Mysteries of the Undead

Coming back to the present day, our main protagonist discovers who or what operates under the guise of darkness with a big secret at the end.

It was a night unlike any other.  Dark and foreboding and menacing.  The sound of tires could be heard screeching down the asphalted street.  Headlights made the night brighten up just a tad.  All the while he was panting.  What he previously did could not be undone.  Tears soaked his face as well as the protruding sweat.  He thought what he did would solve his problems but they only created more.  Hitting a small pothole made the package rotting in trunk toss and turn.  The thump of the body rolling into the backseat made him flinch.

How he performed this grueling act would be labeled as attempted murder.  But how could he kill something that had already been dying?  How would it look to an impartial observer?  If anyone heard all that ruckus the authorities would have been called already, dispatched to his house, and he would be dragged in handcuffs in the back of a squad car.  However none of that happened, it had been almost too perfect. 

The signs on the side of the road seem to go in and out focus.  His breaths became more sporadic and drawn out.  The heart thumping completely out of his chest.  Only a couple more miles out will be perfect.  Outside the city limits well beyond into the country.  The cars lightened with the traffic spaced out few and far between.  Headlights danced barely as the dark wailed through the skies.  The moon stretched out beyond this part of the city, cascading down into a valley.  Eyes focused on moments that played before him like scenes from a movie.  The way the stake pounded inch by inch.  Breaths escaping and heaving.  Reddish eyes glaring and subsiding.  All of that washed over him as an incandescent cloud.  It made him rage at first, turning into sadness then regret.

But he had do it.  If not then this thing would come after him more and more.  Peering in the rear view mirror he thought maybe the creature was behind him, making a flight towards his car mowing down the road.  He had the faintest glimpse that this was not over, the creature would hunt him as if it already knew what he set out to do.  It all began with his friend then his sister, and now it wanted him.  That penetrating darkness huddling over him as a shadow stalking the room.  He swore he could see those eyes glaring back at him in the rear view mirror, but it was just another car throwing on his blinker enough to pass.  He hoped the driver wouldn’t look to over to notice how nervous he was.

Once the cars dissipated from sight, he turned onto a gravel road.  It took him all the way beyond a lush cornfield and into rustic plains.  His lights went to high beams, the light widened and lengthened playing over the scene as if he entered into death row.  That’s what it felt like, walking down that green mile to where he would meet his own death.  Only this time there was no chair, no executioner, no hangman, no judge awaiting trial just an ungodly creature which he knew would be after him sooner or later.  Well beyond the plains a forest shot up and he drove off the beaten gravel road into tall thick grass.

Slamming on the breaks he let out a sigh.  Right up against the edge where the forest met the pasture he parked.  Stumbling out, he reached for his supplies in the backseat.  The equipment felt heavy and once he opened the trunk, the scent of death fueled his nostrils.  Coughing and gagging, he wrapped his hands around the black disposable bag.  Sure she was heavy but he managed.  Those tears came again thinking about his sister rotting underneath his arms.  You had to do what you had to do.  Lugging her foot by perilous foot, he kept his back straight arms bent, his grip tightening around what seemed to be her upper torso.  His utility bag banged against his back but he carried on, the weight never constricting him.  His conviction led him further into the forest, moon blotted out by oaks and maples, that dread creeping up on him like a snake.  

About five minutes in, he crashed landed on top of jagged rocks.  He winced but never yelled.  Trails of blood tore through his jeans leaving behind skid marks that began to welt.  Knowing that nothing was broken he plopped down to sit, his back leaned against a trunk.  He stared blankly at the black plastic bag that began to rip at the edges and seems.  An arm dangled out completely lifeless yet somehow vaguely animated.  It was no longer that luscious tan color but a feverish white mixed with blues and violets.  Rotten smell permeated more and more and he covered his nose with the rim of his jacket.

