oo00oo
I always knew something was off about Mystic Falls. Things didn't always add up, only an idiot could not see that. Though up until last night, I wish I'd turned a blind eye. After all, there's a reason they call ignorance bliss.
Let me set the scene for you.
There I stood, in the Mystic Falls High parking lot, dressed as a fairy and sipping spiked punch after partying myself out at the annual Halloween Party. I'd just lowered myself onto the bonnet of a nearby car to catch my breath when I heard a scuffle behind the buses.
Curious, my body compelled me to take a step toward the noise, then another and another. Until I stood before the gap between buses two and three. My childhood friend, Jeremy Gilbert was pressed up against the side of bus two, passionately kissing local outcast Vicki Donovan.
My nose wrinkled in disgust.
I'd just begun to turn away with mouthwash on my mind when Jeremy's panicked scream stopped me in my tracks. Frozen to the spot, I turned my rigid neck back around to see what had happened.
Before I could so much as process the image before my eyes, Elena, Jeremy's sister came running around the corner with a length of wood held firmly in her grip. Hidden by the shadows, I watched, eyes wide, as Elena proceeded to slam the plank against Vicki's head in a killing blow.
Vicki didn't even flinch.
Instead, she dropped a struggling Jeremy and threw Elena fifty feet into the garbage cans!
Everything that happened next, happened in a blur.
A man emerged from nowhere… Vicki was tackled to the ground… Elena helped Jeremy to his feet… the two siblings ran for the service door… Vicki threw off the man... Jeremy was viciously attacked from behind.
When Elena ran to her brother's aid and Vicki turned to her in rage, the world crystallized into focus once again. The whites of Vicki's eyes were dyed a deep crimson, the veins along her cheeks bulged and pulsed black as death, and from her mouth sprouted elongated k-nines. She was no longer a person at that moment, she was a repulsive monster.
I wanted to scream but it was as if my voice had transformed into hot tar. No matter how hard my voice struggled, no sound escaped.
Elena screeched high and loud as The Monster tore into her neck like a rabid dog. The man (Who I later identified as the new guy, Stefan Salvatore) appeared behind The Monster and rammed a wooden dagger through its chest.
The Monster shrivelled; the veins across its face spread and its skin turned ashen.
The opening and closing of my heart valves accelerated in turn.
Once again, events blurred together. Stefan escorted Jeremy inside… Elena collapsed next to The Monster's corpse... a blurry mess of a man appeared behind her… She screamed at him, hitting and crying inconsolably… He threatened her… She ran away…
By the time the world began to make sense again, the mystery man had heaved the corpse over his shoulder and disappeared in a blur. Moving on auto-pilot, I shifted my body from its cast to move back to the car. My stiff limbs and spinning mind had barely gone two steps when the man reappeared before me, The Monster's corpse noticeably missing.
My breath retreated into my lungs.
He slowly sized me up.
My blonde curls were a mess, my fairy wand had fallen to the concrete some time ago, and the spilt punch on my sparkly taffeta looked different now sober. I echoed the look of a child who'd just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
I don't know what I was expecting the man to do next, but it wasn't what he did. He grabbed my upper arms, looked directly into my eyes, and spoke deliberately.
"You will forget what you saw here tonight. You got tipsy, saw a couple fight, and left the party early," He said.
I tilted my head, confused.
There was an authority to his words; an unknown weight that demanded obedience. In any other scenario, I may have given in to the temptation to comply. But something inside me, something dark, something ugly, reared up and bared its teeth.
It didn't want to comply, it didn't want to obey.
So, I didn't.
Before I could react further, the man was gone. And with him, the weight.
It was only hours later when I was tucked safely into bed that my brain started putting it all together. The recent deaths. The rise in animal attacks. The arrival of Stefan Salvatore. Vicki's transformation and subsequent death. It could all be explained by one phenomenon… Vampires.
So, Vampires. Are. Real.
And Vicki Donovan had been one.
WORSE! Stefan Salvatore and the mystery man were most likely bloodsuckers as well.
Which meant Elena Gilbert had to know, she was dating the vamp after all. Did that mean Jeremy knew too? No, his reaction to Vicki had been too real to be faked. He didn't know.
Though he must know now… right?
