A steel mist filled the streets of Moscow in heavy swirls while a light snow was slowly beginning to fall on the moist pavement. The sky was an ominous gray with clouds that were of an unforgiving black. A little moonlight gave the clouds a lining that, although it was not quite silver, was bright enough to distinguish that it was indeed night. The city was a surreal place on that October evening of 1836; the colors seemed to have bled and flowed into the distant purple mountains, leaving a cold and sad corpse as Moscow. The city was desolate and quiet, except for the eerie church bells ringing far in the distance, not completely drowning out the squeals of a few lost bats.
Julia Spencer stood in the foggy decrepit graveyard with both fear and anxiety churning in her shallow chest. Uneasiness flowed from her wide, sharp eyes but behind them excitement was strikingly present. Her eyes, a gorgeous mixture of cerulean and emerald, darted amongst the black barren trees and mossy stone graves.
There was an obvious beauty and naïveté that radiated from her slender form. Her aforementioned eyes were the lone portals to her true self; they showed a child-like simplicity and purity, but there was also something that showed an understated intelligence. Her cheeks were pink with the energy and vigor that was commonplace in most sixteen-year-old girls. There was, however, a lack of color in the rest of her skin; her neck, arms, and shoulders were ghostly pale and, while it was quite becoming, her white silk dress made Julia appear all the more phantom-like.
She studied the heavy metal gate of the graveyard as its hinges screamed slowly….
Through the thick mist she saw the top of Anatole’s black head, his thick hair in moist curls, and, as he slowly approached, she saw his intense turquoise eyes and deep red lips. His face lost form in the whitish fog and to Julia, he appeared as a frightening apparition without shape or body or true reality.
She struggled to swallow but then she began to see the dull outline of his lean figure and a smile encroached upon her face, driving away her fear. Clad in all black, he contrasted sharply with the dreamy gray of the cemetery but the appearance of his sickly face did seem oddly akin with the strong feeling of death that mixed in with the depressingly omniscient fog. He was thin and pale but still handsome.
The two now stood opposite each other, Julia with a radiant and loving smile, and Anatole with a confident and intense stare. He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her towards him and away from the grave against which she leaned. She felt a cold chill go through her as his cold thin hands encompassed her warm little ones. They walked amongst the eroded headstones, hand in hand. She rested her blonde head upon his thin shoulder as she let out a loving sigh.
“Anatole,” she whispered gently. “Anatole….”
“Julia, dear, have you become delusional?” he asked in a humored tone.
She giggled. “No dearest,” she said suddenly becoming serious. “It comforts me to speak your name. Anatole. Anatole! Anatole Zrenskaya.” She let out a pleasant laugh.
He chuckled softly to himself as he threw his arm around her slim waist. “Julia! You act like a lovesick maiden who has lost her knight.”
“Or one who will soon lose him,” she whispered sadly. She stopped and held her face in her hands. Heavy sobs shook her frighteningly sharp shoulders. Stumbling from him, she leaned against a bare black tree whose outstretched branches looked like a spider whose web was an ever-darkening ashen sky. She held the rough trunk with one shaking hand while the other held her teary face.
Anatole touched her shoulder, sending down her spine a cold feeling that shocked her and instantly made her stop crying. His red lips moved toward her, falling on her downcast forehead.
“Come now,” he said comfortingly. “Do not cry. I shall not have our last moments be ones of tears and sobs.”
“Yes, I know,” she said with a heavy breath. “Oh, how I hate the world! A world where you are not…a world where I do not want to live.”
“Do not speak that way….”
She closed her eyes gloomily and then opened them with sudden, hopeful brilliance as if struck by a desperate idea. She griped his lank forearm as she shot forward in excitement. A smile spread over both their faces. Anatole kissed her cheek impulsively as she began to speak with girlish excitement.
“Oh! Oh! Come with me to England! Leave this country and come with my father and me. He wouldn’t mind, I know he wouldn’t. It would be heaven! Oh—”
Anatole looked away despondently. Julia looked at him worriedly but then with gentle understanding. She lost the childish happiness as reality sank in. Anatole could not leave his life in Russia just as she could not leave her life in England forever. They continued to stroll amongst the graves, talking of past memories and anticipated ones. The gloom of the evening seemed to grow heavier as the minutes slipped from them. Nothing more would pass between them. All was over…all was hopeless.
They now stopped as the final minutes of their final hour came. They stopped at a tall grand tombstone of a concrete cross. The moss ran over it in thick layers, concealing the name of some lost soul who was probably rotting beneath the two lovers’ feet. Julia leaned her back against the concrete, closing her eyes in despair.
“Well, Anatole,” she whispered bitterly, “it’s over.”
“No….” he said mysteriously.
Julia forced out a doubtful laugh.
“No?” she asked with a playful grin. She raised a slender finger to his scarlet lips. With a natural seductiveness she led it down his chin and throat and to his chest. She felt the cold skin that clung to his heaving ribs through his loose black shirt. She gracefully unbuttoned it, single-handedly, opening it almost completely.
Anatole smiled wickedly.
