The Rose Mansion Part 2

What’s that?” Christine asked.It almost was like she thought Harold was going to poison Angelina on top of everything else.
"It’s for pain.It is a sedative of some sort.”
“Will it hurt her?”
“Not at all.It might put her into a deep sleep but nothing more than that.”
Christine knelt closer to her dying sister and held her thin,white hand with all her might.
"Hold her arm straight."
“No....NO!” Angelina screamed.Her hair was sticking to her cheeks in strands.She was strong,but her weak,emaciated body was no match for the both of them. “It’s ok,Angelina.” Christine urged. “Harold will make everything better.”
Angelina relaxed her arm but more tears dripped down her face and pillow. “But I..I don’t HAVE any! I tried to t-tuh-teeell Anthony n-n-not to leave but he...he never took it back...NO!” Robert stuck the needle in the little jar and sucked the needle full of it’s clear contents.He found a vein (and with ease because her skin was almost translucent)and gently,skillfully,punctured Angelina’s thin skin with the tip and injected her with the medicine.Within minutes Angelina calmed down enough so that both Harold and Christina could stop restraining her and settle into two cushioned chairs placed by both sides of her bed.She was quiet but she still cried and mumbled incoherent sentences.
“Anthony...I didn't get to see how...Dear,I told you I left that b-by...Thank you for the roses,no nice..get...in time of the way..I’m sorry I forgot these ones to bring last room,love...” She rocked her head back and forth across her pillow. Harold and Christine could only look at her with a mixture of pity and sorrow.
“She...wasn't this ill before. If I would have known how severe it was I would have gone for you...thank God you came when you did.Maybe if I brought you here earlier she would have a better chance.” She looked straight into his eyes. “What do you think it is?”
Harold shook his head.He was about to answer Christina when Angelina started to moan.It was a low,scary sound.Harold placed his hand on Angelina’s forehead. “That’s odd...”
“What?”
“She doesn't have a fever.” Suddenly,as if on que,Angelina’s face turned an odd color,grayish green, and she broke out in a sweat.With every sick,gasping breath,Harold could see the bones of her neck more.
“Angelina?Angelina,I need you to let me know that you can hear me.Angelina,talk to me.”
Angelina Swept her head back and forth,just as she had before.Her eyes were closed tightly as if it was bright daylight and not in the dead of night. “Huh...Huh.”
“Harold?” Harold gasped.
“H-Huh-hungry...”
Christina began weeping.Angelina’s moans,Christina’s crying,and the wild storm filled the room with a chaos that angered Harold.He felt like his eardrums would explode.
“Angelina! Stop it and talk to me!” He was now on the bed,almost on top of her,screaming into her face.Her eyes were still closed,but Harold’s were wide and deadly serious.He was about to scream her name again to her but then...
Then she stopped.She stopped crying and rocking her head and kept her head straight but with her eyes still closed.Christina’s cries quieted into little hiccups.Even the storm seemed to slow into a gentler drizzle.The lightning became silent flashes of whitish blue light.
Harold was breathing hard.He held Angelina’s thin shoulders. “Angelina-“
Then somthing horrible,something neither Harold,Christine,or anyone for that mater, could ever explain.For the thing that happened next could NOT be explained.It defied science,belief,and logic.To Harold and Christine,what happened after that would always seem like a horrible dream...a nightmare.
Angelina opened her eyes slowly.Her thick,beautiful eyelashes fluttering,but Harold could not believe what he was seeing at all when he looked into her eyes.He did the only think he COULD do.He shook,leapt off the bed,and let out a cry of pure horror.
These were not the crystal blue beauties that he used to gaze in with a sense of wonder and admiration.These eyes were black,complete pitch black with two white dots for pupils.
Christina must have seen those..things...too because she screamed and the sound pierced the night.Thunder boomed and lightning flashed,making Angelina’s face bright with total whiteness.She looked like a green,rotting corpse with the two solid black voids where human eyes would be.
Then,ever so slowly,Angelina,the corpse,whatever it was, raised up in the bed and smiled at both of them.It slowly started out of the bed towards him.It grinned with the hunger of a madwoman.A hunger for murder that could never be filled without real,warm blood.
It was a vampire.
Harold spread his arms to his front and waved her away,gasping,filled with raw fear.She smiled and revealed,not just two,but a set of gleaming white teeth that were long and sharp as knives.He could not scream.A scream seemed to be trapped in his throat.He felt like He was swallowing his tongue to keep down his screams of what had to be madness.He was sure he was going crazy.What else could explain somthing this awful and horrifying?He wanted to run away as fast as he could but in one flash of bright white light the door that was open the entire time slammed shut with a loud BANG.The candles blew out and all three of them were in complete and utter darkness.Christina screamed,but he could not tell from where.The room was big,but now it seemed huge.He could not see his own hand in front of his face...
and there was a living vampire with them.Somewhere,anywhere.I was completely dark,darker than any other night because the moonlight was now almost all gone.A cloud must have passed over it.The thing was lurking somewhere in the full darkness with it’s teeth.It was waiting for one of them to scream so it could kill it.Then what? Harold thought inside his now aching head.
