The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

The Victorian Vampire

By: Kagome Itoshime

Chapter Two: The Angel in The Night

As the sun slowly rose, Anita lay innocently in her bed sleeping softly while the pearl embroidered gown hung soundlessly in her locked closet. Just the least bit audible, were her grandparents in their shared bed chamber, only just waking along with the sunrise.

The foot steps, most likely of those of her grandmother's, padded their way to the opposite end of the cabin, and not more then twenty minutes later, were the sounds of cooking in the kitchen.

She began to smell the air, catching the scent of breakfast on her nose. Anita rose slowly from the depths of her feather comforters and yawned heavily, still tired from her out wood night date.

"Dear?" her grandfather softly announced as he tapped twice upon Anita's chamber door. His voice was rather raspy, either from age or sleep not yet gone, but he was above all rather cheerful for the beginning of a new day.

"Yes, grandfather?" Anita responded short of breath after expressing yet another long yawn.

"Dear, when you are dressed, please join your grandmother and me for breakfast in the dinning hall." he requested as he heard his only and most dearest granddaughter stood up off her bed and step closer and closer to the chamber door until he heard the bolt unlock. The door opened slowly to revile the angel to her grandfather.

"Of course grandfather, I could never dream of not." she assured him as she smiled a warm and loving smile to her grandfather before kissing him softly on the cheek.

"Of course you wouldn't mind, otherwise you wouldn't get breakfast." he laughed softly before he became serious once more. "You better apologize to your grandmother as well darling, she fears you may be very disappointed and, well, dislike her for all time." he softly whispered in her ear as she gave her grandfather, whom was only inches taller then she, a warm 'good morning' hug.

"I will, I fear I was against myself last night grandfather." she noted to him as she leaned against the chamber door, preparing to close it.

"Well dear, please tell your grandmother that, you know very well how much she cares for you. Please join us when you are dressed." he noted one last time before he trekked his way down the passageway to his wife, who was cooking her normal, daily breakfast in the kitchen. Anita saw her grandfather kiss her grandmother once on the cheek before closing her chamber door and leaning her back against it, in such a way as if to think. But she did not.

Anita quickly moved away from her door and to her closet, which she slowly unlocked, and opened. She looked at her new pearl embroidered gown, and grabbed the pink home dress that hung to the left.

She walked slowly down the passage way, as she came upon her grandmother preparing the table.

"Good morning dear, sleep well I hope?" she asked conversationally as she one by one set the breakfast additions upon the table top, then sitting herself down in the chair next to her husband. As they prayed for a safe day, Anita took no interest or part in it.

She seemed distracted, she seemed to be thinking about the man whom last was standing in her grandparents wheat field, awaiting only her company. She heard her grandparents utter the ending 'amen' of there prayer and brought herself back to the existing reality she unfortunately lived in.

"So dear," her grandmother began to ask once more, "did you sleep well?" The elder lady began to fill her plate with the eggs and sausage she had prepared as her husband and granddaughter did as well.

"Actually, I did." Anita calmly responded just before she took a fork full of eggs and placed them carefully into her mouth.

"Did you dream?" the elder woman asked curiously as she too continued to eat.

Anita thought a moment. Should she tell her grandmother about the previous night, in the form of a dream? "Yes, I did." she paused momentarily. "I had a dream that this man was standing in the wheat field, just looking at our home. It was really weird." she added as an after thought more to herself then to convince her grandparents of the lie.

After then, Anita sat on the kitchen chest and watched her grandmother wash the breakfast dishes and gather the necessities for their lunches.

"Grandmother?" Anita shyly asked as she drew imaginary circles on the counter next to her. "Yes dear?" the elder woman responded as she continue with her daily chores.

"Grandmother, have you ever heard of a man named Phillip Renaldi?" She asked this as if it were nothing, but her grandmother's reaction was more of a shock, if possible, then Anita even asking her grandmother the question at all.

"Why do you wish to know?" she asked suddenly as she looked over at her young grandchild. She thought a moment, but began to tell before she ever received a response. "The man was a blood thirsty murderer. I'm surprised that he ever had children. But to be frank, that monster is four generations gone. I assure you, you have no need to worry about a man so old that he's left our world."

Anita calculated the tables a moment. "Were his children named after him? Generation after generation?"

"Well, yes. But that's nothing for you to worry about. That family line ended in 1488, when the last son disappeared when he went on a hunting expedition in the west country of England. That was back in the Victorian age." The elder lady resumed with the washing of the dishes. "Where'd you hear that name from anyway?" she asked to suit her own growing curiosity.

