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The first man to appear in the chamber, carrying a torch in his left hand and a long blade in his right, walked directly to the coffin and bent over it. He put his ear to the box and listened. He closed his eyes and stay in the position for a long moment. His back to Rosella, she couldn’t accurately describe his face, only his body. He appeared medium height, with the long hair typical to the men of the area and time. He wore drab, but clean clothes that showed his physique to be of normal size, not overweight but not well muscled. All in all, he was a man that was easy to forget.
The stranger stood and went to the other side of the coffin. He peered down at the box and motioned for whoever was in the passage to enter the chamber. Rosella was able to see the stranger’s face, but found that his looks were as forgettable as his body. He had light beard stubble that she saw on a majority of the men in the county of Cork as protection from the damp and often cold weather. His eyes, lifeless and gray, brought no extra attention to his face. But, Rosella did admit that the stranger’s eyes contained a ferocity and intensity she had never seen before that day.
Walking towards the coffin, a priest appeared, holding a cross in his hand and chanting in Latin. Rosella assumed that this castle passage had led to a burial tomb and she had walked in on a funeral service, or, at least the presentation of the last right’s. The priest splashed holy water onto the coffin, and she remembered that the lid appeared to have smoke rising in the places where the water splashed. The priest took a step back from the coffin, but continued to speak. The other man stood over the closed coffin lid, long blade in hand, concentration locked on the box.
The priest began to raise his voice as he proceeded to become worked up by his reading. Rosella, her curiosity having gotten the best of her, had stepped forward to watch the scene, but as the events grew in seriousness, she had retreated further back into the cave. The priest continued to speak louder until his voice was almost a yell and his arms had begun to wave wildly, seeming to increase the force of his words.
The box began to shake. Smoke began to pour out of the coffin, from under the lid. The smoke was thick and smelled like must and dead leaves. The chamber began to fill with the thick smoke and the priest paused in his reading.
“Don’t stop now you bloody fool”, yelled the stranger, his English accent surprising Rosella.
The priest went back to his reading. A weird white light began to shine from the box, bathing the chamber in daytime like brightness. The priest began to back away, but the stranger held his ground. A dark figure rose from the coffin and struck a hand out at the priest. The hand, more of a beast’s claw, had razor sharp nails at the end, and those nails severed the priest’s head. The priest’s body continued to move with the sermon as the head rolled to the edge of the coffin.
The creature in the box stepped out of the coffin, but the stranger, never having faltered with fear or trepidation, swung his blade, slicing the creature’s head clean off the body. Ironically, the creature’s head rolled next to the priest, their lips almost touching in a kiss.
Rosella bit back a scream, her body shaking uncontrollably. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. The creature, a being she had never seen before, looked less like a human than it did an animal. Even in death, the body reached for the stranger, trying to take hold and squeeze.
The hunter, unfazed and calm at the events, casually knocked the hand to the side and went to gather the creature’s head. With great efficiency, the stranger took hold of the creature’s head, and picked it off the ground. Rosella got her only good look at the face of the man/beast as it sat in the stranger’s hand. The face was a long and pale, with red eyes and long tooth. The face belonged to a man, but a man those children saw in nightmares. She shuddered at the thought of having been alone with a demon such as this, almost having opened the coffin and seeing the creature.
The stranger dropped the head inside the coffin where it landed on top of the decapitated body of the creature. The stranger, moving very quickly, brought the torch to the body in the coffin and set it ablaze. The body caught fire, a roaring and flaming fire, almost immediately. The stranger took hold of the priest’s head, and tossed that into the coffin fire. He then grabbed the priest’s body under the arms and dragged it out of the chamber.
Rosella stepped out of the passage she had hidden inside of and peered down the passage the stranger had left through. She watched the stranger as he dragged the priest down the long passage and back into the front entrance. After waiting five or ten or the longest, scariest and most agonizing minutes of her life, or maybe it just seemed that way because Rosella refused to turn and look at the burning coffin, she decided it would be safe to leave the chamber and journey down the passage.
But, she needed to look into the coffin, had to see what the creature was. With frightened hesitation, she crept towards the coffin. The flames had settled, leaving only a charred mass of flesh to rot inside the box. The smell was nauseating, turning her stomach more and more with each step she took towards the smoking box. At the edge of the coffin, Rosella peered inside. The creature sat up, smoke still rising from it’s hollowed eyes and blood pouring from it’s charred mouth. Rosella fell back in fear, her back crashing to the hard ground of the chamber. She turned away from the box certain that the creature was stepping out, ready to pounce on her. She closed her eyes and waited to die, to scare to anything else.
“It’s still not safe to be near the box”.
A strong voice silenced the nightmarish fantasy. Rosella turned around and saw the stranger, torch in hand, entering the chamber. She took him in again, a longer look this time, surprised to notice things about him that she hadn’t seen in him the first time. It was like she had forgotten what he looked like the moment after she saw his face. He still had the same appearance, but the way the torch lit his face in it’s glow, she saw that his eyes had a certain animal cunning that she had only begun to see upon her initial glance. The glow of the torch, the way the flames jumped and danced at random, made his eyes look red like the creature in the coffin.
