Chapter Five - The Wandering

Dawn was almost here. Bill needed no timepiece to let him know this, he could feel it as surely as a spring bud knows when to burst into bloom. Bill was always grateful when dawn began to approach. For it was only when he was safe within his dark, hidden resting place that Bill finally felt peace. Thoughts, so many lifetimes of thoughts , so many years of memories, most of them better forgotten. During Bill's waking hours in the cover of night as he walked the earth those memories would come, unbidden, to haunt him and pull him into a place so dark that Bill truly believed that God had not only rejected his soul but would surely send him to a place of hellfire and torment when he was finally no more. After the things he had done, had been forced to do because of what he was, did God even want his soul? Did he even possess a soul to lose?

During those years after his life had been stolen and he was compelled to follow Lorena, his maker, they had gone to various places throughout the south. They had first traveled to New Orleans, a city that was more welcoming for vampires than many other cities. But after the war there was so much unrest and combined with the refusal of residents of New Orleans to accept the defeat of the south and subsequent occupation by Federals, this had created an unsafe atmosphere for not only Bill and Lorena, but all vampires. It was in New Orleans that they met three vampires and had formed a nest for a short while. In the wicked old vampire, Lestat, Lorena found a kindred spirit, for he was as evil and unremorseful as she. The vampire Lestat took as much glee in the foul deeds they committed as Lorena did. Bill was grateful and relieved that Lorena had someone else to occupy her time and attentions. He hated to think about the terrible things she forced him to do when darkness came and they once again were free to roam the city. Lorena had tormented Bill relentlessly since she had turned him and although he tried to force his mind to forget the things she required him to do, there were times when images came into his head, unbidden, and Bill would hang his head in shame and despair. But Louie, well Louie was as tortured a soul as he was. Like Bill, Louie also found it distastful and repugnunt to feed on the lifeblood of unsuspecting humans. Also traveling with Lestat and Louie was a little girl, Claudia. Bill could hardly bare to look at the child. She was a constant reminder of the life he had lost. The life stolen from him. He and Lorena stayed in New Orleans several years, but soon unrest in the city forced them to leave, with Lestat, Louie and Claudia booking passage for Paris. It was a risky business, traveling by ship. There were no guarantees of feedings and unless you had made costly arrangements ahead of time, there was always the danger of being either staked or brought up and left in the sun to burst into flames if the ship had sailors who had no affection for the creatures of the night. It was many years later that Bill heard of the fate of the young child Claudia. She had been left in the sun to burn and turn to dust as punishment for the planned killing of Lestat. He never heard of Louie again.

Bill didn't always have to stay with Lorena. At times she would grow bored with him. She would seek out fresh blood who would be more enthuiastic about the sexual pervsions and cruelties she required. Then Bill was free to roam the earth as he pleased until she called him back. Sometimes the need to return home was all but overwhelming at times. It covered his mind and consumed his every waking moment. He yearned to see what his children were like, what they had become. Even tho Bill knew he could never return to his home and pick up his life where it had ended, the need to see them would overtake him with such force that although he knew his heart no longer beat, it felt as though some huge, cruel hand had reached inside and ripped it from his chest. One night, about 40 years after he had been turned and he had been released from Lorena for a short respite, the temptation to return to Bon Temps had been overwhelming. As he made his way down those familiar roads in the darkness of the night, Bill asked himself what he would do if he was seen. He hated the idea of glamouring anyone, let alone his family. But he knew he would have no choice if anyone saw him. He thought it would be wiser to cut through the cemetery and stay under the cover of shadows from the trees. As he walked in the direction of his home he passed by a grave ,freshly mounded with dirt. Just to the other side of this fresh grave he saw a marker. He stopped and looked down. William Thomas Compton was written on the marker. A marker for him. With a sudden lurching in his heart, he realized who's fresh grave that was. It was his beautiful Caroline, with hair the color of sunshine and rain. In renewed anguish he threw himself facedown upon this grave and wept bitter tears for all he had lost, for all she had lost. As those crimson tears soaked into the earth that covered the mortal remains of his beloved Caroline, Bill slowly got up, turned back in the direction from where he had come and walked away, vowing never to return.

