Kevin Dunn—Elizabeth—Poetry, Horror Fiction, The Necromancer

KEVIN DUNN

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Elizabeth

“This sounds really bizarre,” Rich remarked. “You’re pulling my leg, right?”

“Believe what you will,” Nick countered. “But tonight’s the last time I’ll probably be able to see her, and I’m going to.”

“All right, now I don’t know if what you told me is true or not, but I’m convinced that you believe it is. Maybe you should see someone.”

“Hey! Look, I don’t need a shrink. I should’ve known you’d react this way. You’re always so cynical and narrow minded.”

“Sorry, man. I know you wouldn’t make up something like this, and I know you don’t need a shrink. It’s just that it’s an incredible story. I don’t suppose I could see this woman, huh?”

“No, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. You can’t possibly expect me to believe a wild story like this without some kind of proof.”

“I’m not asking you to believe me. I just...I had to tell someone.”

“All right, I understand. So, assuming that everything you just told me is, in fact, the truth, what then?”

“I’m going to meet her tonight.”

“And then what?”

“I’m not sure, but I have to do something. I love her.”

“Well, anyway, I gotta get going. I’m going to be late.”

“Yeah, me too. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

At two-fifteen the following morning, Nick quietly set out into the cold, black air. He arrived twenty minutes early. He approached the estate and rang the bell. There was no answer. He banged on the door. Nothing. He was getting tired, so he sat down and curled up against a tree while he waited. He was tired, cold, and his stomach was beginning to growl, but still, he waited. Would she show? He began to think that he was just deluding himself. He looked at his watch.

“Ten after. She should be here by now. It’s hopeless. She’s not coming.” And he knew it. Nonetheless, he decided to wait until four o’clock, anyway.

“Maybe I am crazy,” he said aloud. “Maybe I should see a shrink.” Somehow, in spite of his frustration, and the cold and hunger, and the uncomfortably cramped position he was sitting in, he found himself lapsing in and out of sleep. He began to dream, but he heard a loud crash which startled him back to consciousness.

He was fully awake now.

The wind groaned and whistled through the barren boughs and treetops. The air was thick, opaque with white fog. Bleary-eyed, Nick stood up and became aware of someone moving toward him.

“Elizabeth?”

“Yes, my darling,” she replied as she appeared through the mist.

“Am I dreaming?”

“No, you are very much awake. You are here, and I am here, and I love you.”

She advanced toward him through the mist and caressed his cheek. She was naked. Her flesh was cold and white. He opened his coat and held her close to him. His body grew numb as they embraced, but he still held her and wanted to keep holding her—he never wanted to let her go.

She kissed him and caressed his face again. The mist began to clear. She took his hand and led him into the house.

Rich sauntered down the street toward his home. It was a chilly Autumn day. The sun was setting. Children were still outside playing in piles of brown and orange leaves. The trees looked decrepit in their silhouettes, sharply defined by the soft glow of the sun which bathed everything in a tinge of amber and long shadows.

As Rich entered the house he heard the phone ringing.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Richie?”

“Yes?”

“Hi. It’s Tonya.”

“Oh. Hi, what’s up?”

“I’m calling because I wanted to know if you could tell me where Nick is.”

“Didn’t he come home last night?”

“No. I’ve been calling up all his friends to see if I could find him. I haven’t seen him since the day before yesterday. I’m really worried about him. It’s not like him not to call.”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen him. He wasn’t at work yesterday or today, so I figured he just had a cold or something.”

“Well, if you hear from him will you let me know?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Okay, thank you. Goodbye.”

Rich hung up the phone and turned on the TV, turning to the five o’clock news. Another body was found washed up along the shore early in the morning, a man who had been missing for more than a month.

Rich decided to fix himself something to eat. He tossed a hamburger in the pan and turned on the stove-top, half listening to the TV, half preoccupied by Tonya’s phone call.

He remembered the strange story that Nick had told him two days before. It wasn’t his place to say anything, and he certainly didn’t want to get Nick in trouble, but, he thought, How many times do I have to cover his ass?

Diane walked in.

“Who was that?” she asked.

“Oh, that was Tonya looking for Nick. He hasn’t been home in two days.”

“She must be frantic.”

“Yeah, but if she knew where he really was she’d be pissed.”

“Is he having an affair?”

“Yeah. Now I gotta go look for him. He told me that she’s some kind of countess or something who lives in a mansion near the old lighthouse.”

“Don’t go. It’s really none of our business, anyway. Let Nick take care of his own problems.”

