Night Feast (7 page)

Lia, for some reason unbeknown to herself, decided to take it with her,  so she placed the handkerchief down the front of her dress between her breasts.  The piece of material was clean but smelt of Elena’s perfume, and once again she felt her desire to go through the portal rise.  Lia left her bedroom, ran quickly down the spiral staircase and went out into the dark night.

The antique shop belonging to Abe and Dalia Jackson, was about a hundred yards from the portal to the left.  It was only ever open for business during the night, just to meet the needs and requirements of its special and unusual clientele.  The Jacksons, although very low key, were extremely wealthy due to their business operations.  Their little shop generated far more income than all of the shops and restaurants in the mall, in Portland put together. If they had been situated in town they, and their clients would most likely have attracted too much unwanted attention.  The antique shop business had been in Abe Jackson’s family for generations.  He had been taught the ropes by his parents and inherited the shop, after they had died.  He and Dalia lived above the shop with their only fourteen year old son.  The boy went to a local school but was never allowed to bring any of his friends home, or discuss the family business.  Abe’s great-great grandfather had built the shop, deep in the woods, because he had wanted to attract a different kind of customer.  He had originally set it up as a pawn shop, and had purposely built it quite near to the portal that had then been a strange, small white light.  He had known instantly from his discovery of it, that it would develop as a sort of entrance for beings from another time.  His own grandmother had told him many stories of such things, when he was a child and had always emphasised that the supernatural would need guidance and money, if they were to blend into worlds and societies, that were unknown and alien to them.  His grandmother had also told him that the burning of Heather incense attracted beneficial spirits, and brought rain to over dry land.  She had also mentioned slyly, that the more ambitious would add a few drops of blood taken from a white dove to the incense before lighting it.  It was this additional action that was responsible for the beginnings of the Jackson’s burgeoning business.

The pungent aroma of doves’ blood and Heather incense attracted vampires and other supernatural beings from far and wide and from the past, present and future. Although dangerous they spared the lives of all the Jackson family,  knowing that they were a great necessity for their own survival, in this new territory.  It was agreed that the Jacksons would buy and sell the valuables that were brought to their shop by these strange individuals.  The money enabled them all to walk around, and live in the towns and cities.

When this unusual legacy had been passed down to him from his father, Abe knew that his family would never be free.  He also knew that his son, as it had been for himself, would have to bring his future wife into the secret.  However, he had found the killing of doves and the fraternising with the Dead remarkably easy as a boy, so he had decided that persuading a new wife would be a breeze.

Dalia Hatcher had grown up in Frenchville, Aroostook.  She was the eldest daughter of four siblings and had always been the curious sort.  Her fascination with Ouija boards and fortune telling had been a constant concern for her mother when she was younger, so it didn’t really surprise her when her daughter announced that she was going to marry that strange looking young man, Abe Jackson.

Before their betrothal Dalia had only been to Abe’s house during the day.  She had been very surprised on how unprepossessing it was on the outside, because she was well aware that the Jackson’s were Kennedy rich.  When she had first entered the shop on that bright and warm sunny day,  she had felt a chill that she could not explain.  However even though she was a novice when it came to antiques, she could see that the merchandise had a most unique rarity.  Then she’d married Abe.

At first she had wanted to run.  Abe had explained everything to her, and had tried to hold her and make her feel safe when he saw that she was gripped with fear.  He thought that she would have taken the family secret much better, due to her interests and morbid curiosity of the unknown.  When she told him that she was going to leave he shook his head sadly, and informed his wife that she would be hunted down by his clients, because she knew their secret.  The new bride had no choice, but to stay by her husband’s side.  After a while her fear subsided, she was the only family member who made sure that the incense mixture burned day and night, and as Mrs. Dalia Jackson, she became the most gracious and useful advisor to her supernatural clientele.

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It wasn’t that she hadn’t picked up the aroma of the  dove’s blood and Heather incense concoction.  She had without a doubt, but the scent of the young human girl had been far more appealing to her vampire nature.  However, once through the portal Lia intended to follow her nose, and investigate where the strange, but beckoning smell was coming from.  She took a left turn and quickly came to the little antique shop.  Lia peered through the glass window and felt a little odd, because she knew that even as a vampire she could enter without invitation.  So she opened the door and went in, and saw Abe and Dalia Jackson standing shoulder to shoulder behind a wooden counter.  The couple look older than her own Mother and Father.  She knew instantly that they were younger, they were obviously human. They were both in their early forties and were wearing strange clothes like Elena had been.  Their clothes were different from hers in colour, style and texture, more for people of their years, less frivolous.  They both wore pants in a different fabric than the ones she had hidden under her floorboards.  They were also wearing thick woollen tops.  The reason for this was that the shop was freezing cold, they always refrained from heating it, to accommodate their customers.  Dalia said it was important to make them feel welcome.

“Hello dear, can we help you?”

The woman had a kind maternal voice.  She appeared confident and knowing.

“Is it alright if I take a look around?”

“Yes of course it is my dear, you go right ahead.”

