The Vampire's Soul

A Story by Katelyn Prince

I wrote this last November. This is the creepiest story I've written so far. Probably not the scariest thing you will ever read, I'm not personally into reading horror, but I did the best I could. :)

Have you ever heard the phrase, “the eyes are a window to the soul”? Well, it’s true. My story begins where most end: in a grave. I had died a horrid death, in a fire that had engulfed my house. I had been buried with multiple wounds that had not been treated, which may be the cause of my problem. Something happened after I had been buried (for how long I don’t know) that caused me, the soul, to separate from the body, now the vampire. One moment I had been dead, peacefully sleeping in the void beyond, when suddenly I awoke as just a spirit. Some would call me a ghost, but ghosts are beings trapped on earth after death because something was unfinished. I am trapped on earth because my body, now a vampire, is roaming around the countryside and in the city feeding off of peoples’ lives. Another reason I am unlike a ghost is because I cannot move around as I please, but am pulled by an unknown source to follow my vampire body around wherever it roams, forced to watch it suck the blood, and therefore the life, from innocent and unsuspecting victims.

I don’t know how a ghost feels or how it sees things, but I feel like just a set of eyes, unable to move around, continually fastened on the vampire below. And he knows that I am there. After every kill, he turns to look at me with his pure black eyes and smiles, revealing what teeth were not already exposed through decomposed flesh and knowing that I cannot stand to watch the sickening ritual, but am forced to anyway. As I said before, the eyes are the window to the soul. And if the soul had a color, it would be white, which I assume is my current color. When the soul is absent from the body, the eyes, which are usually white, are pure black. No iris, no pupil, just black. And of course, one needs blood to live, since life resides in blood. With no blood of his own, the vampire must take it forcefully from another. Their life then goes into him, and he can survive another few days.

I am not sure why a vampire cannot be seen in a mirror, but I do know that he uses it to his advantage. One of his most recent kills was on a poor woman cleaning her bathroom. The vampire had silently walked behind her, as he usually does, but had hit a rock with his foot. No doubt it had fallen from the walls of her small stone cabin. It slid across the packed dirt floor and bounced off one of the walls. She had looked up at the sound and gazed into the mirror to see behind her. Of course, she saw nothing, and had continued cleaning. By now the vampire was directly behind her. She felt something brush her arm and spun around, face to rotting, purple face with the vampire. He grabbed her arms, thrusting his fangs into her neck and had finished before she could scream. I watched with unblinking eyes. He stepped back, letting her pale, dead body fall to the floor. He turned around and looked right at me, a drop of blood trickling from his lips. He smiled, flashing his stained teeth, and walked out of the house. I, of course, followed.

This was what my life was like for many years, if you could say I was alive. A few times he would accidently walk into daylight, which would turn his exposed skin into ash, but he would quickly retreat into darkness. I thought of all the vampire lore I had heard during my living years, but nothing told me how to stop the vampire and return to sleeping in the void.

Then, one day, a girl saw the vampire before he could strike, and ran to a building. He followed her, for he had not eaten in a few days and, if he could not find someone to take life from, he would die. But for how long, I was not sure. We followed her into the building and saw her at the far end, standing before a crucifix. Instantly, the vampire hissed and drew back. She yelled something, and behind the vampire eight people, each carrying a crucifix, walked towards him. He backed away from the crosses, but was forced towards the larger one. He was soon surrounded. They began chanting, he lashed out at them, but recoiled when they pushed the crucifix into his face.

Suddenly, I felt myself being pulled towards the vampire. He felt it too, for he glared at me as I drew closer. I was so close now I almost felt him. Suddenly my vision turned black and, when I opened my eyes I was once again in my body. I felt my rotten flesh hanging loosely on my old bones. I could actually see my bone in places my flesh had turned to ash due to sunlight. I spun around, thankful to once again chose where I looked.

Then a thorn was thrust into my chest. I felt the long wooden stake break through my back. I looked at the face of the man holding the stake. The vampire screamed, but not from pain, since he could feel none. He screamed because he had been defeated, and had to return to his rightful place: the abyss. I stared at the man who had killed the vampire. I hoped he saw the relief in my eyes as my vision quickly became dark.

When the body was once again dead, the people threw it into a tub of boiling water, to treat all wounds it had and prevent the creature from becoming a vampire ever again. The priest and his followers once again buried the body in the grave it had crawled out of. And this time, he stayed there. Dreaming peacefully, never to be awoken again.