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Netherworld of the Damned: Part Two
- Netherworld of the Damned: Part Two -
In the previous part, I told how I had come into the embrace of a death that was not quite death. I had thought myself to still be living, still be upon the surface of the earth... that I had cheated the Angel of Death of her prize, that being my immortal soul. Yet, the truth was far more sinister! Something always seemed off about this place, off about my life there. I vaguely knew that I had once had a childhood and parents, a family and a life... yet as time went on it became increasingly difficult to recall their details. I decided to seek out some assistance in understanding what was going on... in a city several hours away from the manor house, a small community of little note, I had heard of a physician who purported to be of an understanding about the nature of reality. I paid him a visit at the asylum he so worked at. When I got to where the receptionist told me I could find him, one of the patients had just finished telling the man a story about my manor house, about me, that seemed mad indeed! He claimed that I was not just a regular vampire, but a kind that was on the verge of becoming a lich as well... that is to say a sorcerer or warlock who has managed to cheat death and in the bargain gained unspeakable occult powers. Though their soul was no longer within their body, but kept elsewhere! I could not imagine what drove the odd fellow to make these claims. The madman strained against his straight-jacket as he slumped back into the corner of his padded cell. The tall physician looked over the patient's journal, seeing that it was all as the patient claimed it was. “So this is what drove this poor devil so mad!” he exclaimed with a hint of surprise in his voice. The doctor then turned to a female assistant who stood nearby, saying: “I want you to schedule my next week off, I intend to travel to the manor house this man spoke of... to the very woods he was found in even, if time permits... and I should very much like to meet this supposed lich from the man's tale. That way, I can see for myself if dark magic can truly overcome death, where all of our science cannot.” I approached the man, and introduced myself to him. “Doctor, if it is this lich you are seeking, then you need not waste the trip, for I have come to you this day instead.” The doctor was about to say something to me, when the madman in the cell began to laugh very loudly, very insanely. He kept repeating: “Be our guest, good doctor! It is a small matter, and there is always room for another in these cells!” He repeated that four or five times, before the doctor grew angry with him and beat the man into silence. The doctor then turned to me, saying: “Forgive me for my rudeness in not responding, but you can see what I have to deal with here!” He then turned to a nurse who also waited outside of the cell, and ordered: “On second thought... go and fetch my assistant and tell her to cancel the trip. I need more time, to work with these patients, after all. Yes... that would be so much safer, safer for me indeed, than wasting my time on the road for nothing, if nothing this turns out to be.” The doctor then turned to me once again, and stated: “Perhaps there is something to this tale after all, though, eh!” He had fear in him, I could sense as much. He then said to me as if this were the sanest statement in the world: “I must tell you, that on the world I come from, there is no such thing as magic so far as I know. No such thing as vampires, or liches, or evil spirits. We believed in science there! But here... did you know that I have ceased to have any memories of my childhood? Of my family even! Of the world I actually came from, before passing through some sort of fog or mist in order to arrive here. It is as if childhood here is but an illusion, along with family and the lives we think we remember whilst living in this place. I believe that this is not the planet Earth any longer... rather, that we are in fact in some sort of netherworld. Not Hell, exactly! But more akin to a kind of purgatory.” I told him that this was what I wished to talk with him about. He explained further: “This world is home to many of creation's outcasts. Everyone who is alive in this world came from someplace else originally, and all those who were born here know not a thing of other worlds at all most often, making my case particularly rare. Most only remember the fog when they grow older, or at least think that they have grown older. Does age even matter here? And if age means nothing, then what of death! To die in a deathless realm... is that when we will awaken in the next life back on the worlds we came from? On our own variants of Earth?” He looked deep in thought.
He then told me: “I have actually been paid to tell people that belief in another Earth is a delusion of the older generations. This netherworld, it has no name! Have you ever noticed, there are no maps here of the world, or even of the lands, cities, villages or towns we live in? It is true! I am supposed to just keep on telling people that the fog is only a myth, but I doubt I can do that for much longer. I am ever a physician, a scientist first and foremost! I must commit myself to truth, not lies.” He then walked over to his patient and took a scalpel out of his lab coat's pocket. He told the lunatic: “A man should always be prepared for what he would face.” He then said to the patient menacingly: “So tell me good sir, what I should expect of a world in which liches exist! Tell me all that you have witnessed.” What followed next was torture, not medicine or science of any kind. The man told the doctor all of his secrets as he was slowly dissected, his brain being removed last for further study. His other organs were to be sent to local hospitals for use in organ transplant surgeries and various medical experiments. I doubt they even questioned where the organs came from, and probably paid well enough to acquire them. This sort of doctor would not have cared that he was being paid to cause suffering and death. “You think that I am a sadist.” he admitted to me, adding: “I do what I do for a reason.” he explained, washing off his various instruments in the cell's sink. He whistled merrily like a child washing mud away from a favorite toy after playing outside. “I take no pride in the art I must do.” he explained, stating: “The human body is a canvas, and my art is necessary to be worked upon it sometimes.” He then escorted me into his study, where he spoke into a Dictaphone as he tried to explain madness itself, though his words were wholly inadequate. His words were thus: “The inevitability of man's fragile nature is most evident in the mind of the insane, who seem to suffer from abnormalities in their faculties. I dare not call it destruction of reason, for it is nothing less or more than the distortion of reason as we know it. Since we try to cure it, we believe we are the rational ones... but what if we are as mad as they? What if, in each human being, there lies the ability to distort reason either in greater or lesser proportion to those we foolishly label as mad! I myself as a doctor, have done things that could be called insane. The mind would explode were we to constantly remain as polite society would have us behave! There is a sublime truth even in the toad-like croaking of lunatics... very soon, I shall seek out one such truth. I have swum with toads, but soon I shall soar like an eagle. My talons are sharp, my wits sharper than my prey thus far! We shall be seeing who will drown in the swamp and who will remain above the poisonous marshes. I am about to take a journey into the heart of darkness itself, and I wonder if like the poor soul whose tale I just heard, I myself might emerge changed.” We set up a meeting for one month hence, and I agreed to receive this man as my guest at the manor house at that time, to show him why the madman had said all that he had.
It was the day of the physician's visit, and the hour was past midnight. As swiftly as the bats take wing on the evening air, his solitary carriage sped well across those rugged back roads of the wilderness that bordered the lands ruled by the dark lords of deathless domains, such as myself. I am certain the doctor thought himself renowned as he sat in the carriage and likely read one of his scientific books to pass the time. I could picture him pouring over the madman's journal, that same who had once ventured into my lands and lost his mind as a result. Now the doctor was making the same journey, and the account that the deceased lunatic had given was the stuff of nightmares. A terrible vampire lich and his demonic and twisted daughter, living together as husband and wife, preying upon blood and souls alike to keep their own lives from perishing. My daughter was no longer human, to be fair. Her possession by the guardian spirit of the land itself had changed her greatly over time. I now realized that both of us originally were from another world entirely, one beyond those infernal mists and fog that perpetually enshrouded these domains of this dark world. But I could not understand why such an otherwise “sane and respectable” man of science would wish to torture his patients in order to learn of occult secrets that had no place in scientific thinking at all. I then realized the truth! He sought immortality, he wished to continue forever.
