Fevre Dream Read online

  Young as I was, I have vivid memories of the cell in which we were imprisoned. It was cold and damp, all rough stone, with a great door of iron so thick and heavily barred that even my father’s great strength was no use against it. The cell stank of urine, and we slept without blankets, in filthy straw scattered over the floor. There was one window, but it was far above us, slanting through a solid stone wall at least ten feet thick. It was very small, and the outside was heavily barred. We were actually below the ground, I think, in a sort of cellar. Very little light filtered down to us, but of course that was a blessing in disguise.

  When we were alone, my father told me what I must do. He could not even get to the window, the gap in the stone being so narrow, but I could; I was still small. And I had the strength to deal with the bars. He ordered me to leave him. He gave me other advice as well. To wear rags and draw no attention to myself. To hide by day, and pilfer food by night. Never to tell anyone how I was different. To find myself a cross, and wear it. I did not understand half of what he said, and soon forgot much of it, but I promised to obey. He told me to leave France, and to seek out the servants who had fled. I was not to try to avenge him, he said. I would have vengeance enough in time, for all these people would die and I would live. Then he said something I have never forgotten. “They cannot help themselves. The red thirst is on this nation, and only blood will sate it. It is the bane of us all.” I asked him what the red thirst was. “You will know it soon enough,” he told me. “It cannot be mistaken.” Then he bid me go. I squeezed up the narrow aperture to the window. The bars were old and rusted through. Since it was impossible to get to them, no one had given thought to their replacement. They broke away in my hands.

  I never saw my father again, but later, after the Restoration that followed Napoleon, I made inquiries after him. My disappearance had sealed his fate. He was clearly a sorcerer as well as an aristocrat. He was tried, convicted. He lost his head to a provincial guillotine. Afterward they burnt his body, because of the charge of sorcery.

  But I knew none of this then. I fled the prison and the province and wandered to Paris, where survival was easy in those days, so chaotic was the situation. By day I took refuge in cellars, the darker the better. By night I came forth and stole food. Meat, chiefly. I had little taste for vegetables or fruits. I became a proficient thief. I was fast, silent, and terribly strong. My nails seemed sharper and harder each day. I could claw through wood when I had a mind to. No one noticed me or questioned me. I spoke good, cultured French, fair English, and a smattering of low German. In Paris I picked up the gutter tongue as well. I searched for our vanished servants, the only others of my race I had ever known, but I had no clue how to find them, and my efforts came to nothing.

  So I grew up among your people. The cattle. The people of the day. I was clever and observant. Much as I looked like those around me, I soon realized how truly different I was. And better, as I had been told. Stronger, quicker, and—I believed—longer-lived as well. Daylight was my only weakness. I kept my secret well.

  The life I led in Paris, however, was mean and degraded and boring. I wanted more. I began to steal money as well as food. I found someone to teach me how to read, and thereafter I stole books whenever I could. Once or twice I was almost caught, but I always got away. I could melt into shadows, scale walls in the winking of an eye, move as quietly as a cat. Perhaps those who pursued me thought I changed into a mist. It must have seemed that way at times.

  When the Napoleonic Wars began, I was careful to avoid the army, since I knew they would require me to expose myself to daylight. But I followed behind them in their campaigns. I traveled through Europe in that fashion, saw much burning and killing. And where the Emperor went, there was loot for me.

  In Austria in 1805, I saw my great chance. On the road by night, I chanced upon a wealthy Viennese merchant fleeing before the French armies. He had all his money with him, converted to gold and silver, a fabulous sum. I stalked him to the inn where he spent the night, and when I was sure he was asleep, broke in to make my fortune. He was not asleep, however. The war had made him afraid. He was waiting for me, and he was armed. He pulled a pistol from beneath his blankets, and shot me.

