#nosferazzi: a novel!

[fakesurprise]

Huzzah

Aka Nosferazzi: a novel! is over 50K. It is NOT a novel draft - certain scenes need more room to breathe, the timelines needs more time in it for Walsh doing normal pap stuff and the like; ideally the novel would take place over several months.

But once I had everything set up, things moved faster then I thought. Using 10+ POV characters was also rather overkill. But nanowrimo is about trying things. And as a prequel to the actual intended novel it did the job rather well.

There is enough meat on the bones for me to be pleased with, and that’s all I can realistically expect for 11 days.

[fakesurprise]

He was old, however young he looked. Last night had proven that with his control over every minute since I’d ran into him, his testing of me, the questions and comments. I wondered how hard it was for him to keep passing. To get older and older, burdened with skills and knowledge. Trapped in a body that could never change.

Part of me didn’t think there were any other vampires. I didn’t think Walsh was insane, but I didn’t know why he wasn’t.

[fakesurprise]

Being a paparazzi was about sports photography as much as photojournalism; you have to be fast, since you have moments to get the proper shot.

It was a good skill to develop and I was more than willing to make use of it; it also kept me dealing with people and with more time on the pulse of the city. I was home before midnight and spent the next four hours on YouTube. Not Kiren’s channel, but other random news one, treading news leading to twitter, reddit, other sources. Mostly it was finding summaries and reviews of movies, recent events.

I haven’t aged in decades. I can do things humans can’t, but what has kept me from having to do them is taking the time to fit in. Remember what is on TV. That TV isn’t even a thing anymore, properly. Keep an eye on what social medias are what, who the president is. Be able to hold as many conversations as I could. I learned about discord, filed that away. Got more practise on duolingo. At some point I was going to have to leave North America, or find a way to successfully vanish into a small town. The world was getting too big and with too much to know.

The last time I had mentioned Reagan was president, someone took it as a jab at Obama. But it was slip-ups like that which added up. And the constant moves to avoid suspicion. New IDs cost more than not needing to eat afforded me and increased security meant hiding money in a bank simply didn’t work like it used to. There were ways to do off-shore accounts, but you needed a lot of money to be considered for those.

I survived. I wasn’t at all rich, got by on what jobs I could find. I imagined there were better ways to survive, but I didn’t know anyone else like me and had only once encountered something I genuinely was certain wasn’t normal. I ran from that.

Whatever was up with Kiren’s family could be the same. I had no way of being sure, but that was enough to not run. Even I can’t run forever. He wanted answers. He wasn’t afraid. And I hadn’t realized just how much I needed that, not until he waited.

And I ran, even then.

[fakesurprise]

One Evening, and What Followed After

I spotted the lights on in the fourth floor window of the apartment half a black from the building. And as simple as that, everything shifted. The building. An apartment. No longer the place I’d lived in for over two years. I didn’t break stride as I walked, hands still deep within my pockets. It could be nothing, but no one survives on could be. I walked past the building and halfway down the block. The moon was a faint sliver in a clouded sky, the air heavy with the promise of snow. It was the quiet and dark of an early November as I moved into one narrow street and down a side alley. Rats behind garabage moving away. The impressions left by a homeless man sleeping in a doorway. Faint sounds of TVs from open windows. I heard both ER and Roseanne playing through closed windows nearby. The neighbourhood was small apartments and quiet houses. No sirens within a four block radius.

Everything was as quiet and boring as I preferred.

I took a deep breath, double checked that no one was following or watching me, and a moment later drifted up into the darkness and through the air to the apartment. Everything is diffused when one is a mist: vision becomes hazy, smell and taste almost the same thing. Hearing remains, though my range is diminished; I could improve it all had I not brought my clothing with me, but that was far less wise.

I had a small stash in a tree trunk outside town, enough for a few months in another city. With the funds in the apartment it was enough for a new ID as well. Without it, I would be stuck being Wilbur Tanner. Not a name I liked, but if I’d learned anything since the change it was to pick names close to my deadname. If I had died at all.

I shoved all the thoughts borne of worry aside and slipped in through the opened crack in the bathroom window. The apartment was not large. Small kitchen, bathroom, a living area with couch and bed, one single dresser, a tiny closet. It was clean and quiet, on the top floor of the building and if I had to I could go right through the walls to get into the hallway.

