Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Alwin Abendroth is a newly made vampire living in the 17th Century. He becomes a Prisoner of War.. Will he escape, what happens to him? Go read it if you want to know.

“ 17 April 1612              

           

            I was born 12 May 1569, to birth parents I will never meet. I grew up in a Roman Catholic monestary monastery in Genoa, Italy and at age 18 I left and started my new life in Germany, where I blended in. By 1591 I was 22, and happily engaged to a beautiful girl her hair of pure snow and her eyes of fresh autumn leaves. She was unnaturally beautiful. On our wedding night, Kadrendra exclaimed to me that she was not of this world. She exposed her fangs to me but did not bite. She told me she would live forever and that she never wanted me to waste away like the rest of her family would. Kadrendra became my best friend that night.

On my 25^th birthday just 3 years later Kadrendra asked me a second 

time, pleading to me to let her make me vampiric. Naturally I verpflichtet [obliged in German] her, but when her father appeared at our house that night, she was ermordet [murdered] by her father’s hand. Celestian left in a rush. When he had come in Kadrendra was preparing our home for my reawakening, the part of turning that was for feeding, to make it complete. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and lost control when he saw my unconscious body on the floor, my neck snapped. My love had been putting das Licht [candles] around our home for a very soft der Wechsel [transition]. I was to wake up soon and she wanted our home to be properly paret. I was awake within an hour and very confused. All of my natural senses were sharply heightened, and I could hear the neighbors down the road talking. I blocked it out and tried to comprehend where I was. I noticed little things that fully triggered my memory, but where was Kadrendra?

I looked everywhere around our home, and was stopped dead in my tracks by a cold veiny body lying on our bed. All I saw was her face and I knew. I shut her eyes and removed the stake from her heart. I wept tears of blood as I mourned my loves death.  After a bit, I looked over the stake and was shocked to see her father’s initials on the butt of the stake. I was immediately enraged with hatred. I wanted to rip his throat out and drink all the blood out of his body. So like any other rational vampire, I ran out of my home and to his house.  I watched as he ran up his porch steps. I chased him down and pinned him to the front door, seething.

He pushed me off of him and bared his fangs at me. I was immediately scared out of my mind, wishing I hadn’t tried to pin him down. I can still remember his words:

“ How dare you attack me! She knew the consequences of what she was doing to you. I warned her the night she met you, so don’t do that again, boy. I’m over 500 years older than you.”

In the moment, I had been horrified at his age. Then I remembered the research I had done. In the old German folklore, Vampires weren’t able to conceive children. So that had been a lie, what else?

I remember questioning him out on that front porch and after two questions he shushed me up and ushered me into his home and told me he would tell me everything.

 

 

13 May 1612

           

            Back to journaling yes? Anyways, where was I? Ah yes..:

Mr. Amsel ushered me into his home and sat in his large arm chair. He continued our conversation.

            “Look, son. On Kadrendra’s 16^th birthday she made a promise to me. That sense she was growing in her fangs, she promised to never turn anyone. That she would have children naturally with another birth born vampire. Turned vampires look the same as when they were turned, even if their a couple hundred years old. Yet born vampires age like humans until their 18, and that’s when the aging process slows dramatically. She not only made the promise to me but to our clan leader, Elias Kuster, along with the rest of the clan.”

I remember the words well. He always had a very stern voice but in this instance his voice was light and stricken with grief over his daughter’s death. He told me that he would help train me to control my new powers and that exactly what he did. He’s been my father figure ever sense that night.

           

 

21 March 1630

            I’m in fear that the Swedish army gets closer every day. They say they’ll be here any day now, and that I need to be ready. The war has been going on for about 13 years and who knows when it will end. I enlisted in the German army back in 1625. I figured sense I can’t be killed by normal bullets, I had nothing to lose. I know it’s been a long time sense I wrote in this, but sense I’m starting out for Spain tomorrow I thought I would start this again.

 

 

 

22 March 1630

 

            I leave in a couple of hours…. General Kozcov said we would be stopping in Frankfurt before we head for the border and into France. To my knowledge we’ll be helping the French army at the Spain border to keep the Spaniards out. Well, wish me luck.

 

            We just arrived in~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ “

 

And the text just ends, with the quill pen streaking across the page as if Alwin had been jerked, the book I held in my hands, dropped. I gently held the journal, worn and coming apart from so many soldiers who had passed it to the General and eventually gotten back to me. I read his journal every couple of days to remind myself that Alwin was healthy and alive.

