Chapter 1 September

4:21 AM

I always think about that day, that day in September, when leaves were slowly turning into yellow dry handkerchiefs and we were looking at the world from behind the bars. We were in an asylum. I was taken there by my father and his second wife. He, a widower, didn’t know what to do with an unmarried thirty-three-year-old woman who refused to eat, dress, and leave the bed. They sent me here, forced me into the gates of the asylum, abandoned me, allowed me to be labeled clinically depressed from day one.

I suppose I was melancholic. I was sad. I could cry for days for no reason. I felt this numbing pain at the back of my head every time the onset was about to start. And then my whole body hurt, every touch was like a burn, every laugh was an inner cry inside me. I wished I was dead. So they got rid of me, a burden difficult to deal with, a daughter with no wish to start a family and bring a decent fortune to them all. Back then, in the nineteenth century, it was difficult for a woman to live on her own. We were the property of our fathers, then husbands, with no rights to vote and very little to own. Of course, we weren’t dumb, we could manipulate our fathers and husbands, we could make our lives as comfortable as it was then possible, but many of us often fell victim of the world run by men. I didn’t live back then. I remember I was focused on my sadness and I didn’t see the changes of up-coming decades. That life wasn’t for me.

If my father had known what kind of treatment I would get in the asylum, he would have never thrown me there in the first place. He couldn’t have suspected it. None of us could. I couldn’t predict it back then. I was afraid of cold showers, electric shocks, lobotomy, straight jackets my entire life. I have never been afraid of death, my depression wanted me to die so badly that I wished I could help her achieve the aim.

But, instead, something else happened. I don’t know if they broke into the asylum or whether they entered it calmly and quietly. Maybe the front door was open, maybe someone invited them in. They ran into each and every room. They unleashed their deathly instincts. I remember a figure bending over me, white fangs shining in the moonlight, and these eyes, which saw my fear, my wish to end it all, and hesitated. I remember that sweet smell of freshly cut flowers. I remember the strength with which my body was held, an overwhelming force which I simply couldn’t resist. The pain was unbearable. I felt all blood sucked out of my body at once and I fainted, leaving all my worries behind. Finally, I died. I found my peace.

I woke up the next day to see the remains of that terrifying night. I left my chamber to see disfigured bodies on the floor and a pool of blood on the asylum’s corridors. I glimpsed at myself. My white sleeping gown was stained with blood. My long red curly hair was glued with blood to my breasts, neck, and head. But apart from the fact that I had a wound on my neck, I was feeling well. I regained my strength and I was able to walk. I saw more clearly, I heard more distinctly and my sense of smell improved.

The bodies were lying everywhere. No one moved. A dozen or so asylum workers lied in terrible poses on the floor, their dead eyes staring at something with unspeakable fear. I heard a cry coming from the chamber at the end of the corridor. I rushed there, my bare feet stomping on the bloody pools, meandering around stiff limbs and pieces of clothing. I almost slipped. I entered the room to see a crying woman sitting at the dressing table. Her white bed sheets reflected the massacre of the previous night. The girl was sobbing. She pulled away her short black hair and showed me her wound.

‘We have been changed!’

I touched the wound on my neck and I knew. Later that day, I learned that the girl whom I met was Elizabeth. She was eight years younger than me. Her parents left her in the asylum for she was seeing things and hearing voices. But that night she saw everything correctly. We were turned into vampires. And Elizabeth was to become a big part of my new, slightly special, family.

Among fifty-seven people, who were at that time in the asylum, only five of us were turned. The rest were drained. We found an old woman with dementia, a little boy who couldn’t stop talking, and a doctor, who remained in a state of shock for days after the raid.

‘I’m here just doing my practice. I haven’t even planned to become a psychiatrist. I wanted to be a surgeon...’, he was talking to himself as we were taking the bodies into a pit dug in the ground. They were beginning to rot.

‘Stop crying over a spilled milk, help us,’ I begged, pushing the body into the hole.

Even the old lady helped. The boy was running around, collecting from the floor the blood-stained clothes. We burned the bodies in the pit. We didn’t have another option. The stench was unbearable. We stayed in the asylum. We didn’t have another home. We cleaned the floors, we burned the bed sheets. We hoped that our family members would want to contact or visit us after some time, but they left us there forever. We lost touch with our old lives, we lost our relatives, friends, and memories of the previous selves.