If death was a release form this place, he did not wish it! Here he was powerful, could do as he was of a mind to. He was desperate, growing older, and becoming vainer by the day. Insanely desperate! That was his haste, and it was haste that brought him to my door. “If this world be some sort of place that is for eternal damnation, then time is indeed of the essence for such as he... for what if instead of gaining a new life on another world, death only brings one back as a spirit bound to this netherworld forever!” I remarked to my daughter, the lovely Idalia. The doctor's particular madness was fear of the unknown... and the worst possible emotional combination is fear and desperation. He had bled a man to death and tore him apart simply to prepare himself for what awaited him in my lands. He had no moral threshold to cross now, and I was certain little would hold him back. He told me that he had actually lain with his own sister for the mere slaking of such a forbidden pleasure. How ironic that one who professed to cure insanity had so very little restraint of his mind and the lunacy it contained. He could face others and try to dominate them, but he could not strand before the unknown without being changed. This place, if it was Hell or something similar... it did not exist to corrupt us. It exists to imprison corruption that was become too terrible to be allowed to exist elsewhere in creation. If this were not Hell, it was more awful a purgatory for being so distant from the grace of any heaven as darkness can be from light. Even so, it looked like any other world did! It had life and death, love and hate aplenty. Beauty, ugliness, and more. As the carriage sped along, the doctor looking out of the windows, he would have noticed the trees and how odd they had become. For the trees of my lands were twisted in obscene caricatures of human-like forms. Some of the trees held the corpses of men and women upon them as snakelike vines bound them in place, thicker than any ropes and far more biting than chains. Each vine was lined with sharp thorns that pierced and sawed flesh... even as that flesh became warped by some unholy power into unnatural forms of life. Because the trees looked human-like in form, the result was an appearance of two forms entwined together, one that was living and one that was dead. For the trees' victims could not die even as they seemed to! The doctor would not be able to rationalize this sight. He would taste fear and know disbelief as his carriage brought him farther, deeper into a country where only fools dared venture forth. No one knew how this place became so accursed, nor how. One day it simply seemed that it had fallen under a shadow out of Hell, warped into the form it now had, and was unable to return to a semblance of its' normal nature. The seeming necrophiliac trees, the warped landscape, the winged creatures that soared on the night skies, preying upon more than just small animals... the doctor would see all of that and worse things still before ever reaching the dark manor house itself. He would find no rest on his trip hither, and within the hour his carriage arrived at my doorstep. The house he would behold, it had been build upon over the years until it had become a veritable fortress, surrounded by forests and an almost swampy borderland between several quaint and sleepy little hamlets whose people either tried to shun this place entirely or had more than an intimate familiarity with the doings of myself and with my daughter, who both hunted in those places and kept the peasantry in line, in the most terrible of ways. Some praised us, for be brought order to these lands, and some called us the vilest of devils. The driver of the carriage dropped off his passenger and made fast away as soon as possible. The physician was to be left to his own devices, and was not expected to return from this place. I watched through a window as the man outside walked up to the dark oak doors and noted the skull-like faces of the door knockers on which he banged in hopes of getting a quick answer, striking the metal to the wood loudly. I opened the doors for him, and my daughter was at my side. She was no longer a grown woman... having aged back into a child again and remaining as such. Her hair had become as red as blood, and her green eyes had a faint glow within their irises. There were streaks of palest blonde in her hair, and her skin was so pale that it was unnaturally so. She wore a black Victorian style child's dress with short puffy sleeves, matching black bloomers, and black dress shoes. She spoke with all the authority of a queen despite her seemingly young age, as she welcomed our guest to our home. The man was nervous as he noticed her.
“Know now, sir...” she announced: “Know that you find yourself in my father's home. Here, you will henceforth abandon your own notions of all you have become accustomed to outside. Here, you will do as you are told! You have been invited here, and we have received you. Thus, be welcome, sir! We have been, after all, expecting you.” She was harsh and haughty in her tone, and I was proud of her. The man was noticeably filled with dread, and was surrounded by a different insanity than he was used to dealing with. He would find this difficult to explain or quantify. For this was an ancient madness we possessed! He could not cope with such, could not expect how it may affect him. He tried to act rational and stand firm, in spite of it all. He replied: “Child, are you...” and suddenly Idalia sped forward faster than any human eye could follow. She seized the doctor by the neck, her mouthful of fangs glistening. She then struck him hard across the face, her blow landing stronger than any man's may have been capable of. She snarled like a wild beast, screaming in the man's face: “Listen, meat! Father demands that you obey the rules here. Rule number one is: do not speak, unless spoken to!” and he nodded meekly, knowing full well that this creature who menaced him could easily kill him in but an instant. Following that, she walked back to my side and acted seemingly like a normal child, putting her hand in mine and smiling. She had the sensual walk, however, of a grown woman rather than the steps of a little girl. I saw that the physician so noticed this, and so I cautioned him: “If you stare at my beloved like that... I, will tear your eyes out and feed them to you! Doctor. She is neither human nor a grown woman, after all. She is mine! And I am hers... body and soul.” The physician then stated: “I apologize, but something about her is as if it were captivating my mind, affecting me strangely. I did not mean to stare as I had!” To which I said in a wrathful tone: “I warned you, doctor!” and with an animal's snarl, the little girl took out a sharp and twisted looking needle from a hidden pocket, throwing it hard at the physician's face. The needle landed just above the man's left eye, sinking deep enough into his skin to strike the bone, producing a so much blood that it poured down into his eye. He screamed and tore the needle from the wound, casting it unto the floor. He dared not cross us again after that! He took out a handkerchief, mopping the blood from his face, which kept on pouring down regardless. His face had visible terror upon it, and now he felt not anything but loathing for the demonic child who had done this to him. “Resign yourself to peril, and be aware that your life here is at our mercy.” I advised him. “You are in your asylum no longer.” The child then snarled once more, and put her arms around me, hugging me tightly. All the time, glaring hatefully at the doctor who had dared to think lustfully about her. The house was elegant and proper looking on the inside, with many objects of occult significance decorating several of the shelves. We led the doctor to the fireplace in the living doom, where I tended the flames before turning to regard the man who had wished so badly to come here. My skin was pale as he regarded me, my head and eyebrows shaved and devoid of any hair, my face painted in the likeness of a harlequin with red lipstick, white face paint, and black shadowing around my eyes. I wore an ivory circlet around my head, and wore long flowing black robes that gave me the very appearance of a manifestation of death itself. There were some additions to my appearance over the long years... two scars going out from the corners of my mouth, giving me the odd appearance of having a perpetual smile that was not normal. My lipstick extended to those as well. And my eyes had a similar faint glow to my daughter's, only mine was a fiery red glow... in odd contrast to my eyes' natural blue shade. I then said to the doctor, after laughing a bit at his expense: “So now you look upon the true face of immortality... doctor. When we met at the asylum and in the hallway, I used a glamour spell to hide my face's actual features, which now you can see clearly. Do I see your shrinking from my visage? I thought that you wished to be privy to such dark immortality yourself, to save your miserable life from the disease that is ravaging it, that your medicine cannot cure. Is my condition, is my daughter's condition, preferable to you than the prospect of the grave and your doubts about what lies beyond it? Tell me, if you can.” The doctor was horrified so deeply that he had lost any desire to even think, comprehend, or analyze any longer. This was beyond science or faith! This, was pure evil.
He looked helpless, the doctor, confronted so directly with the supernatural. The child sped forward and struck the visitor again, this time drawing blood from the man's mouth, which she licked from her fingertips. “Answer my father, you meat!” she screamed, and the injured man covered his ears and wept bitterly, his lower lip quivering. I stepped forward and stated calmly: “Now darling, let us not beat our answers out of the man! Let him contemplate what he would say. We can always bleed him fully later.” And he could say nothing to us, so horrified was he. This was not the kind of immortality that lay in his future, he knew. At worst, he would only die. “I... I do not know what to think.” he began. He threw up on the carpet, terror gripping his heart like a vise's grip. “Wait, I beg you, do not strike me like that! Not again, please!” he was a coward, now that he had no one at his mercy to victimize. Here, he was made to be the victim. The pleasure he had taken in dominating others, was stripped away, and he was forced in his turn to submit to the dominance of we who were superior. I took a dagger from a nearby table and I drove the blade deep into the man's wound above his eye, causing it to bleed even worse. The wound then turned a leprous shade of black and the skin all around it began to bubble up with some noxious and unknown poisoning. “Fear not...” I began, adding: “This taste of death shall not kill you. It will just see to it that you remember who is master here!” He wanted to fight back, I could tell, but he was not able any longer raise even a finger as the poison did its' work, making him weaker and weaker. Soon, a semblance of vitality came to him, but not enough... as he slumped to his knees in agony. “I will never fight you!” He declared to me, and I laughed as if amused by this, saying: “I know you will not!” and with a kick I sent the doctor sprawling unto the floor, unto his belly like a snake. Like a condemned man, he lumbered to his feet once again, lowering his gaze to avoid making any eye contact with either myself or Idalia. The man folded his hands behind his back, lowering his gaze to the floor. I smiled and nodded, approvingly. Once he had recovered from the shock of his breaking, the doctor responded in as meek a manner as possible: “Sir... when I left the asylum to come hither, I told no one of the disease I carry, the rot that eats away at my internal organs. One day soon, I will die of it! My colleagues called me a lunatic, even as much as that raving man you saw me with. I was desperate, and mindful of what my patient had told me of you. Of what he witnessed here! I would prefer a natural death to your way of life. If it pleases you, sir... do let me take leave of your house and return to my duties at the asylum. The kind of immortality you possess... it is not for me. Is it painful, by the way? Those scars of yours, those on your face, they look terribly painful to me, at any rate! So, have I your leave to depart this place with no had feelings, or must I remain... for the night? I know not the hours of the carriages in your lands.” I said to him in a mock sympathetic tone: “You poor little man... your life is truly a total waste, is it Not! Dead if you do, dead if you don't!” I chucked mirthlessly, adding: “Doctor, I am afraid this is not quite as simple as my being able to just let you leave. You learned the way to my door, did you not? Tell me, have you told anyone else the way here! A wife, or perhaps... your sister.” The physician stammered as he replied: “Only my sister, no one else, I swear!” I smiled, the smile of the Devil itself, as I said: “Oh, very good then! I only have two victims to worry about, then.” The poison flared up in the doctor once again and he was unable to move. I then took the dagger I had used upon him previously and drove the tip of it deep into the man's chest, slitting him up to his neck after cutting away the front of his fancy dress suit's shirt. He would be attending no more formal dinner parties with his colleagues! “Oh doctor, I think this is going to hurt! A lot.” I said to him, laughing insanely. He took many long hours to die as I flayed his flesh from his blood-soaked bones with surgical precision. That fatal operation was almost a delicate procedure, done with an artistry the physician had no knowledge of in comparison. All the time he was being flayed, the doctor screamed until his vocal chords went hoarse, only for those to be at last severed by my blade. All of his organs and sinews I took and placed in jars, filled with preserving fluids to keep them for various experiments. I scraped the bones clean and gave one to my daughter to play with. She put it in her mouth like a dog and licked any remaining blood from it until it was very clean.
