The Tangled Thread - Part Two: Now, by Die Booth

[mad_docs_of_lit]

Part Two: Now

2010-07-12, 2.15am


For the record my name is Joshua Trent Cannon, I am nineteen years old and I live in Astoria, Oregon. In case I’m gone when you find this then please believe me that I’m not on crack or insane or whatever and we have no history of mental illness in our family apart from depression, and I’m pretty sure everyone has that. I’m not sure where this is going to lead or what’s going to happen to me now, or even if I’ll still be alive by the time anyone reads this so I’m writing it all down now and I swear to you that every word is true.

Now I’ve written that I’m not sure where to start so I guess I’ll just start from the beginning.

Do you ever feel like life - not your life, I mean just life and society in general - is all kind of spiralling out of control and nothing even means anything anymore? OK that sounds stupid to begin with, I should probably just start over but I’m not sure how much time I even have.

OK. Put it a different way.

Do you believe in God?

Because I didn’t used to and I’m not sure I do now, especially not now, but what I’m talking about isn’t so much all that Bible bullshit they teach you at school and broadcast on cable, not God in that sense, just – something more, right? There must be something more out there than social networking and mobile phones and football. I guess I was just getting tired of life, I mean tired of just day-in-day-out. Yeah I know that’s probably normal, whatever. It just seems to me there should be more somehow, but I just couldn’t buy that there’s some higher being or whatever watching over us all. But then I couldn’t face another day of just being another nobody studying to work in some office and get married and have some kids and maybe one day own a house and watch the whole cycle start over, all adrift in this pointless sea of apathetic existence, either.
Look I’m not saying I’m smart or anything, I’m just saying that if you’ve read this far and you think I’m some little emo bitch drawing dotted lines on his wrists then just read a bit more OK?

That’s why I started doing our family tree. I thought, I don’t know, that maybe it would be for a start interesting and it might give me some kind of reason to be here. Grounding or something, roots, I don’t even know – unravelling the tangled thread. I was interested though and it was something to do and I could just go off and look busy and not have to small-talk the same old crap to people in class. I found out all sorts of stuff, mostly online, because I’d gotten a couple generations back and mom’s side of the family turn out to be from England which I thought was cool. People don’t remember stuff like that these days. I think it’s sad people don’t remember, don’t know where they came from and don’t care. So I ended up talking to Aunt Karen about it on the phone (for the record this is my mother’s aunt Mrs Karen Early, from Portland) and it was her who first told me about the family legend.

At first I thought it was just dumb. I don’t believe in God so I definitely don’t believe in the Boogeyman. It’s all sedatives for a society that can’t face the thought of death, that can’t even face the thought of somebody ignoring their fucking Facebook updates, never mind the knowledge that one day they’ll totally cease to be and eventually there’ll be nobody left who gives a damn. But, whatever. What Aunt Karen told me was that her dad used to read her this story that his uncle wrote like over a century ago, about how he slayed a vampire in England. Right now you’re probably thinking what I was, which was pretty much ‘yeah right’ but I don’t know, it was kind of funny, so I asked her to email it to me to include in the family tree stuff and she said she’d mail it because she’s like eighty or something and she’s not so hot on computers.

I don’t know if this is the original book he wrote it in or what (for the record – Frederick Henry Alnwick born 1889-02-24, died 1916) but it looks pretty old, at least sixty years old if you ask me. I feel kind of bad writing in it but I really feel strongly that these accounts should be kept together. When I first read his story I thought it was stupid but now writing this, the fact that it might be his actual handwriting in this book weirds me out and I’m not sure why.

I don’t know how long I’ve been writing this, I should hurry.

So this guy - my ancestor, right - wrote down a story about how he killed a vampire in London. I thought it was fiction, or he was a bit crazy. I thought maybe he was an old crazy guy writing stories for his grandkids but then I looked again at the dates I’d found for him and I realised that he died young, really young and that when he wrote the vampire thing he was only a year older than I am now. It seems strange, the thought that back then a guy my age would have a servant and rent rooms and talk like he’s like, fifty years old or something. That he’d die in the war – well, I guess some things don’t change. I thought that just, it was different back then, of course it was. People didn’t have to question stuff, they didn’t have all the pressure we do now, even though in a way they became adults a lot earlier if you get my drift, it wasn’t the same thing. It was simpler. But then the more I thought about it the more I realised that really, he was just like me – wanting something more, wondering what else was out there. So I thought I’d give his story a chance. I thought I’d do some vampire hunting of my own.

