05: Celtic God

Laura wanted nothing more than to be buried down the ground. She didn’t want to be rude, but Melinda’s tears were soaking her shoulder. Her hands were wrapped tightly around her waists as though what Laura had just wished for would border the line of illusion and become a reality. Truth be told, she least expected this from the Martins, mainly because they’d been with this Zheira for a long time. This would have made it easier for them to make a distinction.

But, for some reason, it was never the case. Did she really look a lot like Zheira than she ever gave credit for? And why should that matter anyway? It wasn’t as if she was really her. They just look so alike. That was all.

When, in her relief, Melinda raised her head, Laura’s heart clenched a little. She’d seen unrivaled desperation like no other in her hawk-like blue orbs, her tears still trickling down to her cheeks. It reminded her of the picture of despair painted in her very eyes the moment her grandma died in her arms.

“Y-You’re safe,” said Melinda, cupping Laura’s cheeks. “I always pray for you to come back, and you did.”

Not only was her makeup messy now, but she also resembled a child that had been given a toy after an hour of tantrums. She barely reached Laura’s head, but the way with which she looked at her whole being, almost made it seem that they were on the same footing.

“You seemed okay. I’m glad.” She closed her eyes for a moment to allow some more tears to cradle her cheeks. Once she opened them again, she smiled a bit wider. “Come! Let us sit.”

Laura stole a glance at the old woman whose face could no longer be painted. Her almost milky eyes were narrowed, her shaking hands both clenched at her walking stick, and her breathings rather shallow.

Nodding at her, Laura settled beside Melinda who was now blowing her nose on her handkerchief. She wanted to at least say something and clarify the misunderstanding, but she couldn’t find the right words to articulate what had been nagging at the back of her mind.

“I know you’ve been through a lot,” started Melinda, looking up at the horizon with a sad smile, “and you’d done a lot of growing up since we last saw each other. You used to hate grays, you know. Yet, you colored your hair gray now.” Pursing her lips, she looked directly at Laura’s eyes; blue to gray, hopeful to confused. “Remember your dream to become a fashion model? I’d already contacted some of my friends. I know you’d come back.” She smiled once again, this time a little brighter and was more genuine. She reached out to caress her hands. “Your skin would never be a problem. I promise.”

Sighing, Laura patted Melinda by the shoulder. “Mrs. Martin, I’m sorry, but I am not your daughter.”

But Melinda merely shook her head. She turned toward the old woman who was leaning closer toward them. Pointing to the door, she said rather stiffly, “I thought you were going to talk with this Martha? By all means, do.”

They stared at each other for a moment or two before the old woman walked away. The ominous tip-tap of her walking stick echoed in her wake, and Laura felt a bit more uncomfortable now. She was almost certain, up about 90 percent, that something would go wrong. She just wished her driver was already down in the parking lot.

The moment the old woman was out of earshot, Melinda turned toward her rather excitedly, and all she could do was let out a sigh yet again.

“Look, Mrs. Martin, I know you see your daughter in me, but I really am—” Laura gasped, closing her eyes. Melinda had once again cupped her cheeks. She had never before felt those soft, welcoming hands as though of a mother. Somehow, it made her think, though rather impossible, that she was indeed Zheira.

“A mother knows, Zheira. You may look different, you may have changed, but you feel the same. Your eyes are still the same.”

A tear suddenly escaped from her eyes. She was just about to wipe it when Melinda beat her to it.

“No more lies, my child. Come here.” Stretching her hands in welcome, she flashed yet another smile, and it must have been the very reason that made her lean toward her chest, her lips curving like it never did before. “I missed you. Very much.”

Before Laura knew it, everything that she had been holding back for the past few days went tumbling back to her, a lot fresher than any other. To be hugged like this, with overwhelming love pressured in every touch, had always been one of her wishes. There was only a lot her grandma could offer, but she couldn’t give a motherly love. She must have been so sad. To be connected like this to a stranger, it was clear she’d suffer a lot. Pity.

