I know, because he’s my best friend.
We grew up next door to each other, born in the same year to sets of parents who’d both recently moved to the new development. His name was Mal and he was older than me by a couple of hours. We played on the same sports teams, went to the same schools, it was all the same. We were as close as brothers.
That changed the summer before our final year in high school. That was five years ago. I’m 22 now… but Mal’s still 17. He hasn’t aged a day since the night of the attack on his family, the Greys.
I’m an only child, but Mal had an older sister named Michelle. One night, she met a guy named Waylon at a bar and brought him home.
This is where the story gets tricky, and if I lose you here, I’ll understand.
Waylon killed Michelle, then killed Mr. and Mrs. Grey in their bed. He almost killed Mal.
Mal told me he fended off Waylon’s attack by using a piece from his newly broken bed frame and stabbing Waylon in the chest with it. Waylon stumbled off, crashing through the window and disappearing while Mal began to… transform.
My parents heard the commotion and called the police, who obviously arrived too late.
The three dead Greys had been decapitated by something akin to large animal bites puncturing their necks. Mal had a bite mark on his, but it quickly healed.
Mal refused to leave the house after that night. He was almost 18 and had just inherited a chunk of money from his parents. He found a Doctor to diagnose him as having some irrational fear of sunlight, so friends and family only came to see him at night. Though, there weren’t many visitors.
I went over every evening at dusk and spent the night. Because the other thing was, I’d developed insomnia since the attack. Mal and I were so close, it was like my physiology was affected by the violent acts just as much as his. Only not.
Over the weeks that followed, my sleep patterns turned into Rubix Cubes. Then they spun out of control altogether and I was basically awake all the time.
Even now, I haven’t slept in something like 487 days. I fall into micronaps every few hours or so. My brain shuts off and the world goes black. Then I come-to like nothing’s happened.
In the early days, I watched Mal change, getting skinnier and painfully malnourished. He looked terrible. But he never wanted to eat. And anytime I brought something over, he got nauseous. He had no appetite.
He was always thirsty though.
He started off with consuming the blood of small animals. Racoons and possums. Then he moved onto strays. Cats and the occasional dog.
Then he was visiting the next town over after he’d scorched our hometown of animals to drink from. He emptied neighbourhood after neighbourhood of strays in weeks.
But all those animals seemed to do was keep Mal alive. And barely at that. They didn’t give him the sustenance he needed. It was like he was trying to fuel a car with watered down gasoline.
Now, I don’t want to use the V word that probably comes to mind, but whatever the infection that Mal was given in the attack, his entire physiological system now ran off of his ingesting of the chemical properties that make up animal and human blood. He needed to drink as much as he could, as often as he could.
It was only a matter of time before Mal turned away from the animals, and towards people. I wasn’t surprised when he told me the morning after his first kill.
Mal had come across a strung out, unconscious woman. She was homeless and was slumped over in the door inside an alleyway. She had a needle hanging out of her arm. Blood was dripping from her open track marks. The smell pulled Mal in and he drained the woman of blood until she was dead.
Mal ripped up her arm, trying to hide his bite marks, or give the impression it was something else.
Then he went home. But he didn’t walk home.
He flew.
He could never explain how it worked other than a strange, mental and instinctual feeling that allowed him to levitate, then move directionally up or down, forward or backward, left or right.
The blood of the woman made him healthier and stronger than he’d ever felt. All of his senses and more seemed to be charged up like he was operating on high octane fuel. He was more clever and conscientious than ever. It was like he suddenly met his potential in every way.
He also became meaner. Crueler. Disconnected from humanity. His power could’ve been used quite differently by others. But it was toxic for him. It drove him to justify what he was doing.
With every homeless person Mal killed, I watched him develop a God complex, seeing me and others as something like old, outdated models.
Mal rationalized the murders by explaining he was doing a public service. The homeless and drug addicted were just drains on society and our taxes. The town would be cleaner and run more properly without them.
Mal would fly their body to a quarry, decapitate them, drain them, then chain them to a rock and drop them in the deepest part. It was the easiest way to continue doing what he was doing, while not rising suspicion by leaving any evidence. The homeless person would just… vanish.
No one would ask about those people, he’d say. They’d simply disappear, and the town could run more efficiently without them.
And with his meanness and cruelty, he also became more isolated. Outside of me, no one knew about him and what he was. What he was doing. But he never looked at me as a liability. We were sandbox brothers, and that went deeper than blood.
Until it didn’t.
I met Kristin in one of my classes. She was my girlfriend for all of a month. Mal hated her and was open about it. I think that’s what drove him to the chatrooms and away from me. Neither of us had ever had girlfriends, so when I found companionship outside of him, he felt abandoned.
Mal started diving into the deep web, searching for others who were like him. Specifically like him. Online, he went by the handle of Anderson Grey, which were both of our last names put together - Mine being Anderson and his being Grey. He didn’t want to use his full name, to protect his tracks.
Mal went out to meet with the people he chatted with sometimes. People who claimed to be like him.
But they never were. They were fakes. Wannabes. Performers. Which, to Mal, was worse. Because with every false hope, it was becoming more apparent there wasn’t anyone, anywhere, like him.
