Vampires: The Recent Undead (43 page)

“I felt it when you killed them,” the friar said in a husky voice. “They were my children, part of me—I felt the light of their minds go out.”

Don’t let him speak
. Ricardo’s own power recognized the force behind the words, the connection that bound them together. His power flowed from the other.

Ricardo started to lunge, but the friar held up a hand and said, “No!” The younger man stopped, spear upraised, face in a snarl, an allegorical picture of war.

Fray Juan smiled. “Understand, you are mine. You will serve me as my caballeros served me. You cannot stop it.” The Master had a toothy, wicked smile.

Ricardo closed his eyes. He’d fought for nothing, all these years and nothing to show for it but a curse. He was not even master of his fate.

Free will was part of God’s plan. What better way to damn the sinful than to let them choose sin over righteousness? But he had not chosen this. Had he? Had something in his past directed him to this moment? To this curse?

Then couldn’t he choose to walk away from this path?

He started to pray out loud, all the prayers he knew. Pater Noster, Ave Maria, even passages of Psalms, what he could remember.

The friar stared back at him. His lips trembled. “You should not be able to speak those words,” Juan said. “You are a demon. One of Satan’s pawns. He is our father. The holy words should burn your tongue.”

“Then you believe the tales of the Inquisition? I don’t think I do. Come, Juan, pray with me.” Louder now, he spoke again, and still Juan trembled at the words.

“They’re only words, Padre! Why can’t you speak them?” Ricardo shouted, then started the prayers again.

The hold on his body broke. He had been balanced, poised for the strike, and now he plunged forward, his spear leading, and drove it into the friar’s chest. Juan tumbled back in his chair, Ricardo standing over him, still leaning on the spear though it wouldn’t go further. Juan didn’t make a sound.

Juan’s skin turned gray. It didn’t simply dry into hard leather; it turned to dust, crumbling away, his cassock collapsing around him. A corpse decayed by decades or centuries.

Ricardo backed away from the dust. He dropped the spear. His knees gave out then, and he folded to the floor, where he curled up on his side and let the sleep of daylight overcome him.

Rumor said that the small estancia had once been a mission, but that the friar who ran it went mad and fled to the hills, never to be seen again. A young hidalgo now occupied the place, turning it into a quiet manor that bred and raised sheep for wool and mutton. The peasants who lived and worked there were quiet and seemed happy. The Governor said that the place was a model which all estancias ought to learn from.

The hidalgo himself was a strange, mysterious man, seldom seen in society. Of course all the lords in New Spain with daughters had an interest in getting to know him, for he was not only successful, but unmarried. But the man refused all such overtures.

It was said that Don Ricardo had ridden north with Coronado. Of course that rumor had to be false, because everyone knew Ricardo was a man in the prime of his life, and Coronado’s expedition to find Cíbola rode out fifty years ago.

But such wild rumors will grow up around a gentleman who only leaves his house at night.

Endless Night

Barbara Roden

Barbara Roden is a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and publisher, whose short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection, Horror: Best of the Year 2005, Bound for Evil, Strange Tales 2, Gaslight Grimoire, Gaslight Grotesque, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2010, Best New Horror 21,
and
Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe.
Her first collection,
Northwest Passages,
was published in 2009; the title story was nominated for the Stoker, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy awards, while the book received a World Fantasy Award nomination for Best Collection. She writes, “ ’Endless Night’ was always going to be set in Antarctica during the ’Golden Age’ of Antarctic exploration, but it didn’t start out as a vampire story; initially it was about a close-knit group having to deal with the sudden arrival of an outsider. However, as the story developed I saw the possibilities of introducing a vampire into a setting where, for several months of the year, there is no daylight. What if this ’endless night’ proved to be a curse rather than a blessing? And when you have fled to the most remote place on Earth in order to escape who and what you are, where do you go when you realize that even in Antarctica there is no escape?” Good questions result in a good story.

“Thank you so much for speaking with me. And for these journals, which have never seen the light of day. I’m honoured that you’d entrust them to me.”