  Shock and pain overwhelmed me. The blow drove me to the floor. It had caught me in the stomach, square, and I bled profusely. But then, suddenly, the flow began to ebb, and the pain lessened. I got up. I must have been a terrible sight, pale-faced and covered with blood. And a strange feeling came over me, one I had never felt before. The moon was coming in through the window, and the merchant was screaming, and before I knew quite what I was doing I was on him. I wanted to silence him, to clamp my hand over his mouth, but . . . something took hold of me. My hands went to him, my nails—they are very sharp, very hard. I tore open his throat. He choked on his own blood.

  I stood there, trembling, watching the black blood spurt out from him, his body thrashing on the bed in the pale moonlight. He was dying. I had seen people die before, in Paris, in the war. This was different. I had killed him. A great passion seemed to fill me, and I felt . . . desire. I had read often of desire in the books I stole, of lust and the carnal urges to which man is heir. I had never felt any of it. I had looked on naked women, on men, on couples locked in sexual congress, and none of it had touched me. I could not comprehend all this nonsense I read of uncontrollable passions, lusts like fire. But now I knew them. The blood flowing, this fat rich man dying in my hands, the noises he made, his feet beating on the bed. It all excited some animal deep within me. The blood drenched my hands. It was so dark and hot. It steamed as it came from his throat. So I leaned forward and tasted it. The taste made me mad, feverish. Suddenly I had plunged my face into his neck, ripping with my teeth, sucking up the blood, tearing, swallowing. He stopped thrashing. I fed. And then the door opened, and there were men with knives and rifles. I looked up, startled. How I must have terrified them. Before they could act, I was through the window and gone into the night. I had the presence of mind to grab the money belt as I went. It had only a fraction of the man’s fortune in it, but it was enough.

  I ran long and far that night, and passed the next day in the root cellar of a farmhouse that had been burned and abandoned.

  I was twenty years old. Among the people of the night, a child still, but now coming into adulthood. When I woke that night in the root cellar, covered with dried blood and clutching the money belt to me, I remembered my father’s words. I knew what the red thirst was at last. And only blood will sate it, he had said. I was sated. I felt stronger and healthier than ever in my life. Yet I was sick and horrified as well. I had grown up among your people, you see, and I thought as you did. I was no animal, no monster. There and then, I resolved to change the way I lived, so such a thing might never happen again. I washed, stole clothes, the finest I could find. I moved west, away from the fighting. Then north. I took rooms in inns by day, hired coaches to travel from town to town each night. Finally, with difficulty due to the war, I made my way to England. I took a new name, determined to make myself a gentleman. I had the money. I could learn the rest.

  My journeys had taken me about a month. My third night in London, I felt strange, sick. I had never been ill in my life. The next night was worse. The night after, finally, I knew the feeling for what it was. The red thirst was on me. I screamed and raged. I ordered up a fine meal, a great rich red slab of meat I thought would slake the yearning. I ate it, and willed myself to calm. It was no use. Within the hour I was out on the streets. I found an alley, waited. A young woman was the first to pass. Part of me admired her beauty; it burned in me like a flame. Another part simply hungered. I almost tore her head off, but at least it was over quickly. Afterward I wept.

  For months I despaired. From my readings, I knew what I must be. I had learned those words. For twenty years I had thought myself superior. Now I found I was something unnatural, a beast, a soulless monster. I could not decide whether I was a vampire or a werewolf, which puzzled me. Neit
her I nor my father had the power to turn into anything, but my red thirst came on me monthly, in what seemed a lunar cycle—although it did not always coincide with the full moon. That was a characteristic of the werewolf, I read. I read a great deal on those subjects at that time, trying to understand myself. Like the werewolf of legend, I often tore out the throat, and I did eat some small amount of flesh, especially if the thirst was on me badly. And when the thirst was not on me, I seemed a decent enough person, which also fit the werewolf legends. On the other hand, silver had no power over me, nor wolfbane, I did not change my shape or grow hair. Like the vampire, I could only walk by night. And it seemed to me that it was the blood I truly craved, not flesh. But I slept in beds, not coffins, and had crossed running water hundreds of times, easily. I was certainly not dead, and religious objects bothered me not at all. Once, to be sure, I spirited away the body of a victim, wondering if it would rise as a wolf or a vampire. It stayed a corpse. After a while it began to smell, and I buried it.