This spot would do just fine.  It took him a while but he completed digging a hole.  Breaking through solid dirt then the next layer of moistened earth onto wormy mud.  Keeping no track of time, it felt like an hour passed and he dug halfway.  The other half he trudged through taking quick two minute breaks in between just to catch his breath.  A new day of dawn was breaking on the horizon but the night still prevailed.

Rolling her body into the deep inset grave he panted and heaved.  Chunks of nervousness came out as he clenched his stomach.  So much horror and pain mixed with an unwillingness to let go.  But you have to.  He worked well until the sun rose and set in the east.  The body was buried deep and good but still the murkiness soaked into that apparatus that made everything good and decent.  He felt the pangs of loss and superficial malice.  He could not go back home and explain to anyone what had happened, what he had done.  He looked up as the sky turned to its blue hue with crescent clouds and he tried to pray but nothing came out.  

Making his way back to the car he noticed he was far out where no one would even dare to look.  This far into the country there had been pockets of small communities and individual homesteads but he made sure that he drove to the point where only the occasional trucker would drive down a twin-lane highway.  This far out he might as well been close to how old natives felt marking territories and jumped from tribe to tribe.  He would make his way back into the city, hoping that this nightmare ended with his sister Sarah.  He hoped that what he did was enough to expel that looming darkness so that not even the creature or its ilk will ever do damage to him or anyone else…oh how wrong he was.  

The air smelled of sulfur and nicotine.  Blackness clouded his vision through a padded hood.  His arms were tight under the pressure of rope kept behind his back.  The chair beneath him felt made of metal, one of those that were of a used kind that you could find randomly in a church basement.  Footsteps echoed around him and a couple of voices chuckled exchanging dialogue.  Their sentences were so incomplete it sounded like school yard children fighting during recess.  One by one the voices died down hearing a door swing open and close numerous times.  Pretty soon all he could hear was his own shallow breaths permeating through the black fabric covering his face. 

Hands tightened then loosened feeling the twine that made the rope.  A single slipknot formed at the base.  Child’s play.  These people whoever they were were amateurs.  So many years waned by and as he got older he became wiser.  He knew whoever these people hearkened to, they were nothing but cattle.  Pawns acting like leeches, parasites wanting to be the butterfly, drones serving their queen, children beholden to a parent.  Or maybe parents?  Or even worse, a slew of parents?  Not wanting to find out, his wrists slackened becoming pliable acting like a rag doll.  His head came up prodding his memory of all the work he done only to move his middle and pinky fingers down the knot.  Slipping one finger over the other, the rope intertwining between knuckles, he worked the slipknot upwards not down.  His wrist went sideways in the most agonizing way bringing the knot between both pairs of knuckles, his middle and index loosening the main braid.  Pretty soon the slipknot straightened and strand upon strand he undid his locked peril.

Once the rope fell to the floor, he quickly undid the veil constricting him letting out a sigh of relief.  His eyes adjusted to the brightly lit room turning from shades of white and frost.  Honing in on his eyesight they came to land on a person standing mere feet away from him.  Feeling defeated he fell for the oldest trick in the book.  His mouth curled into a grimace as he brought his hands to rest on his legs.  

The man before him wasn’t that much older than he.  Of course his hair was disastrously long coming down in unkempt strands.  The scent of booze and cigarettes radiated off him, something that he himself knew too well.  Shirtless showing a dizzying array of tattoos up and down his arms, across his chest.  Not even in the best of shape hair nestled around his pot belly.  Tattered and holed jeans with an old school chain wallet dangling made his presence even more satiated.  Curled tendrils formed a frizzled beard which was not touched by a comb in years.  Even being the captive he was in better shape and more in tune with his surroundings. 

“Damn…you are good,” the man belted out.

Philip kept silent staring at him with malicious intent.  Unlike this one he was not going to break his composure.  Unlike this ilk he had conviction.  Unlike this sloth he kept his head on high.  He was almost certain this man was not qualified due to his occasional sway and the way his eyes glazed over.

“So, you’re the one they bought in, huh?”

Once again nothing to say, no comment, no answer.