And then, the change began getting noticeable. We started feeling hungry. We sensed that food was no longer for us. We knew that the salted meat, flour, and wine bottles kept in the pantry were going to be wasted. We realized that we had to kill to keep ourselves alive.

So we went, five of us, in search of blood. Me, Elizabeth, Nick (eleven-year-old boy), Philip (the doctor), and Amelie (the old lady who barely remembered her name). We were more terrified than the people we were going to deprive of life. But we did it. We killed with our new strength and appeased the thirst that for us was more than painful.

You get used to killing people. Phillip once laughed that it is similar to the section of the dead body. The first one is on the verge of trauma and disgust. The following ones don’t make such an impression. That was true for us all. We learned how to get by. We learned how to appease the thirst drinking the blood of those we killed. We learned how to cover traces, how to get rid of bodies, how to hunt in areas which wouldn’t raise suspicions and bring unwanted guests to our asylum. We turned this asylum into a dream villa of luxury and peace. We watched generations perish. We took advantage of political conflicts and wars. We survived.

Our diseases never abandoned us. Elizabeth kept hearing voices and seeing things which were not there. Amelie didn’t remember what happened the day before but she would recall events from previous decades, then centuries. Nick remained this crazy little child, who couldn’t focus on anything, and ran around as if he had the energy of a ticking bomb.

And then the sadness overwhelmed me. The depression didn’t want to forget about itself and the burden of distraught didn’t allow me to hunt.

I admit it. I tried to kill myself many times. I drowned myself with rocks in my pockets, I hanged myself on the velvet scarf that was given to me by my father. I jumped from the cliff. I cut my veins open in the bathtub. I took sleeping pills. But it appears that you cannot easily kill a vampire and the vampire cannot kill itself. I decided to starve myself, deprive myself of blood, but I only hibernated for a couple of months to wake up with an enormous thirst and run to kill a goat (the first thing that crossed my way) and sucked the life out of it within a minute. I was alive. As much as you can call it life. I was left with returning bouts of depression and a new family, whom I was supposed to know for centuries.

After decades of our peaceful existence in the gates of our institution, another raid happened. We were woken up by noises coming from the entrance door. We distinctly heard footsteps. I sensed the smell of freshly cut flowers.

They came again. There were four of them, three haggard looking fellows and one gentleman in his forties. Indefinitely in his forties.

‘Well, well, well, my friends, look here.’ he pointed at us, unsuspecting anything. We have never seen other representatives of our kind.

Apparently, they were also surprised to see vampires instead of people. Rob, Bob, and Kit had been turned in prison. They were petty criminals who robbed, stole, and wasted away the money in inns all over the country. They were positively surprised after one night, when the prison was raided, to gain a new life, immortality, and strength. Later, they stole money and jewelry from their victims as soon as they drained their blood. Christopher (the aristocrat) was different. He was a different kind of conman, he was a higher league. He traded with pirates, he smuggled goods, gambled away millions. It wasn’t the best time in his life when a change from human into a vampire happened. He was orphaned by his strict parents, he inherited his fortune. He didn’t have a family but he had a lot of women to accompany him. One night, his house was raided. The bodies of his ladies of company were lying motionless on the floor. He was changed. Christopher was lost indefinitely for humanity. He noticed wounds on his neck, for the first time in his life he felt a thirst for blood. Used to his new condition, while he was coming from a brothel, wasting his family’s fortune, he came across Rob, Bob and Kit. They wanted to drain him, but that was impossible. He showed them his fangs, they expressed fear and respect, seeing an aristocratic vampire of his class. Christopher kept them for company. He tempted them with golden coins and promises of female warm bodies. They stayed with him weighing pros and cons, while pros seemed to outweigh the cons. He offered them a better life.

‘Well, well, well,’ Christopher laughed again, ‘It seems that we have found home!’

They stayed with us, making us a family of nine. A family connected with a different kind of blood. Blood of the same guilt. The same death. Bad blood. We had been with each other for decades. We lived side by side, knowing each other’s flaws like old horses. We turned our asylum into a family home of strangers who became everyday companions.

I still think of these times, of how much has changed over the years. Of how our position changed. Us, women. Us, the sick. I look at our unchanged bodies and still admire these rustling leaves, which turn yellow behind the window of my room in September two hundred years later.