“What happened?” John asked, “Why aren’t you burned?”

The man flashed a smile that John felt he should recognize. “Come in, come in,” he said as he escorted John into a dimly lit space that was about as clean as a cramped dorm room shared by a pack of messy freshman. Empty pizza boxes and soda cans littered the room while stacks of white cardboard file boxes were stacked ceiling high like Doric columns supporting the motel’s ceiling.

John made his way past the first wall of mess and noticed a door to his left, slightly ajar, revealing an adjoining room bathed in the blue light from a bank of computer and TV monitors. Only then did John notice the man was holding a black gun in his left hand.

“Just in case you were someone else,” he said, noticing John surprise. The man gently set the gun on a stack of boxes and led John towards the other room. “Actually, it’s for the rats, you should see the size of the fuckers here.”

As the man walked two paces ahead, John considered grabbing the gun, given that his power had no effect on the stranger. He resisted the urge, though his instincts were screaming for him to do otherwise. Besides, the man wasn’t exactly screaming danger,what with his messy long hair, flabby gut and cheeky grin.

“Hey, lemme put some pants on,” the man said, “I don’t wanna’ get you all hot and bothered with these sexy legs.”

The man paused, as if he were waiting for John to laugh. When no laugh came, the man disappeared back into the first room. John stood in the adjoining room, confused and trying to make sense of his surroundings.

The second room was equally messy, though more organized, and seemed as if some sort of work was being done inside. The door out was blocked off by one line of a C-shaped desk which lined three walls. Rows of computer hard drives with different colored lights, blinking and steady, lined the floor. Atop the desk sat at least 14 different television and computer monitors. Despite the plethora of equipment, there stood only two office-type wheeled chairs.

On the computer monitors, John spotted several screens of presumably live closed circuit camera footage around the motel’s perimeter, various web sites and live news feeds from several news stations. The TV’s were also tuned into new channels, except one which showed the episode of Seinfeld which John had heard. All the monitors were silent.

The man returned, now dressed in black jeans and black biker boots, holding two Coke cans. He held one up, offering it to John, who declined with an absentminded shake of his head.

“What is this place?” John began, then asked, “who are you?”

“Larry Keriowski at your service,” he said, extending his hand and smiling a huge grin. “It’s okay, I’m vampire proof.”

John shook his hand. Larry’s soft hands matched the mush of his midsection. Only after they shook hands, did Larry notice that the tips of his fingers were coated in some orange powdered residue. “Sorry, I was eatin’ Cheetos; want some?”

John shook his head and repeated his first question.

“This,” Larry said, waving a hand around, “is the war room. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

John circled the war room, more confused than ever.

Larry explained that he was using the equipment to track any sort of news which would let him know when John had returned. He hadn’t expected John to appear so close to home, whatever that meant, nor had he expected to see him so soon. The comment Larry had made when he met John at the door about taking so long had apparently been ironic.

“I figured I might get some unexplained deaths from some small town news a month or two from now. Little did I know you’d be all over CN-fucking N.”

John looked up just as a handful of screens began a video of John from earlier. He stepped closer to the screen.

“Oh my God,” he said.

Though he had vague memories of the man he drained on the street hours earlier, they were fuzzy, without detail. Seeing himself, through footage someone had shot at the scene, sent a chill down his spine and cemented the reality of his murderous actions. While the video was of him, it did not seem possible he could do such a thing.

“I am a monster.”

Larry laughed. “Well not quite, but I can see how you’d get that.”

John sat down in one of two chairs and looked Larry dead in the eyes.

“How do I know you? And why aren’t you surprised that I don’t remember you?”

Larry’s eyes flitted nervously for a moment but then returned with their jovial light.

“I’m your apprentice,” Larry said, “you’ve been teaching me magick for the past few years.”

“Magick?” John asked, “what are you talking about?”

“You really don’t remember… anything?” Larry asked.

John shook his head.

“Wow, it worked better than I hoped.”

John felt the hairs on his neck stand on end as something in his stomach twisted. What the hell did that mean? He started glancing around for another weapon and wondered if Larry had grabbed the pistol while he was changing his clothes.

“Relax, John,” Larry said, as he nonchalantly popped the cap from his Coke can and took a deep swig. “You asked me to wipe your memories and bury you.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Street lights blurred by the car’s window as the man without a name raced the retreating moon.

He was in frantic search for a hotel far enough from the murder scene to make the mallet in his mind cease its pounding. He’d driven about 40 frenzied miles North before finally spotting an aging Motel Eight, squat and half forgotten off the highway. A flickering neon light announced “VA  ANCY”.

