Sat, May 19 2012
| TITLE: | Sympathy for the Vampire - Echoes |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Odensdisir |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Drama |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | PG-13, Gen |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | List any main characters or adult relationships |
| DESCRIPTION: | Write story summary here. |
| STATUS: | Complete |
| PREVIOUS STORY: | Sympathy for the Vampire |
| NEXT STORY: | Sympathy for the Vampire - The Road to Hell |
One cannot blame a man for needing to live above everything, and when a man has already been all but murdered it is plain instinct that takes over - the instinct for self-preservation, that says I cannot be revenged for this atrocity unless I can live through it, and therefore whatever is required to live I will do. To live, and be revenged.
It was not Fogg himself who called to me, not in the strictest sense. Only his body. What his cousin might have told him about his surely confusing adventure in Amsterdam I do not know. The call came not for Angelo Rimini, though I was the one to whom it was addressed. It was the final desperate act of a mind near dissolution, the last act of will of a dying man, but Fogg was a man of formidable will even when he was dying.
No, I should say is, or I mislead you. Do not mistake me. Fogg is a man of formidable will; the world is a dangerous place with Fogg in it.
No conscious act, no, but refusal to accept that he was lost, his dying body calling out for aid. Once before he had been so close to death and had known it in his body. I speak not of the peril of his many acts of daring, but times in which the flesh reflects at leisure on the fact that its life grows weaker day by day.
The body only knew that once before in Amsterdam he had been close to dying, and had prevailed over the enemy who would have destroyed him there by means of my assistance. And therefore called for me.
There is no help for it, not now, the thing is done.
Only time will tell whether torment sleeps for both of us.
+ + + +
It is called Patagonia, a very beautiful place, and here I have come to raise sheep and cattle and grow rare botanicals. The mountains of the Andes - or the Patagonian Alps - they are at my back for my refuge and protection. I have a quiet life, but a successful enterprise in agriculture and animal husbandry. They think I am eccentric, but they think no more than that.
So comfortable is my existence that I feign the rising and the sleeping of mortal men; it is not like Europe where the livestock upon which one must feed goes about mostly on two legs. Meat must be bled after it is slaughtered to be fit for the use of men, after all, and when the thing is done with humane swiftness one of my kind can subsist very well without recourse to inhospitable acts such as preying on one's neighbors.
My nearest neighbor - at two hundred miles' remove merely - has been to Africa, and believes that I am Dutch from the Transvaal. So that my taste for fresh blood soup passes for something learned from native herding people in Africa, and is remarked upon - but not questioned - as harmless. We are a very young country, here in Patagonia. We look out for one another without much of judgment or condemnation, for none of us lacks secrets in our past.
When I woke suddenly in the very early morning I did not at first understand what had waked me. I am not as a rule too light a sleeper, and for this reason keep people around me to see to the security of my house - a very benign task, here where I have come, because the native population unfortunate to say is long departed, and theft of a dozen lambs or calves of beef does not yield the sort of monetary return that would encourage robbery by violence.
I felt such pain.
Now, this was difficult for Angelo, children, because a man of my sort feels no pain as a rule but hunger-longing - and the spiritual sort that yes, may make a man cry out aloud, but which only infrequently threatens his existence. This was pain of the flesh, good solid physical anguish of the body. The surprise of it startled me awake.
The moment that I woke it fell away from me, so that I no longer felt the pain itself but only remembered it. So real. I could lie there in my bed with my kind house-lady still asleep beside me and feel the physical memory in my body, feet that burned with agony, skin that had been laid open, hands that had been misused and bones that had been broken in the ribs and arms and shoulder and perhaps face.
It made no sense whatever.
I was very confused.
One would think that after so long without the particular sensation of pain it would be an experience interesting in its novelty, if nothing else; and yet it was not so. I was afraid to close my eyes again, children. I am as sane as the next vampire on most days, after all, and to contemplate the pain that had awakened me and not feel fear would have been irrational.