You learn to consider such options when you haven’t aged since 1982.

I enter slowly, diffusing more until I would be barely visible as a haze in the air near the ceiling.

Four people. Two male, two female. And one dog.

The dog growls, barely loud enough for people to hear him.

Only cats are comfortable around me.

“See? We’re fine,” one of the woman says as I move into the living area. “I can’t believe you convinced us to break into his home, Sh –.”

“Norville.” One of the men, his voice flat and hard.

“Norville. Look. Fred brought his dog, followed that sweater from the club. Confirmed it was this apartment.” She is smoking, waving the cigarette like a conductor, nails gleaming with a manicure more expensive than my rent.

The one called Norville is in the kitchen. “I said there is something off about him. Look at this kitchen. The fridge has food, but the oven is spotless and almost no dish even used!”

“Dude.” The other man is holding the growling dog without a hint of authority. Short, chubby and worried. “We broke into his home. Wilbur might be odd, but this is breaking the law!”

“The place is clean enough for a serial killer,” the other woman says as she comes out of the kitchen. She is bored; some of that is Valium. Not as wealthy as the other woman, but she wishes she was. I suspect they’re cousins.

The one with the dog is named Thomas, not Fred. He’s clearly only here because he was promised food. The wealthy woman’s family own a few restaurants, and conversation fractures between them. All are tense, worried, listening for sounds in the hallway.

I could arrive outside my apartment, if they have no one watching. Could bluff them into leaving. Two men. Two women. One dog. None has a wooden stake, no hint of garlic to them.

I am being hunted by a quartet of idiots who watched too much Scooby Doo. It would be funny, except it never is.

And there is something off. Even as a mist, I feel the hairs on my non-existent neck rise.

The fourth one – Norville – comes out of the kitchen. Tall and thin, thick glasses balanced on his nose. He looks like a scrap of nothing, but he holds their attention, was able to draw them here.

The dog is growling at him. Not me.

I swear.

No one noticed, since mists don’t make sounds. The dog is briefly distracted by the wind.

Norville has influence, far more than his age and demanour suggest. He is wearing a thick leather jacket two sizes too large. Under it is a book. I can feel it, now than I’m trying to.

As thought it was hidden.

There are alien harmonics in the air.

Something is deeply wrong here, and I have no idea what it is.

“Vi, you folded his sweater and put it back into his dresser,” the chubby guy says.

The rich woman gives him a stare. “I do know how to fold laundry. It is best we leave.”

But even so, she waits on Norville. They all do.

I have no idea what the book is. Or what it does.

I leave, out the window and to another alley. Reform.

I don’t feel the cold. I haven’t since June 11th, 1982. But my hands are shaking as I look down at him, and for once I imagine I must look as pale as people think vampires do.

Is four people a coven? Is this magic? Is magic actually real?

I have no idea. And no one to ask. I start walking. My fault, for joining everyone from the factory at a club last night. Also for hunting earlier; I was too full of energy to kill four people at once, even if I was so inclined. I could kill them in mundane ways, but that book put even that solution from my head.

I knew I should go to the club, get information on them. Find out what they were, if possible.

But every instinct whispered for me to run, and I hurried out of the city before they became a scream.

I had wanted others like me to exist, maybe. But other weird things I had not considered at all.

Some days I thought I was all that. A decade a vampire, never caught.

Most days were like today, where I was amazed I was still alive.

I could stay. Confront Norvile. Ask more questions.

Instead i walk faster. Still seeming casual. Nor running. Someone out on a nighttime jaunt toward the edge of the city.

No one to pay attention to. No one important.

I ran, once it felt safe. Burned off energy drawn from people. Made myself hungry. Sharpened myself to being dangerous.

No one followed, or if they did they never found me.

It was almost two years later that I realized that Norville was the real name of Shaggy.

And it left me with even more questions, and less of a desire for answers.

Because for all the book did, they’d still made fun of him.

As if they knew something about him that he never knew.

I tried to tell myself it was a foolish idea, but it persisted like pinstripe clothing had. What if they did know nothing. What if they made him real, by accident? What if that could happen.

And what if I was somehow that as well?

Drugs don’t work on me like they do on humans.

I spent most of 1996 trying to invalidate that truth.

[fakesurprise]

“I’d like to think I was braver, when I was human, but immortality makes one a bigger coward than anything else it does.”