Then he met a group of people online who referred to themselves as “The Oroks.” They identified as Sanguinarian Vampires, and fed on small amounts of human blood in ritual sacrifices.
Mal became close with them. Online. He thought they were the real deal.
He finally met with them in person. There was an abandoned church on the outskirts of town that The Oroks would perform their rituals in the basement of.
But again, it all led to heartbreak.
The Oroks were wannabes. There was no sacrifice. One of them was a nurse and had access to the blood bank at her hospital. She’d take three or four bags, test them to make sure they were clean, and bring them to the ritual for consumption.
All of this crushed Mal. After all the talking online, this was just more of the same. People pretending to be like him.
Mal went home pissed off, then came by looking to vent. Kristin was over, which made him more angry. So I sent her home and went over to visit.
It was the worst I’d ever seen Mal. He was beyond distraught. He was hopeless. And in the most destructive way.
We hung out until the morning, then Mal went to sleep in his blacked out basement. I thought our lengthy talk and hangout went well. That he was going to start changing his direction. Maybe use his abilities for good. If there was such a way.
I was wrong.
Mal was awake all day in his basement, planning and scheduling another meeting with The Oroks. He’d realized, during our talk, that the only thing worse than being alone, was being surrounded by people who made him feel alone. So he put out an offer to the group.
If the Oroks wanted to be like him, he would turn them.
Every member of the group responded “yes” to the offer. So they all planned to meet that night at the Church where Mal would bite and infect them. And after that, the Oroks, led by Mal, would enter the town… and turn everyone to be like him.
Mal left me a note on my window just after dusk. He wrote of the plan and warned that I should leave town. Though, wherever I went, this would catch up to me.
Mal knew I wouldn’t stop him. But I had to try. I’d stood by and watched Mal do horrible things to animals and people. So I made an easy plan. I drove to the abandoned Church with two jerry cans of gasoline and a pack of matches.
When I got there, there were a half dozen cars and trucks in the back parking lot. I walked to the edge of the basement entrance, and could tell Mal was just starting to turn The Oroks. The screams and cries coming from the basement were horrific. They’d all wanted it, but the infection sounded excruciating as it took them over.
I snuck onto the first floor as the savagery below quieted. I quickly opened the first can and covered the floor of the old church with gas, lining the areas between the pews so the floor would drop into the basement as the fire burned through the deteriorating wood. I emptied the first can, but as I went to open the second, I heard sounds starting again from the basement. Animalistic sounds of creatures waking up. Thirsty.
I kicked over the other can and rushed over to the pulpit, which had an exit off to the right.
I lit one of the matches and sparked the rest of them with it. I went to throw the burning pack, but stopped.
Mal was standing at the far end of the Church. He told me the fire wouldn’t stop anything, and that he was here to stay. Then he started walking towards me. I tossed the matches in a puddle of gas towards him and ran.
I felt the heat from the fire as an inferno ignited behind me. I ran out through the side exit as an explosion tore through the Church. The extra jerry can must have erupted in the fire.
I was thrown across the grass yard, and landed hard. My neck was burning and the back of my jacket was on fire. I peeled it off and stumbled to my feet.
The Church had collapsed in on itself now. There were chunks of burning wood and roof all over the yard and parking lot. But amongst them, was movement. A body. Twitching. Pulling itself forward. Trying to survive.
I picked up a piece of wood that’d blown off the Church and approached the body. It was badly burned, but I could tell it was Mal. He looked up at me, and told me he’d still be here. No matter what I did.
I lifted the piece of sharp, broken wood. Just as I was about to slam it down through Mal’s chest and heart, a bullet tore through my shoulder and sent me spinning off him. A second shot exploded into my chest.
I knew I’d been shot because of the loud bangs, but didn’t know who shot me until I hit the ground. There were two police officers, guns raised, quickly approaching me. I tried to yell out to them that it was okay. We were safe. I’d stopped the bad guys.
But they thought I was the bad guy. I guess I don’t blame them. It looked pretty bad at the time.
The gunshots were painful and my vision became hazy and hallucinatory. As I started to black out, I turned to look at Mal’s body beside me… but it wasn’t Mal.
It was some old meth head now. He was burned to a crisp.
I wasn’t on the church lawn anymore either. I was in the middle of a dirty street downtown. And there was a small building burning out with a hellish roar of fire on the corner.
Then my consciousness drifted away.
When I woke up I was here, being psychoanalyzed by white lab coats. They keep saying I killed those animals, the dogs and cats. That I killed those homeless people and anchored them to the bottom of the quarry. But that’s insane.
It was Mal. He did all of that.
Now they’re telling me I wasn’t at a church. I was at a homeless shelter that had a soup kitchen under it. I’d set fire to it, killing forty five people. One of which, I tried to stab through the chest in the middle of the street.
But that’s also wrong. I saved everyone. I saved the town. The world. If The Oroks had gotten out, we’d all be like them now. Like Mal.
But thanks to me, I stopped it all. I saved the planet.
And what did I get for it?
Being locked in a fucking padded cell in a straight jacket and charged with dozens of murders. They keep saying Mal’s not even real. That I made him up. That I’ve never lived next door to a family named the Greys. That it was my parents who were killed in a druggie home invasion gone wrong five years ago.
But I know the truth. I saved the world.
And I’d do it again.