15. a, The Pleasure and the Pain
The mists, those that were fogging my mind, cleared in an instant; focus returned and I turned it with full force to the task at hand, namely working out whether I was to meet my new people or the executioner. All those thoughts of Vlad and The Grail disspated, leaving a hollow where they'd been. That void then filled, too, its ragged edges drawn together by the vacuum that the departure of impossible musings had created.
Once more I led the descent down the splendid spiral staircase, taking in its beauty as best as I could. Behind me, the two hoodies matched my every step, their footfall echoing mine from only a yard or two behind me.
The turbulent mist had similarly cleared overhead; the artificial sun sat blazing above us, so intense that I almost didn't notice that the clouds were now following us down the stairs, billowing around our ankles as if somehow directed towards us. No, that wasn't quite right; the mist seemed sentient, as if it belonged to a remote larger organic being.
From out of nowhere, I began tittering to myself; the impromptu mirth soon became a full bellied laugh. It had suddenly occurred to me that, to anyone watching (and I had the unnerving feeling that someone was), I would look like a guest on a '70s chat show, descending onto the floor of a TV set in a cascade of cloud, borne of dry ice hidden out of sight in the wings. Where that thought had originated, I knew absolutely not.
Trying to regain control, I forced myself to looked down at my feet (for the want of any better notion). Surprisingly. it worked; but only because, within in a second, I was mesmerised. The sun's rays, plundering the mist at my ankles, picked out opalescent, mother of pearl and aurora borealis pigments embedded within the ivory staircase, glinting furiosly now that the sun was at full muster.
Millions of sparks, like November fireworks or the first frost forming amidst tarmac's nooks and crannies in early winter, were reflecting and refracting beneath my feet and beneath my palm as it passed over the pallid banister. The entire static structure became fluid, twinkling as if the sculptor had trapped a whole galaxy at the beginning of creation in the very stone when they had begun carving this incredible staircase. From some way off—in another life, perhaps—I imagined canned studio applause ringing in my ears as my mind began to wander again.
Before it could wander too far, it was snapped back to reality (or what passed for reality, now). In an instant, the cloud had taken on a bitter cold edge, so cold that it felt 'angry'. Mist settled on my forearm, inflicting a sudden shooting pain. It felt as if a rattlesnake had snapped its jaws around the muscle, proceeded to dig its teeth in deep, puncturing veins, dispatching its venom to seep into my very bones and was finally leaving a hollow numbness in its wake.
Wait! Vampires don't feel the cold, I told myself, so how could a cloud, cold or otherwise, inflict me? The numbness was beginning to spread, making it difficult to think. But, as I forced myself to believe the pain couldn't be real, the numbness began to subside; in a moment or two, the ache was but a memory. A nasty memory, but gone, just the same.
Struggling to decipher the mystery, the answer came to me suddenly, as if carved into my mind by a bolt of lightning. The answer heralded from the same unidentified quarter whence I'd earlier heard the 'applause'. I thought I'd only imagined that audience; now, I wondered. Yes, there was a definite source, but it was neither tangible nor visible, at least not from this vantage point so high up on the spiralling staircase.
Some unidentifiable someone—unknown, but somehow familiar—had implanted the sensation of pain into my mind. Not only the sensation, but the imagery of the snake, its jaws and the venom to accompany it. The bite had felt wholly real and physical, even down to the spreading numbness.
The 'pain' must have been my mind's reaction, likely out of habit, to that synaptic invasion. Or perhaps to the touch on my mind itself, as if someone had slipped their hands between my skull and brain and had began to massage the nodes, all the while wearing barbed wire gloves to convey the sensation, which wasn't all (but mostly) unpleasant.
So, vampires can feel pain, then, albeit not in the traditional sense, namely through a physical act. Should I have been offended that whoever wielded this power had tried to shock me? If they had wanted to hurt me with any conviction, they could have done so, of that I was certain. With that power at their disposal, they had the capacity to stave off my amateurish act of self defence, and some. But they had desisted as soon as I resisted them.
Had I got it wrong? Could it be that they didn't possess the power with which I credited them? Or could it be that their power had a range and that I fell just outside it? Absolutely not. I felt them retract the sensation as soon as they knew I'd received their message; they had more in their arsenal and were satisfied enough in the knowledge that I knew so!
