Elizabeth trudged up the dark muddy hill, surrounded on each side by tall imposing trees that reached into the night. Just beyond the trees to her left a busy main road whirred with traffic passing by, headlights passing between the branches throwing strange shadows into the darkness. Her eyes cut through the night with sharpened vision, and the ever steepening hill didn’t draw any extra breath from her dead lungs.
The noise of the road fell away as the top of the hill came into sight; a single house whose garden backed onto a graveyard, with a quaint old English church. People were moving around in the house Elizabeth noted as she walked past their back gate; four people sitting around a table in a warm looking dining room, a news reporter just visible on a TV screen behind them. Elizabeth drew her gaze away and moved into the Graveyard.
Old style street lamps illuminated the paths through the graves giving the area a strange orange glow in the night air. Elizabeth noted how calm this place felt, tucked away from the road, nestled behind a wood, the night was quiet here. Her large boots crunched on the gravel path as she stepped into the light of the first lamp and slowly she made her way towards the church at the other side of the field.
Elizabeth took in the names of some of the graves as she walked passed, towards the outside the graves were mostly new. Last month, the latest, last year, she walked past; but as the graves drew nearer to the church they got much older. Some she couldn’t even read as they had been so weathered with time. A power dwelled in this Graveyard too, though that was not why she had come, she stopped at the church door and let it wash over her; a sleeper lay here somewhere.
Shaking off the feeling she grasped the handle of the large oak door and pushed it open. There were lights on in the church still, and quiet music softly danced around Elizabeth’s head as she closed the door behind herself. The church itself was so old it was said to have been built during the first century, and still stood with all its original stone fittings. The interior was suitably more modern however, carpet lined the flagstone floor, and the pews were made of treated mahogany; heating must’ve been installed somewhere too as the heat washed over Elizabeth.
A different feeling had come over her now as she stepped into the church, a feeling of wrongness that bore down into the pit of her stomach, as if the walls themselves were pushing her away. Ignoring this she stepping out of the antechamber into the nave and took a moment to look around; the church arched up to the roof with no second floor above the nave, to her right glass doors marked the entrance to the bell tower. The main portion of the nave lay to her left, where many pews lined up facing the alter at the far end of the building.
One man sat on the front pew, wearing the vicar’s regalia, silently reading from one of the bibles. Elizabeth turned her body and began walking towards him, the rejecting presence still pressing against her undead body, her footsteps were soft on the carpet, but he still heard her coming it would seem. The man stood and closed the book, holding it above his lap in both hands as he turned himself towards her. He spoke softly into the echoing room.
“The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net.” She stopped as he spoke and a pause of silence drifted between them until “Micah page seven verse two.” Elizabeth raised her head in acknowledgement.
“We don’t get many of your kind here,” he continued “not many so bold as to enter the house of god.”
Elizabeth side stepped into the nearest pew and sat down quite casually, stretching her arms above her head, clicking her shoulders as she did. The Vicar did not move, but stood watching her cautiously.
“There are easier food sources than clergymen I guess.” She finally spoke after getting comfortable. Her voice fell flat in the large empty room, it did not echo like the Vicars. “I’m not here to eat you.” She added, seeing panic crawl across the man’s face. “I want your advice.”
The man’s face changed from fear to amusement, an ironic smile on his lips. The man was old, with grey woolly hair around the sides of his head, but bald on top. He had the wrinkles around his eyes of a man who smiles a lot. “My advice?” the concept seemed to truly amuse him.
He walked down the centre of the pews and sat down in the row next to her; close enough to talk but far enough for the man to feel safe. Elizabeth watched him closely, she’d been tricked by enough vampire hunters to not trust this man as much as he mistrusted her; the distance was small enough for her to kill him before he could react, as long as he had no tricks planned.
“Well then, my lost little lamb, what help do you think I can be to you?” he had placed the bible on the pew shelf, and was now leaning towards her, his attention focused. She thought for a moment before responding, drawing herself forward into a less casual position and she leaned towards him.
“Do you believe in the apocalypse Vicar?”
He frowned as they held each other’s gaze “Do you believe in god Vampire?” the question was not unkind.
Elizabeth blinked twice “I am a walking corpse, cursed to drink the blood of the living to survive. I may never walk in the sun, or taste food the way it was meant to be tasted; everything is dulled except for that sweet red dream. So yes, yes I believe in a God. Is that God your Christian father, or Muslim divine being? I dunno, maybe. Maybe it’s one of the many Norse or Greek gods; hell maybe it’s a Sikh God or maybe it’s Buddha himself. I don’t find it matters too much, but either way I have no choice but to believe.”
“The bible does tell of a time of judgment, which would be an apocalypse, but the idea of revelations and the four horsemen type of events is heavily debated, some speak of it as a metaphor.” Her reply didn’t seem to surprise or upset him, his voice remained calm.
“What if I knew…” Elizabeth spoke quietly “… knew that it was coming… what if I could stop it. I should do that right? Save all those people; that’s the right thing to do?”
The Vicar’s mouth opened ever so slightly and his eyes widened, either on shock or fear. Elizabeth was impressed how quickly he regained his composure however. “If you really can stop judgment day, you would deny millions their chance to be absolved of sin! They would have no afterlife; everyone would be destined to wander in purgatory for the rest of eternity.” The shock had not yet left his voice.
Elizabeth frowned “So quick to condemn my kind, but isn’t that the afterlife due to me? I get to walk an un-life until something finally finishes me off, then I walk purgatory for the rest of eternity. Or worse go to hell for my sins, there is no redemption for vampires.”
Trouble defined the Vicar’s face; this was not what he had expected when a vampire walked through his door. He sat silently thinking for a time, the red haired young girl who sat pale before him did not interrupt his thoughts. In fact she hardly did anything while he thought, barely a twitch, though they sat like this for a good few minutes.
When he spoke her eyes flicked back to his as if she were waking from a day dream “The world and the lord place us on our paths that we must walk, some are easy paths, and some are hard paths, but we are judged not on what happens while we walk these paths, but our intent behind our steps. You must do what you feel is right; stopping the apocalypse would indeed save the lives of thousands if not millions; but you would also deny the judgment of the righteous, and deny the afterlife to every man to have walked this earth since the dawn of time.”
He stopped to take a breath before finishing “You would also tempt the wrath of God, who can be most vengeful.”
Silence fell between the two as Elizabeth seemed to process what he’d said, soft music still playing as the backdrop to this scene. The Vicar still appeared troubled, but Elizabeth reached across and held his warm, leathery hand between her cold marble-like smooth hands. “Thank you, you’ve been a great help to me.”
They both stood in silence and Elizabeth released his hand, turned and walked softly towards the entrance. Before she left she stopped, pulled out an old pouch, coins jingling inside as it bounced out of her coat pocket. She placed it on top of the collection box, and gave the Vicar one final, calm smile. He stood there, looking somewhere between stunned and worried.
The door clicked closed behind her as she left and the Vicar spoke into the chamber alone “What have I done?”