Fiction Short Story – The Curse of Immortality
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“The curse of immortality holds us in its unforgiving grip tighter than the rusted bolts that hold the new machinists latest contraptions together. I bet you wonder how immortality can be a curse? Other than the obvious facts that you must distance yourself from the lives of mortals or face the detection of your overly abundant life, there is one that all philosophers would comment on. While you live this eternal life of pain and suffering you must watch those few you come to care for wither and shrivel at the hands of time and eventually die. Oh, but do not mistake it, there are far greater pains to endure. Immortality exacts a price the heavens may admire.”
Those were the horrific words of my induction. For years I thought I knew Barrymore Scott McQuewen. I went to college with a women I believed was his daughter. I spent numerous hours studying the newest pamphlets and treatises with him on the most modern scientific marvels to be invented both here in our native Elandria and abroad on the continents. As everything became suddenly revealed and my conception of the world shattered, it was no great surprise that I did not even know his name.
“Sir Barrymore,” I interrupted him in what I hoped was not the unsteady voice I heard in my head. I didn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t want to. Not only what I thought at the time to be a touch of lunacy creeping into my employer’s and dear friend’s mind, but the news that Evelyn, the most vibrant woman I have ever known, was dead. “You must try to compose yourself and face reality.”
Barrymore chuckled harshly to himself as he stared out the open window at the flickering gaslights illuminating the rain-chocked avenues of the street below. Flashes of lightening showed me the silhouette of his lithe and muscular frame. For a moment I stood shocked as I studied it. Sometime before I reached him here in his study, Barrymore had pulled the sleeves away from his white shirt, and despite the sheer rage the act must have been derived from, the tails of his shirt still clung tenaciously inside his gray trousers.
“Edward you do not know the truth of reality,” he said wryly. “You, like millions of others, live in the world deceived. So many times I have thought to remove your blinders and reveal the truth.”
Straightening my coat I rose from my chair seated at his study table, which was just another example of tonight’s fury. His leather bound books with their precious vellum pages were normally stacked neatly each in its place, but now they were strewn about thither and yon. At the time I did not understand the secrets of which he was trying to let me partake. I believed the knowledge of his only daughter’s gruesome murder had snapped the relays of his brain. Nothing else could account for this strange subject matter of which my employer seemed transfixed upon. Warily, I stepped across the sea-blue, tiled floor toward Barrymore, wracking my brain for a way to console a man on the loss of the most precious thing in his life. I could think of nothing to pull him from his delusion.
In truth, that is hardly surprising. Since our days in college, and before, I have dreamt of Evelyn. Even today, three-hundred and ten years later, her visage still dances at the back of my eyes like an angel of heaven as clearly as that first day I saw her step from Barrymore’s four-horse carriage in her modest red and white dress. While she lived I never had the good fortune of diverting her attention from that damnable wolf, Thomas, but on the night of her death I never again worried about fortune. I have taken anything I wanted since. I do not know if this would be a betrayal to Evelyn’s memory, or my memory of her, but I could not allow my weakness to get in the way of my desires.
“The police will find him,” I said as confidently as I could. It was possible. They heard the screams and came rushing to the scene only to find her already dead and her murderer escaping through a back window. They were hot on his trail, but they hadn’t been able to keep up with him. “Thomas will not get far.”
Barrymore turned away from the window then and stared me straight in the face. Contempt and anger were etched deeply in his features, but they were not what arrested my heart. For the briefest of moments I thought his eyes were yellowed slits like those of a feral cat ready to pounce. But as I blinked to reassure myself of what I saw, his eyes were there normal mellow brown, though rimmed with red. I said to myself that it must have been a trick of the poor lighting in the room.
“May whatever god they pray to keep them from him or soothe their soul on its way to whatever realm it may go, for they shall not survive the encounter should they meet him,” Barrymore said in earnest.