She realized that the creature attacking her from the ashy remains in the coffin, had been her imagination. She laughed quietly at herself, her silliness. The stranger walked into the chamber and went to her. He extended a hand and helped her to stand. She stared at him, into his eyes. He gave a slight smile and nod and went to the coffin. She followed.
They both looked inside the box saw the charred body of the demon. Rosella could hold back her intense curiosity no longer. She looked at the charred demon, and then at the stranger and let the questions explode from her mouth.
“What is it? Who are you? Is it dead?”
The stranger smiled. A small smile that did nothing for his appearance, neither taking away or adding to his face. It seemed that his appearance and expression were crafted to allow him to be easily forgotten. Later, when Rosella told the story of this day to her daughter, she found it hard to remember how the stranger looked, admitting that she may have created some of his appearance in her mind as she told the story.
He remained calm at the tornado of questions she unleashed at him and very casually answered her questions exactly as he she had asked.
“The creature is called a vampire. I am Francis O’Callahan, a vampire hunter. Yes, it is dead.”
She stood motionless, her mind telling her that Francis was a crazy man, not to be believed, her heart telling her he was speaking the truth.
“What is a vampire?”
Francis began to walk around the box, removing a canister from behind his back and splashing its contents on the steaming creature in the box.
“Vampire’s are creatures of the night. They are the undead that walk the earth, feeding on the blood of the living. They are neither alive, nor dead. Almost impossible to kill, unless beheaded by a silver blade, exposed to sunlight, or a stake through their heart. They area ageless monsters that can never grow old and die. They are evil.”
Rosella stared at Francis as he told her the story. His eyes never left the charred creature in the coffin, never trusting its death.
“And you? You hunt these,..things ?”
He gave her a quick glance and continued to pour the canister’s liquid onto the body. In several places, steam rose on the creature’s body when the liquid touched.
“Yes, I hunt these creatures. My father was one of the original hunters, and he taught me the legends.”
Rosella was speechless, for the moment. The hunter put the canister back into his pocket and bent over the coffin. He stuck his hand in the box, grabbing the head of the demon. He pulled the mouth open and exposed the huge teeth.
“They feed with these.”
He said this as he pointed to the teeth. He removed a small silver knife from his front coat pocket. With the blade, he cut the teeth from the vampire’s mouth. The sound was sickening; a loose tearing of flesh that sounded like a fresh scab being picked by a child. He took the teeth in his hand, and wiped them clean on his pant leg.
Rosella watched with keen fascination. He took the teeth, now an impossibly clean and almost sparkling white, and handed them to her. She took the teeth in her hand and looked at them. They were each almost as long as her fingers. At their ends, they were pointed like animal’s teeth. She poked the tip of her finger with the tip of the tooth, and wasn’t really surprised at how easily the tooth entered her skin. They were incredibly sharp.
“You can keep those, as a remembrance of this night.”
Rosella tried to give back the teeth, but Francis wasn’t listening. Instead, he closed the lid to the coffin.
“What about the man that came here with you? The priest. Is he dead?”
For the first time, the hunter broke his stride. He stopped working, or hunting, and looked at Rosella. A somber look crossed his face and he seemed as if he was actually very sad.
“He was a good man and he died doing something worthy and just. God’s work.”
The hunter stared deeply at Rosella as he spoke, but then quickly resumed his undertakings. He gripped the coffin by the smaller end, where the feet went and dragged it a little. It seemed fairly easy. The hunter smiled and looked at Rosella.
“My work here is done. This is going outside, in the sun. Just in case.”
“Isn’t it dead?”
The hunter didn’t answer as he took hold of the coffin again and began to drag it behind him as he walked backwards down the long passage. Rosella quickly followed.
At the end of the passage, they emerged into the front room, but they quickly left that room and went to the front entrance.
The grass in the front entrance, mostly dead and yellow, blew from a strong breeze. The hunter stepped out into the center of the entrance, dragging the coffin behind him. Rosella, walking timidly behind Francis, noticed that the sun had set, and it was getting dark. She couldn’t understand how that was possible. She had come to the castle early in the morning, and she felt like she had only been there for an hour, two at most. But, she couldn’t deny the impending darkness. She also couldn’t deny the fact that she wanted to flee from this castle, never to come back.
Francis dragged the coffin into the center of the grassy area. He splashed more of the canister’s liquid onto the box and walked towards Rosella.
“The sun will finish whatever I couldn’t.”
Rosella stared at the hunter with horrified fascination. She was curious about this man: who he really was, where he was really from, where he had really been? But, she was too intimidated by him and his means to ask any of these questions. Instead, she backed away from him as he approached. He sensed and saw her apprehension at his closeness, and backed off.
“I mean you no harm”, he said, sounding more than a little hurt.
Rosella felt bad, but she couldn’t deny that this man revolted her as much as he intrigued her. She tried to nod it off, acting as if her backing away was less about him and more about, something else.
“It’s okay, I am just still a little shaken from seeing that thing kill the priest. I know you mean me no harm”.
The hunter smiled and said, “I must be going now”.
He turned and walked away. Rosella was on the verge of saying something, anything, to keep him here, but the words never came.
Francis, arriving at the beginning of the drawbridge, turned and looked at Rosella, for the final time.
“Remember, fear what is in the night!”
With that, he turned, walked across the drawbridge, returning to the darkness of night he had told Rosella to fear.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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