Revelations
Alice followed the doctor up the wide stone steps to the wraparound covered porch of the massive house. She clutched the lapels of his laboratory coat to her throat, suddenly conscious of her bare feet and unwashed tresses. Her fingers itched to rake her hair away from her face, but she knew the effort would be wasted. Silk purse out of a sow's ear, she thought grumpily. She nervously wet her lips that had become dry to the point of cracking from the wind. The doctor had not slowed his inhumane stride once he was certain they would have a clear shot at reaching their destination.
The laboratory coat was made from heavy cotton, but Alice was chilled to the bone. She tucked her numb fingers into the sleeves of the opposite arms and into her armpits in an effort to bring some warmth back to the freezing digits. She stared down at the hem of the coat pooling around her feet. She knew she was a tiny girl, but this was bordering on silly. Alice felt like she should be bowing low and bringing tea in her makeshift kimono. A small smile played at the corners of her lips. She raised her eyes to watch the doctor as he crossed the large porch to the front entryway. The gaslights on either side of the doors painted his features in a golden hue. He still looked worried. As well he should, thought Alice.
Staring around her at the vast veranda and front garden, Alice was frankly astonished. This was a fine house, not the sinister lair as she had expected. There were lights glowing softly from the large windows and as they approached the large double doors, one of them swung open at the hands of a positively ancient woman who beamed at the doctor. The woman's eyes widened as she saw Alice's tiny form hovering behind the doctor.
"Oh good gracious, doctor!" she exclaimed. "You've brought a guest – you should have warned me, I have not prepared - "
The doctor interrupted the woman's excited fluttering. "Madeleine, this is Alice. She is my ward by the decree of her parents," he made the lie sound so convincing that even Alice had to remind herself that this was the first anyone had heard this news. Perhaps the doctor had planned this before; perhaps it was an off-the-cuff excuse that occurred to him seconds before they arrived at his home.
Alice made an awkward curtsey to Madeleine and murmured, "Hello, ma'am."
Madeleine bustled forward, only slightly taller than Alice, and gathered her into her arms in a maternal embrace.
"You poor child!" she said, fussily arranging the doctor's coat on Alice's shoulders. "Get yourself inside where it's warm and out of this unhealthy damp. I'm surprised at you, doctor - taking this young lady out in this weather; she could catch her death of cold..."
On and on she rambled, sometimes berating the doctor fondly for his tardiness, his lack of foresight to the weather, other times decrying her shock over the conditions of Alice's dishabille and bare feet.
"Madeleine, light of my life," the doctor finally laughed and held up his hands in mock defeat. "Could we possibly get a warm robe, slippers and some hot food for Alice? Please bring them to my study. I need to talk to my new ward and we will require some uninterrupted privacy for quite a while."
Dr. Coombs indicated a set of pocket doors on the left side of the foyer and Alice preceded him into a softly lit room lined with hundreds of leather-bound volumes. The glow was coming from a cheerfully crackling fire in the hearth and with a light head; Alice sank into a high backed armchair placed close to the warmth. Her hands and feet had gone strangely numb; she wondered if this is what it felt like before a person fainted from stress or exhaustion.
This room, this house was so incongruous from the place she had been living in that she felt stirrings of anger and resentment blooming in her chest.
How could the doctor leave her in absolute darkness and return to this comfortable and cheerful house every day? How dare he!
As she let her eyes roam slowly around the room, she could tell that the doctor was not a pauper, he was well educated and affluent. The heavy desk under the large windows was ornate and obviously costly. The thick rug her toes were digging into with an enthusiasm that she had not registered was soft and, again, of apparent expense. The mantle was within reach and she traced her fingers lightly over the marble, the intricate carvings of leaves and branches indicated an artisan's skill and care. The scent of freshly baked bread and chicken broth overwhelmed her nostrils and she started as she realized that Madeleine had returned, with a silver tray covered in a white silk napkin gripped ably in her small hands. Over her shoulder, a dark robe trailed down her back.
The doctor relieved Madeleine of the tray, placing it soundlessly on the low table in front of the chair. Alice leaned forward against her will to inhale the pungent steam from the tureen. The soup smelled heavenly, better than anything she could recall eating at the hospital. Again, bitterness flared in her chest and she straightened up quickly, looking away from the tray and its tempting fare.
Madeleine had taken advantage of Alice's distraction to whisk the doctor's coat from her shoulders before settling the heavy robe in its place. Under her admonitions, Alice allowed herself to be jostled about as the robe's sleeves were rolled up so that her hands were revealed and the belt knotted firmly about her tiny waist. Alice felt like she was three years old and being bundled into her father's overcoat. The slippers will lined with what must have been rabbit fur, Alice sighed luxuriously as she wriggled her toes further inside.