“The silent type?” the man finally said while moving closer to him.  The booze smell intensified.  He brought out a single switch blade, the mechanism shooting out its silver weapon.  He bent down to get a closer look at Philip.  Those puffed up saggy brown eyes peered into his own.  Never wavering or faulting, just a dead glare.  That sappy sadness danced its familiar tune.  “You know who I am?  Who we are?”

Philip pointed to a pack of Camel’s edging out of his pocket.  The man chuckled removing one from the pack.  His hand placed the cigarette in Philip’s mouth and lit the end.  Sitting back in his chair he rocked back and forth enjoying his time or for what little he had left.  “I think if you were going to kill me, I would be dead already.  So, you need me for something or you want to tell me something.”

“I’m the one that asking the questions, hunter!” the man snapped, the blade came to Philip’s throat as he huddled over him, “I was waiting for you to untie that knot, you prick.  You managed to kill a lot of our kind, even important ones.  There is nothing more that I want then to watch you die.  To bleed needlessly on the floor.  But…she does not want you dead.”

Philip’s gaze went perplexed, his eyes shifted from his switchblade up to the man’s stare.  The man chuckled again his belly rumbling as he did.  For a second he thought of disarming him, throwing him against the concrete wall and breaking his neck in the process, but he held back.  This is what he wanted for a long time, information.  For years he tracked and hunted, trying to find the source of this darkness, this tainted bottomless pit and now he felt like he was close.  Close to the point of getting answers and figuring out how far the rabbit hole went.  He kept his mouth shut for the time being, patience now was the key to get the right answers. 

The man drunkenly grabbed him by the arm and lifted him to his feet.  He shoved him towards the door, his body swaying again in the process.  “Start walking.  Make any stupid move and you die.”  Following close behind Philip, he made his way out in a long lit hallway.  From the looks of this place he could either be in a factory or a hostel.  Smell of decay and rotting corpses hit him like a barrage of bricks.  He coughed incessantly until his lungs got used to that revolting stench.  The drunken man laughed behind him.

There in the hallway was a couple of others.  All of them dressed accordingly, most of them with piercing and snaking tattoos.  Dark clothes with offshoot colors highlighting different areas.  Most of them looked as if their minds left their bodies, no souls to match their appearance.  Some with short hair, others with long.  One huddled in a corner gripping his arm, hiding all the needle points riddled to the wrist.  Another shook with a paralyzing twitch, his eyes not even focused on Philip but the wall behind him.  A young girl spasm and screeched, her mottled hair fell out in clumps.

The vermin and the pest were attracted to such vices.  Darkness swelled as a punch to the gut.  Surfaces of decay and suffering duly noted, attaining an unalienable right of passage.  Night acted as a bridge into other facets that misery brings.  That want and need of pressing desires led into alleys of terror and bloodshed.  A wafting aroma of dread and spinelessness spread incoherently among this crowd.  Tarnished with the belief of what darkness brings, that incredible tinge of becoming more.  Philip knew who they were, the underbelly of darkness.  Night rolled them in like moths to the flame as he walked further down this hallway of the damned.  

However they were still human.  Some aspect of them lingered, with thoughts of sons and daughters, of wives and husbands, of family and friends.  No one was too far gone accept maybe the one behind him shoving every once and a while for the hell of it.   The chuckles kept coming, and others looked on with an incoherent sense of skepticism.  There had been a few who eyed Philip, some smiled devilishly and some frowned with meanness.  The more coherent were always more deceiving.  Manipulation was one hell of drug, and these few understood it.

One at the far end opened a set of swinging doors into a lounge.  The drunken one stopped refusing to take one step in.  He pushed Philip inside and made sure the doors shut and locked behind him.  This lounge had been posh, kept in order, ordained in the finest furniture.  A plush leather couch kept on the right and a finely ornate desk on the left.  The air went from diseased to almost serene.  But that sense of dread was not far off.  None of this seemed right in particular it felt out of the ordinary.  Numerous paintings danced on the walls, those of time’s past, from the Enlightenment to Gothic, from Nomadic to Grecian, from Realism to New Age.  All this told a story that Philip could faintly understand.