There’s this girl at college I don’t know all that well but without being prejudiced or whatever, you can tell when people are into this sort of stuff (For the record her name is Holly Baumeister and I’m not sure if she’ll thank me for mentioning her here but I think it’s important to have the facts straight). We got talking and she told me that she knew people who were into it i.e. vampirism, that is, drinking blood. We were planning on hanging out maybe some time with some people she knew (we didn’t get around to this for obvious reasons.) What I was more interested in was that she had heard from another guy (?) whose name I don’t remember that there was an abandoned house in the woods out Columbia River way and anyone who went in there was supposed to get murdered by this vampire that was buried there in an unmarked grave. Then for the record she put her hand on my knee and asked if I wanted to go smoke some weed in her room so that pretty much sums up how much I believed any wacky stories she told me. I said not right now but did she want to check the house out with me instead and then she got all like anxious on me - like she’s this big horror movie fan and listens to black metal and so on, but she seemed really scared at the thought of going along to some derelict house. She told me not to go and when I asked why she said that she didn’t know but she had a bad feeling and that she knew people who knew people who’d been there and they weren’t messing around, people had really seen things there and she didn’t want me to get hurt. That was the last time I spoke to Holly and that was three days ago (July 9).

I kept thinking about what if both the stories were true and there was some vampire kid stuck there on his own in that house, thinking he was evil and never seeing anyone or talking to anyone who didn’t run away screaming. I didn’t really believe there was, but I thought I’d go see anyway.

I want to say it was yesterday that I went to find the house and I guess date-wise it was but time-wise it was earlier this evening, just that it feels like I’ve been awake for a week.

I felt stupid telling anyone else what I was doing because checking out old houses is kind of grade school and nobody was really interested in my genealogy stuff anyway, so I went on my own. I wanted to wait till it got darker but Holly wouldn’t tell me where the house was exactly so I figured I’d be maybe walking around some before I found it so I drove out at around 6pm and parked by the woods and took a look around.

It wasn’t hard to find the house because it isn’t all that far in from the road, like I think the property extended further a few decades back but then that house was abandoned and some other places might’ve been knocked down and the trees grew up more so it’s forest now. I should have researched it.
The houses around there all look about 1950s maybe. It didn’t look too weird; I’ve seen houses like that before. It was just siding painted white with a red border top and bottom and a veranda and slant roof. It was still light when I got there because I found it so quick and I didn’t want anyone to see me snooping around there so I took a walk through the woods until it started to get dark and I went back to take a proper look at the house. Most of the doors were gone and I think all of the window glass too, and the roof tiles were all covered in moss. I was worried walking in because the boards were gone rotten too so I was more bothered about falling through the floor than what I’d meet, because it’s too close to the suburbs really for junkies and when I went in it didn’t even look like there’d been kids in there which did seem kind of odd.

When I went in I felt something right away, but I kept telling myself it was just what Holly said raising my expectations, or I’d watched too much crap on TV. I wasn’t thinking at all about Frederick Alnwick’s journal at this point. I was thinking that this was stupid and some kids were going to jump out and make me piss my pants and then fall about laughing at me and I was kind of tensed up for it. Like when people say they can feel the hairs on the back of their neck stand up, like they’re being watched? Well that’s not just a cliché because that’s really what it feels like, like something’s standing right behind you but when you turn it follows you exact so you never see it. Like you’re in a pitch black room and something you can’t see is standing with its face right up to your face.

I didn’t really want to go upstairs part because I was spooked and part because the floors were so messed up but I went anyway just treading along the sides of the treads and there was all this orange fungus growing on the backs of the treads where the wood had rotted which looked kind of arty so I took a photo on my phone. It was getting properly dark at this point and I started to wish I’d brought a flashlight but I figured I’d be in and out.