My sleep was uneasy that night. I dreamt of running through a maze of never-ending corridors. But no matter how far I ran or which corners I turned, my five-year-old self always ended up back in a Lab filled with a living dead man's organs scattered about on tables or pickled in jars.
I didn't know what that meant.
oo00oo
Walking the school corridors the next day, I caught sight of Jeremy and froze.
My conscious brain hadn't realised it until that moment, but the prospect of being near Jeremy, Elena, and Stefan six hours a day, five days a week left me terrified.
Thoughts such as, ' 'What if they recognise me?' and 'What if they know I know?' scrambled my brain till I couldn't think straight. So, in a split-second decision, I chose to avoid them for the day. A day turned into a week, a week turned into a month, and soon I was well on my way to avoiding them for the foreseeable future.
Sadly, my methods quickly revealed themselves to be unsustainable.
Detentions stacked up as my excuses for jumping out windows, arriving late to class, and skipping assembly altogether grew flimsy. Eventually, I had to ask myself if this one-sided game of Chicken was worth the complete destruction of my once perfect record.
The truth is, it wasn't.
Elena and Stefan hadn't approached me once, let alone pulled their lips apart long enough to realise I existed. Meanwhile, Jeremy's personality had done a complete one-eighty. Where he'd once slept through classes, too high to concentrate. He now dived headfirst into every new assignment with vigour. Instead of smoking in the Stoner Pit on break, he spent all his free time in the Library studying or consulting with the new History teacher, Mr Saltzman.
His grades were slowly but steadily improving. All while mine was rapidly plummeting.
Things couldn't get any worse.
Then Fate stepped in to prove me wrong.
One late November night, I felt a pull in my chest while walking home from choir practice. Thinking nothing of it, I allowed the tug to guide my feet along the path of least resistance. It led me into the woods and down a path I'd never come across before. I had only been walking for thirty minutes, at the most, when a glimmer amongst the trees snatched my attention.
Intrigued, my body inched closer, careful not to disturb the underbrush.
Soon, the ruins of the old Fell Church came into view along with a scene straight from a fantasy film.
The town Wiccan's granddaughter, Bonnie Bennett stood in the middle of a circle of flames, eyes rolled back into her skull and lips moving in an unspoken chant. All while the mystery man from that Halloween night hung pinned to a tree via a branch through his stomach.
My eyes immediately did a double-take. The man was still breathing, he was still alive!
As if pushed by an invisible wind, I stumbled backwards onto my butt. Flashes of that night flew past my mind's eye. The fangs, the blood, the blurs, the screams. It all whirled inside my head like a maelstrom. Recollections of the terror I'd felt, of the panic and the confusion and the fear threatened to choke me.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't BREATHE!
'How can this be happening to me?' my mind wailed, 'Why am I even here!?'
I wanted to leave! I wanted to run back home to where everything made sense! I wanted all this to stop and for my world to go back to the way it was before!
None of those things happened.
Instead, my eyes closed (stomach-churning, brain-scrambling). I heard glimpses of conversation going on between the man, Bonnie and… was that Stefan Salvatore? And when did Elena get here?!
"Emily."
"Unleash them into this world!"
"Damon, what did you do?"
"INCENDIA!
"BONNIE! NOOO!"
Overwhelmed and struggling to catch my breath, I lay down on the dirt and curled into a ball. The dank ground and fresh smell of dirt seeped into my bones as one thought repeated itself over and over in my head.
'Why am I here? WHY AM I HERE? WHy aM I heRe!?
The slam of a car door jolted me from my thoughts.
Peeking one eye open, disorientation hit me full force.
Fell's Church was empty... Bonnie Bennett was gone... The pentagram of fire was out… Damon Salvatore was missing... Stefan and Elena were nowhere to be seen...
I was alone.
Amongst the quiet darkness, I felt as though I'd just woken from a bad dream. My surroundings were tinged with surrealism. Both too crisp and yet too fuzzy. Rising up, my boots crunched through dead leaves as goosebumps emerged from my damp skin.
'Was I dreaming?' I wondered, 'Was this all just a bad dream?'
Confused, I had barely taken two steps away from the stone walls when a burning sensation hit my neck. A fresh spike of adrenaline flooded my veins. Turning my head ever so slowly, I began searching the trees for the threat.
