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Netherworld of the Damned: Part One
- Netherworld of the Damned: Part One -
This is a ghost of a memory, a fever dream of a thought, a glimpse of a time now long passed away. In the larger scheme of things, these events transpired, and that was terrible enough to consider when I did set about to write of them. I shall not ascribe a time period to this, nor a specific place. I will leave this account outside of time, outside of space, yet intrinsically a part of the multiverse we live within. It is a tale of horror, of terror! To begin with, I had made a pact with a manifestation of death in order to find new life, to continue living, despite that death itself should have claimed me for its' own. This pact had made all the other, equally sinister pacts previously to pale in comparison. For this left me wholly and utterly transformed. I was told that it was in my family's blood, the darkness that erupted from me on a certain Samhain evening... when the moon did not shine with its' light and black clouds clothed all the night sky in shadow. I was cradling the lifeless form of one who had been a mentor to me, a tutor in the black arts that I had long since eclipsed her in. She had loved me once, several thousand years or more in the past, when we both wore other bodies, other forms. That was what made her betrayal so shocking to me! No worse an enemy can there be, than one whose smile delights you with its' warmth even as the deeds they do fill you with disgust. She had stabbed me with a silver dagger that was forked at the end like the tongue of a snake, certain that it contained some kind of holy power... hoping that it would at the last serve to pinion me to the grave. With my breath and my blood leaving me in turns, I tore it from out of my side and regarded the woman with wrath. I touched my left breast and spoke: “This is where my heart is, you serpent! This is where you have already wounded me...” and then I pointed to my side, which was already covered in blood from my wound. I explained: “This, did nothing but hurt! And on that, it hurt less than the other did.” That was when she came at me, wrapping her hands hard around my neck and squeezing with all her might. She aimed to kill me after all! I had no choice... I attempted to push her off of me, but she was mad... shrieking like a demon possessed. My eyes began to feel the affects of strangulation, and I knew I would surely die if I did not act. And so, I pierced the murderess's black heart with the dagger. She leapt back, releasing me, clutching her own wound now before she did at length expire in a heap, to lay at last not moving and as cold as any grave. I was bleeding out, and I had no means of reaching any sort of medical attention or healing art. She had managed to kill me, in any case, but my death would come slower and more painfully than her well-deserved end had. She was no mentor to me any longer, no teacher, no lover or friend. I had to let go of all I had felt for her, for in her attempt to claim my blood for some dark ritual... she had allowed power to overcome her love for me, and greed and arrogance to cloud her judgment. I witnessed a serpent crawl out from her mouth, as I sat on the floor bleeding profusely. The serpent was red, as red as blood itself, and spoke unto me. It said these words: “I am here to transform you with the enlightenment of what lies beyond the last of all mortal breaths.” And I held my wound, trying to keep the blood from flowing mortally as I got unto my feet and moved steadily away from the large snake... for it had grown in size and length now that it was freed from its' human guise. It was a monster, no natural animal, the scarlet fiend! I backed up and did lean against a wall of my chambers, those same that I had once shared with she who was now certainly my undoing. The serpent was taunting me, saying: “Here shall lie one who perished betrayed by a lie... a lie told by one who used love to mask deceit! Or, perhaps here shall arise a monster that will not be a human being any longer, nor anything akin to what once they were. The choice is yours!” and at once I knew that the serpent was some devil or demon out of Hell itself. Doubtless sent to answer my call, a byproduct of the pacts I had made with the infernal realms. I looked down at the slain woman in her black hooded robes, who in her demise looked very much like the grim reaper itself. I wept for what I felt should have been between us. As I wept, I said to the creature: “I slew her only in self-defense. In that act, I took no pleasure, and though I fear to die... I would be lying to say that I see little reason to go on for me. She was not always like this... something drove her mad. Even now... can I ever hate her?”
At that point, some unholy force possessed the body of the dead woman and caused it to get to its' feet and kneel before me. She gestured to me, as if begging for help standing. I yelled loudly to her, then, as much in shock and in revulsion: “If you have the power to rise again from death, then get up unto your own two feet! I shall not help you, betrayer and murderess that you are.” I was crying. I did not mean a single one of those words, but I did not believe that this was truly her any longer anyway. The serpent then taunted me even worse than before: “Slay her again! Taste of her blood, and live forever.” Though I would not be manipulated. I replied, angrily: “Why should I taste the blood of the dead? Surely, there is no life eternal therein.” My reasoning was sound. But still the cunning serpent would not relent. The demonic snake then crawled back into the dead woman's mouth, possessing her body wholly. Her very teeth became fanged like unto those of the serpent... and she bit her own mouth with them, causing a great torrent of blood to fill her cheeks. She moved closer and closer unto me, and in my mind I heard her voice echoing: “Kiss me one final time, my pupil, my apprentice, my love! And let me beg for my forgiveness, for all that I have done unto you this night. Kiss me, and taste of my blood... in that way, you will gain eternal life. And I, my redemption through your love and compassion! Where is the evil in forgiveness? Is not this a virtuous thing!” Out of sheer madness, through a haze of tears, I kissed her. I kissed the woman one final time, and her blood filled my mouth... still warm, despite that she was very cold, too cold for having been dead so short a time. I could not help but swallow the blood, there was no way to spit it all out. Suddenly, my wound bled its' last and I stopped breathing. Yet, I did not die and I found new breath beginning to pump within my lungs! And so I breathed again. The serpent left the body of my former mentor once again, and she fell in a crumpled head unto the floor. Exactly as if she had been a marionette whose strings had been snipped with a pair of unseen scissors. She was still as beautiful in death as she had ever been in life, her cold beauty making the tragedy of her even colder actions that much more difficult for me to bear! “I... forgive you.” I said, removing the dagger from out of her breast, throwing it away with all my might, aiming for the devilish serpent. I struck it, and the awful creature crumbled into dust. For many days I just sat there, staring at she whom I had once felt a love for the likes of which I could not put into words. As days became weeks, and weeks months, I did notice that her body did not decay, but remained perfect. I purchased a coffin made of glass and had it installed within the tower above my chambers. Therein, she would slumber until the Day of Judgment, when God might grant her soul the very mercy that was not within my power to bestow. I pressed my tongue against my teeth and noticed their increasing sharpness. I was changing into something more akin to the serpent creature from Hell than a being of flesh and blood as made in the image of God. I began to thirst, and to hunger. And for what, I dared not speak! I had made a pact with a manifestation of death, and now I would have to bear the consequences of it. Soon, I would have to hunt. That is the only word for it! As I began to put quill to parchment, to write of my experiences in a diary, I found that I had not the heart to date the entries. I did not wish to think of time any longer! And so I closed the big leather-bound journal, and thought to close it forever. I was dead, and yet not dead... and so my life, and that diary, were both over. I was beyond God's protection now, having become a devil myself, and all because of love. I decided, in the end, to cross out much of what I had written, and instead wrote other lines, other entries, in the book to replace what came before. My life up until now had been a lie! I had to write the truth, and so I did. Even if the truth was unspeakable! Time was irrelevant... I was timeless now, and all the lands around my home became likewise. The plants grew wild, the trees taller, and the grass higher. All the while, it seemed that the land began to hunger and thirst in a savagery equal to my own. I do not believe the land was accursed, though the people who dwelt upon it began to say that it was so. Though my wound had healed, the scar that remained was on the left-hand side... just along my ribs on that side. It reminded me of Christ's wounding and of the lance that had pierced Him, though it was in mirror to his own for his wounding was on the right-hand side. That fact... had not escaped me.
