Chapter Two: Open Mind

Harriet woke the next morning in a bleary fog. Her mouth felt thick and fuzzy and she had a heavy crust of mucus in her eyes. Her head pounded. She wiped at her eyes as she sat up in her bed. There was a halo of golden sunlight around the blackout blinds. She could not remember much of the night before, aside from some sort of feverish dream that her former test subject, an undead vampire, was looking after her. She shuddered at the thought – the last time he had been in her flat he was possessing her. The idea of his physical body here creeped her out a bit: vampires belonged in underground laboratories, safely restrained. It’s not like she was afraid of him, exactly, but certain things belonged at her job, while other things belonged at her flat. She had quit her job, and memories of it had no right to follow her home like this.

She swung her legs out of bed and touched her feet to the cold floor. She lurched upright, dizzy and sore, her whole body aching. Painkiller time. She moved carefully through to the main room, where the blinds were closed to shut out most of the sunlight. She got herself a glass of water, some ibuprofen and paracetamol, and then did a double-take, realising how clean and tidy the kitchen was. In the gloomy dark she realised, with horror, that someone was sleeping on her sofa. It had not been a fever dream afterall. She sipped her water and mooched over.

It was the tallest of her test subjects whose official title was BIUK HA1.1 but who had designated himself as ‘Victor’. Vampires look dead at the best of times, but most of all when they are sleeping; his skin was corpse-grey mottled with purple veins and arteries. He suffered from a sort of undead lividity, his blood pooled and formed dark bruises on the lower side of his body. When awake, his calves and feet would be black and swollen, but lying as he was it was his right side that darkened with blood, while his left side was drained and pale.  

Harriet was a little fascinated with Victor, scientifically speaking. His body was trapped between life and death; he breathed softly like a sleeping man, but the wheeze in his throat made it sound like a death rattle. He was clammy, sweating as a living person, but with a tepid-to-cold body temperature. From experience, she knew his pulse was weak and his heart rate was slow. Yet he was animated; walking and talking with functional muscles and brain.

She observed him, a dumb dead thing unconscious on her sofa. His limbs were long, his legs hooked over the sofa arm. He had taken his shoes off, revealing one of the weirder aspects of vampire anatomy – upsettingly thumblike opposable large toes, with long clawed smaller toes. Harriet had a theory these could be used to hang upside-down in a batlike fashion, but had never seen any vampires performing this behaviour.

She returned her attention to the vampire’s face. He wasn’t handsome; his fangs gave him a goofy overbite. He had prominent cheekbones and jawline, in a gaunt, malnourished way, and dark circles under his eyes. His lips were thin, and dark with dead blood – they felt cold to the touch, as if he had just come in from the snow - not that she had touched those lips in quite some time. She turned her attention to his pointed ears – the undead did not have especially acute hearing, and to this day the scientist could not work out why the helix of the external ear tapered to a point. It was a harmless detail (not like claws or fangs), and it charmed her a little.

Harriet realised she had been musing over Victor’s appearance a little too long and a little too indulgently. Despite having no witnesses, she felt embarrassed, so she changed her observation to a risk assessment. One bloodsucking monster out cold on her sofa. She gave him a prod, her finger making contact with his shoulder. No movement. Another poke, this time more boldly on his cheek. He scrunched his eyes, frowning, and Harriet took a hasty step back as he mumbled incoherently then relaxed again. She poked him a third time, and this time he rolled over, facing into the sofa, livor-mortis side up, pale side down.

  He failed to leap into action and violently attack her, so she guessed it was probably safe to let her guard down. He had not bitten her and drank her blood at all during the night, which was a sign that his immediate plans did not involve her death. It made her a little uneasy that she could not guess his true motives, but physically she was safe. For now.

Her headache raged on, so she reached up to the centre gem of the metal crown, and felt around for the bizarre catch, and as she tugged on it she thought ‘GO’ as loud as she could, as instructed by Matt. The magnetic force disappeared and she pulled it away from her forehead. She untangled the other nodes and the wire from her hair.

Her head felt… clean? Cold? It was like she opened a window to let fresh air into her skull. She had forgotten there was a buzzing sound associated with the device, and the air was wonderfully quiet now. It had been over a week since she had last taken the thought-jammer off, scared that the vampire would read her thoughts again. But he was here, in plain sight, and clearly asleep, what was he going to do?

