They Come with the Thunderstorms

The ruined monastery was always an unwholesome place, A small part of the building had been home to the Inquisition for centuries. Later, during the reformation, the monastery was sacked by a regiment of Scots mercenaries who hanged all the monks regardless of whether they were torturers or simply good people of a religious vocation. One could have guessed that such a troubled place would become haunted.

Chapter One

The crash of thunder was practically continuous.  Strong gusts of wind blew sheets of rain sideways. Humans stayed inside; guard dogs hid from the storm under cottages they were supposed to protect. Something, or some things, came at the height of the storm and stole away two sisters as their parents slept. Their father beat upon the doors of the parsonage until he roused the pastor. Together they awoke the village mayor, whose son was engaged to the elder kidnapped sister.

I was awake, watching the lightning and the cool rain when I heard the alarm bell sound. Taking my ancestral sword, a heavy rapier that my great grandfather had carried when he warred against the French, I joined the small posse. Seven of us left the village:  The girls’ father, the mayor and his two sons, the parson with his silver crucifix, Reno the bull mastiff, and myself. Hunched forward and half blinded by sheets of rain we pushed forward into the teeth of the storm.

What words best describe attempting to track in a storm?  Following a scent is almost impossible even for a well trained mastiff. For the men in the posse, the words might be exhausting, boring and dangerous. A small outcrop of rock becomes a slippery, obscured obstacle. Sliding backward and down can lead to all sorts of injuries and painful bruising.

In four hours of exhausting travel, I estimated that we had gone only five miles.

The four other humans in the posse took shelter within a small cave saying that we should wait till dawn to continue. But I could read the defeat in their eyes. In the morning when the storms were passed, they would return home. Even the girls’ father had convinced himself that his daughters were dead. He would return to his wife and son, perhaps have another child or two.

Sheer contrariness and rage kept me on my feet and moving forward. I seized the crucifix from the pastor stuffed it into my poncho and moved on, using my sword to feel for obstacles in the dark. The dog Reno stayed with me although his master, the mayor’s second son called him back. Tracking either by scent or footprints had proven impossible. I simply headed for the abandoned monastery, certain that whatever had stolen the girls would return there.

Of course, I was afraid to enter the haunted monastery by myself, but I was more afraid of long sleepless nights trying not to imagine the fate of the two sisters and contemplating my own cowardice. I was like a boy who has climbed onto a ledge above a river.  The boy would jump because chickening out while his friends watched was worse than breaking a leg. I would enter the haunted monastery because living the rest of my life with the memory of my cowardice was worse than facing vampires and ghosts.

Some rusty piece of iron from the collapsed gate gave me a nasty gash on the left leg as I entered. But, what’s a few drops of blood lost to a person who expects to be a drained corpse in a few hours?

My first impression of the interior of the monastery was that it was huge; easily five times the size of York cathedral, the largest building I had ever before entered. For a few minutes, I wandered about followed by the mastiff Reno, too awed by the number of rooms to remember to be afraid. The skeletons of men, presumably monks, hanging from windows, torch holders and anywhere else strong enough to hold their weight highlighted the décor of the place. Reno and I searched the entire first floor without finding a trace of the girls, or being attacked by anything larger than a pack of very hungry rats. Reno snapped their necks in less time than it takes to tell. (Strange that the rat has the dirtiest mouth of all mammals. Humans come in second. We can’t even come out first in that category. Can’t swing through the trees anymore. Can’t keep ourselves warm in the winter without killing a bunch of animals for their fur. What the hell good are we?)… “Wow am I ever losing it now!”

Chapter Two

The sun should have been up two hours ago, but the storm still rages and the sky is dark.

The posse I started out with has not shown up. Might as well go and check out the place within the monastery that I have been avoiding. The dungeon under the monastery holds the torture chambers of “the dogs of God,” the Inquisitors. How many Jews, protestants, heretics and accused witches have died horribly down there! Naturally, that is the heart of all the evil in this place. Where else would the vampires have taken the kidnapped girls? Where else will they be waiting for me?

It takes a while to find  the entrance to the dungeons. So sleepy I could lie down amidst the rat feces and the skeletons and sleep for hours. Instead, I sit upon the steps into the dungeon and rub the cross all over my sword. They say you have to have faith in order for a holy symbol to turn the undead. But do you need faith in God or only faith that the sight of a holy symbol will pain the undead? Put another way, can an agnostic wield a holy symbol?  I suppose I am about to find out.

Something very large, very fast and very evil attacks me as I take the last step into the dungeons themselves from the stairs. Can you imagine a wolf twice as large as you have ever seen, and flayed alive? I stab with my sword. The undead wolf dodges the blade easily and knocks me over. Reno leaps upon the creature and the three of us are rolling about on the dungeon floor biting and slashing. Alone I begin to search the dungeon, leaving behind the headless corpses of poor Reno and of something evil. “Wait for me a short time, brave dog. We can travel into the dark together.”

And so I search, without hope of survival and therefore without fear of death. And I find them as I knew all along I should:  Two pretty girls tied to racks, blinded and tortured with a hundred shallow cuts. And there, licking the blood from the girl’s wounds, three vampires grinning at me. Replete with the girls’ blood, they move like bloated spiders.

The blinding speed attributed to vampires is lost to them. It is only a small advantage, but I use it to take the fight to them.

My ancestral sword, sharpened by the cross, drives into the closest vampire. Blood, not the creature’s own spurts from the body. Not content with the damage I have done, I ram the crucifix in my other hand deep into the bloated body of the undead creature. A horrible screaming borne on a gust of charnel breath, issues from the vampire’s mouth. The cries of an undead and immortal creature experiencing the final death drive me back a few steps before the creature explodes.

The remaining two vampires circle me counterclockwise, seeking to plunge their fangs into the back of my neck. “One down and two to go,” I tell them.

“We care nothing for that blood greedy bag of bones you just punctured,” one tells me.

“All we care about is feasting upon the blood of a valorous youth:  Your blood.”

“Suck cold steel!” I scream, swinging my sword in an overhead stroke meant to split one vampire from the top of his head to his heart. The creature’s speed allows him to avoid the sword stroke with ease. His claws sink into my belly, yanking forth my intestines and dig deeper into my scrotum. His fangs sink into my throat. The second vampire bites the back of my neck and begins to suck. Somehow, I reverse my sword and thrust it behind me into its blood sack of a belly. There is a scream of pain and rage from the undead I have stabbed. A smile runs briefly across my face before I pass out from blood loss.

Epilog

My life has changed for eternity. I am one of the undead now, a slave to my two fathers in darkness. They have raised the girls from the death to unlife:  Unthinking zombies to serve their need for sex and torture. My fathers in darkness are teaching me the ceremonies for raising the dead and encourage me to practice by reviving the heroic dog Reno. This I will not do, leaving instead the valiant dog to the peace of death.

Three years have now passed. The vampire that used to be me has become much stronger, able to break the control imposed by my two fathers in darkness. They have raised up another undead wolf creature to guard their coffin while they sleep. But I have always had a way with animals. The wolf creature obeys me now.

At the summer solstice, the longest day of sunlight, the vampire that used to be me drags their coffin outside at noon. After nailing the coffin shut, I set it afire. The screams of my two fathers in darkness are music to my ears.

I should have stayed outside in the sunlight and ended my unlife but there are still things I have to do. When winter comes again, when my burns have all healed, I must return to the village. The mayor’s older son must be reunited with his fiancé. I owe the mayor’s second son a pet to replace the bull mastiff Reno. He can have my undead wolf thing in exchange. Lastly, the village priest must want his crucifix back. Religious artifacts are of no use to me anymore.

The End.