“Julia,” he said with mocking disapproval. “Don’t you think this is a bit sacrilegious…we are, after all, in a cemetery.”
“Who cares?” she said with genuine irritation.
Anatole lifted his hand and placed it upon her shoulder, sending down her spine that familiar cold shock. He slowly brought his hand up to her neck where it floated momentarily, and then he felt it with his icy palm. Julia opened her eyes as she heard a barely audible gasp rise from Anatole’s throat. His eyes were transfixed upon her neck. She turned playfully from him but his hand stayed upon her milky flesh. His stare remained constant as he pulled her passionately up against his thin figure. His red lips fell upon hers and then all her sadness was gone. She loved him!
His lips felt hers overpoweringly and then traveled progressively downward to her chin and then her neck. She half-expected his lips to continue downward but he kissed her burning throat relentlessly. Julia, totally in ecstasy, grew limp in his hold. Anatole looked at her face with her closed eyes and agape mouth. A smile crept upon his face revealing his sharp white teeth. His eyes fell upon her neck once again and a red light seemed to flicker behind them wildly. Julia opened her eyes sluggishly, curious as to why he had stopped kissing her. Her now slit-shaped eyes must have played a trick on her because for a horrifying instant she saw his incisors grow into snake-like fangs. His mouth fell upon her throat and she fell limp again.
“I love you,” she whispered. She slid her hand up his back as she felt his teeth just touch her flesh.
He murmured slowly, “I love you, too.”
His fangs pierced her pale skin softly, sending two streaks of scarlet blood flooding onto her silk dress. She straightened up groggily and opened her eyes. She watched the fog fall upon the cold headstones in dizzying swirls as she felt her energy—her soul it seemed—drained by the dark figure upon her. Immobilized, she could only stand in his arms and listen to his quick, rhythmic, lustful breathing. Second by second her life slipped from her over Anatole’s sensuous blood-stained lips, into his very being where it consorted with his soul unwillingly.
As his teeth slid slowly out of Julia’s throat she seemed to lose all composure, as did he but for other reasons, darker reasons. The union of the two was broken now; there now stood two exhausted figures in an increasingly foggy cemetery.
In agony, Julia fell upon the tombstone, arms strewn blasphemously against the giant stone crucifix for support. She drew in a screaming breath and looked through her wild hair that had fallen over her face like a blood-drenched curtain. Through dying eyes she saw his burning stare and smiling, bloody lips and as she caught a glimpse of his red-stained teeth a violent shudder traveled through her so that she fell to her knees as if in defeat. She could feel the blood still flowing down her slightly convulsing body.
Anatole’s face now confronted the sky with blood running over his cleft chin and down his pink throat. A guttural, wicked laugh rose from within him and echoed out loudly. He stood triumphantly beneath the sprawling dead tree, smearing with his pale fingers the stream of blood that had run onto his exposed chest. He panted in exhaustion and obvious malevolent satisfaction. Julia could only look upon him dumbly, dragging shaking fingers over the small, yet insurmountably deep, puncture wounds on her blood-stained neck.
She closed her eyes wearily and with weak hands she clutched the base of the tombstone against which she sat. Moss crawled beneath her fingernails as her grip tightened. From her white and trembling lips she let out something like a weak scream but there was no one there to hear it. Anatole seemed to have disappeared into the all-encompassing mist; as Julia sat there she had a distant fear that it would devour her as well. She screamed out again but with more passion and fervor than her previous attempt. She now simply sat without expression at the base of that grand tombstone having extinguished the last remains of her energy. Her nails continued to claw weakly at the moss on the grave behind her, tearing the growth that had overrun it years ago and revealing an inscription. She let her fingers, drenched in dirt and blood, feel the shallow engraving slowly. Her mind was blank as her fingertips ran over the name, etched in the most beautiful and intricate Latin. As she slipped further and further into faint, the mist seemed to subside and reveal the bright sliver in the sky that was the moon. The snow-covered cemetery, too, was revealed in its ghastly glory; varying forms of headstones jutted from the whiteness as if for the first time.
In that instant Julia became aware of the forest of tombstones in which she sat. Her teary eyes looked at them, each in turn, from the hauntingly beautiful angels down to the simplest rectangular headstones. She finally seemed to notice the grave against which she sat, its tall, strong form piercing the violet sky. Filled with a sudden awareness and reverence, she turned on her knees to get a more appropriate look at it. Renewed fear crossed her face as she stared at the crucifix.
She began to weep as she brought her hands together in prayer. She looked up pleadingly at it but she cast her eyes back down as if in shame.
“Salvation…” she began chokingly.
Then suddenly she noticed the inscription, hardly remembering it was she who had uncovered it and then wondering why she had done it in the first place. It was a gray square, stained with blood, against the deeply green moss. Her eyes widened in terror as she read it:
Hic Jacet
Anatole Zrenskaya
1409-1427
Requiescat in Pace
She clutched her throat impulsively, struggling to speak or scream. The utter horror she felt flowed from her lips sharply in a screaming plea.
“Salvation!”
She fell backward in the snow unconscious, staining its purity with her ceaselessly flowing blood.
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