But offended by the attack? No, I was fascinated. What's more, hungry. Imagine having such a power, to be able to implant pain into someone's mind, let alone remotely, but from a distance? For a moment, I did.
15. b, Who is Thine Enemy?
For the first time, a yearning for the power with which vampires are endowed engulfed me, entirely. Yes, I'd already toyed with bending sight. I was also working on Slippage, and with some limited success, to date. I'd even ran so fast across rooftops that it was tanatamount to flying. But this ability to control what someone is thinking to the point that it causes them physical pain (albeit implied)? This was another level of supernatural, a power akin to divinity.
I halted suddenly, and stood there a second, for two reasons. First, I was trying to work out how one could conjure this very special trick. But also, the shock of the 'bite' had, metaphorically, stolen my very breath. I needed my body to catch up with my mind and vice versa.
Thankfully, I think the hoodies were as distracted by the view from the staircase as I had been. Maybe they were as unfamiliar with this level beneath the main house as I. At any rate, I felt no sudden prod in the back for me to proceed.
Using this respite, I applied logic to the process of the mind pain implantation based on what I'd felt. It wasn't as straightforward as trying to work out why a slap on the wrist stung so.
After several moments reflection, I deduced that this talent would work only if the type of pain the perpetrator was trying to inflict reflected the victim's situation, or something from their past. For me, I happened to feel the 'pain' at the place where the scar from one of Billy's incisions was still visible on my arm. Coupled with the image of the snake that the perpertrator 'sent' with the instruction to my brain to sense pain, it really had felt as though I had been bitten. Not only bitten, but had felt the venom coarsing through my veins, too.
I futher deduced that the sadist imparting the pain would also need to have established a prior connection with the victim's mind. With a sense of familiarity of the attacker, the victim's brain's defences wouldn't rear up at the recognition of their presence. Animals, dogs in particular, excel in this trait.
Upon that realisation, it was as if another jigsaw had fallen into place, this one at the behest of an invisible hand. Given my specialist knowledge of vampires prior to becoming one, I knew that legend suggests that one has to invite a vampire into their home before the vampire's powers can take effect. Similarly, when Harker had arrived at Castle Dracula, the Count was like a study in stone until Harker extended pleasantries. Yet further, there were countless accounts of the Count assuming the shape of a wolf to take into account. The impression of a higher level of sense, an animalistic sense, was too great to ignore.
But my reasoning suggested more than simple familiarity at play, here. In order for this talent to work, the perpertrator would also need to be able to 'see' the situation in which the victim found themselves, like viewing a live feed of events. Without making the type of pain relevant to the victim, wasn't it likely that any sensation would seem so alien and disassociated with their predicament that it would have no effect upon them? Yes, relevance was key to making remote pain work, too.
Assuming that my forensic process was correct, and I had a strong feeling it was, that meant I already knew my attacker, even if I couldn't yet identify them. The strong feeling of familiarity I felt at the 'touch' of the invasion, a solicitous feeling, like returning to an ex-lover's bed while they were in a relationship with (an absent) someone else, bore out the logic. What that meant for me in the future, I had no idea. The shudder that wracked my body this time was real.
But, my situation aside for a moment, just imagine if all those factors aligned and you were devout on hurting someone. The torture that someone who possessed that power could administer—without even having to get near the victim—would be unimaginable, interminable, deadly. And the victim wouldn't know to defend themselves until it was too late to do anything about it.
The next logical step was, of course, to discover who here would want to cause me pain, or to at least send a message that they could, should they so desire. I tried to recapture the feeling of familiarity that was wrapped around the intrusion. Even through the barbs, their touch was still frustratingly intangible, like smelling a certain brand of perfume as you walked alomg the street, then trying to remember of whom the scent reminded you. But the harder I tried to identify the attacker, the quicker their essence slipped away into the shadows of memory, like a raindrop dissipating into a reservoir, a full-blown dream shrinking down to the echo-blip of the Big Bang on a Cathode Ray Tube television set, before blinking out completely.
Perhaps more pressing, I needed to establish how I could protect myself should whoever was responsible for the 'snakebite' decide to try to take another nip. That process, I decided, was likely to be more difficult than finding out the perpertrator in the first instance. And, perhaps, more disturbing if it was someone whom I'd previously thought of as a friend. After all, who else but someone who knew me would feel the need to get inside my mind?
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Updated 10th June, 2020
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