Damon Salvatore stood unharmed in the shadows, staring straight at me.
I knew then what I'd seen was no dream.
The fire, the magic, the vampires, the witch… It was all real.
Witches and Vampires are REAL!
...And now one of them knew I knew.
I turned tail and ran, determined to never speak of this incident again.
oo00oo
As Fall transitioned into Winter, memorials became a regular feature on WPKW9 News. Town events began to sound more and more like a death sentence as the bodies kept piling up. No one's life was left untouched by the quote, "increase in animal attacks." Everyone knew someone, whether that be a neighbour, a second cousin or a colleague at work, who had lost their life.
And yet, when the average citizen was asked if they feared for their lives, they would simply shrug and say, "That's just Mystic Falls."
I, on the other hand, was scared out of my wits.
My anxiety increased with each new addition to the Mystic Falls Courier obituary. I started spending almost all my free time at home; quitting choir, avoiding the Grill, and refusing to go to any and all parties to do so. After my classmate, Aimee Bradley was "bitten by an animal" at the annual Miss Mystic Falls Pageant, I stopped going on my daily jog through the woods as well.
The only person who approved of this behaviour change was my father.
Sitting on the kitchen counter, eating a snack before lunch one afternoon, he had said, "It's good you're staying back these days, with all that's going on and all." He'd chuckled to himself, "You always did have an uncanny ability to find trouble."
For my part, I stared deeply into the grains of my muesli bar.
'Why am I always in the wrong place at the wrong time?' I pondered. Far beyond coincidence, the only way I seemed to avoid said trouble was to never leave the house AT ALL!
Watching my father dice carrots for dinner tonight, a dawning realisation finished its completion. It asked me, 'Is the reason for my dad's agoraphobia due to him knowing about vampires and witches too?' This, in turn, had me asking, 'Am I going to turn into an agoraphobic too!?'
Evidence suggested I was well on my way…
Before that thought could go any further, I felt a niggle pull on my chest like a pebble stuck in my shoe. Wincing, my head turned in the direction of origin nevertheless. A little voice in the back of my head chanted, 'Follow it, FoLlOw It, FOLLOW IT!'
In a blink, I was standing hazy-eyed by the backdoor, hand poised to turn the doorknob.
"Not again," I grumbled. These blackouts had been happening far too often for my liking lately.
"You better follow it, Niamh," my father called out, not looking up from the chopping board, "It's what we're made for after all."
A moment of hesitation bit at my heels.
On the one hand, if I followed this feeling of longing I could end up running into a vampire or a witch or who knows what else went bump in the night! My life could be put in danger, again.
However, on the other hand, if I didn't follow this feeling it would continue to haunt me. Like an itch that can never be scratched, it would slowly drive me insane.
Was I willing to take the risk? Was I willing to venture into the unknown?
The pull grew more insistent.
My resolve firmed.
Letting myself sink into the feeling, my feet marched out the door and through the treeline. Time lost all recognition, the sun dipped below the horizon, and still, an invisible string guided my way. In what felt like a moment, I didn't recognise my surroundings at all. No matter how hard I tried, no clues as to my location presented themselves. Only the singing of crickets and buzzing of sandflies kept me company.
Then I heard it. Incoherent whispers.
Even better! They were close; too close not to be a sign.
Sadly, the whispers were coming from the other side of a thick set of brambles. The kind full of prickly, stabby, thorns. The kind guaranteed to leave my pasty white skin littered in cuts and scratches. The kind that any sane person would walk around if it could be helped.
It couldn't be helped.
"Ugh! I am so sick of this!" I cried, barrelling in head first, "I could be in bed right now, gossiping about boys! But noooooo."
A branch smacked into my face.
"Instead, I'm tromping through the woods! Risking my throat getting torn out by Vampires!"
A thorn yanked on my ponytail.
"All because this stupid town is soaked in messed up MAGIC!"
A branch, half-buried in the dirt, snagged my foot.
Tripping onto my knees, I emerged on the other side of the thicket grumpy. With twigs tangled in my hair, my clothes ripped beyond recognition, and my hands covered in bleeding scratches, I resembled a hurricane survivor.
"Stupid, frikin', AGRH!"
