Short story (Secret)

I feel powerless

That was the foremost thought in young John’s mind as he cleaned his room. The fireplace went out for an instant, plunging the room into momentary darkness, before sputtering back to life. John paused his cleaning and tossed a few pieces of firewood into the hearth to feed the flame. He glanced at the empty bed on his friend's side of the room. It had been empty for days. Kai had run away before but had always returned to the orphanage after a few days. John never had the gall to follow him before. He was comfortable in the orphanage. Each day was the same, and John didn’t mind that. There was no room for secrets or mysteries in his mind. 

He worried for Kai; no one else seemed to. They all thought he would be back eventually, but John couldn’t seem to keep the worst-case scenario from his mind. What if he never saw his friend again? Who would sleep in his bed? Who would clean his side of the room? Eat his portion of supper? Remind him that even though they didn’t have parents, he still had a brother? 

John sat on his bed with a sigh. A night breeze drifted in lazily from the window, bringing the smell of a pending storm. His mind wandered as he sat there thinking about Kai. He remembered the last thing his friend had asked him. It had been a question involving the headmaster. Kai asked John if the headmaster had been looking extra pale recently. John told him that the man was over sixty, of course he looked pale. 

“John?” A warm hand jolted him from his thoughts. It belonged to one of two caregivers at the orphanage, Sister Helen. John moved over as the Sister sat on the bed next to him. “What troubles you, child?” 

“You know what troubles me, Sister. Kai is still missing, and no one seems to care or worry about him. What if he’s in trouble? Doesn’t the goddess compel you to watch those under your care?” John asked somewhat rudely. 

The Sister’s eyes stayed compassionate. “I understand your frustration. And I assure you you're not the only one worried. The city guards have Kai’s description and will find him eventually. But if you ask me, he’ll return when he’s ready, like all the other times.” 

John looked to the empty bed across the room. “Why does he do it, Sister?” 

“I don’t know, John. I wish he would stop too.” 

“I feel so powerless. Should I be looking for him? Is it enough to clean his side of the room while he isn’t here? I don’t know what to do.” 

“Are you asking me, your caretaker, if you should run away?” John glanced at her. She smiled. “I’m sure you know who the headmaster used to be.” 

John nodded. Every child in his care knew who he was. 

“Then you know how dangerous his life used to be. His job requires quite a lot of blessings from the goddess of the night, and it just so happens that’s where my specialty lies. We’ve been working together for decades at this point. And every time he leaves on a hunt, I worry. But what would following him do? It would just put myself in danger. So, I stay here and I wait, and the headmaster hasn’t let me down by dying yet.” 

John shook his head lightly. He understood what the sister was trying to tell him, but he couldn’t quite accept it. “What do I do with this feeling then? How do I make it go away?” 

The Sister got up and started to clean Kai’s side of the room, something John had been afraid to do. “Keep yourself occupied. A busy mind has less time to worry. If you want to help out then find me after your studies tomorrow.” 

“I might just do that.” John helped the Sister clean his friend's side of the room. Kai had run away a few days before weekly inspections. He probably just wanted to avoid cleaning. He would be back soon enough. In the meantime, he would stay busy, like Sister Helen told him to. The Sister inspected his room thoroughly as always and moved on to the next. The next room was Karl’s. He never cleaned, even for inspections. John wondered if he would hear Karl’s punishment through the walls again. 

Karl’s punishment did keep John from sleep, but it didn’t last for long. Three lashes to the wrist from a stick didn’t take long. The pain lingered for a while though. John lay awake long after Karl stopped weeping. He lay on the cusp of rest as his mind cycled through memories of him and his friend. For as long as he could remember, Kai was next to him. They grew up together, and John couldn’t get older without him. Waiting wouldn’t be enough. He had to do something.

He got up, went to his window and measured how far the drop would be. Then he decided the fall would break his legs and backed away. Besides, what good would running after Kai have done? John would get lost himself. Suddenly he thought of a much better idea. 

John peeked outside his door and looked down the hall for the Sister’s candlelight. It wasn’t there. He crept through the halls of Kalawan's orphanage keeping an eye out for the Sister. It wouldn't do him any good to get caught like this. He had never done anything like this alone. Usually, Kai would be dragging him along. And in a way he still was. 