She growled like a rabid animal, and went outside to bury the bone in the yard now that it was picked cleaner than any scavengers could have. I took the dead man's heart from out of its' cavity and squeezed the blood from it. It squished loudly as I forced the blood into my mouth, savoring the forbidden taste of it. “Soon, I shall taste your sister's flesh as well, but not quite as painfully as I have yours!” I said to the dead man before crushing the heart entirely. “It will be exquisite... this, I promise!” and with that, I used various arcane methods to entrap the doctor's soul into a crystal jar, for later torments of far less physical sorts. The skin would come in handy later, once the man's sister was in my power. I intended to claim the woman if I could, to partake of her pleasurably before deciding if she needed to die. I told the dead man's entrapped soul all that I intended, sparing no details of the full horrors of it all. Had he any body any longer, he would have screamed. Loud enough for Idalia to hear him even outside! It would be some time much later that the slain man's sister was brought hither. I sent her a letter claiming that her brother was sick and near death, and in urgent need of her at my manor house. In the letter I told the woman to tell no one of her destination but to come quickly. Her name, I would discover, was Wanda. She honestly thought that her brother's illness had finally done him in, and as she stood at last to knock upon my doors, she was not expecting what came after. My daughter showed her in, acting very polite, and the child showed Wanda to the living room where I waited for her arrival. I used no illusions, and on seeing my true face she screamed and fainted. I carried her to my chambers, and decided to have a bit of fun with her. She was beautiful looking! Golden blonde, blue-eyed, and fair of skin. As handsome as her twin brother had been... such was her beauty, and it appealed to me. I had no intention of spilling a drop of her blood, at least not just yet. I ran my fingers through her hair after laying her down on my bed. It was short hair, almost boyish in style, but her face was angelic. “Like a seraph! I will let her so slumber in peace, for the moment.” I remarked. The little girl who was my beloved looked at Wanda and then at me, asking: “Will I have more bones to play with tonight?” I then laughed merrily, and put my hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “No, but I think there is one final use we can put the good doctor to. Bring me his skin, and some nails. We need to work quickly, so as not to awaken the lady here. I do have some spells that might assist us, with that.” We worked silently, as Wanda dreamed that nails were being hammered into her brother's skull. In the dream, she screamed as two shadowy beasts tortured the man, stopping not even at her tears. Wild animals would never touch the skull, for it had been picked clean, as all the bones were. She remembered how when they were bot younger, her brother had forced himself on her, claiming her virginity cruelly. She never forgave him for that act! Part of her was elated to see him dead, even as she wanted to scream but could not. She saw forests of twisted trees, each one a vile mockery of human forms. Her brother's shadow came out of a grave and pushed her unto a tree, from which vines erupted, entwining about her, trapping her unto the trunk. Her limbs were stretched and spread out, and thorns cut and sawed deep into her flesh. She could not move, and endured a horrid form of crucifixion. The shadow entered her body, and for a second she was one with her brother, privy to all his thoughts, his vilest deeds, and the reasons he allotted for those acts. That was the worst horror of all! To know why he had raped her, what he felt at the time and thought too. She was not a sister to him, but rather a plaything to be used and then cast aside. One of the vines loomed near to her mouth, like a lover about to kiss its' beloved. She dared not open her mouth even to cry out, lest the vine enter her body, so she kept her screams inside her mind instead. The vine took on a phallic shape, horrifying the woman even more, promising a fate worse than death. It caressed her all over her body, moving to places where she prayed it would not go. It lingered at those places, threatening but not acting. This dream was beginning to end at that point, mercifully. Wanda's eyes began to clear from her slumber, but reality was little better by far then such nightmares... for she could feel a terrible sense of oppression all about her, uncertain of the cause. She at first so thought she was asleep still, looking all about her and seeing so many strange artifacts, old bookcases, and alchemy apparatus. It was a very surreal chamber!
In any place where elegant furnishings were not there, something arcane in nature was. Wanda knew this was a domain of blackest magic and sorcery, and as she sat up in the bed she noticed then the skin of her brother which hung upon the far door like a bloody coat hung up to dry, nailed in place so that it could not be removed easily. Stretched out, so that it seemed he was melded with the wood of the door. She was beyond sanity at that sight, gibbering, raving with madness as her mind snapped. I was already in the room watching her from the shadows. I greeted her as if it were time for tea, and that was in an odd way the limit of what the woman could take. She screamed loudly, and could not stop! Her voice was finally quite hoarse from this display, her hands clutching at the front of the long white nightgown with its' wide, billowing sleeves that she found herself wearing. That had belonged to my mentor once, long ago, before she had betrayed me and tried to murder me. It looked better on Wanda by far! What I did with her in that moment, she should not ever have quite be able to bring herself to remember. I had violated her in body as well as in mind, like something out of a horror story. Wanda's sudden insanity as a result could not ever fully purge these events from her brain, however, and in her darkest of moments she would remember it all. She passed out once I had finished partaking of her sexually, and I brought her to a cold, dark cell in the deepest cellars of the house. She spent a very long time there, so long that she had lost all track of any time. Every day, my daughter would come to feed her, and to feed upon her blood as well. Slowly, after what seemed an eternity of endless days, her mind began to return to her at last. She kept on thinking of the dream of that evil grave, feeling that it might be a premonition of sorts. Yet, through it all, she felt an oddest sense of happiness that her brother was dead. He could never touch her again, but what had raped her in his stead? She recalled my face, so like unto death, clad all in black like a grim reaper of souls. Her nightgown was torn and pulled apart in places, and there were stains on it right between her legs that reminded her of how her body had betrayed her, climaxing with pleasure that her mind willed it not to during her ravishment. She struck herself with her fists on thinking of it, as my daughter came by to check on her, the child's footsteps light on the cold stone floor. The cell was pitch black, as was the whole cellar, the only light bring brought by my daughter's bright candle, which she carried with her. The shadows cast by the candle were wild and flickered in a way that made it seem that they had a life of their own. One shadow on a far wall resembled a giant black spider, and a primal fear of this horrid image made Wanda cringe even more than the darkness had. As the little girl stepped into view, the spider-like shadow which was not caused by anything visible to the physical eye seemed to skitter across the cellar halls, through the bars of the cell, and across the woman's skin. The shadow seemed to delight in her terror before it faded utterly, causing Wanda to nearly swoon. She allowed this to pass over her, and there stood the little girl who had been keeping her alive. The girl with a soul that was centuries old, and with the blood thirst of a feral animal. There was no innocence or pity in the eyes of the child, but rather a feral echo of what used to be grace and dignity. Traces of refinement eroded by madness. She had not always been like that, Wanda realized, but could she hope to reach what.. if any... humanity remained within that mockery of eternal childhood? The little girl stated: “I say, you there! If I may, miss...” and the child had a sinister tone as she spoke: “My father is thinking of making you his second bride. I was his first, although I was quite willing. He was almost like a real father to me once, in the beginning... but so much more came after that. His deathless state gives him eternal passions, all for things other than magic, you know. What I am, you will become, and I am here to offer you a choice of sorts, for I am the guardian of these lands and can do this. Father gave your brother the same choice! You can wait for my father to come for you, to prepare the painful ritual that will alter you forever. Or, I could put you out of your misery and bury your bones with your sibling's!” Wanda looked deep into the insane little girl's eyes, staring as they did from beyond the cell's iron bars. She looked into them, and saw jealousy. Seething jealousy bereft of any compassion or mercy. “You want to keep him for yourself, don't you child!” Such perversity is rampant in this place. Now, let us discuss further about my choice.”
