The Pull
by Jason Windham

Leechek The Vampire sat in her secret cavern. The earth called to her, pleaded with her to lie her eternally young bones within it. The earth desired to taste her presence deep within it=s bosom. Dirt on flesh, worm on skin, the earth desired her. She sat in her cavern, listening to the calling, resisting it, there was still strength and beauty within her flesh. She brooded, reached out and touched the cavern walls. She felt herself next to the mother of all things. She could hardly keep her mind open, how the secrets of the clay poured into her, bottle-necking in her brain. She was the vampire of Ossen, a woman and mistress in all ways. Though the earth reached out to her, she was pure in herself, consistently inconsistent, above and beyond the deep rest.

What was it that troubled her, made it possible for the temptations of death to cling to her pretty elbow? A gracious and invisible influence had entered her life. It was the spirit of change, the promise of continued alteration, the fluctuation of the cosmos. Once she was capable of living life night to night, feeding to feeding, lover to lover, but with time her enthusiasms had grown great and her possibilities smaller. The careful balance that must be maintained within every living thing, took wild and wide arcs within her. She had become unbalanced.

All at once, she spread her night wings and took flight, riding the winds, she traveled to the home of the Haitian, to New Orleans, to the club of Luther Gilbert. He smiled as she entered into his place, chased the customers away. AWhat can I be doing for you, my love, my sweet, my sweet?" he asked.

"There is something clinging to me." she explained. "Something is hanging over my every movement, something bad, something dangerous? What is it?"

He looked her over with his white dim eyes. "Oh, yes." he said, AThere be something a-troubling there with you, my pet, my pet. I can see it too, see it for what it is, what it be's, what it wants from such a lovely thing as you."

"What is it?" she asked again, frowning. "Can you kill it away from me, make me whole?"

He reached out and touched the air above her head. He cringed. "It be that thing, that most sorrowful thing, so sharp and like sour butter. I know this thing, I do my sweet pet, my sweet Leechek, it is a thing called Disappointment, that is what this thing is."

"Like fire." she frowned.

"No." Luther Gilbert shook his head, "Not right. This thing is not one with flame, but of the displacement of comfort, your fire has been eased to the smoldering branches. The burning that you feel, is it's absence."

She nodded, "I have no comfort."

"No comfort." Luther Gilbert repeated, "And this sad feeling that you wear as a prized crown, it is the same as the pains of misfortune and mistreatment. You cannot say the reason for your melancholy, but deep within you, you must know that you have been betrayed. Will you let your fire go out, Leechek? Will you let this carry you under the earth?"

"What must I do?" Leechek asked, "What may I do?"

The Haitian-born Luther smiled wryly, "All you need is a sharp knife, or a sharp mind, a hammer or a saw. I do not know what tools you need, or what tools you have. You must take inventory of what you possess, you must find out what you have kept, then you will know what you are able to do. Do you understand?"

"I do." Leechek frowned seriously.

"About the secret relationship between mirrors and our kind: a mirror is always useful in such ways. You could hurt yourself without one. Until you find what is yours, you may borrow my mirror and my sharp knife. Go and look, go and cut, go and find."

Leechek took the knife from Gilbert and stood before the silver mirror. How humans had misinterpreted the nature of mirrors. The humans say that a vampire casts no reflection, and as for as it goes, that is truth. But a vampire with a mirror is a special thing, for the vampire can see itself more clearly than any human ever could.

Leechek reached out and touched herself. The mirror warbled and stretched elastically. The watery nature of the glass yielded to her caress. She stared, her eyes growing keener, her observations growing powerful.

"Liberate me." the glass Leechek pleaded with the one of flesh.

Leechek plunged the knife into her counterpart. Then pushed her hand into the open wound. It was warm inside of herself.

"What can you find in there?" the glass Leechek asked.

"Many things." Leechek consoled herself, her hand finding beauty. "I have found Swiftness within you, I have found Accuracy and Action. I have found Our Gracefulness and Dignity."

The glass Leechek grabbed hold of the fleshy one, with both hands grasping onto her wrist, she drove the hand deeper. "What else may you find? You name what you find pleasant. Haven't you felt the sharp and brittle things? Do not deny yourself. Show courage."

Leechek gasped as her fingers ran across razors. "I have found Our Cruelty, Our Deceitfulness. I have found the sharp seeds of when we've been wrong."

"We are very, very dangerous, aren't we?" said the glass Leechek. "Our Beauty hides the ugly, bent nails that have been pounded into our core."

"Enough." Luther Gilbert said, pulling Leechek from the glass. "It can be bad to go too long, or push too deeply. Continue your journey with what you have found."

Leechek took wing once more, flying towards a haven she kept in the city of Saint Louis. As she plunged further into the inky blackness, she allowed her thoughts to turn to the past, how she had been imprisoned with false pleasures. She felt particularly bad because the past held no real comfort, the taste of mortal blood was a delusion of power, an illusion of contentment. She had over-estimated the joys of draining life and gaining life.

Saint Louis offered little hope of things feeling better. It was the home of her Lord, Ossen, and the city was His. How the mirror was so much like all life, mutable and changing. The air in which she flew was as tangible as all things she had clung to, blood was air, fear was air, their was an airy quality to all things she encountered, of all things she lorded over, embraced. In Saint Lewis she found her tomb, an old house as old as any house in the new country. She had no solid foundation from which to grow, all she had was her distress and sadness. Conscious thought threatened to overwhelm her as she lay in her darkness.

Her servant, Elijah, came to her, offering any small service.

"Who am I?" she asked him, "Who am I to you?"

"You are the air that I breath." he answered, taking his old hat in his hands, "You are energy, endurance, my capable manager. You are the steadfast thing in my life. With you, I have hoarded an immense balance of affection, servitude, and greatness. I have no intelligence, save for my instinct to serve you. I am foolish and dull, but through you, I am great."

She took her servant beneath her wing, pulled him close. "I have harvested you, I purr at what I have gained in you. I rub my hands together at the sight of you, my creation. Perhaps through you, I have achieved my best. If security comes from one's belongings, then I base my greatest value upon your loyalty. Have I put your value too high? You say I am the air that you breath, but perhaps in time your quality will be as air to me, elusive and impossible to take in hand."

She turned her face from his. "It is my fear that all has settled." she said. "The earth pulls at me to drag me under, for the time being I am able to hold in sway the unbalanced orbits within me. There is a flux of blood, when blood is air, when blood is water, when blood is fire, when blood is earth. Blood is all things, and blood calls me to feed, and to sleep. This is my fear, to sleep."

The servant left her then. And she crossed her arms one over the other. She would not see him again, for the years would pass too greatly for a mortal's life. To gain clearness of vision, she closed her eyes. In her dreams, she saw all of her spirt, all of her aspects, all of the junctures where she was poor of judgement. In her dreams, she healed. And when she awoke, a hundred years had passed, and she felt better.

©2003 Jason Windham

Jason Windham has had stories published at Dark Moon Rising, The Outer Rim: Mercuric, Suspect Thoughts, The Writer's Hood, Blood Moon Rising and he is a regular writer for Demon Minds.