It was a relief to not have that pressure around her head. She stumbled to a wooden chair (formerly a ‘laundry chair’ but the vampire had cleared it so it could be used as a seat) and sat down in it to close her eyes. She let her head pound and throb and waited for the painkillers to kick in.

Dimly, she could sense the vampire’s mind, like a mist over his body. She couldn’t see anything, it was an unusual sixth sense, akin to identifying warm or cold drafts. As far as she was aware, she would only have the ability to detect Victor’s mind. And he would have the ability to detect the mind of anyone he bit, as well as the ability to read it and control it – a very unfair system. He was a parasite, drinking thoughts and feelings along with blood and life.

She got up and made herself some tea, moving slowly and painfully as her whole body ached. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she wondered if it was too early to go back to sleep.

You could go to sleep if you like, said Victor in her mind. You were pretty sick last night, recovery should be a priority.

Harriet physically flinched with surprise. “Out!” she snapped.

The vampire unfolded himself from where he had been lying on the sofa. Actually... Just hold still for a minute, he thought. Harriet, to her horror, realised she had no choice but to hold still. She could not move, and stood frozen by the kitchen countertop.

Victor walked past her and washed his hands in the kitchen sink, his toe claws clicking on the hard floor wherever he stepped. “To the bathroom,” he instructed. “I need to borrow your eyes and mirror.”

Please let me go, thought Harriet.

“I literally need to borrow you for like, five minutes.”

Harriet took her place in front of the mirror. Victor stood behind her, he had no reflection. He reached past her to open the mirrored cabinet above the sink and grab a few first aid items. She could almost feel him using her eyes as he held up a bottle of surgical spirit for her to inspect. Oh no.

It’s going to sting. He thought. I’m sorry.

Let me do this myself! You don’t have to do this! Give me back my body!

It’s for five minutes. He peeled off the gory bandage, a waft of stink filling the bathroom. “Yikes, that’s infected,” he said aloud. Harriet moved against her will, baring her neck to the mirror and staring at it. Victor pulled on some nitrile gloves, and compared his blurry vision of a dark shape on her neck to the crisper image Harriet could see in the mirror.

Harriet braced herself for what followed. First, he washed the neck using warm water, and prodded around the wound with various tools he found in her bathroom cabinet. There was a build up of pus that he carefully extracted, drained, and cleaned away. She couldn’t even flinch in pain, held still by the other presence in her mind. She couldn’t clench her jaw, there was no outlet for the sensation. Her tear ducts still seemed to work, and her eyes watered. Victor sighed in irritation and wiped her tears away as they were blocking the view. “It’ll be over soon,” he said, preparing to administer the surgical spirit. “You’re being very brave.”

Please stop. Please!

Being bitten by a vampire had hurt, and it had been combined with a terrifying fear of death. The struggle and panic involved in a fight for one’s life is obviously highly traumatic, but in terms of sheer pain, having surgical spirit applied to the entire open wound was painful beyond words – blindingly, screamingly painful. This had also come as a surprise to Victor, who fled her mind to escape it. She dropped to the floor clutching her neck and howling.

“Shit!” he yelped. He hovered around her, trying to gently shush her, trying to help. Seeing that she was in no mood to be shushed he rushed out of the bathroom momentarily, returning with the telepathy blocker. Gradually her agonised howls stopped and she huddled on the bathroom floor, panting, blood and other ooze dribbling down her neck.

Victor tried to ignore the fresh blood smell. “Are you okay if I put a bandage back on?”

She glared at him.

He took the initiative, and once more possessed her limbs to stop her from struggling while he fished out some gauze and tape and dressed the wound. He then released her mind and body and quickly, allowing her to mop up the excess fluids in her own time.

“Never do that again,” she spat, reaching for the telepathy blocker with trembling hands.

“Sorry, I just thought I could reduce the infection-”

“It’s your fault I have this in the first place, stop making it worse!”

“Sorry!”

She placed the telepathy blocker around her head again and closed her eyes briefly. The device flickered into life, glowing blue and tightening around her head once more. Satisfied that he was no longer in her head, she commanded: “Leave!”

“Okay,” he said like an apology, getting up to leave the bathroom.

“I uninvite you from this house,” she added, hoping that maybe it would do something painful to him. She did not actually expect un-inviting the vampire to work, but suddenly he lurched out of the bathroom as if something unseen had grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Hey, what the hell?” he said as he was dragged out of view, his foot claws scribbling like a dog’s paws moments before the front door slammed shut.