And yet to fear it was irrational as well.
My body was not compromised. I lay comfortably and companionably with my house-lady, a very genial woman from the north Americas, very plump and soft and delightful to have in one's bed. Whatever it had been it was no physical threat to me.
There was something more.
Somewhere in me was a belief that I could recognize the voice that the pain spoke, and was slowly becoming aroused with protective instinct, as for someone to whom I was indebted in some way.
There was no help for it. If I was to gain an understanding I would have to seek after that call and see if I could discover what it meant. I put my arm around my sleeping lady to anchor me in the bed; and closed my eyes to still my mind, and listen.
Nothing at first. It had come to me as I slept, after all, and the conscious mind has many more barriers and filters working in its defense. I thought about the pain that I had felt, and slowly it began to become real, once more, the very unpleasant sensations attendant upon physical abuse of a sort that I hesitated to contemplate.
Once I had but connected with the message I had gotten, though, the cry came loud and clear and full of desperate petition. He did not know that he referred his pain. He only knew that to send it out was to send it away, and I could not quarrel with his need to send the pain away, because he had been tortured. And was being tortured. I did not know where because he had forgotten, by that time, where he was and why he was there, who had taken him and what it was they seemed to want to know. They were cruel men, but luckily crude also. What they had done to him was horrible but of much less damage over the long run than a more sophisticated culture might have engendered.
Now I knew who he was, at least.
It was Phileas Fogg who was dying.
We had a bond between us that I had never wanted to create, and once created had not ever wanted to arouse; because it had been only for the love of Miss Rebecca Fogg that I had consented to intervene, and thus in order to make it a genuine rescue it was required that Fogg not suffer consequences.
The bond should have remained dormant forever, I had fled from Europe here to Patagonia to ensure that it would sleep. But he had been exposed to so much pain that his mind grasped desperately at any hope for possible escape, cried out in the black void for help and rescue with so much power - because of so much pain - that the thing I had so wished never to be found life, after all that I had done to silence it.
My house-lady stirred in my arms, and I opened my eyes with great effort.
What was I to do?
If Fogg should die I could once again perhaps see my angel, my queen among the warriors of the earth, Rebecca Fogg.
And yet she had been willing to do anything to save her cousin's life. She would never know that I had known that her beloved cousin was dying, and had done nothing.
And what could I do?
Wherever Fogg's body lay it was far, far, far way from Patagonia. Somewhere in Europe, somewhere west in Europe, and there was no hope of trying to find him. He would be dead before I could even reach the nearest station to send a telegram. Was not his coming death an opportunity for me, a wonderful way in which I might be once again permitted to speak to Rebecca Fogg?
It was not.
It would give her so much pain that he was dead, however he died, but especially if he should die of torture. It was a cold place, where he lay, and he had been very brutally imposed upon. She was a fearless woman; she would find his body and force herself to look on him and know what had been done, and how long they had done it, and then the torture that they gave to Phileas Fogg would continue with her as long as she drew breath.
There has never been a woman in my life like Rebecca Fogg in all the years that I have walked the earth, and they are many. I would do anything to spare her pain - even at the cost of pain, to me.
And where I lay I had enjoyed much life.
There was the harvest of the meat that nurtured me, and my house-lady as well had very much life and joy in her, a thing which nurtured the spirit far beyond the need for the blood-food. I was strong. I was as strong as I had ever been, yes, even on the battlefields of Europe where a man can become drunk with gluttony.
I thought that I might try. I was not quite looking forward to the experience, but if it worked it would protect Rebecca from the anguish she would feel if Fogg was dead, and if it failed at least I would have tried. Rebecca need never know. I did not need for her to know to take the pleasure in my hope that I might be of service to her, somehow, even very far away, even only indirectly, even only at cost to myself.