The next word on my tongue died out as the whispers grew in intensity. Where once they had been quiet and sombre, now they were loud and demanding. Curious, I scanned the clearing and spotted a dilapidated mansion at the centre of the noise.
Confronted with the sight of the pulling's target, a bolt of anger shot through me.
'This is it?' I thought, 'This is what was calling me?!' Not a vampire who could eat me, not a witch who could set me on fire with a wave of her hand, but a HOUSE!?
"This cannot get any weirder," I decided.
Approaching it, the whispers grew more frenzied with each step I took. However, the moment my sneaker-clad foot touched the stairs to the porch, they stopped altogether.
"Oookaaay?" I said, "Because that's not ominous at all!"
Perhaps sensing my reservations, the tugging grew more insistent.
Anger overrode my fear.
If the mysterious sensation wanted to drag me into a spooky haunted house, then so be it!
Back straightened and head held high, I marched up and steps and stormed through the door.
The house creaked as I put my weight on the wooden floor planks. Dust coated everything inside, giving the interior one monochromatic dank feel. The entire place felt eery inside, yet, against all odds, something inside my soul was deeply comforted by it.
Despite its obvious neglect and supernatural leanings, I felt safe here.
This notion surprised me.
After all, who would find an abandoned mansion in the middle of the woods comforting?
Running a finger along the dusty banister, I was about to ascend the stairs when I caught sight of a silhouette in the open doorway. Spinning around in alarm, my eyes nearly popped out of my skull at the sight of a man leaning casually against the door frame.
Immediately, my breath caught in my throat and adrenaline froze my muscles. Every fibre in my being screamed one thing on repeat, 'VAMPIRE! RUUUN!'
"Curious you could find this place when I could not," he said in a posh British accent.
Taken aback, the words poured out of my mouth before I could stop to think. "I'm sorry?"
The unknown vampire disregarded my words, choosing instead to survey the mansion with a critical eye.
"This house was built upon land where many witches were burned at the stake," he stated casually. We could have been discussing the weather for all his blase tone and relaxed body language suggested.
"What!" I snatched my hand away from the banister, stumbling away as if burned. I had been drawing comfort from a supernatural gravesite?!
"You did not know?" he quipped softly.
"No, of course not!" I protested.
The vampire remained silent for a moment, sizing me up. Meanwhile, I stayed glued to my spot next to the banister. When he evidently found what he'd been looking for, he pushed off the door frame and carefully crossed the threshold.
The whispers returned with a roar.
Unlike when I was outside, this time my ears could pick up words amongst the our-pouring of rage. "MURDERER!", "ABOMINATION!", "HEATHEN!" they screeched, "GET OUT!", "DEFILER!", "LEEEAAAVE!"
The cacophony grew to a crescendo when the man blurred in front of me.
Ignorant to the screaming around him, the vampire grabbed my shoulders, bent down to my eye level, and spoke in that same hypnotising manner Damon had all those months ago.
"What do you know of this house?" He asked.
"Uuuh..." My brain struggled to form coherent sentences.
The shrieks, the weight, the tugging. It was simply too much! I couldn't think!
"I, I, I, don't know?" I stuttered, "N, nothing. Nothing!"
Whatever the vampire said next was lost on me as a hundred voices screamed directly into my ears. When I didn't so much as blink in response, he nodded his head and pointed to the door.
I took the clear dismissal for what it was and seized the opportunity to leave. Walking away, heart still in my throat, ears ringing, I took one last glance back at the mysterious new vampire.
He stared back at me, a look close to concern adorning his features.
Unnerved, I swivelled my head back around and disappeared into the safety of the forest.
oo00oo
Entering the Grill the next day, I reflected on how strange my encounter with the new vampire had been. His demeanour had been calm and composed through our entire conversation, never once showing an inclination towards violence.
And yet his aura had been an ancient one.
Unlike the Salvatore brothers, whose strength and speed were worn on their sleeves like a peacock's. The other man's power had been subtle, hidden beneath the creases of his suit and the shine of his shoes. That action alone spoke of restraint and confidence. It was as if he felt no need to flaunt his power because he knew that when he needed to act, he would do so swiftly and efficiently.
He was different from the others and that made me uneasy.
"Weirdo," I mumbled to myself, "Freak."
I noticed Damon sitting at the bar at the same time he noticed me.
