the campfire vampire on candlelight night

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

Candlelight Night, they’d come to call it, 7 months later.

They wouldn’t know at the time, but the blazing inferno that tore apart the forests was in fact born from a tea-light, flickering against a shattered windowpane.

They wouldn’t know at the time, but that cabin - made entirely out of wood and abandoned entirely out of suspicion - wasn’t abandoned at all. Hence the suspicion.

They say now, “but how could there possibly be somebody living there? In that place? With half eaten walls and dried up pipes and rotten ceilings where floors should be?”

The cabin was a million miles from everywhere. The woods it resided in was a million days beyond any life remaining in its thick canope of blackness. Sunlight never pierced the place. People never passed through it.

They went in, sure. But never came back out.

Still. They wouldn’t know at the time that it was never people that were the problem.

It was the ex human, the expired being, the one that didn’t need sunlight nor living creatures to exist.

Because he, himself, was not living. He was just the dead that was still alive.

“Vampire?!” They say, still now, with such disbelief. Some look offended by such a prospect. “Don’t be so stupid.”

But is it stupidity or is it security, when the Campfire Vampire is in town?

—

For 5 long months, their forest burned. All ablaze, they looked on, amazed. Locals started to doubt whether their town had ever not been coated in fire, because before long it became such a casual sight. The sky alight.

One man, Eric his name was, considered it less of a burning and more of a beginning. “Wasn’t the beginning of the universe this blinding? Didn’t it have to sear hot enough to explode into existence? Aren’t all endings beginnings? Aren’t beginnings just endings in disguise?”

They wouldn’t know at the time, but Eric was the great grandson of the vampire’s former au pair.

Eric didn’t know at the time, but his great grandfather was once the vampire’s 3pm afternoon snack. Just once. Once was enough.

They found him, a vacuum packed sack of bones, bound by his skin clung tightly to every organ, every rib, every inch of himself. His eyes had popped out of their sockets, only tethered by thick nerves winding outwards. He was so white he could have been considered an immortal, himself, were it not for the fact that his life had been sucked right out of him. There was not an inch of blood left in Eric’s great grandfather’s body.

Of course, those who found him found themselves facing a similar fate. Nobody has found this out yet. Eric still has faith in vampires. And a vampire still has pieces of Eric’s great grandfather in him.

—

7 months ago, the candle began to burn. 5 months later, only an outline of the forest remained. There was no more cabin in the woods. That already darkened space was now blacker than ever, save for the odd silvery bone and tooth plucked from beneath the ashes.

Almost 350 people stepped into there throughout the vampire’s unofficial reign. None stepped back out again.

“The universe began in fire, it’ll end in it.” Eric said, 3 months ago. He was right.

3 months later - today, as it’s known - they discovered a light in the darkness. Another burning in the charred woods, not candlelight this time, but a campfire.

With kindling made of Eric’s limbs.

The vampire must have had a taste for that blood type. Or a passion for pyromania.

In any case, they won’t know it right now, but in 4 months and 6 days time the town will come to find out that he was just a vampire with a taste for blood.

Warmed, of course.

And throughout history, he’ll be remembered. Be feared. Be known as:

The Campfire Vampire on Candlelight Night.