Week 15 Story: The Lost Mother

Author's Note: A lot of the russian fairy tales (or rather all of them) center around people coming back from the dead. In the first story I read, there is a mother who had died in childbirth found nursing her child at night. When she is discovered, she leaves without saying anything and the baby is dead in the crib. I decided to ignore the last paragraph about the baby dying and make a new ending where the mother is some sort of vampire. This is what happened after she was discovered:

Sarah froze when the lights came on. She hadn't thought about what to do if caught, she just wanted to see her baby one last time. The lad was so hungry and, to her surprise, she was still producing milk. Even in death. One of the men rushed out of the room to fetch her husband. This was going to be hard to explain.

Her dear, sweet John rushed into the doorway and stopped, looking at her. He would glance down to their son in her arms, still suckling, but always returned to her face. A look of both longing and pain could be seen in his eyes. The babe unlatched from her bosom and snuggled into his mother's arms. John watched the movement and suddenly became enraged.

"Out damned spirit!" he shouted. "Leave my beloved's body to rest and my house to mourn. It is a cruel trick which you play here this night!" Then he began reciting passages from the bible that would be needed for an exorcism. Sarah knew this would not work, unfortunately. If only it were that simple. She turned and gently set the baby back in his crib and waited. When the yelling finally stopped, and everyone in the room realized that it had had no effect on her, she spoke.

"Oh Jacob, if only your sweet reading would save me. I'm afraid I'm beyond even God's help now. I don't have the slightest idea how to begin to explain this, but if you'll let me I would like to try." Sarah took a step forward and reached for him, but he shrunk back and held the wooden cross from the mantle in front of him. This would not, as she now knew, hurt her. However the fear in her husband's eyes did more damage than he would ever know.

She decided to just start explaining and let things happen as they will. "When I was a young girl, there was a strange man that came to my town. He claimed to be a doctor, but no one knew where he was from. He had no family and no story, but our most recent physician had just died under mysterious circumstances, and we needed a new doctor." Sarah took a deep breath. They were all listening, good. "Well this man has no distinguishable family titles, but was very wealthy. He seemed to have taken a liking to me, but there was something about him that I didn't like. I refused him, despite his insistence for my hand in marriage. I'll be forever thankful for my mother and father for agreeing with me that he was not fit to be my husband. The man eventually left after being rejected for the 9th time. He vowed though, that one day he would be back to have me for all of eternity. I didn't think much of it because then I met you, my dear husband. I fell in love and I haven't thought about this man for another day in my life. Until he came back suddenly. That day that our son came into the world. The bleeding wouldn't stop, so you called for a physician, and in walked the man who refused to leave me alone. When he sent you from the room with the baby, he bit into himself like an apple, then forced me to drink the blood from his wrist.That bleeding suddenly stopped. I was healed! But just as I was about to shout for you, he grabbed the pillow and smothered me."

"I don't understand." Jacob interjected, "you say you died, and i myself buried you not a fortnight ago. So how can you be standing here before me tonight?"

"The blood that healed me did this. The doctor who killed me was a child of the night, and by my demise coming with his blood in my veins, so have I become one too."