The vampire of Myanmar

The vampire of Myanmar Wrote by: Nardoni Elena Fioletti Giulia Uberti Federico Lisa Lea Florence Xeres Van Den Langenbergh Bram Leenders Haider Naeem Bogdan Maria Kay Hoskens

It was the night of the 13th of November 1976. I was sitting in a bar named ‘Phillies’ which is situated close to the beltway of the city. I was sitting there with a couple of friends when something awful happened. It was dark and cold that night and it looked like the city was sleeping and there was no one else awake except for us. Even the most popular pub in the city was closed. Connor, the milkman, and Abby, his wife who was a bit crazy, were listening to my story about a strange appearance in the woods. It went like this: It was a week before the 13th that I was staying over with a friend who lived in the north of Myanmar. Our hotel was surrounded by high trees and there were disturbing noises from a creature I had no knowledge of. It sounded like a bat, but the sound was slightly different. I couldn't sleep, so I decided to take a walk. When I was outside something unusual happened. There was someone sitting on a bench next to the frozen lake, which is unusual in Myanmar. The moon was bright but it was very dark so I wasn’t able to see his face. I went closer and I was able to see his face, which had the same color as the moon, and his clothes which were as dark as the night. I was hiding in the bushes because I was trying to have a better look. Blood was everywhere, on his face, on his hands, in his mouth… He was laughing very loudly. I took my polaroid to take a picture for the police. I crawled closer to the bench until I got a perfect view for a clear shot. “Woah, he has really big teeth”: I thought. I can’t deny I was a bit scared. I gathered all my courage and took a picture. The sound of the click was louder than I expected. For a second I thought he had heard me and seen me. It took a while before the picture was printed. My heart was beating like hell. I was wiping the picture while I was crawling back to the bushes, but when I sat there and looked at the picture, there was no one on it…



I was terrified, I was sure that I had seen something, though I didn’t know if it was a human being, a monster or an animal, but in the photo, there was nobody, nothing, nil not even a sign of life, just the blank surface of a picture. For a minute I thought that it was the tiredness from the flight not making me see what I believed I had witnessed a few minutes before, so I sat down on the bench. I had to clear up my mind from what had just happened so I decided to give my longtime friend Betty a call. With my trembling hands I groped into my pockets to retrieve my latest model of phone through which I tried to call her; as soon as I flipped it open I typed her number on the phone pad but I forgot that there was no signal in the area because of the great amount of frozen water of the volcanic lake I was next to. While I was constantly trying to reach her, I started thinking about how we first met. It was the first day of primary school in Landerville and I was nervous about meeting new guys because I was a very shy kid but, among the noisy group of newbies, suddenly a little girl with such curly red head came next to me and started talking to me and, since then, we’ve been really good friends. She was the type of pal you could talk about anything, the one who listened to everything and never judged you about your opinion: a really caring, funny and talented girl, a dreamer with a thousand ideas in her mind but, at the same time, she was a rational person, this caused her sometimes to struggle with her self.

Unfortunately, my dear Betty had moved to the north of Myanmar a couple of months before, when I heard the news I was so sad that I started planning a trip to surprise her and, luckily, that day had finally arrived. A few attempts later when at last I stood up and left the bench where I had been brooding over the unusual outcome of the disturbing photo for quite a while Betty answered the phone with her sleepy voice… I tried so hard to explain to her what had just happened under my eyes, but she thought I was kidding her...At the beginning I was really disappointed that she didn't trust me but then I realized I would not even believe it either….Someone calls you in the dead of night explaining they have just seen a strange man that they took a photo of but nothing was on the picture- and you are supposed to believe that story? I couldn't get this out of my mind, anyway. It became an obsession. That's why I decided to return to the lake, the night after. And what I saw was beyond my expectations… A dead body was lying down on the shore of the lake. I thought my heart had got out of my chest – it thumped so much. This time I called the police directly but when I turned my back again, guess what? No corpse anymore… Everything happened so fast, I was just like out of reality. My legs started to move, to run and when I finally came back to the hotel, I was sure about one thing: what I saw was not a coincidence and I was going to show Betty the truth. So I decided to make some research as soon as I could.

