The Vampire Heart
Night had fallen. A chill wind whistled through the branches of the trees as giant shadows, cast by the full moon, reached out like grabbing fingers across the snow-covered fields. At the edge of the forest, where the great oaks met the meadows, a field mouse scurried from a hollow in one tree toward another one a short distance away. Suddenly an almighty screech tore through the night. After a high-pitched squeak and the sound of flapping wings faded into the darkness, the mouse was nowhere to be seen.
Oskar had witnessed the whole incident from a window on the uppermost level of a small dilapidated chateau he had taken for his own.
“The night remains savage,” he mumbled to himself as he turned and padded across the room to the dressing table. “It never changes.”
He