She didn’t curse the world, but she knew she never did belong here. A lot of people made it possible for her to feel that way, her grandma one of them. Remembering this, she wiped her tears and laughed awkwardly, sitting upright.

“I’m sorry. Got carried away.”

Melinda shook her head and was just about to open her lips when Laura raised a hand.

“I know how you feel about me, Mrs. Martin, but I really am not your daughter. I’m Laura Gaunt.”

“Gaunt?”

“You heard about them?”

Drawing her hand to her ponytailed hair, she breathed heavily. “They were, well, a distant cousin. I don’t talk to them a lot, simply because they can be anti-social, but I have never mentioned anything about them to you. How did you know them?”

Laura wanted to slap Melinda to get this over with. She just seemed so adamant about who she was. She couldn’t blame her, though. If she were in her shoes, she’d act the same way. It was probably excruciating for her to still long for the daughter who had almost killed her husband.

“I’ve been brought up by a Gaunt. My parents both died when I was still a baby, and Grandma Rose was the only one left. Haven’t you heard of the Gaunt’s scandal?”

“No.” Melinda sighed, looking up at the now hazy horizon. “I’ve been holed up taking care of you all these years, so issues didn’t matter to me that much. Now that you mentioned it, though, what happened?”

Glad to have steered the subject into a different track, Laura told her of the unfortunate deaths of three Gaunts all at once just when she’d been born. How through the murder her grandma had suffered a mental blow, how she’d been singled out in every class she was in, and how her grandma had died in her arms with nothing but the hope to unravel the death of her parents. Of course, she kept the part about vampires and stuff. She didn’t want to freak her out.

“How old are you?”

Confused though that it was what concerned her more than what she had just told her, Laura still said, “I’m 20 years old. Why?”

Melinda pursed her lips, tearing a bit. “Perhaps, you’re just Laura and not my Zheira.”

There was this certain pinch from inside her that Laura couldn’t understand. A part of her felt as though she had lost a mother for the second time, but the sanest part was relieved they’d got things sorted out. She just didn’t know what to feel from the two.

“Can you tell me more about your daughter?”

Melinda stared at her for a moment before, wiping the wet off of her cheeks, she looked past the tall building in front of them. It looked as though she could see what was behind it. “Do you believe in supernatural stuff?”

Nodding, Laura entwined her fingers, settling them on her crossed legs, eager to know more but was wary to go too far in case Melinda snapped and walked away.

“Zheira is one of those. She was never really my daughter to begin with, but she’s good as one. We found her all alone in one of our escapades in the Black Forest. Since then, we brought her up.”

“Isn’t the Black Forest in Germany?”

Melinda nodded, almost lifeless.

“I’m sorry to ask this, but how can you say she is supernatural?”

“She grows horns when she turns seven, can read a memory, has golden eyes, and purple blood.” She counted all of those in her fingers, her voice becoming low in every passing second. “If that’s not a sign of supernatural stuff, I don’t know what is.”

Laura closed her eyes. She wanted so much to believe what she had just heard, but from where she stood, Melinda seemed to be just playing around. What she came here for was the vampire’s existence, but it seemed not to be the case. As far as her countless research could prove, a vampire never had any horns and, for that matter, a single drop of blood. Venom maybe but definitely not blood.

“Thank you for being honest, Mrs. Martin.” She patted her by the shoulder with a small smile. “I do hope your daughter finds her way back to you.”

Melinda reciprocated her smile, though a little forced, her bloodshot eyes a lot redder than when she teared earlier. “Can I ask you a favor? Can I sleep on your shoulder?”

Chuckling, she shook her shoulder. “By all means.”

***

Laura laid with her back on the bed. It had been over two hours since she met Melinda. She could still remember the way her head rested on her shoulders, her innocent face as she slumbered, and the disappointment lingering in her eyes when she realized Laura wasn’t her daughter. It was almost as though she was staring at the mother she had never been acquainted with. 

It was barely bearable.