  You can imagine my terror. I was not human, but neither was I one of these legendary creatures. I decided my books were useless to me. I was on my own.

  Month after month the red thirst came upon me. Those nights were filled with an awful exultation, Abner. In taking life I lived as never before. But there was always an afterward, and then I was filled with loathing for the thing I had become. I slayed the young, the innocent, the beautiful, they above all. They seemed to have an inner light that inflamed the thirst as old and sick people could not. And yet at other times I loved the selfsame qualities I was drawn to kill.

  Desperately I tried to change myself. My will, so strong normally, was nothing when the red thirst was on me. I turned to religion with hope. When I felt the first tendrils of the fever in me, I sought a church, and confessed everything to the priest who answered my knock. He did not believe me, but he agreed to sit and pray with me. I wore a cross, knelt at the altar, prayed fervently, with the candles and statues all around me, safe in the house of God, one of his ministers by my side. Within three hours, I turned on him, and killed him right there, in the church. It caused a small sensation when the body was found the next day.

  I tried reason next. If religion had no answers, then what drove me could not be supernatural. I slaughtered animals instead of humans. I stole human blood from a doctor’s office. I broke into a mortician’s office where I knew a fresh corpse had been taken. Each of these helped, they quieted the thirst somewhat, but they did not end it. The best of the half-measures lay in killing a living animal, and drinking its blood still warm from its body. It was the life, you see, the life as well as the blood itself.

  Through all of this, I protected myself. I moved about England several times, so the deaths and disappearances of my victims would not be concentrated in one locale. I buried as many bodies as I could. And I finally began to apply my intellect to my hunting. I needed money, so I sought out wealthy prey. I became rich, and then richer. Money breeds more money, and once I had some, more came to me honestly, cleanly. I had become quite fluent in English by then. I changed my name again, styled myself a gentleman, bought myself an isolated house on the moors in Scotland where my behavior would draw little attention, hired some discreet servants. Each month I went away on business, always overnight. None of my prey lived anywhere near me. The servants suspected nothing.

  Finally I hit upon what I thought might be the answer. One of my servants, a pretty young maid, had been growing more and more familiar with me. She seemed to like me, and not simply as an employer. I returned her affection. She was honest, cheerful, and quite intelligent, if uneducated. I began to think of her as my friend, and I saw in her a way out. Often I had considered the alternative of chaining myself up, or otherwise confining myself until the red thirst had passed, but I had never hit on a scheme to make it work. If I put the key in reach, I would use it when the thirst was on me. If I tossed it away, how would I get unchained? No, I needed the help of another, but I had always heeded my father’s warning to trust none of you with my secret.

  Now I decided to take a risk. I dismissed my other servants and sent them away, hired no one to replace them. I had a room built in my house. A small windowless room with thick stone walls and an iron door as thick as I remembered from the cell I’d shared with my father. It could be secured from the outside with three great metal bolts. I would have no way out. When it was complete, I called my pretty little maid in, and gave her instructions. I did not trust her sufficiently to tell her the full truth. I was afraid, Abner, that if she knew what I truly was, she would denounce me, or flee at once, and the solution that seemed so close at hand would be gone, along with my house and property and the life I had built. So I told her only that a brief madness came on me each month, a fit such as epilepsy brings on. During my fits, I said, I would enter my special room, and she must bolt me in and keep me there for three full days. I would take food and water in with me, including some live chickens, to take some of the edge off the thirst.

  She was shocked, concerned, and quite puzzled, but at last she agreed to do as I bid her. She loved me in her way, I think, and was willing to do almost anything for my sake. So I entered the room, and she locked the door behind me.