I did not think that I had too much time. The call that had come had been near the end of Fogg's strength, and his body knew that he was dying even while his mind knew only that he was in desperate agony. It is an unpredictable relationship; if the mind believes itself to be dying it can make the thing a fact even when the body might recover, but in the same way sometimes if the body is convinced that it is dying the mind cannot persuade it otherwise. I had to move quickly.
I roused my house-lady, and told her what I needed her to do. And yes, I told her it was for the sake of another, because I have always been honest with her and she has secrets of her own. I'm sure that what I meant to do made no sense to her but she was so sensible a woman, and aware that things occurred in life that defied reason. I felt I could count on her, and in that trust I was not ever once mistaken.
I was afraid, yes, I, Angelo Bonaventura Rimini.
I kissed my good lady, and ate some opium, and lay down.
Now that I knew whose pain it was I could find him much more quickly. He was in my blood, after all. So was the drug. I could take so much more of the pain that he had because of it, and the narcotic daze that it referred to him through me crippled not only his knowledge of his pain but also his awareness of what I meant to do. He would have fought me. It is very certain. He did not want to die, and he had a will that was very strong or else he would have then been dead already.
The opium seduced him.
He could let his consciousness flee with the comfort of the relief of pain that the opium provided, and my hardest task was to convince him somehow that it was safe to surrender himself to me.
We had the bond between us.
He had cried out for help, although not from his conscious mind, which knew nothing.
And I sincerely wished for him to live. So all in all, he did not struggle long, but allowed himself to sink into the opium trance without much fear that it was disguised death.
It took great courage on his part to do that, even under persuasion of such pain. I had a thought of admiration at the moment when he put himself in my hands for the saving of his life. It is no wonder that Rebecca loves him.
I only had the thought.
Not until much later did I think what it might mean. Once the thing was done I had much more immediate concerns.
I was in a body that lay half-naked on the cold dirt floor of a filthy cell somewhere, and though I could channel strength into the body that I occupied there was no question but that there was much pain. Even with opium. My good lady did her duty very carefully, however, and fed the body that lay still in my bed in Patagonia on opium at regular intervals, so that the pain could be managed while the spirit that was stored in the body in my bed took comfort and rested.
I needed all the time that I could get to gain a good control of this body, which was so different from mine and had been pitifully misused. I had to take care to husband its strength. It was not the body of an undead, and could still have suffered the physical death. What might have happened then? Sometimes I wonder.
Fogg's torturers came back, depressed and frustrated that he was so near to death and still had told them nothing, and of a mind to punish Fogg for all the effort they had wasted on his behalf. And kill him at last.
They were not expecting Fogg to stand and strike them down.
They had not even locked the door to the dirty cell, or set a guard. I thought that I would kill them, because even though Fogg's spirit rested far and far away Fogg's body hated them for the things that they had done to it. Knew their smell and scent and voices and their hands, held in its physical memory the experience of horrible suffering, and wished to be revenged. But I had to be careful of my strength. It was more of an ordeal to walk in that damaged body than I could have guessed, and Fogg could always come back, after all, and hunt them down after the fact.
They would believe that Fogg himself was a supernatural being of some sort, after this, though they could never guess the cause or the reason. This amused me.
I covered Fogg's near-nakedness with borrowed clothing, disgusted but knowing that I could not go out into the street without disguise; then I walked out of the cell and went upstairs.
It was surreal, and really very comical.
The people who saw me, in the house where Fogg had been kept prisoner, did not recognize me at all until it was too late - if then. Why would they? Fogg was a man who lay in bloodied torment in the cellar. He could hardly move, still less walk, but I could move well enough within him, at least for a time.
I searched the house and found some papers in a room where planning seemed to have been done. I found Fogg's papers, some money, some interesting information on troop movements near the Fulda Gap which I took. I discovered that I was in Antwerp. There would be a consulate, I thought.
