The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

Within every cemetary is a heart.

All roads lead to it, all paths twine to it.



Walk out across a cemetary, from any direction and you will find yourself there:



The Heart, the locus, the place where pain throbs with a deep sense of undying loss within the land of the dead.



I go there, as I have gone there for 20 years.



She stands on a heavy square pedestal, wings spread and lowered over her shoulders, her arms extended, empty, reaching and hovering.



She is big. 12 feet tall. You can stand below her and look up into her face. Lay your hands upon her hem, feel the fold of weathered copper and bronze gown.

"Neteralova" ,the pedestal says in Roman lettering. There is a date: 1887. That is all.



What is her story? This black angel draped in buriel clothes... I heard it when I was younger. Before I came to this town.



"The Black Angel...don't touch her, you will die before midnight."

"The Black Angel...don't look in her eyes, someone you love will die."

"The Black Angel...don't touch her and curse God at the same time, you will be unlucky for the rest of your life."



Yes. Well. I first saw her on a pale sunny day. We drove into the cemetary, lost in circular lanes I would someday know better than many roads I should have come to know better than I have.

She stood there. We clustered around her, staring , speculating.

I reached out and laid my hand upon her for the first time. She was warm from the sun, then under my hand the metal chilled and with it my heart.

This was the story I first heard:



A woman, young and beautiful, married her love. They were happy, they were devoted. Soon they realized that their love was coming to fruition and they were to expect a child before the end of the year.

Fall ambled around, the rains came, the leaves fell, it began to grow cold. The young woman came to her delivery early. Something was wrong. The child was born, drew its first and last breath in the same moment and then died.

It was clearly seen that the mother would soon follow. The husband held her hand and brokenly promised his dying wife her greatest wish: Life long fidelity, he would never love again, he would never marry again. That being said, the wife sighed out her life and her spirit fled her.

She was buried, her grief stricken husband erected an enormous monument to her: A sorrowing angel of white marble.

As has been said, time heals all wounds, and so it did. Eventually the man found love again. After some consideration, he took a new wife.

It is said that the moment the vows were spoken, the angel bowed her head and turned black.

Guilty and unable to bear the evidence of his betrayal, the man took his new bride and fled the country. He was not ever seen again.



And there it is...nonsensically, white marble turned to black copper and bronze:

An alchemical transmutation of love into betrayal.

Across the street lies the local cemetary.



Our town is old enough to have amassed a sizable collection of gravestones that sprawl out over rolling hills shadowed with hundreds of century old black oaks.



It is a well manicured cemetary, lying on the edge of town. It's paved walks giving way to graveled paths that in turn yield to dirt trails that wend their way onward into the woodlands that border the backside of the burial grounds.



I have lived in this house for many years, all of my adult life, in fact.



I am a watcher.

I have a desk next to a large bay window that looks out across the street to the cemetary. I have seen so many people walking there, one wonders that the dead can sleep at all.



I am also a walker. Guilty as any who have wandered off across a necropolis in search of whatever bitter ends there are to be found amongst the cedars and the bleeding hearts.



I take with me a lighter. Whenever I see a memorial candle at a grave, I light it. Sometimes at night, after I have been walking, I can peer across the dark street and see one or two candles still burning in their glass or stone holders.

Sometimes I see shadows moving back and forth in front of the lights. I wonder..