Page 4 of Taste of Forever
If I had said that out loud six months ago, it would have been a joke. A Halloween prank, maybe. But right then, as I walked through dense woods under the cover of night, I was dead serious.
I stopped recording and slid the phone into my leggings side pocket. It would be too dark to capture anything until I reached my destination, the vampire world of Sanguine.
Four months after stumbling into this supernatural world and seeing a real vampire with my own eyes, I couldn’t get those creatures out of my mind.
The strange group of people out in the woods released me after three days and endless insistence that vampires were real and prowling in the night. Kidnapping and strange beliefs aside, I had been fed and well-taken care of. Regardless, I was eager toget home and put the whole experience behind me. I had sobbed with relief when I found a hiking trail that led me back home.
The night before I left, one ofthemhad come to the settlement. He rode up on a motorcycle, a woman climbed on behind him, and they left together as if they were a couple. The entire community of humans seemed to hold its breath until he was gone.
Even from a distance, I knew the fangs and red eyes weren’t part of a cheesy costume. Just the sight of him sent my instincts prickling, some kind of warning deep in my DNA sounding off at this nearby predator. He wasn’t human. I knew that as certainly as I did my own name. There was some uncanny valley disconnect in the way he moved and how smooth his skin was.
I made it home the next day, but Sanguine never truly left me.
For months I’d scoured the internet, finding vague references to Sanguine and another place called Vargmore on cached archives of long-dead blogs and websites. My notes became messy, disorganized scribbles, so I started a blog of my own for easy reference and, potentially, to connect with other people who had stumbled into Sanguine.
At least, I attempted to start a blog a few times. Every single one mysteriously disappeared after a few posts. First, my password wouldn’t work. And when I reset it, everything I posted was gone.
Talking about things out loud helps me process information, so I had tried starting Youtube channels after that. Those also got taken down.
Someone clearly didn’t like me talking about the possibility of actual vampires living in a parallel world, no matter how vague I was. Eventually, I was forced to keep everything offline, backed up by at least two different hard drives. I didn’t trust cloud storage at that point.
I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. Iknewwhat had happened to me and what I saw. Even so, I couldn’t fully trust my memories until I attempted to find Sanguine again.
And find it I did.
It was a completely different hiking trail in another part of the local community forest. Maps showed nothing but more wilderness, but the trees eventually thinned out to what looked like the fringes of a small city, or maybe an older suburb. Aged brick and concrete buildings lined streets of cracked pavement and in some areas, cobblestone. There was enough wear and tear on the structures to make it clear they’d been standing for decades, if not longer.
If the lack of any mention on a map wasn’t weird enough, I felt a strange heaviness in the air when I spotted the city. Something like humidity, but not quite. It made the small hairs on my body stand up and instincts of danger prickle like I was being watched.
I’d turned back and went home immediately, too scared of possibly being captured again, or worse. The city had been utterly still, empty and quiet to the point of creeping me out. Later, I slapped my forehead in aduhmoment. Vampires were nocturnal and I’d gone looking during a day hike.
As a scientist, I really should have known better. To replicate results, everything, especially environmental factors, had to remain consistent. If I really wanted to prove myself not crazy, I’d have to go at night.
My next visit to Sanguine was my third, and I watched the silent city come to life.
Red-eyed people with flawless skin went about their business. They talked to each other and laughed, drove cars and rode motorcycles, entered and exited buildings like normal people. Humans were among them, as well as less vampiric-looking people with black eyes and smaller fangs.
Again, I people-watched for a few minutes and then went home, this time to come to grips with the reality that I had seen.
Vampires were real. And the world they lived in was a short drive and walking distance away.
Which brought me to tonight, and my plan to go into that world and record some evidence of their existence. What better proof than being bitten? Assuming I didn’t die from it, of course. Stranger things had happened in the name of scientific discovery, right?
What did I plan to do with the recordings? I wasn’t sure yet. Putting it online didn’t feel right, even if it didn’t get immediately removed. I thought of sharing my findings with Justin, but had the sinking feeling he’d be dismissive even if faced with proof. It had been a long time since he validated my feelings about pretty much anything, and I didn’t want this to become another desperate bid for attention.
Sharing with a colleague from work would be another option but considering we all worked in a secure, state-funded lab, that felt a hair too close to alerting the government. Which could either open a can of worms in terms of research and ethics or get me blacklisted as the crazy conspiracy theorist lady.
Mom and Dad would have heard me out.A brief pang of longing clenched in my chest, as it always did when I wished my parents were still around.
But they weren’t, so I’d have to be satisfied in finding the proof for myself. To have in case I ever doubted my own mind again. Evidence was the basis for reality. I needed to know I wasn’t losing touch with the real world.
I followed the now-familiar trail by flashlight, heading off-trail when I reached the tree that served as my personal landmark. It was a few minutes of walking through wild, untamed wilderness before the brush and forest started to thin out.
Emerging from the trees brought me to the top of a gently sloping hill, where I could see the lights and activity below. Dusk had fallen maybe twenty minutes ago, and I could see the small city rousing, waking like some nocturnal beast.
I clicked off my flashlight, then whipped out my phone and took a few still photos of the view. It was no sprawling metropolis, but quaint in an older, small-town way. Most of the buildings were single story, except for a couple that looked like nightclubs and one stark white building that appeared to be a hospital. That one in particular stood out like a sore thumb, and I’d remembered it from my previous visits.
The white building saidBLOOD BANKon the side, and I wondered how literal that was. Could I give blood like at a normal blood bank, sitting with a tube in my arm and cookies and juice afterwards? Or was it more of a place that my corpse would be delivered to and never leave?
