Abhartach

October 30th, 1828

“I am so alone, I am so utterly alone. By the time you’re reading this, I will have plummeted from the top-floor window to the inevitable…”

Sitting on the castle windowsill was a Countess, Countess Karnstein. A young girl of barely eighteen with flowing auburn hair and a face pale outside of freckles, her heart pounded beneath that same pale skin as the inevitability of eternity, of death, drew in upon her somber mind like a tightening noose.

She had always felt a call, a call to the void; it was something she couldn’t help, something there wasn’t a cure for. Her tutors had spoken of “melancholy” as if naming it would banish it. Priests had urged prayer, doctors had recommended laudanum, cold baths, and bitter tonics. None of it mattered. For years, she had been able to reason herself away from the edge, away from her doom, away from it all, clinging to the small comforts of her life like a sailor clutching wreckage in a storm. But this time was different. This time, the storm had claimed everything.

She had just become Countess a week prior, when her father and mother were trampled by a mad horse breaking free from the reins of a carriage. Their blood still stained the cobblestones outside the chapel. They had left her, their only heir, with a castle full of portraits, a title heavy as a millstone, and all the responsibility in the world.

She loved her parents; she missed them desperately. She longed for nothing more than to feel the warmth of her mother’s arms once more, the scent of rosewater and ashes in her hair, her father’s voice echoing through the hall like a hymn. She saw this, the ledge beneath her bare feet, the night yawning below, as the only way back to them. So she sat at the sill, contemplating, fingers tracing the grooves of the ancient stone.

Outside, the cold autumn wind prowled through the window like a living thing, wrapping itself around her, sending a chill down her pale skin that was warmed only by a thin lavender nightgown. The flames in the fireplace had long since died, and even the portraits seemed to watch her with hollow eyes. Tears tracked down her cheeks, salt and ice against her lips, as her hands began to tremble and she edged ever closer to the edge.

This was her end. She imagined herself in her family’s crypt, lying among the Karnstein dead, the stone walls close and cold. To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious, she thought, repeating the phrase she had once read in an old, worm-eaten book hidden in her father’s library, its leather cover stained with age.

As she prepared to jump, a servant knocked gently on the door. The sound barely reached her through the howl of the wind. The latch clicked, and he opened it just wide enough to peer inside, just wide enough to hear her whisper goodbye, her voice a ghost already fading.

She turned her head slightly, auburn hair lifting in the wind, eyes dark with decision. And as if time stood still, before the servant could take a step forward or speak to talk her down, he heard it: a final, piercing scream. She lunged out the window.

The night swallowed her. Her body struck the gravel road below with a wet, sickening impact. Her spine twisted out of her neck like a broken marionette’s string. The servant’s cry went unanswered.

It was over. She was dead.

It’s unclear if she knew the glory, the glory of death she sought. Days later, when the crypt was opened for her burial, her coffin lay empty. The Countess’s body had vanished, leaving only speculation. A great mystery, never solved.

History soon forgot her, as it forgets most women who go too soon. But the very, very few historians who still whispered her tale knew the folklore around it. Though they claimed grave-robbing, they were aware of older names, Abhartach, Nosferatu, the Undead, the Bloodsucker, older than any Christian burial rite. Yet the few who clung to these fables were laughed away as relics of another age. And so the Countess, Countess Karnstein, was lost to time.

September 28th, 2020

Marya Stoker, a detective and criminologist, unlocked the door of her small apartment after a shift that had stretched from dusk nearly to dawn. The deadbolt gave way with a reluctant click, and she slipped inside, greeted by the familiar hush of the place. The apartment smelled faintly of coffee grounds gone stale, the bitter tang of old cigarette smoke clinging to the wallpaper, and the faint musk of her own sweat. They were the scents of exhaustion, of long nights bleeding into longer mornings.

She dropped her keys onto the table with a metallic clatter, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence. For a moment, she stood there, shoulders slumped, staring at the shadows in the corners as if expecting them to move. Then, sighing, she tugged at the buttons of her sweat-soaked shirt, one by one, until it fell open. The fabric clung briefly before sliding down her arms, damp with the weight of the day. She peeled off her bra and tossed it to the floor with a tired groan, then padded barefoot toward the bedroom. Each step felt heavier than the last.

The bed was an unmade nest of tangled sheets, stale warmth clinging to the fabric. Marya hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her pants, shoved them down to her ankles, and let herself collapse forward onto the mattress. The springs gave a weary groan beneath her weight. She buried her face into the pillow, inhaling the lingering scent of detergent and sweat, and closed her eyes.

Rolling onto her side, she reached toward the far half of the bed. Her fiancé, Clive, was there, his dark hair pressed neatly against the pillow as if he had been waiting for her. His body lay still, wrapped in shadows cast by the half-closed curtains. Relief softened her breath.

“It’s been a long day,” she whispered, her voice trembling with exhaustion. “Please… hold me.”

There was no answer.

Marya’s hand brushed against his shoulder. The skin was ice cold.

