Alice Henderson - Voracious

July 22, 1763

Mountains above Vienna

An amazing thing happened today. I had all but given up hope of catching up to the creature. I was ready to head back to civilization, eat a real meal in a tavern, when I came upon a narrow crevice in the cliff face along which I was traversing.

A putrid smell issued forth from the shadowed recess, and I peered inside. I gasped. Lying there in a stripe of sunlight was Stefan, or what I thought at first was Stefan.

On its back, pure black as it had been the night it attacked Anna and me, sprawled a dead thing with tremendous claws and hideously pointed teeth. The clothes of an aristocrat adorned the body. I bent low, sure it was my quarry.

The killing blow had come from a ten-inch gleaming stake protruding from the creature’s belly, pinning it to the ground below.

I touched the weapon, a smooth metal spike that felt cool to the touch.

I shall never forget the visage of that dreadful creature there in the crevice. Its eyes (what were left of them, as one had been partially eaten by some animal) were opened wide as if in terror, and the mouth lay open and twisted as if in a scream.

For a long time I stood in the entrance of the crevice, staring down at what I was sure was the murderer of my Anna, feeling at once relieved he was dead and also intensely curious as to what had killed him.

Was this metal spike made of the very same metal Anna swore was able to injure the creature? If so, who had carried such a weapon?

I leaned in closer for a look and was suddenly seized by curiosity to go through the creature’s belongings. I unbuttoned its waistcoat and searched the pockets of its breeches. I came away with several letters and a small pocket-sized journal much like this one.

Retreating from the crevice to read by the bright sunlight, I flipped through the journal.

What I found there left me dumbfounded and amazed.

After reading the entries breathlessly, I learned that this wretched beast in the crevice was not the creature I have been pursuing, but was Ffyllon, the man who had given the letter opener to Anna.

The journal told an impossible story. Ffyllon was impossibly old, and had somehow been alive since the twelve hundreds. One night back then, he and his brother had been working on a written version of the Welsh text, the Mabinogi. As they labored into the wee hours of the night by candlelight, a desperate knock came at the door.

Ffyllon leapt up to admit a bedraggled traveler who complained of starvation. The scribe lived with his brother, Gywnfar, who was a brilliant linguist. The two brothers invited the traveler in and fed him. For three months the traveler stayed with them, talking to both, but mainly to Gywnfar about his work translating ancient texts and his ability to speak over nine languages.

Then one frightful night the scribe came home to find the traveler sitting atop his brother’s dead body, tearing flesh off the bones and devouring it. In a fit of rage, Ffyllon fell upon him, pounding the traveler with fists, cups, plates, and anything else he could find. He even bit the traveler, tearing a great hunk from his shoulder.

But the fight was in vain. One strike across the scribe’s temple knocked him senseless, and the traveler dragged off the brother’s body to eat it elsewhere.

When Ffyllon awoke, only blood remained where his dead brother had once lain. The scribe vowed revenge and left his trade to pursue the mysterious traveler.

Over time, Ffyllon noticed he healed much faster than before. He stopped aging. Years went by, then decades, then centuries as he pursued the creature. He learned important facts about the creature, studied its patterns and habits in order to better destroy it. On several occasions he tried to kill the beast, but nothing worked. Not sword, not musket, not drowning. During one of their confrontations in an alley in London, the creature summoned two gleaming spikes from its forearms, and impaled Ffyllon with one of them. A group of theatergoers passed by, and the creature ran off, withdrawing the spike as it did. It took Ffyllon nearly a year to recover from the wounds, instead of his usual few days. He became convinced that this metal, summoned from the creature itself, was the key to destroying him. If it could wound Ffyllon so, with his special healing abilities, perhaps it could wound the creature, as well.

During Ffyllon’s recovery from the grievous wound, he met a group of nomadic storytellers, with whom he stayed while he healed. He told them the story of the creature. In hushed voices they drew away, whispering among themselves. Ffyllon grew full of fear that he had offended and that they would finish him off in his sleep. But instead they produced a gleaming letter opener and gave it to him. The weapon of a hunter, they told him, made from the special metal. He asked where they had obtained it, and they told him many decades ago they had come across the twisted, rotting corpse of a monster, and that knife was sticking out of its belly.

Ffyllon reasoned that, since the blade was left in the body, and the body was indeed dead, in order to kill the creature, the metal had to remain in its body for some unknown extended period of time. Ffyllon himself had only recovered because the creature had run off after wounding him.

Ffyllon’s last entry, dated June 20, 1763, stated that he was closer than ever before.

He had trailed the creature to Vienna, where he learned of its next victim, a young pianist named Anna Gordova. Ffyllon had contacted her, posing as a friend of her uncle. He had given her the letter opener made of the special metal so that she could defend herself if he was not there when the creature attacked. To prepare her, he told her the legend of the creature.

I lowered Ffyllon’s journal and wondered at the tale told therein. He had not been there when the creature attacked, was instead drugged and incapacitated in the rooms above. And the creature had killed Anna. At least he was not able to eat her body.

I think of this poor man crammed in the crevice of rock. He must have continued his quest, leaving Vienna after Anna’s death, and pursued the creature, just as I do. But now he is well and truly dead. His theory must have been correct; the creature stabbed him with one of its gleaming spikes and then left the metal in the wound. The hunter now dead.

My mind cannot grasp the scope of this journal.

Even as I was hunting the creature, so was this poor soul, this man who had turned into a creature after ingesting the beast’s blood.

My heart pounds. I myself have noticed my increased healing speed, my energy and power growing daily. Could it be that I myself somehow ingested the creature’s blood? Could the blood that entered my mouth when I kissed Anna’s hand actually been that of the beast’s from when she stabbed him?

I am terrified.

Will I end up as this poor soul did? Murdered centuries from now in some lonely crevice in the high country, failing in my one mission to bring justice?

Eternal life… even just a few months ago, the thought would have enticed me, seduced me. To be young forever, to feel that powerful, that invulnerable… would have been a blessing indeed.

But now, like this? To endure this eternity without Anna? To be a monster? The thought revolts and terrifies me.

What am I to do?

July 23, 1763

Mountains above Vienna

After a great deal of consideration, I have decided to persist. I will take the mysterious metal stake and fashion a knife out of it at the next town.