Fogg was frantic with fear - even drugged as he was - to get to the authorities and tell them about those troop movements to the east of the Fulda Gap, and his will lent me strength regardless of the ruin of his body. Ruin, I should not say ruin, Fogg had been tortured but was not mutilated. Vandalized. The vandalization of his body. He had no understanding of what was happening, of course; to the extent that he thought anything, in his opium-induced sleep, he thought that he was dreaming or imagining the things his body knew that it was doing.
Going out into the street I hailed a cab. It took longer than I would have liked because my clothing was not very respectable and my appearance did not inspire trust, but my money was reassuring enough. When I arrived at the British Consulate, again I had some difficulty at the gates; but I had Fogg's papers, and his name was recognized if his person was not - in the condition it was in, especially.
They brought me direct to the Consul himself, to whom I unburdened myself of the papers that had so concerned Fogg. There were questions, very pertinent ones, but I for Fogg's sake grew indignant that they should press a man in Fogg's condition for details of where he had been since he had disappeared more than a month ago, and so let flag the strength with which I had sustained his body, in order to rebuke them.
It was no job of acting on my part to cry out and collapse, I can assure you, children. It only took the moment's pause to make acknowledgement of the wounds that Fogg had suffered, and once they began to undress Fogg and remove the garments with which I had clothed his body there were no more questions, let me tell you that with no small satisfaction. No. There were only oaths and self- reproaches and the flight to someplace where a man could vomit in horror and revulsion, and the call for the doctor, for a room, for an emergency wire to London right away.
Sustaining Fogg while they stripped his body and looked to his wounds was very tedious. The opium that my good lady fed the body in which Fogg's spirit lay did not absorb the entirety of it, but I could not risk more, and it seemed to be accepted that Fogg would refuse the drug. Let Miss Fogg just get here, they told each other. She will sort him out soon enough when she finds out about it.
It was almost enough to drive me from the body in a panic, for I did not want to confront my Rebecca in the body of her cousin. More than anything I did not want her to realize what had happened. She had looked at me and called me Angelo once in my life, and I would not trade that moment for emeralds; what would she think if she found out that I had so endangered her cousin as to step into his shell, even to save his life? What would she think? Would she not rightly judge that selfishness had gotten the better of me, and led me to put her cousin in grave danger just to beg for gratitude from her?
If I had fled the body then and there, however, there was too much danger that it would have died. Fogg's spirit rested now, in the arms of my good lady, but he had suffered much over recent weeks and was very much weakened. Even him. It is a powerful and a passionate spirit, very fine, but still a mortal man's.
Concentrating all of the strength that I could call into that pitifully misused flesh I lay in sickbed in Antwerp and hoped that Fogg would heal enough that I could escape undetected before Rebecca came.
I could hear things that Fogg could not have heard, because the senses of a vampire are much sharper than that of a living man. The Consul had sent people to the house. The police had taken the people who had tortured Fogg into custody, and there was confusing news when they were asked their story.
Fogg had been despaired of. They would have killed him in a day or two, because he was past the point of being able to talk; and although torturers, they were practical men who had not for one moment intended to let Fogg die in anguish over days, instead of putting a quick end to it once there was no further point in trying to prolong the dishonorable business.
And Fogg had done the impossible thing, had risen up and struck them and escaped, but calmly, coolly, as though he had barely been touched - well, I was flattered to hear it. I knew how difficult it had been for me, and so it gratified my ego to hear my effort described in such terms as these.
It must have seemed so purely by comparison, of course.
There was no arguing with the wounds that were there on Fogg's body, and so - while the Consul did not understand - he could only believe that Fogg possessed reserves of super-human strength and matchless courage.
Courage indeed Fogg had. And strength had been loaned to him ungrudgingly. It amused me that I had so improved on Fogg's reputation when all that I had meant was to try to save his life, but even that still hung in balance for a day or two.
It was too long.
Rebecca Fogg arrived.
To think of the humiliation, children, I, Angelo Rimini, lying in the so broken body of a man and not even one who looked a bit like me, it was terrible. I have never been so reduced in circumstance for longer than I care to describe to you, but that was not the problem, after all.