Her eyes snapped open. A pulse of dread cut through the haze of fatigue, sharp as glass. She sat up quickly, shaking his arm. “Clive?”

The body resisted her touch, heavy, stiff. She pulled at him, flipping him toward her, and in that instant, the dim lamplight revealed a horror her mind almost refused to process. His throat was torn open, the flesh ragged and uneven as though chewed or clawed apart. Dark rivulets of half-dried blood clung to his collarbone and spread into the sheets. His mouth hung slack, his eyes dull and clouded.

Her breath hitched, caught between a scream and silence. Before the sound could escape, the shadows in the room shifted. Something hurled itself onto her from the darkness. The weight of it crushed her against the mattress. A face pressed down into hers, its mouth colliding with brutal force.

The kiss was not human. Its lips split hers, teeth scraping, tongue forcing its way deep into her mouth. The taste flooded her senses, coppery, thick, as if she were swallowing rust and old pennies. Blood smeared across her tongue, warm and alien. She gagged, writhing beneath the figure, her nails clawing at its scalp until she tore free a lock of coarse red hair. The strands clung wetly to her fingers.

With a surge of desperation, she shoved against its chest. It staggered back, rising above her in a hunched silhouette. Its laugh cracked the air, guttural and inhuman, a sound that seemed to reverberate inside her skull rather than the room. And then, it was gone. Not fading into smoke, not retreating into shadow. Simply gone, as though it had never existed.

Marya lay there gasping, chest heaving, the sheets sticky against her bare skin. She struggled upright, tripped over her pants still tangled at her ankles, and crashed to the floor. Cursing, sobbing, she ripped them off and crawled, dragging herself across the carpet to the bathroom.

She barely made it to the toilet before her stomach revolted. Vomit poured up her throat, violent and bitter, spattering the porcelain until her eyes watered and her ribs ached. When it ended, she slumped against the wall, throat raw, gasping for air.

The mirror above the sink caught her attention. She lifted her head, and the reflection struck her like a blow. A stranger stared back: her lips smeared crimson, her chin streaked with blood that dripped onto her chest. For an instant, she thought it was Clive’s, or perhaps the creature’s, but then she tasted it again, the iron tang, thick and suffocating, still coating her tongue.

Her knees buckled. She gripped the sink, shaking violently, tears spilling down her cheeks in hot streams. A broken sob tore out of her as she fumbled for her phone. With trembling hands, she dialed her department. Her voice was ragged, uneven, as she forced the words into being: her fiancé had been murdered.

The voice on the other end tried to steady her, saying officers were on their way. But the words were distant, meaningless.

The phone slipped from her grip and clattered to the tiles. She sank onto the floor, clutching her stomach, the silence pressing in heavy as stone. In her mind, the guttural laugh echoed, over and over, unclear whether it was memory or hallucination.

Then the windows of the apartment flew open with a violent crack. The curtains billowed inward, the night air rushing through with an unnatural chill. The room seemed to shudder, unreal, as though the world itself were pulling apart. Marya curled into herself on the tiles, crying uncontrollably.

By the time officers arrived, she could barely form words. Her body shook as she held out the lock of red hair clenched in her palm. They promised it would be tested in the lab. Answers, they said, would come. Yet as Marya stared at the crimson strands, still damp and reeking of sweat, she could not escape the truth: every detail of what had happened felt impossible, unreal, like a nightmare she had been forced to live.

Questions, body bags, cameras flashing, faces in and out, in and out, until the house emptied, leaving only silence and a state of shock. She showered, scrubbing until her skin ached, and when the last of them cleared out, she tried to sleep on the floor. Tried, but never managed. Restlessness gnawed at her. She had seen hundreds of bodies in her career, but this was different. All her hard-won desensitization was gone. Now there was only the sense of being cornered, trapped.

Eventually, the next night arrived, dragging itself across the sky after a day that refused her any rest. Marya had lain awake on the floorboards, every blink haunted by the taste of blood and the echo of that laugh. Yet despite the horror, despite the shadows lurking at the edges of her mind, she forced herself into the precinct. She was a detective, and detectives did not yield.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, stabbing at her exhausted eyes. Her body sagged with every step, knees weak, hands trembling from too much coffee and too little sleep. But her voice, her voice still had fire. She slammed reports onto desks, barked orders at subordinates, her fury the only thing keeping her upright.

“Every detail,” she snapped at the assembled team, her throat raw. “Every shred of evidence. What have you found?”

The room fell into an uneasy silence save for the steady hum of the machines. A weary forensic scientist, Dr. Maxwell Lawrence, pushed his glasses up, cleared his throat, and spoke with careful, measured words as if testing each one for safety.

“The hair,” he said slowly. “We ran it through everything, every database, every cold case file we could access. The result… doesn’t make sense. That DNA has turned up before. Not once, not twice, but in at least fifty unsolved murders, stretching back more than a century.”

Marya blinked; her heart faltered as if someone had struck a chord inside her chest. The scientist’s gaze dropped to the folder in his hands, knuckles paling against the paper. “It’s impossible,” he went on. “Could be contamination. Could be a wig. Could be” He swallowed. “something else. I don’t have a rational answer. No one here does.”