Wanda cleared her throat, saying: “Before I agree or not, what exactly is it that I am in danger of thus becoming?” and the little girl opened her mouth in a grin that showed every tooth to be fanged, much like the fangs of a serpent. The end of her tongue was forked, as well. The child giggled, and said: “In truth, there is no name for what I am. You will be something like this... though not this exactly.” And so the very thought of that made Wanda's head spin, as did the prospect of something positive that she was realizing could come of all this, even now. A plan that she could enact, rather than perish in this place! Wanda explained: “You did not know my brother as I had the misfortune of knowing him. I would well rather become the Devil's whore than lie in the same grave as that swine of a man.” Idalia pointed to her prisoner's torn garment and asked: “Even after my father did all of that to you?” And Wanda nodded, so stating: “All men can be beasts, child. It is only love that keeps them from become far, far worse than beasts. If I can come to love your father, perhaps he might love me in return, and if we can find love as a couple together, then perhaps no further bloodshed need take place in these halls. Or at least, a bit less than there has been previously!” At which the little feral girl saw that Wanda would not relent, which made the child scream: “But he loves me! Me, and only me!” and as the little girl screamed she struck her head repeatedly against a wall, knowing it had not the power to harm her. There was just a cut that healed within mere seconds. Wanda laughed, and said in a mocking tone: “What you need, young lady, is a mother as well as a father. I shall be happy to teach you the discipline your father has neglected in his rearing of you... once he and I are husband and wife, that is!” The child stormed off, and Wanda was left alone in the dark with her thoughts as the shadows closed in to rise like vapors until all was black. The darkness seemed to cling to the woman's bosom, suffocating as it filled her vision. Perhaps she was going mad, for it was no longer unpleasant to her, the darkness. I had been watching all of this from one of the other cells the whole time. “How much more could he violate me anyway?” Wanda mused. Her body had already endured the worst of it, and her faith was shattered, her soul becoming corrupted. No longer was even that inviolate! I called out to her, taunting: “You truly believe in your mind's resolve, and think it will not impale your head like the sharp barbs of a monstrous and wet, blood-red rose? Oh, alas for the proud lioness! She has met the true king of the jungle and perhaps soon her bones shall but litter the undergrowth. Yet, those bones are strong in you, for you are human and no mere animal. Alas, for the proud lioness? She has not half as much courage in her, even when impaled by a hunter's spear.” and quite unbidden came the image of a man of the woods, with a hunter's spear rammed through his neck and out one of his eyes. Wanda saw this image clearly, as if from another world and a past time. “I am not frightened by the black leprous taint of despair...” she told me, adding: “I will conquer it, and I will become something more terrible than the terror I fought against.” I nodded, though she could not see me or know that it was I who spoke to her, for I had disguised my voice. In realizing the true depth of her own determination to live, Wanda realized how easy it was to lose your humanity and become just like that feral little girl. The ritual did not take long to perform, the summoning of the fog and the invoking of the nameless Old Ones, along with the complete transformation of the young woman who had given herself over to this darkness. All passed within but a brief span of time! For dear Wanda, it was like a mad hallucination that opened her eyes to a new reality and yet clouded them a the very same time. Once it was over, she was vastly changed and she could see the raw anger in the little girl's eyes as the child looked evilly at her. Wanda was given a long white gown fit for a princess to wear, as her eyes had now become like blue sapphires, in contrast to the child's sparkling emerald eyes. Both sparkled with inner light, only in different hues. Finally, Idalia screamed in her pent-up rage: “Father, husband, beloved mate of my very soul! Why do you need another bride... have I ever not given you everything that you desired of me... more than any other woman ever could, over the years? Have I not killed for you and had a hand in your remaking... even as you remade me! I would do it all again for you. So what need have we of this mockery of heavenly beauty?” I then laughed, and took the little girl into my arms.
I said to her: “My lovely daughter, wife, and beloved though you still be to me, in all forbidden ways! You are still eternally a child, and any eternal child needs that one thing which you do not possess: an eternal mother. Thus, I wanted you to have everything that a normal child has, and more. Should I deny you this? Of course not! And so, meet your mother and do try to get alone with her. The two of you are going to be together until the end of time... and beyond.” And so the child and her mother met each the other's gaze, the little girl then looking to me, seeing the love in my eyes, and seeing a similar kind of love beginning to light up within the eyes of the woman who stood before her. She cried... and we two who were now her parents reached forth our loving arms to console her. “Mommy?” she wept, and as she did Wanda said in a caring voice: “Now now, dear. Don't cry! As soon as we get rid of that beastly little tapestry you two nailed to my bedroom door, all will be forgiven and forgotten. We can start over, as a family!” We danced after that, as outside a storm was brewing, thunder and lightning striking in the distance. At long last, our inhuman family was complete. The doctor's skin was burned in the fireplace, his bones left to their forsaken grave. Finally, Wanda's brother was no longer a part of her life. “Ironic, is it not?” she mused about him, saying: “He worked so hard to cure madness, but neglected to see his own for what it was. At least we admit to yours, and perhaps that is what makes us saner than he ever was.” The little girl loudly barked like a dog, just to act silly. “Except for that!” Wanda exclaimed, as we three deathless creatures settled down to live a far more normal life, like actual human beings. As the years went by, Wanda made a garden outside and nobody objected to it at all. I showed her the jar made of crystal in which her brother's soul was trapped, and she lifted up the container to her mouth, opening it. The disembodied spirit of the cruel doctor screamed silently as he was fully swallowed up by the sister he had harmed so long ago, losing himself as he became a part of her for all of time. “He wanted to be one with me, in a carnal way... now he is one with me, but in a way far more fitting!” the woman laughed, relishing the sweet revenge. It was her extraordinary faith in herself that allowed her to remain unchanged, even by that act. She then kissed me, and kindled warmth within my cold, deathless flesh. We went outside after that, each picking a rose from the garden, letting the roses entwine as we embrace each other romantically. I glanced over to the grave of Wanda's brother, where Idalia had dug up his skull from its' resting place and threw it into the darkest part of the surrounding woodlands. The little girl then stated that she was a bit irritated at having to put all of the dirt back over the grave again later on, and after doing so she rushed over and hugged both myself and Wanda lovingly. All hatred, all jealousy, was gone from her eyes... she was a peaceful guardian of these lands once again. “Father, give me a kiss all my own now!” Idalia begged, and Wanda walked off to mind the flowers in the garden, in order to give us our time together. Whilst the child and I embraced and kissed, and my mind thought of how she looked back when she was still a grown woman, my heart filling with old passions for her. We were lost in that moment, and she whispered unto me so that only I could hear: “Beloved! It is time, for this place can hold you no longer... you have earned your redemption, by embracing your humanity. As time has no meaning here, know that from this point on we will all three of us age as normal! Accursed no more, the deathless state lifted from us. When our time to pass on comes, we will return to the world we came from and begin new lives there. Perhaps never to remember what transpired here! I relinquish my task as a guardian of these lands... and leave them to their natural coursing. Even so, shall I remain your daughter and your love! For I and this girl are one now, forever.” and so the guardian spirit spoke, releasing from Idalia the feral state she had been in for so long as a result of the land's unnatural state. So this world truly was an aspect of the hereafter, then. I could not truly say who I had been prior to my death, for I had come to this place to begin with by means of death's embrace. This place that some may perhaps call Hell, yet in which no one burned save by inner fires more terrible than physical ones. I had looked over at Wanda then, and she nodded, having heard with unnaturally keen hearing all that Idalia had whispered to me. “Let us make the rest of this life a good one, then!” she said, and smiled happily.
