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atlantic-riona · 2 months ago

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Though I Walk Through the Valley

Written for @inklings-challenge 2024. A Catholic college student and a vampire take a trip to the Underworld. Shenanigans ensue. There are four parts.

I. A Visitor of the Vampiric Variety

I opened the door to find Malachy standing on the steps, one hand raised to knock. He looked about as surprised to see me as I was him, and after a few moments spent staring blankly at each other—vague remnants of thoughts regarding grocery lists and the possibility of afternoon naps still floating about my mind, Lord only knows what was circling his—he pulled himself together to give me a strained imitation of his usual annoying smirk. “Fancy a trip to Hell?”

I slammed the door in his face.

Honestly, upon later reflection, I should have left it like that. I still had no intention of getting mixed up in his world, even if Isa—well. My best friend and I were cautiously on speaking terms now, but the argument we’d had loomed forbiddingly in the background of every interaction, even though by silent, mutual agreement we didn’t acknowledge it.

But curiosity got the better of me, and I opened the door again, just a crack. “What.”

In the twilight shadows of evening, his slightly ominous expression would have sent shivers down any onlooker’s spine. Here in the warm afternoon sun, it merely looked out of place. “There’s a problem.”

“Yes, it’s called an irritating vampire refusing to get off my doorstep,” I retorted. “Was there something new, or…?”

“The Circle,” he said simply, and my blood ran cold.

“Goodbye,” I said, and shut the door firmly. I could hear him calling me through the door about needing my help, but I ignored this. And when I heard the windows rattling, I picked up my spray bottle, helpfully labeled “HOLY WATER,” and pointed it meaningfully (label side facing the window) in his general direction. He got the hint. At least I assumed he did, because the windows stopped rattling soon after.

Still, just in case, I went around the house, double-checking that all the windows and doors had crosses nailed above them, or rosaries wrapped around their handles. Call me paranoid, but I’d seen a lot of movies, and I was taking no chances.

I didn’t see Malachy for three days. And good riddance, said I. So when he showed up at my doorstep, looking inordinately pleased with himself, I certainly was not pleased myself.

I leaned against the door, which was open just a crack, and said clearly, “Go away.”

“Lili, you’ll want to hear this,” he said, grinning. Somehow he’d recovered his equanimity in the past three days, and I didn’t think it was for any reason I’d like.

The grin annoyed me. I pointed at the miniscule amount of space between the door and its frame, and said, “You see this? It’s about how much interest I have in whatever you’re about to say. And it’s only open so you can hear me tell you to go away, which means realistically my interest is much lower.” I had briefly considered shouting at him through the closed door, but regretfully had set that plan aside. I didn’t want him trying to crawl through the windows again.

“It’s about Isa,” he said.

Through the opening, I gave him the old stinkeye.

He laughed. “Charming as ever, I see.”

“Did Isa send you?” I asked coldly, and not without a little pointedness.

His composure slipped a fraction. “No,” he admitted after a long minute. “I’m here without her knowing.”

I knew I’d regret this, but I still unhooked the chain and pulled it all the way open. “What is it, then?”

I had forgotten the secondary reason for keeping the door mostly closed, but it quickly sprang to mind when Theresa’s excited shriek from the living room deafened me. “Is that Malachy?”

“No,” I yelled back. “Go do your homework!”

But it was a fruitless endeavor to tell your little sister to do something as dull as solving for x when there was a live, breathing—well, dead and unbreathing—vampire at the front door, and it was doubly fruitless when said little sister had been obsessed with all things supernatural (especially the fanged variety) for years. Theresa came sprinting out of the living room, vaulting an armchair in her enthusiasm and skidding to a stop in her pink-and-white polka-dotted socks. “Malachy!” she cried happily. “Come in, come in, I have so many questions!” She’d already nabbed a clipboard from somewhere and was now squinting through her glasses to locate a pen.

As the point I wanted to make was already moot—namely, that inviting vampires into your house traditionally never ended well—I settled for giving Malachy a stare of loathing as I removed the cross hanging over the door, before stepping out of his way. He, in turn, gave me a brilliant smile, one that prominently displayed his sharp white teeth, before stepping inside.

He clearly thought Theresa was cute, but easily brushed aside, since immediately after greeting her with amusement, he turned to me, as if to continue our earlier conversation. How quickly he’d forgotten! I didn’t feel motivated to disabuse him of his misunderstanding, so I merely settled back, arms crossed, to watch the show.

“You remember how we found out that Isa’s condition is because she’s a descendant of—” he began, but broke off with a startled look when Theresa briskly pinched his arm through the leather jacket he was wearing. “What the hell?”

