03/02/2024
Heirs to the Night
By DR Sage
The journey to our new home was long and arduous. We traveled for weeks across barren landscapes, seeking any sign of refuge. Food and water were scarce, and we grew weak from exhaustion. My father, a strong and stalwart man, struggled to keep pace. My mother, ordinarily vibrant and full of life, grew pale and drawn. My siblings and I, just children then, whimpered from thirst and hunger.
One night, a strange mist rolled in as we huddled around a meager fire. It carried with it a foul, rotten smell that turned my stomach. Out of the fog emerged a pale and gaunt creature with eyes that glowed red like embers. It let out an unearthly shriek as it descended upon us.
My father attempted to fight it off, but the creature possessed unnatural strength. It slashed at my father with razor-sharp claws, spilling his blood across the ground. The rest of us could only watch in horror as the monster tore into his flesh, feasting on him like a rabid animal. My mother begged for mercy, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. The creature ripped her throat out in one swift motion, silencing her cries.
My siblings and I huddled together, confident we would meet the same gruesome fate. But the beast merely looked us over with its glowing red eyes and laughed sinisterly. "You shall join us soon enough," it hissed before disappearing into the fog from whence it came.
We buried my parents there, under the light of the moon. It was then that we noticed the changes taking place within us. Our skin grew pale, and our appetites changed. Food no longer satisfied us. Water did not quench our thirst. We realized with dawning horror that we had not escaped the plague after all - we had become it.
The creature's promise echoed in my mind. We would "join them soon enough." This was not the end but only the beginning of our cursed existence. We were no longer human but damned creatures of the night. And one day, we too would feed.
We knew we could not stay in that place, so close to where our parents had been so viciously ripped from this world. We gathered what little we had and continued our journey. We moved only under the cover of night, for the sun burned our skin. Any mortals we encountered shunned us or ran in fear.
Eventually, we came across an abandoned castle nestled deep within a dark forest far from villages. Here, we made our new home, able to avoid the judgmental eyes of humans. We darkened the windows and slept through the days, emerging only when the moon rose high in the night sky.
At first, we tried to resist the cravings that racked our bodies. But the gnawing hunger became too much to bear. Despite our best efforts, we slowly began preying upon mortal men and women, quenching our undying thirst for blood. With each passing decade, our humanity slipped further away, and we descended deeper into horror.
Centuries passed. Villages rose and fell around us, but we remained frozen in time. We watched history unfold, detached and isolated in our crumbling castle. We were cursed to walk the earth eternally, belonging neither to the realm of the living nor the dead.
The passing of the ages changed the world outside our walls. Lands were conquered, and kings were overthrown. New technologies emerged, and societies evolved. But within the castle, time stood still. We continued our bizarre existence, feasting on blood when necessary, sleeping away the days.
My siblings and I eventually went our separate ways, desiring solitude and distance from the constant reminder of our eternal damnation. But we would reunite at the castle every few decades, our paths crisscrossing like the threads of some twisted tapestry.
Sometimes, our victims were evildoers like thieves, murderers, or worse. It is as if dispensing some perverse justice upon them could absolve us of our sins. Other times, we fed indiscriminately, for blood was blood, and our thirst knew no bounds.
I, in particular, struggled to cling to whatever shreds of humanity remained within me. To never entirely give myself over to the demon I had become. I read voraciously, surrounding myself with literature and music. Seeking stimulation for a mind and soul locked for eternity in a state of living death.
My sister Isabel embraced the darkness, delighting in our blood-soaked existence. She would lure men back to the castle with her beauty, teasing and tormenting them before finally ending their lives. Their blood provided sustenance, their fear entertainment.
My brother Henry eventually lost himself entirely to the beast within. He became a savage creature that fed and killed without thought or remorse. I could see nothing of the sweet boy I had grown up with in the monster he had become.
And so we continued our haunted lives, despising and relying upon each other. Our fates were bound together, our souls long lost. We were the damned, and this decrepit castle was both our sanctuary and prison.
A century after a century passed until finally, I decided I could bear my cursed existence no more. On the one-thousandth anniversary of the night we were turned, I returned alone to the castle, my ancestral home and site of so many horrors.
I lit a fire in the grand hall, watching the flames engulf the interior. Centuries of cobwebs and dust went up in smoke. I felt an immense weariness as dawn broke and sunlight began streaming through the windows. I had lived far too long. A millennium as one of the walking dead. Perhaps it was time at last for my soul to be released.
I crawled into a massive four-post bed, whose opulent curtains had long ago decayed to moth-eaten rags. My skin blistered in the sunlight, smoke stinging my eyes. But I felt utterly at peace. Whatever end lay beyond this mortal realm, even oblivion itself, would be preferable to the nightmare of my unnatural existence.
As the sun's rays warmed my face, I closed my eyes. The smoke swirled around me, fire crackling in the distance. I sighed again, a thousand years of sorrow and pain leaving my body. And then I crumbled away to ash in that great bed, finally free from my earthly torment. The castle continued burning until nothing remained but scorched rubble.
Perhaps my siblings still walk the earth to this day, creatures of the night bloodthirsty and haunted. But as for me, my spirit is departed. Whether I now reside in heaven or hell, I cannot say. But I rest in knowing that my part in this immortal tragedy is finally concluded. My name and tale shall fade into obscurity, hopefully forgotten with time. For I wish this curse upon no other living soul.