" Emily spoke of it yesterday, just as an after thought to something her mother and father had said to her." Anita spoke distantly of her life long best friend as she thought about the man who lived in the woods.

As suddenly as she had asked the question, Anita jumped off the chest and bid her busy grandmother adieu for the time. She quickly jogged down the short passageway and into her chamber, closing the door behind her, although not bolting the door as she had done the night before.

She plopped her thin body down upon her bed before she began to think. Once doing so, she got back to her feet once again and dug out a notebook, ink bottle, and a feather. Reminding herself as she sat back onto the bed that her family was poor, she opened the notebook and uncapped the ink bottle.

She wrote a note to herself about the previous night's events, detailing the descriptions of her sights and sounds. And most importantly, the appearance of the man in the night, Phillip Renaldi. The way his skin was aglow in the fire light, and the irus of his eyes so dark, could have been a portrait of the night painted carefully on the canvas of his eyes, and how the man's personality told a story other then the one he wished it would.

She sat up a moment and thought. For a man of his age, which could have been no older then mid twenties, around twenty-five, how could he hold a posture of a man withered with age and filled to the brim of wise stories of the olden days? The longer she pondered this question the more bewildered she became.

It was hard to tell how long exactly she sat upon her bed, attempting to calculate and figure out explanations as to why the young man was so wise, but after not too long, Anita was asleep, wrapped up in her feather comforter. The sun had to yet even reach high noon when a beautiful, young girl the same age as Anita slowly popped her head into the chamber through a crack she made in the door.

This girl, known by Samantha, slowly creped her way into her young friend's bed chamber as Anita slept soundlessly. Samantha herself was greatly shorter then her counterpart Anita, but then to say, there was very little that the two held in common. Samantha's hair was black, and reached not fare bellow her shoulders, and her eyes were blue like the cloudless sky. The dress she wore was one of a bit more fancy then that of the one that Anita wore. Then to say, Samantha's family was farther richer then that of Anita's could ever dream of being.

As Anita rolled over slowly and opened her eyes just a crack, she noticed a dark haired form bent over looking at her as she laid upon her bed. Anita was not sure at what it was that she was seeing, so she took a double take and screamed when she noticed the hunched figure was her friend Samantha.

"By the Gods! Samantha! What are you doing in my chambers?" Anita exclaimed as she sat up in her bed with a half frightened half shocked look upon her now even graver face then usual. Anita's cheeks were now flushed red from her angered shock.

"Your grandmother informed me that you were in here and that I should wake you up!" Samantha smiled as she joyfully sat on the bed next to her friend. "Only naughty girls stay up all night little missy. You were up all night, weren't you?" she asked septically as she carefully wrapped her arms around Anita's neck and shoulders.

"I was not up all night!" Anita weakly defended herself as she flushed embarrassed.

"Oh really? Fair to prove it?" Samantha checked her friend as she pulled Anita down upon her back and climbed atop her.

"I need not prove myself to you!" she weakly shot back at Samantha as she sat on Anita's stomach lightly.

"Then you were!" she excitedly exclaimed as she leaned forward whispering, "Where did you go? With who?"

Anita sighed heavily, finding that she was obviously defeated. "I went for a walk through the forest with a friend of mine." She said the words quietly, as if they were the incantation to a dangerous spell.

"The forest?" Samantha exclaimed in surprise as she rose from her hunched form upon Anita's body. "With a friend of yours? Which friend? You have like, hundreds!"

"I do not!" Anita exclaimed as she embarrassingly attempted to sit up, but her efforts were all in that of vain, for it seemed Samantha was unwilling to sit upon anything besides her friend. "His name is Phillip." she whispered almost silently as she allowed her body to flop backwards upon the bed.

"What was that?" Samantha asked as she noticed that her witty friend had spoken and that she herself had not heard it.

Anita slightly rose her voice and repeated the words she had just previously spoken. "His name is Phillip, he's an older male friend of mine." she added the as a sudden after thought. She knew that would make her promiscuous friend interested.

"A man? Named Phillip? Anita, there is no man in our village named Phillip." Samantha stated as she thought a moment on the idea of a young girl entering the nearest large forest with an elder, more experienced man named Phillip, which nobody knows whom is. "Is he cute?" she suddenly asked.

Anita suddenly raised her upper body, using her arms to hold her high as she looked shocked into the pools of daydreaming that were now Samantha's eyes. But then as their eyes met, both seemingly straight faced, they burst out with an uncontrollable laughter, which seemed endless. To be noted, this case of giggles had in fact lasted until a knock came at the door, presumably from that of Anita's grandmother.