“Language!” I hissed.

Theresa ignored the both of us, scribbling something down on her clipboard. “So you’ve got pain receptors,” she said, clicking her tongue thoughtfully. “Which means your brain is capable of receiving and translating signals, even though it’s technically not alive, according to my research. Or is it alive? Does the blood you consume reanimate your life systems? Is that why you need to constantly replenish it?” She looked up inquiringly through the bright pink frames of her glasses at Malachy, who stared at her.

“Er—yes. I do need blood to…operate, as it were.” For the first time in my memory, he seemed discomfited.

Theresa nodded. “Right, blood’s very important to staying alive and operational, but it’s not really the only thing you need. How about oxygen? Do you need to breathe?”

He blinked at her, and then at me. Like I was going to rescue him from his flailing. I was enjoying myself too much. “To speak, mostly. And habit. I don’t actually require it.”

“Interesting.” Theresa scribbled something furiously on the clipboard, elbowing me when I tried to peer over her shoulder at what she’d written. “Then I wonder how you’re accomplishing cellular respiration. Of course, blood transports oxygen, so I thought that might be why vampires needed it, but if you don’t need to breathe, then how are you getting that oxygen? And how are your organs functioning? Or are they functioning? Are they rotting inside you right now?” She took a step forward, as if to start looking, and Malachy actually backed up a step.

“There will be no autopsies in this house,” I said loudly, “especially if you’ll be finding rotting organs. I just cleaned the carpets.”

“My organs are not rotting!”

“Didn’t ask, don’t care, they probably are, but that’s your problem, not mine.”

“They are not—”

“I have a scalpel, we could check,” Theresa piped up, beaming. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about your regeneration and healing capabilities, anyway.”

We both looked at her.

“How old is she?” Malachy asked me in an undertone.

“She’s turning twelve on Friday,” I said, not bothering to keep my voice down. “And speaking of, Theresa, if you want a party Friday afternoon, you’d better finish your homework ahead of time. You can bother Malachy afterwards.” I’d probably pay her to do it, if he was overstaying his welcome.

She gave me a pleading look. “Just a couple more questions?”

Behind her, Malachy was shaking his head no. I bestowed a beautiful smile on him, and told her, “Of course! You can have three.”

Theresa was physically incapable of sticking to three pre-planned questions. I let her herd him into the living room, talking at the speed that only middle-schoolers could achieve, and went into the kitchen to grab some supplies.

I came back out to find Malachy eyeing Theresa warily as she industriously wrote out calculations on her clipboard. He was sitting on one of the armchairs—the one that happened to be farthest from any doors or windows, I noticed. Coincidentally, these were all covered in crosses.

“Homework,” I said firmly, and she sent me a pleading look, but I shook my head at her, and she sighed. Collecting all of her things, she dragged herself out of the living room. As I set the vase down on the end table. I could hear her sadly thumping her way upstairs and into her room.

Malachy nodded at me, which was probably the closest I’d ever get to a “thank you” from him. Then he sniffed the air, and frowned over at the end table by the couch. “Is that…?”

I arranged the garlic flowers in the vase to display their purple petals a little more prominently. “Just testing out some questions of my own. Say, if I spilled some beans just now”—I had, there were a few on the floor by the couch—“would you feel compelled to clean them up?”

He had been regarding the garlic flowers with narrowed eyes, but turned away from his contemplation long enough to give me a scornful look. “I’m not a jiāngshī, am I?”

That piqued my curiosity. “There are different types of vampires?”

Malachy laughed. “As many as there are legends about them. Hollywood doesn’t have a copyright on the supernatural world, you know.”

“Great,” I muttered. So not everything I knew about vampires would apply to every one. Lovely. Guess I’d better start stocking beans in my purse alongside garlic and rosaries.

“That’s not really important right now,” he said, and I stared at the carpet. Normally Malachy never passed up the chance to mock my understanding of the supernatural world—if he was doing so now, the world must be ending soon. And I didn’t want any part in the trouble he’d probably brought with him, but on the other hand—Isa.

Just because my best friend had started dating a vampire—and been drawn further and further into a world that seemed bent on killing her—didn’t mean I wouldn’t do everything in my power to help her.

And right now, she wasn’t doing too well. Apparently, one of her direct ancestors had been attacked by a very powerful vampire, one who’d been thought to have perished ages ago. But now he’d resurfaced, and Isa was experiencing side effects from it. Odd dreams and lethargy being the least of them.

That was my understanding of the issue. The Circle had other ideas.

“What’s the problem?”

