Chapter 2: first day and night
My first undead sleep was uneasy, for the forest canopy was not strong enough to keep the sunlight from my grotto at high noon. A gap in the leaves above produced a triangle of light that moved and finally clipped my left hand, and as I shifted away my heels and backside started to burn. It was like being on the cusp of an oven. I squirmed, almost burrowing to find the lovely darkness.
Voices interrupted my sleep a second time, somewhere in the afternoon. A couple walking the trails, visiting someone from the Fleurimont hospital, digesting some recent news for themselves or a loved one. I needed a better spot for the next day, I decided, fleeing into black unconsciousness, a strange sleep without dreams.
When sunset faded at the end of my first undead day, the dryness had returned. But the ache in my chest was gone. I felt around my ribs. No sore spots. And I hadn’t thrown up any of the chipmunk blood, so the night’s diet would be straightforward. It was time to wander farther afield, and make myself a more proper lair.
I passed by the darkened student residence just once, looking in on my room. All empty, all ready for a newcomer, my worldly possessions expelled. For a moment I was frozen, and then I got the hell out of there.
So I jogged the woods for my first full night post-change, off the trails now, snatching the unwary. Chipmunks, a groundhog, a bat just before midnight that I took with a sudden leap off the ground. I was jumping far and high now, enjoying the rushing wind through my hair as I sliced along, enraptured with this feeling. The feeling of new strength – I had been athletic enough in human life to occasionally enjoy that new-strength sensation, and I was practically drunk with it tonight.
When I slurped up the bat until it was as dry as a fallen leaf my hearing changed noticeably for a time, a new buzzing and sharpness that merged with my vision to make even the darkest spots plain to me. This confusing blend of sensation was much like the blend between taste and smell, and I stopped in a small valley to close my eyes and tease apart this new thing. It was true echolocation. With eyes open I slowly worked out the differences caused by the delay when looking/hearing at greater distances. There were ‘colours’ in my new hearing as well, or something like colour that seemed to correspond to the texture of objects reflecting sound. Stone and wood were quite different, and the surface of water had an indescribable sonic ‘colour’ of its own.
But a price came with my new hearing, much like the overwhelming brightness of the bathroom lights at the start of my change. Stopping by a road in a protective thicket in the early morning, squinting as car lights approached and then faded, the engine’s roar was now deafening. My head buzzed, and felt ready to crack, and I feared that I would scream like some of the little creatures I had consumed. Beyond sheer volume I could also perceive the changing pitch of the approaching and receding car engine as never before, even the Doppler effect. Night one with this talent was an agony if I strayed outside the forest’s quiet, the rapid movement of lonely vehicles rising and falling in frightening confusion, stretching and distorting the ‘sound-images’ I was just starting to perceive
Another problem arose when I approached a small, nameless stream on the other side of a highway, separating me from some taller, darker woods, sure to have secret places that would remain comfortably dark in the middle of the coming day. My steps started to get heavy, and suddenly I was pulled to me knees, three feet from the running water. Even rolling my eyes left and right started to become hard, and I was forced to look down as the feel of extra gravity grew and grew. There was a brief moment of total panic, the feel of being trapped.
The effort that it took to back up a single step was incredible, as if I was hauling heavy rocks. But my eyes could move again, and the next lunge away from the stream was like hauling maybe only one heavy rock.
Somehow, I’d need work out all of the rules. Sardonically, I wondered if I could figure out which religion was the one real one – maybe by trying to tiptoe toward a Catholic church, a United church, a Methodist church, a synagogue, a mosque, a Scientology centre, whatever those buildings Mormons used, and so on. I was confident that I knew the basics: garlic, mirrors, silver, holy trinkets of whichever faith was the real one, maybe salt, and definitely running water. I couldn’t help but moan when I wondered about the first night that it rained.
Maybe volume of water mattered, and a light sprinkling of rain would be harmless.
I was struggling to recall my reading of Dracula – not Stoker’s original book, but the Great Illustrated Classics edition for kids. There were so many more recent stories introducing new abilities and rules and fantastical histories, and I guessed that I would have to start my research with the classic, though it was unlikely that even Stoker’s novel was the first tale to study. I recalled the Dracula had travelled across the English channel to reach London by ship, killing everyone aboard. Could I travel over the stream with a barrier of metal, like a ship’s hull or a bridge?
Priorities. I needed solid darkness because dawn was coming, and my legs were trembling as I rose back to my feet, retreating away from the failed attempt to cross the stream. The sparser woods would have to do, and I couldn’t go far – I felt like I had just worked out far too hard. I wondered, fleetingly, if I could exercise my way across streams. I knew that I was faster and able to jump far and high, but just how strong was I?
Well, not very strong now. I stumbled back into the woods where I had come. I had travelled in a meandering journey this night, collecting furry snacks, bounding up and down forested hills, watching and warily zipping across the occasional rural road. The hospital grounds where I had first slept were perhaps eight kilometers away, but as I looked back in that direction I felt … something. Tiredness, confusion, the half-belief of what I really was – they interfered with my sense-making, but I felt …
Danger.
Some whispering extra sense, like the bat’s sonar, was creeping in, donated perhaps by all the scurrying beasts I had claimed tonight. It was an instinct that I didn’t doubt in the moment – afterward I could doubt, but in the moment I was absolutely certain. This vague danger was remote for now, but whatever the threat was it was back there, near the hospital. It had found my first sleeping spot, and if I returned that way I would die. I might sleep in safety in the coming day, but I would have to keep moving, find a way beyond any debilitating stream.
What was chasing me? My new instincts and senses had nothing more to say.
With dawn coming within an hour, I found a deep thicket with thorns I couldn’t feel upon my skin that had a dark and dry heart, the soil below rich but barren – sun didn’t reach here to let anything grow. This would do. Chirping birds filled my ears in the pre-dawn, and the exhaustion hit all at once – the stream had nearly pinned me, and out in the open it would have killed me.
But as I lay down, still more of a living human in posture than corpse, my head listed to the east, toward the hospital, where that hunting presence was searching.
Chapter 3: River Problems – and Worse
Image credits: Mario Hains, Roland Zh