Dalia could see that this beautiful young girl was a vampire.  She had been in the business for over twenty years now, the girl had that look about her.  Dalia sharp senses could tell that Lia had breeding.  The way she carried herself could only result from being the offspring of aristocracy.  Both she and her husband knew that they would not get any trouble from their new customer.  They also noted that by the look of her, she would bring them some wonderful rare pieces from her time.  It was going to be financially rewarding for all concerned. Lia walked slowly around the small and cluttered antique shop. There were paintings, vases, furniture and jewellery from different eras.  At the back of the shop there was a full length mirror,  very similar to the ones that her parents kept locked in the attic at home.  Vampires had no need at all for such things, because they couldn’t see their own reflection.  Nonetheless, Lia walked over to it to take a closer look, because she found  its golden guilt-edged frame really quite elegant.  She was completely taken aback however, when she saw her beautiful face for the first time in her life.  The full length antique mirror, priced at ten thousand dollars, revealed to the young vampire the image that her parents and sister saw, what the proprietors of this shop saw, and what all her victims saw,  just before she ended their days.  Lia had assumed that she looked very similar to Kathrin, also very beautiful, but with darker hair.  They were really quite different to look at after all.  Lia emerald green eyes were a different shape to Kathrin hazel ones, and Lia had been blessed with her Mother’s high cheekbones.  Daddy had often said that Kathrin resembled his Mother when she was young.  As she continued to gaze at herself she wondered why she could see herself in this particular mirror.  What was so special about it?  She could not see even a hint of her reflection in the mirrors at home.  Lia’s eyes travel downwards to the swell of her full breasts and she saw Elena’s handkerchief stuffed between them.  It suddenly dawned on her that this must be the reason, so she threw the handkerchief to the floor and her image immediately disappeared from the mirror.  Lia retrieved it and placed it back between her breasts.  She felt a new sense of power, because this little discovery was going to make it so much easier for her to fit in.  She would even be able to apply the same paint around her eyes as Elena had, now that she could use this human equipment.  Lia walked over to the counter.

Dalia had seen what had taken place, and thought that she must have been mistaken in thinking the girl was a part of the vampire community.

“We assumed that you were...”

Lia smiled as she interrupted her.

“A vampire? yes I am, but it appears that I have discovered how to see my own reflection.”

Then Lia abruptly changed the subject she wanted to get down to business.

“I want to fit into your human world, you will help me yes?”

They both nodded and then, in a monotone voice, Abe Jackson spoke for the first time.

“We buy jewellery, furniture and paintings from your kind, we pay very large sums of money for these rare pieces.  It is a very good business, and has been in my family for generations.  Your kind come here often, they seem to have what we want at their disposal.  We are the only business of this kind around these parts, I’m sure you know what I mean.”

Abe knew that the majority of his supernatural customers went back to their own time space and killed and robbed the rich, in order to obtain their exhibits.  He, like his wife however, thought that this girl was different from the rest of  ‘em.  She had an air of good breeding and background.  Lia nodded, she knew exactly what he meant.

“I will return” she said and she left the antique shop. 

Lia arrived back home to find that nothing has changed.  It felt like she had been gone for hours, but there was no sign of her parents or sister.  It should have been dawn by now, but everything was still pitch black.  Lia glanced at the grandfather clock, that was standing near the front door in the large hallway.  The time was twelve o’clock, midnight.  She wondered how that could be because her family left the house at ten minutes before midnight, and she had left ten minutes later than that.  Lia hoped that she hadn’t missed a whole day, she would have some explaining to do if she had.  But the house appeared to be exactly how she had left it, there was no evidence of mud on the floor from her father’s boots, no sign that they had been and gone again.  Lia looked quizzically at the clock, that had been there for as far as she could remember, and suddenly began to consider that when she had gone through the portal, time may have stood still.

Delighted with the idea that she may have made yet another discovery,  she mounted the spiral staircase until she arrived at another steeper set of steps, at the east wing of the house. At the top of these steps was the attic which, in all of the excitement she had forgotten that the door was always locked.  She went back down the stairs to her parents’ bedroom, and found the key in a jewellery box, that her mother kept on her dressing table.  Once in the attic she observed with satisfaction, that she had the sort of things that met the Jacksons’ requirements.  She gathered her chosen items together and placed them in a large sack.  She was on her way.

Abe and Dalia Jackson were very impressed with the contents of the sack.  They bought everything, the jewellery, the vases, the oil paintings.  They were particularly taken with the portrait of Lia’s late English grandmother Isobel Beauchamp.  It had been painted by the portraitist, landscape and historical painter George Romney in the late seventeen hundreds.  Arabella’s father had been a lot more amenable when his first wife had been alive, and had commissioned the well known artist to capture his beautiful wife on canvass.  The Jacksons had gasped  with pleasure, when they saw that the painting carried a date and a signature.  They agreed wholeheartedly to take all that she’d brought them right off her hands.

While Abe went to get money from the safe in their apartment above the shop, Dalia gave Lia some addresses that would help her set herself up in Portland, Maine 2011.  The vampire appreciated the advice ,and left the shop with a large sum of money. It was enough to comfortably keep a family of four for at least one year.  Abe had been honest with his new client, and told her that her grandmother’s portrait painting was probably worth a lot more than he had given her.  He suggested that she return in a few weeks, giving him time to have it valued and sold.

Armed with the money, Lia easily found her way to the mall.  It was Saturday morning now, but daylight could do her no harm, as long as she kept out of direct sunlight.  She entered the busy shopping mall, ready for her new adventure.  Many people stopped and stared at the beautiful young girl, who was wearing clothes from another era, and with great self control she stopped herself from thinking about all that blood, in all those veins.

Lia went into a clothes shop ,after her long and questioning stare at the display of dummies in the window.  The chatter of the young shop girls ceased at her sudden appearance.  They looked at her with great interest, and marvelled at her extreme beauty and her strange sense of dress.  A small, sweet looking girl approached her.

“Hi, I’m Jody, can I help you?”

Lia took a deep breath and smothered the thought of Jody’s appetising blood.

“Oh hello, yes you can help me I would like to buy some clothes please” she answered politely.

“Ok, you must be about a size two?”