He recorded what he learned over the years, head bound in books among the pages of the past.  Highlighting passages and connecting the dots.  Forging through his pursuits, working his way up the totem poll.  Little by little he teetered on the edge of truly knowing of this plague, this unforgiving darkness.  But he seemed so far off at every turn, down a dark alley the trail wound up dried.  Deciding to sit on the couch he pondered on his next move.  Was this the end?  Did he finally reach his source?  Or was this another wild goose chase?

“Quite a predicament you’re in, Mr. O’Rourke,” a voice came from the swinging doors.  His eyes shot over to undisclosed man who silently waltzed in.  This was no ordinary man, it was one of them.  He could smell the dead already, he became accustomed to it.  Not dressed like the others, he wore a brown blazer over a v-neck shirt.  A pair of tight fitting jeans hugged his legs, his arms were long and lanky, his hair brushed and oiled to one side.  He noticed the nails came to violent points and those fangs stood out in comparison to the rest of his face.

“Why did you bring me here?”

The man moved with a sullen grace that was captivating, but his charade was subtle.  He motioned for Philip to have a seat at the desk.  He did not shy away from this invitation but invariably accepted.  The man took to the seat behind the desk, a stack of papers to his right, a chalice and wine bottle to his left.

“It is very simple really.  We brought you here to kill you,” the man smiled with a toothy grin.

“If you are going to kill me, you would have already,” Philip smiled back maniacally.

“You have been quite the man, Mr. O’Rourke.  Moving from place to place, from city to city,” he glanced at the fleet of papers, pulling out one in particular, “Quite the tracker.  On a road of discovery and fulfillment.  One that looks for answers in all the right places yet receiving none in return.  Turning to God in perilous times, doing the work of crusaders that came before him.  A qualified hunter of things that go bump in the night.  A slayer of nosferatu.”

Philip kept his eyes on the man casually glancing to the paper he held in his hands.  If he had at least one weapon on him he would have used it already.  But he was plucked by his feathers, torn from his home, went down that deep recessed hole that not too many ever came back from.  Losing himself in lore and mysteries that shot leaps and bounds into uncharted territory.  He committed many acts of violence that were rightly justified, to turn the tables on his tormentors, those who held him captive at this very moment.

“A thorn in our sides.  You have lost so much over the years yet you have so little humanity left,” the vampire glared blankly at Philip, “You have been watching us very closely.  You have taken on our tactics.  Hiding in the shadows waiting for perfect times to strike, to take down many of our fledglings.  But in the service of what?  Of a higher power?  Of some vague ideal?  Or is it more of a personal conquest?”

Philip leaned in closer never shying away from his target.  “Your kind is a plague on this world.  Like a bad virus that needs to be distinguished.”

“A virus you say?  Tell me, Mr. O’Rourke, can a virus give new life?  To breathe an essence of vitality into another.  To give people a second chance at redemption?  Surely we are not this plague.  If anything, we are the answer to humanity’s corruption.”  He began to walk over to his pictures.  “For many years we were shunned and ostracized.  At one time we knelt at the feet of many men who claimed to be gods and kings.  Through ancient times we were slaves, treated like cattle being led to the slaughterhouses.  We kept to ourselves like all good slaves do, doing what we are asked and told.  We minded our own business, kept out of affairs.

“But over time we grew into something more.  We used to be so far few and between, scattered in different sects of the world.  Those who were rulers reigned over us with an iron sword.  But we bid our time to the moment where we would bite back.  Take the hands of our creators and tear into the cartilage.  Little by little we would take back what was ours, what was truthfully ours,” the vampire neared Philip patting his ghost like hand on his shoulder, “…life itself.”

Philip heard rants like this before, not just within their sphere of vampiric morality, but in politics, in cults, in the darkened rooms of coffee shops and bohemian dorm rooms.  None of this rattled his veins, nothing could change what has already been done.  He struck down not only many but one of renown, of significance within their twisted hierarchy that they called a coven, or a society, or a clan.

