The Diary of Anne Pettit

Tuesday, 2^nd February 1904

Mother says I should keep a diary to practice my writing. I think she just wants time to herself. The laudanum the doctor gave her for her nerves makes her sleep most of the day away.

Thursday, 18^th February 1904

Mother tried to introduce me to the Grover’s son. I can’t even remember his name. He was most unremarkable. I told her I wasn’t interested in a husband, and she said I’m nearly a spinster. My eighteenth birthday is in a month. I still have time to find someone that piques my interest. As long as I marry before twenty-two, I believe mother will be satisfied.

Sunday, 13^th March 1904

Happy birthday to me? I wanted to have a garden party, but mother forbade it. She is taking the laudanum more frequently, and her mood has soured at all times. Perhaps when father returns from Europe she will improve.

I spent the day with the maid, Catherine. Mother and father always act like they can’t understand her because of her Irish accent, but I think they just don’t want to have to speak to “the help.” She gave me a lovely hand-made card and a hair ribbon.

Friday, 6^th May 1904

Father finally returned from Europe, with some affliction that requires frequent visits from the doctor and mercury pills even though he looks hale. It left mother distraught, and they have been bickering every moment they are both awake and in the same room. Father has been sleeping in his study.

Friday, 20^th May 1904

The bickering turned physical today when mother flung a vase at father’s head. Thanks to mother’s screaming, I know what ails father. It is possible that everyone for miles around now knows he has syphilis.

Catherine was a dear. She offered to take me to a party in the city. She said that a young woman shouldn’t have to hear her parents carry on so. I agreed. I’m dressed and ready to go, writing this while I wait for Catherine to finish her chores. I don’t think I could find my way alone.

Friday, 30^th June 1904

I’ve been going to the parties in Hell’s Kitchen every Friday and can make my way there and back on my own. They are rather informal affairs, but men and women mingle and drink gin or whiskey. At some point in the evening, the music starts. Nearly everyone can sing or play an instrument, and the music is lively.

I’ve met someone that piques my interest, but there is a problem. It isn’t a man who has caught my eye, but rather a woman about my age, Aine. Her accent isn’t as thick as Catherine’s, but her voice is melodic. Every time I close my eyes, I see hers; green, haunting, something sad behind them, peering into my very soul.

Wednesday, 3^rd August 1904

Mother left today to stay with her sister and brother-in-law in Philadelphia. Father mopes about the house and does nothing until he flies into a rage. I’ve noticed his hands trembling at times, and his moods are unpredictable and severe.

Aine has offered to put me up in the city and I have packed. I will leave this evening when the carriage arrives for me.

Over the past few weeks, mother had ignored me, my father, Catherine, everything except her laudanum. The house was quiet until last week when father propositioned Catherine and hit her when she rejected him. She left for good and hasn’t been replaced, and mother and father let the house fall to disarray.

With mother’s departure, the groundskeeper left. Father will be left alone in the house with nothing but his own moods for company.

Thursday, 4^th August 1904

Aine has shared a secret with me. It’s unbelievable, but she has shown me enough proof to verify it. I’m certain I should fear her, but I can’t help but love her.

I have some time to make a decision whether I will be around for only a little while or join her permanently. Mother would, no doubt, be apoplectic about it, unless she was still in her laudanum. Father would probably explode in rage at the thought.

Still, she has required that if I wish to join her, I say goodbye to my family before we go.

Sunday, 4^th September, 1904

I talked to father yesterday. I told him I would be leaving with Aine for good. I felt it best I be honest with him, as far as I could without sharing her secret. When I told him I was in love with her, he seemed resigned. He was listless and his tremors have grown worse.

Talking with mother today was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. When I showed up to her house, my aunt grabbed me in a tight hug and wept. She took me to the cemetery, to mother’s fresh grave.

Although it was difficult to find out she was dead, it was the easiest conversation I’d had with her in years, and the closest I’d ever come to feeling like she listened. I told her everything, including Aine’s secret.

I spent the night at my aunt’s house, where she told me what had happened. Mother had taken her laudanum on Monday morning and lay down for a nap, from which she never rose.

Friday, 9^th September 1904

It’s a new moon tonight. The night is pitch dark and the humidity is stifling. Tonight I join Aine. I’m frightened but more excited.