The shrubbery surrounding the motel looked as though it had enjoyed jurisdiction for at least the last half year; the kind of place where attention to detail was not a priority. It was the perfect spot for a man with no legal identification to lay low until nightfall.

Abigail had fallen asleep in the back seat, covered by a tattered pink blanket she had brought along with her. The man thought how normal she appeared all curled up in slumber, as though she hadn’t been brushed by tragedy beyond reason.

The fat man at the desk barely glanced over his early edition of the Sports page long enough to take the amnesiac’s $40 in exchange for a sticky key ring, its faded blue label peeling with the number 7.

“Thanks,” the amnesiac said.

“Yeah,” the fat man said, “the pleasure was all mine.”

The amnesiac drew an empty breath, figuring the less banter the better just a beat before his planned response slipped from his lips.

The room was exactly as squalid as he expected. Though at the moment, the door may as well have been opened by his personal butler.

Abigail found one of the two beds, laid down and grabbed the TV remote, and clicked on, casting the room in a soft blue glow.

The man half expected to see a news report of the murder, but as Abigail flipped channels, he saw nothing other than bad early morning programming. Perhaps fortune had decided to throw him a bone, and the bodies had yet to be found.

He peered outside one last time at the vacant parking lot and then drew the curtains closed. They were the standard thick motel room variety one usually found in these places. Funny, the man mused, how he knew such trivial things, but couldn’t recall the essential details of his life.

He wasn’t sure how amnesia worked, though he seemed to recall in old movies, or perhaps cartoons or fables, the cure was often found in a bonk on the head. Perhaps, he would look for a rubber mallet in a day or two.

The curtains seized his attention again. He wondered if they were thick enough to keep the room dark and just how much sunlight could he be exposed to? Instincts, or perhaps some buried memory, indicated the curtains would be enough — he had only to avoid direct sunlight.

Vampire.

The word echoed in his mind from some unknown source. He felt the word like an old nickname, though he didn’t seem to have a lust for blood or the fangs he typically associated with the legends. There again, that funny sort of trivia… or experience. He swallowed the bile that rose with the thought. He considered the moniker a bit longer.

Vampire seemed somewhat incorrect, but not altogether wrong.

Whatever he was, he was not human — not all of him anyway.

He went into the bathroom — no windows. Bad, if he needed to make a quick exit with the girl, but perhaps a good place to go if the sunlight managed to seep through the curtains.

He stepped from the bathroom and noticed that Abigail’s eyes were already closed as she lay on top of the comforter.

He knew he needed sleep but his mind was racing. He was eager to unravel the enigma of his tangled identity, both the facade and the horror hiding underneath.

He lay on his bed, fully dressed in the dead man’s clothes he’d taken, and closed his eyes.

“Do you believe in God?” the girl asked.

He looked over at her. Her eyelids were still shut, but he could tell the child hiding behind them was awaiting an answer.

“What?” He wondered if he heard the question correctly.

“Do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know,” he said, though a sudden roll in his gut said no. “I don’t think I do. But, I don‘t know anything before a few hours ago.”

When the girl failed to ask what he meant, it occurred to the amnesiac for the first time that she hadn’t raised a single question about his past, or lack of, though he had mentioned his missing memory at least twice. He considered asking her why, but she opened her mouth before he could open his.

“I don’t think there is a God. I mean, if there was, why would he allow my parents to die? Or send me to an uncle who sold me to those… people,” she said this last word only after a pause, “I don’t believe God would allow such… things.”

They sat in silence for a while as his mind flashed on her memories, which he witnessed during their brief embrace. He wasn’t sure what to say.

“They were religious, you know?”

“Who,” he asked. “The… people?”

“Yeah, he used to force me to read The Bible every morning. Said I was infected by the devil because I made him lust after me. It was my fault. I wasn‘t godly enough.”

Again, the man didn’t know what to say. He looked over at the girl. Her eyes were still closed, though he could see her cheeks were wet with tears.

Finally, the man found words.

“You know he was full of shit, right?”

The girl laughed, just slightly, and wiped at her nose. For the second time in an hour, he found himself wanting to hug her tightly.

“Yeah,” she said, “besides, if I were the devil, I would have killed him a long time ago.”

Further silence filled the room until she decided to shatter it.

“But you took care of that for me. You, the angel who doesn’t believe in God.”

He gave vent to a dry crackling laugh and the sound threw an alien echo against the darkened walls of the old hotel room. Their laughter mingled for a moment, and he discovered that he liked the sound of her giggle, hoarse, but pleasant. Exactly like a child’s laugh should be.

“I’m not an angel,” he said.

“I know, I saw.”

“The bodies?” he asked.

“No, when we touched. I saw in your head.”

