Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Moonlight steals through the granite crack. The rotten lid of the wooden crate is rent asunder with splintered ease. It reveals decaying satin, and tattered rags; and the translucent, and yet strangely incorrupt corpse of a man.

His face seems carved from marble, the illusion shattered as the eyes slowly open. Ice blue irises unveiled after ten years of dreamless sleep, they fill with disdain as they move across his rotten garb.

Hunger pounds…

He lifts himself slowly out of the ‘final’ resting place, the hermit retreat.

A cruel smile briefly flickers across his white, bloodless lips, disclosing ivory daggers – the cruel weapons of the stab and puncture.

His hand tenses, opening and closing in a stubborn mortal habit, attempting to move blood through fingers with no blood. Moonlight glints upon the bone white, razor nails.

Heartbeats call…

Hair as black as raven wings betrays the pallid flesh of the unblemished living corpse. He carefully stands, he legs unused to carrying any weight, the weakness of hibernation.

Why now? Why awaken now?

First to feed and then… Then to find more suitable clothing. Theatrics? Living up to mortal expectations.

He eases open the granite door. For now I must be hidden.

The hunger is all consuming.




© 1990 & 2006 Andrew M Boylan