SWNOVELS Chapter CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
IN THE MIDDLE OF AN OLD FIELD, away from the rural highway, several chickadees chased one another around the old abandoned house surrounded by tall grass. The scent of wildflowers and sulfur was in the air as the wind moved the branches of the nearby oak tree. The small rickety dwelling was no longer deserted as the wizard Dorian sat on its beaten porch dejected. The house was several miles from the nearest neighbor off the rural highway, with its long driveway overgrown and almost undetectable.
Dorian was just over five and a half feet tall with deep-set blue eyes. He looked young and quite handsome, except that his hair was gray. He observed the hay swirl with waves of wind. He’d been sitting there for over two hours, remembering his brother chasing him through the tall grass when they were kids. Time had a way of meshing memories over an extended period and distorting them. The imperfect recollections had been minimized.
“One day follows another until we can’t stand it anymore.”
Dorian had searched for his identical twin brother Lemuel for over three hundred years. Together their wizardry fed off one another and magnified their abilities, placing them at the top of the ladder of wizards, but now apart, he figured that he had lost almost 40% of his energy. They had boosted one another from birth. Lemuel had disappeared on a foggy Sunday night in 1694 in the vicinity of the Upper New York Harbor. The night fog had resulted from a magical enchantment thicker than mud. They had lost one another in the mist; that was the last time he’d ever seen his sibling. His shouts of LEMUEL went unanswered. They had been there to meet another wizard, to pay for a powerful spell, but it had only been a trick. There was no enchantment, only deception. Fog now brings Dorian a sense of dread with its murkiness and keeps him from slumber.
Lemuel had been warned not to raise the dead, that he would be dealt with harshly, but he had been motivated to raise zombies to do his bidding. Even the threat of being buried alive hadn’t fazed him because he was confident it would never happen. He thought himself too wise to be caught off-guard. Five powerful wizards back in those days had formed a union of sorts and had taken it upon themselves to deal with the miscreant wizards by binding them and burying them alive for all eternity. There was no fate worse than being buried because a wizard could only sleep for so many hours a day. Life with absolutely nothing to accomplish was horrible indeed.
Dorian stood and stared off into the puffy white clouds. Time was different for vampires, but sometimes it could be worse than it was for humans. His journey through the streets of life had been fraught with head-on collisions and traffic jams. His discontent was tantamount to the highest mountain; his dark soul was devoid of a meaningful existence. His thoughts always pulled him back to the same subject.
A car went down the rural highway so fast that it was practically flying. When he heard it crash several miles down the road, he had to smile. “Fool.”
Sometimes in his dreams, he would go into the coffin with Lemuel, into the darkness with his brother, and it wasn’t entirely dark for a vampire, but he could take nothing from it. No hint of its location. No communication was possible. Whether it was real or only a nightmare, he couldn’t say, except that even after three centuries, he would occasionally tap into his brother’s fear. Being buried alive was not something one could get accustomed to, where time became one’s worst enemy. The more he thought about it, the more it did seem to be too much for an ordinary dream. To be trapped in such a way was unfathomable. He felt his brother must be mad after all that time in a box.
Dorian and Lemuel had always been close, brothers in the flesh and spirit. Although Lemuel had always had a nastier side to him, they still got along. The occasional fight never endured for more than a day or two. Most of the awful deeds they had accomplished originated from Lemuel; however, Dorian was more than happy to go along with his brother’s ideas. Kill and torture this one or that one. Because Lemuel had been so good at being evil, Dorian didn’t need any of his own ideas. It hit him hard when he could no longer look into Lemuel’s eyes for comfort. He fed off his brother like bedbugs feeding off humans. He promised that he’d never give up the search, and he never did.
The wizards that had set upon his brother buried him some twelve feet into the earth; they were smart enough not to place him into any cemetery where he could perhaps be located. They had broken his physical connection with his brother, but the emotional bond was more potent than any magic. Dorian had always had a close link to his brother; he could sense his location anywhere, but not once since he disappeared all those years ago. It continued to feel strange not being able to sense Lemuel. Like a cell with no battery power, there was no reception. He managed to kill two of the five wizards, but it didn’t do him any good as they wouldn’t talk, and even under horrible torture, they wouldn’t reveal his location. The other three fled and were never heard from again. He had never been able to track them down.