The man shot up from the mattress as though it carried a current. Abigail flinched as her eyes flicked open, still wet with tears.

She had SEEN inside his mind, just as he had seen inside hers.  How much had she seen? Had she unraveled the mysteries lost in the fog of his missing memory?

He did his best to control his mounting excitement. He didn’t want to scare her. He grabbed the edge of his mattress tight; a silent gesture promising he wouldn’t leap from the bed. She relaxed and then rose to ninety degrees. Their eyes met.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“I couldn’t make it all out,” she said, “but you were afraid of something. Very afraid.”

“Was it the coffin I was buried in?”

“No, it was before that. And there was something else, a woman, a woman you loved very much. You were holding hands with her at the beach. You told her you would never forget this moment.”

He stared at the girl, helpless, desperately wanting to draw deeper from her well; a lost soul trying to mine meaning from the maundering of a fortune teller. He could remember nothing, let alone a woman he loved.

“She loves you too,” the girl said, her toes now grazing the carpet between their beds.

Her footfall sent a current into the air that escalated between them, fusing their attraction like ore to magnet. Everything slowed, the light of the TV flickered as each frame seemed to pause slightly before lurching forward like a warped record spinning slowly.

The amnesiac had no hope of stopping whatever was about to happen.

The girl moved forward, her bare foot inching closer to his scuffed leather boot. He looked up and saw her eyes staring straight at him, not through him, as she slowly raised her hands and reached towards his face.

He tried to pull away, but was paralyzed by the same unseen force which was controlling the girl’s movements.

The air pulsated in nearly visible waves of energy. He felt the rhythm writhe through his skin and then burrow deep into his marrow. The girl held out her hand, palm open, fingers splayed just inches from his face. Blue arcs of spider web thin threads of light danced at the tips of her fingers like icy fire that illuminated her face in a ghostly glow.

His body shook, his heart pounded and he wanted to cry “no“, but nothing other than a cold gasp could escape the narrowing prison of his throat.

Her hand inched closer to his face as sparks jumped from her fingers to the tiny hairs on his cheek. Any second now, he feared, they would be locked in that deadly embrace until he robbed her of every ounce of her life, helplessly feeding on her like a parasite until she was nothing more than an empty, smoldering husk.

His eyes were saucers as her palm moved impossibly close to his face, suddenly just centimeters from his forehead.

The pounding pulsed louder in his ears, in his head, in his soul as the girl’s palm suddenly seemed to shoot forward a surge of arctic energy, sharp as a dagger and straight into his head, freezing him instantly.

His vision went black, replaced a half second later with a slow to focus image. He was standing on a beach, staring at his love. Instantly, a flood of tears surged forth and he yelped, “Oh my God”.

His hand reached out to touch the memory, but couldn’t. His body was frozen.

He started at her. Christ, she was like a painting. Emerald eyes, dark auburn hair, lips that curled ever so slightly into a wry smile that was as familiar as it was heart melting.

“Hope,” he called out in the duality of now and then.

She moved closer, whispered in his ear, “Promise, you’ll remember this day always?”

“Always,” he said, as he glanced around, soaking in the image. The setting sun, the cool ocean breeze whipping through her hair. The soft feel of her hands in his. He wanted to die right there in that moment just so he could experience it for an eternity.

She looked at him with that smile, those eyes, and spoke again.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it, John.”

John!

The man’s eyes shot open and the bright sun over the horizon blinked away. Heaven was replaced by the darkened reality of the claustrophobic hotel room. He stared at Abigail, who stood before him, her hands now dangling at her side. She seemed unharmed by the exchange.

“Did you see?” she asked, now crying openly.

“Yes,” John cried too. “Thank you.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Almost four hours earlier…

The man without a name stared down at the burned bodies in disbelief. He no longer bore any of the scratches, scrapes or cuts that lacerated his body just minutes earlier, but he also felt impossibly alive; a new tempo seeming to beat in the blood beneath his skin.

Inside his mind, he was still feeling the staccato of shock from the murders he committed. He wondered again what the hell happened? And more importantly, how? He could not get his brain to embrace the arctic truth lying in ash before him.

In a vain desire to resolve his numbing questions and the enigma of his own identity, he slipped into a downstairs bathroom and finally came face to face with his disquieting reflection.

The face that stared back was young, with only two tiny wrinkles yet to flirt with the corners of his full mouth. His long dark hair and indigo eyes were no more recognizable than a stranger off the street. He leaned in close, examining his features as though they were harbored behind glass in a museum. The image blurred like a breaking wave, causing him to lean even closer before the hair on his neck rose to the sound of water running from a faucet he had not turned on.

What the?