His words hit her like a bullet. For a breath, the precinct thinned away: the fluorescent buzz dimmed, conversations receded into static, and all that remained was the echo of that inhuman laugh and the wrong, hot press of lips against her mouth. Each time the memory surfaced, it felt altered, as if some small, careful hand had rearranged the edges of it. The sharp disgust that had rolled through her that morning had dulled at the margins, fraying into something she could not, would not name.

Her breath quickened. She shook her head as if to dislodge the thought, but the memory lingered: not only the violence, but the closeness, the insistence, the way her body had trembled beneath it. Shame coiled in her, metallic and bitter; beneath that shame, something else stirred, dangerous and traitorous. She hated herself for the flicker of it, for the way her pulse hitched at the memory, and she hated the thought all the more for its persistence.

She clenched the desk edge until her knuckles ached, forcing herself back to the room. Anger was cleaner. Anger was a tool. If this thing had taken Clive, she would see it answer for that. She swore a silent oath: find it, stop it, kill it if she had to.

Even as she shaped the vow, a softer whisper threaded through her resolve like smoke, the obscene notion that she wanted to see it again. The idea made her retch internally, but she could not smear it out of her mind.

She forced her voice steady and asked the only question that mattered in that moment. “Where’s the closest previous case?”

The scientist inhaled, then replied, “They’re scattered, Georgia, Maine… but the closest match is just over the border in the Outer Banks. It happened about fifteen years ago, ma’am.”

“Okay, okay,” she huffed. “Get me paperwork drafted to the Outer Banks County PD, request they reopen the case, and authorize me to travel there as a liaison. Run the DNA to the FBI and flag it as potentially linked to a serial offender or an organized cover-up, possibly a cult. And someone get me another coffee before I break something, and I hope it isn’t someone else’s face.”

Just as she finished her sentence and the room scattered into motion, a firm hand caught her shoulder. She turned to find her senior officer looming, his expression carved in stone.

“Detective Stoker…” His voice was dry, rasping, and echoing with authority.

“Y-yes, sir,” she answered, her usual confidence faltering.

“I trust you understand,” he said evenly, “given the… personal nature of this case, you are not to be involved in the investigation. Effective immediately, I’m placing you on mandatory paid leave. Minimum of five days. No exceptions.”

Her throat tightened. “B-but, Commissioner Hodder…”

“No buts.” His tone cut like a blade. “Go get some rest. And for God’s sake, stay at a friend’s place. Sleeping in that apartment isn’t good for your head right now.”

She swallowed hard, shame and grief burning together in her chest. “Y-yes, sir,” she whispered, her voice breaking beneath the weight of despair.

Despite his words, she had nowhere else to go. The graveyard shift as a detective left little room for socializing, and the few friends she had were still back on the West Coast, where she had grown up. In this city, there was only Clive. He had been her one connection outside of the force, the single thread tying her to a life that wasn’t soaked in death and paperwork. Now that thread was severed, and the emptiness felt unbearable.

So she went home.

She unlocked the door as though walking into a tomb, every hinge creaking like a reminder of what waited inside. She collapsed onto the bed, their bed, the same one where, less than a day ago, her fiancé had lain lifeless, and she lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. The sheets still smelled faintly of him.

Hours passed.

She did not move.

The walls seemed to breathe around her, expanding and contracting in the quiet of the apartment. Her thoughts circled like vultures, tearing at her resolve, until exhaustion finally smothered her. Insomnia gave way to sleep, and sleep gave way to dream.

In the dream, she was no longer herself. She moved like a fly, wings thrumming in frantic rhythm. She buzzed through a canopy of leaves, past shafts of sunlight that broke in gold across an orange-pink sky. Birds sang above her in sharp, ringing voices. The melody they carried rose and fell in aching arcs, sweeping and mournful, with a beauty that unsettled as much as it soothed. She almost knew it, almost. It stirred something buried deep in memory, a tune she had heard before, something grand, tragic, and unbearably familiar.

She flew faster, trying to outrun the recognition clawing at the edges of her mind. The song chased her, every note heavy with longing, every cadence filled with sorrow.

Then she stopped.

She was caught.

A web clung to her wings, strands stretching and tightening no matter how she struggled. Her buzzing slowed to a pitiful hum as the trap thickened around her body. Then it appeared: red legs, spindly and deliberate, creeping forward. A spider descended, massive, twice her size, its yellow abdomen glistening in the dreamlight, a skull-esc pattern in black etched across its back.

It hovered above her, patient, inevitable. Then the fangs sank into her neck. The pain was sharp and numbing at once, her body going slack as if drugged. Threads of silk wrapped around her, binding her in place, cocooning her with clinical precision. She was helpless.

She awoke.

Her eyes shot open to the darkness of her bedroom, but she could not move. Sleep paralysis crushed her chest, pinning her body like the spider’s silk had. Her breath hitched as tears streamed uncontrollably, and then she saw it, something above her.