“I would, but I’m thinking of Tonya. She sounded really upset on the phone.”

After dinner, Rich drove down to the mansion where Nick said the Countess lived. He pulled into the driveway. He was sure this was the place; it was just as Nick had described it.

He walked up to the front door and rang the bell as the last glimmer of twilight faded to dusk. He rang the bell again and stood back from the building, looking up to scan it. A light came on upstairs. Rich waited. Finally, the door opened and a beautiful brunette appeared.

“Hello,” she said with a slight foreign accent.

“Hello, my name is Richard Mathers. I’m a friend of Nick’s. You know him, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. Please come in.”

He walked inside. The mansion seemed much larger than it appeared from the outside, and it was luxuriously furnished with all the trappings of wealth.

“May I take your coat?”

He slipped out of his dark wool overcoat and handed it to her.

“I’m Elizabeth. Can I get you something to drink?” Her voice was soft and haunting.

“Scotch and soda.”

“Coming right up.” She walked over to the bar. Her straight black hair flowed all the way down her back. Rich could understand why Nick would want to keep her to himself.

“So, Nick tells me you’re a countess.”

“Yes, that’s right. I moved here from Hungary a few years ago when my husband, the Count, died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Ours was a marriage of convenience. He needed someone to be an ornament for his arm during high-brow social gatherings, and I needed to be wealthy. I know it sounds crude, but it was an arrangement that suited us both perfectly.”

Rich felt a little uneasy by her candor.

“About Nick...”

“Nick is sleeping,” she said, handing him his drink.

“Sleeping?”

“Yes, he hasn’t been feeling well.”

“Can I see him?”

“He should be awake soon.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh, it’s nothing serious. He just has a bit of the flu. He’ll be fine.”

“Shouldn’t he see a doctor?”

“My personal physician has seen him already. I can assure you he’s being well taken care of.”

Rich was feeling more relaxed now that he knew Nick was all right.

“Please, have a seat,” she said, motioning toward a plush maroon sofa.

The room was dark except for the lambent light radiating from the flames in the fireplace. She sat beside him. Her eyes were black like onyx. The lips: full and glistening red. The cheekbones: high. The skin: sallow. She was probably the most enchanting woman he had ever seen. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

As they sat and talked, he found himself getting an erection. She brushed his hair back with her fingers and kissed him. He didn’t want to resist her; he couldn’t resist her if he tried. She grabbed his hardened member through his pants and they fell to the floor and shed their clothes.

She rode him, her body singing a voiceless chorus of sin.

It vaguely occurred to him that he was cheating on his wife, but it wasn’t the first time. Nick had long since indoctrinated him in the art of cheating; how to be successful at cheating. But Nick had gotten more reckless recently, and Rich found himself constantly making excuses for him.

At first it seemed harmless enough. An occasional lunch-hour trip to the local brothel, sleazy pickups, one night stands. But Rich still loved Diane, and he knew that although Nick was an incorrigible skirt-chaser he still loved his wife too.

Somehow this was different, though. Nick’s affair with Elizabeth seemed more than casual, which was unheard of. He said he loved her, and he was prepared to do anything necessary to hold onto her, and if that meant leaving his wife, so be it.

Rich knew it would be a mistake and felt he had to intervene. He was good friends with both Tonya and Nick before they were married, and he couldn’t stand seeing them flush six years of marriage down the toilet.

But Nick’s marriage was the least of Rich’s problems now.

Rich swooned in rapture. He looked up at Elizabeth, her buoyant breasts bouncing gently above him as he kneaded the flesh of her thighs and hips between his fingers. She ground him snugly inside that patch of fur between her thighs as she clawed his shoulders and raked his skin. It was barbaric, primeval, timeless.

He looked into her eyes. They smoldered with malice, but continued to draw him in deeper, sending him ever faster to damnation. She moaned. He cried out, feeling certain his soul was being teased from his body by the malevolent, sensual goddess he now loved.

A series of gasps, groans, and sighs signaled the end of the act, and Elizabeth wept with languor and satiation as she collapsed onto Rich’s chest and clutched him closely.

He woke up. He was lying naked on the semen-stained rug. The fire was burning low, and Elizabeth was gone. His clothes were where he had left them. He looked at his watch.

Three a.m.

He got dressed and looked around, figuring he’d see how Nick was.

He walked upstairs, thinking it strange that a woman as beautiful as Elizabeth would be living alone in this big, empty house. He continued down the hallway, but found nothing.