'What is he doing here?' I panicked, 'Did he follow me? Is he stalking me!? WHAT THE HELL!?'
Internally freaking out, I made a beeline for my friends' table, all the while keeping my head down and actively avoiding the vampire's gaze. My reasoning following the 'If I don't acknowledge him, he won't acknowledge me' line of logic.
Greetings went around the table as I sat next to Jake. Darcy and Joeanne had already ordered some fries and continued snacking on them merrily while I tried desperately not to dissociate. I had only agreed to leave the house that morning because mom had promised to pick me up and drop me off, eliminating the chance of bumping into a supernatural being.
However, it seemed my plan had been flawed. It hadn't taken into account the possibility of meeting a vampire/witch/and-what-else while inside the restaurant.
A lack of foresight I was deeply regretting now...
"I know you," A deep voice said, snapping me back to the present.
I looked up to see my friends all staring at one Damon Salvatore towering over our table.
My heart nearly vacated my rib cage.
"How?" I asked, throat suddenly dry.
Smiling slightly to himself, he walked off, leaving us without a reply. Turning back to my friends, eyebrows raised, they met my bewildered look with their own questioning ones.
"Who was that?" Jake asked.
"I... think… His name is Damon Salvatore?" I replied.
"What did he want?" Joeanne asked next, popping a fry into her mouth.
"I honestly don't know."
'Why did he talk to me? Why? Why? WHY!?' All at once, I felt like I was going to be sick.
Excusing myself from the table, I was making my way over to the restroom when a hand suddenly snagged my elbow and yanked me into an empty booth. I yelped, surprised, to find myself sitting next to none other than Damon Salvatore.
He ran a thumb over the back of my hand, still caught in his grip.
Never before had I been so aware of the delicate bones underneath my skin. All it would take was one firm squeeze from the vampire and my bones would be crushed like twigs. Instinct told me that if I tried and screamed for help now, that is exactly what would happen.
"Strange little girl winds up in the middle of the woods during the middle of the night," he said, still rubbing slow circles into my skin, "Mildly concerning until you consider you also ended up in the parking lot the other night."
My stomach plummeted.
Did he know? Had he seen me that night? I had been so sure I'd gotten away with it! How? HOW!?
Damon, no doubt sensing my panic, leant forward and increased his grip on my wrist till I could feel the bones grinding together. It took every inch of self-control I possessed not to wince.
"Sound like a coincidence to you, pipsqueak?"
I didn't respond. How could I when my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth?
"I compelled you. It didn't work. Why?" He demanded.
"Compel?" I said, more to myself than as a question for him to answer. I doubted he would answer even if I asked anyway.
He proved me right when he abandoned that line of questioning and asked, "Who are you?"
Again, I didn't respond. My mind was still stuck on the mystery of 'compulsion'.
His grip on my hand tightened to the point I physically felt my bones bending.
"Niamh!" I gasped in pain, "My name's Niamh O'Connell!"
The crushing vice loosened ever so slightly. I felt tears forming in the corner of my eyes.
"Right then, Niamh, What. Are. You?"
"What do you mean?"
"Hmph," His grip loosened even further as he leaned back in the booth, a contemplative look on his face. I swallowed hard, a single tear finally slipping free. In that moment, the urge to cry out for help was stronger than ever before. But a simple recall of how this vampire had ripped into Bonnie's throat the night had me hesitating.
'If I drew the attention of the people around us, would he tear into their throats as he'd done to the witch?' I asked myself.
The possibility kept my mouth shut.
The vampire looked back down to me, gaze questioning.
"Either you don't know or you won't tell," he said, then shrugged, "Either way, I'm gonna need you to stay away from now on."
"Stay away from what?" I blurted, only for a new realisation to dawn on me. "Wait. There's more?!"
"Not for you there isn't."
With that ominous statement, he released my hand, stood up, and sauntered out the door. I followed him with my eyes and stared at the door for minutes after he stepped through.
'Compel'
What had he meant when he said he'd tried to compel me and it hadn't worked? Was he referring to that hypnotising voice he and that other vampire used? Or was he referring to something completely different?
The ambiguousness of it all twisted my gut further.
Abandoning the booth, I reached the toilet stall just in time to throw up.
I was never going to hang out at the Mystic Grill again!
oo00oo