In the previous part, I told how I had come into the embrace of a death that was not quite death. I had thought myself to still be living, still be upon the surface of the earth... that I had cheated the Angel of Death of her prize, that being my immortal soul. Yet, the truth was far more sinister! Something always seemed off about this place, off about my life there. I vaguely knew that I had once had a childhood and parents, a family and a life... yet as time went on it became increasingly difficult to recall their details. I decided to seek out some assistance in understanding what was going on... in a city several hours away from the manor house, a small community of little note, I had heard of a physician who purported to be of an understanding about the nature of reality. I paid him a visit at the asylum he so worked at. When I got to where the receptionist told me I could find him, one of the patients had just finished telling the man a story about my manor house, about me, that seemed mad indeed! He claimed that I was not just a regular vampire, but a kind that was on the verge of becoming a lich as well... that is to say a sorcerer or warlock who has managed to cheat death and in the bargain gained unspeakable occult powers. Though their soul was no longer within their body, but kept elsewhere! I could not imagine what drove the odd fellow to make these claims. The madman strained against his straight-jacket as he slumped back into the corner of his padded cell. The tall physician looked over the patient's journal, seeing that it was all as the patient claimed it was. “So this is what drove this poor devil so mad!” he exclaimed with a hint of surprise in his voice. The doctor then turned to a female assistant who stood nearby, saying: “I want you to schedule my next week off, I intend to travel to the manor house this man spoke of... to the very woods he was found in even, if time permits... and I should very much like to meet this supposed lich from the man's tale. That way, I can see for myself if dark magic can truly overcome death, where all of our science cannot.” I approached the man, and introduced myself to him. “Doctor, if it is this lich you are seeking, then you need not waste the trip, for I have come to you this day instead.” The doctor was about to say something to me, when the madman in the cell began to laugh very loudly, very insanely. He kept repeating: “Be our guest, good doctor! It is a small matter, and there is always room for another in these cells!” He repeated that four or five times, before the doctor grew angry with him and beat the man into silence. The doctor then turned to me, saying: “Forgive me for my rudeness in not responding, but you can see what I have to deal with here!” He then turned to a nurse who also waited outside of the cell, and ordered: “On second thought... go and fetch my assistant and tell her to cancel the trip. I need more time, to work with these patients, after all. Yes... that would be so much safer, safer for me indeed, than wasting my time on the road for nothing, if nothing this turns out to be.” The doctor then turned to me once again, and stated: “Perhaps there is something to this tale after all, though, eh!” He had fear in him, I could sense as much. He then said to me as if this were the sanest statement in the world: “I must tell you, that on the world I come from, there is no such thing as magic so far as I know. No such thing as vampires, or liches, or evil spirits. We believed in science there! But here... did you know that I have ceased to have any memories of my childhood? Of my family even! Of the world I actually came from, before passing through some sort of fog or mist in order to arrive here. It is as if childhood here is but an illusion, along with family and the lives we think we remember whilst living in this place. I believe that this is not the planet Earth any longer... rather, that we are in fact in some sort of netherworld. Not Hell, exactly! But more akin to a kind of purgatory.” I told him that this was what I wished to talk with him about. He explained further: “This world is home to many of creation's outcasts. Everyone who is alive in this world came from someplace else originally, and all those who were born here know not a thing of other worlds at all most often, making my case particularly rare. Most only remember the fog when they grow older, or at least think that they have grown older. Does age even matter here? And if age means nothing, then what of death! To die in a deathless realm... is that when we will awaken in the next life back on the worlds we came from? On our own variants of Earth?” He looked deep in thought.
He then told me: “I have actually been paid to tell people that belief in another Earth is a delusion of the older generations. This netherworld, it has no name! Have you ever noticed, there are no maps here of the world, or even of the lands, cities, villages or towns we live in? It is true! I am supposed to just keep on telling people that the fog is only a myth, but I doubt I can do that for much longer. I am ever a physician, a scientist first and foremost! I must commit myself to truth, not lies.” He then walked over to his patient and took a scalpel out of his lab coat's pocket. He told the lunatic: “A man should always be prepared for what he would face.” He then said to the patient menacingly: “So tell me good sir, what I should expect of a world in which liches exist! Tell me all that you have witnessed.” What followed next was torture, not medicine or science of any kind. The man told the doctor all of his secrets as he was slowly dissected, his brain being removed last for further study. His other organs were to be sent to local hospitals for use in organ transplant surgeries and various medical experiments. I doubt they even questioned where the organs came from, and probably paid well enough to acquire them. This sort of doctor would not have cared that he was being paid to cause suffering and death. “You think that I am a sadist.” he admitted to me, adding: “I do what I do for a reason.” he explained, washing off his various instruments in the cell's sink. He whistled merrily like a child washing mud away from a favorite toy after playing outside. “I take no pride in the art I must do.” he explained, stating: “The human body is a canvas, and my art is necessary to be worked upon it sometimes.” He then escorted me into his study, where he spoke into a Dictaphone as he tried to explain madness itself, though his words were wholly inadequate. His words were thus: “The inevitability of man's fragile nature is most evident in the mind of the insane, who seem to suffer from abnormalities in their faculties. I dare not call it destruction of reason, for it is nothing less or more than the distortion of reason as we know it. Since we try to cure it, we believe we are the rational ones... but what if we are as mad as they? What if, in each human being, there lies the ability to distort reason either in greater or lesser proportion to those we foolishly label as mad! I myself as a doctor, have done things that could be called insane. The mind would explode were we to constantly remain as polite society would have us behave! There is a sublime truth even in the toad-like croaking of lunatics... very soon, I shall seek out one such truth. I have swum with toads, but soon I shall soar like an eagle. My talons are sharp, my wits sharper than my prey thus far! We shall be seeing who will drown in the swamp and who will remain above the poisonous marshes. I am about to take a journey into the heart of darkness itself, and I wonder if like the poor soul whose tale I just heard, I myself might emerge changed.” We set up a meeting for one month hence, and I agreed to receive this man as my guest at the manor house at that time, to show him why the madman had said all that he had.
It was the day of the physician's visit, and the hour was past midnight. As swiftly as the bats take wing on the evening air, his solitary carriage sped well across those rugged back roads of the wilderness that bordered the lands ruled by the dark lords of deathless domains, such as myself. I am certain the doctor thought himself renowned as he sat in the carriage and likely read one of his scientific books to pass the time. I could picture him pouring over the madman's journal, that same who had once ventured into my lands and lost his mind as a result. Now the doctor was making the same journey, and the account that the deceased lunatic had given was the stuff of nightmares. A terrible vampire lich and his demonic and twisted daughter, living together as husband and wife, preying upon blood and souls alike to keep their own lives from perishing. My daughter was no longer human, to be fair. Her possession by the guardian spirit of the land itself had changed her greatly over time. I now realized that both of us originally were from another world entirely, one beyond those infernal mists and fog that perpetually enshrouded these domains of this dark world. But I could not understand why such an otherwise “sane and respectable” man of science would wish to torture his patients in order to learn of occult secrets that had no place in scientific thinking at all. I then realized the truth! He sought immortality, he wished to continue forever.