It descended slowly, impossibly, like her dream bleeding into reality. Hanging from the ceiling was no spider, no marble-weaver, but a woman. Draped in layers of Victorian black and deep violet, the figure floated down as though suspended by invisible threads. Her hair blazed red in the dim light, a living flame framing a face both beautiful and grotesque.

Marya’s body refused her. Not even her fingers twitched.

The woman leaned close, and her lips pressed to Marya’s. The kiss was deliberate, lingering, her mouth moving lower, tracing to her throat, then her collarbone. Teeth grazed flesh. Then, with sudden force, fangs pierced deep into her breast.

Agony and ecstasy collided. Marya felt her lifeblood pulled, drained, her body shuddering though it could not move.

She awoke again.

This time, she was truly in her room, the ceiling bare, the shadows still. But her chest ached. She looked down and saw the bruise on her breast, dark and spreading where the fangs had been.

No cuts. No blood. No proof.

Only the pain.

And she couldn’t think. Not clearly. Not anymore.

The memory of this second attack was already warping, shifting under some unseen hand. One moment, she recalled a monstrous, ghoulish figure descending like a spider, and the next she saw instead a radiant, pale-skinned redhead, petite and impossibly beautiful, drifting toward her as if in a lover’s embrace. The kiss replayed in her mind, soft, sensual, tender in ways no human had ever touched her. Each recollection contradicted the last, and the more she tried to grasp it, the more the truth slipped through her fingers.

Desperate, she forced herself upright. She had to hold on to something. She snatched a Sharpie from the clutter of her bedside table and grabbed the nearest scrap of paper, a grease-stained receipt from a local pizza joint lying on the floor. Her hand shook as she scrawled, pressing hard enough that the marker nearly tore through the thin slip.

She wrote down everything: the dream, the birdsong, the web, the bite, the kiss, the fire-red hair, the layered gown, the pale hovering woman who was monster and angel both. Each frantic stroke of ink was a plea against forgetfulness, against corruption, against her own mind betraying her.

And as soon as she finished, as soon as the last jagged words bled into the paper, her body collapsed back onto the bed. The Sharpie slipped from her fingers.

Sleep claimed her again, swift and merciless.

When she awoke once more, all she longed for was the return of the pale beauty. She had no recollection of the attack, and the bruise on her chest had somehow healed overnight, her skin unmarked as though nothing had ever happened.

Still, she remembered something important, something about a receipt. Her eyes caught on the pizza receipt lying on the table and the uncapped Sharpie on the floor. She picked it up, frowning, trying to recall why it mattered.

For a moment, the paper felt heavy in her hand, filled with meaning. But when she looked closer, her mind skipped past the frantic black scrawl written across it, refusing to see what was really there. All that registered were the printed words of the order, grease-stained and ordinary.

“Garlic knots,” she muttered to herself, forcing a weak smile. “Guess I was craving them.”

With that, she tossed the receipt back onto the table. Nocturnal as ever, Marya’s mornings began at sundown and ended just before dawn.

She threw on something less stained than the rest of her laundry, shoved her feet into her scuffed boots, and grabbed her keys. If she wanted to eat, she needed to rush; Pauccini’s would be closing in a few hours, and her warped schedule left her guessing whether this counted as breakfast or dinner.

When she arrived, however, the place wasn’t closing. It was buzzing. The lights inside were dimmer than usual, the booths crowded with people clutching soda cups and paper bags of popcorn instead of pizzas. At the counter, a hand-lettered sign explained it: Special Event Tonight, Horror Film Marathon. Doors locked at midnight. Movies until morning.

She blinked, confused, as the cashier explained that the restaurant had partnered with a local film club. Tonight, the ovens had shut down early to make room for the projectors and folding chairs. They were starting with Dracula (1931) and ending with Martin (1978), with a string of other monster films running straight through until dawn.

If she wanted food, she had to pay admission. The rule was firm. Annoyed, she slid her card across the counter anyway. Hunger spoke louder than irritation. The ticket and a lukewarm slice of pizza were shoved into her hands, and almost without realizing it, she found herself clutching both as she drifted toward the crowd, the sound of an old orchestral score already humming faintly from the speakers.

She hadn’t planned to stay. Just a quick slice, maybe a coffee to go. But as the first strains of that familiar melody rose from the speakers, the same ghostly tune from her dream, her feet refused to move. The opening credits of the pin-ultimate gothic film flickered onto the screen, and she found herself sinking into a chair among the crowd as Swan Lake played melodramatically through the soundtrack.

The music coiled around her like silk, tugging at something deep inside her chest. She felt as if invisible threads had wrapped around her wrists and ankles, drawing her still. The air thickened. The chatter of the room receded. Darkness pressed in until only the screen remained.

Bela Lugosi’s eyes stared out from the flickering film, black pools of impossible depth. Her breath caught. Webs began to creep at the edges of her vision, glistening strands overlapping the movie’s grainy images. Dozens, no, hundreds, of marble orb-weaver spiders swarmed across the webs, their red legs moving in perfect silence. Yet she felt strangely calm, almost serene, her heartbeat slowing to match the rhythm of the music.

