Down Under

[Lancaster]

2-1-2017

Last night I told my mother what I was.

Of course she didn’t believe me. News doesn’t travel as fast as I thought it did, I suppose. Or she’d heard what had happened in that crazy town in Canada and just dismissed it. So many people here have.

It’s not so bad. All the old friends I had, they’re still here. Most of them are married, they have kids. They have lives. I can see the way they look at me. Some admire the life I’ve led, travelling the world. Some think I still have to grow up. They think I should have a life like theirs. A partner. Children. Settled down with a nine to fiver.

I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to come back. The heat is getting to me when it shouldn’t. There’s nostalgia in that heat, and I keep wondering what I’d be doing if I’d never left. Would I be teaching music somewhere? Would I be doing the exact same thing here as I do in Harper Rock? Would I have a bar of my own, involved in the local live music scene?

I went to a New Year’s party, ran in to a few old friends. Olivia Hanson was there. We had a fling in High School. She’s aged nicely. She’s not into the kale and the fitness regimes like the rest of them. Her smile is as warm and genuine as it always was. When we talked, it was as if we had never been apart, like we’d stayed friends all these years. She’s married now, and has two beautiful children. All blonde hair and blue eyes, and they look exactly like their mother.

If I’d stayed, would I have been their father?

I wish I’d never left.

[Lancaster]

4-1-2017

Today I woke up in the hospital, covered in burns.

It took all my power to convince them to let me go, but I couldn’t stay there. Even doctors in Australia can be a danger. There were too many questions. I was dead, they said. I was dead, and when they rolled me out into the sunlight, my sun crisped and burned. It was fascinating!

I’d have been fascinated myself. I wish my mother had believed me. Now she does. She hasn’t stopped crying. She came to my room to wake me up. There was some lunch thing she’d organised with my Aunts and a few cousins were in town. She wanted me to come. Of course I couldn’t. I was dead. I was cold to the touch and I had no pulse. I didn’t react.

Imagine being a parent and finding your child like that? She was traumatised. She still is. I’m sitting here in the living room, mostly healed from the burns, and I can hear her in the lounge room. She doesn’t want to come near me. She doesn’t know what to think. I thought about leaving but what good would that do?

I won’t leave until she understands. I won’t leave until I have closure. If she thinks I’m a monster, so be it.

Though I’d much prefer it if she came to terms with it.

Mum. Please understand. Please forgive me.

[Lancaster]

5-1-2017

Why am I writing this? Lack of anything better to do, I suppose. I found the old notebook in my room, covered in dust. My stuff was all in boxes. Which is fine. I haven’t been here for years – even before Harper Rock. It happened before Harper Rock. It’s good of Mum to keep this **** here. She really should just throw it all away. I actually think she has thrown some away. She’s kept what she thinks might have sentimental value to me. This notebook probably slipped in by accident.

I keep the ring on a chain around my neck. I know my mother. She’d ask questions, she’d get excited. She’d want to know when I got married. She’d be upset that she wasn’t invited. She’d want to meet the ‘lucky lady’. I can’t lie. I couldn’t handle those questions. I had to tell her I was a vampire so I could stop avoiding things, and walking out of rooms when she asked why I had to sleep all day.

Now she knows. She’s come around. She believes me, now. She says she’s never coming into my room again. She doesn’t want to see me like that, and I can understand why. I’ve just made her promise to drag me out if there’s a fire.

I don’t know what I’m doing. Did I come here to make amends with my mother? Is that the only reason? And now that she knows, now that she’s coming out of her shell and asking me questions, what now? When she’s settled down, when everything has reached a stalemate, how do I proceed? Where do I go from here?

I hear her crying herself to sleep. I can feel her anguish. She doesn’t hate what I am, but she’s my mother. She understands as much as I do. I’m her only son, and this isn’t a blessing. It’s a curse.

[Lancaster]

20-2-2017

A week ago, my mother insisted on throwing a birthday party. How long had it been since I was home for my birthday? She wanted to make a big deal out of it. It’s not a major birthday, and I’d forgotten how old I was supposed to be.

If I was still human, I would be forty-one. How many people told me, that night, how much they thought I could not possibly be forty-one? If they only knew that I would remain thirty-five for the rest of my life, and beyond. I was stuck at thirty-five. What’s my secret? They asked. Be turned into a blood-sucking creature of the night.

I’ve bought tickets. I’m on the first night flight out of Brisbane. I’ll stop a few places on the way and hope there are no delays. I haven’t got a special destination in mind. I’m going back to Harper Rock. Why?

I do not fit. I wanted to. Ever since my last growth spurt at seventeen, I have not fit. My limbs are too long, my head so often bouncing against door frames and beams. At least the height thing was manageable. Now, I am undead. I do not age. I drink blood to survive. I cannot have children, and the woman who would be my wife is gone. I can’t go play golf with those friends of mine who have jobs in high places. I can’t go to brunch or arrive early to barbeques. I have to make up excuses, and even if I did come clean, I still would not fit. This world is not made for me, I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be the outsider.

I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live, either. Where once I had drive, I now have nothing. I used to be able to live in the moment and enjoy every second of my life but now the moment seems dull, bereft of colour. Whatever I do, I can’t put the colour back again.

I’m going to sleep. I’ve heard of others doing it, vampires. They lock themselves away and they sleep. I suppose it’s like a self-induced coma. The relic around my arm, still warm, now, even as I’ve packed it away in my suitcase, kept me fed. I wouldn’t be able to sleep with that thing keeping me awake – like a constant nicotine patch. By the time I get back to Harper Rock it’ll have been at least five nights without contact with another of my kind. I won’t have fed. I won’t go home. I won’t show my face. I’ll go straight to the catacombs, to the apartment there that’s gathering dust.

I just have to decide – do I tell people? I heard from Bjorn, once in the beginning. I have heard from no one since. They do well enough on their own. I can’t think about business right now. If I just let them go and disappeared, if they fail, close down, burn down – I can’t summon the energy to care.

I’ll decide when I get there.

[Lancaster]

24-2-2017

I’m not sure removing the relic was a good idea.

I feel like an animal. Every human that walks past is a piece of meat and not a person at all.

But it is not their blood I desire. Still, when I sleep, I dream of playing with them. Like they’re the geckos and I’m the cat. I want to see them lose their tails.

I shouted at an air hostess and barely was able to talk my way out of international security.

This city breaks my heart. As soon as I inhaled the air I recognised it. I don’t want to be here.

I was going to go to the catacombs, but I’ll go to the sewers instead. I still have that hole there – the one I tried to disappear into before. Pi found me then. She’s gone now – she won’t find me again.

I’m sitting in the Den for one last time. I’m writing this… why? One last testament, I suppose. Maybe I want to be found.

Not enough, though. I don’t want to linger. I’m a liability. All I want is blood. I have to leave.