IWTVTober Day 1: Church
Challenge Credit goes to @TAZAT0UILLE on Twitter.
Although many vampiric myths, especially those about how to deter a vampire, are patently untrue, the striking image of a cross is certainly one that drives into the heart of many a creature of the night. Though not because the great image of Jesus’ suffering stands a chance of cleansing the darkness from a vampire’s soul, not at all. Perhaps it is something as close to empathy as a creature of no human-like heart could feel.
Armand is not a Christian, never was. He had played at Muslim for a few weeks when he was Rashid. The sprawling urbanity of Delhi had been muddled with persons of many faiths: Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian. All walks of life. He does not remember what his family worshipped, when he had been Arun. But it was certainly not God, or Jesus, or whoever. No sight of a man strung up on two pieces of crossed wood had ever conjured in his mind a reason to be sorry for the sins he had committed, in both body and mind.
In Europe, the cathedrals loomed above the cities, stone giants with thousands of watching, carved eyes. Armand had never stepped foot in one, let alone went to bow his head to rattle off a prayer or two. Though his French coven had dwelled deep in the catacombs, nestled in the bowels of some church perhaps, he had refused to take any of the routes that exited into those echoey, marble halls. One evening, in the late spring of 1949, when the last of the freezing mists clinging to the streets of Paris were infused with the amber haloes of the streetlamps, Armand had listened to Louis muse about the oddity of churches here in Europe, how they were less grand in America, less tall. Louis had said that, in many ways, cathedrals were like vampires: cold and ancient, with the feeling as though every crack in the stone facade held secrets.
Deep in the black, twisted thing lodged between his ribs, Armand had felt as though that statement was aimed at him somehow.
Now, almost 80 years later, Armand sits in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine one evening, eyes boring a hole into the back of a dark wooden pew as the others around him have theirs bowed in prayer. Why he decided it was here that he needed to sit, he can not answer. Truly, that evening, it was as if his feet had driven him to walk to this particular spot, wavering as he watched the parishioners make their way into the building for a midnight mass. Thoughts and whispers diffused the air, filling Armand’s head like a heady perfume. Inside the cathedral, packed in with the cattle, his head swims with the latent notions tickling his subconscious, sinking into his synapses like a balm that infuses into the skin.
Throughout time, he had found that human thoughts were at once both base and alight with something that even he, in his five hundred years of unlife, had failed to grasp. But then again, he also knew humans to be subtly manipulative with their thinking, as if they were aware that he - and supposedly an Almighty - was listening. He categorized and memorized the various shades and aspects of postulations that trickled from the cloud of human subconscious around him at all times. When the parishioners had their heads bowed in prayer, for instance, Armand felt himself awash with all kinds of soft, wishful desires, flowing through his veins and numbing his senses.
‘Please, Lord, help my wife to see that I love her.’
‘Lord, I don’t know if I have the strength, give me a sign.’
‘Please let him be okay.’
Notions of things that were surely not so out of their control, less the weakness of cattle had been underestimated. They always left a bitter sugary taste in Armand’s throat - at least how he’d remembered sugar to taste anyway.
As the priest at the front of the cathedral begins his sermon, and the parishioners raise their heads, Armand can sense the thoughts becoming less fanciful. Brutish and honest, they bubble in and out of Armand’s ears and bounce through his brain like a spring, wound tight to be released at a moment’s notice.
‘I wanna get out of here so bad. I’m exhausted!’
‘Can this man hurry up so I can take a piss?’
Armand’s eyes remain forward, the buzz of human need around him boring into his head and nestling into the nooks and crannies of his skull. If it had not been for the unlucky loud man that had been stumbling around at 2 a.m. that he had drunk the other night, Armand would be - what was the lovely term he’d learned from Daniel? - ‘jonesing’ for the pumping, raucous blood of someone from this congregation. Maybe somebody in the back, who is thinking something along the lines of ‘where’s the nearest McDonalds?’ as they itch to type it into their phone.
Then, among the rabble, a singular wish, familiar from before, still held in that hopeful glow that lingers from the silence of prayer.
‘Let him be fine. Dammit, he better be, or I’ll. . .oh I don’t know.’