“That’s quite all right.” Emily Edwards smiled; a delighted smile, like a child surveying an unexpected and particularly wonderful present. “I don’t receive very many visitors; and old people do like speaking about the past. No”—she held up a hand to stop him—“I
am
old; not elderly, not ’getting on,’ nor any of the other euphemisms people use these days. When one has passed one’s centenary, ’old’ is the only word which applies.”

“Well, your stories were fascinating, Miss Edwards. As I said, there are so few people alive now who remember these men.”

Another smile, gentle this time. “One of the unfortunate things about living to my age is that all the people one knew in any meaningful or intimate way have died; there is no one left with whom I can share these things. Perhaps that is why I have so enjoyed this talk. It brings them all back to me. Sir Ernest; such a charismatic man, even when he was obviously in ill-health and worried about money. I used to thrill to his stories; to hear him talk of that desperate crossing of South Georgia Island to Stromness, of how they heard the whistle at the whaling station and knew that they were so very close to being saved, and then deciding to take a treacherous route down the slope to save themselves a five-mile hike when they were near exhaustion. He would drop his voice then, and say to me ’Miss Emily’—he always called me Miss Emily, which was the name of his wife, as you know; it made me feel very grown-up, even though I was only eleven—’Miss Emily, I do not know how we did it. Yet afterwards we all said the same thing, those three of us who made that crossing: that there had been another with us, a secret one, who guided our steps and brought us to safety.’ I used to think it a very comforting story, when I was a child, but now—I am not as sure.”

“Why not?”

For a moment he thought that she had not heard. Her eyes, which until that moment had been sharp and blue as Antarctic ice, dimmed, reflecting each of her hundred-and-one years as she gazed at her father’s photograph on the wall opposite. He had an idea that she was not even with him in her comfortable room, that she was instead back in the parlour of her parents’ home in north London, ninety years earlier, listening to Ernest Shackleton talk of his miraculous escape after the sinking of the
Endurance
, or her father’s no less amazing tales of his own Antarctic travels. He was about to get up and start putting away his recording equipment when she spoke.

“As I told you, my father would gladly speak about his time in Antarctica with the Mawson and Shackleton expeditions, but of the James Wentworth expedition aboard the
Fortitude
in 1910 he rarely talked. He used to become quite angry with me if I mentioned it, and I learned not to raise the subject. I will always remember one thing he
did
say of it: ’It was hard to know how many people were there. I sometimes felt that there were too many of us.’ And it would be frightening to think, in that place where so few people are, that there was another with you who should not be.”

The statement did not appear to require an answer, for which the thin man in jeans and rumpled sweater was glad. Instead he said, “If you remember anything else, or if, by chance, you should come across those journals from the 1910 expedition, please do contact me, Miss Edwards.”

“Yes, I have your card.” Emily nodded towards the small table beside her, where a crisp white card lay beside a small ceramic tabby cat, crouched as if eyeing a mouse in its hole. Her gaze rested on it for a moment before she picked it up.

“I had this when I was a child; I carried it with me everywhere. It’s really a wonder that it has survived this long.” She gazed at it for a moment, a half-smile on her lips. “Sir Ernest said that it put him in mind of Mrs. Chippy, the ship’s cat.” Her smile faded. “He was always very sorry, you know, about what he had to do, and sorry that it caused an estrangement between him and Mr. McNish; he felt that the carpenter never forgave him for having Mrs. Chippy and the pups shot before they embarked on their journey in the boats.”

“It was rather cruel, though, wasn’t it? A cat, after all; what harm could there have been in taking it with them?”

“Ah, well.” Emily set it carefully back down on the table. “I thought that, too, when I was young; but now I see that Sir Ernest was quite right. There was no room for sentimentality, or personal feeling; his task was to ensure that his men survived. Sometimes, to achieve that, hard decisions must be made. One must put one’s own feelings and inclinations aside, and act for the greater good.”

He sensed a closing, as of something else she might have said but had decided against. No matter; it had been a most productive afternoon. At the door Emily smiled as she shook his hand.