The following day, I went to my town's archives to find a link with this kind of event. I discovered a lead- I noticed similar episodes had happened before. What I found out was this: every 10 years there had been disappearances and weird things were seen by people, just like me actually. And every time nobody believed in these stories let alone the police who didn't care… All these elements aroused my curiosity and made all this even stranger….Why every ten years? I thought of the outlandish animal-man near the lake and I had an idea: it might be a creature that woke up every ten years. It was a vampire... At least, that's what I thought. I tried to call Betty, but I think she was too scared to pick up the phone because of these spooky stories. I can't blame her, I'm scared too. I had to contact someone who knew more about this kind of events, my good old friend professor Gobelyn. He had a secret laboratorium under his house, where he did all kinds of weird experiments. Moreover, he was also very intelligent. When I phoned him, he was silent for a long time, so I knew something was wrong. I immediately took my bike and rode to his place. He was dead when I came in: I had reached him too late but what I did as soon as I stepped into his lab was looking for evidence of his murder. On his desk laid a research about an old myth. The myth was about a vampire who shows up every ten years, kills a couple of people and then disappears. I took the research and put it in my backpack. Just to be sure, I checked the body of professor Gobelyn and I saw two bloody vampire bites on his neck. This is just more evidence that the myth must be true. As I turned around, I heard some noises behind me. It was Gobelyn who stood up and looked right in my eyes. He looked hungry. I ran away, left my bike, and the only thing I heard was \"RARHAJARAHAUAHHHHH\": *vampire noises*.

When I was back home, I started thinking. What if the dead guy at the lake turned in a vampire too, just like Gobelyn? What if it takes over the whole city? I have to do something. That night I couldn’t sleep I was so distressed and nervous I was constantly thinking about what I saw and I couldn’t believe that all of those nightmarish things were happening to me. The following morning I decided to take the bull by the horns so I retraced my steps to the professor’s house to look at what the situation was. Surprisingly the door was already open, so I didn’t have any problems going in. What I saw left me completely shocked: the teacher was calmly sitting at the table drinking some coffee and reading a newspaper, in that moment, what popped in my mind was how on earth he was so normal after what had happened the night before. I broke the silence greeting him as he welcomed me inside with a very friendly smile. After asking him how he was, I could see from his face that he had no idea what I was talking about, so I started telling him about the dead body and how he wasn’t really dead and all of that, but he continued to look at me with a very perplexed face. While I was talking to him and trying to see if he remembered anything of the day before, I noticed something in his eyes: blood. There wasn’t much but that particular alarmed me quite a lot, I stopped talking. I was so scared but at the same time I was really interested; what did he do last night? Why can’t he remember? I was lost in my thoughts when all of a sudden he started screaming, his skin became pale, as white as snow, and his brown eyes became red. I ran away and found a bench near a park, from whi ch I decided to call Betty for help again: I was going to find out what was going on to Mr Gobelyn.

Fortunately she answered. I asked her to meet me in this place and, after not even five minutes, she was there, next to me, so I brought her with me and while we were heading to the teacher’s house I revealed to her everything, or at least everything I could tell her in that short amount of time it took us to arrive at his house. The minute we entered the door we knew something was different and we weren’t wrong, because we didn’t see a human: instead of a really nice man we faced a full blown vampire. She screamed. I immediately put my hand on her mouth because we couldn’t have attracted his attention on us or he would have killed us, with no doubt. He was a monster, there was no sign of Mr Gobelyn inside of him so it wouldn’t have taken a lot to be his next victims. I grabbed Betty by her arm and we rushed outside his house, but unfortunately I wasn’t very fast: I was running pretty slow, I don’t know if it was because of the terror that grew inside of me every time I looked backwards and saw him getting closer and closer. Betty was crying, I was getting tired and it was obvious we wouldn’t have had many chances to survive but, luckily an ambulance came rushing down the street probably because of an accident. We were running on while the vampire immediately stopped, in the middle of the road, and started chasing the ambulance. I started breathing again, Betty had a small smile on her face and we were finally safe from that monster, but we knew that it wasn’t over yet with him….

After that awful event, I decided to show Betty the book about the myth but she insisted on forgetting the book and the story, preferring to move on. I found it really strange from her part, I just didn't understand; she snatched the book away from me and just left. When she withdrew I noticed something that I had never seen before: she had a kind of birthmark on her wrist and when she touched me to take the book I felt she was frozen to death… When I was left alone I flipped my computer open, logged on the web and after a long time on the internet I found a similar book on this ancient myth, it was online. So I started studying the pages and the pictures. What I found out went beyond my expectations… My heart stopped beating for a while… According to the myth, there was an original vampire, from whom everything began and who turned others into vampires by biting and killing them. After having been bitten and killed, you woke up from the dead but you have turned into a vampire.… That explained what had happened to Dr. Gobelyn…. And, still according to the myth, the original vampire is recognizable both by a mark on his wrist and by his cleverness, as well as his change of voice and appearance…. I couldn't believe it… I decided to go to Betty's. Before entering her house, I saw her through the window, I saw her face... She looked like a monster, like….a blood-thirsty creature... That confirmed my horrible discovery… Betty, my childhood friend, was the original vampire. I entered anyway, I was prepared - I had taken a stake with me. I went up the stairs, she turned around to look at me and I pulled out my stake to stab her in the heart but…. At the exact moment when I plunged the stake in her chest, she started drinking blood from my throat… And that was how I became a vampire….but also how I stopped the vampire descendants.