TITLE: Undying AUTHOR: Elanor G EMAIL: ElanorG@yahoo.com URL: http://www.yahoo.com/ElanorG RATING: R for blood and guts CATEGORY/SPOILERS: Uh...Story, inspired by Tooms DISCLAIMER: Don't own these characters. Doing this for fun, not money. Big, big thanks to JET and MaybeAmanda for beta reading! XxXxXxXxXxXxX He does not know what he is. He does not know why he is. He does not know where he came from. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers the first time he was Hungry. There was always simple animal hunger, of course, but this was different. This Hunger would not be satisfied by carrion on the side of the road, or famine-starved bodies hastily buried in shallow graves. All of his senses, all of his thoughts were focused on the chosen prey, and it was a hunger not just for the rich organs in their bodies but for their whole essence. For the thrill and the challenge of the hunt itself. He does not know what he is or where he came from. He is Undying, and that is all he needs to know. XxXxXxXxXxXxX 1723 The old priest barred the door and shut out the night. Good to have a door between him and the cold darkness. He was weary to his bones. The world seemed to be turning black. Between the marauding English despoiling the country, the hard, desperate men lurking on the road, and the gaunt specter of famine striding the land, the priest sometimes wondered if these were the Last Times. But he struggled on, staving off despair and trying to care for his flock. Why, just today he had found a young man lying in a ditch not far from the church, gaunt and half-dead with hunger. With difficulty he had helped the young man up and brought him to the rectory. He laid him in a cot in the kitchen and fed him a cup of broth. This seemed to ease the young man's pain, and he fell to sleep without saying a word. In a little while the priest would go tend to him again. But for now, he needed a few hours sleep, and a sip of wine by the fire. He shut and locked the door of his chamber out of habit, even though there was no one else in the house besides the sick boy. In these times one couldn't be too careful. Then he sighed and went to the fireplace. Only ashes in the grate. Where was his tinder- box? The priest knelt, wincing, on the stone floor. He threw dry furze into the grate and struck his flint. But no matter what he did, the fire would not catch. The priest frowned. Perhaps there was something blocking the flue? He leaned forward and turned his face up the black opening. Instead of chill air, he felt a hot rush of foul breath. The last thing the priest saw was a pair of glittering yellow eyes. Then he was overwhelmed with a pain so great he could not even cry out. The widow Shanahan found the old priest's body in a pool of blood when she came to cook his breakfast the next morning. Before she fainted, she thought she had never seen a face showing such pure fear, or such pure astonishment. XxXxXxXxXxXxX His thoughts are not like ours. His mind is something more than animal, but it would be false to say it is less than human. Instead his mind is sideways to ours, a mixture of animal cunning and methodical human cruelty. He has the lightning instincts of a predator, but his thoughts are long and slow. The years are nothing to him, and he is in no hurry. XxXxXxXxXxXxX 1783 My Dearest Sister, I am so distracted with Grief and Terror that I know not if my words will make any Sense. Perhaps if I write to you now it will help clarify my frantic Thoughts. Forgive my shaking Hand, dearest Fanny, and the Tears which spot this Page. My beloved Wife is dead. She did not come down to Breakfast and so I sent her Maidservant to see if all was well with her. Kate rushed back down and said that the Door of the Chamber was lock'd, and that furthermore her Mistress would not respond to any Call. Full of Concern, I went up and entreated Anne to open the Door but there was no Answer. At last I employed some of the Servants, sturdy Fellows, to assist me in taking down the lock'd door. When finally we entered the Chamber, a Vision of such Horror awaited us that even the strongest Man turned white and some did void their Bellies. Blood was everywhere. Anne lay on her Bed, and her fair Face was frozen in a Rictus of Terror of which I have never seen the like. She was in her dressing Gown and I could see there was a Wound near her Belly. As if in a Dream, I bent closer to see what had happened. No! Suffice to say she was murdered in a Fashion most horrible and cruel. I cannot further describe the Outrage committed on the Person of my beloved Wife, as if she were a Beast in an Abattoir! I am only glad that our Son was spared this sight. How did this happen? If