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The following was told to me by René on that cold, wrought-iron bench facing the river.

“I was born in 1702.”

He saw the shocked look on my face and nodded.

“Yes, over three hundred years ago. I was not lying when I told you I come from a long line of woodworkers. My grandfather worked on the wood paneling of the palace of Versailles before leaving France. In Quebec, he found acclaim and respect as a master of his trade. My father followed him, as did I. By the time I came of age, I wanted to establish my own reputation. By then, though we were still tradesmen, our family’s stature had increased. We moved in higher circles than we once had, and were invited to balls and soirees by our grateful clients.

It was in 1730 at one of those affairs that I met a woman. I was wandering the gardens of a grand seigneur, already too drunk, looking for some fresh air. It was a summer evening, when every patch of green is alive with the sounds of crickets and locusts. I had been admiring the soft blooms of a rose bush, when I noticed that those sounds had ceased entirely. And that is when I first saw her.

When she appeared to me, I thought she was a hallucination. A beautiful woman with powdered hair, sumptuously dressed in the latest fashion, but entirely in black damask threaded with gold. She reclined on settee in a stone grotto, a gigantic, rather wild-looking pointy-eared dog beside her, which she stroked with languid, indulgent gestures. She pointed at me with a slender jeweled finger and smiled.

‘Boy, beautiful boy. Come closer.’ She stretched out her hand to me.

I had no choice but to obey, gliding towards her as though I was skating on ice. I took that perfumed hand and kissed it. Her smile deepened and my lips felt heavy, as though I had just ingested poison, the kind of poison that kills slowly and fills men with delirium. I reclined next to her, head spinning, as she shooed off her animal, which retreated with a snarl.

‘René Allaire,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘Humble little carpenter.’

I opened my mouth to ask how she knew me, but she silenced me with the touch of a finger. My entire body felt suspended in a hypnotic daze, as though we were the only two people on the entire continent.

‘Beautiful boy, what do you desire?’ Her voice was like a hiss. She placed her hand on my cheek and suddenly we were dancing in a grand palace with walls covered in carved, gilded wood. I wore a coat embroidered with gold thread and rings of priceless jewels. I would give you this and more if you would be mine. Come to me and I will make you greater than anything in your imagination. She and I were laughing, and laughing, and laughing.

We were back in the garden and she was kissing me. I was helpless, falling deeper and deeper underwater, inhibitions fading like the light of the surface. However, even in this state, I noticed there was something terribly wrong with her feet. Every insect, worm, and vermin in the vicinity was writhing underneath the foot of her black silk shoes. Spiders climbed out of the bushes and crawled over her arms and shoulders. Like lightning, the word came to me, jarring me from my stupor. Witch. With my waning strength, I managed to pull myself from her embrace. I stumbled, backing away from her.

Her lovely face darkened, transforming into a mask of surprise and rage. Her voice throbbed inside my head as though coming from behind my ears, behind my eyes. I howled in pain. I will not be denied, René. You are already mine. Come to me, or your existence will be nothing but suffering.

“No!” I shouted. I pulled out the crucifix under my shirt and cravat. She scowled.

‘Your trinkets will not save you.’

She disappeared, along with her dog, leaving me sweating and breathless.

She made good on her promise. My nights were filled with nothing but her, mocking me in my dreams, tormenting me until the rising of the sun, leaving me tired and miserable. During the days, I would catch her visage in the corner of a mirror, in the reflection of a pond, diabolically grinning, eyes burning like coals, teeth and tongue black as she laughed. I distanced myself from my increasingly concerned family, lest she decide to torment one of them in an attempt to get to me. I rented a room from an old widow and avoided my friends and my business.

But the one connection I could not bear to sever was that of my betrothed, Marie-Anne. She was the daughter of a prosperous merchant of furs and I cared for her very much. I became more careful and circumspect about where we would meet, only in churches or on other hallowed ground and only during the day. She fretted about me, how hollow and haunted I had become. She begged me to attend a dinner her father was hosting for some of his colleagues. I was so weary, and so sick of disappointing her that I acquiesced.

When I arrived that evening to the home of Marie-Anne, I was surprisingly calm. The witch had hardly plagued me all day and I thought, with all the naivete of youth, that I had bested her. The dinner was exceedingly merry, the wine flowed freely and all were in good spirits.

In the midst of the grand feast, an elaborate trout pie was served. I eagerly brought a piece to my mouth, but it tasted of ash. I spit it out, a strange feeling descending over me as I looked around the table. Everyone was partaking of the fish with great gusto, including Marie-Anne at my side. I tried another bite, but again, it tasted of nothing but ash. Scanning the room once more, my eye caught the grand rococo mirror over the mantle. A serving girl stood by herself in a corner, her face staring into it with grin that was far too wide. Her reflection was that of the witch, black teeth clattering, laughing silently at me.

I stood and staggered backwards in terror, grabbing the sleeve of Marie-Anne.

‘Stop eating,’ I said in a frenzied whisper. She looked at me as though I were mad. One by one, each person at the table, mouths full of fish, began to laugh at me, maniacally, as though they had lost control of themselves completely. Then, their eyes bulged, their hands clawed at their necks as though they were being burned by the food they consumed. They began to vomit so violently that many fell to the floor. I caught Marie Anne and held her as she convulsed, her face a mask of utter terror, her skin clammy and greenish pale. With one last heave, blood poured out of her mouth and she fell limp in my arms.

The room was silent. Every single guest had met the same fate. The serving girl in the corner still stood staring in the mirror, smile gone, face completely blank, only her own reflection for company. I fled the house of horrors, the face of the witch greeting me in every window I passed.