The problem was that the staff of the consulate knew that I seemed to be Fogg, but they did not know Fogg, and Rebecca and Fogg's valet who was with her knew quite well.
I think she smelled the difference, somehow, before she even stepped into the room; I sensed so much confusion from her.
I was awake in an instant, and in agony, because I had wanted to avoid detection.
I had no hope of deceiving her.
Perhaps, I thought, I could still hide the truth.
I heard her in the hallway outside the sick-room in which Fogg lay, demanding with a fierce and unyielding tone to see her cousin. They did not want to let her in; the sickroom smelled of infection as Fogg's body struggled to cleanse itself of the filth of the cellar in which he had been tortured for so long, and there were other things of course quite obvious but which there is no need to mention.
She would not be moved.
I could have told them that it would not avail. She was not to be turned from her purpose.
I closed my eyes, although I ached to see her, for fear she would see something in his face. I could hear her stand at the doorway for a long moment, as though she gathered her courage to come in. But when she came, it was calmly and gently, as though to see the body of a man who had been tortured was a thing that she did every day. She came into the room and looked down on her cousin's body for a long moment; then she leaned over it, children, and kissed the forehead of her poor cousin with such tenderness that Fogg was back in his own body in an instant.
And cried out, very pitifully, a hoarse and surprised sound that expressed the agony of his flesh with all too clear a voice. The opium that my house-lady fed to him within my body held no comfort for his spirit once returned to his own. I think that I have said that I could not permit myself to accept drugs while in his flesh, because it was my body after all that was already drugged, and there are interactions to consider.
I had not thought that she had so much power over him as to call him back into his body with a single touch. It was very unfortunate, because she was distressed, and called for the doctor with imperious anger that thrilled me to my heart. Rebecca.
"See here, what is this nonsense? He's in pain, how can he rest in this condition?"
Perhaps I had not understood what power he held over her, as well.
"We have been trying, Miss Fogg, but he refuses any such assistance - "
"Refuses, you great donkey, how dare you tell me he refuses, look at him, he is in no condition to refuse you anything, God's teeth, you'll pay for this - now bring me morphia, and bring it now, now, this instant, what are you waiting for - "
I did not dare allow it to happen.
Fogg was frantic to be with her. But Fogg was still weak. I was much more the master; and I forced him back, into the sleeping shell that lay in bed half of a world away.
"Rebecca. You must not. Please trust me now, if ever you have done." I opened my eyes as I spoke to her, the eyes of the body of her cousin, and she knew.
She knew.
She fell back a step, and she might have fallen, but the valet who was there caught her in time.
"What have you done?" she said. She did not say my name. She did not need to. She knew who I was. She could see me in his eyes.
"I beg you to forgive me." I was so much stronger than was Fogg, and still I had spent three days and longer in his body doing everything that I could do to help it draw upon my strength and heal itself. And there was pain. I fear that I was not entirely myself at that moment. "It was not intended. But he was dying. I thought that I could do it and be gone."
"Passepartout, close the door," Rebecca said. Sat down at the bed- side. I dared not look at her. I felt my reduced condition with so much shame. "Is Phileas - where?"
"His spirit lies with my body far away. Where it can rest without pain. But he was at the point of failing strength, Rebecca, and the desperation of his predicament, it gave power to the bond that once we shared."
I had once given comfort to his body, and healed his flesh. Why had I not guessed that his flesh would find its way to call for me to help it when it could not continue on its own?
"And so he was able to walk away from there, with his feet wounded." She understood. Too quickly; and too well. "I see. What has happened just now, though, I will not hear that sound in Phileas' voice, I put you on fair warning. I will not."
So careful, not to say my name. I think that the valet may have started to understand, but there was reason to fear that the people around her would make a wrong conclusion had she called me Angelo.