“I look forward to reading your book when it comes out.”

“Well”—he paused, somewhat embarrassed—“it won’t be out for a couple of years yet. These things take time, and I’m still at an early stage in my researches.”

Emily laughed; a lovely sound, like bells chiming. “Oh, I do not plan on going anywhere just yet. You must bring me a copy when it is published, and let me read again about those long ago days. The past, where everything has already happened and there can be no surprises, can be a very comforting place when one is old.”

It was past six o’clock when the writer left, but Emily was not hungry. She made a pot of tea, then took her cup and saucer into the main room and placed it on the table by her chair, beside the ceramic cat. She looked at it for a moment, and ran a finger down its back as if stroking it; then she picked up the card and considered it for a few moments.

“I think that I was right not to show him,” she said, as if speaking to someone else present in the room. “I doubt that he would have understood. It is for the best.”

Thus reminded, however, she could not easily forget. She crossed the room to a small rosewood writing desk in one corner, unlocked it, and pulled down the front panel, revealing tidily arranged cubbyholes and drawers of various sizes. With another key she unlocked the largest of the drawers, and withdrew from it a notebook bound in leather, much battered and weathered, as with long use in difficult conditions. She returned with it to her armchair, but it was some minutes before she opened it, and when she did it was with an air almost of sadness. She ran her fingers over the faded ink of the words on the first page.

Robert James Edwards

Science Officer

H.M.S.
Fortitude

1910–11

“No,” she said aloud, as if continuing her last conversation, “there can be no surprises about the past; everything there has happened. One would like to think it happened for the best; but we can never be sure. And
that
is not comforting at all.” Then she opened the journal and began to read from it, even though the story was an old one which she knew by heart.

20 November 1910:
A relief to be here in Hobart, on the brink of starting the final leg of our sea voyage. The endless days of fundraising, organisation, and meetings in London are well behind us, and the Guvnor is in high spirits, and as usual has infected everyone with his enthusiasm. He called us all together this morning, and said that of the hundreds upon hundreds of men who had applied to take part in the expedition when it was announced in England, we had been hand-picked, and that everything he has seen on the journey thus far has reinforced the rightness of his choices; but that the true test is still to come—in the journey across the great Southern Ocean and along the uncharted coast of Antarctica. We will be seeing sights that no human has yet viewed and will, if all goes to plan, be in a position to furnish exact information which will be of inestimable value to those who come after us. Chief among this information will be noting locations where future parties can establish camps, so that they might use these as bases for exploring the great heart of this unknown land, and perhaps even establishing a preliminary base for Mawson’s push, rumoured to be taking place in a year’s time. We are not tasked with doing much in the way of exploring ourselves, save in the vicinity of any base we do establish, but we have the dogs and sledges to enable us at least to make brief sorties into that mysterious continent, and I think that all the men are as eager as I to set foot where no man has ever trodden.

Of course, we all realize the dangers inherent in this voyage; none more so than the Guvnor, who today enjoined anyone who had the least doubt to say so now, while there was still an opportunity to leave. Needless to say, no one spoke, until Richards gave a cry of “Three cheers for the
Fortitude
, and all who sail in her!”; a cheer which echoed to the very skies, and set the dogs barking on the deck, so furiously that the Guvnor singled out Castleton and called good-naturedly, “Castleton, quiet your dogs down, there’s a good chap, or we shall have the neighbours complaining!” which elicited a hearty laugh from all.

22 November:
Such a tumultuous forty-eight hours we have not seen on this voyage, and I earnestly hope that the worst is now behind us. Two days ago the Guvnor was praising his hand-picked crew, and I, too, was thinking how our party had pulled together on the trip from Plymouth, which boded well, I thought, for the trials which surely face us; and now we have said farewell to one of our number, and made room for another. Chadwick, whose excellent meals brightened the early part of our voyage, is to be left in Hobart following a freakish accident which none could have foreseen, he having been knocked down in the street by a runaway horse and cart. His injuries are not, thank Heaven, life threatening, but are sufficient to make it impossible for him to continue as part of the expedition.