My Vampire Story
It should never have come to court. As I sat in the public gallery watching Jonathon’s figure hunched despairing in the dock I wanted to stand up and shout at them all “Not guilty. Not guilty.”
But the case dragged on. Hour after hour of minute detail, legal argument, medical reports. We heard in gruesome detail about the state of the body as it was examined by the police surgeon and later by pathologists in two separate autopsies.
The final decision was that death had been caused by a single wound. Following a fall from an upstairs window the victim had landed on garden railings below, one of which had completely pierced his body impaling him through the heart.
The victim was described as an extremely elderly man and the body, on examination, had proved to be engorged with blood, despite the gaping wound to his chest. There was lengthy and confusing technical evidence which appeared to show two different blood types present within the corpse. No reasonable explanation could be offered for this unknown medical condition, but the experts agreed it had no relevance to the cause of death.
So much for the so-called experts.
Evidence was brought by the prosecution to show Jonathon had been alone with the victim just before the fatal incident. I was not called as a witness because, although I was in the house, I had been unconscious at the time and only woke when the police and ambulance sirens sounded outside the window.
The defence put the case that there was no evidence to show the victim had been pushed or in any way forced over the balcony. They challenged the prosecution to prove Jonathon guilty of any act of violence or intention to harm the victim.
Jonathon hasn’t said anything. The police questioned him for hours but got nothing out of him. How could he tell them the truth. Better to say nothing at all. Which is how he ended up arrested and held on remand on one charge of murder and a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Of course he did push that foul creature out of our house. In the final struggle it was only by sheer good fortune that the rotten wood of the balcony gave way. And perhaps only by the direction of some guardian angel that the monster landed as he did in the only way that could truly cause his death.
He had not been an old man when we knew him, or when he fell head first from our balcony. He was young, charming, beautiful in a frighteningly strange way. We met him at a party. One of those dim, drug thick affairs when everyone is a stranger but it doesn’t matter because nobody is their real self.
I say we met him. Actually it was me. I think I
was the only sober person there because Jonathon and I had to drive home to
I found myself talking to a charismatic stranger. His eyes glittered like the only living thing in that smoke dead room. I suppose I was stupid, talking about myself, telling him where we lived.
After that we saw him quite often. He would call round late in the evening – we never saw him during the day, he said he was working. I’d answer the door bell and there he would be, standing in the front porch waiting to be invited in.
I never felt at ease with him, but he never did or said anything wrong. His manners were perfect. But Jonathon was always there. Jonathon always talked with him, entertained him. You could say he was Jonathon’s friend, although I was always aware of the way his eyes always rested on me with a hidden hunger that I found disturbing.
Strangely it never occurred to either of us to send him away. We were caught like flies in a silken web, ignorant of how he was spinning to haul us to our fate.
Then one evening Jonathon was late home. I was alone when our friend arrived. I should have sent him away, shut the door in his face. But I invited him in.
In know that was where I made a mistake. Where I gave him the power over me that he had so patiently been waiting for. I don’t remember what happened next, it is lost in a kaleidoscope of dreams and honey and the taste of blood. When Jonathon came home he found me alone, sleeping on the sofa with the lights turned low.
After that my health deteriorated rapidly, I became tired and listless and started taking a lot of time off work. I went to the doctor who sent me to the hospital for tests, but they couldn’t find anything wrong. Our strange visitor continued to call, but now only when I was at home alone. My memory of those nights is hazy. I would have been in no position to describe them to the police even had they asked me.
I am the only one who knows what happened on that fateful night. Not because I have my own memory but because I am the only one Jonathon has been able to tell. In the days before they arrested him we put the story together.
He told me he had come home early that evening because he was worried about me. On entering our flat he came across a shocking scene. I was lying on the soft, I seemed almost in a coma, and our strange visitor was bent over me. As he lifted his head Jonathon saw blood dripping from his mouth.
Jonathon sprang forward with the strength of a madman. Wrestling the intruder off me they struggled together out through the open door to the balcony.
He saved me. My brave Jonathon . He saved my body and my soul. How can I save him now as I sit here in this courtroom dumb. I just want to shout out to them all “Not Guilty. Not guilty.”