Upon the following morning, I had tasted the blood of the living for the first time... of my very own volition in this case, and requiring no prompting from she who had turned me from the light for all of eternity. I was out hunting, and I came upon a thick stretch of dense pine forests that was so dark... that even by daylight, it seemed that the sun came there but sparingly. There was a small grove of old oaks in the woods, and there were flowered garlands hung from the branches. Young girls wearing long and flowing gowns of purest white were tending to the garlands as they danced and played about the area. Apart from them and down a winding path there was a large cottage in which dwelt a small family of three. A husband, his wife, and their young daughter. The wind was howling, and I was almost afraid of the sound that it was making, for it seemed both familiar and strange to me... like something I heard in another life, in another place similar to this one. Though I could not hope to place it! I would, perhaps, have felt stronger had I not been alone, for solitude was not pleasant for me and played too much into my natural distrust of strangers. People said I was childlike in that way, and perhaps I was after all! The more I tried to pretend I did not have these issues, the worse they seemed to become. Something in me felt weaker than ever on that day, on that late afternoon. It was during the Samhain season once again, a full year having apparently passed since last I had ventured out from the immediate area surrounding my dwelling place. Had I really spend so long preparing for my emerging? Or had it been many years! Either way, it was the dark season once more, as the colors of autumn could be seen in the leaves of so many trees... that I was captivated by their beauty. After my tryst with the dark powers of Hell, it had seemed that each and every year upon this season I became strongest! Which was why my present odd sense of weakness disturbed me greatly. The dead leaves scattered before me, crunching beneath my feet like tiny bones as I crossed the distance between the path and the cottage. I was out hunting, I kept reminding myself... only that, and nothing more wicked or sinister! But a voice in my head kept telling me that I was not so innocent, a voice I kept forcing to be silent only through a great act of willpower. The windows of the cottage were covered in the first frost of the season, and within the cottage I saw the beautiful young daughter playing with her dolls. Outside, her mother sat upon a wooden bench and was gathering up flowers from the ground and putting them into a basket next to her. She was beautiful enough, the woman, but perhaps not in the way that angels are said to be. She wore a frilly white gown that was decorated with purple and blue ribbons. It was very full, with puffy sleeves, and more elegant in design than the peasant folk were normally accustomed to wearing. She had ribbons of similar hues in her hair, which was long, luxurious, and light red with blonde highlights. Her hair was to my eyes a bit like candle flame, and her own eyes were in color like unto the green of the sea. I was enchanted as I looked upon her, though not quite in love. I was spellbound enough, however, that I did not notice that her husband was storming out of the cottage door to catch me staring at his wife quite intently. He was a big and burly man, with a mane of dark hair and an unkempt looking beard. He wore a brown belted tunic, brown pants, and brown shoes. He looked like dirt, personified, to put it simply. Hardly a worthy match for such a wife! “What are you doing out here in these woods, master of the high manor? I had heard you were abroad, and have wondered what brought you forth from your isolation after so long an absence from these lands!” His tone was demanding, and he held his ax defensively in his hand. I had in my hands, only a hunting spear, which was relaxed in my grip at my side. “Your wife is a beautiful creature, sir, if I might pay so kindly a compliment! Would I be wicked to say this, or is it in fact more a compliment to you, that you have managed to gain such a wife? You have chosen well, it would seem.” Yet, the man saw the way I stared and knew it was not so innocent as I had painted it. A kind of lust had begun to blaze within my breast, and it was wicked indeed. Satanic, even! The woodcutter glared at me and bellowed: “You may be the Lord here, sir, but the vows I swore in marriage I hold more sacred than any loyalty to the nobility of this domain. Vows that the Church holds as sacred as I do! Even you, it is to be hoped, would dare not break faith with God!” But he did not know what it was that I had become.
Even I had oft tried to deny the beast within me! But something snapped at what it took to be a kind of challenge to some hellish authority, which was certainly not of God's design. Before I knew what I had done, swifter than humanly possible I had in short order impaled the man with my hunting spear. I looked on, horrified, as it entered his large neck and protruded out his eye at an oddly precise angle that did not kill him instantly, though he quivered and did spasm as he perished nonetheless. The beast that lay within me drove me to remove the man's dislodged eye and throw it as his wife, who screamed at the sight with great terror in her voice. I drank a great quantity of the blood that gushed from out of my victim's gruesome wounds. He never had the chance to scream, himself, for so quick was his demise at my hands that he could not even so much as react to it. The woman ran into the cottage and pushed with all her weight against the door, attempting to keep me out. I withdrew my spear from out of the dead man's body even as it struck hard the cold ground. The woman screamed out from the cottage: “I must tell you, my Lord, that my husband only meant to come out and greet you! And where is he now? What have you done to him, and what do you mean to do with me! I was content in my marriage, you must know. Leave me be, so I might mourn for my husband in peace! And never touch my daughter, you filthy devil. Never!” She must have sensed my lustful feelings towards her from before. I told her the truth, though I mixed it with lies. “It is clear that your husband thought me an intruder, milady, and he was preparing to make ready and attack me. You heard his tone! I was forced to take his life, and it is regrettable, but better that than for him to be a criminal by attacking his Lord and ruler.” And she began to wail and scream, and I could practically see the tears rolling down her robust cheeks, marring cruelly her pleasant face. “Why? Why would my husband be so foolish! Even I know the face of the Lord who rules our land, so why would he be so ignorant as to displease you like this?” I pushed in the door, for she had stepped away from it for a moment. I stepped over and began to caress her gentle face. “Who knows what makes men and women do the things they say or do?” I offered, perhaps as an excuse for my own wickedness. And then, the beast within me exploded and I took the woman by force, ripping and tearing her garments with what had been my hands, which now to my eyes appeared to be like the claws of a beast indeed. I was clearly possessed by some demon or devil, and to add to the horror of my deeds my very teeth were burying themselves into the poor woman's neck. My tongue had become like a serpent's tongue, and my teeth felt like fangs. I was drinking the woman's blood more ravenously than I had that of her husband, mixing the pain with the pleasure I was already wrenching from her body in a more purely sexual manner. At length, I had slakes more than one thirst and only too late realized the full horror, the barbaric cruelty of it all. I fell to my knees, screaming and weeping in anguish. The little girl who had been this woman's daughter was huddled in a corner of the cottage, shivering with terror and crying pitifully at seeing what I had done with her mother. In my madness, I had not thought about the child potentially witnessing these depraved acts. Her life was now ruined by this feral madness that had consumed me, and I kept telling myself that they would be the last. I buried both her parents behind the cottage and set it afire, taking the child with me to raise as my own. As the little girl and I so walked away, turning our gazes away from that scene of vile carnage, I noticed that the normal marks that all mortals have upon their palms... upon mine, were covered with bloodstains in shapes not dissimilar to inverted pentagrams. I could not see the “M” shape on my palms through those bloody marks. I now did knew for a certainty that I was damned, and I laughed insanely. My young companion cried to see my sudden loss of sanity, though I cautioned her not to. I promised that she would never need weep so bitterly again, even as I noticed that the girls I had seen playing in the woods earlier were not there. No garlands hung from the trees, either. It was as if I had imagined their very existence! I asked the little girl if she knew of such children or festivities on that day, and she replied in a frightened manner: “No, sir, my Lord sir... that was last week.” and she explained that this was the reason her mother was busy picking up the flowers from the ground. Apparently, reality was no longer becoming real for my eyes!
During the days that followed, I was not sure if I was experiencing sleep as I should have been, or if my eyes beheld something else when I closed them. After all, why should a dead person such as myself have any need to sleep? Even so, I thought I did sleep one night, and believed myself to be dreaming as I did so. In the nightmare that came to me, the ghosts of the woodsman and his wife arrived to visit me. The woodsman was angry, but could do me not any harm... for he claimed that I was something he did refer to as a “Vampire”, and under the protection of a deity of some sort. If he meant a guardian angel or a protective god, there was a sick sort of irony in it for I surely was no longer in the good graces of any angels who were not yet fallen! His wife had somehow found it in her heart to forgive me, and wrapped her arms around me reassuringly, much to her husband's anger and frustration. She claimed I was not at all myself, and so not responsible for what transpired. But, the bloody and rapacious deeds were surely my own. Then, a strange sort of little girl appeared and dragged me with inhuman strength from out of the woman's arms. The woman and her husband fell into piles of ash and charred bones, whilst the odd child who gripped me with such power was fast leading me out the doors of he manor house and on out into the wind places of the surrounding lands. “I am the guardian spirit of this domain.” She spoke in odd tones that were almost musical to hear. “I have chosen you, and you have awakened at last!” Her singsong voice chanted. I was taken to some ancient circle of standing stones etched with carvings and designs of incomprehensible meaning and likely of ancient Pagan origin. In the midst of the circle was the goat-like countenance of the hermaphroditic demon some called Baphomet, its' bat-like wings all spread out across the back of its' stone throne that was erected at the circle's center. Its' eyes burned like hot coals, and with a twisted claw the demon summoned forth the Angel of Death from whatever dark place such a one calls home. But the angel was not terrible or ugly to behold, but beautiful beyond all reason! She strode forward, and the little girl behind me giggled mischievously. The angel took me with no effort into her embrace, and forced a fierce kiss upon my lips that was as cold as ice in the winter. It was then the angel spoke: “Your kiss is death, vampire!” said she, and the sad ghosts of the woodsman and his wife appeared one final time before Baphomet's throne. The child then whispered into my ear: “You are not responsible for the lives you steal in my name. Their souls go to the place prepared for all who perish in such a way. God ordains it, the Devil commands it, and who is to say that you are not at least one of those two things! And I do not mean God when I say that.” With that said, the two ghosts, whose lives I so utterly destroyed, were each picked up in one of the demon's immense claws, for the demon was just that large, and then they were consumed by the towering beast. “Such a beast as this is, lies within all of us.” explained the increasingly strange little girl. “I am giving you leave, to let yours free whenever I do command it. For you are chosen by me.” I than asked her, my lips quivering with a great deal of fear: “How should I control it otherwise, and know when it is by your own desire rather than mine?” She then became something truly terrible that I cannot describe, and forced as awful of an attention upon me, as I had visited upon the the woodsman's wife. Once she had partaken of me in two horrific ways, she transformed back into a little girl again and stated: “You will know, my child, for I shall be watching! When I am watching, you may be free to act as your desires will you, for they are then in harmony with my own.” The ancient standing stones ran red with blood, and he demon was no longer there. I was alone with the terrible child guardian who had brought me hither, and I recognized her voice as that of the serpent who had spoken through the corpse of my dead mentor. If this was not the Devil after all, it was surely something equally terrible! I was hers now, body and soul. Even those who are damned, it seems, must obey some divine will and blessed... or accursed... authority. I awoke from the nightmare sweating, and my eyes thought I was sweating blood. The Angel of Death stood just in front of me, off the side of the bed. She pointed to me and stated imperiously: “You are free from my embrace for a time, but rest assured that everyone must pay for their sins eventually. In death, all debts are paid! Even if you are as sinless as you believe yourself to be.” She vanished then, and I was awake.
