Storytellersunplugged

Here at Storytellers Unplugged we started a semi-traditional practice last year of posting fiction during October to celebrate Halloween. When we started out, there was a predominance of horror writers in the group - we are much more diverse now. Some of us will still be posting fiction this month, and for my own entry I’ve chosen a very old story of mine. It was written for and published in a fanzine titled “Norfolk by Night,” and it’s a vampire story. It’s not extreme horror - it’s almost philosophical in nature. I still smiled when I read it, though I wrote it back in the 1990s. I will probably be reading this for a podcast version in the next day or so…and if so I’ll get the link added to the post…for now…Vintage Dave - vampires - and welcome to October!

By David Niall Wilson

I have traveled roads long and weary, darkness my companion and destiny my guide. I have seen the sun rise and set on the courts of kings, and I have seen those kingdoms crumble back to dust. I have shared wine with women, war with men, and the night with no one. I have no name, and yet I am. Death does not stalk me; not though I dream a thousand nights for his cold embrace. This is my destiny.

Though I was born to poverty and ignorance, I have aspired to eloquence and power. I am a success story on an epic scale, one with a tragic footnote. This story I have put down that those who follow in my footsteps will understand that I was here, that I endure, even now, even in the social wasteland of this place that they now call Norfolk, but that has none of the charm, or the old-world civility, of the original city of that name.

I came here out of boredom, out of an incessant need for travel, a yearning for change. I have spoken with derelicts, madmen so soused on wine and midnight dreams that they could barely remember their given names, but whose words wove the tapestry of society with clarity and vision. I have stalked men, and women as well, from upper to lower class, knowing each, loving few, ending the existences of all but one. That is my story.

I prowled the docks, for they are near the sea, near those whose adventuresome souls and yearning hearts mirror in some small way the eternal quest that drives me onward. The men of these later days do not have the heart, nor the strength, of those whom I knew in earlier times — in greater times — but the spirit is still there, and it was that I sought. Something different, something new. Someone who might relieve the unbearable weight of boredom that bears down on my shoulders every waking moment of the night. I never dreamed of entertainment, I sought only a moments relief.

I thought momentarily of the bars. There is always music. Caustic and violent as the modern groups tended to be, there was still the allure of poetry, still the message of their souls to be picked free. I decided against it. It was a night to wander beneath the stars, to find something unique. Somehow I felt it, and I have learned to trust my instincts.

And so the docks — the waves — the moonlight dancing on choppy, off-shore swells and glistening in the captured pools of salt-spray on the rocks. I moved as silently as the breeze, as effortlessly as the gulls who owned the day-time sky.

I dream, at times, of those moments — the price of immortality — the daylight lives and trivial pursuits of those upon whom I fed. I can remember, even now, the graceful swooping movements of birds, their arrogant cries. Such dreams are an empty pursuit — painful.

I saw him as I crossed from one darkened alley to another, walking along a row of abandoned warehouses without concern, despite the hour and the solitude — despite the danger. We were not in one of the better neighborhoods, those held no interest to me. It was the edge of things, the borders of the “real” world, that caught at my senses and gave me a reason to go on.

From the instant he caught my eye, I knew I’d found what I was looking for. He wore what appeared to be a robe, sweeping to the ground at his feet. It was sewn and patched together of a hundred colored rags, of old shirts and pants, even socks, wash-cloths, towels and sheets. It was multicolored and ragged, and in the moonlight, with his long gray hair and unruly beard, with the staff he held in his right hand as he moved, he might have been an ancient prophet, Moses with his robe of many colors moving through the night.

I swept past him far to one side, coming at him from the front, where he could see me clearly, moving slowly and watching him with wondering eyes.

He never flinched. His eyes were filled with light and energy, the one thing about him that bore witness to an intelligence buried beneath the veneer of madness, of secrets he knew and none would guess. I smiled, and as I drew near, I held out my hand.

He stared at me, not offering his own hand in return, but he stopped as well, as though he’d spotted, or guessed at, my own nature. He did not turn to run, nor did he cower, but he stood there as an equal, calm and self-assured.

