Of Monsters and Men

“I’m telling you, Marsha!” the old man spluttered, pushing his walker across the hardwood floors. “I’ve dedicated my life to searching for answers and they all point me in the same direction!”

The small orderly walking behind him smiled softly, taking care to pull the IV pole closer with each step he took.

“And just what would that be, sir?”

“They’re real,” he ground out, shuffling along the side of his bed before dropping down onto the plush mattress.

“And just who might they be?” Marsha teased lightly.

The elderly Mr Richards grunted softly as she helped him back under the crisp white covers. He would always talk her ear off about his many visits to the great archaeological sites of Europe and would allude to some or other superstition in the process. There was no reason this conversation would be any different.

But his frail hand shot out and grabbed hold of her arm, all hint of mirth slipped from her face. His grasp was frail to say the least, but when he beckoned for her to come closer, she obliged without protest.

“Who’s real, sir?” she asked again, her tone a touch more serious this time.

“...Vampires.”

One word.

A word said with such urgency - such conviction - that Marsha could only stare blankly at the old man. Of all the superstitions and fables, why did this one make her feel a little more wary?

It was probably nothing.

“Mr Richards,” she tried, patting his hand in reassurance. “You know those are just stories. Vampires aren’t real-”

“They are!”

His sudden outburst shocked her almost as much as the desperation in his voice did. Those cloudy grey hues bored into her, begging to be believed.

“I swear to you! They’re real! As real as you and me-”

“Alright, shh, it’s alright,” Marsha soothed, squeezing his hand gently in an effort to calm him down.

She knew how worked up he could get when talking about his field of study, but there was only so much excitement an old man could take. Especially one of the longest running residents in the Chesterton Rehabilitation Centre.

Originally a hospital that had run out of resources, it ended up being sold to the eldest son of a very rich family. During that time, the old hospital had been converted into a safe haven for those suffering from all kinds of mental afflictions. Be it a soldier with PTSD, or an old man showing signs of dementia.

Marsha had witnessed firsthand how violent some of these patients became when confronted with the reality of things and sometimes… the only way you could really help them was to simply go along with it all.

“Alright, Mr Richards,” Marsha said after a moment’s contemplation, and promptly pulled a chair closer. “Let’s start from the beginning.”

After settling him in and pouring a nice cup of chamomile tea for the erratic man, she sat down and fixed him with a patient, yet attentive look.

“Why do you think vampires are real, sir?”

Mr Richards scoffed lightly, before resting the steaming cup and saucer of the overbed table.

“I don’t think, girl. I know.”

Marsha tried to bite back a smile at his feisty nature. She imagined he must have been quite a problem for his peers back in the day.

“My apologies,” she said, shaking her head knowingly. “Well then, how do you know vampires are real? Have you ever seen one?”

“Of course, I have!” he rasped, before pointing a finger in her direction. “As have you.”

Marsha’s brows knit together in mild confusion, but she maintained an aura of calm as she addressed him.

“I can’t recall ever seeing a vampire, sir,” she said, tilting her head to the side. “What do they look like?”

“Now there’s the question,” he chuckled, taking a quick sip of his tea to soothe his raspy voice. “You see, everyone believes vampires are these pale, youthful looking men and women. Handsome even. But the idea of a youthful presence was established so that you’d never quite suspect the real culprits, missy.”

“The real culprits?”

Suddenly, a vivid picture formed in her mind. Every strapping young vampire Marsha had ever read about in those young adult novels was quickly replaced by a sickly, old man.

The thought alone was enough to kill off any notion of romance.

“Indeed,” the elder hummed, pleased by her question. “You see, they had to make these otherworldly monsters so that you would never suspect the ones living in these husks around you during the day.”

“Hang on,” Marsha interrupted with a shake of her head. “I thought vampires couldn’t come out into the sun?”

“Tis but another lie of theirs,” he leaned in a little closer. “But there’s always a little truth in their lies. Like an inside joke that only they really understand.”

Mr Richards paused for a moment, seemingly contemplating something, before he reached underneath his pillow and pulled out a rather worn journal. The leather looked like it was in desperate need of replacing, its pages yellowed from years and years of use. And yet, the old man held it like it was something to be revered.

“Erythropoietic porphyria,” he rasped, flipping open the book and paging with a shaky hand. “It’s a genetic disorder. Quite rare in fact. And do you know what the symptoms are?”

Marsha shook her head, trying but failing to hide her sudden intrigue as Mr Richards leaned over his book and read out loud.

“Hypersensitivity to sunlight. Exposure symptoms include: skin blistering, painful rashes, burning sensations on points of contact, and skin discoloration,” he paused, meeting her gaze. “This violent reaction to sunlight is where the belief of vampires being nocturnal stems from.”

Marsha inched a little closer, now rather curious about this book he was reading from. The pages were littered with his untidy scrawl and arrows darted all over the spread. It looked like one big mindmap if she were being honest.