Sunday, 10^th September 1905

After the revelation of the first night, I forgot about this diary entirely. I only came across it today as we are packing to travel to Spain. How would I describe that first night? It was more than I could’ve imagined. That darkest of nights became as midday. The stars shone more brightly than any lamp, and I saw colors I had never seen before.

I had feared it would hurt, but the pain was brief, and mixed with desire and pleasure. The love I already felt for Aine grew only deeper, subsuming all that I was in a longing for her, and a hunger for blood. I don’t know when I will next write in this diary, but I will pack it with our things.

Tuesday, 1^st August 1916

It seems we will be moving again. Aine says we can’t spend too long in one area without being found out. I’ll miss the countryside around Madrid; it’s positively breathtaking by moonlight.

We were planning on going somewhere else in Europe, but they say there’s a war going on. A few of the farmers’ sons have left to join the French Foreign Legion to help out, while Spain remains neutral. The only thing we know about it is what we hear over a late dinner. Yes, we still eat and drink normal food. We only need blood a few times a month.

Tuesday, 5^th September 1939

I had forgotten all about this diary until I came across it unexpectedly this evening while packing up essentials. I’ve been trying for weeks now to convince Aine that we need to leave Warsaw. She doesn’t care about what she calls “the affairs of men,” but I’ve been watching politics closely for over a decade, and I saw this coming.

I knew the funny little man in Germany would be trouble, and I was right. We’re preparing to leave for Danzig, where one of Aine’s contacts will meet us with a seaplane. We’ve never flown, so we’re both looking forward to it. In the meantime, however, we must make our way north through the occupying forces.

The one good thing that came from all this is that hunting is easy. No need to hide our kills or limit ourselves to those who won’t be missed. There are thousands of invaders to choose from. We just need to wait for one of them to get separated from their unit, which seems to happen all the time.

Monday, 6^th August 1945

We’ve been staying in Boston for last two years while the war raged on. Today’s paper had the most horrific thing I’ve ever heard. A bomb that erased an entire city. I don’t really have much to say about it, except that even Aine was shocked to tears.

Thursday, 9^th August 1945

They’ve done it again. The depravity of men has reached new lows. These atom bombs will be the death of the planet. Never again will I feel guilt at killing when I need to feed. Humanity is cursed.

Thursday, 13^th March 1986

I’ve not written anything in this diary since the bombing of Nagasaki. Today would be my 100^th birthday and, I guess, I was feeling a bit nostalgic. The weather in Hokkaido is beautiful, and the plum blossoms are stunning in the light of the new moon.

Aine and I are drifting apart. We often spend weeks apart, only to come together again and pick up as if we hadn’t. I’m not certain when it began, but I would guess about the time we left Boston for Lima, in 1951. Time has a different meaning now.

Another development: Aine has gotten careless on some of her feeds, and I’ve had to clean up after her. I’m not sure whether it’s carelessness or a depression of some sort, and she won’t talk to me about it.

Thursday, 9^th September 2004

It is my hundredth anniversary with Aine, as one of her kind. I finally met her maker, Appius. He’s soft-spoken and prefers Latin to any of the other languages we all speak. His eyes, though, frighten me by the deadness of them.

He examined me, tasted my blood, and told Aine “this one is fit to leave the nest, and will not have to be put down.” Her relief was obvious, but I was unsure whether that relief was that he wasn’t going to kill me, or that she had tacit permission to leave me to my own devices.

Wednesday, 21^st May 2008

Aine and I parted ways. She’s gone to Istanbul and I’m going to Sydney. We still love each other or, at least, I still love her, but we’re not in the same place we were over a hundred years ago. I’m definitely not the same person I was then.

Perhaps someday, I’ll be as disconnected from the world as she and Appius, but there is still so much to experience. We made a promise to meet every decade. We’ll be meeting in Madrid in 2018.

Friday, 25^th March 2022

We didn’t meet in 2018, or any year since. Appius and I found each other in Mexico City last night. I’ve learned to sense others of our kind, and I knew he was somewhere around Texcoco. I sat in Parque Hundido and waited on him to show. He hasn’t heard from Aine either. He fears she may have walked into the sun, but I doubt it.

I convinced him to continue his search, and I will do the same. I’m worried about her…worried that she has been discovered. At the same time, there is a part of me that hopes that if she is gone, that in her going she found, even if only for a brief moment, the happiness that has so long eluded her.