A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (best reads .TXT) 📗

Ronay was dead. No doubt about it. Loss of blood and shock combined had done the job, and what good were all my nascent plans for vengeance now? I hurled the corpse away, and was just growling my irritation at this development when a great blow smote me from behind. Such was the savage impact that I imagined for a moment I had been hit with a mace; fortunately the force was mainly distributed across my upper back and left shoulder, falling only slightly on my head.

      Recoiling, I spun around to face this new challenge. It came from the courageous little monk, and the weapon he had swung at me, and was preparing to swing again, was the great wooden crucifix that a few moments ago had been hanging on the infirmary wall.

      Hissing and growling, I wasted no time in beating a retreat. My object in invading the monastery had been accomplished—insofar as it ever could be—and I judged it would be blasphemous to treat either monk or crucifix as my first impulse had suggested when one struck me with the other.

      Even as I passed out of doors, it crossed my mind to wonder what stories, of my monstrously transformed existence, the monks would now begin to tell. But for the moment I felt little concern over what stories might be told. Ronay had now paid for his treachery, as much as he would ever be made to pay for it in this world. It was time for me to seek out his two villainous companions.

      But first, new instincts urged me; there was something else that I must do. What was it? The answer came to me with an inner certainty, beyond all questioning: Time now for me to go—home.

      As I was climbing the outer wall of the monastery, somewhere not far away a rooster crowed. The sky in the east was turning gray as the dark surface of the lake passed softly and swiftly under me again. First the water gurgled and chuckled beneath the softened ice I trod upon. And then the open water drifted beneath my feet as I passed on my way home.

      Presently, with the gray eastern sky now brightening almost unbearably, I found myself once more in the glade where I had awakened. Stretching my suddenly weary body out to rest, upon the surface—as I then thought—of that most attractively disturbed patch of earth, I surrendered to dreamless and innocent slumber. Only dimly was I aware, without any particular concern, that I was sinking like so much gentle rain into the earth. I was fast asleep long before the first direct rays of the sun appeared above to touch the barren tops of winter trees.

* * *

      This time my slumbers were prolonged. My second post-mortem awakening did not take place, as I now believe, until sometime in the early spring of the year of Our Lord 1477. Again I found myself standing, at night, in the clearing above my secret grave. Again I fed, quite ravenously, upon the blood of the first mammalian creature I encountered—it chanced to be a sheep this time. ,

      I understood, vaguely and without knowing how, that a considerable period of time had passed, and that doubtless my surviving enemies were still beyond my reach. Again I slept. Other periods of lucidity and mobility followed, at seemingly random intervals of a few days, weeks, or months.

      Among the many aspects of my episodic new life that puzzled me intensely was the fact that I never saw the sun. Actually I could no longer even imagine myself directly confronting the intensity of that solar fire. Could I have feared anything, it would have been the sun. Also more than I could understand were the recurrent, lengthy periods of deathlike torpor in the comforting darkness underground, and the fact that blood—only animal blood, so far—was all the sustenance I craved.

      As more time passed the pain of my wounds steadily diminished, until they ceased to hurt at all. Healing progressed, and even the scars, at least the ones that I could see, began to fade.

      Even in the face of all these oddities, even with the memory of my own burial to contemplate, the idea never seriously crossed my mind that I had died a true death, that I might now be really dead. Gradually, however, I was forced to admit that neither was I alive, at least according to my old, mundane way of looking at things. This mode of existence, for which I still lacked a name, or was unwilling to assign one, was indeed something new.

      There came an awakening different from all that had gone before. Someone, in the middle of a spring night, had discovered my grave. And now the unknown, rhythmic spade, working with benefit of a full-throated nightingale accompaniment, was industriously digging up my coffin.

Chapter Five

      Angie, retreating into the guest bedroom to get away from that soft terrible sound at the front door, turned on the tape machine again. For one thing, she was terrified at the idea of falling asleep; and for another, she had an urge to hear more of the fantastic story on the tape. Her urge was perhaps illogical, but really it was not as crazy as the nightmare into which she and John had fallen during the past few hours. She had a feeling, strong though impossible to justify, that the tape might tell her something that would be useful in getting out of the bad dream again.

      Some fifteen minutes later she turned the tape player off again. Unable to resist a horrified fascination with what might be happening at the front door, she returned to the living room.

      Here all was silent. No one beat at the front door or pushed the bell. The viewer was still turned off. John, sitting in one of the armchairs, looked up, hollow-eyed, when Angie appeared. Clutching the arms of his chair, he said: “The pounding stopped a few minutes ago.”

      Feeling compelled to look,