“It doesn’t stop there, though. Look,” Mr Richards coughed, pulling down a flap that had been folded over. “Other symptoms of EPP are severe anemia, which gives them that sickly pale hue and also-” he tapped on the page where a word was written in bold red pen. “-iron deficiency!”

“Sir-”

“Did you know that in ancient Rome, people believed that drinking blood was the fastest way to treat an iron deficiency?” he went on, the words tumbling out faster than Marsha could keep up. “And to this day, the one food source that has lots of iron is red meat!”

He quickly flipped to another page where a black and white photo resided, various circles drawn all over the man’s face, but primarily under the eyes and around his mouth.

“It also causes deformities in the teeth, which was the basis for the idea of fangs-”

“Sir, please,” Marsha said, interrupting him by placing her hands over his frail ones. “You need to slow down a little bit.”

She held his gaze and patiently waited for his frantic movements to still. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him. Not at all. In fact, she had no doubt that a disease as complex as the one he spoke of could have caused quite some hysteria during the middle ages. But there was a slightly more pertinent question at the forefront of her mind that begged to be answered.

“Sir…” she started, studying him closely. “Are you saying you believe that porphyria is a strain of vampirism?”

The elder stilled as soon as she posed the question to him. Then, to her utter surprise, he frowned back at her as if she had just insulted him.

“Don’t be daft, girl,” he scoffed, turning back to his book. “I may be old, but I’m not senile.”

The sudden reproach in his tone left Marsha feeling much like a child who had disappointed their parents. But before she could mutter any semblance of an apology, a series of hacking coughs ripped through the air, leaving dear old Mr Richards a wheezing mess.

Marsha rubbed soothing circles into his back as he swallowed down the rest of his tea almost greedily.

“I’m really trying to understand,” she managed to say once it seemed the immediate onslaught of his respiratory functions had ceased. “But you need your rest, too.”

Mr Richards shook his head in stubborn protest. Then, quieter than he’d spoken this whole morning, he gave voice to the idea that had been struggling to come through in his garbled speech.

“Vampires exist. But they aren’t what you think,” he whispered, a desperate glint in his eye as he did so.

An eerie silence followed his admission, the weight of which settled between them like lead. It felt like she was being entrusted with the most precious secret. And she’d be damned if she didn’t listen.

“Many decades ago, in the old English countryside, there was a very rich, very powerful family,” Mr Richards explained, pulling his journal closer. “Now, even though they were well-off, the old patriarch of the family had what we refer to today as erythropoietic porphyria.”

With a rather dramatic flourish, he flipped a yellowed page and revealed a list of names forming what appeared to be a genealogy of sorts. The first and oldest entry dated back all the way to the 1800’s.

“There was no known treatment for the disease at the time, but the family had hired an apothecary who suggested something quite uncanny-”

Marsha swallowed down the bile that had already risen up into her mouth, the word springing to mind before the old man had even uttered it.

Blood.

“In an attempt to rid himself of his ailments, the patriarch sent his farmhand out during the day to procure fresh blood from the oxen in the fields and had his wife create a herbal tincture from the substance.”

“...he actually believed that would work?” she questioned, trying to hide her distaste.

“Indeed, he did,” the answer came. “And believe it or not, his condition greatly improved after.”

“How is that even possible?”

Unfortunately, the answer only served to disturb the young orderly even more.

“With modern medicine, it has been determined that the iron found in the blood he drank replenished some of his iron stores,” Mr Richards wheezed, his voice strained in an attempt to fight back another cough. “He went from being a tired, sickly old man, to a rejuvenated aristocrat! Which was why he continued with the practice well into his senior years.”

“That’s barbaric,” she whispered, unable to conceal her horror anymore. “Is this what led to the belief of vampires?”

Having nearly reached his quota of tales for the day, words were becoming harder to produce for the old man. Instead, he pushed the leather journal closer to her, pointing out the last paragraph on the page.

Marsha was wary at first, but after some encouragement, she carefully picked up the book and read through his untidy scrawl.

After the de Lancaster family incorporated the tradition of bloodletting and subsequent ingestion thereof, the belief of blood being a cure-all became somewhat prevalent among the elite families who had learned of this secretive habit.

The question was then posed: if animal blood could bring a man back from the throws of infirmity, what more could human blood be capable of…?

For a long moment, she was incapable of formulating a response. What she’d just read - the reality posited in this tiny journal - made her want to wretch.

“You’re saying people actually…”

“I am,” he answered solemnly. “It was rife among the elite families, many of whom still partake in the practice to this very day! Have you never wondered why so many people disappear every year?”

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Marsha countered sharply, gripping the book tighter. “With modern medicine, that archaic belief would have been debunked-”

“They don’t care about modern medicine, child,” Mr Richards chastised. “It’s a ritual for them. Like a drug, it gives them the ultimate sense of power.”

