Seamus 2

Seamus inhaled a breath of fresh air as he walked beneath the perfectly aligned apple trees. The sun had risen only a half hour earlier, and there was still a frost lining the apples and leaves in the trees. Frost on the grass. Frost on the apples in the grass. That apple.

Seamus leaned down and picked up the apple he’d eyed. He looked around to make sure farmer O’Leary wasn’t around. The man had previously chased him out with a pitchfork for having stolen from his orchard. Satisfied that nobody was nearby, Seamus wiped the apple on his wool vest and brought it to his mouth for a bite. Golden juice filled his mouth as he sank his teeth into the fruit and he woke up in an unfamiliar room made of stone.

The ceiling and walls were all made of the same stones.  Seamus could smell apple cider in the room, that probably triggered the dream of farmer O’Leary’s orchard, he reasoned. But what happened before that dream? Blackness.

Weakened, hungry, and somewhat in a daze, he threw off the bed sheets and stepped onto the floor. The stones were warm on has bare feet. A bed of embers glowed in a hearth adjacent to his own warm bed. A chair and a small table was in the middle of the room. Seamus found his shoes on the floor, laid neatly next to the foot of the bed, he put them on and stood up straight. His face felt flush before he became quite dizzy, then collapsed clumsily back into the bed.

He remembered a trick his drinking buddies used to tell him if the ceiling ever started spinning: hang onto the floor. With his face buried in the straw mattress, Seamus let his right arm fall against the side of the bed in an attempt to hold onto the ground while the spinning sensation passed. He felt his blood pool up in his fingers and hand, then his forearm felt warm. The spinning slowed, and after what felt like an hour, Seamus sat up and buried his face in his hands, cursing whatever previous drinking binge percolated this fresh hell.

Seamus slowly raised his dreary head from his hands and saw the table in the middle of the room. He leaned forward into a clumsy crawl toward the chair. He pulled himself up and sat down upon the cushioned chair. The smell of cider was strongest here. Next to a large plate of food was cup full of apple cider, as well as the bottle from which it had been poured. A fatty, pink slab of corned beef took up a quarter portion of the plate in front of him, flanked by cabbage and baked red potatoes.

Seamus pulled out a small whisky flask from his vest and poured a liberal amount into his cup of cider. A little hair of the dog that bit me should help, he thought. With the fork and knife that had been supplied with the meal, Seamus began to eat. The beef was salty and cold, though still quite good. He then forked the cabbage and potatoes into his mouth. They too were cold, as though they’d been sitting for quite some time after having been cooked. Seamus realized he wasn’t hung over, as he didn’t feel like vomiting.

He reached for the cider he had spiked to wash down the food. The taste of apple cider and whiskey filled his mouth, and he suddenly remembered his dream of farmer O’Leary’s farm and sinking his teeth into an apple. Seamus continued eating. He’d wolfed down half of the corned beef and all of the potatoes before swallowing another draft of cider. Seamus wiped the corner of his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, and suddenly remembered that he did recently drink. He’d drank beer, but he couldn’t place what pub he’d been to. He forked a vinegary leaf of cabbage into his mouth and chewed. In time with his chewing he heard the growing sounds of footsteps. He heard a growing clock clock clock sound of wooden heels on a stone stairway. He stopped chewing the cabbage as the footfalls grew louder and stopped behind the oak and iron door to the room.

Seamus grew increasingly alarmed as he realized that he couldn’t feel any soul to the creature that was on the other side of the door. It felt like a rock was lodged in his throat, especially after he swallow the mangled leaf of cabbage that had sat in his mouth.

The door opened. A slender man in a black frock coat and top hat and dark eyes stood in the doorway.
“Good evening, little one,” the man had a foreign accent, devoid of the familiar Irish brogue that he’d known.
“It is good to see that you have awakened.” The man had very carefully measured the syllables of his words.

“And who are you?” Seamus asked.
“I am…” the man paused, seeming to contemplate his words, “You may call me Lugosi”.
Seamus studied Lugosi’s face. He had full lips, a large, hawk nose and a high forehead. His black hair came to a widow’s peak “V”. His eyes had a vibrant deadness to them.
“Why…” Seamus began, Why don’t you have a soul?! He wanted to ask.
Lugosi cocked his head inquiringly, though his face remained impassive.
“Why am I here?”
“I found you in the forest. You had been attacked.”
“Attacked…” Seamus said, almost breathlessly.
Seamus couldn’t find any soul in the man, but he knew he was telling the truth. He could divine that much.