"No bond between two people that I have ever known approaches the power you hold over him, Rebecca." Truly I had had only suspicion. And what could be more natural? Was I not myself in thrall to her, completely? "If you will call him back too soon the outcome is in question. Please. No morphia. I dare not risk it, Rebecca, and that means - "
I must stay here with his body, for a little while longer.
"But how can I permit it," Rebecca said. "As little as I care to hear such pain in his voice. How can I permit you to endure it. Knowing as we both do."
How could she even ask such a question?
But, children, that she did ask it . . .
"Queen among the angels." I could not keep the pain out of my voice, but it was not the pain of Fogg's body, it was the pain of my own heart and soul. "Only forgive me and I will not have suffered. I could not bear that there should be so great loss for you, if I could but prevent it. I don't know what the consequences might be in the long term."
"Forgive you I shall never," Rebecca said. "Because the debt is not in that direction. But tell me before you go away. So that I may at least thank you."
I had the strength to nod. "You cannot bear the sick-room, Rebecca," I suggested, urgently. I had to get her out of there; her presence called so to her cousin's spirit, and troubled him, rousing him to more full a consciousness than was advisable. I feared he might even be strong enough to take note of where he was, and in what body. "And this good valet. He must care for you. It will be best."
She nodded. And she rose. The orderly was at the door, the doctor with him; yes, she had demanded morphia for her cousin, and there was no opposing Miss Rebecca Fogg. She was a force of nature, and magnificent as avalanche. I could hear her talking in the hall.
Oh, you're very kind to a silly woman, thank you, but you are right after all, Phileas refuses. I'm so sorry. I spoke without understanding; no, take it away, Phileas will say when he wants morphia.
The valet had stepped near. "If you help my master I will go to the church and ask that God grace," he said. "But if you hurt my master. I will sin against Christian charity. I am warn you."
Had I not been in pain I could have laughed, and yet he was utterly sincere, and his warning deserved my full respect. "You are your master's very loyal servant," I assured the man, in French. "This will not be an occasion of sin for you, if there is anything at all that I can do to avoid it."
No, I would not harm his master, not if I could help it.
I was worn out with talking. I closed my eyes.
The most strange thing happened then, children, the opium that my good lady fed my body to comfort Fogg's spirit, Fogg himself stepped back away from it and let the narcotic work on his own body.
For my sake?
He should not have been aware enough to do so complex a thing. Perhaps it was only that his spirit was so comforted in sensing Rebecca that he no longer needed so much help to manage pain. For a moment I thought that it might be so.
I think that I decline to say, exactly, what I think it may have been.
Whatever the reason, the body started to heal well and much more quickly after Rebecca Fogg had come to see her cousin. She gave him so much strength, and of so different a sort than mine; all I had to offer was physical vitality. What there was between them was so much more complicated than that. Two days, children, two days, and the body grew strong enough to shelter Fogg's own spirit, and I fled. I did not do as Rebecca had told me, and warn her of my leaving. I was too afraid. If she had touched my hand, knowing it was me inside that body, I am sure there never could have been the slightest hope of keeping Fogg free and clear of unnatural influence. I longed for her too much. It was already so risky a thing.
No, I fled, and came back to myself at length in my own bed and in my own body, with my good lady looking on and caring for me. It had not been a good thing to have asked her, in retrospect, although I had not known how it would be. But she was brave, and bore with a good heart, and in time consented to forgive me for what the whole experience had demanded from her.
My bedroom in those days was not so very different than it is now. There is a glass there, yes, for my lady's use; but even if Fogg had risen up at some time when my lady was not in the room to stay him, what harm could it do if he saw himself in the mirror?
Who was to say whether Fogg in the body of a vampire would see anything at all, let alone Rimini?
There were windows as well, but they were mostly draped, and there was no furniture that I could guess might give a clue as to where the bed was. Precisely. In geographic terms.
And yet I could not shake my dread, children, that I had already lost the battle to keep clear of Rebecca and Phileas Fogg, no matter how I craved her good opinion.