I did not dare go back to my home. Instead, I went to the only place a good French Catholic would go and the one place the Witch could not follow me, inside a church.

The priest took pity on me, though it was the middle of the night and I looked like I had been through the circles of Hell. I told the priest that I was being plagued by a witch. Despite what modern people think, not all places and peoples of the past were obsessed with the persecution of witches and witchcraft. That was a phenomenon of a different time and place. Still, we took seriously encounters with the diabolical.

The priest told me that if I were to cleanse my soul through confession and receive the Eucharist in that state of grace, the witch would not be able to haunt me. I readily agreed. When the priest said the words of absolution, I heard a great shrieking, wrathful cry that reverberated through the confessional. At Mass the following morning I received the Eucharist with joy, the first peace I had since that night in the garden.

When I left the church, I felt cautiously optimistic. I wandered the streets of Quebec City, and nowhere did I see her vile face, hear her wicked laugh. While the protection of the sacraments heartened me, I knew I could not go back to the people I loved. When I closed my eyes, I was not haunted by the Witch, but by the corpse of Marie-Anne. I watched the people of the city go about their affairs, innocent, oblivious. No one else needed to suffer.

I decided I would let her kill me, for that is what I sincerely thought, in my naivete, that she desired. I had done what I could to be reasonably assured of my salvation. I was not frightened of death, only of the pain, of what tortures the witch would devise. But I steeled myself and summoned as much courage as I could and waited for the night. Little did I know that for her, death is far too merciful.

At sunset, I was beyond the tall stone ramparts of the city, prepared to die. The night was fair and mild and I tried to catalogue all of my senses, the way the breeze felt against my cheeks, the faint smell of a cooking fire somewhere nearby, the drone of birds and insects. I knelt in the soft grass.

The sun had barely sunk beyond the horizon when a churning, thick mass of clouds appeared in the sky, a sickening green. It was as though a great storm approached, though no rain or wind accompanied the agitated sky. Through the city gates behind me rumbled a magnificent carriage, black with gilt wooden grotesqueries grinning out at me. The spectral horses that pulled it were gaunt and agitated, their eyes glowing red, snouts wreathed in smoke. They reared and struggled against their iron bits.

A finely dressed man exited the vehicle and looked at me with disdain. Despite his powdered wig and face, there was something about his eyes that were too bright, too unnatural. He held out his hand which was grasped by that of a woman in black leather gloves. The witch emerged, her beautiful, wicked face bearing a triumphant expression.

‘Is this he?’ the man said, unimpressed.

‘Come, Philippe, don’t be a snob. This is my dear René. René has been a very naughty, rude boy.’

A sudden, invisible force dragged me by the hair across the grass to her feet. She put a delicately embroidered mule over my throat and began to apply pressure, causing me to gag and gasp.

‘I had so many different plans for you, René. So many creative, imaginative ways for you to enter my service. But then you had to go to your little priest with his magic words and now I can’t do anything at all. So, you must remember, you forced my hand.’

‘Just kill me!’ I cried, sputtering. ‘My soul is prepared. Just do it.!

Both of them laughed coldly. She removed her shoe and I gasped. She bent down and lifted my chin in her hand.

‘I am not going to kill you, beautiful boy,’ she whispered, her voice chilling me to the bone. ‘I’m going to give you the fate of which lesser men dream. You are mine. Forever.’

‘If I do this,’ the man asked anxiously. ‘Does that mean we are even?’

She rolled her eyes.

‘For now.’

Behind her, the man revealed his fangs. She laughed and pushed me towards him and in an instant, he gripped me with preternatural power. I tried to fight him, but it was futile. I was like a rodent in the jaws of a serpent. I felt myself weakened, helpless to stop it, but welcoming the end. Surely the witch was wrong, I thought. I am going to die. Then, there was blood in my mouth. Not human blood, but the blood of the undead. I couldn’t resist, it was already down my throat and I wanted more. From that moment, I was as you see me before you.

The vampire disappeared shortly thereafter. I belonged to her, her servant, lover, and reluctant accomplice. For over a century I traveled with her, witness to all of her depravities. And then, right after the end to your country’s civil war, she tired of me, like she tires with all of her playthings. She released me, or at least that is what she told me. For fifty years, I wandered from place to place, doing carpentry by night, free, happy as I could have been in this form.

It was then that I met your great-grandparents. But that story I will leave for another night.”

I took a deep breath. René looked down at his hands, drained by the ordeal of recounting the past.

“Thank you,” I said. “I…know that must not have been pleasant.”

He stood and walked away from me and down to the dock. He stood for awhile looking at the blackness of the river, lost in memories. I had a million questions, but gave him his space, cognizant of how time moved differently for mortals than immortals.

With a sigh he turned back, facing me. In the distance I caught the image of a shrouded figure, perhaps a woman, draped in black. I was hit by a wave of utter hatred so violent it nearly brought me to my knees. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, it had vanished.

“Did you see that?” I shouted.

“What?” He was at my side with dizzying speed. When I described to him what I had seen, he shook his head.

“This witch, she’s behind all of this, isn’t she?” I asked.

“She’s playing with you. Her favorite pastime. But there is much I need to understand if we are to thwart her plans. We need to talk to someone who will have more…recent information.”

“What do you mean?”

“Follow me.”

He began walking towards the cottages at a supernatural speed. I cursed and ran after him. When I finally caught up, winded and cramped, I found him touching the deep claw marks in the side of my cottage.

“I hope you’re not reassessing your thoughts on structural integrity.”

“No,” he grinned. “I think I know where to find your loup garou.”

x

[Part 9]

[Part 10]

[Part 11]