Letters from Hellsing II

I ran across the orchestra pit to the door and praying, turned the handle. It swung open revealing a large, low ceilinged room running underneath the length of the stage. Two or three doors were set along the back wall. Over one of the doors was a glowing plastic "Exit" sign. It was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.

I turned back to waive more people down the steps and looked right into the eyes of a ghoul. She was stumbling down the steps, eating what appeared to be an arm. She dropped it and began reaching towards me with a gurgling sound. I screamed and ran for the exit sign dragging children as I went.

"Hurry, Hurry! This way!" the young man called from somewhere up above. He was there ahead of me kicking at the back door and cursing. It had been chained shut.

"The window" I screamed to him. He stopped kicking and looked around. There, on the floor was one of those old flat irons. The kind you used to have to heat up on a stove. Just the thing to prop open a door to catch a breeze on a hot summer day. He picked it up and smashed it against the window in the door. The glass shattered and a blaring alarm went off.

I looked ruefully at the small opening. "Can you get through?" I asked the young man.

"I think so." he said.

"OK, you go first and I’ll hand them through to you."

"What about you?" he shouted over the alarm.

"I’ll come out last after the children."

We both knew this to be a lie as it was painfully obvious that there was no way I could ever fit through that window. But we also knew that there was no time to argue about it so he handed me the little girl (his youngest sister it turned out later) and squeezed through the window.
I began picking up children and passing them through to safety. I was just lifting the 3rd child through when the remaining kids began screaming. I looked behind me and saw several ghouls advancing towards us. They were moving slowly, but surely in our direction.

I managed to hand two more children through the window before my nerve broke. "Run!" I screamed shoving the children before me. I had seen that horrible man from the stage. He was smiling and waiving at us like we were some old friends he had just spotted across a crowded restaurant. Panicking, I wrenched open the nearest door and without even looking to see what was in there, began pushing the remaining children into the room. I glanced back down the hall. He still stood there smiling.

"I’ll be right with you my dear, just as soon as I finish my appetizer." He shouted above the alarm. His smile broadened as he held up a small child who was staring at him with enormous eyes. "Waive to the nice lady" he said raising the child’s limp hand and wiggling it back and forth.

"Won’t be a minute." he said. "You just wait for me there, that’s a good girl."

I bolted through the door, slammed it shut and leaned against it panting with fear. I could hear his laughter echoing through the wood. I thumbed the lock and grabbed a chair jamming it under the doorknob as I’d seen done in the movies. Like that would keep out a vampire.

I looked around. The children stood gravely silent, staring at me. We seemed to have run into the old Green room which the producer had converted into a makeshift chapel for "Fellowship Time" before the performances. There were several folding chairs lined up in front of a podium which had a large bible placed on top. To either side was a flag pole stuck in a heavy base. One flag was white with a golden cross wrapped in red flames. The other was a Union Jack. An old battered couch, a side table with a coffee maker and a few overstuffed chairs scattered about the room made up the rest of the furnishings. A door in the wall near the podium stood open. It led into a closet which contained a card table and a few more folding chairs. That was it.

The alarm cut off abruptly. I could hear shuffling footsteps in the hall and scrabbling sounds as the horrors outside attempted to open the door. There was nowhere to run. We were trapped.

We were going to die.

I gave up, collapsing sideways onto the nearest folding chair. I stared at the door. I was so tired. I had been praying in my mind for escape this whole time. Perhaps, I should begin praying for a quick and painless death instead.

So tired...

So easy to sit. Just sit quietly and accept my fate.

The thoughts rolled through my mind like a comforting fog. I closed my eyes. Why keep fighting? It won’t make a difference and it will just frighten the children that much more. Why should they die so afraid? The scrabbling sound grew louder as a comfortable apathy swathed my brain in a soft, calm gauze.

LETTERS FROM HELLSING

A friend of mine who lives in the UK found this journal in the wreckage of a burned out car he was towing. The contents disturbed him greatly and he was afraid, for reasons which will become apparent later, to publish this in England. He thought that as I, like her, worked for a public library and we seemed to be from the same state, I might be able to figure out who she was and whether or not the story she wrote was true. It's too large to post in one go so I will publish it in sections in hopes the author will come forward. I can only pray she is still alive to tell me who she is. 

I had decided to take the job to get away from the stress.

Ha!

