12. Eternal Sunshine.
A sour taste forms in my mouth as I sit here and listen to the bull that's coming from Vlad. I turn to look at him, batting Ingrid's hand from my head and getting to my feet. I glare with cold eyes, the fear that was rushing through every pore washing into resentment, anger, all of the things I was feeling for Ingrid before, re-directed at Vlad.
"So it was you who wiped my memory. My family, the Van Helsings, Mr Renfield."
"Renfield? I forgot about that spider licker," I hear Ingrid say. "What a cretin. You'll pay for reminding me of him, breather." I'm too fired up to pay any attention to that little non-quip. All of my attention is on Vlad. "You're the reason for these past years of confusion, loneliness, self-deprecation?" I'm shaking I'm so pissed.
"You were like that before I met you, Robin," Vlad mutters with narrowed eyes. I crinkle up my nose, balling my fist. It slams into his face like a truck, sending cold blood showering. Ingrid squeals in delight and claps her hands. It looks like the older guy might do something, but Ingrid wags her finger at him and he slinks back, concerned eyes going to the fallen Vlad.
"What was that for?!"
"The past thirty-two months."
He gets to his feet a little woozily, hand going up to bleeding nose. I push my tongue against the inside of my cheek and then launch another hook at his face, putting my all into it. He drops. A streak of red blazes vibrantly against pale skin. I step towards him, looking down with a set expression. "And that was for the year that I did know you. Whoever you are, whatever you involved me in. Not that I remember any of it."
He sits up, cradling his nose and gawping at me. I lean further towards him, holding him tightly with my two dark eyes. "You say that you wiped my memory for my own good?"
"Yes! I certainly didn't do it for my own benefit!"
Standing up straight, I flick my eyes towards Ingrid. "Your sister is right. You wiped our memories to protect only yourself. You can't bring someone into your life and then blip them out of it at your will. Haven't you ever seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?"
"What?"
"When you decided to clear my memory of whatever the hell went on in my missing year did you not consider how screwed up that would leave me? How disconnected? There's a gaping void inside of me. I don't know what is meant to be there. I've been struggling with it for all these years. And now I'm finding some of this junk out. Like you're all vampires and some deal went on three years ago that triggered you to cast me aside, that triggered The Princess of Darkness here to sire a bunch of thaggish New-Rave minions." I put my head to the side and intake a steady lung of air. "Which then led to Stokely becoming a suburb of Hades, or something thereabouts. It all fits. Slots right into place."
My eyes wander around this room, this ancient old castle and all of the associations that come with it. I can picture myself three years and some months ago. A goth kid that didn't fit in, seeking other worlds to bury his sense of social inadequacy under. I must have been stoked to come across this place.
"When I was thirteen I was obsessed with all this stuff. I can see how enthusiastically I'd hook onto this whole deal. If you were going to pull a memory-wipe trick on me, that was the time to do it. When I first met you. But the cut off point was pretty shortly after that time. You made a choice and you chose to wrap me into your world."
Vlad takes a step closer to me, looking at me through imploring eyes.
"Yeah, but things were getting pretty bad at the end there, Robin. You don't remember, but it was getting really bad and I had to save you and your family from it."
"That maybe so. But wiping our memories was not the way to do it. It made us vulnerable."
Vlad blinks and thinks this over. Swallowing down, he nods and says, "I think I get what you're saying. It was wrong of me to take liberties with other people's heads. I should have given you a choice. You would have chosen to stay in the loop. And the loop would have slipped right over your head and become a noose, Robin."
"Don't give me that crap!" I shout. "It's my neck. It's up to me to make my own mistakes."
"Ok. I appreciate that. Give me a few days to recuperate and I can try to restore your memory for you," he says with a certain softness. Fixed and firm, I shake my head.
"I set out to get the straight. To fill this void. I don't need every last detail. I just need to roughly know where my head is. I have it straight. As straight as I need it. I don't feel so lost and vulnerable any more. I've got what I wanted from you. And now I'm going to say what I would have said if you had given me the choice to three years ago." I pause, flickering my eyes closed for a moment and steeling myself to pour out words from my mouth that I have been swallowing down year after year.
"I'm never going to be a part of your world. I am human. And I am realising what that means, what it means to be human. It's not all bad. And I can't be something I am not. So I'm going to walk away from this now. Put it behind me. Live out my life and be done with it."
His face smoothes over. A ghostly silence fills our space. Ingrid is grinning over the scene, enjoying the show much more than her brother. Their father sticks to the shadows, but I am all too aware that there are three sets of cold glinting eyes in this room and only one heartbeat. After a sort of 'moving on with life' sigh Vlad nods.
"You and I were once best mates. You belonged to a world I desperately wanted to be a part of, and vice versa. We constantly disappointed one another because we both took what we had for granted and wished for things that were beyond our reach. Neither of us appreciated what we had and we were constantly jealous of one another. It was a shallow relationship in which neither of us were truly happy." His fists are balled up tight. His whole body is stiff like board, like he's having trouble accepting the words that are falling out of his mouth. He presses his lips together, expression clearing into neutral. "You are right. It's time to put childish things aside. It is time to embrace what we really are. Deal with it and move on."
Ingrid rolls her eyes. "Finally he gets it through his thick skull. I could do with a brother I actually respect; someone on a level, not just those useless half-fangs."