I went outside, on a lark, to check on the plants in the gardens of the manor's grounds... and they had all become monstrous and somehow terrible. The guardian spirit, in the form of the child form that odd nightmare, kept appearing near the gardens and telling me to feed the plants. I went hunting and with no regrets kept on bringing back fresh victims to feed the plants with. They were consumed by the horrible things, and I began to wonder if in fact I had died after all... for this was a sight seen only in Hell itself. My daughter, for that is what she had become to me, was becoming increasingly used to her new life as the child of a noble. She dressed in the most beautiful of gowns, had servants aplenty to wait upon her, and I pampered her like no other. As the years went by, I watched her grow into a beautiful woman, the very image of her mother. Hair like that of candle fire, eyes as green as the sea, and a face that to me I had come to regard as perfection. “You look at me so strangely sometimes, father!” she said to me, to which I would always reply: “It is because you are so beautiful, daughter.” to which she would blush. I had a mind to turn her into whatever it is that I was, so that she might be spared the ravages of old age and death. Yet that would also visit upon her my hunger, my thirst, and the beast inside of me. And so, I decided to think about it and give it some thought. The girl's name was Idalia, and to me she became a truer object of devotion than the cruel child who haunted my nightmares and claimed to be a spirit of the land itself. I had become more a guardian than she! In my time as lord of this land, in all the years of it, I had put an end to crime... and had donated large sums of my own wealth to the poor. Yet, I had broken with the Church and decided that I had no use for any Christian religion. I was Pagan in all my ways, and proud of it enough to speak of it openly. This gained me the ire of certain priests who lived upon my lands, and often they attempted to stir the people's hearts, minds, and souls against me. That is why, on a certain occasion, I decided to show them who was the ruler and who was not. I told Idalia to remain at home, and I decided to go forth on a hunt once again. A hunt with no small measure to deeper meaning! I had renounced my humanity utterly, for what had being human ever gotten me but sorrow, after all? I had more control over myself on this occasion than I had previously on hunts past. I firmly believed that showing such restraint was a good exercise for me. I visited the yard of the church where the priest presided who had become such trouble to me. I dressed in a wide-belted, embroidered tunic of darkest black, trimmed with gold... beneath which I wore a pair of Turkish style pantaloons in a red as blood color. A pair of soft leather boots and a black velvet-like hooded cloak completed my outfit. I was as pale as a corpse that had no blood left in it, and my head was shaved bald. My eyebrows too, I kept shaved off, and my resulting appearance was not quite human looking. It was perfect for this very specific occasion especially! For I had a mind to instill fear in the supposedly righteous heart of this man who had dared to act against me. The churchyard was a rough place with a broken fence that was surrounding the graveyard... filled do doubt with the rotting corpses of those who had imagined they had a paradise awaiting them in Heaven. They had earned no such thing, for following this faith! The church itself squatted above the graveyard like a white maggot upon the bloated flesh of a dead man. If the soil of that place was not dead, it was certainly dying! Every tree was like a dried claw scratching up towards the sky with the utmost mad desperation. A useless effort, though perhaps the earth should scream as I approach that house of God! Even so, it was silent. Was I not something ungodly now? I had my face painted in harlequin-like makeup to accentuate my otherness. White face paint, blood red lipstick, black around my eyes... like the face of a demonic clown, only more evil still. The bell of that church was ringing out the hour when I kicked the wooden door in and stormed inside. The priest, ever the coward that he was, was nowhere to be seen... but a nun was sitting in one of the wooden pews that was near to the altar. The image of Jesus Christ crucified and bleeding hung above the altar, and I had thought that such a visage of torture and death... though not permanent death... was strangely fitting and appropriate for this evening's sport. I was singing as I walked across the distance towards the nun, my cold blue eyes filled with menace. It was a silly, lighthearted song, and it so disrupted the nun's prayers.
She had pretended not to notice me kicking the door in, and the moonlight was doing strange things through the stained glass windows of the church, which depicted (even more ironically) the various fell and terrible scenes of the Apocalypse from the Bible's Book of Revelation. The dim torches and lamps that lit the interior of the church served only to enhance the ghostly air of the place... and to make the young nun's face seem pallid as she turned to regard me, a sudden look of fear in her dark eyes. She was a short woman, and I towered over her, savoring her terror but not acting upon it. “Do you pray for your salvation, sister?” I asked, and she showed me the rosary beads she clutched in her palms, stating with honesty: “I do. But now I believe I shall pray for yours as well, since you seem troubled to come in to this house of God with so much violence and irreverence.” I laughed, and even I found my laugh to be sinister sounding, and perhaps more than insane. “Sweet sister, I do not need your prayers, for I must confess that I am quite damned. I am no longer capable of being saved, you see!” and I grinned, and as I did so it was the very grinning face of madness itself. My teeth felt sharp to my tongue. The nun gasped at the sight of my face, devoid of all reason as it must have appeared, and she made the sign of the cross over her chest. I do not know why she did not run, or scream, though. She really should have, actually! I might have spared her, were I not thirsty and hungry at that moment. I pulled her into my arms, pulling her rosary out of her hands and stuffing it into her mouth with a casual cruelty that shocked me. She spit it out and let it fall to the floor, its' beads scattering as it broke apart. “The Holy Mother will cure you if you harm me!” the nun defiantly said... smacking me hard across my face with the palm of her left hand. An interesting choice! I then grabbed that hand, chuckling: “Beware the left handed path, my sweetmeat sister!” And I broke the bones in her hand with a loud crack that brought tears to her eyes. Yet, even so, she still refused to cry out. I pulled her habit from her head, revealing her flowing locks of dark brown hair. Her large brown eyes seemed to have no malice in them, despite my treatment of her. I found her lovely looking without the habit, and she was indeed young and fresh in her life! I forced a kiss upon her, pressing her body against mine, and my teeth bit her lips and tongue, drawing blood. As I withdrew from that embrace, she gasped in revulsion and the sharp pain of her bleeding mouth. She did open her mouth several times, as if to say something, but she could not find the right words. If she had, she could not make them come forth. “Lost your ability to speak curses, sister?” I mused aloud. I then stated ferociously, snarling as I did so: “Then allow me to deprive you of your dignity next!” and with that I tore her black and white garments until she was nearly naked. I pressed her down unto the pew she had been sitting in, and I lodged myself firmly between her legs while she squirmed about. She did not kick, and struggled but little as I had my way with her, and throughout my ravishing of her body she never once screamed or even so much as uttered a single cry or plea for mercy. Her eyes were full of tears, but even thus she did not weep aloud. I was tiring of her defiance of my will, and so once I had in all ways finished taking my pleasures of her... I kissed her one final time, this time, biting her tongue off and spitting it into her face with the utmost contempt. She went to scream, but only a horrid gurgling sound came out as her blood flowed from her open mouth. I leaned in close and licked it up. She tried to bite me and I struck her with such ferocity that all of her teeth broke at once from the cruel force of the blow I inflicted. My hands felt like claws to me once again, and they reached for the dagger I kept in a sheathe on my right boot. With it, I cut into her body, slicing off her right breast. I then broker her ribs and cut her heart out of its' moorings. I squeezed her heart in my hands, and forced the blood from it... swallowing the blood in great gulps until the heart was dried out. I then cast it down unto her corpse and spat some of the blood upon her face. It was then that the priest came forth from his living space, having heard the commotion. He was a weak and foolish looking old man with white hair, wearing very ostentatious looking robes that I can only suppose were more than his typical priestly attire. I reached him quickly, grabbed him by the throat, and dragged him over to the nun's corpse. That was only the beginning of the terror I was suddenly inspired to sow! I would make this man suffer in terrible ways.