Suddenly, the mirror image was gone, replaced by a mug he’d seen just minutes earlier – the angry face of the bald man.

He fell back against the wall, before realizing his reflection hadn’t changed. He wasn’t looking through his own eyes; he was peering through the eyes of the dead man, images caught in a previously deceased moment when the man had been shaving his head.

A single beat from the false reflection’s appearance and it was gone, replaced with the wide eyed stare coming from the hollow eyes of the amnesiac.

Without warning, the world disappeared again, and the man found himself staring into the approaching fist of the bald man. A split second shattered along with the impact and the amnesiac felt like a dull echo of a faraway sound. The bald man landed another blow and he felt it, like a phantom pain in an absent limb. The amnesiac screamed in a voice that was not his own, but that of the woman who had suffered the beating he was now experiencing.

Reality returned and the amnesiac fell to the ground, shaking, gripped by vertigo. Then the ride kicked into motion again.

A million memories seemed to tear through his skull in a sudden chaotic burst of flashing images and cacophony of sound. It was too much; the man’s head felt as if it were expanding rapidly, unable to contain all these alien thoughts. He reached up as if squeezing tightly enough would be enough to keep his skull intact.

More images swam through his mind in a dizzying current in which he was cast adrift. Understanding drowned him with the sick realization that he was somehow infected with the memories of the people he’d killed.

Voices grew louder — snippets of conversation, sounds of music, stolen thoughts, growing louder and faster; both cold and sharp like the blade of a dagger, digging into some deep part of his brain like a worm turning towards the center of an apple. Should that worm burrow to the core, the man shuddered with certainty, that it would plunge him deep into a madness from which he would never ascend.

Whatever traces left of his life before waking in the tomb were now drowning in chaos as he struggled to find some tether back to reality.

The whirling world flickered in and out of existence, one second displaying the reality before him and the next, the unnerving world behind the eyes of the dead.

He couldn’t fight anymore.

He let go and slipped into the darkness.

_____________

His bedroom was impossibly dark. Even the moon hanging fat in his window held no reign here. Downstairs, the boy’s father raged. But it wasn’t his father that held his attention or commanded his fear. It was the visitor in his room.

The shadow that was not a shadow, but not quite a man.

The boy thought he might be dreaming. He rubbed his eyes and opened them again, attempting to discern the shape, or rather shapes, moving in the darkness of his room.

“Hello?” the boy asked.

“Hello,” a voice whispered back. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

_____________

The amnesiac woke to the sound of pounding.

His eyes shot open as he leaped to his feet in a single fluid motion, fists clenched tightly at his sides, palpable waves of electric currents arcing around them. He was ready for whatever was coming.

But nothing came.

He looked around. It was still dark outside. He quickly ran to the blinds and closed them to prevent the entry of unwelcome eyes. He thought of whoever had buried him in the woods and that perhaps they were outside, waiting to finish the job.

He listened. The pounding returned, a soft tempo drifting from upstairs.

Another memory flashed — closet door — unlike the barrage of visions that nearly drove him mad, this one flared and faded quickly. Just long enough to send him up the stairs, hurried but uncertain of the door’s significance.

As he hit the landing, the pounding grew louder.

“Hello?” the amnesiac’s uncertain voice wavered through the still.

“Help, help!” came the shrill scream of a terrified child.

The amnesiac raced into the master bedroom and saw the closet door. The pounding continued louder. He threw open the closet door and flicked on a light. Boxes and clothes, but no child.

“There’s a lock, open it,” the child cried out, pounding at where the lock was.

He tossed boxes aside and saw a lock with a key in it, turned it, threw it to the ground and then pressed against the wall which was a door.

And then he saw her. A girl no older than 12, dark hair hanging over her large wet, dark eyes, her mouth wrenched open in an agonized wail mixed with relief.

“Abigail” a memory whispered just as the girl reached out to hug him.

A spark shot from her skin to his, and suddenly, a barrage of images he would never be able to unsee, pierced his mind; the horror of what the bald man had done to her. The memories flickered away and were replaced by reality as he saw their arms locked, her body convulsing and pupils rolling back into her skull..

It was starting.

This murderous energy was going to take her as it had done two others already.

A terrified scream fled his throat as he pulled back with every ounce of his strength to break the connection. They both stumbled backwards.

She retreated into her dungeon like a wounded animal, shaking, as he put distance between them.

She wasn’t dying.

“Don’t …touch me,” he gasped, fear choking his voice. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She stared at him and then brushed her arms where they had briefly touched. She looked as if to ask what had he done, but instead said something else.

“Did you kill them?”

“Yes,” he said, about to explain he hadn’t done so on purpose, when she interrupted.

“Good,” she said.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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