Enter Darkness

Chapter One

I am fading in and out.  I think I’ve been unconscious for a while, but I… don’t remember.  I can’t remember anything at all… just blurred images and vague sensations.  I… what the… why is my shirt… is that blood?  I press my hand to my chest… my shirt is still damp with red, sticky fluid.  I swallow, hard, and become abruptly aware of a sharp, biting pain in my neck.  Reflexively my hand darts to the spot.  I stop.  That can’t be right.  I feel - two holes in the front of my neck?  I realize that my throat feels sticky too, and my hand comes away covered in blood and trembling.  I notice for the first time how pale my skin is, thrown into sharp relief by the sickly red all over my palms.
    “I… what happened to me?” I rasp aloud.
    “You are the dead,” responds a voice that is hollow and emotionless as the grave, but at the same time strong as iron.
    I jump, and immediately cry out in agony as I wrench my broken leg.  Amidst the pain, I dully begin to remember my leg being broken.  
The thought is cut away by a sharp slap that twists my head around and leaves my wounded neck screaming in pain. “Silence!” the iron voice commands.
I turn my head back slowly and look at the man who slapped me.  He is very tall, and very thin.  He’s wearing a dark overcoat, and has silver hair that almost hides his eyes-

Oh my god…

His eyes…

They’re red.

Everything floods back.  Suddenly I remember everything – the noise, the wind, the intruder, my baby, Emily…
“You… you… YOU!” I shout, and scramble backwards off the bed (am I on a bed?  How did I get here?  Where’s here?).  I land hard on the cold stone floor, wrenching my broken leg even harder.  I can’t feel it anymore.  All that matters is that I have to get out of here, I have to get away from that monster-
That monster promptly picks me up and slams me against the wall with horrible strength, knocking the wind out of me.  “You will be still,” he commands.
“Fuck you!  FUCK YOU!  You killed - oh god… you… killed…” hot tears well up behind my eyes.
I never even see the knee that slams into my stomach.  Pain explodes through my whole body and a strangled cry escapes my throat.  “You will be silent,” he says.  He releases his inhuman grip on me and I slump to the floor, gasping for breath, tears dripping down my cheeks.
The monster turns away, apparently disinterested.  “Yes, I killed.  Can’t you say it?  I killed your miserable child, I killed your worthless wife…” He looks over his shoulder at me.  “I killed you, Jack Price.  You are dead.  Did you know that?”
“I’m not… dead…” I wheeze, trying to catch my breath.
“Yes, you are.  The instant my blood touched yours.  Do you remember that?  It made you what you are now – and that is why you aren’t dead.”  He walks over to a chair against one of the stone columns in the room, reaching it only a few strides even though he is not walking quickly.  He sits down.  “You, Jack Price, are a vampire.”  He smiles slightly and leans foreword, staring at me.
Neither of us says anything.  I close my eyes and sob silently, all the while feeling his gaze boring into me.  After several minutes of silence punctuated only by dry sobs, I whisper, “…kill me.”
“No.”
I look up at him, vision blurred by tears.  “You… you have to!  Please… you can’t understand how much pain-”
“Pain?” He interrupts, rising to his feet.  “You know nothing of pain.”
“YOU CAN’T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU’VE HURT ME!  THERE’S NOTHING WORSE THAN THIS!” I scream at him in a blind rage.

For the next two hundred years I will wish with all my fragmented heart I could take those words back.

The monster’s eyes light up with a sick glee as I struggle to my feet and lunge at him.  Before I can even touch him, he delivers a smashing punch to my chest that sends me skidding across the room.  I feel my rib cage shatter as I come to a halt against the opposite wall.  I scream out in pain, every breath I take sending a thousand white-hot needles into my lungs.
“Oh god… kill me… kill me…” I whimper pathetically.
The monster seizes me by my broken leg with his inhuman grip and begins to drag me, screaming, out of the room.  “There is pain beyond what you feel,” he says, “and I can prove it to you.”

Chapter Two

It has been several months now since Orlock first brought me to this castle.  In those months, he has taught me what immortality truly is.  It is being totally unable to die, no matter how much you want to and no matter how close to death’s door you are.
I don’t scar anymore.  I’m not sure if that’s because there’s no room left on my skin for more scars, or because I’m slowly getting tougher, or both.  What I am sure of is that Orlock is totally insane at a level that is staggering to me even now.
He’s put me through every pain, every torture I’d ever heard of, and a few I’m sure he made up himself.  I wouldn’t put it past him.  I’ve been locked in every dungeon at least twice now.  He’s starved me, stabbed me, ripped off my skin, burned me, injected me with acid…  And none of it killed me, no matter how badly I wanted it all to end.
That, I’ve learned, is immortality.

I sigh and stop pacing around my room.  It is a truly rare occasion – I have not been tortured in several days.  I have learned no to get my hopes up, though.  He’s probably just building a new spiked pit for me, or something.
I used to keep a diary, but that ended when I learned that Orlock read it.  I’d be damned before he ever learned my private thoughts, even if the writing may well be the only thing that kept me sane.  Come to think of it, I’m not completely sure that I am sane.  After all, how would I be able to tell?  Use Orlock as a reference?
Orlock may be insane, but he’s the dangerous type of insane – the type that’s totally off his rocker, but still knows exactly what he’s doing and how to do it well.  My room, for example, is escape-proof, and the only time I’m able to leave is when I’m being dragged off to try out Orlock’s newest toy.

I drop down on my bed and close my eyes.  Vampires apparently develop a “sixth sense” about the sun’s position before too long, and so I know that sunrise is not too far off.  Sure enough, I soon fall into the coma-like oblivion between life and death…

I am outside a house.  Without thinking about it, I move foreword and enter after a young, handsome man leaves, looking around as though searching for something.  I move through the house silently, passing by a lit room where a young woman is sitting on a couch watching television.  I pay little attention as I move down the hall, towards a darkened room with the door slightly ajar.  I enter the room, somehow able to see perfectly in the total darkness.  A crib stands alone in the middle of the room, a baby asleep in the blankets.  I pick up the baby and it stirs.  It opens its eyes, looks at me…
And begins to bawl.
I look at it for a second more… than the door bursts open.  I see the same young woman who was watching television staring at me. For a second she cannot move, then…
She screams.
The same young man I saw outside bursts into the room and begins yelling at me.  I turn my head to look at him, and he freezes.
Kill…
I turn back to the baby and bite my nail.  It cries out for the last time as my nail slits open its throat.
The man and woman both scream.
Kill…
I turn and jump at the woman, tackling her out of the doorway and smashing her into the television set.  She lies unconscious.  I feel the man running up behind me, and turn to casually block the kick he attempts.  Leaping up, I deliver a kick to his jaw that sends him tumbling across the room with a bone-crunching snap.  The woman comes to, and the man tries to yell to her to run.
I grab her arm and rip it off at the shoulder.  Before she can even scream, I chop her apart with my bare hand.  The man screams, but I pay him no regard as I begin ripping the woman apart and devouring her…

I awake in a cold sweat, screaming.  The whole room is spinning.  I stagger out of bed and collapse on the floor, trembling and twitching horribly.  A wave of nausea overtakes me and I vomit on the floor next to my bed, tears welling up in my eyes again.
When the nausea finally passes, I hear the last thing I want to hear – a hollow, emotionless, iron laugh echoing throughout my room.

As Orlock drags me out of my room, kicking and screaming, my sanity ebbing away, his words echo in my head… “Maybe in real life you went insane… and you killed your family, and this is nothing but an illusion of your psyche… a Vampire Phantasm, you could call it.”