Then you go crazy and they lock to in a rubber room forever where you're only allowed to eat mushy food with a spoon and sing songs for the rest of your mad life...
He told himself to stop it.What would happen?
Then it would just be another ghost story with the house.Who could possibly believe this?Even Harold could not believe it..and he was it with it’s own eyes.He stood there and grabbed his spinning head. “Please,just be a nightmare..Please Oh please...This can’t be real...”
But it was.Harold knew it was real because he felt,he truly felt the metallic feeling of the air.He could hear his own heart pounding,he could taste the saltiness in his mouth as he fought the urge to vomit when he thought if rotting up here in a haunted house,and then he swore...he swore he could could feel the very brush of satin fabric on his bare hand like a kiss from a poison butterfly kiss.It tickled his skin but made his body feel as if it was full of ice water.He covered his hand like it was wounded and backed away silently.His heart pounded in his chest as fierce as the the thunder.He wanted to scream..how badly he wanted to scream and run away.But he could only stay perfectly still in the perfectly silent room so the thing could not sense him.He listened for breath,lady footsteps,anything.He felt like diver in the middle of a dark,dark shark tank.Maybe she could smell him like a shark..
Then the lightning flashed and lit up the room for less than two full seconds.
In two seconds,it’s hard to see much of anything.Sight is the quickest of senses but it still takes a moment to comprehend and acknowledge what it is seeing.(Just like it takes you a moment to twitch away from a hot surface.Or,for that matter,understand and feel it’s heat in the first place.)Harold was lucky he was facing the way he was or he wouldn't have seen anything at all.He saw the four poster bed with it’s sheets now piled on the floor,he saw the two chairs overturned,he saw the bedside table...
Yes.He was very lucky he was facing the way he was..or he wouldn't have seen Angelina or the vampire or whatever it was,crouching low to the floor.It’s eyes were all black now and it’s mouth a wide open pit of black with spiky teeth poking out.
Everything was white.The thing’s satin robe was white,it’s face was white.Then in a split second after the flash lightning was gone and everything was black again,Harold saw the picture in his mind.
Before he heard the blood curdling scream,he saw in his mind that the vampire was facing Christine.So,in other words,he SAW his finger in the fire and saw it twitch away,but not he felt the burn.
He leapt blindly into the darkness and grabbed at the movement he heard.There was screaming,and not just Christine’s anymore,and a growling/hissing sound.He felt cold and slightly warm flesh brush up against him.He fought and tackled what he could not see.He punched someone and felt warm blood pool down his hand.He didn't see what he was trying to kill,but he sure wished he wasn't hitting Christina.He actually thought of just running away to avoid hurting anyone anymore,just leaving them both in the darkness,when somthing as sharp as a razor blade and as destructive as a meat grinder ripped and tore at his arm to shreds.He screamed louder and punched at what he thought was Angelina.He HEARD the ripping of flesh and cried.Warm blood was everywhere he could feel it.
A flash of lightning and he saw Christina on the ground,fighting off her sister.Everything.Everything was covered in red blood that looked purple in the fighting moonlight.
Trying to keep that picture in his mind like a photo,he lunged into the darkness.His dominant arm waved limply beside him.Still,he bent his arm backwards to administer the most powerful punch his dizzy body could sum up.He punched,felt the velvet softness of a lady’s skin,and then felt the bone crush and crack at his knuckles.The feeling vibraed up throgh his fingers and arm until it stuck in his ears and replayed itself.He punched again....and again.HE wanted that thing to die...whatever the hell it was.
He heard a thump.The smack of a dead-weight body.
The body could have been Angelina’s or Christina’s.He really did not want to know which because he knew they were both most likely dead or going to be dead.He killed them.Maybe both,but at least one.He stumbled up and bumped into every piece of furniture in the room before finding the bedside table.Using the walls as guides,he felt around.His mind flashed to a story he read called “The Pit and the Pendulum”
It took him somthing close to 20 minutes.Suddenly he was glad he didn't try it 21 minutes ago before he threw that final punch.In the darkness,he never would have been able to to it.He was sure it was the bedside table because he could feel it’s shape and the ground by it was wet from the spilled water basin.He found a pack of matches.Found a candle.It took him five minutes to light the candle before a gust of wind blew it out again.He lit it again and watched the single thin flame waver with his shaking hands.He could not turn around....his body was a rock...but he did turn.Very slowly and carefully...he turned.