The Renfield Syndrome by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 49

The night was unusually warm, and as Caspian stared up at the encroaching night sky, he began to see the faint glimmer of stars as they peeked through the early evening air. In school he learned that it is not the stars that move but us and began to see this as a metaphor for his life—always moving as those around him seemed still. Although he was alive, he was not living, and as long as he was running, he would never have the chance to stop and collect himself, to examine what dim light was his life.

“When do we eat?”

The voice was back.

“I thought you were dead,” Caspian said.

As much as he was hoping the voice was gone for good, he wasn’t surprised to hear it rumbling through his brain as it rattled the bars of his consciousness. “Fuck you,” it replied. “You wish I was dead.”

The voice was right. Caspian wanted out, but the monster that had consumed his soul refused to let him go. “We do this when I say we do this,” Caspian proclaimed.

The monster was highly prone to fits of anger. Any psychologist would not be surprised given what Caspian had been through during his early years. And when the beast was hungry enough, it would take over, leaving Caspian somewhere in oblivion, watching while unable to stop. Yet he did feel a twisted pleasure in what he could not control, and if there was no chance of getting caught, he would allow the beast to continue feeding. The conflict between pleasure and the need for peace would continue until something separated them, forcing one or the other to die at the expense of the other.

As the sky filled with the light of the full moon, Caspian heard the distant howl of a coyote. He knew there were no wolves in that area of the Northeast, but its singular wail awakened something within him. As Caspian listened to the coyote’s continued baying, it shortly instilled a whisper of inspiration. He imagined a grand castle somewhere in Eastern Europe where the mountains are cold and the people live by fear and superstition, a place where vampire lore runs rampant, frightening children into obeying their parents. Now he was beginning to see what he really was, and although he would never develop the obligatory allergy to sunlight, he had finally found himself. The beast inside growled with satisfaction. “So,” it began. “How does it feel? All that power to do whatever you want and fuck everyone else.”

Caspian realized that the world was filled with small, meaningless people—those who will never know just how insignificant they are. It now fell to him to cull the herd of those who posed a threat to society by virtue of their insignificance—those who had forfeited their humanness by their treatment of others. He could not police the world, but choosing to move on the next day, he knew where he was going and what he would do when he got there.

Sleep came easy that night as he drifted off to the continued howls that seemed to remain afar. Like a lullaby, the animal’s almost painful bay struck a chord within Caspian’s soul, leaving him feeling strong yet isolated. Like the lone soul in the distance, Caspian quickly identified with its isolated nature, and as he drifted off, took comfort in the fact that for that one night he would not be alone.