The Blood Reapers: Chapter One

[Morningriser]

I once thought humans were the dominant species and able to take full advantage of life, the irony is, I never truly lived until I died. Humanity is just as vulnerable as any other animal in the wild. If anything, they are weaker. An animal has the savage instincts to hunt and survive in the harshest environments, whereas humans take their next meal for granted. I didn’t always have such a morbid outlook on life and the world around me, in fact, I once embraced the exact ways I speak against now. Modest or not, I was a rich kid in my younger years and never had a care in the world about where my food or shelter came from. Then again, when you are a boy, there really isn’t much to care about anyway is there?

Of course as a child you have the things that matter to you as well, my passion was baseball. I was fascinated with the sport and always wanted my father to take me to New York so I could watch a game being played live in person. I must have drove him mad with the constant inquiries I made to him. I didn’t even care which teams I got to see play, New York had three of them, and seemed like a very interesting place to see a game. It’s not that we couldn’t afford to go to New York, my father was a busy man and found leisurely activities to be mostly trivial. He had a vineyard to run and was constantly needed in the fields to assist his workers. He always put family first but he put his livelihood at a close second in order to provide for his family.

My sister, Chloe, was a few years older than me and she fancied the world of fashion design. By the time she was only ten she was making her own clothes as well as dresses for our mother. She had dreams of one day renting a flat in Paris and attending design school. So many people have dreams and passions but that is all it ever is, a dream. Chloe was very talented and even as a little girl could brighten any room she walked in. When she wasn’t making clothing she was helping mother in the garden and around the yard. Mother always made sure our entire estate was decorated with the most beautiful floral patterns money could buy. Between her and Chloe they kept our property beautiful year round.

Our mother was a very gentle spirit and so soft spoken it was as if her words came out as an angelic songstress lightly speaking to preserve her voice. Every morning my father awoke and let her lie in bed while he tended to the fields. When mother woke she always walked outside to the courtyard in her night gown. She wore slippers when cold and was barefoot when it was warm. She took advantage of the sweet clean air of the countryside and always enjoyed filling her lungs with it each morning before beginning her day. Mother owned a bakery in the city and when she wasn’t working in her garden, she worked at the bakery.

I miss the life I once had. Everyone grows up and goes out into the world to make their
fortunes, but are usually able to hold a special place in their heart for the childhood they had. My
parents never got to see Chloe and I grow up and become adults. Our last family vacation came
only four months before our lives changed. After so many attempts at talking my father into a trip to New York, he finally gave in. I returned home from my classes at Lycée Classique et Moderne, a private academy in Brest, where I found Chloe more seemingly happy than usual.

“What are you so happy about?” I asked. Her beautiful auburn hair was curled and she was twirling around the courtyard in a white sundress, smiling from ear to ear.

“Father is taking us to New York City!” the excitement in her voice said everything to me. I was suddenly on cloud nine. I might as well had just found the definition of true happiness.

“Are you kidding me sis? You better not be!”, as if she would lie to me about something like that. Chloe knew how much I wanted to go to New York and for her to lie to me would have been entirely against her nature as she never had much of a sense of humor.

“Ask daddy for yourself if you don’t believe me” she said. “He told me this morning and I have been happy all day” she continued. “Imagine me in New York, the fashion capitol of America”.

At once I ran in the house looking for my father. As usual he was nowhere to be found inside so I ran out to the fields as fast as my legs could carry me. When I found him he was overseeing a harvest. I came to a stop right in front of him and struggled to catch my breath as the fresh scent of grapes and foliage filled my nostrils.

“I assume your sister told you?” he smiled.

“Yes.. yes she did. Is it true? Are we going to New York, father?” I asked.