[fakesurprise]

“You’re new at this, aren’t you, kid?”

“Joining Helsing Inc. has been my goal since I was six and -.”

“I can read your file just fine. You know we’ve never run into a real vampire, yes?”

“... I know they hide. I know what happened to my aunt and -.”

“Hmm. Pop quiz, then: who is the most dangerous vampire in the world?”

“This is a test, isn’t it? Fine. Count Von Count.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He is 6,523,729 years old. Age alone means he has power and experience no other vampire has. It also means the so-called Count Dracula is clearly one of his progeny, and his power is so great that no children are afraid of him.”

“... a moment. I see. You actually did research on vampires in case I would ask?”

“Know your enemy, yes. Even if your enemy is sometimes the HR department.” 

“And this is your genuine answer to the question?”

“I am fully willing to admit my recollections about my aunt’s demise could be wrong. And if there are no real vampires, that means one must compare fictional ones. And Count Von Count will outlive all other vampires; the longer he lives, the more there is for him to count. He alone never seeks out his death, or that of others. And he is the only one who hides the depths of his power effectively.”

“You are not considering Count Chocula then?”

“Too many controversies, as any competent breakfast historian could tell you.”

“You have now officially past your probation.” 

[fakesurprise]

I put up the do not disturb sign and walked out onto the balcony. The sky was dark, clouds seeming as distant as the stars. I could be mist and gone in any moment.

But he knew what I was. And trusted me.

Sometimes the weapons that hurt the most are the ones we use on ourselves. And they are always the ones we keep pretending are never weapons at all.

[fakesurprise]

“I went looking for proof. I hunted every forest in the americas, in the 90s and 80s. There were always stories, of a people older than people. Stories of people who survived impossible events; every tale of the wendigo is a human They changed. I think they hide in other forms, can alter our genetic makeup because they were us, once. They changed, and somehow we didn’t. So sometimes they give us gifts, like turning into mist.”

Walsh blinked, once. “You saw me turn into mist, Mr. Hines. I can see in the dark. I can drain energy from humans, I do not age. And you think this is because I was genetically modified by a Sasquatch?”

“You blacked out and woke up changed?” No reaction, which is also a reaction. “It is like that in all the stories. Aliens. Fairy abductions. I think they change some of us, for reasons we may never know. Seeing if we are ready to become like Them as well. How else do you explain how no one has caught a Sasquatch in this modern age? They hide, because they know us better than we know ourselves. They used to be us, or something like us. They give us gifts, not understanding. Or understanding too much.

“There are no monsters, I think. Just experiments they are running.”

“And you think your idea makes it better?”

“No. I don’t think we can understand them. Even if I am right, they are too advanced to be found. I am just old, and not yet dead. All I have are theories almost no one believes, because it would destroy our place in the world. But I think they made you to survive. All the ‘monsters’ were made to survive. To see if humanity is ready to live longer. To see if we are ready to be more. Anything we can do to a mouse, the Sasquatches can do to us. And we can do anything to mice.”

“...I will keep that in mind.”

[fakesurprise]

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. Even his shadow seemed to tower over mine, though only a couple of inches taller than me.

But his hands were soft, careful. His eyes carried only worry.

He could take me to Dakota; hit me right now, and there was no way I could get out of the way in time.

He didn’t.

He hadn’t.

He looked terrified.

I found my pen in my pocket. No paper.

“Kiren?”

I wrote on my hand, showing the words to him after. I want to talk again.

Cletus closed my hand gently. “You already do.”

I started crying. I couldn’t stop and he just wrapped his arms about me and waited until I was done.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Dakota didn’t – she does cruel things, but not monstrous ones. I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t think she did, but a power likes hers is sometimes only good at pushing, not at – anything else. I don’t know ...” He shook his head.  

I understand my silence.

I’m not sure he understands his own.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he whispered.

I didn’t have enough palms for words, not for any that mattered.

[fakesurprise]

I pulled out my flashlight and walked toward the house. The building was your basic run-down two-storey home. Brown siding, no hint of a fence, the front porch reduced to a looking like a deck that had been attacked by beavers and then thrown off a cliff. You could have put it in a horror movie and people would have complained it was too fake to be real.

Part of me wondered how much the house had been rented for.

