The Quarry

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Beyond Ink and Shadow

ANGELA SENIOR

‘The words have left me,’ said the writer to the vampire.

As soundlessly as ghosts drifted over snow, the words had crept away from the writer. As she wrote she willed the words to return, but the reams of paper merely blackened under her pen. Even fleeing to her laptop to escape the clutter, one typed sentence was rarely followed by another. In her house, she found no solace. The words were not there anymore.

So, the writer escaped to the nearest coffeehouse to write. Each night she tried not to stare at the stranger she passed - how his vigil under the streetlamp drew her gaze to the historical house opposite him. Instead, she focused on the cobbled streets that tripped her when she walked too fast.

Not once did she let her curiosity lead her into his world.

In turn, the vampire had wandered upon her by chance. He had taken in her furrowed brows as she slashed ink across innocent paper and decided to share a piece of himself with the writer.

‘The issue is the invitation,’ The vampire mused after taking a gulp of syrupy red liquor. Currently, he was bound by mystical rules and a gnawing hunger. Barred from entering, each kept him on the wrong side of the cobbled street, far from the place he still called home. The vampire was poetic as he lamented his fate. But the writer was not yet made of poetry and could only stumble after his lead.

That night, the writer let her ink dry.

*

The second meeting of the writer and the vampire took place in the same night-worn coffeehouse. The writer refused decaf, and the vampire managed something red in his cup. The writer never asked where he had gathered his sustenance for she feared the truth might be worse than her imagination. Together, they schemed the vampire’s return.

‘So, if I were inside the house and invited you in…?’ The writer asked after misled plots of high stakes burgling and nasty falls from loose trellises fell short. She thought it might be best to lean into simplicity.

‘Well…yes,’ the vampire answered reluctantly.

‘I don’t need to be the owner?’

‘No, can you imagine the havoc the rental system would wreck upon my kind. Lord, no. I’d be kept out of everywhere,’ the vampire bemoaned.

‘And you haven’t thought to try it before? All you’d need to do is ask a friend. Or ask an acquaintance?” The writer added, feeling that she might not yet be a friend to the vampire.

‘In my earlier days I did. A work friend of mine,’ the vampire paused and sipped at his red as the writer leaned forward in the carefully crafted suspense. “I consumed him, so to speak. He wanted what he thought I had. But he never considered what he would lose…I never appreciated being confronted with my vampiric tendencies. So, afterwards, I stopped being amongst people, lest they be the same.’

The writer leaned back in her chair and looked down at herself.

‘What about me then? Shouldn’t I be fleeing if you tend to eat your friends?’

‘Oh, no. You’ll be fine,’ The vampire dismissed. But the writer drew out the silence. The hamster wheel of worries in her head needed more crumbs from him. The vampire sighed at her and leaned forward gently.

‘I believed, upon first sighting you, that perhaps making you prey was apart from my own wishes. You had your own struggles after all,’ he said as he struggled to meet her eyes.

‘Sympathy? That must be new for you,’ the writer joked to free herself from the growing weight upon her chest.

‘I was never one to appreciate a bitter taste,’ the vampire shrugged as a smile escaped him.

‘Shame though. It might’ve given me something to write about.’

*

Nights later, the vampire shared that there was a day on the vampiric calendar where the cold lingered close to the skin and blood tasted like ice. It was on that coldest day of the year when the writer would try her luck.

The vampire couldn’t trust kindness yet but relented to the writer as her plan spun out before him. The writer planned to knock on the front door and ask for sanctuary from the cold. She would claim to be locked out and waiting for her friend when she stumbled across the historic plaque on the house. The vampire would join her when the sun had set.

It was late afternoon when she approached the house alone.

Answering the door was an eccentric historian as British as the land they both stood upon. The vampire had told her that the historian had owned his home for four decades. He had also warned her that the historian was the stuffy recluse type who rarely had visitors. But the writer doubted that would be a problem, as she thought that someone with historical interests must be eager to share their knowledge. Especially with a writer.

The first thing the writer noticed about the historian was that he looked warm; all rugged up in downy floor-length robes. The second was that the historian was attentive. His brows creased in concern for her plight and his eyes lit up when she showed interest in the house’s history.

As planned, the historian eagerly invited the writer inside.

*

When the vampire had told the writer about his home, it sounded simple and practical. In his words, the house was sparse because he had not yet earned enough to fill it. But he loved it all the same. The vampire remembered his home for the way he was welcomed back into it. Never had he missed a night of his wife’s welcoming embrace and the jumping joy of his two children until his new life claimed him. He had not warned the writer of how grand it would be inside.