Then there were times Bill would hear a name or see a face, or a particular sight would assault his memory and images would come forth to tear him apart anew. Bill recalled one night in particular. He was hungry, desperately hunger. He had not fed in several days, simply because he was loath to do the things required of him in order to feed. Finally, he knew he could hold out no longer. As he lingered in the darkness of night, secluded in a clump of trees on the backside of a farmhouse, he saw a young man walk out on the porch. Bill watched as the young man put his head into his hands, fell to his knees and wept. He could hear screams, terrible pain wracked screams coming from somewhere inside the house. As Bill stood there and watched this young man, his mind was drawn back to his own home, his own night outside, looking up at the stars and begging God to spare the life of his Caroline, to somehow ease her suffering as she struggled to bring their child into the world. He remembered how frightened he was, how angry he was at himself. After all ,it was his own passion, his own lack of self-control that had done this to his wife. How could she ever forgive him? As he continued to watch, this young man slowly got up and for a brief moment he looked back at the trees as if he had heard something, saw something. Suddenly, there was the faint sound of new life. It was only after the young man turned and walked back into the house did Bill realize he had been weeping. Bill would not feed that night.

As the years began to pass the world started to change more than Bill ever imagined it ever could. Things, wonderous things, magical things began to appear. Although Bill had not yet used one, he had heard of a magical invention from a man named Bell. After all, who would he have called? You could actually talk into it, and someone could hear what you said, even if you were many, many miles away. There was another magical thing invented long before Bill became a vampire, but now you might own one for yourself and make your own photographs.. It was a wonderous thing! As an act of self-preservation, many vampires started a myth of not being visible on photographs, so unsuspecting victims would be lulled into a false sense of security. Also, Bill had heard of many wonderous things to be seen in New York City. He traveled there and was able to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge in the cover of night, he was able to watch as the Statue of Liberty was brought into New York Harbor.

Soon the word began to spread that a lot of vampires were traveling to Alaska . It was the great Klondike gold strike! There would be untold riches to be mined there. All a vampire need do was wait for the poor unsuspecting minor to find his bonanza, glamour him or drain him of his blood, then take his gold. Lorena sent for Bill and against his will, they made their way to Alaska. Bill hated it there! It was, of course, a perfect place for a vampire. Bill hated the cold, but those months and months of no daylight were a vertual paradise on earth for Lorena and her kind. Bill had never been more wretchedly unhappy since he had been turned. Finally, they left the Klondike strike and made their way to San Francisco. Things improved in San Francisco for a while until a devastating earthquake and fire laid waste to the city and forced them to flee.
Before long Bill found some respite from his lonliness by going to a magical, wonderful place called the moving pictures. He sat there in the dark, amazed by what he saw. People, real people, living, breathing people, moving across that huge white screen. And the sun! He could see the sun. He could close his eyes and feel the sun beating down across his face. He was able to watch things going on in the world, things that people who still could walk among the daylight could do. It was there in a movie theatre that he saw that a great ship, The Titanic, had gone down in the icy waters of the Atlantic. So many people lost their lives. He saw newsreels of the great Mexican bandit Pancho Villa. Bill found himself rather envious of this bandit and was quite sorry when Pancho got captured. He saw newsreels of Charles Linbergh and his Spirit of St. Louis. Bill felt himself overcome with envy over the idea of being so free as to be able to fly into the clouds, as free as a bird.