John took slow and measured steps through the hall, careful not to make too much noise. As he made his way through the place he called home, the storm he smelled earlier started. Rain started to fall lightly at first, then harder as he reached the staircase. Thunder seemed to shake the building as he finally reached his destination. 

He knocked, glancing left and right for the Sister. “Headmaster Eric? Hello?” 

He knocked again, this time louder than he thought reasonable. After another silence, he pulled at the door, which opened with ease. Candlelight spilled out of the opening. John, not daring to look in, called out, “Headmaster? May I come in, please?” 

After a lengthy silence, John did something a voice inside him was protesting against. He slipped inside the room and shut the door behind him. The headmaster's personal quarters looked quite similar to his own at first glance. A hearth sat to the right, the bed next to it, and a large table with an oak chair was opposite to the hearth. There were paintings in the corner shrinking from the candlelight as if they didn’t want to be seen. The headmaster was nowhere to be found. John wondered if he was out on a hunt. 

He came to ask the headmaster to look for Kai. Headmaster Eric was a vampire hunter. If he could hunt monsters he could certainly track down Kai. But the room was empty. John glanced back at the door and decided that going back to his room wasn’t an option. He would wait for the headmaster to get back. He went and sat near the hearth for warmth. Rain hailed against the closed window behind the desk. 

John couldn’t sit still and decided to pace. His gaze kept wandering to the desk as he wondered what kind of letters a famous vampire hunter like Headmaster Eric would receive. John walked over to the table and grabbed the candle on it. He approached the largest painting in the corner. It was a beautiful yet horrible image of the headmaster driving a sword through what John presumed to be a vampire. However, in the painting the vampire looked more human than the headmaster. He had tears streaming down his face and a look of the utmost betrayal. The headmaster's much younger face was twisted in anger and another emotion John couldn’t identify. 

“John?” 

His heart dropped through his body as the headmaster's voice echoed the room. He turned to find the old man standing behind his desk. John glanced at the door he hadn’t heard open. He started to apologize but then noticed that the headmaster looked as pale as a sheet of paper. John remembered the question Kai had asked him.

“Headmaster Eric, are you feeling all right?”

The headmaster leaned against the table and sighed. “I’m getting old, boy. Why are you here? Did Helen send you?” 

John cleared his throat and stood straighter. “No. I’m sorry for the intrusion, but I wanted to ask if you could find Kai. He’s been missing for three days now.” 

“I know. But Kai has run away previously, and he has always returned.” 

“I feel something is wrong this time, Headmaster. I don’t think he simply ran away. I feel something bad has happened to him.” 

The headmaster shut his eyes as if trying to ward off a headache. “John, your worry for Kai makes you unreasonable. I’ll excuse you this...” 

His hand slipped from the table and he fell to the ground like a log. John rushed over. The headmaster was already back on his knees when John helped him up. Headmaster Eric looked John in the eyes and held his gaze for a length of time that was uncomfortable to John. The headmaster's eyes swept to John’s neck for an instant, then he pulled away. 

“Does Helen know you're here?” 

“No.”

“Do any of the other children know you're here?” 

“No.” 

“Do you really want me to search for Kai?” 

“Please. I want him to be safe.” 

“Then follow me.” 

To John’s surprise, they didn’t head towards the door. Instead, they walked to his large oak chair. The old man hunched over and pushed the oak chair with effort. It moved surprisingly silently across the stone floor. It revealed a spiraling staircase that went down into an unknown part of the orphanage, at least it was unknown to John. 

The headmaster started down the stairs. John hesitated, but after a moment followed. The stairs seemed endless, and John wondered how often the old headmaster climbed these steps. 

“What did you think of the painting?” 

“It was sad,” John responded almost reluctantly.

The headmaster glanced back at him. “Why do you say that?” 

“That thing you killed looked so human. How could it have been anything but one of us if it looked so similar?” The candle John held flickered for an instant. 

“That was decades ago now, I think. My memory gets weaker with each passing day. But that memory stays strong. He was a vampire, as I'm sure you’ve guessed, but he disguised himself as a human. He seduced an impressionable young woman, and they married. She never found out what he was until his fangs were in her throat. Worst of all, he had a son. The son was born a vampire with no say in the matter.”