Lemuel was a hole in his fabric of time and space.
Dorian had been at the small red abandoned house for seven weeks; he wore a path around it, thinking about his brother. He had had several items that his brother wore and a lock of his hair, but now all that remained were two strands, with the rest being used with magic to locate him. Each enchantment necessitated an item that had touched his brother, which could only be used once. He knew that once the last strand of hair was used, that would probably be it; he would remain buried practically forever, perhaps until the end of time. It weighed on him. He had attempted many spells over the years, gathering ingredients from all over the world, and with time, he became increasingly depressed. He was his brother’s only hope.
A monarch butterfly flew near him, up and down. Dorian brought his hands together, killing the butterfly, scraping the remains onto his blue jeans. He took no satisfaction in the murder of the butterfly.
Dorian didn’t understand why the spells in his Blood Book didn’t work. That made him worry that there wasn’t a proper one to be found. The last one had been two eagle feathers attached to one strand of hair, which the magical wind took high into the air, but he lost sight of it near the cabin. The idea was that it would drop onto his brother’s grave, and then he could dig him up, but even with his speed and enhanced sight, he lost it in the wind. Dorian believed that it was possible Lemuel was buried in the area but was he a mile away or fifty? Maybe he was close, perhaps not.
A large storm cloud went over the area blocking the sun and sprinkling the area with rain. He blurred around the small red house with the twisted roof to get rid of the glue that permeated his mind. Who else would have stuck to the same task for hundreds of years? Dorian did go for periods without trying to find Lemuel, but he always went back to it, and usually, it was the nightmare that prodded him into action. Was it his brother’s attempt to reach him from inside that box? At times he was convinced that it was, and at other times merely his imagination.
A cow moose was detected and chased down for its blood. Dorian jumped on its back and drank from it. The animal panicked but could not escape as the vampire drank. When he jumped off, he watched as it never returned to that area. At least that had been satisfying. He preferred animal blood to a person’s as he liked the wild taste.
It was sparse inside the dwelling, with only a couple of chairs, a kitchen table, an old wood stove, and a comfortable new cot he had purchased. The Blood Book remained on the table opened to the eagle spell. Dorian was considering doing the same magic again, with the idea that he was now closer to his brother, so it would be easier for him to follow the feathers. It made sense, but with only two strands remaining, it made him uneasy. If he used another and it didn’t work, he would be on the last one. There was nothing else that remained. Until now, he always hoped something would work, but with the hair being used up, there would be no hope. Without hope, life was in free-fall, one cliff after another.
Dorian sat at the table, took two eagle feathers, and placed them about four inches apart. He took the small plastic bag containing the last two strands of hair out of his right pocket; only he was panicked to see only a single strand remaining. He took off his jeans so that he could carefully search not only inside his pockets but every inch of the material, but he could not locate it.
“No!” He meticulously scanned every inch of the kitchen and the small dirty bedroom. He was becoming more and more disheartened by the second. What were his chances of finding a single strand of hair? What if it was outside? He thought that he might as well be searching for a particular drop of water in the ocean. His level of anxiety made him want to cry. Dorian ran his head into the table while scanning the floor, stood up, rubbed his forehead, and then he had a thought that sunk his ship. If he somehow managed to find a strand of hair, it was more likely to be his than his brother’s.
Dorian made his way outside and sat dejected on the porch. Considering that it might be a relief when the last hair was used, he would finally be able to get on with his life. But knowing that Lemuel was buried somewhere, he knew he would probably never find peace. With his right hand, he set the field on fire but then, thinking better of it, extinguished it with his left.
Time wasn’t his friend, and it seemed it never would be. He pulled several strands of hair out of his head and tossed them into the wind. It was funny how a single strand of hair had caused him such distress.