“Do you truly believe in God, father? Then pray to Him now!” I commanded the priest. You can very well imagine the priest's horror at seeing a living fiend from Hell holding his neck and making him so gaze upon the defiled corpse of the nun that had been praying in the priest's very house of supposedly divine worship. I shall leave it for the reader to picture! I told him: “I will spare your life, father, if you partake of the dead nun as if she were your fondest lover.” and the truly awful prospect of that unholy act of necrophilia made the man shriek and beg for mercy. “I will do anything you ask, sir Devil... for so I firmly believe you to be now... only, please, do not make me copulate with the dead. I would burn in Hell were I to engage in such a sinful intercourse!” I then began to pull the hair from the priest's head as I stated angrily: “That sin you fear to commit, but how oft have you thought nothing of doing far worse to young, innocent boys? I know your sort of hypocrite, priest... and I have only the utmost contempt and disgust for you.” I chose those words, for I knew of the decadence and corruption of many of the members of the Church, and this man seemed to be to be that very sort of person. He said nervously: “How did you know about that? I mean, sir Devil, please... just kill me. Just kill me already!” So such went his pathetic pleas for lenience. I had none for him. “Do it then!” I dared the priest, adding just for effect the words: “Put your shriveled manhood into the dead nun. You need not take her as a maid is oft taken... you could always seek pleasure from the hole where her heart used to be, if you prefer!” And I shoved him on top of the corpse, and was surprised when he actually did as I had bidden him, partaking of that vile and bloody orifice he had just gazed upon, thrusting into her heart cavity with all his might. He exhausted himself in his pathetic efforts to attain pleasure, and when he had finished he begged me to kill him. “I cannot live with this, or with the fact that you know of my sins. Sir Devil, please just kill me and get it over with at last!” He was a long time dying, after that. I cut his limbs off, one at a time... using a woodcutters saw that I found in a shed in the churchyard, after I bound the old man to the altar. I hung up each of the man's limbs in the doorway of the church itself using strong ropes. They dripped of blood from severed veins and arteries as crows came from the woods to feast upon the raw flesh I had exposed in my cutting up of the priest. They found their greatest meal just outside the shed though. For there I had placed the slain man's head, torso, and organs... all in a mangled heap upon the cold, misty soil. I knew he had been guilty of sin... I just knew not how I came to realize this. It was some sort of supernatural sense of sorts, surely. I did not regret what I had done to him... not even when I castrated the man and forced him to eat his own disgusting member, which I had flayed prior to removing from his body and shoving it into his mouth. I thought about the nun after that, and how strong willed she truly was, and how all she wanted to do was pray for my salvation. I broke down and allowed myself to lament her horrible death and further defilement at the priest's hands. Why had I acted with such cruelty at the prospect of salvation? Because I wanted to be purged of my humanity! But at such a heavy and wicked cost, that I had not imagined at first that I was capable of paying. I decided to bury the nun in the church's cemetery, which I will freely admit I left the priest to rot and remain as food for the crows and other eaters of the dead. I took the beads from the shattered rosary with me, and I tried to put the night's horrors out of my mind. The day was not yet upon me when I could be strong enough to allow such things to no longer affect me... I wondered if it ever truly could be. Or if, as inhuman as I was, I was condemned to remain human in my conscience, in my lost soul! I walked away from the church, and I did not look back at it. My palms were covered with blood again, and they seemed to burn like fire. I noticed the shape of pentagrams in the blood once more, the sign that I was surely the Devil and doing Hell's bidding. Perhaps this pain was my punishment for it! I would need to master that pain, if not soon... than as soon as possible, at least. I licked the blood from my hands, and as soon as I had so done, the pain came to naught. My will was getting stronger, and surely enough innocent blood had thus been shed in the cause of that strength. I took no pride in that fact. Pride was the one sin I would never allow myself to indulge in. I made my way along paths no mortal should ever tread, proceeding home.
I spotted the manor house on the horizon. I wanted to believe that some quiet days waited me there, a the very least some time to reflect upon my long journey and the things I had done and witnessed in my time away from the house. I shall recount none of that here! It was not to be, for I could hear the wind howling, seeming to me that it carried the moans, shrieks, and screams of my victims upon it. I could imagine their ghosts flying upon the air to come and seek vengeance upon me for their deaths. But no such grim wraiths were carried hither! It was, after all... only the wind. As I reached the front porch of my manor house, my daughter was waiting for my return. She grasped the front of my tunic with some fantastic strength and pulled me close to her so she could whisper this unto me: “At last you return and so, let me gift you with this final bit of wisdom, for I meant to impart it unto you sooner had some other matters not arisen! You need not learn my true name, but this much you must know... I bear the flame that perishes not, the same that lies within your breast. Long before I took this woman's body to be my own, long before you saw me in your dreams and nightmares, in Babylon they worshiped me but I will not reveal the name they called me by. They worshiped you as well! This woman was born to house my spirit, and because she was born you may be redeemed... but only through blood, for blood is the stuff of sacrifice. As it stands today, this land is sick from the cruel deeds done on its' soil for generations and generations. The trees cannot be nurtured, the soil may as well be ash! Only the ice and fire... the lava and the stone of the mountains... remain untouched. In your youth, your journeys took you there and I sense that you were shown... the corruption that has reached even the underground domains of legend. The demons of that place devoured too many souls and flesh of human beings, to ever be redeemed. Is that not fitting, for devils? Their damnation was ordained not by God, but by their nature! Yours need not be so. Were you to simply die right now, you would never know peace... though I would try to help you. The Angel of Death would have her way with you! To your eyes, I am but a woman, your daughter. The daughter you stole from her mother to raise as your own. But I have witnessed the cycles of time laid bare unto my eyes! Even now, I see all the evils that are done my mankind. I see the wife who hurts her husband, as your mentor hurt you. I see adulteries, incest, and fornication of every sort. Some are not sins, though people think them to be... and some are beyond sins, being true evils. The father who is lustful of his daughter, the mother who is lustful of her son. The siblings who rut like wild beasts while all these vile deeds are done in the dark of night, hidden, so that the common folk believe that all their neighbors are more pure than they are. The Church excuses anything for the right indulgence money, but God is a harsher judge than the Pope! Evil still smells foul when covered with perfume until it is like the scent of a loveless harlot. You cannot promise me that you will not become corrupt, for is not temptation hard on all who live! But, if you keep at least one secret place in your heart pure, then you will either be forgiven or given another chance at redemption. Think upon this! One chosen as you, to bear the darkest of gifts, needs not indulge them without refinement. Be gentle in your manners, first and foremost, and this at least may be your first step. You were human before you became a beast, and you must remember that again, lest your humanity become wholly lost. I lament the desolation of this land, and only your will, which is now tied to the land by mine, can shape it anew. It will reflect your mood, your soul, sometimes your very mental state. Simple folk claim that these are the end times, but such a time is not yet come. God is not here to enact such a final judgment! I am here instead, and you yet walk the earth in wrath. I am an angel come to be your conscience! Think of me as such. And know that besides being your soul's mate, I too shall be your beloved through all the years, all the centuries to come. I had a hand, in your rebirth... and it was your tears at your mentor's betrayal that summoned me forth into the world once again... so that a fire could be kindled that will burn brightly in your breast as never before. Remember that living blood is only your nourishment, and do not live for blood as would a glutton for food. Lest you fall into that sin!” And we embraced as if for the first time. She was not my daughter any longer... she was something far more. And so we kissed, kissing as true soul's mates may!