The headmaster stopped and turned to face John fully. “I killed him. I had no remorse for it. Monsters shouldn’t live in our world, marry our women, and father bastards. It was all a mistake, and I rectified it.” He turned and continued down the spiraling staircase. 

John hurried after him, and following a lengthy silence, a question came. “What happened to the son?” The headmaster remained silent. John felt his curiosity overwhelm his sense. “Did you kill the son as well?” The side eye he received from the headmaster was enough to quell his curiosity. 

The silence didn’t last for long as the staircase ended and they reached a door. The headmaster opened it and beckoned John through. John stumbled into the dark room and held out the candle. The headmaster closed the door and latched it shut, then took the candle from John and started to light lanterns around the room. 

The first lantern lit up a part of the room that displayed the various weapons that Headmaster Eric had used on hunts. There was also a large chest probably containing his most valuable belongings. 

The second lit up a section of the room where heads were mounted on spears, each head frozen in a caricature of some horrible expression. The faces were held into their frozen expressions by small needles poked into the skin. John almost became sick all over the floor. 

The third threw light on the most disgusting sight of all, sitting upon a wide table were jars upon jars of blood. All of them sat in neat rows, except one that was open. The smell it was exuding did make John sick. He vomited on the floor. He didn’t even wait to stop throwing up as he ran to the door, but it was latched, and the key was with the man who led him there. 

John slowly looked to the headmaster, who was drinking from the jar of blood as a soldier drinks from a mug of ale. As he put the jar down, a tiny drop fell down his face and stained his shirt. The blood he drank seemed to make his face a little less pale. John couldn’t make sense of anything, and so he just stared, not being able to say a word. 

“You look petrified, boy. As if you’ve seen a spirit. Not to worry, I'm no such thing, just a plain old vampire.” 

John found his voice. “You’re not a vampire. You hunt vampires.” 

The headmaster shrugged. “Two things can be true.” 

John searched the headmaster's expression. “Are you going to kill me?” 

“Yes.”

A sob escaped John, but he felt a strange determination to face the vampire with strength. “Did you kill Kai?” 

“No. He really did just run away. If only you had stayed in your room.” 

The headmaster approached him. John shut his eyes and braced for pain, it never came. The headmaster had pulled up two chairs and faced them against each other. He motioned for John to sit. “I feel I owe you an explanation, John. I've never killed a child under my care before. Desperate times. If you have any questions?” 

John sat and felt strangely calm. “Why do you kill vampires if you are one?” 

The headmaster looked at his hands. “I didn’t choose this. Vampires are a stain on this land. If I thought my death would help anything, I would kill myself in an instant. It just so happens that I can use my knowledge of vampires to help the humans extinguish my race. I’ll do anything toward that end, even kill you.” 

“You have so much blood back there. Why do you need mine?” John hated how desperate his voice sounded. 

“Fresh blood makes me feel young. A Knight of Mreza approached me about a hunt. I can’t miss this one, lad. Those jars of blood are good to keep me alive, but they can’t let me live the way I want. I need fresh blood for that, your blood.” 

In that instant, all the fire in the room sputtered out, then leapt back to life. In that instant of darkness, the headmaster had moved from his chair to behind John. John could feel the headmaster's breath on his neck. He tried to get up, but a decrepit hand held him down. And John thought:

I’m powerless

Across the city, as a monster fed on his prey, Kai looked towards where he thought the orphanage might be from under his shelter against the rain. His gaze was too far to the right. He thought about his timid friend who was more like a brother. He wondered what John was doing right now.

Later that night, Kai was caught by the city guard attempting to steal from a man named Jace. The man was kind enough to let Kai and his friends go with only a warning. The city guard recognized Kai and marched him back to the orphanage. Kai had spent the last three days looking for honest work. It didn't even have to pay much, but he found nothing. So Kai resorted to stealing. He only wanted money to buy some sweets to share with John. 

Kai was given back to Sister Helen and she was told what Kai had tried to do. Kai knew he would get lashes from the stick for this, and he dreaded it, but he didn’t regret trying. The Sister dragged him by his shirt back to his room, where he would endure his punishment. Despite the impending pain, Kai was excited to see John. All they found was an empty room, and an open window. The floor was wet with rain.