it were a Burglar, nothing was taken save for a small Bottle from her Dressing-table. The Window was locked, as was her Door, and the Servants saw no one in the Night. It is as if a vile Demon came down the Chimney. An absurd Thought, yet my Mind keeps returning to it. I know not what I shall do, Fanny. I think we must leave for our House in London, and abandon our Estates in Ireland. I can no longer bear this accursed Place... XxXxXxXxXxXxX He remembers leaving the Old Place. He remembers villagers chasing him with lit torches through the bog. He remembers coming to the great city and seeing the signs about America: Men Needed, Plenty of Work, Land for All. "Name?" the man had barked at him. He had to think about this. Finally he chose the name of the last prey, the young man whose body he had thrown into a well. "Tooms." He remembers the crowded and miserable ship full mostly of men and boys looking for labor. He remembers how much he enjoyed the journey. XxXxXxXxXxXxX 1843 Joe came to the rail of the ship for air. The hold was so wretched that he felt he would rather endure the cold than spend one more minute below deck. He stumbled a little on the wet boards - the whiskey was beginning to go to his head and his stomach was queasy. He was beginning to doubt the wisdom of this journey. He leaned against the rail and breathed in the clean salty air. Blackness all around, and no one else here on deck. Good. They did not want "passengers" (cargo, more like) on deck. There was no one to force him back below with the sick and the wailing children and the fighting drunks, the air thick with the smell of vomit and shit and unwashed people. Better than starving at home, lad, Joe told himself sternly. He rubbed his stubbled face and sighed. Then he saw something that nearly made him jump out of his skin. There was something climbing up the side of the ship. Joe blinked. It must have been the whiskey. He looked again and it was still there. Should he tell someone? He leaned over further to get a better look. He saw a pair of yellow cat-like eyes gleam in the faint light. Joe was dead before he could scream, and the ocean took his body. No one knew he was gone, and no one missed him. XxXxXxXxXxXx His favorite pastime is to sit and look at his small collection of treasures. The oldest one is a flask - the whiskey in it long since evaporated. He lost the things that he collected in the Old Place: a small wooden cross, a bottle of perfume, too many other souvenirs to remember. Tooms likes to sit and look at his little treasures for hours on end, absorbing the essence of their former owners and remembering how they tasted. It is his only entertainment, for the most part. He once went to a movie - it was not often that he moved among people but he was waiting for night to fall and he felt restless and bored. The story was about a vampire, an Undying thing who drank the blood of his victims. Tooms had chuckled throughout the movie. The other patrons looked at him with annoyance, then alarm as his chuckles grew to wild laughter. The others began to get up and leave, spilling popcorn and clutching their pocketbooks, until Tooms was alone in the theater. He laughed and laughed and the sound was like the thin howl of a wolf. *Blood.* Who could survive on such thin stuff? It was too absurd. XxXxXxXxXxXx 1933 Frank Briggs struck a match for O'Brien's cigarette before lighting his own. The brief light and the smell of tobacco was comforting in this cold, dank place. "Dunno, Frank," said O'Brien, his pudgy face thoughtful. "This place sure gives me the willies. I'll be glad when we can get out of here." "Aw, Billy, you're getting too soft in your old age," Briggs joked. The place gave him the willies too, but damned if he would admit it to the older detective. O'Brien shook his head. "You young guys are all the same. You think you're so tough. Then there comes a time when you see something real God-awful and you ain't the same after. For me it was the Wilbur case. More'n fifteen years ago. Boy, what that sonuvabitch did to that girl. That one still gives me bad dreams." Briggs had heard about the Wilbur case until he was plenty sick of it. Billy O'Brien would trot out that old story any time he was soaked in whiskey. "Yeah, Billy, you told me all about it." "You young guys," said O'Brien again, shaking his head. "Detective Briggs? Detective O'Brien?" Briggs looked over at the young cop. "What?" "I...I think we found something." The young cop's face was so pale it seemed to glow in the dim light. "I think you ought to come see this." "Hang on, Moody. We're coming down." The walked through the cavernous room and their footsteps seemed to reverberate