This is a ghost of a memory, a fever dream of a thought, a glimpse of a time now long passed away. In the larger scheme of things, these events transpired, and that was terrible enough to consider when I did set about to write of them. I shall not ascribe a time period to this, nor a specific place. I will leave this account outside of time, outside of space, yet intrinsically a part of the multiverse we live within. It is a tale of horror, of terror! To begin with, I had made a pact with a manifestation of death in order to find new life, to continue living, despite that death itself should have claimed me for its' own. This pact had made all the other, equally sinister pacts previously to pale in comparison. For this left me wholly and utterly transformed. I was told that it was in my family's blood, the darkness that erupted from me on a certain Samhain evening... when the moon did not shine with its' light and black clouds clothed all the night sky in shadow. I was cradling the lifeless form of one who had been a mentor to me, a tutor in the black arts that I had long since eclipsed her in. She had loved me once, several thousand years or more in the past, when we both wore other bodies, other forms. That was what made her betrayal so shocking to me! No worse an enemy can there be, than one whose smile delights you with its' warmth even as the deeds they do fill you with disgust. She had stabbed me with a silver dagger that was forked at the end like the tongue of a snake, certain that it contained some kind of holy power... hoping that it would at the last serve to pinion me to the grave. With my breath and my blood leaving me in turns, I tore it from out of my side and regarded the woman with wrath. I touched my left breast and spoke: “This is where my heart is, you serpent! This is where you have already wounded me...” and then I pointed to my side, which was already covered in blood from my wound. I explained: “This, did nothing but hurt! And on that, it hurt less than the other did.” That was when she came at me, wrapping her hands hard around my neck and squeezing with all her might. She aimed to kill me after all! I had no choice... I attempted to push her off of me, but she was mad... shrieking like a demon possessed. My eyes began to feel the affects of strangulation, and I knew I would surely die if I did not act. And so, I pierced the murderess's black heart with the dagger. She leapt back, releasing me, clutching her own wound now before she did at length expire in a heap, to lay at last not moving and as cold as any grave. I was bleeding out, and I had no means of reaching any sort of medical attention or healing art. She had managed to kill me, in any case, but my death would come slower and more painfully than her well-deserved end had. She was no mentor to me any longer, no teacher, no lover or friend. I had to let go of all I had felt for her, for in her attempt to claim my blood for some dark ritual... she had allowed power to overcome her love for me, and greed and arrogance to cloud her judgment. I witnessed a serpent crawl out from her mouth, as I sat on the floor bleeding profusely. The serpent was red, as red as blood itself, and spoke unto me. It said these words: “I am here to transform you with the enlightenment of what lies beyond the last of all mortal breaths.” And I held my wound, trying to keep the blood from flowing mortally as I got unto my feet and moved steadily away from the large snake... for it had grown in size and length now that it was freed from its' human guise. It was a monster, no natural animal, the scarlet fiend! I backed up and did lean against a wall of my chambers, those same that I had once shared with she who was now certainly my undoing. The serpent was taunting me, saying: “Here shall lie one who perished betrayed by a lie... a lie told by one who used love to mask deceit! Or, perhaps here shall arise a monster that will not be a human being any longer, nor anything akin to what once they were. The choice is yours!” and at once I knew that the serpent was some devil or demon out of Hell itself. Doubtless sent to answer my call, a byproduct of the pacts I had made with the infernal realms. I looked down at the slain woman in her black hooded robes, who in her demise looked very much like the grim reaper itself. I wept for what I felt should have been between us. As I wept, I said to the creature: “I slew her only in self-defense. In that act, I took no pleasure, and though I fear to die... I would be lying to say that I see little reason to go on for me. She was not always like this... something drove her mad. Even now... can I ever hate her?”
At that point, some unholy force possessed the body of the dead woman and caused it to get to its' feet and kneel before me. She gestured to me, as if begging for help standing. I yelled loudly to her, then, as much in shock and in revulsion: “If you have the power to rise again from death, then get up unto your own two feet! I shall not help you, betrayer and murderess that you are.” I was crying. I did not mean a single one of those words, but I did not believe that this was truly her any longer anyway. The serpent then taunted me even worse than before: “Slay her again! Taste of her blood, and live forever.” Though I would not be manipulated. I replied, angrily: “Why should I taste the blood of the dead? Surely, there is no life eternal therein.” My reasoning was sound. But still the cunning serpent would not relent. The demonic snake then crawled back into the dead woman's mouth, possessing her body wholly. Her very teeth became fanged like unto those of the serpent... and she bit her own mouth with them, causing a great torrent of blood to fill her cheeks. She moved closer and closer unto me, and in my mind I heard her voice echoing: “Kiss me one final time, my pupil, my apprentice, my love! And let me beg for my forgiveness, for all that I have done unto you this night. Kiss me, and taste of my blood... in that way, you will gain eternal life. And I, my redemption through your love and compassion! Where is the evil in forgiveness? Is not this a virtuous thing!” Out of sheer madness, through a haze of tears, I kissed her. I kissed the woman one final time, and her blood filled my mouth... still warm, despite that she was very cold, too cold for having been dead so short a time. I could not help but swallow the blood, there was no way to spit it all out. Suddenly, my wound bled its' last and I stopped breathing. Yet, I did not die and I found new breath beginning to pump within my lungs! And so I breathed again. The serpent left the body of my former mentor once again, and she fell in a crumpled head unto the floor. Exactly as if she had been a marionette whose strings had been snipped with a pair of unseen scissors. She was still as beautiful in death as she had ever been in life, her cold beauty making the tragedy of her even colder actions that much more difficult for me to bear! “I... forgive you.” I said, removing the dagger from out of her breast, throwing it away with all my might, aiming for the devilish serpent. I struck it, and the awful creature crumbled into dust. For many days I just sat there, staring at she whom I had once felt a love for the likes of which I could not put into words. As days became weeks, and weeks months, I did notice that her body did not decay, but remained perfect. I purchased a coffin made of glass and had it installed within the tower above my chambers. Therein, she would slumber until the Day of Judgment, when God might grant her soul the very mercy that was not within my power to bestow. I pressed my tongue against my teeth and noticed their increasing sharpness. I was changing into something more akin to the serpent creature from Hell than a being of flesh and blood as made in the image of God. I began to thirst, and to hunger. And for what, I dared not speak! I had made a pact with a manifestation of death, and now I would have to bear the consequences of it. Soon, I would have to hunt. That is the only word for it! As I began to put quill to parchment, to write of my experiences in a diary, I found that I had not the heart to date the entries. I did not wish to think of time any longer! And so I closed the big leather-bound journal, and thought to close it forever. I was dead, and yet not dead... and so my life, and that diary, were both over. I was beyond God's protection now, having become a devil myself, and all because of love. I decided, in the end, to cross out much of what I had written, and instead wrote other lines, other entries, in the book to replace what came before. My life up until now had been a lie! I had to write the truth, and so I did. Even if the truth was unspeakable! Time was irrelevant... I was timeless now, and all the lands around my home became likewise. The plants grew wild, the trees taller, and the grass higher. All the while, it seemed that the land began to hunger and thirst in a savagery equal to my own. I do not believe the land was accursed, though the people who dwelt upon it began to say that it was so. Though my wound had healed, the scar that remained was on the left-hand side... just along my ribs on that side. It reminded me of Christ's wounding and of the lance that had pierced Him, though it was in mirror to his own for his wounding was on the right-hand side. That fact... had not escaped me.
