Page 19 of Farkas: Gothika
A shovel with a splintery wooden handle rested against the wall near the mound of dirt. Lee managed to walk over there, pick up the shovel, and snap the handle over his knee. Leaving most of the shovel behind, he returned to the coffin clutching a broken length of handle. The end of it was sharp.
The corpse’s eyes widened when Lee held his makeshift stake over its chest, but it—no, he—was unable or unwilling to move. Lee had seen the film with Bela Lugosi. He knew what would probably happen were he to impale the creature’s heart.
When Lee looked into the creature’s eyes, expecting to see a red glow, he saw instead the soft sable gaze of Vincent Farkas.
Lee let the stake drop to the floor. He closed the coffin lid and ran, stumbling, all the way back to his chambers.
* * *
“I am sorry,” Vincent said, appearing sincere.
Soon after night had fallen, Vincent appeared in the embroidered caftan, pushing a cart laden with sandwiches, potato salad, cakes, and wine. Lee didn’t say a word while Vincent laid out his dinner, and when the food was ready, Lee stood on one side of the table as Vincent looked at him sadly from the other.
“I did not intend to distress you.” Vincent sighed. “I must sleep during daylight, you see, and with some soil from my homeland quite close. And while I sleep and when I first wake, I am… depleted. Until I eat.”
“Until you feed.”
Vincent shrugged. “The terminology does not matter.”
“Who do you feed on?”
“The willing, when I am able. My protégés, whom you met, hunt for deer and other animals. Occasionally I do so myself. Sometimes I hunt humans, but I prefer to avoid that. In any case, I need consume very little to regain my youth and strength.” He nodded toward the table. “Less than the equivalent of a glass of wine.”
Lee had no idea if this were true and whether he ought to feel placated. He didn’t know what to think or feel about anything anymore. An odd sense of acceptance had settled over him. A sort of inevitability, as if he should have envisioned this scenario years ago. There was a degree of comfort in finally reaching this point.
“And Laszlo Farkas….”
Vincent gave a small smile. “I am Laszlo. And Vincent. And several similar names I have assumed over the years. Eventually, no matter how much I isolate myself, people start to notice that I have not aged. Sometimes at that point I move, but that gets tedious. I do not like giving up my home. Instead, I gradually allow people to glimpse me seemingly getting older until I introduce my grandson and can start again. In the modern world, this requires a good deal of paperwork.”
“Which is where I come in.”
“Yes. You are making sure I retain my property, but under a new identity.”
That particular aspect didn’t bother Lee; he created multiple corporate identities quite often, usually with goals at least as sinister as Vincent’s. In fact, none of the legal work he’d been doing here ruffled his shriveled conscience.
“You lied to me. Pretended to be someone—something you’re not.”
“It is a product of my unique situation. Had I been straightforward from the beginning, how would you have responded?”
Lee thought about this for a moment. “I wouldn’t have….” Wouldn’t have remained sane? He wasn’t sure he could boast that now. “I couldn’t have worked with you.”
“Of course not. How could you sit for hours in the company of a monster?” Vincent seemed sad about this. Perhaps he spoke from experience.
“What do you want from me?”
Instead of answering, Vincent walked to the fireplace and looked up at the painting. Which was, of course, of him. He stared at it for a very long time, and when he finally spoke, he kept his back to Lee. “I am not entirely devoid of human emotions. Loyalty and remorse—I feel those things. I am, as you heard me tell my protégés, capable of love. And loneliness.” He sighed deeply. “I believe I experience that at a depth no human can imagine.”
Against his better judgment, Lee poured himself a glass of wine and drank some of it. “Lots of people feel lonely too.”
Vincent spun around to look at him, eyes bright. “Yes! To be without a family. To know that if people saw your true self they would reject you—even destroy you. To yearn for love but believe oneself incapable of inspiring that emotion in another. You know these things, yes?”
“Yes,” Lee whispered.
“These emotions have haunted you for a few decades. But they have weighed on me for centuries. Can you imagine this? Can you understand how heavy this burden is?”
Centuries. “I don’t know.”
“I have many gifts. I also have faults. And although I can endeavor to change myself, to improve myself, there are constraints placed upon me by my nature. A lion cannot be a mouse. And so I try to fill my needs as well as I can.”