“You are Death?” he asked calmly?

I shook my head. “I am not, nor are you Moses, but there is a strange light about you.”

“I am a prophet,” he said matter-of-factly. “I have seen things — many things. They will not listen.” He waved his arm in a gesture that encompassed the world.
“They never have,” I told him. “From one who knows only too well, they never have. Walk with me?” I asked him, but there was not really a question involved. He moved at my side easily, comfortably.

“I did not think you were Death,” he told me, “because I have not yet foreseen my own.”

“You see everything?” I prompted.

“No, only that which matters. To me, life matters very much, so I believe I will see Death, and I will know him.”

“You are not so far from the mark,” I admitted slowly. “I have been as the angel of death to many — too many to count. Does that frighten you?”

“No,” he answered immediately. “Death is for all — I have always known that. If you were Death, I would walk with you anyway — what would be the point in resistance?”

“You are a religious man?” I asked, thoroughly intrigued. We were moving back toward the beach, along the water now. There were the flashing lights of boats — naval vessels — and the occasional backfire of a car’s engine as backdrop to our conversation — nothing more.

“I am a religious man,” he replied, his eyes growing far away, “In a sacrilegious land. I am a prophet in a world of non-believers. I am the answer to questions better left unanswered, and so, am unwanted as well. There is no soul in mankind any longer.”

“And yet you believe in your own?”

“I live within my soul. It is my soul that draws me onward, that shows me ways when others see walls, that opens windows where others see only air. There are veils, shuttered portals all around us, but we have trained ourselves to ignore them. There are windows to the soul, but man has bricked them over.

“There is poetry, still, but it is empty. It is re-played pain and endless unfulfilled dreams. They do not know what will fulfill them, so they build towers to reach a God they do not believe in, hoping that when they arrive they can take over and all will be well.

“There is religion in the world, but there is no passion. The passion is for things of the Earth, things of the flesh. There is no passion for spirit, or for beauty. There is more passion for death — it must be pleasant for you?”

He turned to me then, and I was fascinated. “There is no passion in death, so it is not such a pleasant thing. I take no pleasure in death, my own or those of others. Death is a necessity, to me, the universe — even to you.

“I serve no Gods but the night, the stars, and hunger — only one demands anything of me and the effort necessary to please him is slight. Your Gods, it would seem, deny you nothing except life.”

“I have more life here,” he gestured to his breast, his eyes softening for a moment, almost twinkling, “than you will find in the rest of this city. I learn, I watch, I survive. These are my life. To know is enough.”

“But it would be better if they knew, as well,” I countered. “That is why you try to make them see.”

“I tell them because they ask. Then they laugh, point their fingers, and wander back into darkness. It is not for me to judge, or to desire, but for them.”

The hunger was calling to me, and I knew that if I stayed longer, much as I was enjoying this exchange, that I would feed. Something within me would not allow it. There was something in his eyes, something that reminded even me, after centuries of cynicism and loneliness, of faith. There was a promise in those eyes, and I would not snatch it from the Earth.

“I must leave you now,” I told him. “To you I am not Death this night, but there are others. Walk your paths, prophesy and speak when they will listen.

“Our roads are not so different. We are solitary, we are visionary, and we are free. They are lonely roads, but they are true — keep that nearest to your heart.”

With those words, and looking back only once into the flashing depths of his eyes, I was gone. I moved as swiftly as my heightened strength and agility would allow, beyond the limits of his sight — or perhaps not. He raised his staff, and he waved in the direction in which I’d moved. I did not return that wave, but turned to embrace the darkness with new vigor.

Somewhere behind me, a beacon, a latter-day Moses, walked the streets of his own land, showing miracles to the blind and preaching to the deaf. I moved as he named me, the Angel of Death, the Grim Reaper with fangs as my scythe and hunger as my guide. We both blended with the darkness.

All around me the blood called to me. Somewhere in the shadows of the city the renewal of my own form of life pulsed through another’s veins. For once, I would dine with a clear conscience — I had spared a life that mattered, and he had shared that life with me of his own free will. Such are the miracles of the night.

—– DNW