I shook my head in resignation. I could think of nothing more to say in the matter, though, I knew I should not give up. I owed my living and my education to this man. In his deepest hour of need was I to leave him in this dire strait with only a few hollow sounding words and without succor? It wasn’t right, and I knew it. With all that Barrymore had done for me in my lifetime, I couldn’t give up on him now.
When I was young, I was like all the other urchins in the street, except for one thing, I had a good head for numbers, and I was lucky enough to run into Barrymore when he first came into the country. He was about to be cheated out of a few coppers from a weaselly little clerk named Howard Fillmore. Most of us children filched what we could from the shop while he was on duty because he rarely kept a close eye on the merchandise, but he would overcharge a customer anytime he saw the opportunity arise and pocket the difference. I saved Barrymore from just such a danger, and in a strange turn of gratitude he promised to have me taught by an actual tutor. My father, who was a drunkard and a mine worker, and who could never have afforded such a boon, would have forbade the gift but for the visitation that he received by Barrymore the day before the tutelage was to begin. I do not know what they spoke of, but my father gave in, and I began my study of arithmetic. Not long after, my father died of the coughing disease that effect almost all miners, and again Barrymore showed me a kindness and took me in as a ward. My studies continued into college, and I agreed to service as Barrymore’s steward for seven years in return for all his kindness to me. Ten years had since elapsed.
“After this diabolical crime, you are saying that Thomas will escape the justice due?” I asked him mortified.
“No, young Edward,” he replied most solemnly, “tonight his curse ends.”
Again he seemed to wander into his delusional area of curses. “What do you mean, Sir Barrymore? What are you talking about?”
Barrymore smiled at me, almost as if he delighted at my confusion. “Why have you lingered here these three years past? I know some better opportunity to raise your fortune has crossed your path in that time? Did not Lord Cromwell ask to contract you as his steward? It would have considerably raised your fortunes and wealth.”
Lord Cromwell was probably the most senior Member of Parliament and being a member of his household would have paid handsomely. The offer was made a year ago, but for some reason I turned it down. “You are changing the subject,” I chided.
“No,” he replied smoothly, “I am giving you the explanation. Tell me why you did not take the position with Lord Cromwell?”
I thought about it and shrugged. It didn’t seem to explain anything, but I said, “It didn’t feel right. This place is like home to me. I have been here almost my entire life, why would I want to leave?”
Barrymore nodded. “That is only part if it, but that is important nonetheless.” He shrugged his shoulders like he was releasing a weight. Then he turned back to the window. “Edward, are you sure that you want to know this? Once I have released what is inside of you, it cannot be withdrawn, and you will always be with us.”
Suddenly, I became angry. I felt as if I was being yanked from side to side. Barrymore wanted to tell me something one moment and in the next he wanted to hide it. I felt it had everything to do with the gruesome murder of his Evelyn, and therefore I had to know. “Sir Barrymore, I have spent almost my entire life with you in this house learning and being instructed, if what you have to tell me has anything to do with the death of your daughter then I feel you must tell me!”
“She was not my daughter,” he said quietly, “she was one of my pride.”
“She was what?” I asked quizzically.
“She wanted to escape the curse, and so did Thomas, so I gave her permission to leave and go with that bastard werewolf,” he said with fury.
There was a word that I recognized, but I could hardly credit. A werewolf? They were creatures of myth, along with all their brethren of the curse of lycanthropy. The goddess Lyca was supposed to have planted the seeds of lycanthropy within mankind, and certain members of the species were cursed to a half-life between that of a particular creature and humanity. The goddess favored the animal over the human and therefore the animalistic form would consume the restrictions that civilization placed on us. There were tracts and pamphlets that dated back hundreds of years recounting how these half people would terrorize the countryside until they were put down by the populace by burning or beheading. It was said that they couldn’t be killed by any other means, and that they only lived to kill. There were even recent books on the subject that purported the existence of the beasts, but I had always laughed them off, as did most rational people.