“Life belongs to everyone.  You only wish to take it away.”

“By replacing it with new life.  A new embodiment for a bright future.”

“A future that is ran by the damned, who prey off mortals and the weak.  The circle repeats itself.  The slaver becomes the master.  The master takes on new slaves.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“That might be, Mr. O’Rourke.  But we are the true end to that madness that you deem a circle.  That circle ends with us.  For years we have been in the shadows and only now have we come into the light.  We have taken on many roles and many positions.  We run things as we deem fit.  We feed off that life, and in turn it gives us strength.  We now control that circle.  Isn’t it amazing that your relics did not harm us?”

Philip thought back to his encounter with the one who took his sister and his friend.  How he held that cross up to its eyes only to be knocked down.  That monstrosity gripping it tightly bending and snapping it in half.  The only thing, that he could remember, that warded the creature off was…what was it?  The thing encased around his neck, dangling with an unforeseen power.  Something so close and so dear.  Protecting him when nothing else seemed sufficient.  It was not some vain repetition or callous thought.  Not some superficial talisman or materialistic symbolism.  Something that was passed down to him, from his grandfather to his father and those that came before him.  Entombed in the form of faith mixed with reason, with blind fondness mixed with ambition, with grandeur and fortitude mixed with hardened conviction.  It came in the form of a personal emblem and when his hand searched his neck he found nothing.

The vampire laughed snarling his teeth.  His hand violently clasped around Philip’s neck, choking him ever so lightly with enough strength to break a wooden plank.  “Your blind faith.  That heirloom you wear around your neck.  I made sure I had it removed.  That blood of yours is very unique, Mr. O’Rourke.  Years upon years of some of the most skilled hunters and trackers.  All of them now dead…from disease…from strokes…from heart palpitations…old age…dementia…madness.  Foolish errand boys doing the work of God.

“What if I told you we own God.  That plague you so humbly search and destroy.  We have replaced him with our own effigies by borrowing some of your own.  A direct trade for a fair and balanced fight.  Tainted by years of exegesis and trans corporeal manifestations.  Those symbols that your kind hide behind, and you cower in the face of true adversity.  We became the vicars of your relics, brandished by popish ideals and intricacies that we had our hand in.  All your idealistic priest and deacons carefully manipulated and transformed until we became the ones behind your altars.”

The vampire picked Philip up and tossed him nonchalantly into the wall behind him.  The air went out of his lungs tumbling to the floor to grip his chest.  He staggered but rose to one knee only to get struck down by a swing of an encroached talon.  His face jolted to the right, speckles of blood landing on the furniture.  He felt the wind knocked out as if his life belonged to them now.  There he lain on the floor spitting out more shards of crimson dust.

The vampire backed away, his height doubled.  The room darkened as the lights began to flicker, within that shade his eyes blared.  Two obsidian pools of emptiness, two hollow soles contorting his face appeared so viciously.  His back arched forwards hearing all his muscles break and mold into hunched patterns.  Philip stared in horror at the grotesque creature forming mere feet away from him.  This was unlike anything he saw before, elbows jutting out into jagged edges, feet clawing its way from the soles in his shoes, two char-coaled wings extending from his back.  Clearly he was outmatched and death was on the horizon.

“Young hunter, so naïve and vain.  All your pursuits leading to your death.  All pointing to this divine moment.  I…we have the upper hand.  Every facet of your pathetic lives in the palms of our hands.  Controlling and exerting ourselves into your world while only a few notice.  And now we have…you.  You who will not live to tell your tale, all your secrets forgotten and crusade misled.”

Philip even though beaten managed to kneel on one knee.  Looking up his eyes shone with a different story, his lips curled into smile.  “You think I am the only one.  There are many like me…waiting patiently.  Our day will come.”