It sounded perfect for me. The job was fun, the people were friendly and a free trip to Europe all expenses paid. It was a short term commitment and I had plenty of leave available at my old job. They even said I could bring my son. What could possibly go wrong?

Ha! (I know I said that already but it bears repeating)

So here I am, lying in a bed, in a basement, with semi-healed wounds, silver wires holding my internal organs together. Not even in a proper hospital. National health my foot. Ow! And you would think that I would get some sympathy for what I’ve been through, but no!

........ Perhaps it would help if I backed up a little to give you some context. I am a 40 year old divorced mother from the United States. Sounds glamorous so far doesn’t it? Wait, there’s more. I majored in History and Secondary Education in college, have an extensive background in customer service and collection and currently work for a public library.

"Stop! Stop!" you say. "I can’t take it all in. Wow! You are so cool!"
Yes, yes, I know. Stay with me it will get better, I promise.

After the divorce, I was in a rut. Ironically part of the reason for the divorce was to get out of the rut but I just seemed to find a new one and jumped right into it. I was going crazy. So when a friend, who had a job with this traveling Family Theater group, had an accident which made him unable to travel, I jumped at the chance to take his place for the final leg of the tour. I managed to get an extended leave from work and soon found myself on my way to Europe for 8 weeks.

Suddenly, I was stage manager, wardrobe mistress and unofficial prompter for a popular Christian family musical review participating in an "International, Interfaith, Cultural Exchange Series".

The producer was a big man on "family values". He also had a big family (6 kids) which he brought with him along with his wife, a cook, a nanny, 2 dogs and a hamster named skip. He agreed that my son and I could be folded into the "family" for 8 weeks so I could bring him along. 3 weeks into my stint with the company, we opened in London.

Everything was in its usual state of opening night affairs, a sort of controlled chaos right on the edge of panic. Business as usual and I was right in the thick of it. My son and some of the other kids had come down with a cold and so were "home" at the hotel with the nanny. It was quite crowded, the animated series being very popular in the UK, and we were wall to wall with sugared up children and exasperated parents.

We were about ½ through act II. I was in the auditorium helping the board man with his light queues when all hell broke loose.

It’s still like a dream.

It started with a scream from above and the body of one of the theater technicians crashing to the stage. There was a break in the taped music and for a brief moment, the theater was deathly quiet. Then, as one of the actors bent to the fallen man, the sound of harsh laughter boomed down from the catwalks. Bodies frozen with fear, our eyes swiveled upwards to the source of the chilling sound.

A figure leapt down from above and landed lightly on the stage next to the actor and the fallen man. He was huge, well over six feet tall and grossly obese. His arms were unnaturally long and his face was oddly bruised and puffy. He looked a bit like a grey orangutan.

He glanced around the theater with wild glowing eyes and smiled. "The show must go on." he said and snapped his fingers. The music blared out. Casually, he reached out with one hand to the actor next to him and ripped his throat open. The large man chuckled and tossed the actor's body to one side. As he reached for the next closest person, an actress who stood transfixed, paralyzed with fear a scream rang out from the back of the auditorium and the spell was broken.

The audience began to panic and stampede towards the doors. The big man laughed again as he pulled the now struggling actress towards him. "Don’t leave" he shouted "you’ll miss the best part!" He snapped his fingers again then embraced the actress tightly. She screamed and he laughed with delight. He began dancing her around the stage singing to the blaring, happy music.

Several of the audience members reached the exits just as the doors were flung open. The theater staff; ushers, manger, concession clerks, even the ticket taker were all standing there blocking the exits. There was something very, very, wrong with them.

Even from a distance I could see that they had gone a shade of greyish green and their eyes... their eyes were like empty sockets. Black shadows at the entrance to a cave. They reached out to the nearest audience members and began to claw at them.

The front of the crowed surged back against those behind them. The big man laughing, bent his head and gently kissed the actress then reached up, almost tenderly and ripped one of her ears off. He tossed the ear into the panicking crowed then twirled her around stage a few more times before ripping her other ear off. Her took her head in both hands, kissed her again then twisted her neck. He looked out into the audience and shouted "Everybody sing!" The dead eyed theater staff opened their mouths and began to emit a gurgling, moaning sound. The big man smiled broadly. "Everybody dance!" he said and tossed the lifeless woman into the audience.

