Descent Into Madness by Catherine Woods-Field Page A

not struggle against my strength as I picked him up into the air, flinging him into a nearby tree. He smacked into it, the impact ratting the top branches. Birds flew into the darkness, their wings beating noisily against the wind.              
                  "Go," I said to him, as he lay there at the foot of the tree unfazed. "I am done with you." I walked away, not glancing over my shoulder to see if he wept for me.
    .

 
    EIGHT
     
     
     
     
     
    B uda became my home, my solace, for the next thirty years. Rumors of vampires and werewolf-like creatures were spreading, and I found I could not escape them. It did not matter where I was— these tales, these folklores existed. I learned to conceal myself behind people’s ignorance. From these fictitious legends, I had nothing to fear, for not even one was true. Yet they gave nations a false confidence, while I strolled merrily among them.              
                  Through the tradesman, I heard the folklore of many lands. The people of Moravia claimed a vampire could only attack while naked. Bavarian vampires slept with one eye open and thumbs crossed. I wondered how these legends took shape and grew roots.
                  Then I heard of the atrocities these people were committing against their own dead in fear that they had become vampires. They defiled newly buried graves, staking corpses or removing the newly deceased’s hands and feet. Other cultures removed the head, or they would remove the heart and burn it to ash, making the supposed victims drink of a concoction containing the ashes to break the "vampire's curse."
                  These rumors followed me everywhere, but no one ever suspected that I was a vampir . That is what they called my kind in Buda – vampir. I first heard the term from a man during a Gypsy celebration held in the summer season. Hearing it for the first time sent had chills down my neck.
                  "It appears that Miklos Tomas was a victim of a vampir," he had whispered to me, as he twirled me around the bonfire. “Stay inside and bolt your door tonight, for a group of us strong men will be slaying the demon at midnight.” His pálinka-laden breath was warm against my cheek. The liquor’s sweet scent – from Hungarian fruit – wafted violently past my nose.
                  “Why midnight,” I asked as his grubby hands gripped my waist. Against
                  “That’s before the creature rises from its grave. We need to strike between midnight and the witching hour to send it to the nether world, my beauty.” He leaned toward my cheek, desperately pressing his filth covered lips against me as I pulled away.
                  Miklos Tomas had not been a victim of a vampir, though. Men from the village and church had exhumed the poor man's corpse as I watched. The corpse displayed the usual signs of decomposition - the long grown fingernails, hair growth, peeling skin, bloated body, the presence of blood at one corner of his mouth. And the men were convinced these natural signs were evidence of a vampiric curse.
                  They had burned his remains and scattered the ashes. How could his soul find rest now? It would have taken considerable restraint not to leave a scrap of evidence when I descended on the huddle of soot-covered men. It would have been easy to conceal the fang marks in their fattened necks after I ripped into their jugulars – the smug looks of self-importance wiped clean from their faces. But the marks were there, though, for those with a head intact. Some corpses I left with their heads lying next to the feet, or with a stake jammed snuggly into their lifeless heart.
                  In that moment of anger, I had broken my vow not to kill.
                  I fled the villages; their nescience showed me the depths that humanity can sink.