Supernatural

The New Whitby Vampire

… has a conscience and a mission of mercy

Eighty feet above sea level, I survey the red rooves of the town of Whitby. The wind buffets my lean body and runs chilly fingers through my shaggy hair. The North sea is peaceful tonight, a primrose yellow moon reflecting fragmentedly on its surface, but the presence of this lighthouse on which I perch is testament to how cruelly that dark body of water can treat ships.

The lonely structure on which I stand, once a beacon for sailors and a warning of the sharp rocks along the coast, has been my home for more than a century. Modern lighthouses need so little human intervention, that my refuge here is undiscovered and largely undisturbed. The light tower also makes the ideal launch pad when I want to fly.

Now I leap from the ledge and silently spread my arms, feeling air currents flap my shirt and buoy me up while my form transforms to a bat’s. As I wheel and hover over the beach and pier, I observe how the centuries have changed this fishing port.

I’ve been anchored to this coast since my time as a sailor on the Demeter ended, and my immortal life began.

We were all wary of the strange cargo we’d been carrying since we left Varna. Twenty unnaturally heavy crates were brought aboard, they made the gangplank bow alarmingly as the crew manhandled them below deck. None of us could guess what was in those crates, but we frequently speculated when we took the night watch.

Not long into our voyage, our numbers began to dwindle. One sailor went missing, then a second; fallen overboard perhaps, but with such an experienced crew it was strange.

The night I should have died, I’d been manning the bridge, but strange sounds drew me to investigate. After I’d lashed the wheel with rope, I carried a hurricane lamp to search, but I was totally unprepared for the monster with burning eyes and sharp fangs who assaulted me and wrestled me to the ground. He surely planned to drain me and fling my useless corpse overboard. He must have done so with others in my crew, but before he could extinguish my life force, dawn began to break.

With an unholy howl of pain, the venal, blood sucking creature scuttled away, scorched by the tendrils of golden light which suddenly broke through the clouds.

I was left half dead and feverish, but his filthy vampiric virus thrummed in my veins.

A few days later, during which time I transitioned, struggling to exist below decks, land came into view. But as if the town of Whitby intended to repel our dreadful cargo, the ship was suddenly caught up in a mighty thunderstorm. The sky darkened like night, the sea roiled and tossed our vessel in all directions, like matchsticks. Towering, powerful waves heaved the ship up then slammed it down, before they hurled themselves at the cliff face. Barricades of brine reared like horses, then with mighty spumes of froth, they raced ashore to crash against the wall of rocks.

By this stage, most of the crew were gone, the monster who’d infected me had regarded them all as nourishment. Having paid handsomely for his berth, the reclusive Count in fact spent most of his journey in the dark hold, hidden in a coffin and surrounded by dirt from his native land. He was dormant, save for his nocturnal missions to kill my fellow men in the name of sustenance.

What remained of the crew had eventually discovered his body hidden below decks, and while daylight made him unresponsive, they had lashed it to the helm like some gruesome figurehead. Yet while the ship floundered in the storm, the monster was able, by some feat of evil determination, to steer the Demeter into land.

It ran aground beneath East Cliff, and was soon broken up by the pounding waves.

I should have drowned that night, as those other sailors did, but I had been re-made by the virus. So I struck out in the waves and pulled myself up the rocks, under cover of the cloying sea fog. I found shelter in the ruins of the Abbey.

I saw and heard nothing more of the Count, the monster who bit me, but my body experienced something like an earth tremor when he was exterminated.

I lived on, if you can call this existence living. At first, my hunger was terrible, and yet I could not bring myself to kill humans; I fed off sheep and goats and other livestock.

I remained on the coast, because the sea was my livelihood. Sleeping in a cave by day, I hunted at night, but soon enough another storm caused a shipwreck. My keen hearing meant that the pitiful cries of the sailors assaulted my ears, and tore at my conscience. When I flew down to that ship, I bore witness to the broken bodies of sailors who could have been my crew.

Observing men who were moaning and bleeding, my purpose became clear. I could bring them a swift death and ease their pain.

