The Cemetery Diaries
Pandemonium
Pandaemonium is the name of the demon that gave birth to this chaos, to each and every vampire descended from the original bride of Satan, Eve. In her breast forever we find our abode and our damnation. Pandemonium is what has broken out across the cemetery. It’s what’s in our nature. Sparks fly from exhaust pipes and engines where rocks, knives and broken bottles strike them. Headstones crack as those more powerful of us leap like wolves upon the weakest. Gravel crunches underneath boots, and there is kicking, wrestling, punching, tossing. The clan has gone into a frenzy. Chalk it up to a bad trip and a pretty girl, two of the most destructive forces in history. But wait–
I see him striding slow-motion through the battleground, perfectly calm in the eye of the storm. His hair is as white as mine is dark, a nest of cobwebs that flows in a mullet down his back. His eyes are marble-white, frosted with pale blue irises like tiny snowflakes. His leathers only cover him from the groin down. Even the snowy trail of hair creeping southward from his navel is exposed above his low slung chain belt, while his chest is completely bare, chiselled from fine ivory. He turns and for a moment I catch a glimpse of the scars carved ritually into his back. Fancy that, I say with a smirk. A demon, wearing angel’s wings? He smiles back, a cat’s purring smile, and soon I see what all the fuss is really about.
His gang is not far behind him, dressed half in studded riding leathers and half in moon-pale drapery. They call themselves the Buried, because the majority of them made it to the grave before they were reanimated by ritual’s kiss. They were some of Australia’s first European settlers, and first fallen by black magic, all interred no later than the eighteen hundreds. That was a time when coffins and proper wrappings for corpses were scarce. Men and women who died of widespread disease were often simply wrapped in shrouds, and it is in these ghostly, torn and threadbare hangings that the Buried awoke. Now, they trail their fragile wrappings like capes of eerie mist, floating so lightly that they appear to be jellyfish moving underwater.
They march over the section of the cemetery reserved for unknown dead, treading those faceless graves and nameless plaques. Here, the raised slabs covering entrances to vaults are shaped like stone coffins, mimicking the architecture of the larger tombs in their detail. Here are lacy Victorian embellishments. There are the Roman columns. White crucifixes swim in a world of shadow, like in old silver-plate photographs. The Buried are fast gaining ground against the struggling Invictus, we whom death shall never conquer. This is their territory, they claim, in voices born of ashen tongues. Vampire boys, says their leader, you’re killing us. That’s the other thing about the Buried; they’re a different breed of undead to our kind. They don’t call themselves vampires, although they feast on blood. They have no life force to preserve, no living flesh to maintain. An occult force animates them and keeps them together but cold.
I found her where my grave is, I shout above the clamour. I know that they’ll take you, you newest of all toys. You’re an unexpected bonus of crashing this party– a beautiful freshborn, capable of being persuaded to any undead tradition. They’ve caught sight of you now, and they close in, tightening the circle around us, with you at its centre.
Lovely thing, they coo. Don’t you want to be a proper vampire? Leave these half-dead, lukewarm-blooded scoundrels and come with us, the oldest liches and the rightful heirs to death’s domain. You will be invulnerable with us. You will be properly deceased, and free from the circus of macabre self-indulgence. We do not dwell in churches, they say. We do not play morbid children’s games. We only want this cemetery because of its memorials made to our number. The Invictus, grave robbers and desecraters that they are, cannot say the same.
For a moment, you break the grip between our hands, and I see you leaning out like a boat tugged seaward by the tide. Then, you shudder, and you’re back in my arms. It’s time for me to say the word: run. Run as fast as your strange new feet can carry you, stuffed inside those boots. Run so that the cage around your heart presses through your skin, desperate to break free. Run until your mouth is parched and your throat dry, little dead thing. Keep your glasses on. You stumble, tripping over an old root dredged out of the hard ground by drought, and I pull you unceremoniously to your feet. I shove you onto the back of the bike, never turning to see what phantoms pursue us, and wake the engine up. My bat-finned vehicle roars like a gargoyle, and spreads its solid wings. It’s time to fly.
I see him striding slow-motion through the battleground, perfectly calm in the eye of the storm. His hair is as white as mine is dark, a nest of cobwebs that flows in a mullet down his back. His eyes are marble-white, frosted with pale blue irises like tiny snowflakes. His leathers only cover him from the groin down. Even the snowy trail of hair creeping southward from his navel is exposed above his low slung chain belt, while his chest is completely bare, chiselled from fine ivory. He turns and for a moment I catch a glimpse of the scars carved ritually into his back. Fancy that, I say with a smirk. A demon, wearing angel’s wings? He smiles back, a cat’s purring smile, and soon I see what all the fuss is really about.
His gang is not far behind him, dressed half in studded riding leathers and half in moon-pale drapery. They call themselves the Buried, because the majority of them made it to the grave before they were reanimated by ritual’s kiss. They were some of Australia’s first European settlers, and first fallen by black magic, all interred no later than the eighteen hundreds. That was a time when coffins and proper wrappings for corpses were scarce. Men and women who died of widespread disease were often simply wrapped in shrouds, and it is in these ghostly, torn and threadbare hangings that the Buried awoke. Now, they trail their fragile wrappings like capes of eerie mist, floating so lightly that they appear to be jellyfish moving underwater.
They march over the section of the cemetery reserved for unknown dead, treading those faceless graves and nameless plaques. Here, the raised slabs covering entrances to vaults are shaped like stone coffins, mimicking the architecture of the larger tombs in their detail. Here are lacy Victorian embellishments. There are the Roman columns. White crucifixes swim in a world of shadow, like in old silver-plate photographs. The Buried are fast gaining ground against the struggling Invictus, we whom death shall never conquer. This is their territory, they claim, in voices born of ashen tongues. Vampire boys, says their leader, you’re killing us. That’s the other thing about the Buried; they’re a different breed of undead to our kind. They don’t call themselves vampires, although they feast on blood. They have no life force to preserve, no living flesh to maintain. An occult force animates them and keeps them together but cold.
I found her where my grave is, I shout above the clamour. I know that they’ll take you, you newest of all toys. You’re an unexpected bonus of crashing this party– a beautiful freshborn, capable of being persuaded to any undead tradition. They’ve caught sight of you now, and they close in, tightening the circle around us, with you at its centre.
Lovely thing, they coo. Don’t you want to be a proper vampire? Leave these half-dead, lukewarm-blooded scoundrels and come with us, the oldest liches and the rightful heirs to death’s domain. You will be invulnerable with us. You will be properly deceased, and free from the circus of macabre self-indulgence. We do not dwell in churches, they say. We do not play morbid children’s games. We only want this cemetery because of its memorials made to our number. The Invictus, grave robbers and desecraters that they are, cannot say the same.
For a moment, you break the grip between our hands, and I see you leaning out like a boat tugged seaward by the tide. Then, you shudder, and you’re back in my arms. It’s time for me to say the word: run. Run as fast as your strange new feet can carry you, stuffed inside those boots. Run so that the cage around your heart presses through your skin, desperate to break free. Run until your mouth is parched and your throat dry, little dead thing. Keep your glasses on. You stumble, tripping over an old root dredged out of the hard ground by drought, and I pull you unceremoniously to your feet. I shove you onto the back of the bike, never turning to see what phantoms pursue us, and wake the engine up. My bat-finned vehicle roars like a gargoyle, and spreads its solid wings. It’s time to fly.