Until she saw him.

The prey caught in the center of the webs.

Clive.

His body was half-decayed, pale and drained, eyes rolled back in their sockets. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Her throat locked. The film hissed. Shadows flickered. And from the center of her vision, a figure appeared.

“Sweet summer child,” it said, a voice not of the theater but inside her own skull. “I have waited so many moons for another like you. You don’t know what you’ve stumbled upon. Darling, darling… I live in you, and you would die for me. I love you so.”

Her voice was music itself, richer than strings, darker than horns, a full, impossible orchestra.

“Open yourself up,” the voice continued, “so you may be forever. Come with me, darling. Come with me. Forget all worldly desires and give in to my demonic kiss.”

The song from the dream, the spiders, the woman, everything crashed back at once.

She tore herself free with a scream that cut across the theater. Gasps followed her as she stumbled up the aisle, nearly tripping over herself, bolting through the lobby doors into the night. She didn’t even think of her car. It sat abandoned in the lot outside Pauccini’s as she ran, the Autumn air burning in her lungs.

By the time she burst into the precinct, she was still shaking, her breath sharp and ragged. Heads turned. She didn’t care. She stormed past desks, papers, startled officers, and straight to the forensic scientist who answered her questions days earlier.

“PRINT OUT THE OUTER BANKS ADDRESS AND GIVE IT TO ME!” she barked, slamming her hands on the desk. Her eyes were wide, her voice cracked. “And keep it quiet, I’m not supposed to be investigating this!”

The man recoiled, blinking at her as if she were some wild thing loosed in the sterile fluorescent light. “Detective Stoker… what the hell happened to you? You look,” he lowered his voice, glancing around, “disturbed, ma’am.”

Her whole body trembled. “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, though the words quivered in her throat. “I need that address. Any information you can give me. Before I forget again.”

She was louder than she meant to be. Louder than the hum of the printers, the shuffle of reports, the clacking typewriters. Eyes began turning, curious, judgmental, alarmed.

“You’re not on the case, ma’am, and you’re on mandatory leave. I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the scientist said in a low, even voice. But as he spoke, his hand slid a folded paper across the desk, slipping it into her palm before anyone else could see.

She looked down. A personal email. Instructions to contact him there if she wanted more, and a tidbit about how strange this case is turning.

For a moment, Marya’s mouth went dry. Her pride screamed at her to argue, to shout, to demand he print everything out right now, but the other eyes on her burned hotter than any words could. Reluctantly, she turned away and forced herself to walk out before anyone decided to escalate.

The night felt heavier now. Crossing town on foot, the streets swam before her, every lamp haloed in her tired eyes. She found her car still sitting where she left it at the pizzeria and collapsed inside, hands trembling as she opened her email app. She sent him a message right there in the driver’s seat.

Hours later, in the suffocating quiet of her apartment, the reply came through. An address. And attached to it, a DNA match.

Her stomach flipped as she read it. The name was impossible, absurd. A Countess. Dead one hundred ninety-two years ago, almost to the day, a month short.

She stared at the glow of the screen, her heart pounding. She needed time to process. To make sense of it. But time was the one thing she didn’t have. Not when her own mind betrayed her, when every hour that passed risked losing the memory, reshaping it into a dream. She didn’t trust herself. She couldn’t.

She braced herself for the drive. Taking only the near-inedible scraps of half-expired Chinese takeout from her fridge and a bottle of red wine, she placed them on the passenger seat like grim travel companions.

Seven and a half hours. No stops. No other choice. She had to get there, had to find the answers, had to keep her promise to Clive. Yet every dream, every memory, every waking moment had begun to twist together into an amorphous blur, an amalgam of truth, nightmare, and something in between. She could feel herself slipping, little by little, into madness.

No music. Just road, headlights, and night. Just trees, and the occasional passing driver. She had wanted quiet, but quiet was not what she found.

Within the second hour, she began to hear it. A melody, razor-thin and perfect, threading through the hum of the tires on asphalt: Caprice No. 24 in A minor, Op. 1. Paganini, though her herself didn’t know its name. Each note drove into her skull like the bite of a thousand fangs, a venom she could not shake.

Then the voice came. Silken, ageless, curling around her name:

“Through endless centuries, I have taken lovers, some fleeting, some eternal. I have been their muse, their ruin. I have mastered every art, every instrument. Tell me, Marya, what wonders could you create if you walked with me beyond death? I played with Niccolò, whispered to Tchaikovsky; ballets, symphonies, requiems, they were mine as much as theirs. Come with me, darling. Be one with me. Be mine. Die for me.”

“NO!” she screamed, jerking the wheel as headlights cut across her vision. A horn blared, and another car swerved into the ditch to avoid her. Her chest heaved, her pulse wild, as a faint laugh lingered in her ears before fading into silence.

Five more hours to go. She forced her grip tighter on the wheel. She had to hold herself together. Even as the echo of a long-dead laugh blared in the back of Marya’s car.

