The Family Chest

I felt my grief hot and clawing in my chest as a watched the ambient dust of the attic filter through the air. The attic, which I now called my own, as well as the house it was attached to and all within its walls. The only light within the long room shone from a single bulb on the ceiling, keeping the far corners in shadow, and highlighting the skeleton of the house- rafters and beams caked in dust and cobwebs. The detritus of generations littered the floor- unwanted bureaus and chairs, trunks of now-antique clothing. The smell of the place was comforting, somehow familiar. "That cannot be possible," I thought. I was never allowed in the attic.

Perhaps that is why I found myself there in the first place. Weary of the familiar sights below stairs and the agony of tears usually summoned by the memories of my father. “This family has always been cursed,” slithered its way through my mind.

Even in the “Old World,” as Grandfather insisted on calling our origins when he was alive, the family had suffered more misfortune, more death, than their neighbors. The family tree twined through history, black crepe draping its many branches. Despite the constant presence of death, life persisted, at least to the point where one day I was born, Isabella, the last of the Albescues, though no one knew it then.

I roamed morosely through the attic, trailing my fingers over the tarnished things of my family, old and heavy with the weight of time, trying desperately to feel connected to the past. What was all the suffering for? I wondered. The problem with our things, the stuff that makes humans human, remaining after our demise is that they are inanimate, impersonal reminders of the monotony of lives lived. A life seems very short and purposeless when viewed from a distance. So mine would be. Suddenly, I wanted to be under the trees, the sky, anywhere but trapped between the groaning beams above and the yawning expanse of house below. “Maybe it should have all burned with them, incinerated into ashes.” Had I said that out loud?

I was turning to depart, disturbed, when I caught sight of something curious. The dust furring the top of a ponderous trunk appeared to have been recently disturbed, as if by hands opening the lid. At least more recently than I could guess, as I lacked the powers to determine how long it took dust to settle up here, one mote drifting to land on a surface at a time.

“Perhaps it was father”, I thought with a pang. I imagined myself following his steps as I moved toward the trunk and knelt before it, touching the touched places almost reverentially. I could hear nothing but my own quickened breath and the soft moan of the wind outside, ever caressing the eaves of this house.

The trunk was made of a sturdy, dark wood, edged with carvings I couldn’t quite make out under the layers of age and grime. It was massive. How many did it take to heft it up those stairs so long ago? The lid groaned in protest as I prised it open, the wood warped and swollen with damp. I was hit with the scent of saltwater and something else I couldn’t place. Something earthy, ancient…persisting.

Layers of burgundy velvet greeted my eyes. These appeared to have once been used as a magnificent bed curtain. I ran my hands through the sumptuous fabric, soft and supple from use, and my fingers brushed against something hard and cool, almost causing me to recoil in disgust. Then I caught myself. It was only a chest, tucked (hidden?) within the velvety folds. It was quite a bit smaller than the trunk which contained it, three feet long and two wide, about tall enough to reach my knee I guessed. I pulled the curtains from the trunk, spilling them about my legs, trying to get a better look at the chest in the dim light.

Inlays of gold and rubies swirled over its surface in patterns strange but alluring, and four golden handles adorned each side. A prominent lock sealed it shut.

Using every bit of strength I called my own, I heaved on the handles, attempting to remove the chest from where it had rested for years beyond my knowledge, but my strength failed. It would not budge.

I retreated back downstairs in defeat, my thoughts consumed by the chest. Where had it come from and what was concealed inside? Why had it apparently been visited, and where was the key? I also wondered about the hold it had over me and the inexplicable urge to go look upon it once more, to open it and release…Release what? My mind was confused and muddled.

That night my dreams were full of terror, but when I woke I could remember nothing of them but was possessed by an unnameable dread and an almost insatiable thirst to open the chest. I had been putting off settling matters with Father’s lawyer, but now I could wait no longer. I phoned him and asked if he was left any keys or other such objects in his keeping, to which he replied that he had a packet from my father and plenty of papers needing my signature.

By the time I returned home, darkness was creeping into the daylight. The packet came out of my coat pocket, and I once again fixated on the scribbling of ink on top of the brown paper. My name in my father’s handwriting. I tore it open in the semi-darkness, coat and hat still on.

At the first glint of metal, my breath stilled. The key. I don’t know how I intuited it was the one I desired, or the way it would slide into the lock of the chest that had dominated my mind all night and day, gliding in like it had been recently oiled, cared for; but so it did, and when I turned the key, I was met with a satisfying click that thrilled my nerves. There was a moment, as I kneeled on the floor of the attic, when my previous fancy returned to me. It should have all burned with them. In my heart, I knew that was as it should be, but I had to open the chest, and now I rue the day I was compelled beyond my will by the demon inside, that I was so weak and susceptible to it’s radiating force.

For when I lifted the lid, I was brought face to face with the horror inside, the horror that I had only expected, with a bowel quivering mixture of anticipation and fear. A most unnatural creature reclined in the chest, and its glittering black eyes were upon mine, and within those inky pools I saw my ancestors, receding into the far distance of time, always suffering, and always caring for this thing, feeding it, passing the gilt chest down to the next generation of Albescus as if it were a treasured heirloom and not a curse, an obsession that could never be satisfied. Already I felt it, the need to further the creature’s survival, enthralled by its unwavering gaze.

I lifted the creature into my arms, and it wasn’t much bigger than a child of three, and somehow it almost resembled a child- half human, half chiroptera, leathery and shriveled. It’s face was more like a fungus, soft and folded and moist. I lifted it to my breast and felt pressure and then the pop as its suckling mouth latched onto the hollow of my throat and its teeth sunk deep into my vein, and then I was nothing, felt nothing but the heady rush of my exsanguination, my blood flowing from my body into the one who must live at all costs.

When the sun comes, I have moments of clarity, seeing beyond the near-constant muddiness of my mind, and I know I am in its thrall and that is why I do the unspeakable things it requires of me, why I eagerly lap up the blood regurgitated from its foul mouth when it returns in the night to feed me. It is the only thing that sustains me now, in this horrible hell in which I live. These are the moments when I am shaken with despair and regret, when I have the presence of mind to remember that night I staggered down from the attic after my first meeting with my new master, shaken and disoriented, and my eyes fell on the remains of the packet my father had left me, which I had forgotten in my haste to open the chest. Lying there was as note from my father reading:

“For the love of all that is Holy, never use this key. It dies with me.”

Why didn’t he throw the key into the sea, bury it where it could never be found? I ask, yet I know the answer, because I too have felt the needles in my neck, and know that while my longing to destroy my Master is strong, my drive to shield it from destruction is stronger yet. As long as I live, I will guard and obey my Master, but after that? I am the sole- remaining Albescu, that tormented line devoted to this fiend, forever aiding in sating its never-ending appetite. When I finally succumb to the siren of the grave, there will be none to prevent it from being unleashed upon the world, servant-less and ravenous, seeking the next one to curse. Who will it be?