25 March 1999 ~ We scream in cathedrals (Interview with the Vampire, part 2)

I guess I'm able to keep going with my Neil story. I felt really weird yesterday after I'd written the first part, almost like a déjà vu sort of thing. But I went to geology class, and, by the the time Claire and Jane arrived and the three of us were giggling, Neil had left my mind for awhile. And by the time Brian appeared, Neil was thousands of miles from being anywhere near my mind...

I don't remember when I started my research. I don't remember growing progressively weirder and weirder. In retrospect, I see my journal entries changing, mutating, becoming darker and more lost each day, but at the time, living it, I didn't recognize it in myself.

Tuesday, July 8, 1997 ~ 9.30AM
Gossip! Neil has cheated on Marianne! With Rachel! Marianne doesn't know -- but I do! Rachel might be lying, but I doubt it... Then again, who EVER knows about Neil...

Thursday, July 10, 1997 ~ 9.30AM
I talked to Julie on the phone the night before last about Neil. She thinks his "vampire-talk" is total bull and doesn't trust him any further than the four winds could carry his lifeless ashes. Well, she didn't put it quite so eloquently, but that was the general idea. I guess she and Erich were trying to convince Neil they're sorcerors or something, and he bought that and added it all to his little story, like a role-playing game or something.

So I'm thinking Neil might be off his rocker.

Speaking of Neil, he and Marianne have been out of town for a week now, and it's getting lonely without them, weird as things may be lately... I mean, Neil and Marianne ARE the Java Kids. They created them! Or should I say, they created us, as I'm obviously one of the Java Kids. We're all in this together...

Sometime in October, 1997
Anastasia... Ah-nah-stah-zi-ah... Anastasia Carrentine Dubois...

Saturday, October 11, 1997
Things are so insane right now; I feel like everything I love has changed and everything I am is some weird hallucination. Why can't I believe that this is all bullshit, a figment of someone's imagination, some insane joke. It's so... (no words are coming...) WE'LL SEE HOW BRAVE YOU ARE...

October 22, 1997
I have the headache from hell. Two nights ago, I saw something extremely scary (The Thing) in the backyard... Greg saw it too; I'm so scared... Sometimes I wonder how full of shit Neil really is; the boy's done his homework into the fantastic. Quote of the day: "Are we really stupid, or is it just me?" --Me, moment of stupidity...

November 16, 1997
She keeps coming to me at night; I dream about her, and I feel her clinging to me when I wake up. She's a part of me somehow; she helps me write sometimes. Today we wrote a poem together about Abigail, and it's beautiful. I want to cry and run to Neil. I want his explanation about Abigail, I want his comfort, I want whatever it is that he has that always makes everything seem better...

See how weird I got? Reading this over, it's so shameful: to think I honestly believed I was seeing shape-shifters in my backyard and that a spirit named Anastasia was writing poetry through me... It became a constant thing. I woke up, wrote down my dreams to analyze later, went to school... And in school, I researched Nostradamus, the dead sea scrolls, some weird Egyptian text stuff, and, of course, vampires, in my spare time. History class started to frighten me, because every war, every king, every historical period sounded like one of The Signs. I believed the end was coming. I felt it coming in my dreams. The only comfort was in Rachel and Neil. They told me I would become one of Them, that they would Embrace me, and we would all fight together. I remember crying in Rachel's arms every time I read newspapers about wars and tensions between countries. Everything was a sign: a sign telling me what to do with the power Neil and the others had given me. They were calling themselves The Blood Roses by then, and I wasn't afraid when I was with them.

It started with Neil's story, of course, as I said in part 1, but it got much worse with my continuing research. I read about vampires first, then demons and fallen angels. I read about Wyldewood, Scotland, and pre-Renaissance England. I wanted to find out where Neil had GOTTEN all his weird stories. But I never did find any single source. He'd taken fifty different mythologies, mixed them together, and thrown in a few completely fictitious elements. I researched the past, I researched alternate dimensions, and I researched the future... And when all else failed, I brought a tape recorder to Neil's apartment and interviewed him.

"What's going to happen in the End," I asked him, trying not to believe the things I was saying, but finding myself unsuccessful.
"There is to be a battle," he said. "It will be the Hunters versus ourselves. They are those who would destroy."
"Who will win?"
"It cannot be told. Lilith knew. It was in her writings. She was a great prophetess. But when she died, the writings were lost. It is now in the hands of Fate."
"What about me?"
"You have to be more specific..."
"You don't know what will happen to you guys... What's going to happen to me. I'm not... you know, immortal..."
"Would you like to be?"

I'm serious; we had conversations like that. He believed what he was saying and I believed it too. I maintained an appearance of skepticism, but it was a façade.

You're probably wondering what happened to all my SANE friends during all of this... Peter and David were dating each other and neither one of them wanted anything to do with me. On Halloween, I placed a protective stone outside their apartmen, which David found. He thoughts it was awfully damn weird, and raised his eyebrows about the whole thing. Erich wanted nothing to do with anyone who wasn't a nihlist or a beatnik at that point, and called me crazy every chance he got. Greg was more fucked up than any of the Blood Roses, and Miérgé helped me out with information about herbs and things when I needed it for my "research." None of them knew I spent every day fearing for my life. I honestly believed that forces beyond my understanding were watching me, waiting for the right moment to attack and destroy my soul. Neil had killed my vision of heaven after death, and I became depressed and my hope started to die a little more every day. By Halloween, I was a shell, a druggie, a smoker, and the most paranoid person you could meet outside of a mental institution. I spent my weekends in the Carnegie Library downtown, poking through encyclopedias and demon mythology. I bought books about Satan. I took notes on Interview With The Vampire. I left the library one day in tears, thinking of all the people I loved who were going to die in Neil's so-called Great War. I walked to the only place I knew I could go: I lay on the steps of the Methodist church a few blocks away, meditating, praying, wanting SOME god to hear me, not caring which one or what he thought of me, just so long as he heard.

My "Embrace" took place two weeks later.

Love,
Anastasia/Helena*

"We danced in graveyards with vampires 'til dawn... We laughed in the faces of kings, never afriad to burn..." --Tori Amos, "Little Earthquakes."