A few years later, Lorena had briefly toyed with the idea of going to Paris for a while as there was a deadly flu epidemic that had broken out in America and it made feeding from humans an even harder and more dangerous undertaking. She had heard a rumor that Lestat and Louie were possibly there, but by then the war had begun in France and that made trans-Atlantic travel a perilous and dangerous adventure. Bill was quite relived, as he had never been a fan of water travel and he hated to sleep in a coffin. Bill was quite grateful when she decided to journey on alone and leave him behind.
The years began to pass more quickly for Bill and then it was 1929. Bill and Lorena had always lived quite comfortably, as all vampires seem to do. They had been able to accumulate quite a fortune in the gold mines of Alaska, and much of it they had managed to invest in stocks through the services of a human who was loyal to Lorena. Then, as suddenly as their fortune had grown, it disappeared just as suddenly. It was all gone. This only served to be a bonus for Bill as he was once again able to break away from Lorena and decided to travel to a new place he had heard about where there were new fortunes to be won and lost with only the roll of a dice or the luck of a hand of cards. A magical place called Las Vegas . Bill loved Las Vegas. It was tailor made for creatures of the night, such as himself. The city itself only came alive when the sun went down. There were beautiful women with plenty of ways to make a man forget about who he was or what he was. Bill was able to use those lovely blue eyes God blessed him with and entice enough pretty girls to make feeding as easy as ordering room service. And there is no one quite as adept as a vampire when it comes to bluffing through a hand of poker. Glamouring skills put to good use. Bill would have stayed there forever but unfortunately those who owned the casinos really didn't intend for anyone other than themselves to become rich and had taken an unmistakable dislike to Bill and his winning ways. Bill was never quite sure anyone knew that he was a vampire, but didn't think it would be the prudent course of action to hang around and find out. While in Las Vegas Bill also made the acquaintance of a handsome, charming and ruthless vampire named Eric. Eric was much older than Bill and already there was an air of unmistakable power in him.
After leaving Las Vegas, Bill just seemed to drift from place to place, never staying very long anywhere. It was while passing through the midwest after leaving Las Vegas that he met two vampires that he would share a nest with for a while and maintain ties with for many years to come. Malcom, like Eric, was a very old vampire. Not as old as Eric, but much older than Bill. Malcom had been turned during the Revolutionary War. Malcom also thought Bill Compton was about the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He spent the better part of three years trying to seduce this beautiful creature and have sex with him, just once. It's an unwritten rule that vampires don't have a long sexual relationship with each other unless it's with their maker. But Malcom was so smitten, so in love with this lovely man that he was more than willing to break those rules. But Bill wasn't to be swayed. He had no interest in a sexual encounter with Malcom, or any other man for that matter. He did however secumb to the sexual advances of a very young vampire, Diane, in a moment of lonliness and weakness. She was a young black woman who had been working in a nightclub. Malcom had followed her home, intending to feed on her. In a moment of complete sexual frustration, Malcom fed on her too much and decided it would be wiser to turn her than leave her body there in the hotel to be discovered. Diane was also quite taken with Bill's physical attractions. One night in an act to merely annoy the ever persistant Malcom, Bill had sex with Diane. That was a mistake. It was like giving steak to a starving dog. Bill had to spend the better part of the next 50 years repelling her sexual advances.
But there was one thing that Bill enjoyed more than anything else. Baseball! Bill would read newspaper accounts of the exploits of great players like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young. He longed for the chance to see a game, but knew it could never happen. " How wonderful it would be if only baseball could be played at night! " Bill often thought to himself. Just one more thing to remind him that he was not human.

In 1938 Bill made one journey that would haunt his memory for many years. He journeyed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and stood in the shadows of darkness and watched as the final reunion of the Boys of the Blue and Gray gathered together. In great celebration and emotion , with forgiveness in their hearts, embraced each other in the bonds of love and brotherhood, each one recognizing the sacrifices all had made. Bill was speechless when he saw those crippled, decrepit old men in their wheelchairs. Many of them blinded by age, many of them missing limbs, still bearing war wounds but proudly wearing the uniform of either the Army of the Potomac or the Army of Northern Virginia. Bill struggled to see if there was anyone there he might remember, but these old men looked nothing at all like the young, smooth faced boys that he had fought side by side with.

By the time the second world war had begun in Europe, Bill had returned to Louisana, vowing never to leave. He was tired of wandering from place to place, town to town. Tired of living in the shadows, concealed by darkness, stealing lifeblood from poor, unsuspecting humans. At times he had grown so weary of his life he would think how easy it would be to just walk out into the sunshine, let those glorious beams of light come down and take this undead being away from here forever. But the wonderful, glorious things he was yet to see! Bill sat in his room one night many years later and watched in rapt amazement as Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and planted a United States flag. Such things he could not even have begun to imagine could have been possible all those years ago when he had walked side by side with his father in the cotton fields of Bon Temps