"Anita darling, are you two well?" the elder woman inquired with a slight laugh in her own voice as she cautiously stepped into the chamber.

"Yes grandmother, we're well." Anita giggled softly as she took in large gasps of air in the effort to regain her breath.

"Great dear, I was beginning to feel worrisome. Please come join me for some lunch my dears." The elder woman promptly left the chamber after extending the invitation to the two young girls.

* * *

Later that evening, the golden rays of a setting sun washed over Anita and Samantha as they lay on their backs in the soft spongy grass that grew just feet away from the back steps that lead upward to the cabin home. The golden light appeared to accent Anita's blond hair just as beautifully as the full lunar orb that expressed bright light only one night a month, carving the image into an even more beautiful picture.

"Samantha? Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier today?" Anita asked suddenly as she forcefully pulled herself from the blessed feeling of a nap after supper.

"Earlier? You mean about him?" Samantha half sarcastically recalled her's and Anita's earlier conversation about Anita's reason for being so sleepy that day.

"Yes silly, it is partially related to Phillip, maybe even completely." Anita mostly spoke to herself about her after thought.

After a moment or two of silence, Samantha pipped up her voice. "So are you going to tell me whatever it is you were going to tell me? Or were you just trying to rub it in my beautiful yet lonely face that there's a mysterious man out there who seems interested in you?" She joked around with her words but as she spoke the last question, Anita seemed to blush heavily, perhaps afraid that what Samantha spoke could possibly be true, but would and older man take interest in a young girl? Or was all that just fairy tale?

"I'm sorry. I became distracted suddenly, just totally blank." Anita giggled apologetically as she blushed. "But there is something I wish to show you, it is in my closet in my chambers. Do you wish to see it?" she asked excitedly.

"Of course!" she responded as Anita helped her off the grass and into the cabin home. While walking down the passageway, Samantha's mind went unnaturally blank before she began to think about how easily Anita became embarrassed, so simple, as if every or anything can make her blush.

"Samantha, please bolt the lock behind you." Anita whispered as she carefully unlocked her closet.

After Samantha was assured the chamber door was locked, she turned around, and was completely stunned at the sight she had to behold. Anita was dressed in a gown of European royalty, beautiful enough for even the Queen of England herself to presume.

"Oh my God! Anita!" Samantha walked forward and felt the pearls, which were carefully sewn onto an amazingly rare fabric that was rarely seen on a woman unless born to a family with riches of a king. "This is what Mr. Phillip gave to you last night? It's beautiful!" she exclaimed as she felt uncontainable joy at the sight of the gown.

"He wants me to wear it tonight when we see each other again. It's such a beautiful gown, it makes me wonder where in the world would he be able to gather enough money to purchase something so expensive! You know what I mean?" Anita obsessed as she turned and allowed the gown to grace the soft curves of her body.

"Yes, I hear what you are saying. It seems odd that a man whom you seem to only know for a few hours would give you a dress worth hundreds of dollars. It makes one think, what kind of job had he done to gather that much money to purchase such a gown." Samantha pondered the serious question a moment longer before allowing a large smile to pass over her lips at her uncontrollable excitement that the gown itself seemed to be radiating.

As the two girls began to settle down, Anita walked over to her door and unbolted the lock, making it possible for one of her grandparents to enter the room later on that night, if they wished to so as they usually did.

But what only seemed minutes later, though really hours, both Samantha and Anita were sound asleep under the feather comforter that lay across the both of them laid down by Anita's dear elder grandfather just before he himself made his way to bed. Both girls were still full dressed, and Anita still wore the gown.

At the high-rise of the moon, Phillip Renaldi emerged from the forest's edge and came to a stop in his place, just the same as the night before.

'Anita dear,' he spoke to Anita's mind, 'join me in this dance?' he asked as he awaited a response from inside the cabin.

Just when he believed she was not inside, a figure dressed in a fancy gown embroidered with pearls stepped in front of Anita's chamber window.

'Join me dear Anita.' he called once more as he rose his hand to her, awaiting for her to slip her hand into his.

Anita quickly climbed out the window and stepped about six feet in front of Phillip. The look she expressed was that of detachment, like it really were not the soul of Anita who ruled over her body.

The reflected moonlight off each and every pearl on the gown gave Anita the appearance of acquiring wings, with a heavenly grace of her pale, always glowing skin and radiating blond hair. With all held in contempt, the appearance for all onlookers was one of the grace of an angel in the night.