The vampire lingered within the darkened confines of the room, grinning and laughing.  “I sure hope so, it will be a fine reckoning.  Triumph is in the hands of victors.  History rewritten by ones who conquer it and dine of it.  Life eternal belongs to us and those who wield its infinite power will have it forever.  You…and your creed…or ridiculous brotherhood…will serve its purpose.  To use you as a footstool for the grand vision.”

Philip finally stood, gathering strength he knew he had, tall and proud in the face of a greater enemy, “Just like how you have your lapdogs and bloodhounds protecting you, doing all the dirty work.  Serving you by day to service the night.  A bunch of cowards filled with Satanists and occultists that get a rush on your misguided vision.”

“A tool that is necessary for callous naught.  Everyone has their own indentured servants, those willing to fight and die for something greater other than themselves…someone greater than them.”

“There it is…that selfish ego boost you get from your vision.  Always preying off of those who indiscriminately can’t stand on their accord.  Those who have none to abide by, you sway, you change, you turn.  Like my sister…she was young and naïve, and you took her from me.”

“Is that what you truly believe, hunter?”

At that thought the room grew cold and haunting.  Behind him the swinging doors opened and over a dozen robed minions emptied inside.  They circled Philip and three of them came in front of the towering creature.  Each of them held decorated daggers and swords, some had scimitars, others had spears.  They wore no hoods but their eyes glowed menacingly.  Each of their deep inset eyes glowed a different color, some bright blue, some fiery red, others illuminating purple.  Philip stood there mystified, these dedicated followers were not completely turned, most of them submerged within the darkness but they were something else, something mysterious and unseen.

“Take Mr. O’Rourke to the feasting.  Make sure he sees…everything.”  The vampire lunged forward and walked headfirst out the swinging doors.  Before he completely exited he turned to face Philip with a patronizing smile, “You may not like what you find.”

The robed clergy walked with Philip down the same hallway, this time completely empty of all the lackeys that were seen before.  Through another set of corridors they went and into another adjoining hallway.  The depressing feel of cold walls gave way to candle lit doorways lavished with wallpapered walls in brass gold and silver.  All this led to a large room resembling a dining hall. 

The rest there looked up from their tables, peering over wine glasses and empty plates.  The sound of violins brasses and harps drowned out the stares in his direction.  Their eyes glowed with ghoulish delight.  The patrons licked their lips smiling, grinning, chuckling, and clapping.  Gone were the robes and hoods now replaced with full on suits and scantily dresses.  A mixture of both man and woman, some standing to gaze onward most of them sitting perplexed by Philip’s appearance.

The same vampire from before walked towards him, now perfectly hiding behind his human skin.  His eyes were back to normal looking more at ease and slightly depressed.

“You never completed your ritual, Mr. O’Rourke.”

At that moment he saw a woman who was as old as he walk towards him.  His mouth jarred opened, his mind stunned and in disbelief.  There she was, one whom he thought was dead, one whom he thought he killed, that brought her peace by ending her suffering was standing before him.  She looked pale and ghastly yet young and vibrant.

“Sarah…no…it can’t be.”  His sister placed a gentle hand on his face and Philip jolted at how cold her touch was.  Her eyes told a different story.  A story that held so much pain and agony…and revenge.  She smiled baring those white pearled fangs, her hair longer than it had been now a ravished blonde instead of brown.  She leaned in to his ear and barely whispered.

“Your love for me could not take off my head,”  she leaned back and howled in laughter while the rest of the dining hall joined with her.  Philip stood there almost paralyzed with fear and astonishment.  He never completed his work and she was right…he could never truly see his sister in pain due to love.  His connection to her was so hard to let go he never truly saw it to the end.  Love blinded his faith.  He could not bring himself to see this to its final resting place.  She took his hand into hers and she dragged him over to an adjacent room, “Come now, Philip, let us talk…”

March 21, 2022

Author's Note

What did you think of the story? Was it an enjoyable read? Did you like me expanding on my saga? What did you think of the ending? I love comments and feedback. Thanks for reading.