Her phone began to buzz. Once, twice, then nonstop. Commissioner Hodder. She didn’t need to see the name to know. She figured Maxwell must have snitched, and she had no desire to hear his voice lecturing her about protocol. The screen lit up a dozen times before finally falling silent. She let it, hands locked to the wheel, her jaw set tight as the night pressed on.

Twilight dissolved into dawn, the sky bruising purple, then pale gray, then the thin yellow of morning. She drove straight through, eyes bloodshot, knuckles white. September gave way to October in silence, the road itself a blurred ribbon of cracked asphalt unspooling beneath her.

By the time she reached the Outer Banks, exhaustion weighed on her like a lead coat. The GPS took her down long-forgotten service roads, hemmed in by forests that seemed to lean closer with every mile, until the trees broke and the horizon opened onto a vast, hulking shape of steel and brick.

The factory rose out of the weeds like a corpse no one had bothered to bury. Its windows were shattered, its rusted smokestacks reaching into the sky like skeletal fingers. Thirty minutes from the sea, the place still smelled faintly of brine, but stronger was the stench of mildew, oil, and corroded iron, an airless, suffocating scent that clung to her throat.

She killed the engine, sat slumped in the driver’s seat, and pulled the bottle of wine from the passenger side. The cork crumbled under her nails, and she drank greedily, red spilling down her chin and staining her shirt like fresh blood. It wasn’t courage she found at the bottom, only a numbness sharp enough to make standing possible.

When at last she stepped out, the gravel crunched under her boots with unnatural violence. Her breath smoked in the morning air. She crossed the threshold like a soldier storming a bunker, then lifted her leg and kicked. The factory’s heavy door screamed on rusted hinges as it buckled open.

Inside: silence, rot, and shadows. Once bustling with life, once littered with bodies, now it was nothing but ruin, an abandoned mausoleum of industry.

In the factory, she found nothing but spider webs, rusted machinery, and dark, dried stains on the floor that might once have been blood. The whole place stank of mildew and old iron, an airless tomb of labor long gone. Her eyes glared across broken glass, torn conveyor belts, dangling chains that swayed though there was no breeze.

She may have been a detective, but in her madness, she was already forgetting what she was here to find. Her mind, fractured and raw, stitched together memories into something monstrous, a Frankenstein of dreams, nightmares, and half-remembered truths. Faces bled into one another. Names slipped away.

Her hand trembled as she pulled her phone from her coat pocket. The glowing screen was slick with the sweat of her palm, the email still open. She clutched the phone like scripture, raised it to the rafters, and screamed as though conjuring a demon:

“CARMILLA KARNSTEIN! COUNTESS OF STYRIA!” Her voice cracked and echoed through the hollow factory. “YOU TOOK HIM FROM ME, AND NOW I WILL REMOVE YOU FROM THIS WORLD! SHOW YOURSELF, YOU VILE BITCH!”

Silence.

Quiet.

Nothing but the drip of water somewhere in the darkness and the echoes of her own broken voice.

Then she froze. A sudden, suffocating blackness closed around her, swallowing the factory whole. Her phone’s light snuffed out. Her body felt pinned in place.

A voice slid into her mind, smooth as velvet:

“I don’t wish for you to die yet… not by my hand.”

Marya’s breath caught as a figure emerged from the void.

“You can’t even remember his name anymore,” the Countess whispered. She stepped forward, radiant, more beautiful than Marya had ever seen, hair like a living flame, skin pale and perfect as marble, eyes glimmering with cruel affection. “I only showed you the path to pleasure, my darling Marya.”

Carmilla reached out a hand, commanding without raising her voice:

“Come to your mistress. Come to me, my darling… kneel before me.”

Marya obeyed. Her body bent before her as though she had been waiting for the command all her life.

“Now sleep.”

At the word, her body collapsed to the floor.

When she woke, she was drenched in blood. Her shirt clung to her skin, her limbs trembled with weakness, and her neck burned with piercing pain, but ecstasy laced the agony. She did not know why. She could not even care.

The sound of boots and shouts shattered the trance. Floodlights cut through the shadows as police stormed the factory. Commissioner Hodder himself strode in, face twisted with rage.

He seized her by the shirt, dragging her up to her knees.

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?!” he roared, his voice reverberating off the walls like gunfire.

Marya’s head lifted slowly, her hair matted, her clothes soaked with her own blood. Her neck throbbed, her body a mixture of pain and a strange, unexplainable ecstasy, but her eyes, her eyes burned. The madness, the grief, the obsession with what had been stolen, all coalesced into one singular, terrifying calm.

In a maniacal whisper, like something born from the minds of a thousand maniacs, she let loose a single word, her lips curling into a grin that made Hodder take a half-step back.

“Love.”

The word hung in the air, soft, mocking, impossible to pin down. It was a declaration, a challenge, a curse. The Commissioner’s face paled, his anger faltering for the first time, as if the sound alone carried a power beyond his understanding.

Marya didn’t flinch. She didn’t speak again. She simply let the silence settle, letting him absorb the truth that she was no longer just a detective, no longer entirely herself, and that whatever had claimed Clive had claimed her too.