“Some of us want to get away from our nature,” Barrymore continued. “We try to live our lives as do the rest of humanity. We try to blend in. try to control the urges to hunt, but sometimes they are too strong. I know this is what must have happened between them.”
My mouth must have been agape by this time. I didn’t believe at this time. “You’re saying that Thomas is a werewolf? And Evelyn, too? And you?” I involuntarily stepped away from the man at the window.
Barrymore turned back to me, and this time there were no tricks of light. His eyes were yellow, and his visage had changed. His form wasn’t human. I didn’t see the change. I don’t know how I could have missed it as I was standing so close to him, but in the next moment I looked directly at a beast out of nightmare. Pointed ears with tufts of fur sticking out of them twitched as they located my exact position, golden orbs reflected the faint light of the room, and sharp glistening teeth showed through his mouth.
“No, we are not wolves, we are panthers,” he hissed, “just like you.”
I backed away hurriedly bumping into his study table, jostling his books further out of place. I heard one or two hit the floor, but I didn’t care. My heart was thrusting back and forth in my throat so hard I could hardly breath let alone speak, but I had to respond to it’s accusation. “I am not!” I growled.
It laughed at me. I don’t know how, but it sounded strangely like a laugh. “Edward, I know those afflicted with the curse. I have lived with it for nearly six hundred years. Why do you think I took you in? Why would I care to help a poor urchin? Why would I educate you? Why would I want you in my house? Why would you feel comfortable and at home unless you were one of us? If you weren’t like us, you would be repulsed after a time.”
His words struck me like a whip. With each sentence he drew closer and I tried to back further away, but I knew I had nowhere to go. There was a door at the back of the study that I could hope to run through, but one look at the beast stalking me told me that his legs were stronger than mine. It would be no time before he caught me. Like as not I would be on the great staircase leading down to the main floors when he caught up to me. One pounce and I would be hurled down to meet my death as I banged my head upon the steps. Would I become a meal for this feral beast? I didn’t know.
“Edward, tonight you will either join with us or you will die,” Barrymore said ferociously. He was no more than a few feet from me now. I could see the points of his teeth clearly. They were so sharp, but then I was drawn to his hands. They weren’t really hands now. They were more like claws. Razor sharp nails tipped his thick hairy fingers.
“Why?” I asked plaintively.
Barrymore stopped. I saw something glistening in his yellow eyes. “A war begins tonight, Edward. I am a clan leader and I am going to take revenge on Thomas for the death of one of my own even though she has forsaken the path. The wolves will be angry when they learn what I will do to Thomas.
“I can see inside of you, Edward. Lyca has planted the poisoned seed within you.
If I do not release it, another will. Whichever releases the curse chooses your path and your form. I would rather it be I, than some wolfwere who would use you to hunt us down.
“Forgive me, Edward. This is going to be painful, and the murdering urge is going to be strong for years, but you will eventually learn to control it if you live long enough.” Those words sealed my fate and released my curse. Something so heavy that no man should ever be bound to endure. To this day when I look down at my chest I still study the furrows gouged deeply therein, and wonder if I hadn’t been afflicted with this curse if I ever could have survived that mauling.
Barrymore was true to his word. He went on the hunt that night and did kill Thomas in the most gruesome fashion that I could have imagined at the time. He was right, too. It started a war between his clan and the clan of wolves of which spawned Thomas. It was a brutal and bloody affair, but I won’t describe that now. I shall only say that it ended badly for both.
So many things were revealed that night. So many things I wish I could have kept hidden, and yet I know they would have come eventually. Fate has a way of turning itself out no matter how hard you work to avoid it. I was lucky in some respects in that the murdering rage did not last long. I gained control early on, but I killed so many before I gained control that I believe my soul so tainted that no amount of penance shall ever cleanse it. There is only one murder of which I truly regret, though. Barrymore showed me so much. Taught me everything I could have wanted, and yet in a rage I ended his curse. Maybe he would thank me, but still I linger. Destined to know the price of this cursed immortality.
__END__