“You remember the Circle,” he said, and I grimaced. Yeah, I remembered them—the organization of witches that basically wanted to run the supernatural world, and the ones who’d taken issue with some of my critiques of said world. It was kind of hard to forget, since Isa and I had fought over her decision to work with them, among other things. The fight had culminated in some fairly harsh things being said on both sides—but I didn’t like to think about that.

Suffice to say, I disliked the Circle and the feeling was mutual.

“What about them?” I said, as neutrally as I could manage.

“They have a lead on Isa’s condition,” he said, “but it involves a trip to the Underworld.”

After a polite pause, in which I gave him ample time to crack a smile at his joke, I reluctantly concluded that he was being serious. “Underworld? As in Hades and the three Fates? Hercules?” I’d really only ever seen the Disney movie.

“Hades, Annwn, Hel, Yomi, Elysium—whatever name you call it by, yes. There’s a key there that might help in a ritual, apparently. Something about using a key from the land of the dead to break the connection between her blood and the vampire’s. Sometime in the next week, the Circle—and Isa—are going to try to summon this key. I’d really rather avoid the risks of Isa attracting the kinds of beings that populate the Underworld, and so I’m proposing to nip in and retrieve it before this becomes a mess of drastic proportions.”

I crossed my arms and resisted the urge to curl up on the couch. It wasn’t that cold, even for October. “Okay. So what do you need me for?”

He gave me a long look. “You’ve heard of Orpheus?”

I shook my head.

“The state of education is shameful, these days,” he muttered. “To cut a long story short—Orpheus was a musician whose wife died. He traveled to the Underworld to ask for her life back. He got it, but at a price. On the way up, if he turned to look back at her, she’d be lost to him forever. Three guesses as to how the story ends.”

“With the redemptive power of love and faith leading to a happy ending?” I said defiantly.

“Wrong. He looks back just once, and no more wife. She was sent back to the underworld forever. Then he died.”

“Of grief?”

“No, actually, he got ripped apart by a group of madwomen later in his life. For disrespecting the gods, I believe. But I digress.”

I slouched back, the soft cushion of the couch dipping under my weight. “That’s a terrible story.”

“The point is, that you must have heard of any number of stories where human champions descend underground to a supernatural world. Alice in Wonderland? Labyrinth?” He caught my surprised look at the casual references to modern fiction and arched an eyebrow. “I’ve lived a long while. You fill up the time somehow, and television’s everywhere now.”

I tried to imagine Malachy sitting in front of the TV, watching as the cartoon Alice in her poofy blue dress spoke to Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and couldn’t quite manage it. For one, where’d he get the TV from? It’s not like he had a house—would the cable guys set one up in a crypt?

Did he even live in a crypt? When he wasn’t crashing on Isa’s couch, I mean.

“The point is that getting to the Underworld’s not so bad, dangers and guardians notwithstanding. In some cases, it’s disturbingly easy to do so. It’s getting out that’s the problem. See, you need someone who…well. Can withstand temptation. Strong moral character, and all that.”

“…” said I, staring at him.

He rolled his eyes. “Some people would take that as a compliment.”

“Wow, the undead creature of the night that makes it a habit to drain people of all their blood thinks I have strong moral character because I—tell him that what he does is wrong? Amazing. I’m truly astounded you managed to find one person to fit your criteria with that level of moral understanding.”

Then again, it was a world that apparently thought vampires were sexy precisely because of the undead blood-drinking thing, so maybe he had something there. Case in point: every time I went to the internet to research supernatural creatures, I had to wade through pages of supernatural romance shows, books, art, what-have-you, before I ever got to what might be considered even slightly academic. If not practical—somehow I doubted that the researchers at Harvard had ever had to deal with the problem of a vampire inviting himself over to tea once a week. I declined to share this thought with him, however.

He arched an eyebrow at me. “Well? Will you do it?”

“What kind of temptation are we talking about here?” I was reluctant to commit, even though I knew in the end I’d do it.

“Any and all.”

Helpful.

Actually, I’d share that thought with him. “Helpful,” I said. “Elaborate?”

Malachy gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Death’s more attractive than you might think. And if not that, then fear.”

“Of…?”

“The unknown? Being left behind? Of it all being a trick? Remember, Orpheus turned around.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And the chances of getting out?”

He gave me his most charming smile. “I have every confidence in your talents, Lili.”

I arched an eyebrow of my own.

“Being the most stubborn, uptight, Miss-Morally-Righteous woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet in death,” he said, still smiling. “Also, you know, very strong belief. And you know how important that is, when it comes to my world.”

I did. Crosses, as far as I understood, hurt vampires—at least the kind I was familiar with—because (depending on what belief one subscribed to) they symbolized the resurrection of the dead, which vampires couldn’t partake in due to their unnatural state, or the power of God, or Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Explanations varied.

