Preface
The most dangerous enemy is not the one who lingers behind you in the shadows, but the one who walks beside you as a friend. They shape the world around you with well-constructed lies, entombing you in the gossamer of their deceit. You’ll never know their true face, for they shed their masks in layers—meticulous and devious, like the skin of an ever-changing snake.
I walked hand in hand with my enemy, allowed their kiss of death to linger on my lips while the world disintegrated around me. I couldn’t see through the smoke and mirrors; too consumed with fighting a destiny I didn’t want; too afraid to let go of a life I wasn’t meant to have. Running only brought me closer to them. Back to where I started. Back to my inevitable fall from grace. One misstep was all it took, and it all came crashing down. And they were right there waiting for it—eager and ready to bury me in the wreckage.
The stage had been set.
The actors were in place.
Everything was a lie, and I never saw it coming.
1. HOLLOW BE THY NAME
The wrought-iron gates creaked open as the black town car glided through the late afternoon fog and took us up the winding driveway to my uncle’s house—the Blackburn Estate. The massive, Baronial-style gray stone had been in our family for over a century and had all the trappings of a real life haunted house, outfitted with arched Victorian towers, ivy-clung walls, and a spike-tipped fence that spanned the entire length of the grounds.
It was arguably one of the most macabre-looking houses in town, and for a second I contemplated telling the driver to take me back to the hospital—a thought that quickly dissipated with a brief flashback to the mandatory group therapy sessions and decrepit nourishment they had the audacity to call food.
Anything was better than that place.
I had spent the last six months holed up in a mental institution, suffering from what they called, “a psychotic break from reality due to a traumatic event.” That event being the death of my father, and the psychotic break being the part where I claimed to have been attacked by a vampire.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking; vampires aren’t real. They don’t murder your father in the middle of the night while you’re watching on helpless and powerless to stop it. Certainly not if you’re living in this little place we call reality, so that’s exactly what I told my doctors—over and over again like an anti-psychotic mantra—until they believed that I believed it and finally signed my release papers.
But I know what I saw.
The town car came to a stop at the top of the driveway where my Uncle Karl was standing in wait on the front stoop, solemn and watchful like a raven holding fast on its perch. His hands were crossed firmly behind his back—stoic, just the way I remembered him.
He was my father’s brother no doubt, and looked every bit the part with the same dark hair and matching charcoal eyes. His hair was brushed back neatly, broken up only by the thin, white edges along his ears that threatened to reveal the age he otherwise carried so well.
It was often said that I looked just like them—a Blackburn through and through—with the same dark hair and lean frame, though my hair was longer and turned in waves all the way down my back, and my eyes were a lighter, more peculiar shade of gray. I used to cringe when people said I looked like him—my father, because I was a girl and girls aren’t supposed to look like their fathers. Girls are supposed to look like their mothers, or fairy princesses, or Barbie dolls, or some crap like that.
I plucked the ear buds from my ears and gathered my things as the driver came around back and opened the door for me. My first reaction was to jump back when his hand came out towards me, though I quickly relaxed, realizing he was only trying to help me out of the car and not decapitate me by way of an extended palm.
Clearly, I still had some residual issues.
I sucked in a calming breath and shook my hand at him to let him know that I had this, and then climbed out by myself, dragging my oversized duffel bag with me. The driver smiled back at me unaffected, and circled back to the trunk where he dug out the rest of my bags; one small, russet suitcase.
This was what my seventeen years of life had been reduced to: one duffel bag and a hideous valise. How ironic since I used to be the kind of girl who shopped every week-end and worried about what so and so thought about my outfit or if what’s his face noticed me that day. Lately though, I couldn’t find it in me to give a shit. I just packed up the bare essentials and told the realtor to donate the rest to Goodwill.
“Hello, Jemma,” greeted my uncle as I made my way up the front steps. He didn’t bother with a hug. “Welcome home.”
There was something strange about hearing that word, like it didn’t belong to me anymore or shouldn’t be coming out of his mouth. Maybe it was because it made me face reality; that these past six months weren’t just some perpetual nightmare I was stuck in; that I wasn’t simply waiting for someone to wake me up and tell me none of it was real and that everything was fine. Because everything wasn’t fine. It was far from fine, and somehow, that seemingly harmless word made it all too real.
The life I knew and loved was gone, and so was my father. No matter how many words I chose to reject.
Inside, the monolithic foyer was fixed with pale, textured wallpaper, mahogany wall paneling, and an incredible grand staircase dressed in a crimson stair runner. Everything about the house was rich, and dense, and rooted. It was everything I wasn’t. Even the air, with its distinct smell of oak wood and sage, spoke to its identify and its history. I couldn’t help but feel small here. Overwhelmed. Incompatible.