"You have to give Dad his power back," Vlad says. "If you don't do it willingly then it'll have to be settled the old fashioned way."
Ingrid puckers her lips and considers this for a moment. "Well…I suppose it's a fair trade. My stolen powers in exchange for a half-decent sibling. But we'll be on equal terms. No tedious sexist comments about my gender. And I want your shake on it."
Vlad nods and extends a hand out to hers. She takes it and shakes it. "I want a second shake when you've merged with your other half."
"Excellent!" comes the older guy's voice. He steps into the light, a smile spreading over his face.
"I need your shake too, daddy-o," Ingrid snaps. She gets a raised brow in return.
"Go on dad, shake. If I really am the 'chosen one' and it's me to take the crown, then I'm going to stir things up a bit. This gender inequality is old fashioned and counter-productive. I'm sure it's one of our major failings as a species. Men and women are different, adapted to be suited to different things. That doesn't make one better than the other. Just different. Unless we push at the old ways we will stagnate. It's part of the problem with vampires. It's part of the reason things are going tits up for us. There's too much bureaucracy and too little common sense."
Very begrudgingly the old man shakes the hand of his daughter. "Very well. To the blood mirror then, to make Vladdy a fully fledged vampire, and for me to be reunited with my devilish good looks and unparalleled powers."
I'm not sure of where to go from here. I know where I want to go, and that is far away. What I'm not sure of is how. The three of them get to their feet and I take my chance to slip off. I'm half way across the room when Ingrid's voice shatters the silence.
"The mirror can wait a few more moments. Now's the time for Robin here to live out those last few minutes of his human life and be done with it, as he so eloquently put it." The three vampires group together, looking my way with hungry eyes.
"Oh be a sport and give the lad a thirty second head start," says the older man. "He's been so entertaining this evening. We owe him that much."
I part my lips, breath catching in my throat and eyes going wide.
"Now is the part where you run," prompts Vlad. Flustered I push my feet into action and do just that. Ingrid starts to countdown from thirty. I'm at the door by twenty. The latch is still stuck. I clatter it uselessly. Ten is called and I free the catch, creaking the door ajar just enough to slip through. My feet crunch on the parts of my previously dropped mobile phone. I'm not even at the gate when Vlad appears in front of me.
"One. Zero," comes Ingrid's voice through the gap in the door.
"Hard luck," he sneers, stepping towards me with golden eyes. There's something in them that seems soft; like maybe this is all an act and really he has no intention of harming me. Like this is all for my benefit somehow; that he's doing it for me, and harming me is the last thing on his mind. I can't be sure that it's not a vampire trick, some form of hypnosis.
It makes no odds. We are what we are, and maybe he's soft but he's still got two sharp fangs and that's enough for me. He's pulling some subtle hypnosis on me and I have to get out.
I feel around in my pocket for a novelty pencil, knowing it'll just snap, but there's nothing else I can do. My hand finds a small strange shape. I pull it out and see a clove of garlic. It must have peeled off from the main bulb earlier. I throw it at Vlad's face and it lands squarely between his two eyes. I don't know if it does anything particularly supernatural to him. There's no smoke or anything like that. But it does distract him long enough for me to get running again.
I'm hurtling down the road, my feet slapping hard against the tarmac. As I round the corner I see two bright eyes glaring at me. Not Vlad's. Car headlights. Bright, blinding, close. Great; I'm doing okay escaping from three evil vampires, only to run full pelt into a van. The breaks screech as I brace myself for the crunch. It doesn't happen.
"Robin!" comes my father's voice. I open my eyes and see our campervan an inch away. The feeling that I am being watched from all angles creeps into me. Things stalk in the shadows. I shuffle to the side and throw the sliding door open, scrambling in and slamming the door shut behind me.
"Reverse. Get gone!" I shout, pressing my face to the window and searching for movement. I catch a pair of glinting eyes as the van reverses. They reflect the light back, dimming as the van speeds backwards. We make it out of the small road and Dad swings the van around, pulling it into our driveway.
"Well whatever was all that about?" asks Dad, turning the lights off.
"Why are we stopping?" I ask.
"Because we're home, freak-boy," Paul says. I turn to look at the road to the castle, on edge and paranoid.
"Can't we go to the hospital? I want to see Chloe. Is she okay?" My attention is snapped back into the van, worried and inquisitive eyes darting between my brother and father.
"She's in a stable condition. We won't know more until the morning. The doctors, they said it was best to go home."
"Well, is Mam in the house then, or what?" I ask, looking at the dark windows and thinking about the fact that I might have invited those vampires into my house all those years ago, when I was in with their crowd. I'm clued up with the ways and wherefores of vampires, and I know that once they've had an invite they can come and go as they please.
"She wanted to stay with Chloe. She was going hysterical with worry for where you were. We tried calling your mobile but it was dead."
"Can we go to the hospital, please," I say through clenched teeth. Stuff is starting to build up. When you're immersed in a truly stressful situation, a life threatening position, you phase-out of it. It's a coping technique, probably. You don't let it get to you too much, not while you need your mind on the matter in hand. But now it's almost over I can feel the shakes coming on strong. I want to get out of this place so badly. "Just drive!" I shout when nothing happens. Dad grunts and puts the car into gear and I relax into my seat, melting into it.
The final chapter will be put up sometime in the next week or so. Please review and let me know if you are enjoying the story. Thanks muchly. X