The panicked crowed near the stage stampeded towards the exits. The staff, still moaning, began to move forward grabbing the audience members who were being shoved up against them and proceeded to claw, bite and rip open any person in their path. There was another brief pause in the music. In it I could hear a child screaming for his mother. He sounded just like my son.

I suddenly found myself able to breathe, to move. Terror crashing over me in waves, I dove into the crowed and fought my way towards the child. I am still not sure how I managed to reach the front of the theater. Most of the audience, those who were not already dead, seemed to be either cowering in their seats or stampeding back and forth between the vampire and his undead servants. (I of course, did not know at the time he was a vampire nor did I know that the theater staff ripping us apart were ghouls I was to gain this knowledge later. Not that it matters to those who did not survive, dead is dead...Well, not really). We were trapped, terrified. Anyone who tried to run on stage was bodily thrown back into the audience by the vampire. Anyone running for the exits was ripped apart by the "staff".

I found myself shoved up against the low wall surrounding the orchestra pit. I tried to step back but tripped over a small child who was huddled under a chair attempting to pull the folding seat down over him. He was struggling not to cry, his small body racked with silent sobs. He looked up at me with terrified eyes which begged me to remove him from this nightmare. I numbly realized that soon he would probably be dead. We all would be dead.

I was shoved once again against the orchestra pit wall. I looked down into the darkness. There was what appeared to be a body lying broken across some overturned chairs and music stands but other than that it seemed to be empty. Dully I thought, how lucky for the orchestra that this production used canned music. Then I remembered visiting my mother at the Kennedy Center. She had worked there as an usher and on occasion would get us "comp" tickets to various productions. Before the show, we would often go down to the staff cantina to eat and once or twice, when a few of the theaters were "black" we were given a behind the scenes tour from one of the senior staff members. My favorite part of the tour was under the theater. It was a whole other world down there. Corridors, storage nooks, dressing rooms, little secret doors and passageways wandering around under the stages and lobbies leading everywhere including ... the orchestra pit!

Heart pounding, barely daring to hope, I crouched down to look under the stage apron. There, in the gloom, a door. If I could get us down quietly we might just be able to get backstage unseen. In the back of the theater was a loading dock. The big roll door would be shut tight but the stage entrance should still be unlocked as the actors and crew liked to sneak out for smokes between scenes.

But how to get to that door? It was a long drop and vaulting over the wall with a child under my arm would attract unwanted attention not to mention most likely leave one or both of us lying injured on the floor. I frantically looked around for a solution and suddenly realized I was surrounded by children. Parents were shoving their children behind them in a desperate effort to shield them from the slow relentless killers advancing on the crowd, sacrificing their lives to buy their children a few moments more.

I had to try to save them. I could not just grab one and leave the rest to die. Dammit! I could not just leave them to be slaughtered but how was I going to get all of those kids down there? I ground my teeth in anger and pounded my fist against the wall in frustration.

"Click"

???

Cautiously, I pushed against the wall. There was some give, then a "click". Holding my breath, I looked closer and saw two small hinges set in the wall. A small swing door was installed near the center aisle. Trembling, I reached my arm over the wall and fumbled with the latch. It swung inward into the darkness. Above it was a detachable rail, below, black painted steps leading down into the pit. I exhaled and smiled, then stopped. "Not out of this yet" I cautioned myself. I searched around for assistance. My eyes fell on a youth, he could not have been more than 12 or 13, who was shielding a young girl from the crush of the panicked but dwindling crowd.

I grabbed his shoulder to get his attention. "I think I found a way out!" I shouted. "Grab as many kids as you can and start sending them this way!" He stared at the pit and shook his head, his eyes wide with fear.

"Were going to die" he said quietly.

I squeezed his shoulder hard and locked gazes with him. "I’m not ready to die yet and neither is she." I said pointing to the girl in his arms. He looked down at her then his head snapped back up to me. He immediately began grabbing children and shoving them towards me. I reached below the seat to the small boy I had first seen. He jerked away. "It’s OK" I said "It’s going to be OK." He reached out to me. He looked so much like my son that my heart skipped a beat this could so easily be my child. I, at least had the comfort of knowing my child was safe and alive. This boy's parents, if they were still alive, had no such luxury. I took him into my arms and made a silent promise to God and his parents. "I won’t let him die. No matter what I have to do I won’t this child die!" Then quickly and quietly began leading the children down into the darkness.