If death was a release form this place, he did not wish it! Here he was powerful, could do as he was of a mind to. He was desperate, growing older, and becoming vainer by the day. Insanely desperate! That was his haste, and it was haste that brought him to my door. “If this world be some sort of place that is for eternal damnation, then time is indeed of the essence for such as he... for what if instead of gaining a new life on another world, death only brings one back as a spirit bound to this netherworld forever!” I remarked to my daughter, the lovely Idalia. The doctor's particular madness was fear of the unknown... and the worst possible emotional combination is fear and desperation. He had bled a man to death and tore him apart simply to prepare himself for what awaited him in my lands. He had no moral threshold to cross now, and I was certain little would hold him back. He told me that he had actually lain with his own sister for the mere slaking of such a forbidden pleasure. How ironic that one who professed to cure insanity had so very little restraint of his mind and the lunacy it contained. He could face others and try to dominate them, but he could not strand before the unknown without being changed. This place, if it was Hell or something similar... it did not exist to corrupt us. It exists to imprison corruption that was become too terrible to be allowed to exist elsewhere in creation. If this were not Hell, it was more awful a purgatory for being so distant from the grace of any heaven as darkness can be from light. Even so, it looked like any other world did! It had life and death, love and hate aplenty. Beauty, ugliness, and more. As the carriage sped along, the doctor looking out of the windows, he would have noticed the trees and how odd they had become. For the trees of my lands were twisted in obscene caricatures of human-like forms. Some of the trees held the corpses of men and women upon them as snakelike vines bound them in place, thicker than any ropes and far more biting than chains. Each vine was lined with sharp thorns that pierced and sawed flesh... even as that flesh became warped by some unholy power into unnatural forms of life. Because the trees looked human-like in form, the result was an appearance of two forms entwined together, one that was living and one that was dead. For the trees' victims could not die even as they seemed to! The doctor would not be able to rationalize this sight. He would taste fear and know disbelief as his carriage brought him farther, deeper into a country where only fools dared venture forth. No one knew how this place became so accursed, nor how. One day it simply seemed that it had fallen under a shadow out of Hell, warped into the form it now had, and was unable to return to a semblance of its' normal nature. The seeming necrophiliac trees, the warped landscape, the winged creatures that soared on the night skies, preying upon more than just small animals... the doctor would see all of that and worse things still before ever reaching the dark manor house itself. He would find no rest on his trip hither, and within the hour his carriage arrived at my doorstep. The house he would behold, it had been build upon over the years until it had become a veritable fortress, surrounded by forests and an almost swampy borderland between several quaint and sleepy little hamlets whose people either tried to shun this place entirely or had more than an intimate familiarity with the doings of myself and with my daughter, who both hunted in those places and kept the peasantry in line, in the most terrible of ways. Some praised us, for be brought order to these lands, and some called us the vilest of devils. The driver of the carriage dropped off his passenger and made fast away as soon as possible. The physician was to be left to his own devices, and was not expected to return from this place. I watched through a window as the man outside walked up to the dark oak doors and noted the skull-like faces of the door knockers on which he banged in hopes of getting a quick answer, striking the metal to the wood loudly. I opened the doors for him, and my daughter was at my side. She was no longer a grown woman... having aged back into a child again and remaining as such. Her hair had become as red as blood, and her green eyes had a faint glow within their irises. There were streaks of palest blonde in her hair, and her skin was so pale that it was unnaturally so. She wore a black Victorian style child's dress with short puffy sleeves, matching black bloomers, and black dress shoes. She spoke with all the authority of a queen despite her seemingly young age, as she welcomed our guest to our home. The man was nervous as he noticed her.
“Know now, sir...” she announced: “Know that you find yourself in my father's home. Here, you will henceforth abandon your own notions of all you have become accustomed to outside. Here, you will do as you are told! You have been invited here, and we have received you. Thus, be welcome, sir! We have been, after all, expecting you.” She was harsh and haughty in her tone, and I was proud of her. The man was noticeably filled with dread, and was surrounded by a different insanity than he was used to dealing with. He would find this difficult to explain or quantify. For this was an ancient madness we possessed! He could not cope with such, could not expect how it may affect him. He tried to act rational and stand firm, in spite of it all. He replied: “Child, are you...” and suddenly Idalia sped forward faster than any human eye could follow. She seized the doctor by the neck, her mouthful of fangs glistening. She then struck him hard across the face, her blow landing stronger than any man's may have been capable of. She snarled like a wild beast, screaming in the man's face: “Listen, meat! Father demands that you obey the rules here. Rule number one is: do not speak, unless spoken to!” and he nodded meekly, knowing full well that this creature who menaced him could easily kill him in but an instant. Following that, she walked back to my side and acted seemingly like a normal child, putting her hand in mine and smiling. She had the sensual walk, however, of a grown woman rather than the steps of a little girl. I saw that the physician so noticed this, and so I cautioned him: “If you stare at my beloved like that... I, will tear your eyes out and feed them to you! Doctor. She is neither human nor a grown woman, after all. She is mine! And I am hers... body and soul.” The physician then stated: “I apologize, but something about her is as if it were captivating my mind, affecting me strangely. I did not mean to stare as I had!” To which I said in a wrathful tone: “I warned you, doctor!” and with an animal's snarl, the little girl took out a sharp and twisted looking needle from a hidden pocket, throwing it hard at the physician's face. The needle landed just above the man's left eye, sinking deep enough into his skin to strike the bone, producing a so much blood that it poured down into his eye. He screamed and tore the needle from the wound, casting it unto the floor. He dared not cross us again after that! He took out a handkerchief, mopping the blood from his face, which kept on pouring down regardless. His face had visible terror upon it, and now he felt not anything but loathing for the demonic child who had done this to him. “Resign yourself to peril, and be aware that your life here is at our mercy.” I advised him. “You are in your asylum no longer.” The child then snarled once more, and put her arms around me, hugging me tightly. All the time, glaring hatefully at the doctor who had dared to think lustfully about her. The house was elegant and proper looking on the inside, with many objects of occult significance decorating several of the shelves. We led the doctor to the fireplace in the living doom, where I tended the flames before turning to regard the man who had wished so badly to come here. My skin was pale as he regarded me, my head and eyebrows shaved and devoid of any hair, my face painted in the likeness of a harlequin with red lipstick, white face paint, and black shadowing around my eyes. I wore an ivory circlet around my head, and wore long flowing black robes that gave me the very appearance of a manifestation of death itself. There were some additions to my appearance over the long years... two scars going out from the corners of my mouth, giving me the odd appearance of having a perpetual smile that was not normal. My lipstick extended to those as well. And my eyes had a similar faint glow to my daughter's, only mine was a fiery red glow... in odd contrast to my eyes' natural blue shade. I then said to the doctor, after laughing a bit at his expense: “So now you look upon the true face of immortality... doctor. When we met at the asylum and in the hallway, I used a glamour spell to hide my face's actual features, which now you can see clearly. Do I see your shrinking from my visage? I thought that you wished to be privy to such dark immortality yourself, to save your miserable life from the disease that is ravaging it, that your medicine cannot cure. Is my condition, is my daughter's condition, preferable to you than the prospect of the grave and your doubts about what lies beyond it? Tell me, if you can.” The doctor was horrified so deeply that he had lost any desire to even think, comprehend, or analyze any longer. This was beyond science or faith! This, was pure evil.
He looked helpless, the doctor, confronted so directly with the supernatural. The child sped forward and struck the visitor again, this time drawing blood from the man's mouth, which she licked from her fingertips. “Answer my father, you meat!” she screamed, and the injured man covered his ears and wept bitterly, his lower lip quivering. I stepped forward and stated calmly: “Now darling, let us not beat our answers out of the man! Let him contemplate what he would say. We can always bleed him fully later.” And he could say nothing to us, so horrified was he. This was not the kind of immortality that lay in his future, he knew. At worst, he would only die. “I... I do not know what to think.” he began. He threw up on the carpet, terror gripping his heart like a vise's grip. “Wait, I beg you, do not strike me like that! Not again, please!” he was a coward, now that he had no one at his mercy to victimize. Here, he was made to be the victim. The pleasure he had taken in dominating others, was stripped away, and he was forced in his turn to submit to the dominance of we who were superior. I took a dagger from a nearby table and I drove the blade deep into the man's wound above his eye, causing it to bleed even worse. The wound then turned a leprous shade of black and the skin all around it began to bubble up with some noxious and unknown poisoning. “Fear not...” I began, adding: “This taste of death shall not kill you. It will just see to it that you remember who is master here!” He wanted to fight back, I could tell, but he was not able any longer raise even a finger as the poison did its' work, making him weaker and weaker. Soon, a semblance of vitality came to him, but not enough... as he slumped to his knees in agony. “I will never fight you!” He declared to me, and I laughed as if amused by this, saying: “I know you will not!” and with a kick I sent the doctor sprawling unto the floor, unto his belly like a snake. Like a condemned man, he lumbered to his feet once again, lowering his gaze to avoid making any eye contact with either myself or Idalia. The man folded his hands behind his back, lowering his gaze to the floor. I smiled and nodded, approvingly. Once he had recovered from the shock of his breaking, the doctor responded in as meek a manner as possible: “Sir... when I left the asylum to come hither, I told no one of the disease I carry, the rot that eats away at my internal organs. One day soon, I will die of it! My colleagues called me a lunatic, even as much as that raving man you saw me with. I was desperate, and mindful of what my patient had told me of you. Of what he witnessed here! I would prefer a natural death to your way of life. If it pleases you, sir... do let me take leave of your house and return to my duties at the asylum. The kind of immortality you possess... it is not for me. Is it painful, by the way? Those scars of yours, those on your face, they look terribly painful to me, at any rate! So, have I your leave to depart this place with no had feelings, or must I remain... for the night? I know not the hours of the carriages in your lands.” I said to him in a mock sympathetic tone: “You poor little man... your life is truly a total waste, is it Not! Dead if you do, dead if you don't!” I chucked mirthlessly, adding: “Doctor, I am afraid this is not quite as simple as my being able to just let you leave. You learned the way to my door, did you not? Tell me, have you told anyone else the way here! A wife, or perhaps... your sister.” The physician stammered as he replied: “Only my sister, no one else, I swear!” I smiled, the smile of the Devil itself, as I said: “Oh, very good then! I only have two victims to worry about, then.” The poison flared up in the doctor once again and he was unable to move. I then took the dagger I had used upon him previously and drove the tip of it deep into the man's chest, slitting him up to his neck after cutting away the front of his fancy dress suit's shirt. He would be attending no more formal dinner parties with his colleagues! “Oh doctor, I think this is going to hurt! A lot.” I said to him, laughing insanely. He took many long hours to die as I flayed his flesh from his blood-soaked bones with surgical precision. That fatal operation was almost a delicate procedure, done with an artistry the physician had no knowledge of in comparison. All the time he was being flayed, the doctor screamed until his vocal chords went hoarse, only for those to be at last severed by my blade. All of his organs and sinews I took and placed in jars, filled with preserving fluids to keep them for various experiments. I scraped the bones clean and gave one to my daughter to play with. She put it in her mouth like a dog and licked any remaining blood from it until it was very clean.