Armand’s head whips to the middle aged woman sitting just in front of him, brown curly hair tied back away from her face. In the unmistakable slump to her shoulders, the severe angle of her nose, and the streak of anger that laced her words, even as she speaks them in her head, he senses a familiar territory that he once hoped to claim, but let slip away. Of a young man twitching on the floor of a dingy apartment fifty years ago. Armand watches her intently, head tilted as he pushes into her mind, looking for more. His power digs into the woman’s brain like claws, dredging through the fluff of whatever latent thoughts she was holding before -
A flash. Studio lights on a book, sitting on a table between two large mugs of coffee and two men. One of whom rants and raves, familiar acerbic syllables decorating each explicit insult.
Daniel.
Silver halo of curls surrounding his lined face, perpetual smirk lining his mouth, sat between the deep, carved lines of age adorning his cheeks and chin. Sunglasses perched on his severe nose, hiding his eyes.
Daniel.
As he spits words of contempt at the interviewer sitting across from him, the unmistakable shape of the words ‘Blow me’ plastering his lips as a loud bleep censors him. The smug confidence of someone who relied on the silver tongue and quick fingers on a notepad or laptop to survive, who would probably give a better sermon than the guy giving the sermon here, now.
If he were here. . .now.
‘Daniel.’
And, suddenly, like being thrown into the concrete wall back in Dubai, Armand is shunted back into himself, suddenly realizing that the woman who bore Daniel’s face is glaring at him, eyes laced with familiar ire and annoyance. She doesn’t speak, instead, she hisses softly under her breath, pushing the sound out between her teeth quiet enough so that it does not interrupt the priest, but sends the message nonetheless. She must think, perhaps, that Armand spoke the word aloud, and did not project it into her head like a volatile spear. With a look of what he hopes is remorse, Armand lowers his eyes, thinking that - in another lifetime - the tops of his cheeks would be warm with an embarrassed flush.
When the service finally ends, Armand makes his way along with the stream of late-night parishioners out of the cathedral’s double doors. He eventually divests himself from the crowd and lays his back against the cool stone, head tilted up towards the sky. As he wallows in the aftermath of having his mind surrounded and infiltrated and filled with Daniel once more, he catches the woman from before exiting the building and striding towards a nearby side street, hands fumbling for a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and a lighter.
Armand peels himself from the stone wall and strides after her, his feet as silent on the stone as a cat’s paws, despite the low heel of his boots. The shadows of the night swallow him, swathing him in a cradle of darkness that allows him to track the woman as she continues smoking her cigarette and shivering in the night air.
Objectively, Armand knows he is not hungry and that if any passersby were to see him - not that they would, unless he chose to let them see him - they would think he was stalking this poor woman like a creeper. But her face, the slope of her neck meeting the collar of her jacket, the way the muscles in her jaw jumps as she exhales a cloud of smoke into the air, conjures psychosomatic memories in the all powerful mind of the ancient vampire. Rational thought has left his head. He is drawn like a poor, unsuspecting moth by the light of a jumping, roiling ball of fire trapped behind lantern glass.
Then, the woman stops. Armand’s trajectory shifts as he ducks behind the corner of a nearby building. He watches her take one last drag and throw the cigarette to the ground, stomping it out with her shoe. Then, she swaps out the cigarette pack in her hand for a cellphone she pulls from her pocket, on which she types out a number quickly and with fumbling fingers. She puts the phone to her ear, turning in small circles like she’s expecting someone to leap out at her at any moment. Armand watches. He hears the phone ring and ring and ring, until a voice he would know and pick out from a crowd of thousands, even if he was blind, emitted from the speaker in a tinny, garbled tone.
Daniel Malloy’s inbox. Call me again, I fucking dare you.
Beep. A soft sigh from the woman’s lips.
“Hey Dan- Dad. I mean, Dad. Hi. It’s me, you know your kid. The first one. Um. Yeah, just, thinking about you. Wanted to speak to you, I guess. You never answer, so I don’t know why I bother. Call me, please. Thanks. Bye.”
She hangs up the phone and keeps walking. Armand stays right where he is, watching her figure disappear into the night. He then turns his head to the towering silhouette of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine against the haze-coloured midnight sky, towers piercing the air like teeth. He feels a clump weight down his heart, like he’s listening to Louis ramble about churches again.
Louis. Daniel. . .
With a flick of his black coat - dramatic but necessary - he strides down and away, directions lost to him in his state. He just hopes his feet take him somewhere he needs to be. Away from what he’s thinking.