Upon the following morning, I had tasted the blood of the living for the first time... of my very own volition in this case, and requiring no prompting from she who had turned me from the light for all of eternity. I was out hunting, and I came upon a thick stretch of dense pine forests that was so dark... that even by daylight, it seemed that the sun came there but sparingly. There was a small grove of old oaks in the woods, and there were flowered garlands hung from the branches. Young girls wearing long and flowing gowns of purest white were tending to the garlands as they danced and played about the area. Apart from them and down a winding path there was a large cottage in which dwelt a small family of three. A husband, his wife, and their young daughter. The wind was howling, and I was almost afraid of the sound that it was making, for it seemed both familiar and strange to me... like something I heard in another life, in another place similar to this one. Though I could not hope to place it! I would, perhaps, have felt stronger had I not been alone, for solitude was not pleasant for me and played too much into my natural distrust of strangers. People said I was childlike in that way, and perhaps I was after all! The more I tried to pretend I did not have these issues, the worse they seemed to become. Something in me felt weaker than ever on that day, on that late afternoon. It was during the Samhain season once again, a full year having apparently passed since last I had ventured out from the immediate area surrounding my dwelling place. Had I really spend so long preparing for my emerging? Or had it been many years! Either way, it was the dark season once more, as the colors of autumn could be seen in the leaves of so many trees... that I was captivated by their beauty. After my tryst with the dark powers of Hell, it had seemed that each and every year upon this season I became strongest! Which was why my present odd sense of weakness disturbed me greatly. The dead leaves scattered before me, crunching beneath my feet like tiny bones as I crossed the distance between the path and the cottage. I was out hunting, I kept reminding myself... only that, and nothing more wicked or sinister! But a voice in my head kept telling me that I was not so innocent, a voice I kept forcing to be silent only through a great act of willpower. The windows of the cottage were covered in the first frost of the season, and within the cottage I saw the beautiful young daughter playing with her dolls. Outside, her mother sat upon a wooden bench and was gathering up flowers from the ground and putting them into a basket next to her. She was beautiful enough, the woman, but perhaps not in the way that angels are said to be. She wore a frilly white gown that was decorated with purple and blue ribbons. It was very full, with puffy sleeves, and more elegant in design than the peasant folk were normally accustomed to wearing. She had ribbons of similar hues in her hair, which was long, luxurious, and light red with blonde highlights. Her hair was to my eyes a bit like candle flame, and her own eyes were in color like unto the green of the sea. I was enchanted as I looked upon her, though not quite in love. I was spellbound enough, however, that I did not notice that her husband was storming out of the cottage door to catch me staring at his wife quite intently. He was a big and burly man, with a mane of dark hair and an unkempt looking beard. He wore a brown belted tunic, brown pants, and brown shoes. He looked like dirt, personified, to put it simply. Hardly a worthy match for such a wife! “What are you doing out here in these woods, master of the high manor? I had heard you were abroad, and have wondered what brought you forth from your isolation after so long an absence from these lands!” His tone was demanding, and he held his ax defensively in his hand. I had in my hands, only a hunting spear, which was relaxed in my grip at my side. “Your wife is a beautiful creature, sir, if I might pay so kindly a compliment! Would I be wicked to say this, or is it in fact more a compliment to you, that you have managed to gain such a wife? You have chosen well, it would seem.” Yet, the man saw the way I stared and knew it was not so innocent as I had painted it. A kind of lust had begun to blaze within my breast, and it was wicked indeed. Satanic, even! The woodcutter glared at me and bellowed: “You may be the Lord here, sir, but the vows I swore in marriage I hold more sacred than any loyalty to the nobility of this domain. Vows that the Church holds as sacred as I do! Even you, it is to be hoped, would dare not break faith with God!” But he did not know what it was that I had become.
Even I had oft tried to deny the beast within me! But something snapped at what it took to be a kind of challenge to some hellish authority, which was certainly not of God's design. Before I knew what I had done, swifter than humanly possible I had in short order impaled the man with my hunting spear. I looked on, horrified, as it entered his large neck and protruded out his eye at an oddly precise angle that did not kill him instantly, though he quivered and did spasm as he perished nonetheless. The beast that lay within me drove me to remove the man's dislodged eye and throw it as his wife, who screamed at the sight with great terror in her voice. I drank a great quantity of the blood that gushed from out of my victim's gruesome wounds. He never had the chance to scream, himself, for so quick was his demise at my hands that he could not even so much as react to it. The woman ran into the cottage and pushed with all her weight against the door, attempting to keep me out. I withdrew my spear from out of the dead man's body even as it struck hard the cold ground. The woman screamed out from the cottage: “I must tell you, my Lord, that my husband only meant to come out and greet you! And where is he now? What have you done to him, and what do you mean to do with me! I was content in my marriage, you must know. Leave me be, so I might mourn for my husband in peace! And never touch my daughter, you filthy devil. Never!” She must have sensed my lustful feelings towards her from before. I told her the truth, though I mixed it with lies. “It is clear that your husband thought me an intruder, milady, and he was preparing to make ready and attack me. You heard his tone! I was forced to take his life, and it is regrettable, but better that than for him to be a criminal by attacking his Lord and ruler.” And she began to wail and scream, and I could practically see the tears rolling down her robust cheeks, marring cruelly her pleasant face. “Why? Why would my husband be so foolish! Even I know the face of the Lord who rules our land, so why would he be so ignorant as to displease you like this?” I pushed in the door, for she had stepped away from it for a moment. I stepped over and began to caress her gentle face. “Who knows what makes men and women do the things they say or do?” I offered, perhaps as an excuse for my own wickedness. And then, the beast within me exploded and I took the woman by force, ripping and tearing her garments with what had been my hands, which now to my eyes appeared to be like the claws of a beast indeed. I was clearly possessed by some demon or devil, and to add to the horror of my deeds my very teeth were burying themselves into the poor woman's neck. My tongue had become like a serpent's tongue, and my teeth felt like fangs. I was drinking the woman's blood more ravenously than I had that of her husband, mixing the pain with the pleasure I was already wrenching from her body in a more purely sexual manner. At length, I had slakes more than one thirst and only too late realized the full horror, the barbaric cruelty of it all. I fell to my knees, screaming and weeping in anguish. The little girl who had been this woman's daughter was huddled in a corner of the cottage, shivering with terror and crying pitifully at seeing what I had done with her mother. In my madness, I had not thought about the child potentially witnessing these depraved acts. Her life was now ruined by this feral madness that had consumed me, and I kept telling myself that they would be the last. I buried both her parents behind the cottage and set it afire, taking the child with me to raise as my own. As the little girl and I so walked away, turning our gazes away from that scene of vile carnage, I noticed that the normal marks that all mortals have upon their palms... upon mine, were covered with bloodstains in shapes not dissimilar to inverted pentagrams. I could not see the “M” shape on my palms through those bloody marks. I now did knew for a certainty that I was damned, and I laughed insanely. My young companion cried to see my sudden loss of sanity, though I cautioned her not to. I promised that she would never need weep so bitterly again, even as I noticed that the girls I had seen playing in the woods earlier were not there. No garlands hung from the trees, either. It was as if I had imagined their very existence! I asked the little girl if she knew of such children or festivities on that day, and she replied in a frightened manner: “No, sir, my Lord sir... that was last week.” and she explained that this was the reason her mother was busy picking up the flowers from the ground. Apparently, reality was no longer becoming real for my eyes!
During the days that followed, I was not sure if I was experiencing sleep as I should have been, or if my eyes beheld something else when I closed them. After all, why should a dead person such as myself have any need to sleep? Even so, I thought I did sleep one night, and believed myself to be dreaming as I did so. In the nightmare that came to me, the ghosts of the woodsman and his wife arrived to visit me. The woodsman was angry, but could do me not any harm... for he claimed that I was something he did refer to as a “Vampire”, and under the protection of a deity of some sort. If he meant a guardian angel or a protective god, there was a sick sort of irony in it for I surely was no longer in the good graces of any angels who were not yet fallen! His wife had somehow found it in her heart to forgive me, and wrapped her arms around me reassuringly, much to her husband's anger and frustration. She claimed I was not at all myself, and so not responsible for what transpired. But, the bloody and rapacious deeds were surely my own. Then, a strange sort of little girl appeared and dragged me with inhuman strength from out of the woman's arms. The woman and her husband fell into piles of ash and charred bones, whilst the odd child who gripped me with such power was fast leading me out the doors of he manor house and on out into the wind places of the surrounding lands. “I am the guardian spirit of this domain.” She spoke in odd tones that were almost musical to hear. “I have chosen you, and you have awakened at last!” Her singsong voice chanted. I was taken to some ancient circle of standing stones etched with carvings and designs of incomprehensible meaning and likely of ancient Pagan origin. In the midst of the circle was the goat-like countenance of the hermaphroditic demon some called Baphomet, its' bat-like wings all spread out across the back of its' stone throne that was erected at the circle's center. Its' eyes burned like hot coals, and with a twisted claw the demon summoned forth the Angel of Death from whatever dark place such a one calls home. But the angel was not terrible or ugly to behold, but beautiful beyond all reason! She strode forward, and the little girl behind me giggled mischievously. The angel took me with no effort into her embrace, and forced a fierce kiss upon my lips that was as cold as ice in the winter. It was then the angel spoke: “Your kiss is death, vampire!” said she, and the sad ghosts of the woodsman and his wife appeared one final time before Baphomet's throne. The child then whispered into my ear: “You are not responsible for the lives you steal in my name. Their souls go to the place prepared for all who perish in such a way. God ordains it, the Devil commands it, and who is to say that you are not at least one of those two things! And I do not mean God when I say that.” With that said, the two ghosts, whose lives I so utterly destroyed, were each picked up in one of the demon's immense claws, for the demon was just that large, and then they were consumed by the towering beast. “Such a beast as this is, lies within all of us.” explained the increasingly strange little girl. “I am giving you leave, to let yours free whenever I do command it. For you are chosen by me.” I than asked her, my lips quivering with a great deal of fear: “How should I control it otherwise, and know when it is by your own desire rather than mine?” She then became something truly terrible that I cannot describe, and forced as awful of an attention upon me, as I had visited upon the the woodsman's wife. Once she had partaken of me in two horrific ways, she transformed back into a little girl again and stated: “You will know, my child, for I shall be watching! When I am watching, you may be free to act as your desires will you, for they are then in harmony with my own.” The ancient standing stones ran red with blood, and he demon was no longer there. I was alone with the terrible child guardian who had brought me hither, and I recognized her voice as that of the serpent who had spoken through the corpse of my dead mentor. If this was not the Devil after all, it was surely something equally terrible! I was hers now, body and soul. Even those who are damned, it seems, must obey some divine will and blessed... or accursed... authority. I awoke from the nightmare sweating, and my eyes thought I was sweating blood. The Angel of Death stood just in front of me, off the side of the bed. She pointed to me and stated imperiously: “You are free from my embrace for a time, but rest assured that everyone must pay for their sins eventually. In death, all debts are paid! Even if you are as sinless as you believe yourself to be.” She vanished then, and I was awake.