throughout the mill. The workers had been sent home and the place was unnaturally quiet except for the hushed voices of cops. A rotting wood door at the end of the room led to a stone stairway, descending into blackness. Another uniformed cop stood at the top of the stairs, looking a little green. "It's some kinda sub-cellar," he said. "But I ain't going down there again. No, sir." Briggs rolled his eyes and turned on his flashlight. He started down the stairs, O'Brien and Moody close behind. And it seemed to Briggs that with every step the darkness closed around him, like a fist squeezing his heart. The smell was awful. Finally his feet hit a dirt floor and the beam of his flashlight swept across the room. There were bodies there in the corner, stacked up like cordwood. "Oh, Jesus and Mary," said Moody. He turned around and raced blindly up the stairs. The sound of retching followed. At first Briggs stood where he was. He didn't have to go too close to see how their torsos were torn up, or to see how their faces were frozen in masks of horror. Maggots crawled over them, but that wasn't the worst of it. It was their faces, their terrible faces, and the feeling of death and terror in this room. He felt his heart beat faster and faster. "Aw, Frank, will ya look at this," murmured O'Brien, shaking his head. "Hey, Frank?' But Frank Briggs didn't hear him. He was too busy squatting in the corner of the room, puking out his guts. XxXxXxXxXxXx During the day he pretends. His job lets him move among people and observe potential prey. He spends his nights in discovery. The city is full of old, dank tunnels beneath the streets and over the years Tooms has memorized their ways. He loves narrow secret spaces and dark corners. He loves finding hidden passages and sliding into them, his body reconfigured, his skin strecthed taut, his bones elastic. Just like a hand fitting in a glove. It's part of the challenge. The more exciting the hunt, the more delicious the reward. XxXxXxXxXxXx The memory of that room stayed with Frank Briggs his whole life. It happened again in 1963. They said he was just another old drunk by then, a washed-up old man. They told him he was crazy. They told him to keep away from the case but he couldn't, he couldn't. Sitting at night nursing his whiskey Briggs realized he had become like O'Brien. And finally he understood his old partner. For how could you forget evil like that, except with a bottle nearby? How could you turn away? It happened again in 1993. By then he was in a home, unable to take care of himself. But he read the papers avidly, and when he saw the story on George Usher's death he was back in the mill. He was back in that room. A young woman from the FBI, of all places, finally came to talk to him about it. If you had had told Frank Briggs sixty years ago that he'd be talking about this case with a g-man who was a woman, he wouldn't have believed it. But the world had changed, and so had Briggs. He was more than happy to drag out all the old clippings. She was very serious and very interested in everything he said. She was awfully young, too. Briggs realized that she was a little like him as a young cop - so goddamn sure of himself, so unafraid. She hadn't yet seen her Terrible Thing. After the young agent left, he took out the flask of whiskey hidden under in his sock drawer and had a long swallow. The memory of the room stayed with Frank Briggs his whole life, even after all his other memories faded. XxXxXxXxXxXx Tooms sits rocking on his heels, studying his most recent souvenir: a cross on a golden chain, a pretty glittery thing reflecting the dim light from the boarded-up window. He usually waits until afterwards to collect a remembrance. But this one is special. Her cross reminds him of the first prey so many years ago, the foolish old man with the wooden crucifix in his room. The woman herself reminds him of the Old Place - her smell, her bright hair and skin. But there is something else about her, something rich and strong, an inner brightness that he wants but does not understand. Tooms has never felt anything like it. The cloud-eyed man, her partner, has it too, a little bit. But not like her. Maybe she is Undying like me, some voice inside him whispers. A ridiculous thought, and Tooms grins. No one is like him. Even if she were, it wouldn't matter. For tonight he will take that brightness from inside her, and feast on her, and then she will be dead like all of the other prey over the years. He sits and rocks and watches the dangling cross. And he waits for night to fall. End XxXxXxXxXxXx Thanks for reading this demented little offering - let me know what you think! Elanor G ElanorG@yahoo.com