Page 9 of Of Faith and Fangs

Mercy bit her lip. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But it’s there, my fear. I don’t know how I can just up and decide not to be afraid.”

“Don’t pay attention to your fear,” I said. “That’s how it binds you, how it controls you.”

“How’d you get such a strong faith? You can’t be older than sixteen,” Mercy asked, as if genuinely curious about a stranger.

“My daddy’s a preacher,” I said. “I guess I just grew up believing. Isn’t that when you need faith the most, when otherwise all you’d have is fear?”

Mercy nodded. “Thanks for the tip. Have any more of those cotton balls, by chance?”

I smiled, reached into a little bag hanging from my bed, and handed her two of them.

“Thanks.” She forced a smile.

“Sleep well.”

“Yeah, you too,” Mercy replied. She returned to her bed, shoved the cotton in her ears, and within moments, I heard her even breathing.

The darkness was absolute, except for the silver blade of moonlight that sliced through the barred window, spilling across the floor like spilled milk. The sanatorium was silent now, all the distant voices snuffed out. Even the wind had stopped.

Something woke me up. Maybe it was a chill, or some kind of survival instinct.

I tried to turn over, but my body would not move. A pressure that was not heavy but infinitely persistent pinned me to the mattress. My eyes were open, but only just. Through the slit of my lashes, I watched as the room seemed to breathe—shadows swelling and receding with each halting breath I managed.

That’s when I heard the scratching. At first, I thought it was a rat, or perhaps a bird that got trapped in the chimney. But the sound was wrong—too regular, too insistent. It scraped at the window bars, slow at first, then faster, as if testing for weakness. My mind raced with scripture: “He prowls about like a lion, seeking whom he may devour.”

I tried to speak, but my tongue was leaden, stuck to the roof of my mouth. A low whisper, just above the threshold of hearing, threaded its way into the room. It was Latin, but not the kind I knew. It was guttural, broken. I heard Mercy reply in a voice not quite her own, a voice that quavered and shrieked with equal force.

The window swung open without a sound. A figure slipped through the bars, impossibly thin, impossibly tall. I saw only its outline, backlit by the moon: a coat that fluttered like crow’s wings, a cap pulled low over a face I could not see. It moved through the room but without the sound of footsteps, as if hovering across the space. It moved to Mercy’s bed and knelt beside her. She did not scream, did not even flinch. She just opened her eyes, pale and blind as a dead fish. The figure leaned in, and for a moment I thought it would kiss her. Instead, it pressed its lips to her throat.

I wanted to shout. I wanted to call for help, to invoke God’s name, to recite the Lord’s Prayer or a Psalm. But my voice was gone. All I could do was watch as the thing—no, the man, for in the shifting light I saw he was at least partly a man—drank from Mercy with slow, reverent hunger. Her face changed as it happened. The lines of pain smoothed away. Her lips parted in a smile, or maybe a grimace, but for the first time since I’d seen her in the sanatorium she looked alive, truly alive. The blood ran down her neck in a thin black line, pooling in the hollow of her clavicle.

The man straightened, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and looked directly at me. His eyes glowed red, but not the garish red of theatrical devils or masquerade masks. It was the red of a sunset glimpsed through closed eyelids, the red of spilled wine. He tilted his head, as if acknowledging my presence. Then, in a single fluid motion, he turned and slipped back out the window, vanishing completely.

I lay there for what felt like hours, heart hammering so hard I thought it might break my ribs. When I finally managed to move, I crawled to Mercy’s bed on hands and knees. She was cold. Her chest did not rise. Her diary had fallen to the floor, open to a page with a sketch of a crescent moon and a girl walking alone beneath it. I pressed my ear to her lips. No breath. I felt for a pulse, found none. Her skin was smooth and flawless, the grey cast of death already creeping in at the corners. A cry built in my throat, but I choked it down.

Had that man not arrived, the one who’d drunk her blood, Mercy might have lived a few days more. I might have had the chance to save her. But now, I’d clearly failed. And try though I wished, I couldn’t bring myself to cry for the nurse. I couldn’t speak at all—as if the strange man had cast a spell on me, as if he’d commanded me to remain quiet. Or, perhaps, it was out of abject horror. Would I ever be able to speak again? I’d heard stories of men, soldiers from the Civil War, who returned and never spoke another word the rest of their lives. It was thought to be on account of the terrors of war. Was that what happened to me?

Dawn arrived with all the warmth of a blade drawn across skin. The sanatorium’s corridors filled with the faintest rattle of keys and footsteps, the subdued theater of the morning routine playing out behind every door. Through the fogged window, the outside world was blanched white, as if God himself had spilled milk across the landscape and left it to curdle. I sat on Mercy’s bed, spine curled against the wall, the cross still clutched in my fist. My knuckles ached, but I did not relax my grip. I could not.

A sharp knock split the silence. The door opened before I could answer, and in strode Miss Hartwell, trailed by a doctor in a brown suit so worn it might have been his only one. He smelled of mothballs and stale tobacco. His hair was parted precisely.

Miss Hartwell’s eyes flicked to Mercy, then to me, then away. “Doctor,” she said quietly.

The doctor moved to Mercy’s side, stethoscope already in hand. He touched her wrist, her throat, then pressed the cold disc to her chest. I watched him work, unable to speak or even to stand. He lifted one of Mercy’s eyelids and let it fall again. He did not look at her face, only at the evidence.

“She’s gone,” he said, voice flat as the surface of a pond. “No pulse. Pupils fixed.”

Miss Hartwell nodded. She produced a form and a pencil stub, and the doctor scrawled something in a cramped hand.

I tried to rise, to say anything, but my legs would not answer. The world tilted, then steadied. My body felt both empty and too full, as if every nerve ending was crowded with bad news.

“Time of death?” the nurse prompted.

“Five minutes past six,” the doctor replied. “Notify the family.”

He was already halfway to the door when I found my voice. “Wait,” I said, a pathetic croak. I was half-surprised that I was able to speak at all.

He turned. “Yes, Miss Bladewell?”

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