Straightening, Madeleine placed the tray on her lap and as the warmth from the soup bowl seeped through the bottom of the tray and the robe, Alice could almost forget the mortal danger she and the doctor were in. He stood a short distance from her on the other side of the hearth, not watching her, but aware of her every move and sound.
She broke a slice of crusty bread in two and watched him silently. Alice realized that his features were largely unknown to her because of the memories he had siphoned away after each "therapy session." Always in the gloom of her cell, his face was ever in shadow and those were the only memories she could recall. He's a fairly handsome man, she thought to herself. Everything about him seemed to be elongated, from his face to his very long legs that added to his extraordinary height. His nose was aquiline and slightly crooked, as if it had been broken and reset at some point. The doctor's sandy brown hair was trimmed very close at the nape of his neck, but was longer on top and in the front so that if fell rakishly over his forehead. Alice had a sudden impulse to brush it back with her fingers. If there was one true flaw in his appearance, it was that his ears had larger lobes than Alice would have thought becoming. But, she reflected, it did not detract from the total presentation. If she knew nothing about him and saw him for the first time at a ball or in a library, she would have thought him singularly handsome after a fashion.
She mentally shook herself out of her reverie. She reminded herself that this man she was thinking so handsome had up until an hour ago been keeping her virtually prisoner. Given that he was a vampire and she was a freak of nature, perhaps he had believed that he was doing them both a favor. Still, she thought, he has to drink – ugh- blood, while I get to relish this lovely stew. Alice did her best to focus on her meal, chewing the morsels of chicken with near ecstasy. It was not until she was soaking up the last remaining bits of broth with the bread that he spoke.
"You have seen something in my future – even though you cannot recall it," he began hesitantly. The doctor refused to meet her gaze, causing anger again to flare in her stomach. "I have to tell you what set the events that will come to pass in motion."
Alice froze in mid-bite. Juices from the soup dripped into the recesses of her mouth from the morsel of bread. She knew what was to come, but why was a facet of her vision that she rarely ever was afforded the luxury of. She attempted to surreptitiously suck the broth from the soft core of the bread silently so that the doctor would continue. She recalled her vision of the doctor questioning her so strongly that she had become agitated; this must have been the session that she had seen in her earlier vision. It had terrified her such that she had attempted to block her mind and his words.
"I have told you this truth countless times," Dr. Coombs began. He was nearly motionless in his anxiety. Alice mirrored his stillness. "I have also made you forget what I have told you." He raised his brows at her mutinous expression.
"Why? For the love of – whom on Earth would I tell?" She sputtered furiously. "More to the point, being incarcerated in that 'hospital' for the Lord knows how long, who would believe me if I were to be allowed loose on the unknowing populace?"
The empty bowl and tray clattered noisily to the floor as she lurched from her seat. She paid no attention to the broken crockery or bread crumbs now scattered across the lovely patterns. She was enraged beyond any measure she could recall.
"No visitors, no family, no one but you has ever come to see me," she railed at him. He had turned from his contemplation of the fire to face her, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, but his gaze steadfastly fixed upon the hearth rug.
"You use me as your personal fortune teller, store me away like a piece of furniture, then wipe out parts of my life as you would chalk drawings from a blackboard?"
She advanced on him, dimly aware of the crunching of china under her slipper-shod feed. Her top of her head barely reached his sternum, but as she glared up at him, she actually saw remorse flood his countenance. He raised his hands as if to fend off an attack.
"Dear one, please return to your seat, I will endeavor to explain, sparing no detail."
Alice's eyes narrowed, searching for any indication of a lie. "You will not make me forget this," she commanded. "You will tell me why you have imprisoned me, where my family is, every detail you have stolen from my mind, you will return to me this night."
He nodded. She did not turn her back on him, retracing her steps while keeping him firmly in her sights. Her hands found the armrests of the chair and she grasped them firmly and sank once again onto the plush fabric. She pointed imperiously at the facing chair.
"Sit. Talk. Do not stop until you have told me everything."
He obeyed her instructions. Very deliberately, he hiked the legs of his trousers up, crossed one leg over the other and settled against the high wingback. Alice thought even the most venerable professor would have to practice the pose Dr. Coombs so effortlessly affected.
"What do you want me to talk about first?" He smiled encouragingly in her general direction without meeting her gaze. It felt to her as if this was an interview for a teaching post. Alice had to work very hard to keep her face expressionless.