  And the thirst came. It was frightening. Despite the lack of windows, I could feel when day had come and gone. I slept by day, as always—but the nights were a blur of horror. I killed all the chickens the first night, gorged on them. I demanded to be set free, and my loyal maid refused. I screamed abuse at her. Then I simply screamed, incoherent sounds like an animal. I threw myself at the walls, pounded against the door until my fists were bloody, then squatted to suck at my own blood eagerly. I tried to claw through the soft stone. But I could not get out.

  On the third day I grew clever. It was as if my fever had broken. I was on the downhill side now, becoming myself again. I could feel the thirst waning. I called my maid to the door, and told her it was over, that she could let me out. She refused, and said I told her to keep me confined for three full nights, as indeed I had. I laughed and admitted that was true, but said the fit had come and gone, that I knew it would not come again for another month. Still she would not unbar the door. I did not rave at her. I said I understood, praised her for following orders so well. I asked her to stay and talk, since I was lonely in my prison. She agreed, and we talked for almost an hour. I was calm and articulate, charming even, very reconciled to another night inside. We spoke so reasonably that soon she admitted that I sounded quite like myself. I told her what a good girl she was to be so conscientious. I enlarged on her merits and my affection for her. Finally, I asked her to marry me when I was free again.

  She opened the door. She looked so happy, Abner. So very happy and alive. She was full of life. She came to kiss me, and I put my arms around her and pulled her to me. We kissed several times. Then my lips trailed down to her neck, and I found the artery, and opened it. I . . . fed . . . for a long time. I was so thirsty, and her life was so sweet. But when I let her go and she staggered back from me, she was still alive, just barely, bled white and dying but still conscious. The look in her eyes, Abner. The look in her eyes.

  Of all the things I have ever done, that was most terrible. She will be with me always. The look in her eyes.

  Afterward my despair was boundless. I tried to kill myself. I bought a silver knife with a handle fashioned in the shape of a cross—the superstitions still had a grip on me, you see. And I cut my wrists open, and lay down in a warm bath to die. I healed. I fell on my sword in the manner of the ancient Romans. I healed. I was learning more of my abilities every day. I mended so quickly, with only a brief time of pain. My blood clotted virtually instantaneously, no matter how gaping the wound I inflicted. Whatever I might be, I was clearly a wonder.

  Finally I hit on the way. Outside my house, I attached two great iron chains to the wall. By night I donned the manacles, and threw the key as far as I was able. A very long way. I waited for the dawn. The sun was worse
than I remembered. It burned and blinded me. Everything blurred. My skin was on fire. I think I began to scream. I know I closed my eyes. I was out there for hours, closer and closer to death. There was nothing in me except guilt.

  And then, somehow, in the fever of my death, I decided to live. How, why, I cannot tell you. But it seemed to me that I had always loved life, in myself and in others. That was why health and beauty and youth drew me so. I loathed myself because I gave death to the world, and yet here I was, killing once more, though this time the victim was myself. I could not wash out my sins with more blood, more death, I thought. To atone, I must live, bring life and beauty and hope back into the world to take the place of all that I had taken. I remembered my father’s vanished servants then. There were others of my race in the world. Vampires, werewolves, warlocks, whatever they might be, they were out there in the night. How did they deal with the red thirst, I wondered. If only I could find them. I could trust my own kind where I could not trust humans. We could help each other conquer the evil that consumed us. I could learn from them.

  I decided I would not die.

  The chains were very strong. I had seen to that, fearful that I would seek escape from pain and death. But now I found a strength in my resolve greater than anything I had ever known, even when the thirst was driving me on. I determined to break the chains, to pull them from the stone walls where I had fastened them. I pulled and strained and yanked. They would not give. They were strong chains. I had been in the sun for hours and hours. What kept me conscious I cannot say. My skin was black and burned. The pain had grown so terrible I scarcely felt it any more. Still I worked at those chains.

  Finally one of them broke free. The left. The ring set into the wall came out in a crumble of masonry. I was half free. But I was sick unto death, having strange visions. I knew I would faint soon, and once I slipped to the ground there would be no getting up again, ever. And the right chain seemed as strong and secure as when I had begun my struggle, an endless time before.