My father chuckled and knelt down to my eye level, still smiling. “Yes Julian my boy. We are going to New York” he said. “That’s not all though…” my eyes and ears widened. “As I understand two of your New York baseball teams, The Mets and Yankees I believe, are about to play the World Series” he reached inside his coat pocket and retrieved an envelope. “I got us tickets for the full series”. My heart must have skipped a beat or two when he told me this. I felt like any achievable dream I could ask for had come true. I leapt my small body at him meaning to hug him but tackled him instead. He wasn’t a very large man, he had a small thin frame, but was still larger than I was then, and yet my excitement managed to knock him off of his feet. Some of his workers that were nearby got quite the laugh from it.

Still bursting with excitement, I ran back to he house to find mother. She was in the kitchen preparing dinner. I never had to say a word for her to know how I felt, call it a mother’s instinct I suppose. She knew how happy I was. We were all happy.

“You aren’t the only one looking forward to this trip to America, you know?” mother said. “Your father and I haven’t had a decent vacation in ages nor have we ever been to America”. Mother was right, the last vacation our family took was to Italy, but I was only two and don’t remember any of it. Chloe said it was a lot of fun and I seemed to like the gondola rides through Venice the most.

“Did father tell you he got us World Series tickets?” I asked.

“Of course he told me” she said. “It was something he has wanted to do for you for a long time. He knows how much you want to go to America and see a real American baseball game” she added.

“Do you think you will like New York, mother?” I asked.

“I don’t see why not. New York, on television anyway, looks a lot like Paris, and who doesn’t like Paris?” mother replied with a thoughtful smile.

Mother did a lot of traveling in her younger days before she met my father. She was born in a small town just outside Glastonbury, England. She grew up poor and didn’t get to experience much of the European continent until she went to college. She worked in the school bookstore to pay her tuition and was always invited on weekend and holiday trips out of the country. She met my father when she was twenty one and had just opened her bakery with a friend from college. My father came into the shop for some loaves of bread. He was celebrating his first harvest with his workers and wanted to host a wine tasting party. Mother said it was love at first sight, he even asked her to the party as his date, soon after the two were married.

That night at the dinner table there was much discussion about the trip to New York and our itinerary. We only had a week to pack and plan the trip. Father even had a room booked for us at the Ritz-Carlton. We were even supposed to have a room with a view of the Statue of Liberty, but there was some sort of booking issue which caused us to settle for a different room. The new room also had a view, but of Central Park. I was the only one who didn’t seem to mind the new room. The statue was nice and all, bt the view was mostly of water. We had a balcony which towered over all the trees below and gave a great view of all the beauty in Central Park.

The following night was game one in the World Series. Father and I had great seats just between third base and home plate. Chloe and mother never cared much for baseball and chose to go shopping while we were at the games. The series lasted five games with the Yankees being crowned the 2000 World Series champions. Those days were the best of my life and what I refer to as the calm before the storm that was coming.

It was our last night in New York that I was awoken by a collection of whispers. The voices were faint and ancient. They called out as if they were trying to pull me to them. I walked to the glass door leading to the balcony. Lights below kept the park dimly lit. A moderate breeze made the silhouettes of the trees dance in the mind. “Julian” they called to me. I slid open the door and stepped out onto the balcony. The whispers continued. Most of the sounds or words were unrecognizable to my young ears. Aside from my name, I wa able to understand “come to us”. I was scared yet intrigued. As I watched the trees blow in the wind I felt myself become somewhat entranced. The whispers continued. The voices were so frail as if they were dying and using their final breaths to call out to me, for what I did not know.

I suddenly felt a hand grasp my shoulder. Instantly I snapped back into reality and felt like I almost jumped out of my skin.

“What are you doing out here?” Chloe whispered with her eyes half shut.

“I heard something” I said.

“It’s 3am, go to bed Julian” she said. Chloe slowly walked back into the room and climbed back into her bed. I took one final look at the park below and saw the wind was gone and so were the voices. As I lied in bed wondering what I had just experienced, the thought never crossed my mind that in only six short years from then New York would be the place I called home.

[Morningriser]

This is my first draft of a rewrite I am doing on a novella I wrote. Would anyone care to offer some feedback?