She growled like a rabid animal, and went outside to bury the bone in the yard now that it was picked cleaner than any scavengers could have. I took the dead man's heart from out of its' cavity and squeezed the blood from it. It squished loudly as I forced the blood into my mouth, savoring the forbidden taste of it. “Soon, I shall taste your sister's flesh as well, but not quite as painfully as I have yours!” I said to the dead man before crushing the heart entirely. “It will be exquisite... this, I promise!” and with that, I used various arcane methods to entrap the doctor's soul into a crystal jar, for later torments of far less physical sorts. The skin would come in handy later, once the man's sister was in my power. I intended to claim the woman if I could, to partake of her pleasurably before deciding if she needed to die. I told the dead man's entrapped soul all that I intended, sparing no details of the full horrors of it all. Had he any body any longer, he would have screamed. Loud enough for Idalia to hear him even outside! It would be some time much later that the slain man's sister was brought hither. I sent her a letter claiming that her brother was sick and near death, and in urgent need of her at my manor house. In the letter I told the woman to tell no one of her destination but to come quickly. Her name, I would discover, was Wanda. She honestly thought that her brother's illness had finally done him in, and as she stood at last to knock upon my doors, she was not expecting what came after. My daughter showed her in, acting very polite, and the child showed Wanda to the living room where I waited for her arrival. I used no illusions, and on seeing my true face she screamed and fainted. I carried her to my chambers, and decided to have a bit of fun with her. She was beautiful looking! Golden blonde, blue-eyed, and fair of skin. As handsome as her twin brother had been... such was her beauty, and it appealed to me. I had no intention of spilling a drop of her blood, at least not just yet. I ran my fingers through her hair after laying her down on my bed. It was short hair, almost boyish in style, but her face was angelic. “Like a seraph! I will let her so slumber in peace, for the moment.” I remarked. The little girl who was my beloved looked at Wanda and then at me, asking: “Will I have more bones to play with tonight?” I then laughed merrily, and put my hand on her shoulder reassuringly. “No, but I think there is one final use we can put the good doctor to. Bring me his skin, and some nails. We need to work quickly, so as not to awaken the lady here. I do have some spells that might assist us, with that.” We worked silently, as Wanda dreamed that nails were being hammered into her brother's skull. In the dream, she screamed as two shadowy beasts tortured the man, stopping not even at her tears. Wild animals would never touch the skull, for it had been picked clean, as all the bones were. She remembered how when they were bot younger, her brother had forced himself on her, claiming her virginity cruelly. She never forgave him for that act! Part of her was elated to see him dead, even as she wanted to scream but could not. She saw forests of twisted trees, each one a vile mockery of human forms. Her brother's shadow came out of a grave and pushed her unto a tree, from which vines erupted, entwining about her, trapping her unto the trunk. Her limbs were stretched and spread out, and thorns cut and sawed deep into her flesh. She could not move, and endured a horrid form of crucifixion. The shadow entered her body, and for a second she was one with her brother, privy to all his thoughts, his vilest deeds, and the reasons he allotted for those acts. That was the worst horror of all! To know why he had raped her, what he felt at the time and thought too. She was not a sister to him, but rather a plaything to be used and then cast aside. One of the vines loomed near to her mouth, like a lover about to kiss its' beloved. She dared not open her mouth even to cry out, lest the vine enter her body, so she kept her screams inside her mind instead. The vine took on a phallic shape, horrifying the woman even more, promising a fate worse than death. It caressed her all over her body, moving to places where she prayed it would not go. It lingered at those places, threatening but not acting. This dream was beginning to end at that point, mercifully. Wanda's eyes began to clear from her slumber, but reality was little better by far then such nightmares... for she could feel a terrible sense of oppression all about her, uncertain of the cause. She at first so thought she was asleep still, looking all about her and seeing so many strange artifacts, old bookcases, and alchemy apparatus. It was a very surreal chamber!
In any place where elegant furnishings were not there, something arcane in nature was. Wanda knew this was a domain of blackest magic and sorcery, and as she sat up in the bed she noticed then the skin of her brother which hung upon the far door like a bloody coat hung up to dry, nailed in place so that it could not be removed easily. Stretched out, so that it seemed he was melded with the wood of the door. She was beyond sanity at that sight, gibbering, raving with madness as her mind snapped. I was already in the room watching her from the shadows. I greeted her as if it were time for tea, and that was in an odd way the limit of what the woman could take. She screamed loudly, and could not stop! Her voice was finally quite hoarse from this display, her hands clutching at the front of the long white nightgown with its' wide, billowing sleeves that she found herself wearing. That had belonged to my mentor once, long ago, before she had betrayed me and tried to murder me. It looked better on Wanda by far! What I did with her in that moment, she should not ever have quite be able to bring herself to remember. I had violated her in body as well as in mind, like something out of a horror story. Wanda's sudden insanity as a result could not ever fully purge these events from her brain, however, and in her darkest of moments she would remember it all. She passed out once I had finished partaking of her sexually, and I brought her to a cold, dark cell in the deepest cellars of the house. She spent a very long time there, so long that she had lost all track of any time. Every day, my daughter would come to feed her, and to feed upon her blood as well. Slowly, after what seemed an eternity of endless days, her mind began to return to her at last. She kept on thinking of the dream of that evil grave, feeling that it might be a premonition of sorts. Yet, through it all, she felt an oddest sense of happiness that her brother was dead. He could never touch her again, but what had raped her in his stead? She recalled my face, so like unto death, clad all in black like a grim reaper of souls. Her nightgown was torn and pulled apart in places, and there were stains on it right between her legs that reminded her of how her body had betrayed her, climaxing with pleasure that her mind willed it not to during her ravishment. She struck herself with her fists on thinking of it, as my daughter came by to check on her, the child's footsteps light on the cold stone floor. The cell was pitch black, as was the whole cellar, the only light bring brought by my daughter's bright candle, which she carried with her. The shadows cast by the candle were wild and flickered in a way that made it seem that they had a life of their own. One shadow on a far wall resembled a giant black spider, and a primal fear of this horrid image made Wanda cringe even more than the darkness had. As the little girl stepped into view, the spider-like shadow which was not caused by anything visible to the physical eye seemed to skitter across the cellar halls, through the bars of the cell, and across the woman's skin. The shadow seemed to delight in her terror before it faded utterly, causing Wanda to nearly swoon. She allowed this to pass over her, and there stood the little girl who had been keeping her alive. The girl with a soul that was centuries old, and with the blood thirst of a feral animal. There was no innocence or pity in the eyes of the child, but rather a feral echo of what used to be grace and dignity. Traces of refinement eroded by madness. She had not always been like that, Wanda realized, but could she hope to reach what.. if any... humanity remained within that mockery of eternal childhood? The little girl stated: “I say, you there! If I may, miss...” and the child had a sinister tone as she spoke: “My father is thinking of making you his second bride. I was his first, although I was quite willing. He was almost like a real father to me once, in the beginning... but so much more came after that. His deathless state gives him eternal passions, all for things other than magic, you know. What I am, you will become, and I am here to offer you a choice of sorts, for I am the guardian of these lands and can do this. Father gave your brother the same choice! You can wait for my father to come for you, to prepare the painful ritual that will alter you forever. Or, I could put you out of your misery and bury your bones with your sibling's!” Wanda looked deep into the insane little girl's eyes, staring as they did from beyond the cell's iron bars. She looked into them, and saw jealousy. Seething jealousy bereft of any compassion or mercy. “You want to keep him for yourself, don't you child!” Such perversity is rampant in this place. Now, let us discuss further about my choice.”
