on the Upper East Side in Manhattan last week?  So you’re on borrowed time too.”

“Both of us.  You taught me to think we are alone, outsiders, but we’re not.  We need the world and its resources.  I realised it doesn’t need us.”

“And that young man at the hotel?  Was he not companion material?  Think of it, my Prince, new adventures.”

Carsten simply shook his head, “I liked him.  I wouldn’t offer this life to the worst of my enemies.”  He took a small package from his coat pocket, a world war two hand grenade.  Honore looked from her window to police vehicles arriving, the prostrate man attracting their interest.

Carsten saw the lights flash across Honore’s duller yet beautiful green eyes, “I left a map at the hotel with your house circled on it.  The young man noticed the blood on my hand, and I daresay contacted the police when he learned that someone from the town was missing.”  Carsten walked to the stove and turned it up high, “Honore, my one and only love, shall we?”

The explosion rocked the neighbourhood.  The house burned alone as neighbours and emergency responders stood in the bitter Norwegian air.

#

At the hotel the next day, there was an air of confusion and upset, along with the morbid excitement of “have you heard about the fire?” “poor Anders, murdered by a stranger, something to do with that strange woman living up the hill”.  The young man had a strange feeling of having dodged a bullet hanging.  At lunch he went to his pigeon hole for next week’s rota and found a small sealed envelope with his name on it, For Oskar Laurson.  He opened it and out fell a pair of beautiful cufflinks, silver, decorated in gleaming duck egg blue enamel.  There was no note.  Confused he turned them in his hand, something he could never have afforded to buy.  The light exposed a tiny engraved name on one of the links, Honore.  He looked at the other and saw it said, Carsten.  Beneath it a date, 1904.  Wasn’t Carsten the name of the strange man from last night he thought, putting the cufflinks in his pocket and eating his sandwich.

END