He heard soft singing coming from the door at the end of the hall. There was a crack of light showing through at the threshold. He approached it, looking in the rooms as he went along, but they were vacant.

He came to the door where the singing was coming from. He heard splashing. He wondered for a moment whether or not he should enter. He opened the door. She was obviously taking a bath. Rich walked toward the tub, intending to surprise her, and drew back the curtain.

The next day, Diane drove out to the lighthouse looking for the mansion. She was upset when she woke up and found that Rich hadn’t come home. She had been worrying all day, wondering what to do, when she finally decided to look for him.

“That son of a bitch,” she thought aloud. “If he’s cheating on me...” She didn’t know what she’d do if he was. Diane was angry, but worried. What if something happened to him? she thought. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like without him.

She didn’t have any trouble finding the mansion; it was just down the street from the lighthouse. She drove by, not sure whether or not she should do this. As she passed the house, she spotted Rich’s car in the driveway.

“That bastard,” she said. “I’ll kill him!”

She pulled up behind Rich’s car, stepped out, stormed up to the front door, and rang the bell. After a few minutes, she banged on the door.

“Richard! I know you’re in there. Get your ass out here right now!” But there was no answer.

The sun was setting.

Diane tried the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, opened the door and walked in. It was dark, so she turned on the lights. There appeared to be no one home, so she decided to look around a bit. She was trembling. She knew she shouldn’t be here.

She heard a noise upstairs and went up to see what it was. She could picture Rich and the Countess laughing at her from the Countess’s bed. Still, Diane was cautious because she was scared. It all seemed so strange.

It was dark upstairs except for a crack of light coming from the door at the end of the hall. Diane’s heart was racing. Her head was pounding. She came to the door. She heard the voice of a woman, but couldn’t make out what she was saying. She opened the door and peered in. Someone was taking a bath—Diane heard soft splashing in the tub. She heard the woman speak again:

“Mmm, you were even better than Nick.”

Diane had him. Her anger waxed. She threw back the curtain and screamed. Rich was hanging on meat-hooks by his ankles over the blood-filled bathtub. His throat and wrists had been cut. His mouth and eyes were open. His face was white and still retained the expression of horror it had when he died. Elizabeth was in the tub, bathing in the coagulating quagmire. Diane fell back holding her hand over her mouth. She felt sick. Elizabeth looked at her and growled, exposing her tarnished fangs. Her eyes were glazed and jaundiced. She lunged at Diane from the tub and tore her leg with her claws.

Diane hobbled from the room and fled down the stairs. She tried to open the door, but it was locked. She threw a chair at the windows, but they wouldn’t break. Elizabeth was coming, still naked and covered with blood. Diane threw the chair at her, but she smashed it to pieces.

Elizabeth had her cornered. Diane looked into the eyes of the vampire and shuddered, enthralled. Those adolescent feelings of uncertainty she had when she was just becoming aware of herself as a woman flooded her mind. Elizabeth had beauty, a beauty which invited all fancies sexual and forbidden.

Diane’s Catholicism crumbled, and she yielded her will (and her body) to Elizabeth.

They kissed deeply, softly, Diane’s being trembling with excitement and nervousness, every nerve-ending tingling and alive with lust. She was aware of what was happening, but she felt as if she were outside her body watching as an outsider.

A cringe crawled across her face, and she turned her head slightly in an effort to break the kiss and free her will. Elizabeth seized her face between crimson hands. She pressed her bloody body tightly against Diane’s, pinning her to the wall, and forced a kiss.

Diane squirmed and whimpered slightly, still an outsider. Elizabeth clamped her fangs down on Diane’s lower lip, making it hot and salty with blood. The pain brought her back, and she kicked herself loose, screaming. Elizabeth pounced on her and ripped her throat open, stifling the screams. Her blood painted the wall behind her red as Elizabeth dragged her down. The Countess drank until her thirst was quenched, then carried Diane to the kitchen. She opened the door to the huge meat freezer and put her in with the others.

Elizabeth went back upstairs to the bathroom. She poured an anticoagulant into the tub. As she finished her bath, she wondered who would come looking for Diane.

The End

[Note: This story was inspired by the legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who reportedly bathed in the blood of virgins to keep her youthful appearance and beauty. "Elizabeth" was accepted for publication by Dark Kiss magazine in 1994, but that was the last I ever heard from them. I wrote to the editor several times but never received a response. I could only conclude that the magazine went out of business.]