She couldn’t understand it. She couldn’t understand how she was linked to her this way. Perhaps, it was because she was warm and loving. In any case, there was no way she’d be this close to a stranger no matter how related they both were.

So, what were these things building for?

This confusion aside, she was rather torn between taking Melinda’s words for everything or just setting them aside in the corner of her brain as yet another trivial conversation. If there were something she was sure of, though, it would be the fact that she didn’t entirely waste her time. If Zheira weren’t one of the creatures of the night, she was at least a being defying logic, a creature that might just compete with that of vampires. At the very least, this assured her that there was existence in the core of Earth that was far more different than human intelligence could ever fathom.

Sighing, she turned and laid on her chest instead, turning her phone on. She pressed the G****e icon and stared for a moment at the search bar before deciding to browse about vampires even though she already knew them by little heart.

The first article she’d seen was from history.com, which had a one-sentence excerpt below the title: “Vampires are evil mythological beings who roam the world at night, searching for people whose blood they feed upon.”

A hundred times she had read this and she almost memorized the content. All the same, she went through it with yet another sigh.

It didn’t tell her much. It was just the usual definition of vampires, their history, some validities of their reality, and sources. Merely scrolling down, she picked up the most common keywords classic monsters and Count Dracula, which happened to be a legend from Bram Stoker’s epic novel, Dracula. She had already read it and things were becoming rather repetitive.

No matter how hard she tried to fit Zheira’s description to how the article described vampires, there weren’t any. Fuming silently, she went back to the search bar and typed creatures with horns and golden eyes, and the results were as implausible as the first.

Rolling her eyes, she went and added ‘that resembles vampires’ in her current search, and the next thing she knew, she’d been directed to an article with an interesting read.

***

CROSS SPECIES OF THE NIGHT

… the creatures of the night roots back to ancient times and had found themselves impure…

Once in a blood moon, a legend had been born, a narrative to which extrapolate the glorified existence of night’s creatures that fed upon the fresh blood of mortals. Long before these creatures feasted to the world, a few there were that worshipped a Celtic God, which to their unchallenged belief, would lead them to the realization of their full potential.

Revering this god as their salvation and, ironically, mercenary, they named him after everything that defined and exceeded rogue. Cernunnos, as the personification of their wildest desires and ambitions, looked down at his people wearing stag antlers as a crown and a sacred ram-horned serpent crawling at his bare body. He rewarded those with the keenest of blood and unrivaled loyalty, a gift that made him who he was in time.

Rumors had it that, as greed became the name for what these vampires existed for, Cernunnos had been shunned in the corner of his temple. One by one, what once was his worshippers jumped to the fence on the other side and feasted with the other ungodly vampires as to the human blood they drank. Only a relatively small group of a family remained, and so, they’d been honored like no other.

Everyone that had turned their backs to the god had a taste of his wrath. They lost their gifts. With nothing, they went to pray once again; however, right on the spot, they’d been burned and buried. Their remains were said to have been juiced by the honored family, the head drinking them all without a waste. From then, he’d been crowned the king of all blood-thirsty predators.

***

Laura screamed in frustration when, after scrolling down an advertisement and pictures of the god, there came not the continuation of the article but a definition, nature, and functions of a myth. Impatiently, she refreshed the article and tried yet another round of scrolling; however, nothing had changed.

She was just about to write a negative review in the comment section when a knock disturbed her silent fuming. Thinking it was her driver, she put the phone on the pillow and jumped out of the bed; however, what greeted her was two policemen, behind them the old woman and Melinda who had her head down, her fingers caressing each other.

“What is this about?” Laura cleared her throat, staring once again at Melinda and at the old woman and an understanding came to her. She shook her head, unsmiling.

“You are under arrest for the attempted murder of Robert Martin.” One of the police raised a hand to show the warrant of arrest. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford it, one will be provided for you.”

Letting out a forced chuckle, she scratched her eyebrow. “I’m sorry, but you got it wrong. I am not Zheira Martin. My name is Laura Gaunt.” She smiled, turning her head toward the police to look him straight in the eye. “And I can prove that.”