October, 2020

Two weeks had passed. Marya had been institutionalized, confined to bright, padded rooms where the walls seemed almost to hum with sterile cheer. The sunlight poured through high windows, blindingly pure, but she barely noticed it, her mind tangled in threads only she could follow.

In these rooms, she wrote. Poems, loving and obsessive, but none for Clive. Instead, her words twisted with a strange, archaic cadence: noble blood, countesses, centuries-old griefs. And repeatedly, obsessively, one name emerged, like a scar across her memory: Abhartach.

She painted as well. Sprawling sheets of paper, provided by well-meaning attendants, became her canvas. Across them danced a ginger-haired woman draped in ball gowns, her skirts trailing into burial shrouds from ages long forgotten. The figure moved across centuries in ink and watercolor, hauntingly beautiful, impossibly alive.

To the staff, Marya seemed calmer, even happier than ever. But her eyes, bright and wide, betrayed a different truth: she was not herself. Something old, something undying, whispered just beneath the surface, coaxing her heart and mind toward a world she no longer fully belonged to.

One night. One fateful night, the clock struck twelve, and Marya began to dance. Her movements borrowed the elegance of La Sylphide, yet there was something unnatural in the rhythm, a tremor beneath the grace. Le Streghe echoed through the hall, a violin played impossibly far away, yet loud everywhere at once, vibrating in her bones. She spun as if strings had been tied to her limbs, pulled by invisible hands weaving the webs of her life.

And she laughed. A sound that was not wholly human, echoing off the walls like a bell cracked and ringing in the wrong key. Madness dripped from her movements, slow and deliberate, curling into something seductive, something Carmilla had wanted from the beginning, and now, impossibly, something Marya wanted herself.

Doors opened without touch, hinges screaming in protest. Shadows writhed across the walls, stretching, lengthening, folding around her like a dark tide. She moved through them as a ghoul might glide through mist, a devilish ballerina spinning in a hall that no longer obeyed the laws of space or time. Her hair, a wild flame of copper and gold, streamed behind her; her eyes, wide and unblinking, caught every flicker of candlelight and shadow, absorbing it into the whirl of her fevered dance.

Somewhere, above and within her, Carmilla’s presence coiled, invisible yet palpable, a pulse in the air, a whisper along her spine. Marya’s body answered with abandon, surrendering to the hypnotic pull, to the promise of power and terror and ecstasy all at once. Every step, every turn, every frantic leap felt predestined, orchestrated by a composer unseen, a ballet older than centuries, older than death itself.

By the time the dance slowed, the hall was empty, or so it seemed. Her chest heaved, sweat and blood mingling on pale skin. A silence hung, thick and oppressive, and yet in that silence, she knew she belonged neither to the world she had left behind nor to the one she had entered. Somewhere in the shadows, something waited, patient and eternal, and Marya had crossed the threshold where the living and the undead, the sane and the maddened, could no longer be told apart.

Marya awoke to the cruel bite of the wind. The grass beneath her was wet, cold, and unyielding, pressing into her sore, bruised ankles. Her body throbbed with every movement; her bare skin shivered, exposed to the indifferent night air. She tried to sit, tried to gather her thoughts, but the ache in her limbs made even the simplest motion agony.

Her mind clawed backward, searching for a thread of memory. The last thing she remembered was the car, the long highway stretching toward the Outer Banks, headlights slicing through darkness, the pulsing echo of a voice she could not forget. And now… this. Naked, abandoned, alone in a field that seemed to stretch into infinity.

Fear coiled tight around her chest. Her stomach growled, empty and gnawing. She had no food, no water, no idea how long she had been unconscious. Her reflection, the body she knew, felt distant, as though she were watching someone else’s pain, someone else’s violation.

Where was she? What was she becoming? She tried to speak, but her voice cracked, lost in the dark. Madness lingered at the edges of her mind, whispering that she had slipped too far, that something ancient and unspeakable had claimed her. A pulse thrummed at her temples, urging her to rise, to move, but her body rebelled.

The stars overhead offered no comfort, their cold pinpricks of light indifferent to her plight. And yet, beneath the fear, beneath the trembling and the shame, there was something else, something awakening, deep, insidious, and unnameable. Carmilla’s influence, lingering like smoke in her veins, seemed to smile in the darkness, patient, inevitable.

Marya shivered, not entirely from cold. She was afraid. She was lost. But more than anything, she did not recognize herself anymore.

Eventually, she rose, if it could be called rising. Her body was too weak to stand, so she dragged herself forward, crawling through the field, nails clawing into damp earth. Ahead, beyond the wavering horizon, a dark line of forest beckoned. Something inside her, some voice not her own, pulled her there.

On her hands and knees she moved, mile after mile, over splintering sticks and jagged stones, moss slick as velvet and granite cold as bone. Each inch left her bleeding and trembling, her breath a ragged rasp in the night air. Yet still she crawled, as if the forest itself were breathing her name.