Seamus looked down at the devoured meal before him, and looked back to Lugosi. He felt the reflex to thank the man, but before he could mouth any words he recognized the uninspired gold cup that he’d been drinking from. Not cider, but beer had been in the cup before. He remembered his dream of sinking his teeth into an apple and feeling the juice fill his mouth and drinking the beer and having teeth sink into his neck and draining his blood. And that face-

Seamus rubbed his hand on the back of his neck, then felt the two scab wounds on the side of his neck. Suddenly, the room was dark and empty. He was looking down at it from the ceiling. The fire in the hearth was extinguished, the table was gone. The bed was ajar from the wall, the sheets thrown from the bed, and sanguine drag marks spanned the room, as if a mop full of blood had made a single pass from the bed to the doorway.

His vision snapped back, and Seamus found himself staring at Lugosi in the doorway.
“You’re quite velcome little one!” Lugosi said smiling with closed lips.
Had I just thanked him?
“You are free to leave as you wish, unless you would like to tour my tower…”
“No I think I’ll be leaving thank-you.” Seamus replied in a single breath.
“Very, well, I hope we meet again, Seamus Bennigan.

Seamus grabbed his jacket off of the foot of the bed and put it on, then made for the door. Lugosi stood aside, and as Seamus walked passed, he had a chilling sensation. It was reminiscent of his summer swimming in Lough Dan, like when his legs would pass through a pocket of shockingly chilled water.

Only this time it felt like his heart had passed through the cold patch. Seamus’s head only came up to Lugosi’s navel. He kept walking. He felt like his knees would collapse as he walked down the stone, spiral staircase. He didn’t want to appear to be fleeing, but fear overtook him and he began running as fast as he could down the stairs. The staircase seemed to make wider and wider circles as Seamus made his way down. For all he knew, he could be making wide circles around unseen rooms.

The staircase finally opened up in a vaulted foyer large enough to act as a ballroom, though Seamus wouldn’t know better regarding ballrooms or foyers. He sprinted toward the door on the other side of the room, his footfalls clacking across the clean, white tiles.

Seamus charged through the doors and into the night. He was taken back by how dark it was outside compared to the brightly lit foyer he’d just egressed. A crescent moon hung low over its twin reflection in a nearby lake. To the right of the lake were mountains, and to the left was a forest. Seamus glanced back to see the building he’d just left. It was a tall and imposing tower, replete with gothic arches not only at the base of the structure, but in the moonlight appeared to span several stories up the tower.

Seamus ran for the forest, not knowing if it was his forest or not. He didn’t remember hearing any footfalls in the stairway coming after him, and he didn’t feel anyone approaching, but he kept running. He kept running until his lungs burned and his legs felt like rubber. He passed several unfamiliar landmarks before tripping and landing in a pile of smooth sticks.

Stunned, Seamus took stock of where he was. He recognized the irregularly shaped boulder he’d once hid behind. Oh praise the Lord… he thought. As his vision adjusted to the dark forest floor, Seamus realized that the pile of sticks he landed in were bones, a full skeleton white in the moonlight, obviously picked clean by birds. A pair of hollow black eyes stared up at him from a round skull lying in the dirt.

Seamus shuddered and shrieked at the shock, and began running again, though devoid of breath. I need to get back to my hovel, collect my things, and just leave. I’ll collect my stash, Oh God, my stash! I need to move my stash! Seamus panicked. Oh Lord, I need to move my stash! Seamus, like the rest of his ilk, could not be without his golden horde.

Seamus ran the familiar path to his hidden gold, Down the glen, follow the river upstream, behind the waterfall- Before Seamus could finish his though, a dark figure fell in a flash from the trees ahead.

“Going somewhere?” The figure said. It sounded like Lugosi.
“Wh-why are you following me?!” Seamus demanded.
“I helped you, and now you will help me…” Lugosi said.
The vampire stared into Seamus hypnotically. What little moonlight that made it past the forest canopy briefly illuminated Lugosi’s white face as he walked, more like hovered, toward Seamus.

Seamus reached for his dagger, but instead grasped only at air and his belt. His dagger was gone. He was paralyzed, if not from fear then maybe frozen by an unspoken spell uttered from the thoughts of the empty husk of a creature that stood before him. Lugosi’s cold iron hand clenched once again onto Seamus’s neck.
“Down the glen, follow the river upstream, behind the waterfall,” Lugosi said.
“Thank you little one.”