While crosses and other holy objects (Christian, so far as I had experienced—jury was still out on other religions, though with Malachy’s reveal of different kinds of vampires, now I wondered) all had the ability to make vampires flinch back, it was the item holder’s faith that gave it real power. And it wasn’t just faith in the item, but what it represented.

Months ago, Malachy had seen me keep back a vampire with nothing more than the Sign of the Cross and two popsicle sticks held in a cross shape. So I suppose to him, that was a sign—no pun intended—of my strong faith.

I wasn’t so sure about that. Somehow, I didn’t think that being able to hold back creatures of the night was more faith-filled than, say, volunteering my time at a soup kitchen, or helping old ladies cross the street, or any number of good works that I could be doing instead of coming home at the end of a day filled with classes and multiple shifts, collapsing on my bed, and promptly passing out, repeat ad nauseam.

But there wasn’t really any point to having a theological debate with this particular vampire about anything, much less Matthew 7:21-23.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll do it.”

That really should have been the end of it. I told him I didn’t have a day off until Saturday, two days from then (and conveniently for me, the day after Theresa’s birthday party, because there was no way I was planning, hosting, and then cleaning up a party for middle-schoolers after literally going to Hades). We set a time, he told me what to bring, and that was that.

Only it wasn’t.

Because Friday afternoon was when the school called to tell me Theresa went missing.

The first thing I did was—well. Panic, to be frank. This wasn’t the first time Theresa had gotten in trouble, and since the last time it had happened, it had involved a vampire of the non-Malachy variety—that is to say, not reasonable in any way and really rather bloodthirsty—I felt I was a little justified in doing so. Then, of course, I searched the house, called the school back, did all the normal things to check if her disappearance was due to something, well, normal.

Then, and only then, I called Isa.

The phone rang, and rang, and then—click!

My hopes were dashed when the voice I heard was the pre-recorded kind. I left a message, and then for good measure, texted her—though Isa had a flip phone, so I didn’t have real hopes of her texting back. And then I immediately called again. And again.

The other line connected, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Isa. I know it’s not a great time, but—”

“She walks through the long dread valley of night,

hand-in-hand with the hunter and his queen.

She sleeps under snow, she sleeps under ice—

and she fades away from the springtime green.”

The voice on the other end was soft—almost mechanical in its recitation. Yet there was something mesmerizing in the quiet rhythm of the words, hardly discernable through the crackling of the poor connection. As soon as the last word was spoken, the voice started over from the beginning. I don’t know how long I stood there, listening to the strange voice.

In fact, I was still listening, transfixed, when I sensed something behind me.

I whipped around, one of the kitchen knives in hand, to find Malachy regarding me with a raised eyebrow. Without lowering the knife, I lifted the phone away from my ear. I could still hear the voice tinnily in the background. “What was the last thing I said to you when you were over here on Monday?”

“It was Thursday, and I believe it was the equivalent of, ‘go back to whatever hell you spawned from,’ only the politer equivalent due to attentive young ears,” he said, but his heart wasn’t in the banter. “Have you heard from Isa?”

Damn. So it was really him. With trembling fingers, I put the knife back in the block. “No. I’ve been calling. Listen to this.”

Without the usual malicious pleasure I would have taken in doing so, I shoved the phone up next to his ear.

He listened to it a few times, ended the call, and scrubbed at his face, which was looking a little paler than usual. For a corpse, at any rate. “She’s missing.”

“So’s Theresa,” I said, feeling cold. I put the phone away, reluctant to even look at it. It was strange to have something so obviously supernatural happen over such a modern device as the phone. “What do you think is going on?”

“I found out that the Circle was ahead of schedule and carried out their ritual at midnight. Apparently, they lost track of Isa at noon today.” He said this in a way that indicated to me that someone in the Circle had been left very unhappy when he discovered this. “When did your sister go missing?”

“I don’t know the exact time, but the school called me around one.”

“Not promising.”

“Do you think—”

“—it’s related? Probably. At least, you’d better hope, because I only know a potential method to track Isa, not your little tagalong.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Where do you think—?”

“Better grab your jacket,” he said. “Looks like we’re making an early start on our road trip to Hell.”

#inklingschallenge #team lewis #genre: portal fantasy #theme: pray #story: complete #my writing #catholic vampire story #part 1 #also part of a wider set of stories that I've never really set down in writing #but it's meant to be in the style of those YA vampire romance books only from the POV of the best friend who is Catholic #I feel like other themes could apply here but the major one is praying for the dead

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