People are always in a constant phase of change, every event cascades to the next, developing their personality with self-deeds, it’s the path you walk that creates the person not the talk you talk.
Sometimes life events can have such an impact on a person that they shake the very core of their soul and the make-up of their personality is altered so much, they become unfamiliar to the people that once knew them so well. Everyone evolves. Everyone grows. Mostly the changes are imperceptible…
But what do people become when you take away their mortality?
Teravoc was told all his life, even by many of his closest friends that he was in no way a normal person. There was something about him, they confided, a dark side. They sensed it often but none really knew what it was. Some may have considered it simply as a shadowy undertone, but it was definitely a side of him, which couldn’t be fully trusted. Everything he did was of the extreme. He was never seen as a follower, a sheep, and because of this he was never really fully accepted amongst any particular group of his peers. Of course, he’d always be invited to join the groups but when he did, he’d be watched by all very carefully indeed. He revelled in his uniqueness and he knew he wasn’t alone. Over the years he’d met many people like himself, who could, to varying degrees, be deemed as living outside or on the outskirts of general society, and he always recognised who they were within moments of meeting them. As they say, it takes a wolf to know a wolf.
Chapter 1 Mortal Coils.
Teravoc sat writing by candle light on an old wooden desk, surrounded by a room with walls of stone, the place had no actual feel that someone lived there. No pictures on the walls, no personal effects, no soft furnishings. The single candle that stood on the table lit the room in a dull orange. Flickering flames danced around making the cold stone glisten with dampness. On one wall a single window could be seen, barred by a metal grate. The window had no glass to shield the room from the elements outside; it was more like a prison cell than a study. Teravoc chose this room specifically as the room in which he would begin his journal. The room had an old heavy oak door, which was reinforced by modern broad steel security beams, it was slightly ajar, and although light from the hallway sent additional light into the room, it was still uncomfortably dark.
“Journal entry. Twenty Fifth of December eighteen hundred and thirty four. Where do I begin this, my tale that I have never before found the time until now to write? Time. On that day, the word had, overnight, lost all its meaning to me. It seems suddenly ironic that the time that I never had, while alive, is all I have left but what kind of time is that? My life as Teravoc began when I found my mother and seducer, it sounds perverse but that’s what happened. I was reborn to the night and birth of any kind is a good beginning. The night I was born seems so distant, so long ago but I remember it well. I lived on the docks of the River Tyne in the north of England. The area was run-down and rough yet it was a busy port full of ships and sailors, smugglers and merchants, criminals, pimps and prostitutes. It brought untold wealth to the black marketers but aristocrats and well to dos never ventured there after dark for fear of being robbed, rolled or ravaged.
In that long-ago mortal life I worked for a brewery, delivering caskets of ale during the night to the many alehouses of the city. Good work was scarce to come by. Of course, I could have worked down in the pits, like many before me, mining for coal, but for the fact that I had a fear of tight spaces. Besides, I preferred being in the heart of the city. It was like being ensconced the belly of a great black intangible beast. You are vaguely aware that there is death and mayhem going on all around you but you feel safe because, as you’re already swallowed up by the beast, you feel sure no further harm can befall you. The brewery job came to me easy, but I’ll tell you about that another time. Indeed, it paid well and I did it well.
The night in question, during my rounds as usual, I was to make a delivery of four casks of ale to the worst alehouse in Newcastle. The infamous Wooden Dolly. It was always being overrun by challenging, rival crime lords and their gangs of petty vagabonds, and was beset with every low-life creature one could possibly imagine. I kept my distance most of the time, as word on the street had the death toll in the place up to about six per month, this number increased to ten with the onset of the dark nights of Winter. The place was so bad even the city’s constabulary kept away. I would not normally travel there alone but this night I had no other choice open to me.
