Chapter 3
51: 1 - 13
The new, spring grass was bright green and soft. It cushioned his step, so I wasn't aware of him until he was upon my wasted, helpless body. He momentarily paused a few feet away from me before coming closer. He came down to one knee and stared into my frozen face. It was then that I noticed beneath his seemingly innocent, fair, freckled face the straight, black collar with the white square at his throat.
Terror seized me at once. The only feature that could have betrayed my fear was my eyes, which must have darkened to the darkest ebony by then. No other muscle on my body had the power to flinch in the slightest. He reached out to my throat, as if to check for a pulse. His hand recoiled at its first contact with my icy, stone flesh, and I watched a flicker of fear race across his face.
My sentiments quickly changed from terror to gratitude as we locked eyes in the beginning of a battle that was centuries older than either of us. I understood what he was going to do for me. He would lay his crucifix upon me, sprinkle me with his holy waters, chant over me, drench me in incense, burn me, stab me, torture me. At last I was going to get what I deserved. This man's purpose was to rid the world of evil like me. He would do it, and I would welcome it.
After long moments of silence, he uttered something I couldn't understand. The momentary fear in his eyes had been replaced with something like determination. He slid surprisingly gentle arms under me and easily lifted my decrepit body. I had lost a considerable amount of weight and was barely more than bones and frigid flesh. He was much younger then and stronger than his stout frame would indicate. He carried me across the field, with my arms and legs dangling and my head lolling back on my neck. There was nothing I could do but go with him. There was nothing else I wanted to do.
Through upside down, bouncing eyes I watched the field become a small hill and the hill a gravel path. In the distance, I could make out a small, stone church with a much smaller, square building behind it. This was where we were headed. He was taking me to his altar, which was surely laden with all his mighty instruments to destroy me. I wept invisible tears for the fitting end that was so close to me.
I was wrong. We didn't go into the church. We walked past the simple structure to the small, square building, where he laid me gently onto a small, sparse cot in the corner. He looked down at me with a soft expression. I thought I saw a gleam in his eye and realized with revulsion that he was going to enjoy this. He held his hand above me and moved it slowly in the sign of the cross while he mumbled an incantation that I didn't understand. I waited for the searing pain, but it didn't come.
He left me briefly and returned with a glass full of a clear liquid. He poured it down my throat. It was cool and tasteless. It didn't scald. It didn't do anything. The little man stood and watched me with furrowed brows. He scurried away again and came back with a thicker liquid, maybe milk. He poured. This drink oozed slowly down my throat with a dull, bitter taste. Nothing happened. The little man sighed. He seemed disappointed at my lack of response. He wasn't very good at this vanquishing of evil business, was he?
I stared again into his eyes. They were not the type of eyes that I had thought I'd seen in the field. They did not seem at all like the type of eyes to do me in. They were soft, kind, fretful eyes. They were eyes that earnestly wanted to help me. He wanted to help me.
When he disappeared and returned again, it was with a steamy bowl. Some kind of soup or gruel. This time I didn't brace myself for impending doom. This time I knew that it would only be an ineffective attempt to save me. Sure enough, the thick, warm liquid dripped down my throat and tasted mildly of dirt. But it also tasted of something else. Something stronger. It tasted of compassion and kindness and goodness. It tasted of someone who cared, someone who thought I deserved more than a wasted, tortured existence. It had been a very long time since I'd tasted anything like it.
Kristoph, beautiful Kristoph, had been the last to have given it to me. I suppose Carlisle had shown it to me back in the day. Before that……before that……my mother. My human mother. It had been decades since I'd let myself think of her. I didn't precisely remember her, of course. But I remembered her soft coos and her warm embrace, and I was sure she must have fed my like this when I was a baby.
His steady, rhythmic lifting and tilting of the spoon made me feel cared for, and for the first time in many, many months, I was filled with something other than despair. I was filled with longing. Longing for compassion and caring and kindness. And this little man was giving it to me, spoonful by spoonful. And I was gulping it up, or rather, thankfully letting it slide down my incapacitate throat. Other than that, the concoction did me no good.
He gave up on the useless gruel and set it aside on a table. He sat on his little stool and leaned forward on his elbows. He stared long and hard at me, into my eyes. I stared back. Both sets of eyes filled with desperation - mine desperate for help, his desperate to help.
He touched his fingers again to my throat and clucked. He withdrew his hand quickly while his eyes flicked back and forth in deep thought. He wiped his freckled brow several times before laying a straw mat on the floor and lying down to rest for a few hours. At the first ray of morning, he went out for a longer time than he'd left me before and returned with an armful of groceries. He busied himself at the stove and came to me with another steaming bowl. This new soup had a read tinge. It slid down my throat, warm and thin and – delicious. I actually tasted flavor along with his kindness.
The effect of this red soup was immediate. The muscles of my throat constricted around it, and my mouth opened weakly for more. He quickly spooned it to me. More, more, more. He ran to the stove and refilled the bowl. More, more, more. Halfway through the third bowl, I started to gag. My body had had no real nourishment for several months and could only handle so much at once. But the difference was astounding. Even the gagging felt wonderful.
The two of us celebrated. Oh how we celebrated - me with half a lip raised in a crooked smile, more movement than I'd accomplished in months, and him with a funny little jig and clapping of his hands. When he sat down by me again it was with wet, happy tears shining in his eyes. He rubbed a gentle thumb across my forehead and looked down at me with great hope.