I went outside, on a lark, to check on the plants in the gardens of the manor's grounds... and they had all become monstrous and somehow terrible. The guardian spirit, in the form of the child form that odd nightmare, kept appearing near the gardens and telling me to feed the plants. I went hunting and with no regrets kept on bringing back fresh victims to feed the plants with. They were consumed by the horrible things, and I began to wonder if in fact I had died after all... for this was a sight seen only in Hell itself. My daughter, for that is what she had become to me, was becoming increasingly used to her new life as the child of a noble. She dressed in the most beautiful of gowns, had servants aplenty to wait upon her, and I pampered her like no other. As the years went by, I watched her grow into a beautiful woman, the very image of her mother. Hair like that of candle fire, eyes as green as the sea, and a face that to me I had come to regard as perfection. “You look at me so strangely sometimes, father!” she said to me, to which I would always reply: “It is because you are so beautiful, daughter.” to which she would blush. I had a mind to turn her into whatever it is that I was, so that she might be spared the ravages of old age and death. Yet that would also visit upon her my hunger, my thirst, and the beast inside of me. And so, I decided to think about it and give it some thought. The girl's name was Idalia, and to me she became a truer object of devotion than the cruel child who haunted my nightmares and claimed to be a spirit of the land itself. I had become more a guardian than she! In my time as lord of this land, in all the years of it, I had put an end to crime... and had donated large sums of my own wealth to the poor. Yet, I had broken with the Church and decided that I had no use for any Christian religion. I was Pagan in all my ways, and proud of it enough to speak of it openly. This gained me the ire of certain priests who lived upon my lands, and often they attempted to stir the people's hearts, minds, and souls against me. That is why, on a certain occasion, I decided to show them who was the ruler and who was not. I told Idalia to remain at home, and I decided to go forth on a hunt once again. A hunt with no small measure to deeper meaning! I had renounced my humanity utterly, for what had being human ever gotten me but sorrow, after all? I had more control over myself on this occasion than I had previously on hunts past. I firmly believed that showing such restraint was a good exercise for me. I visited the yard of the church where the priest presided who had become such trouble to me. I dressed in a wide-belted, embroidered tunic of darkest black, trimmed with gold... beneath which I wore a pair of Turkish style pantaloons in a red as blood color. A pair of soft leather boots and a black velvet-like hooded cloak completed my outfit. I was as pale as a corpse that had no blood left in it, and my head was shaved bald. My eyebrows too, I kept shaved off, and my resulting appearance was not quite human looking. It was perfect for this very specific occasion especially! For I had a mind to instill fear in the supposedly righteous heart of this man who had dared to act against me. The churchyard was a rough place with a broken fence that was surrounding the graveyard... filled do doubt with the rotting corpses of those who had imagined they had a paradise awaiting them in Heaven. They had earned no such thing, for following this faith! The church itself squatted above the graveyard like a white maggot upon the bloated flesh of a dead man. If the soil of that place was not dead, it was certainly dying! Every tree was like a dried claw scratching up towards the sky with the utmost mad desperation. A useless effort, though perhaps the earth should scream as I approach that house of God! Even so, it was silent. Was I not something ungodly now? I had my face painted in harlequin-like makeup to accentuate my otherness. White face paint, blood red lipstick, black around my eyes... like the face of a demonic clown, only more evil still. The bell of that church was ringing out the hour when I kicked the wooden door in and stormed inside. The priest, ever the coward that he was, was nowhere to be seen... but a nun was sitting in one of the wooden pews that was near to the altar. The image of Jesus Christ crucified and bleeding hung above the altar, and I had thought that such a visage of torture and death... though not permanent death... was strangely fitting and appropriate for this evening's sport. I was singing as I walked across the distance towards the nun, my cold blue eyes filled with menace. It was a silly, lighthearted song, and it so disrupted the nun's prayers.
She had pretended not to notice me kicking the door in, and the moonlight was doing strange things through the stained glass windows of the church, which depicted (even more ironically) the various fell and terrible scenes of the Apocalypse from the Bible's Book of Revelation. The dim torches and lamps that lit the interior of the church served only to enhance the ghostly air of the place... and to make the young nun's face seem pallid as she turned to regard me, a sudden look of fear in her dark eyes. She was a short woman, and I towered over her, savoring her terror but not acting upon it. “Do you pray for your salvation, sister?” I asked, and she showed me the rosary beads she clutched in her palms, stating with honesty: “I do. But now I believe I shall pray for yours as well, since you seem troubled to come in to this house of God with so much violence and irreverence.” I laughed, and even I found my laugh to be sinister sounding, and perhaps more than insane. “Sweet sister, I do not need your prayers, for I must confess that I am quite damned. I am no longer capable of being saved, you see!” and I grinned, and as I did so it was the very grinning face of madness itself. My teeth felt sharp to my tongue. The nun gasped at the sight of my face, devoid of all reason as it must have appeared, and she made the sign of the cross over her chest. I do not know why she did not run, or scream, though. She really should have, actually! I might have spared her, were I not thirsty and hungry at that moment. I pulled her into my arms, pulling her rosary out of her hands and stuffing it into her mouth with a casual cruelty that shocked me. She spit it out and let it fall to the floor, its' beads scattering as it broke apart. “The Holy Mother will cure you if you harm me!” the nun defiantly said... smacking me hard across my face with the palm of her left hand. An interesting choice! I then grabbed that hand, chuckling: “Beware the left handed path, my sweetmeat sister!” And I broke the bones in her hand with a loud crack that brought tears to her eyes. Yet, even so, she still refused to cry out. I pulled her habit from her head, revealing her flowing locks of dark brown hair. Her large brown eyes seemed to have no malice in them, despite my treatment of her. I found her lovely looking without the habit, and she was indeed young and fresh in her life! I forced a kiss upon her, pressing her body against mine, and my teeth bit her lips and tongue, drawing blood. As I withdrew from that embrace, she gasped in revulsion and the sharp pain of her bleeding mouth. She did open her mouth several times, as if to say something, but she could not find the right words. If she had, she could not make them come forth. “Lost your ability to speak curses, sister?” I mused aloud. I then stated ferociously, snarling as I did so: “Then allow me to deprive you of your dignity next!” and with that I tore her black and white garments until she was nearly naked. I pressed her down unto the pew she had been sitting in, and I lodged myself firmly between her legs while she squirmed about. She did not kick, and struggled but little as I had my way with her, and throughout my ravishing of her body she never once screamed or even so much as uttered a single cry or plea for mercy. Her eyes were full of tears, but even thus she did not weep aloud. I was tiring of her defiance of my will, and so once I had in all ways finished taking my pleasures of her... I kissed her one final time, this time, biting her tongue off and spitting it into her face with the utmost contempt. She went to scream, but only a horrid gurgling sound came out as her blood flowed from her open mouth. I leaned in close and licked it up. She tried to bite me and I struck her with such ferocity that all of her teeth broke at once from the cruel force of the blow I inflicted. My hands felt like claws to me once again, and they reached for the dagger I kept in a sheathe on my right boot. With it, I cut into her body, slicing off her right breast. I then broker her ribs and cut her heart out of its' moorings. I squeezed her heart in my hands, and forced the blood from it... swallowing the blood in great gulps until the heart was dried out. I then cast it down unto her corpse and spat some of the blood upon her face. It was then that the priest came forth from his living space, having heard the commotion. He was a weak and foolish looking old man with white hair, wearing very ostentatious looking robes that I can only suppose were more than his typical priestly attire. I reached him quickly, grabbed him by the throat, and dragged him over to the nun's corpse. That was only the beginning of the terror I was suddenly inspired to sow! I would make this man suffer in terrible ways.
