Drawtober 2024: Vampire

Once upon a time, there was a rich man who loved his wife very much. Together, they had but one daughter, a beautiful, delicate child named Ella. When Ella was eight years old, her mother fell terribly ill. As her end drew near, Ella’s mother called for her only child to come near her bed. And when Ella approached, her ailing mother rose up and tried to tear the girl’s throat out.

Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Did you think you knew where this story was going? I suppose I rather misled you. Because while this is a Cinderella story, it is not that Cinderella story.

As I was saying, Ella’s mother lunged up, face drawn in a rictus snarl, and sank her teeth into her poor daughter’s fragile neck. Unfortunately, being a very new zombie, Ella’s mother did a rather bad job of it, raking long scratches down Ella’s face and leaving a ghastly wound on her throat.

Ella’s father raced into the room to save his only child, bashing his wife’s brains out with a handy shovel and cursing the doctor who’d told him it was “just a bad flu.” He was, however, too late to save his daughter, who collapsed quite dead on the floor. He buried her body in the garden with many tears and a shallow grave, which ended up being for the best as Ella rose a week later.

I shall say this much for Ella’s father. He was a stalwart man, a man of principle. And though his daughter returned to him as a ghoul, her flesh somewhat decayed and her limbs not as solidly attached as once they had been, he found that she had not become a mindless monster. Far from it—Ella was still the daughter he knew. With renewed determination, then, he brought her back into their home and swore that he would raise her to the best of his ability.

But how does one raise a child of the undead when one is, oneself, living? True, Ella grew as any child would, scraping her knees and growing out of old dresses. But when one’s child had a rather voracious appetite for rare beef and an intense allergic reaction to sunlight, it becomes rather hard to know what to do for them.

To that end, Ella’s father decided to remarry. And he would not remarry just anyone—no, he required a creature of the night to help him raise his ghoulish daughter.

#

When the Countess Beatrice du Sang first arrived at Ella’s home on the arm of her father, Ella had some optimism that she would like her new mother. True, the woman was cold and all too often looked at Ella’s father with disdain rather than with love. But Ella remembered the gentle embrace of her own mother (pre-zombification), and thought perhaps she could find comfort, if not warmth, with the Countess.

Not to mention, of course, that the Countess had a beautiful, vampiric daughter all her own. This daughter was about Ella’s age (as these things are reckoned with vampires), and had lovely, dark hair and wide blue eyes. The Countess was very proud of her daughter, whom she had named Lucinda, and fawned on her with all the love and attention she should have shared with Ella.

It may surprise you to learn, then, that Lucinda was not a heartless and cruel stepsister to her new sibling. Far from it. Lucinda had always wanted a sister, and in Ella she got her wish. The two would frequently stay up well past their bedtime (in the morning, of course; they were undead after all), whispering secrets to each other, reading from favored volumes, and seeing how long they could stand the sunlight before ducking back into the safety of the shadows. Lucinda helped Ella learn to cover up her scars (when she wished to), and Ella aided Lucinda her own toilette, for of course, Lucinda could not see her own reflection.

I should hope the fact that Ella was a ghoul, her stepsister a vampire, and her mother afflicted with zombism would have given it away, but just in case it didn’t: there were many undead individuals in the kingdom in those days. This is not even to mention werefolk, minotaurs, phantasms, swamp creatures, and the like who’d come to settle within the kingdom’s borders. Such a proliferation of monsters was not taken well by everyone, however, and there were a fair number of monster hunters who looked to make their name and fortune off the slaughter of the undead and their ilk. One of these—a monster hunter of little renown but some skill—found his way to Ella’s house. He had heard there was a vampire dwelling within and had sworn to destroy the creature, freeing the earth from its scourge.

Unfortunately, he got the wrong parent.

Stakes to the heart will kill a mortal man just as easily as an immortal vampire. As Ella’s father lay dying in his study, a stake shoved four inches deep into his sternum, his daughter came and found him. She shed bitter black tears as he lifted a hand and pressed it to her cold cheek.

“Take care of your sister,” he whispered. “I love you.”

#

By the time the Countess du Sang had finished disemboweling the offending hunter and arrived in the study, her new husband was already far too dead to revive even by vampiric means. This distressed the Countess greatly. While Ella’s father was not particularly aristocratic, he had been an effective and wealthy merchant. The Countess, by contrast, was that rare breed of vampire who spent her money rather faster than she could stockpile it. With her husband gone, the flow of coin into her coffers soon dried up.

It will not surprise you (being that you are a savvy reader) to learn that as the years went by, the Countess found herself dismissing servants and selling the fineries of the house to keep up appearances. She started with the silver, as vampires can seldom stand the stuff, before moving on to the fine China, the elaborate paintings, and even the curtains and bed hangings in the unused bedrooms. The income from selling these sustained the household, though just barely and certainly not enough to keep servants.

Thus, Ella, whom the Countess had always looked down upon as one of the lesser undead (vampires are very proud of the fact that none of their bits are rotting off), soon found herself relegated to a servant in her own home. She scrubbed the floors, stoked the fires, and did the laundry. She tied up her lank hair and went out to lure unsuspecting mortals into the house for her mother and sister to feast upon. In the winter, she slept near the fire in the kitchen to keep warm, leading to a few embarrassing occasions where she burned her hair, leaving it rather frizzy.

Her stepsister, Lucinda, tried to intervene on her behalf. But Lucinda’s mother was no longer so indulgent as she had been. A vampire cavorting with a ghoul was inappropriate at best and downright humiliating at worst. Lucinda could not be seen associating with Ella if she wanted to keep her marriage prospects acceptable. Only witches would be so gauche as to disregard a respectable marriage, and surely Lucinda didn’t want to end up like one of those crazy old biddies, alone in the forest with nothing but cats to comfort them.

And so Lucinda drifted further away, and Ella was left to her own devices. She was not happy, but she was also not unhappy. She was nill. A void. A nothing. And so she might have long remained, had not the King’s wife suddenly died.