"Celestian, dinner’s ready!” I heard my wife’s shrill voice ring out. I cringed slightly but lifted myself out of my arm chair and into our kitchen. The smell of fresh blood filled our home, and the hunger I hadn’t realized was there, now pulsed fiercely inside my veins. I smiled, my fangs glinting off the candle light as I saw the beauty my beautiful wife had fetched for dinner. What was it you ask? A young girl around 20 years old, clearly foreign to Russia by her clothes. Julia had her eye on her for a while now, just waiting for the right night to fetch her.

Back right after the war started, Julia and I decided to move away, as to be same from the war, so that our home would not be destroyed. By the cover of night we packed all of our stuff, and said one last good bye to our family home, and started a new one on the border of Russia closest to Europe. 

"After you my dear." I said gesturing towards the girl. Julia smiled in thankfulness and pulled the girls hair back before biting into the girl’s throat. I put a hand over the girls mouth, and joined my wife but on the opposite side of the neck. Once the girl was almost drained we stopped, bandaged her wounds and compelled her to forget ever seeing us or knowing what we had just done. We sent the girl out the door, before relaxing in our bed chambers, before the fire I built. 

***

Again I find myself reading Alwin’s journals. I read them at the beginning of every year but this time, I wait a few years. We received word that the Thirty Years’ War in Europe has ended. It’s May of 1648, and the Peace of Westphalia has been accepted. My wife and I have sense moved back to Europe, but this time settling in Switzerland, where we will always be safe. We received word that over a hundred German soldiers had been captured by Sweden and had been since set free. Julia told me this while she had been in town today, she came home hopeful and happy that maybe, just maybe, Alwin had been just a prisoner of war, and was still alive. 

A couple of weeks later we received a package on our doorstep. I retrieved it and sat down in my chair to look at it. I opened one end, before reaching in and pulling out a book, handwritten and worn away. I started to read. 

 

“ 15 May 1648

            Dear Father. If you’re reading this I've found your address, and I’m alive.

I've spend the last 18 years in a Swedish prison camp in Southern Sweden. I met a woman by the name of Karsten, and I’m very much in love. I’ll never stop loving Kadrendra, but I think it’s time I move on. She’s a born vampire and I know she loves me back. We were set free when the war ended and the German army rescued us. Karsten and I are making plans to move back to Germany together.

 

1 June 1648

            Karsten and I have moved back to Germany, and are living together. My address is on the outside of the package, if you would like to visit us.”

            

I smiled and set the book next to my chair and went to tell Julia about the package.

            Alwin snuggled into Karsten as they slept. Karsten woke up first with morning sickness. Alwin immediately woke up and followed her outside and pulled her hair back as she threw up. He rubbed her back and kissed her cheek before whispering in her ear, that he loved her so much, and that their baby was going to be the most beautiful smart vampire on the ear. She smiled through her sickness and hugged him after she was done. She had found out she was pregnant about a week ago and had been more than happy to share with Alwin. It was 1851 after all, they had been wanting kids for years but never found the right time. The pregnancy had been unexpected but it filled them with so much joy.

Months later on the 21^st of September, Karsten went into labor late at night. They had the baby at home, and Julia delivered. Celestian and Julia had come to visit days before and knew the baby would arrive very soon. I was so thankful that they had been here. I cut our baby’s umbilical cord and wrapped him in a towel and brought him to Karsten. She held our baby close and looked from our baby to me and back.

“I want to name him Dieter…” Her voice raspy from the pain she had just experienced. I nodded and nuzzled her neck.

Two years later, Karsten had our second son Klaus, and four years after him our little baby Kai, our only daughter.

***

31 October 1921

          My parents were murdered this morning. How I know… because they never met up with us, I cried all the way to Belgium. We all knew what had happened at the German border. Last night some SS came to our door, wanting to see our ID’s. My father showed him that we were in fact not Jewish. They believed him and left. But later on that night some more men came to the door and accused us of being witches, on account one person may have seen my brother Klaus eat a rabbit in the forest. My father denied the chargers but the soldiers didn’t believe him and tried to arrest him. My father stood his ground and temporarily knocked the police unconscious and got the family together to leave Germany. We made it all the way to the German border without being stopped, but the second we tried to cross into Belgium we were ambushed by SS. My father took all of them on and ordered us to run as far as we could, and that he would catch up to us. My mother had a very hard time leaving but knew she needed to get us away, and fast. We ran for the Belgium border but our mother was captured and she yelled at us to run as far as we could and that she would be okay. Dieter led us into Belgium and by tomorrow we should be able to get onto a boat that will take us to England, hopefully.