The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 2 - Sensitivity

When I woke up, the next evening, and went out into sitting room, there were those two standing in the middle, together, silently.

I stood and watched them without making a sound, and remember it clearly. I thought then that they were communicating, but know now that there was nothing but that silence between them. Dasius, who is taller than his master, holding Laurent closely, their faces a breath apart, small movements, as if in orbit of each other, in gravity. While I watched them, their faces did not touch, though Laurent's body hitched occasionally, from tears which had already dried.

The previous evening I had walked with him, and he had not spoken with me either. He had taken my arm and together we walked back over the fields someone else had rented. "Is it your land?" I had asked him, and he had touched my hand, which held his elbow. Far from the house, where there was a cliff, he sat beside me in the grass, and we listened to the water I could not see. Around us, sheep made low noise, reassuring each other about us. For the entirety of it, his hand touched the back of mine. As light crept up the coast, and he felt me begin to shudder in pain, he helped me go back, and hung rough curtains in my room, and kissed my temple very tenderly.

In the daylight hours I heard whispers, shouting hushed down to thin breath, desperate crying and pleas. "Find him, find him, you have to find him." I listened for as long as I could stay awake, but the weak light filtering around the edges of the curtain hurt me, and I shut my eyes and slept. That evening, when I found them in their silence, I went outside and walked around the edge of the house. There, there was a little milking stool, and I sat upon it. After a little while, Dasius came around, and startled, seeing me. He had a leather crop in his hands.

"Oh, I didn't see you," he said, retreating. "I didn't see you." He was barely visible in the dark, long black hair, eyes which caught the light.

I held my neck.

"It's quite dark," he whispered, as if in offering.

I asked him how old he was.

"No age, no," he said, in that same hesitant tone. "Can you see?"

"Not well."

"Well I will come back soon. I'm sorry. We keep our horse down the road a little. We board her. Laurent can't stand the sound, he says. Doesn't like horses. I don't know. I'll be back."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"You know it. I know Nicky told you," he said, shifting his weight to his left hip. The crop was forgotten at his side.

"Dasius isn't a real name. Where does it come from?"

"I," he started, then, "This is a sensitive issue, you see. It is sensitive, all right? I will come back soon."

"My head hurts," I said.

"Excuse me a moment. I will go, and when I come back, your head will be better."

"Were you sleeping by the hearth? Don't you have a place to sleep?"

"Please stop asking me questions. You don't understand. I have something to do now."

I sat awhile longer after he had gone.

It was very quiet there. All of the sounds were familiar ones. Wind blew a low whistle over the long grass of the fallow field. Sheep sought each other far off, making their soft sounds of wondering and greeting. In the darkness, they huddled together, growing back their long wool for winter. Crickets formed their continuous din, so well-known to my ears that I hardly heard them at all. When I looked up, there was no moon, which accounted for the dark, but many stars. I searched my legs for insects, and hummed.