The historian had lavished the place as if it were his own forest to tend to. The writer couldn’t keep her eyes locked on any of the knick-knacks piled atop the wooden furniture. Each seemed to be bound tight in the mysteries of an era left behind. Her mind would weave itself into a frenzy until she settled again upon the splash of green wallpaper. Behind each corner was beyond what she had expected, and she should have at least expected the books.

The historian was delighted by her awe. He pointed out many of his secrets to her as they moved further inside his labyrinth. Never filling the gaps with a lecture but letting her own mind run wild.

The grandest of all his efforts came when he invited the writer to have tea in front of the fireplace. That toasty room was his truest treasure. Hung on each of its walls were sketches, paintings, and photographs. The careful curation took the writer’s breath away as in each of the frames stood her newest friend.

Each piece of art held a steady visage. A lone figure in dark clothes and brimmed hat stood shadowed under the streetlamp. The writer knew that if she were to look outside the room’s window, she would see that setting with her own eyes.

The vampire had taken the writer there only a week ago. Together, they took in the vampire’s home from the outside. She had peered at the windows and pondered what may be awaiting them. But she had never considered what view might be captured from the inside.

How long the vampire had been lost outside settled for the first time in the writer’s mind. She realised that while she had been told of the vampire’s longing, she had never felt it as starkly as she did then. On these walls he couldn’t see, the vampire was a lone figure scattered through the past.

The historian guided the writer into an armchair and quietly placed a cup of tea into her hands. He then presented her with a freshly printed modern picture. It was different from the rest as the vampire no longer stood alone.

The writer had been added to his history.

They stood on opposite sides of the streetlamp, heads turned to the other in conversation. The historian had captured a moment where the writer had the most cunning grin on her face. But it was that image of the vampire that arrested her. On those walls carved with history, the vampire was hidden. But there, in that photograph with the writer, he was revealed.

The vampire’s cool eyes were fixed on the writer as he smiled through whatever scheme she’d concocted. He stood tall; his arm hefted to push his dark hair out of his face.  Hope was all wrapped up in that photograph that had finally unveiled the vampire. And it seemed the historian had drawn from its well.

‘Since you have seen the most recent, perhaps you should also behold the first.’

The historian handed the writer a framed sketch dated circa 1890. It was another point of difference. In it, the vampire stood at the streetlamp with his back to the viewer as a woman approached him. She held a young girl on her hip as a boy dragged her along. The boy’s other hand was outstretched to the vampire, fingers curled loosely as he pointed them all forward.

The writer held the sketch at all angles to try and make out the young family’s faces, to see them as the vampire had once described. But the artist had not allowed his pencil to finish the finer details.

She returned her gaze to the historian and saw the man’s desperation as clearly as she could the care that shone throughout his exhibit.

The historian had spent his life with this myth and its mysteries. He confessed that he had even witnessed the ghost himself. That capturing it with his phone had been easy. But his feet always stalled at the front door. Something about the way the shadows clung to the stranger had kept him far away. They were always constant, creeping at the edges of the house.

The historian had never seen its true form or human face until the writer had come along.

The historian pleaded with the writer. He begged her to bring the ghost to him for he had much to share. But before the writer could answer, or either of them noticed that darkness danced outside the window frame, a solid knock sounded. The moment they had all been awaiting had arrived.

Excited, the writer said that the knock must’ve been her friend. She felt wicked then as she cast onto the page a grand reveal and lead the historian to his front door.

The historian allowed her to lead him, though he seemed caught as if his hopes were sand in an hourglass. As he hesitated the writer opened the door, revealing the lone vampire on his doorstep.

The vampire’s eyes did not stray from the writer. He stood with eyes full of hope, shadowed hat wrung tight in his restless hands. But before she could utter an invitation, the historian startled to life. He rushed forward to grasp the unsettled hands, welcoming his ghost as he pulled the frozen vampire passed the threshold.

*

Before the historian could have fun with his piece of the past, they gave the vampire time with what he had lost. The writer remained by him. Sometimes she would sit quietly in the corner and write as the vampire spent time with those early sketches. Mostly, she would comfort him with her newfound poetry as they all sat around the fireplace.

Now bound, they shared their stories freely. The vampire found new comfort in his home. The historian was no longer alone with the past. And the writer was reunited with words again. Each day they poured forth from her…But perhaps that will be a story for another day.