And then she saw it: a glow through the trees, faint but unmistakable. A castle, its silhouette black against the sky, its windows lit like watchful eyes. Music rose with the sight of it, unbidden and inevitable. This time, she was awake, yet her body slipped from her control. Her limbs twitched, seized, then spun; she twirled as though bound to invisible strings, her muscles screaming with pins and needles. Through the iron gates she staggered, past stone lions and spiderwebbed balustrades, until she fell forward into waiting arms.

The woman who caught her was swathed in a deep crimson dress, the color of fresh blood, threaded with black so fine it glimmered like shadow. Over her shoulders hung a mustard-colored cloak, old but regal, its edges fraying like moth-eaten wings. Her eyes, eight-lensed, spiderlike, shimmering with gold and onyx, locked on Marya’s. And Marya, gasping and broken, could not tell if she was terrified or enthralled.

The Countess cradled her as one might a bride, her smile both radiant and predatory.

“My beauty,” she murmured, her voice like velvet sliding over steel. “Welcome to Styria. The window at the top of the highest tower, midnight tonight. Nearly two centuries ago, I met my fate there and became eternal.” She laughed, soft and low, the sound curling around Marya’s throat like a silk ribbon.

“I live for you, and you would die for me,” she whispered. “To end your life as a lover, to end your life for love and loss, is the only way to become as I am. Join me in forever tonight, my love.”

Marya tore herself from the Countess’s embrace and stumbled backward, panic flaring. Her bare feet slipped on the cold cobblestones; she fell hard, scraping palms and knees, skin shredding against the jagged stones.

“That’s no way to treat your mistress, darling,” Carmilla’s voice cooed, soft and scolding, a velvet blade across her ears.

A scream tore from Marya’s throat, raw, desperate, primal, but still she tried to run. Her body moved almost of its own accord, dragging across the floor by fingernails, leaving streaks of blood on the ancient stones.

Then darkness seized her again. The world collapsed into black velvet, sensation and fear dissolving together.

When her eyes reopened, Carmilla held her in her arms, too strong to resist. She pressed Marya close, lips descending in a kiss that was both torture and temptation. And, impossibly, Marya returned it. Each heartbeat, each gasp, wove her tighter into the Countess’s will. She was losing herself, thread by trembling thread, and she could feel it, and she could not stop it.

The Countess snapped her fingers, and the organ at the far end of the ancient hall thundered into life, its pipes wailing the Waltz from Swan Lake. Naked, bloodied, and no longer fully herself, Marya found herself moving. Hand in hand with Carmilla, she danced, a dance of death, a dance that seemed to stretch beyond time. Step by step, their bodies entwined like lovers, impossibly close, impossibly intimate.

It was a force Marya could scarcely resist. How could she? In some fragment of her mind, she longed to love again, but not this creature, not this predator. Another girl, another man, another anyone would have been enough. And yet, the Countess’s hypnotic beauty, her power, her dark, intoxicating magic, pulled Marya inexorably closer, like a moth to flame.

Candles flickered, chandeliers swung, shadows twisted across walls scarred by centuries. The waltz continued, and with each turn, each gasp, Marya felt herself slipping further from who she had been. She hated it. She feared it. And yet, part of her wanted it, wanted the obsession, the embrace, the dangerous, consuming love that Carmilla offered.

And so they danced. They would dance, candlelight painting them in gold and shadow, until midnight crept close and the world itself seemed to hold its breath.

As the clock approached twelve, the music stopped. Silence swelled like a living thing between the stones of the castle walls. Carmilla, her eyes glinting like a spider’s in candlelight, led the naked Marya upstairs to the top floor, to the windowsill of what had once been the Countess’s chamber. She set Marya down on the ledge with a gentleness that belied the madness in her voice.

“Tell me,” Carmilla whispered, “how much you love me.”

Marya tried to clamp her teeth on her tongue. She tried to be silent. But what spilled out of her mouth was not entirely hers, or perhaps it was, corrupted and twisted, and that was worse.

“I love you more than the moon is bright on this full-mooned night,” she heard herself say. “As the veil thins and Samhain begins. I shall be yours, I shall belong to you for all eternity, my love, and with you I shall remain.”

The Countess’s lips curved into a tremor of hunger. “Then die for me, my darling,” she cried, her voice breaking into hysteria. “Die! Die!”

Without looking behind her, Marya threw her weight backward. She toppled from the ledge and fell. So many stories down she plummeted, the rush of air stealing her scream. Stone rose to meet her like a lover. Her spine shattered; her leg snapped in two. Her skull cracked. She lay there on the cobblestones, bleeding out, her naked body trembling, her mouth choking on blood and tears. The pain was agonizing, drawn out, her vision fading into blackness. Finally, she drifted into death like a leaf caught in a current.

She did not rise.

She did not love the Countess.

Above, Carmilla collapsed to her knees, tears streaking down her face like rain through a cracked statue. “Oh, the tragedy! My love was not returned once more. Woe is me, for I am punished simply for living. What sin have I committed? What evil? I tell you none at all. Woe is me, woe…”

Part of her didn’t believe her own words. Part of her did. She had killed so many and tonight was none the diffrent.

She’d find a new plaything soon enough, just another doll to play with.