Wanda cleared her throat, saying: “Before I agree or not, what exactly is it that I am in danger of thus becoming?” and the little girl opened her mouth in a grin that showed every tooth to be fanged, much like the fangs of a serpent. The end of her tongue was forked, as well. The child giggled, and said: “In truth, there is no name for what I am. You will be something like this... though not this exactly.” And so the very thought of that made Wanda's head spin, as did the prospect of something positive that she was realizing could come of all this, even now. A plan that she could enact, rather than perish in this place! Wanda explained: “You did not know my brother as I had the misfortune of knowing him. I would well rather become the Devil's whore than lie in the same grave as that swine of a man.” Idalia pointed to her prisoner's torn garment and asked: “Even after my father did all of that to you?” And Wanda nodded, so stating: “All men can be beasts, child. It is only love that keeps them from become far, far worse than beasts. If I can come to love your father, perhaps he might love me in return, and if we can find love as a couple together, then perhaps no further bloodshed need take place in these halls. Or at least, a bit less than there has been previously!” At which the little feral girl saw that Wanda would not relent, which made the child scream: “But he loves me! Me, and only me!” and as the little girl screamed she struck her head repeatedly against a wall, knowing it had not the power to harm her. There was just a cut that healed within mere seconds. Wanda laughed, and said in a mocking tone: “What you need, young lady, is a mother as well as a father. I shall be happy to teach you the discipline your father has neglected in his rearing of you... once he and I are husband and wife, that is!” The child stormed off, and Wanda was left alone in the dark with her thoughts as the shadows closed in to rise like vapors until all was black. The darkness seemed to cling to the woman's bosom, suffocating as it filled her vision. Perhaps she was going mad, for it was no longer unpleasant to her, the darkness. I had been watching all of this from one of the other cells the whole time. “How much more could he violate me anyway?” Wanda mused. Her body had already endured the worst of it, and her faith was shattered, her soul becoming corrupted. No longer was even that inviolate! I called out to her, taunting: “You truly believe in your mind's resolve, and think it will not impale your head like the sharp barbs of a monstrous and wet, blood-red rose? Oh, alas for the proud lioness! She has met the true king of the jungle and perhaps soon her bones shall but litter the undergrowth. Yet, those bones are strong in you, for you are human and no mere animal. Alas, for the proud lioness? She has not half as much courage in her, even when impaled by a hunter's spear.” and quite unbidden came the image of a man of the woods, with a hunter's spear rammed through his neck and out one of his eyes. Wanda saw this image clearly, as if from another world and a past time. “I am not frightened by the black leprous taint of despair...” she told me, adding: “I will conquer it, and I will become something more terrible than the terror I fought against.” I nodded, though she could not see me or know that it was I who spoke to her, for I had disguised my voice. In realizing the true depth of her own determination to live, Wanda realized how easy it was to lose your humanity and become just like that feral little girl. The ritual did not take long to perform, the summoning of the fog and the invoking of the nameless Old Ones, along with the complete transformation of the young woman who had given herself over to this darkness. All passed within but a brief span of time! For dear Wanda, it was like a mad hallucination that opened her eyes to a new reality and yet clouded them a the very same time. Once it was over, she was vastly changed and she could see the raw anger in the little girl's eyes as the child looked evilly at her. Wanda was given a long white gown fit for a princess to wear, as her eyes had now become like blue sapphires, in contrast to the child's sparkling emerald eyes. Both sparkled with inner light, only in different hues. Finally, Idalia screamed in her pent-up rage: “Father, husband, beloved mate of my very soul! Why do you need another bride... have I ever not given you everything that you desired of me... more than any other woman ever could, over the years? Have I not killed for you and had a hand in your remaking... even as you remade me! I would do it all again for you. So what need have we of this mockery of heavenly beauty?” I then laughed, and took the little girl into my arms.
I said to her: “My lovely daughter, wife, and beloved though you still be to me, in all forbidden ways! You are still eternally a child, and any eternal child needs that one thing which you do not possess: an eternal mother. Thus, I wanted you to have everything that a normal child has, and more. Should I deny you this? Of course not! And so, meet your mother and do try to get alone with her. The two of you are going to be together until the end of time... and beyond.” And so the child and her mother met each the other's gaze, the little girl then looking to me, seeing the love in my eyes, and seeing a similar kind of love beginning to light up within the eyes of the woman who stood before her. She cried... and we two who were now her parents reached forth our loving arms to console her. “Mommy?” she wept, and as she did Wanda said in a caring voice: “Now now, dear. Don't cry! As soon as we get rid of that beastly little tapestry you two nailed to my bedroom door, all will be forgiven and forgotten. We can start over, as a family!” We danced after that, as outside a storm was brewing, thunder and lightning striking in the distance. At long last, our inhuman family was complete. The doctor's skin was burned in the fireplace, his bones left to their forsaken grave. Finally, Wanda's brother was no longer a part of her life. “Ironic, is it not?” she mused about him, saying: “He worked so hard to cure madness, but neglected to see his own for what it was. At least we admit to yours, and perhaps that is what makes us saner than he ever was.” The little girl loudly barked like a dog, just to act silly. “Except for that!” Wanda exclaimed, as we three deathless creatures settled down to live a far more normal life, like actual human beings. As the years went by, Wanda made a garden outside and nobody objected to it at all. I showed her the jar made of crystal in which her brother's soul was trapped, and she lifted up the container to her mouth, opening it. The disembodied spirit of the cruel doctor screamed silently as he was fully swallowed up by the sister he had harmed so long ago, losing himself as he became a part of her for all of time. “He wanted to be one with me, in a carnal way... now he is one with me, but in a way far more fitting!” the woman laughed, relishing the sweet revenge. It was her extraordinary faith in herself that allowed her to remain unchanged, even by that act. She then kissed me, and kindled warmth within my cold, deathless flesh. We went outside after that, each picking a rose from the garden, letting the roses entwine as we embrace each other romantically. I glanced over to the grave of Wanda's brother, where Idalia had dug up his skull from its' resting place and threw it into the darkest part of the surrounding woodlands. The little girl then stated that she was a bit irritated at having to put all of the dirt back over the grave again later on, and after doing so she rushed over and hugged both myself and Wanda lovingly. All hatred, all jealousy, was gone from her eyes... she was a peaceful guardian of these lands once again. “Father, give me a kiss all my own now!” Idalia begged, and Wanda walked off to mind the flowers in the garden, in order to give us our time together. Whilst the child and I embraced and kissed, and my mind thought of how she looked back when she was still a grown woman, my heart filling with old passions for her. We were lost in that moment, and she whispered unto me so that only I could hear: “Beloved! It is time, for this place can hold you no longer... you have earned your redemption, by embracing your humanity. As time has no meaning here, know that from this point on we will all three of us age as normal! Accursed no more, the deathless state lifted from us. When our time to pass on comes, we will return to the world we came from and begin new lives there. Perhaps never to remember what transpired here! I relinquish my task as a guardian of these lands... and leave them to their natural coursing. Even so, shall I remain your daughter and your love! For I and this girl are one now, forever.” and so the guardian spirit spoke, releasing from Idalia the feral state she had been in for so long as a result of the land's unnatural state. So this world truly was an aspect of the hereafter, then. I could not truly say who I had been prior to my death, for I had come to this place to begin with by means of death's embrace. This place that some may perhaps call Hell, yet in which no one burned save by inner fires more terrible than physical ones. I had looked over at Wanda then, and she nodded, having heard with unnaturally keen hearing all that Idalia had whispered to me. “Let us make the rest of this life a good one, then!” she said, and smiled happily.
Published 24th Jul 2022
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