"Tell me about what you are," she began. "Then tell me about how I came to be in your custody. Then I want to hear why we are running for our lives, but still have time for a light supper." While her face was impassive, her tone fairly dripped with scorn.
"Very well," the doctor agreed. "On being a vampire, I was sired nearly 116 years ago, in 1804. I have chronicled my life in several dozen journals that I will make available to you… soon." His lips pursed in a soft, sad grimace of a smile.
"I do not particularly enjoy the methods I must adhere to in order to sustain my life, but the exhilaration, the power… it is a powerful force that makes it possible – no – necessary for me to rationalize them. I selected a position of doctor at the Fulton State Hospital here in Mississippi for the sole reason that people are frequently lost to the outside world once they are admitted."
Alice gasped.
"It is an unpleasant facet of humanity that most choose to disregard," he continued. "Hospitals, especially for the deranged or deformed, are ideal for… my kind… because screams and cries for help are ignored, and patient mortality reports are accepted with little dissonance. I do not have such strong cravings as I did in my early years, but I am what I have been made – so I must feed."
He paused to straighten the cuffs of his shirtsleeves to give her a moment to assimilate his words. Alice had been gulping air in great breaths, struggling to keep the soup and bread from coming back up. She clasped her hands together on her lap, but remained in place waiting for him to continue.
"You were brought to the hospital by both of your parents in 1916," he said softly. "You were so subdued. You refused to look at me or your parents the entire time they were there. I thought it was odd, as most patients committed by their family begged and pleaded to be taken home. You merely sat in my office and stared out of the windows as if you knew that would be the last time you would see nature for a long, long time."
Alice felt her eyes well up. She began to mourn. Mourn that child she had been, the parents she could not remember, and the life she never had the chance to lead. Tears slowly began to course down her cheeks, but she did not move to brush them away.
"I have rarely seen two people more in love with their child and still more terrified. Your mother rambled on and on about how you would tell her what was about to happen. As devoutly faithful people, they feared that you were either possessed of exceptional evil or that you were insane and somehow able to guess or influence events. Your father told me that they were committing you to my care only as a last resort. Your parents' social status required them to be very active during the season, you would frighten family and guests with your visions and they feared that you would adversely impact their standing and your… sister's… chances of a successful match when she entered society."
"I have a sister," she whispered. Alice wrapped her arms around herself, a protective gesture that was not lost on Dr. Coombs. He rose and moved past the small table to kneel at her feet in a fluid motion. He covered her hands with his own at her shoulders. They were so cold and hard that the warmth to which Alice had grown acclimated slid away like water down a petal. She had never felt as alone as she did at that moment.
"Yes, they live in your family home not far from here. They came all the way from Biloxi to visit you the first Tuesday of every month for a year after your admittance to the hospital. I must beg your forgiveness for what I did to both you and them. I had been working with you for all that time, trying to understand your gift and how it worked in the hopes that I could help you block or at least control it. You told me that you had seen your parents holding each other and crying as if in true mourning, but that you could not understand the reason. After you returned to your room, I pondered that vision. It suddenly occurred to me that you were God's gift to me, my guardian that would protect me from discovery and possibly the companion I had yearned for in my solitude."
"What else have you done other than imprison me in a tomb that I should forgive?" Alice's tone was thick with emotion.
"The next month, when your parents came for their visit, I lied to them. I told them that you had been stricken with a fever after visiting with another patient and died only that morning. I consoled myself that your parents' grief would pass because they still had a daughter to lavish the love and affection they were too fearful and shortsighted to give you. I resolved to become your sole protector, your guide, from that moment on."
Alice bit her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood. The doctor smelled it too; his nostrils flared but he managed to control his instincts and continue speaking.
"You cannot know – you will undoubtedly despise me more now…" he shook his head sadly. "I saw your parents at a social function not one year after I told them you had died. They did not appear to be suffering continued bereavement. I felt I had done the right thing in taking you from them. You were meant to be mine, my angel to keep and protect."
That was too much for Alice to hear.
"Protect?" she exclaimed. "You call how I lived – no! I cannot even call it living! You call how I was imprisoned protection? You have unmitigated gall, Doctor!"
"You do not understand!" Dr. Coombs held his hands out, palms up in supplication.
"I could not show you preferential treatment, I had to keep you in an undocumented cell so that the staff would not recall who you were and raise a warning."
Alice snorted indelicately. "To be sure, you would want to protect yourself from discovery. Not only are you not human, you are a kidnapper and a liar!
The doctor reached out once more to grasp her shoulders and nodded, accepting her accusation.
"To your third question – now there is a tale that will change your life and undoubtedly end mine."
Alice could only stare at him.