When I got to the upstairs I opened the first door which was a bathroom with the sink all smashed up and this shower curtain still hanging up like something out of Psycho, so I pulled out of there quick because my mind was really doing a number on me.

The second door was I think the master bedroom. Most of the house didn’t have furniture in it, like downstairs there was only a table in the kitchen, but in this bedroom there was still a double bed which was gross because the whole of the quilt had gone this pale, gray-green color with mold.

Then this thing sort of appeared from under the bed, rolled out and shot up and went for me, went for my throat. At first I thought it was an animal because of the speed and it was making this howling noise and its head was covered in like fur. It wasn’t an animal. It was a woman. I don’t think she was alive.
The main thing I remember was the smell and I don’t think I’ll ever get that smell off my skin. It – she – stank like I don’t even know what. Like when you hear of people living with wolves only it wasn’t just that, it was like somebody had never washed but it was like death too, like roadkill but worse. Like blood and pig farm and stagnant water all mixed in at the back of your throat; I nearly threw up from it. She was dressed in just this mess off rags like different layers of caked, dried, brown stuff and her nails were long and curved like bird talons and her hair was long and the same color all matted up with shit and bits of twig. Her face wasn’t pale or anything, it was dirty, but it was alive-looking, her cheeks were all red like she’d been running. She didn’t have big fangs or anything. She looked more like what you’d think a werewolf would look like than a vampire and I took all that in, in like, a second and just... it wasn’t like what Alnwick had written and you know what, I felt cheated more than anything else. I guess I wanted something magical and now there was just this mad, wild woman trying to get her hands around my throat.

All I can see now in my head is her eyes, magnet gray, burning in her head.

I was holding her off for a good ten minutes trying to get back to the stairs and make a run for it, but she was strong. I really think that right then if I could have killed her I would have, in self defence, but she was too strong for me to really retaliate. She kept making like she wanted to tear my throat out and then something weird happened because she got a hold of the beads I was wearing and snapped the string and then as soon as they all started bouncing to the floor it was like the noise was so loud and mundane all clatter-clatter that it kind of broke the spell? And she stopped and dropped on her hands and knees and started counting the dropped beads.

I was like, all ready to run away from her but then she looked so sad on the floor counting that I just felt real sorry for her all of a sudden. It made me think like, who was Frederick Alnwick to just take a life like that, just because he decided that it was evil or God wanted him to or whatever excuse? People are so scared of anything that’s different, it’s why wars are fought and it’s why people give other folks like Holly Baumeister a hard time and it’s ridiculous. What’s the point of there being anything more out there if we’re just going to be scared of it? Like, if an angel came down to earth, people would probably just shoot it. That’s what I thought anyway, looking at this woman shuffling round counting and thinking, what if the story about the vampire in London had been real and someone in my family line actually killed someone? If I wanted to, I could have clubbed that woman over the head right then and killed her. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t even thinking about the police or nothing, I just couldn’t do it.

I asked her did she need my help, but she just grunted and carried on picking up beads. I told her thanks for collecting my beads up again and did she need something to drink and she should come with me to the police station but she just made that animal sort of snuffling noise in the back of her throat. I knelt down next to her and said that if she’d let me, I’d be her friend and help her. That’s when she found the last bead and turned on me and drove her teeth into my throat.

I don’t feel bad. I feel fine. Awake. My throat’s OK, not bitten or anything – at first I thought I dreamt it because I like woke up on the floor of the house and it was fully dark and just before midnight. I thought I’d nodded off but when I got up I was real light headed and I only just managed to get to the car and I fell asleep again for a time and then drove back here.

As I write this I can feel the death forcing through my veins. It feels like when you have blood taken, the pull and drag of it and I know that soon it will spread right through me and I will be whatever that woman in the house is.

I’m not going to lie and say I’m not scared, but I don’t regret not killing her. I wanted to find something out there, something more than just the mundane everyday and I found it and now I am it and I don’t deserve to die any more than she does. This is my opportunity now to make things right – no matter what, I vow that I’m not going to be like her. I’m not going to attack people and I’m not going to drink blood. This is my promise right here in writing that I am going to be a better vampire.

END



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Die Booth

"The Tangled Thread"

© 2010, Die Booth
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