So I set the pattern of my existence. I sustained my strength with livestock until there was a shipwreck, and then I drained only the humans who were already dying. I’d never been a religious man, we sailors have our own superstitions and talismans, but now I occupied the body of a predator, I worked hard to appease my conscience.

Over the many decades that I have been a vampire, seafaring has become safer, thanks in part to better navigation devices, and lighthouses. Change has necessitated a shift in how I carry out my purpose, what I think of as my calling. The irony in choosing a lighthouse as my home is not lost on me: A structure built to prevent shipwrecks and save lives.

I still prefer to select victims who are near death. No human can cheat the grim reaper, but I help speed the inevitable, hurry them into the reaper’s waiting arms. I pick my prey carefully, and as such I am a frequent visitor to Gull House Nursing Home. It is built on the cliffs and boasts a view of the Abbey ruins. The residents there are infirm and unable to care for themselves. The nurses are efficient and kind, but those in their care are terminally ill.

Tonight I’m standing on a ledge outside a dying woman’s window. My system is clawing and spasming with hunger but I will bide my time. My prey doesn’t have long. My preternatural hearing detected her irregular heartbeat, like weak taps interspersed with wet squelches, and her breathing is ragged.

As a vampire, I no longer breathe or have a pulse. Nothing has awoken strong emotions in me since the day my body died, but now my compassion is stirred by the sobs from my victim’s room. Her adult daughter has remained at her bedside for hours, talking softly of shared memories and gratitude for her love and protection. This had been a good mother, and her daughter cries softly and strives to accept that her time is almost over.

Machines bleep faintly, monitoring but not sustaining my prey’s life. Medical equipment which had been assisting, is now disconnected, but strong painkilling drugs drip intravenously. The daughter’s voice falls silent and I surmise that she’s fallen asleep, which is confirmed when I listen to her breathing pattern.

This is my moment, and I must act quickly and decisively. I enter the nursing home through the wide double glass doors, the mat reads ‘Welcome to Gull House,” I am invited in.

A glamour renders me unremarkable, doctors and nurses fail to see me, and most visitors have gone. One orderly startles when I pass, her face a mask of fright, so she kisses her crucifix. She must have the sight, but when she ducks fearfully into a cupboard, I continue unimpeded to my victim’s room.

As expected, the daughter’s torso is slumped forward on the bed, her head resting on her hands, her rear on the visitor’s chair.

My victim looks sunken and frail, her body hardly makes any impression against the bedcovers. She does not see me, her eyes remain closed with the weight of her final hours.

I move silently to the head of the bed, lifting her wasted wrist to my mouth. I’ve learned to disguise my bite by choosing the site of a patient’s intravenous drip, which I remove and apply one fang to suck out her life force.

As I feed, swallowing down blood, thinned by medication and laced with morphine, the old woman’s energy fades. The spark of her life tugs free of her body, no brighter or more remarkable than when a shiny object deflects light onto a wall.

As I swallow a final mouthful of her essence, I watch that faint spark lift away from her corpse and move towards the open window, where it rises in the night sky. I am satisfied, but woozy from the taint of medication in my victim’s blood.

That’s when the daughter stirs, awoken by that moment of quiet from the patient’s heart monitor. The beat of silence before it begins to flatline and shrill.

“Your mother has passed,” I say calmly, adjusting my grip on the dead patient’s wrist as if I’d been taking her pulse.

She looks at me blankly. Even though she’s been expecting this, she’s shocked by the finality of my statement. I want to placate her.

“Take your time. Your mother was a very special person. There is no typical timeline for what you are going to experience.”

Her expression is a mixture of trust and sadness, until two brisk nurses join us, followed by a doctor. The daughter is distracted by their barrage of questions, while monitoring the deceased patient for vital signs. Before they can verify that there are none, I slip from the room.

I leave the nursing home as quickly and quietly as I entered. The white coat I wear flaps behind me, then disappears as I complete my transformation into a bat. Soaring towards the rocky spit on which my lighthouse stands, I use the up-drafts to conserve my energy. Beneath me the lights from homes, businesses and streetlights spread out like a jeweled Turkish rug.

Written for May More’s Tantalizing Tales prompt Lighthouse. I fact checked Dracula’s relation with Whitby here. Thanks to Alexander Martin for the welcome mat concept

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