Before Marsha could say anything more, the old man suddenly erupted into another, far more violent coughing fit.

One that didn’t stop.

In a panic, she quickly pressed the emergency button on the wall, as the elder reached for his throat, hoping that would somehow calm the sound ripping through his chest.

Within seconds, the emergency personnel streamed in through the door, all hurrying to his side. Marsha moved to give them space to work, but was once again stopped when Mr Richards grabbed onto her shirt, refusing to let go.

“Keep. It. Safe,” he wheezed, eyeing the journal in her hands before the nurse shoved herself between them.

She watched on in horror as she was ushered from the room, catching a small glimpse of the nurses connecting the once mobile patient to this strange machine she hadn’t seen before.

The journal felt heavy in her hands, weighing more and more with each hack that echoed from the room. Coupled with his final demand of her, Marsha hurriedly shoved the book into her satchel, out of sight. She nearly missed the soft sound of footsteps approaching.

“It’s always sad watching them so near the end, don’t you think?”

The familiar voice of Dr Chesterton greeted her in the open space. When she turned to face the middle aged doctor, he flashed her a consoling smile, watching as the staff settled the elderly patient.

“I suppose it is,” Marsha responded promptly, fighting the urge to fiddle with her satchel. “

A pensive look crossed the doctor’s face just then, a memory dancing behind those deep brown hues that never quite looked at her for more than a few seconds.

“I remember when Eli was first admitted into my care,” he hummed after a beat. “He was a historian-turned-journalist, you know? But some say he lost the plot after his daughter disappeared.”

Mr Richards had a daughter?

In all the time she had known him, he never once mentioned anything about any children he might have had. They never seemed to visit him either.

“Oh my…” Marsha finally managed, breaking out of her stupor. “Did- did they ever find out what happened to her?”

The doctor shot her a wry smile, before shaking his head. His light salt and pepper strands shimmered in the low light of the hallway.

“I’m afraid not,” he shrugged. “ But the family she worked for offered to pay Eli quite a handsome sum as compensation for his loss. She must have meant a great deal to them.”

There was something strange about his expression just then. Not exactly sad, but the closest imitation thereof he seemed capable of producing. Almost like some superficial level of sympathy.

That was awfully strange…

“How nice of them,” Marsha offered up a polite smile, before turning her attention back to the room.

Mr Richards had finally settled down now. The harsh lines that always marred his face evened out, making him look more peaceful than he ever seemed to be in his waking hours.

“Eli has always had certain reservations when it came to money, though” Dr Chesterton’s voice cut through her observations. “He believed that no honest man could ever be rich. There simply had to be some kind of nefarious deed that established their profits.”

The corner of his mouth curved upwards, almost like he found this tragic story rather humorous. Marsha wasn’t quite sure how anyone could think this was funny-

…there’s always a little truth in their lies…

The words came unbidden, echoing in her ears once more.

…like an inside joke that only they really understand.

Marsha stilled, her stomach churning slightly. Surely not…

Sending a furtive glance the doctor’s way, she forced herself to calm down. She was probably imagining things. Like the way he usually made her skin crawl. Or the blatant disregard he sometimes showed towards his patients.

No. She was just spooked by an old man’s scary story. That’s all this was.

“Fortunately for us,” Dr Chesterton mused. “His delusions won’t be a problem for much longer.”

“W-why is that?” Marsha asked, not liking how pleased he looked with himself.

“Well, we’ve just added a new antipsychotic drug to his treatment plan.”

A what?

Those were usually reserved for the patients in B ward. Mr Richards never qualified for use of antipsychotics, even with his dementia diagnosis…

“The first dose was administered this morning, so pretty soon, his memory of events - real or imagined - will be subject to whatever stimulus we give him.”

“You mean…” Marsha stopped herself, her hand reaching for the strap of her satchel like it was some kind of lifeline. “What about all of his research?”

A derisive scoff rippled into the air, one that belied how Dr Chesterton truly felt about the matter. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his crisp white coat and made to leave.

“All arbitrary at best,” he tossed over his shoulder. “No one is going to miss anything.”

The blasé manner in which he spoke irked Marsha. Maybe Mr Richards had the right idea about the wealthy. Maybe they were all harboring some kind of damning secret. Be it disdain for the elderly and poor… or something far more nefarious.

As if sensing her train of thought, Dr Chesterton stopped in his tracks. Then, with a scrutiny she hadn’t seen before, he eyed her from across the hallway.

“Unless, of course… the old man told you something a little more pertinent?”

Marsha’s pulse started racing. The low light of the hallway cast an array of shadows along the doctor’s slender frame, making her feel a little queasy. Even more so when she remembered the book currently hidden in her bag.

…Vampires exist. But they aren’t what you think…

Maybe Mr Richards really was losing his mind.

But there really was no harm in seeing if his work held any merit.

“Nothing at all.”