Harriet sat there in stunned silence. Vampires could be un-invited? That was a relief. She did not have to deal with him anymore. She did not, however, enjoy the idea that there was something in her home capable of bodily dragging the vampire out like that – she had studied ghosts before, and usually something extreme was needed to cause a poltergeist to act that way. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost, maybe some sort of spell?

She heard knocking at the door. She rolled her eyes and got up, putting firm pressure on her burning neck wound. She did not open the front door, but instead said “Don’t knock again you freak, you’re uninvited and you’re not coming back in!”

She heard a sigh, and then a retreat.

It had… worked? She sat down on the sofa in disbelief. For some reason she assumed that he would be sticking around for months, an uncomfortable reminder of all her failings, but after one night she had managed to evict him?! She did not know if she should relax or be on high alert or… she did not know what to do.

She held her burning, throbbing neck, staring at the door. Eventually she got up, unlocked it, and checked the corridor cautiously. Truly, he was gone. She locked the door and returned to the sofa, blinking at the pain, trying to lie still and let it go numb again. It was too early in the morning for all this drama… Her hand reached up to check that the telepathy device was still there, a little disbelievingly. The anger of the wound was fighting the rolling ache of her head, and the headache won out, and she was back to feeling sick again.

Eventually, her body let her know it was hungry – luckily her undead visitor had bought plenty of food. As she put something in the microwave she told herself she didn’t miss the nasty bastard. He had invaded her home (asked to be invited in), went through her possessions (tidied and cleaned everything), possessed her mind itself (in order to treat her neck wound) and was all-in-all a terrible person. She angrily got herself a cup of juice. Now what?! Now she was all alone, having to live out of food he’d bought her – well she certainly wasn’t going to thank him for that. Apology food did not count as generosity.

She woke up a while later, having taken a crash nap on the sofa. She shuffled to the kitchenette to open the blinds and see some daylight, but immediately decided it was way too bright outside and settled for just existing in darkness. She had a glass of water and more painkillers and assessed her situation.

She was feeling more aware of herself than she had in days and felt compelled to take action. She had left her job, so the best way she could get back on the horse is get a new job. To get a job she would need to make a CV and search job sites – there was so much of her life she was going to have to fabricate for this, as she was sworn to secrecy to the Institute. Also ‘experience in undead husbandry’ was not something many jobs were looking for.

She booted up her ancient laptop, which had been hidden under her bed for some months. She was an intensely private person who devoted most of her spare hours to her work, and had very little reason for home computing. The laptop was an elderly Toshiba which needed its BIOS updating every time it woke up – Matt had explained to her it was probably the CMOS battery which had died. The Toshiba wheezed into life, and Harriet drummed her fingers impatiently waiting for it to load an internet browser.

What followed was a joyless experience. The damned machine was slow and the fan inside would whir and scream like the machine was a helicopter trying to take off every time she opened a new Firefox tab. She looked for jobs in her area and told herself not to be picky but a part of her cringed at the thought of working in retail or service again. As a university student she had taken part time work as a barista, but that was years ago, and she didn’t relish the thought of working in a coffee shop again. Maybe someone wanted an archivist or some similar job that involved organising databases on her own, unobserved and unsupervised.

Harriet lied her way through a passable CV draft. Naming referees and giving them contact details would be a difficult task, given the extremely anonymous nature of the Institute – usually you did not become a ‘former employee’, either, it was a job for life, so she wondered if they had cover stories for people who used to work there….

Of course, there was no way to email in and ask about this, and she felt too sick to hop on a bus and ask the reception desk in person. Eventually she made up names and addresses of fake referees and used them to fill in three or four job applications.

It was a slow task, and as evening approached she gave up on the job search and made herself some dinner, moving largely on auto-pilot. The room got so dark that she needed to turn a light on, and she admitted to herself that she would need to confront her neck wound again, and so she returned to the bathroom to redress it. The smell, which had previously been a putrid reek, was as awful as sweat and blood, but nothing rotting. The gory mess was red, dark red and brown, but no interesting pus colours. She tried one of the antiseptic creams the vampire had brought, which stung viciously, and put a fresh bandage over the wound. It looked more bite-mark shaped rather than gaping-hole-in-the-neck shaped now.

Before bed, she checked the corridor outside her flat one last time for any sign of vampires. Nothing but velvety darkness. Good! That horrible parasite was gone and she would get a decent night’s sleep without him! She closed out the night, locking the door, and shuffled sleepily back to her bedroom, safe in the knowledge that Victor was gone and all would be well.