The red soup kept coming, and day after day, I gained in strength. This little man only spoke Polish, one of the few languages I didn't understand, and I still wasn't able to speak at all, but through a kind of pantomime, here is what I learned from him: His name was Father Pawel. We were in Poland, where he is pastor of a small parish in a tiny village. The soup that was nourishing me was one of his mother's old recipes for blood soup. Delicious, fortifying, life-giving, blood soup. Even though I would eventually gag and cough up the bulk of the soup, my body was able to retain enough of the duck blood to set me on a path to recovery.
During the following weeks, my strength slowly, slowly came back to me. I couldn't do much for the first fortnight, other than lay and listen and sometimes sit up a bit. But I was able to communicate through facial expression, and occasionally I was able to grasp Father Pawel's hand with a gentle squeeze of appreciation. During this time, Father Pawel went about his parish business, often leaving me for hours at a time. But he always came back to feed me, and at night, he would read to me from his book, the Bible. It was in Latin, a language I was familiar with at a rudimentary level, so I was able to make some sense out of it when he read slowly.
The Old Testament stories were fascinating, but it was a reading in David's psalms that help me captive. The first time Father Pawel read it to me, I gasped and indicated for him to read it again. He did, more slowly and I gasped again. From then on, he made sure to read that passage to me every night. Since that time, I've found a proper English translation of those verses – here it is:
O loving and kind God, have mercy. Have pity upon me and take away the awful stain of my transgression. Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. For I admit my shameful deed – it haunts me day and night. It is against you and you alone I sinned, and did this terrible thing. You saw it all, and your sentence against me is just. But I was born a sinner, yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. You deserve honesty from the heart; yes, utter sincerity and truthfulness. Oh, give me this wisdom.
Sprinkle me with the cleansing blood and I shall be clean again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. And after you have punished me, give me back my joy again. Don't keep looking at my sins – erase them from your sight. Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires. Don't toss me aside, banished forever from your presence. Don't take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me again the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you. Then I will teach your way to other sinners, and they – guilty like me – will repent and return to you.
Psalm 51: 1 - 13
The psalm gave me hope. Could I really one day be free from what I'd done? Forgiven. New life. I wanted that. I wanted a new life. I wanted to live again. Every night, Father Pawel read to me from his book, and when I had strength enough on my own, I sat up and read to myself for long, silent hours. I read many stories of divine forgiveness in that book, and my hope grew into belief.
I continued growing stronger, and soon I realized that the blood soup and black puddings made from pigs blood were no longer enough.1 I was craving more. So one night, while Father Pawel slept, I left. I stepped over his snoring form on the straw mat, noiselessly opened and shut his door, and set off over the dark, lonely hills. I went as far away from him as possible in my still weakened condition. I was afraid my cravings would lead me to his throat, and I couldn't take that chance. Not now that I was growing to love him as I had once loved my mother.
As I traveled the distance, I thought about my psalm. "Take away the awful stain of my transgression… I shall be clean again… create in me a new, clean heart." It was beautiful. Poetry to my needy spirit. I had my hope and my belief and yet, I also had a lingering doubt. Did this forgiveness apply to vampires? Or did we give up that privilege when we gave up our mortality? I wondered and prayed and searched for peace. I came to understand that I would not find true peace until I was able to forgive myself. I was working on that. Still working on that.
Infrequently, I thought about the last line, "Then I will teach your way to other sinners, and they – guilty like me – will repent and return to you. Father Pawel always insisted on reading that line. I didn't know why. I never asked him to, and I never read that far when I was reading on my own.
I'd traveled a fair distance and still hadn't eaten. I'd regained enough strength to be able to hunt again, and I figured I'd better get to it before I started to weaken again. I stayed in remote places where I wouldn't be likely to run into a human. The image of Kristoph's suffering was still far too fresh in my mind. What struck me as unusual as I walked along was that, although my body craved pure, undiluted blood, I no longer had an urge to kill. I felt nothing of my old anticipation - the joy of the hunt, the excitement of the attack, the quivering bliss of ripping flesh. I simply needed to eat, and killing was a mechanical means to that ends.
As I walked along, I realized that I was going to return to Father Pawel once I'd satisfied my cravings, once I became less dangerous to him. I missed him. I missed our time together. He fed my spirit, and he fed my loneliness, and he fed my need to care about someone and have someone care about me. I was surprised by how terribly I missed him. I hadn't expected that.
I smiled and laughed at myself. Go figure - my BFF was a frickin' Roman Catholic priest. A vampire in communion with the most sacramental of Christians. Spawn of satan cavorting with the enemy most powerfully equipped against evil. Irony doesn't get any sweeter.
I lurked in a dense forest and easily caught a small, grey rabbit.
I said, "Sorry, little bunny," and lifted its jugular to my lips.
The rabbit squirmed, and I bit.
The rabbit screeched, and I screamed.
I flung the rabbit to the ground, away from me. The poor bunny seemed stunned for a moment but then hopped off into the trees and appeared to be alright. I fell back against a thick, rough tree trunk, spitting out fur and wondering what in the hell I was supposed to do. I couldn't kill. I couldn't kill! I was not going to be able to feed and rid myself of these cravings. They would grow and grow and grow until…until what I didn't know.
What in the hell was I supposed to do?
1 Vampires consuming foods other than pure blood may not be strictly cannon with the Twilight books. However, since blood is an ingredient in both Blood Soup and Black Pudding, I'm using them in this story with the condition that all other ingredients are eventually coughed up.