[fakesurprise]

“You do enjoy complicating things, don’t you?” Massie sounded amused.

“With respect, I’m not certain I could complicate this.”

[fakesurprise]

“I sleep deeply. You could have slept in the bed, or rested in it?”

I shook my head firmly to that.

“Kiren. Vampire or not, I’m not about to bite.”

I might.

He stared at the paper I handed to him, then at me. “Ah.”

The look of shock on his face for a moment was worth the courage it had taken to write that.

I handed over the page I’d written earlier.

I know we’re not going to date. Age aside, meeting someone else like you at all isn’t some magic spell. I know that. But you accepted me without a hint of complaint. The sadness in me finds a home in you.

[fakesurprise]

“The dishwasher is doubling as the bartender,” Walsh said in bemusement.

We watched Kendall make the drinks; someone had taught him how, but he brought them over to us like a cow with self-awareness entering an abattoir. “D-d-drinks?” he asked.

Walsh nodded. “I’m the wine; Kiren is the beer.” The drinks were put down quickly. Kendall waited, saying nothing else, eyes pleading.

“We’re good,” Walsh said gently. “You can go.”

We watched the bartender bolt back to the bar. It would have been funny, if he hadn’t looked so terrified.

“I’ve had people figure out what I was and be less afraid of me than the bartender is in general.” Walsh sipped his wine as I had a drink of the beer. “What an odd little place. It’s almost as if it exists for the author’s amusement and won’t make it into the next draft.”

[fakesurprise]

“It could be a ghost?” I offered, even though ghosts were pretty much impossible to prove.

“Could be.” Bruce shrugged. “The Toronto office still swears there was a poltergeist haunting a development two years ago.”

“What made it a poltergeist?”

“Apparently it had a fit and destroyed structures that weren’t up the standard of the housing code. And would leave relevant pages opened up on nearby laptops.”

I stared at him. Bruce didn’t even crack a smile. “And?”

“Ex-employee with access to the network and a lot of anger to work through. They still claim it couldn’t have accounted for all the sightings.”

“Human copycat of a poltergeist?”

He nodded. “Stuff like that is why I am hoping you come to a different conclusion.”

[fakesurprise]

Most no one believes in vampires, and as he’s the only one he doesn’t blame them. Walsh gets by on energy, but not aging means he moves often. Eventually people get suspicious or he screws up. He takes odd jobs, uses the not eating or drinking to save away money, moves as he feels he needs to. He’s got better at that, and not being noticed. He’s taken acting lessons, picked up tricks. He can pass for older or younger as he needs to but at the end of the day he is twenty, and expects he will feel he is twenty for some time. He can do things humans cannot, and has learned a lot of skills he would have never learned in an ordinary life. But he’s never settled, always moving or considering it, shifting jobs and places he stays every year or two, cities every five years or so.

You can’t grow like that, frozen in time like someone perpetually backpacking. He doesn’t have many friends, close or otherwise.

He thinks all that is why it was easy to become a paparazzi. He can get shots no one else can, yes, but it’s mostly the freedom to interact with others, to become another face in a gangbang of cameras. Almost no one lasts in the business, and that’s expected. This is the first job in a long time where his unusual skills even have a purpose. He is six months into this life and never expects one random shot to change his life.

[fakesurprise]

I had been using the Power for ten years. No matter his potential, he never had. Not properly.

In the end, the difference between us was not one of power, but of bravery.

Kiren was a coward.

I never had been.

I popped another lozenge and spent he rest of the evening saying nothing and letting my throat heal. I had given the security guards two days. I’d worry on the third day. Until then, I just had to get Cletus busy around the mansion and otherwise I could rest my voice.

I checked every camera. The games room. Board room. All the bedrooms. Pools. Garage. The garden. The maze. The house was worth over twenty million dollars, and I had more in bank accounts. I was careful, for all the family thought and all their horror stories. My plan was still to leave the country in five years. Vanish around the world, with enough real power to never need to worry again. And every foolish relative who worried about the Power never once considered that real power lay in wealth you could hold, in capital you could spend.

Every one of them was afraid of shadows. I was the only one willing to grasp the light and admit it was fire.

I would be free. I would be secure. I would be safe.

And if it cost me even the Power, that had always been the price I’d been prepared to pay.

We aren’t slaves. Not even to our gifts.