“Do you truly believe in God, father? Then pray to Him now!” I commanded the priest. You can very well imagine the priest's horror at seeing a living fiend from Hell holding his neck and making him so gaze upon the defiled corpse of the nun that had been praying in the priest's very house of supposedly divine worship. I shall leave it for the reader to picture! I told him: “I will spare your life, father, if you partake of the dead nun as if she were your fondest lover.” and the truly awful prospect of that unholy act of necrophilia made the man shriek and beg for mercy. “I will do anything you ask, sir Devil... for so I firmly believe you to be now... only, please, do not make me copulate with the dead. I would burn in Hell were I to engage in such a sinful intercourse!” I then began to pull the hair from the priest's head as I stated angrily: “That sin you fear to commit, but how oft have you thought nothing of doing far worse to young, innocent boys? I know your sort of hypocrite, priest... and I have only the utmost contempt and disgust for you.” I chose those words, for I knew of the decadence and corruption of many of the members of the Church, and this man seemed to be to be that very sort of person. He said nervously: “How did you know about that? I mean, sir Devil, please... just kill me. Just kill me already!” So such went his pathetic pleas for lenience. I had none for him. “Do it then!” I dared the priest, adding just for effect the words: “Put your shriveled manhood into the dead nun. You need not take her as a maid is oft taken... you could always seek pleasure from the hole where her heart used to be, if you prefer!” And I shoved him on top of the corpse, and was surprised when he actually did as I had bidden him, partaking of that vile and bloody orifice he had just gazed upon, thrusting into her heart cavity with all his might. He exhausted himself in his pathetic efforts to attain pleasure, and when he had finished he begged me to kill him. “I cannot live with this, or with the fact that you know of my sins. Sir Devil, please just kill me and get it over with at last!” He was a long time dying, after that. I cut his limbs off, one at a time... using a woodcutters saw that I found in a shed in the churchyard, after I bound the old man to the altar. I hung up each of the man's limbs in the doorway of the church itself using strong ropes. They dripped of blood from severed veins and arteries as crows came from the woods to feast upon the raw flesh I had exposed in my cutting up of the priest. They found their greatest meal just outside the shed though. For there I had placed the slain man's head, torso, and organs... all in a mangled heap upon the cold, misty soil. I knew he had been guilty of sin... I just knew not how I came to realize this. It was some sort of supernatural sense of sorts, surely. I did not regret what I had done to him... not even when I castrated the man and forced him to eat his own disgusting member, which I had flayed prior to removing from his body and shoving it into his mouth. I thought about the nun after that, and how strong willed she truly was, and how all she wanted to do was pray for my salvation. I broke down and allowed myself to lament her horrible death and further defilement at the priest's hands. Why had I acted with such cruelty at the prospect of salvation? Because I wanted to be purged of my humanity! But at such a heavy and wicked cost, that I had not imagined at first that I was capable of paying. I decided to bury the nun in the church's cemetery, which I will freely admit I left the priest to rot and remain as food for the crows and other eaters of the dead. I took the beads from the shattered rosary with me, and I tried to put the night's horrors out of my mind. The day was not yet upon me when I could be strong enough to allow such things to no longer affect me... I wondered if it ever truly could be. Or if, as inhuman as I was, I was condemned to remain human in my conscience, in my lost soul! I walked away from the church, and I did not look back at it. My palms were covered with blood again, and they seemed to burn like fire. I noticed the shape of pentagrams in the blood once more, the sign that I was surely the Devil and doing Hell's bidding. Perhaps this pain was my punishment for it! I would need to master that pain, if not soon... than as soon as possible, at least. I licked the blood from my hands, and as soon as I had so done, the pain came to naught. My will was getting stronger, and surely enough innocent blood had thus been shed in the cause of that strength. I took no pride in that fact. Pride was the one sin I would never allow myself to indulge in. I made my way along paths no mortal should ever tread, proceeding home.
I spotted the manor house on the horizon. I wanted to believe that some quiet days waited me there, a the very least some time to reflect upon my long journey and the things I had done and witnessed in my time away from the house. I shall recount none of that here! It was not to be, for I could hear the wind howling, seeming to me that it carried the moans, shrieks, and screams of my victims upon it. I could imagine their ghosts flying upon the air to come and seek vengeance upon me for their deaths. But no such grim wraiths were carried hither! It was, after all... only the wind. As I reached the front porch of my manor house, my daughter was waiting for my return. She grasped the front of my tunic with some fantastic strength and pulled me close to her so she could whisper this unto me: “At last you return and so, let me gift you with this final bit of wisdom, for I meant to impart it unto you sooner had some other matters not arisen! You need not learn my true name, but this much you must know... I bear the flame that perishes not, the same that lies within your breast. Long before I took this woman's body to be my own, long before you saw me in your dreams and nightmares, in Babylon they worshiped me but I will not reveal the name they called me by. They worshiped you as well! This woman was born to house my spirit, and because she was born you may be redeemed... but only through blood, for blood is the stuff of sacrifice. As it stands today, this land is sick from the cruel deeds done on its' soil for generations and generations. The trees cannot be nurtured, the soil may as well be ash! Only the ice and fire... the lava and the stone of the mountains... remain untouched. In your youth, your journeys took you there and I sense that you were shown... the corruption that has reached even the underground domains of legend. The demons of that place devoured too many souls and flesh of human beings, to ever be redeemed. Is that not fitting, for devils? Their damnation was ordained not by God, but by their nature! Yours need not be so. Were you to simply die right now, you would never know peace... though I would try to help you. The Angel of Death would have her way with you! To your eyes, I am but a woman, your daughter. The daughter you stole from her mother to raise as your own. But I have witnessed the cycles of time laid bare unto my eyes! Even now, I see all the evils that are done my mankind. I see the wife who hurts her husband, as your mentor hurt you. I see adulteries, incest, and fornication of every sort. Some are not sins, though people think them to be... and some are beyond sins, being true evils. The father who is lustful of his daughter, the mother who is lustful of her son. The siblings who rut like wild beasts while all these vile deeds are done in the dark of night, hidden, so that the common folk believe that all their neighbors are more pure than they are. The Church excuses anything for the right indulgence money, but God is a harsher judge than the Pope! Evil still smells foul when covered with perfume until it is like the scent of a loveless harlot. You cannot promise me that you will not become corrupt, for is not temptation hard on all who live! But, if you keep at least one secret place in your heart pure, then you will either be forgiven or given another chance at redemption. Think upon this! One chosen as you, to bear the darkest of gifts, needs not indulge them without refinement. Be gentle in your manners, first and foremost, and this at least may be your first step. You were human before you became a beast, and you must remember that again, lest your humanity become wholly lost. I lament the desolation of this land, and only your will, which is now tied to the land by mine, can shape it anew. It will reflect your mood, your soul, sometimes your very mental state. Simple folk claim that these are the end times, but such a time is not yet come. God is not here to enact such a final judgment! I am here instead, and you yet walk the earth in wrath. I am an angel come to be your conscience! Think of me as such. And know that besides being your soul's mate, I too shall be your beloved through all the years, all the centuries to come. I had a hand, in your rebirth... and it was your tears at your mentor's betrayal that summoned me forth into the world once again... so that a fire could be kindled that will burn brightly in your breast as never before. Remember that living blood is only your nourishment, and do not live for blood as would a glutton for food. Lest you fall into that sin!” And we embraced as if for the first time. She was not my daughter any longer... she was something far more. And so we kissed, kissing as true soul's mates may!
Published 24th Jul 2022
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