I had a partner who would ride as watcher and back-up, just in case we were held up and robbed of our valued goods, however, this particular night, my partner was hit by the plague of flu that was sweeping the dockside. I didn’t relish the idea of going out alone but I needed the money and the landlord was a generous tipper. I decided I’d take my partner’s pistol with me, along with my own in the hopes that if anyone was thinking of waylaying me, on seeing two cocked and loaded weapons, they would perhaps think twice. And if they didn’t, then at least I’d have a chance to go down fighting. I placed one fully visible by my side on the coach seat and slotted the other in a belt, fashioned from a piece of leather saddling, round my waist.
I arrived nervously at the Wooden Dolly well after two O’clock in the morning. Even though it was so late the streets were still busy with revellers, street sellers, finger-smiths, prostitutes and groups of foppishly dressed drunkards yet they paid me so very little interest that it eased my mind greatly.
It was with relief that I pulled the dray up to the cellar doors, I drew in the horses, picked up the pistol on the seat and stepped down to the ground.
The double cellar doors swung open suddenly and three men emerged from the darkness into the street to greet me. Now, when I say men I use the term very loosely. The first was tall and stocky about the same age as myself, twenty-five. He wore grey tattered clothes and had on ragged boots that looked about two sizes too small since his toes could be seen jutting out from holes in the front of them.
The second was a lot younger, not more than twelve. He was very pale and scrawny and just as unkempt as the first. He had obviously been in an accident at birth or had been slugged too hard in a street fight as his nose was deformed and set-off to one side of his face.
The third popped out of the cellar brandishing a long musket proudly. It must have been as old as the public house itself; I almost laughed aloud when I saw it. The sight was made even funnier when I realised the gun was taller than the man holding it; he could not have been more than fourteen and for all his bluster looked like nothing more than a drowned river rat. He was a comically attired little chap, dressed in scruffy oversized clothes and his hair was so black and greasy and matted down on his scalp it looked like his head was stained with octopus ink.
I stood and eyed these three for a moment then went to the back of the dray and said, “Evening lads, where’s the landlord?”
I pulled the pin and the wooden flap clattered open and the men quickly started off-loading the heavy cargo from the back. From the cellar doors, the landlord finally appeared as usual to pay me. He was overweight and had a scarred face; his arms looked more akin to tree trunks. He pulled out a large purse from the front of his breeches, I was never quite sure if he kept his purse there as a deterrent to thieving hands or whether it was a ploy to make himself appear more greatly endowed the better to impress any passing ladies. He paid me my twenty-five shillings for the casks and tipped a few more coins than usual into my hand and offered me inside to have a drink with him, this was unusual, he never offered me a drink but then it dawned on me it was Christmas Day.
I was already far closer to the place than I wanted to be but I felt I couldn’t refuse his kind offer without offending him; I was making a canny wage if I included his tips, so I didn’t want to do that. I thought it over as he directed the three boys to unhorse the dray and stable the horses round the back of the alehouse. My rounds were complete and it was Christmas Day after all. I still had the two pistols and plenty of dry powder, so I decided to give it a try. I followed after the landlord down the cellar stairs and stood at the bottom as he locked the doors from underneath, the feeling of being “in the belly of things” increased as light from the street above us was snuffed out as the doors closed shut. From the dark of the cellar, we entered the candlelit establishment and the landlord repaired to his position back behind the crowded bar just in time to serve his thirsty punters.
I was stunned with what lay before me; the sights and sounds hit me like a wave, assaulting my every sense. The place was lively to say the least, full of all types of people. The wealthy and healthy, the impoverished and the pale, the lowly, the meek and the mad. It was unusually popular considering how basic and run down it was and how dangerous its reputation.
Ale was flowing generously and there was an excited buzz of conversation in the air punctuated by guffaws, cheering and toasting. I pushed passed the tightly packed tables and sat on a stool at the bar and was promptly served a flagon of ale by a very burly looking bar wench. I had never been inside the Wooden Dolly before, never thought I would ever grace its threshold, but here I was. I felt a little nervous and kept one hand on the stock of the pistol for comfort.
I slurped back the ale and from under veiled eyes, watched the revellers all around me. I was supping on my second flagon, again paid for on the house, when I realised I had relaxed and was enjoying the hospitality of the landlord who occasionally raised a glass towards me in recognition that I was still welcomed.