Author’s Note: I wrote this short story for a creative writing class I took in 2025.
Elizabeth Warrington’s hands shook as she exited the freighter. She was nervous about this entire trip. Coming to America to find her family’s graves and see her old hometown now seemed like a bad idea. It didn’t help that Barrett had made all the arrangements for the trip to Boston. Elizabeth thought Barrett was the devil.
“Relax, darlin’,” her travel companion, a lanky Irishman with dark curls and a permanent 5 o’clock shadow, drawled. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Easy for you to say, John Turner,” Elizabeth muttered. “And stop calling me darling.” She couldn’t help thinking that Barrett had some ulterior motive for helping with the trip. Barrett always had an ulterior motive.
John ignored the last remark. “Let’s go find our car.”
Barrett told them what kind of car to look for, but despite that, it took twenty minutes to find it. The car was a 1988 Honda Civic with a full stereo and aftermarket cruise control. There was an argument about who was going to do all the driving.
“It’s your country,” John said.
“It’s not my country,” she snapped. “I was born in England. Besides, I’ve never driven in the States.” She changed the subject, but she was still short-tempered. “Can you even read a map?”
John merely rolled his eyes at her. “I’ll drive. But don’t blame me if we end up on the left side of the road.”
Navigating Boston’s traffic put both on edge. Elizabeth did her best to read the map, but the map didn’t list all the streets they passed. Once they hit the freeway, she relaxed a bit.
“Where are we going again?” John asked.
“Haverhill. It’s about fifty miles outside of Boston.” Elizabeth looked down at the map. “Except there’s one problem.”
“What?” John kept his eyes on the road.
“There is no Haverhill on the map. There’s East Haverhill and West Haverhill. I don’t know which one we want.”
“I think our hotel is in East Haverhill,” John said. Elizabeth forgot that Barrett used the Network to secure them a hotel room. The Network spanned the entire world. It was necessary to have now an underground network of travel and lodging options, among other things. With the advent of photo ID, it became more challenging to do things they used to do, like book a flight, rent a car, or secure a hotel room. It was impossible when a camera couldn’t capture your image.
The tall buildings and bustle of the city blended into the strip malls and traffic of the suburbs, which blended into the calm tree-lined roads of the countryside. John said he was hungry.
“Food hungry or—”
“Food,” John said, not taking his eyes off the road. Elizabeth was relieved. She hadn’t wanted John to come along on this trip. They were more acquaintances than friends, and John was unpredictable.
“We can stop and hit a drive-through. I’m hungry, too.”
It was dusk when they arrived at their hotel, located off the interstate and down a dark country road. It was a common misconception that their kind were nocturnal and that sunlight would kill them. While darkness was preferable, sunlight didn’t hurt them. In fact, being awake and active during the daytime helped them blend in with the general human population.
Elizabeth again wondered why Barrett was doing this for her. Surely, he was up to something. Barrett, John’s Maker, was always up to something. He’d been trying to recruit Elizabeth for decades.
“And if you get hungry, we have certain amenities available,” the desk clerk paused and looked at Elizabeth and John knowingly.
Elizabeth knew what that meant. There was a room where humans who had a vampire kink would offer themselves up for a snack. She wasn’t hungry for that. She’d learned how to control her impulses a long time ago. Séan taught her well.
Their room had two queen-size beds, a television, and a mini-fridge. John sprawled on one bed, took the TV remote, and began channel surfing. He stopped at MTV, which was playing the latest Pearl Jam video.
Elizabeth sat on the other bed, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. A sense of melancholy weighed down on her like a ram in a metal compactor. It wasn’t just the purpose of her visit that contributed to her sadness. She missed Séan. The loneliness seemed to be more acute now. Séan Ó hAllmhuráin or O’Halloran had been her lover and her Maker.
“I’m gonna feed,” John announced, interrupting Elizabeth’s thoughts.
“Don’t kill anyone,” Elizabeth said flatly.
John made a face at her and left the room, leaving Elizabeth alone with her thoughts.
Elizabeth didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. She tried to shake the melancholy that had her in its iron grip. Rather than sit and watch television, she went over to the desk. The desk held a coffee maker, the room service menu, and a guidebook to local attractions and activities during the fall. It was the guidebook that caught Elizabeth’s attention. She picked up the glossy booklet and thumbed through it, dipping into its contents. She wasn’t into apple picking and didn’t want to visit a pumpkin patch. When she reached the section “Historical East Haverhill,” she paused. This might help her with the purpose of her trip.
“‘Historical East Haverhill,’” she read aloud. “‘Experience the living history of the Puritan settlement as its residents lived it.’”
Elizabeth already knew how the Puritans lived. Her family had been Puritans. Her grandfather, Bartholomew Warrington, immigrated to the colonies with other like-minded people to practice their religion freely.
When John returned to the room, Elizabeth thrust the booklet in his face and pointed at the entry. “This is where I start,” she said.
“You were a Puritan?” John asked in surprise. Then he laughed. “I never pictured you as the uptight religious type.”
“I’m not. I mean, I wasn’t. It was one of the many ways I was a disappointment to my family.”
“Like how?”
“Well, questioning things was one way. That I was twenty-two, and a spinster was another.”
“I find it hard to believe that you were a spinster,” John said.
Elizabeth ignored the flattery. “In that time and place, no decent man wanted a wife who would not be obedient to him. I didn’t have it in me to be quiet and do as I was told.”
After breakfast, the duo set out for the Haverhill historical site. They paid for their admission and set out to explore the area. Elizabeth thought the Historical Society
did a good job of recreating a Puritan settlement. The buildings were accurate down to the last detail. The historical re-enactors were very good, even using the vernacular of the time.
During the presentation at the jail, Elizabeth said to the re-enactor, “I know that during this time, particularly in Salem, people held witch trials and accused women of witchcraft. Did this ever happen in Haverhill?” Elizabeth already knew the answer. She wanted to hear what the historical re-enactor would say.
The young man playing the part of jailor looked momentarily off-guard. He quickly recovered and said, “There was no official record of any witch trials in Haverhill.”
As they were exiting the site, Elizabeth said, “The jailor lied.”
“What?” John exclaimed. “How do you know?”
“Well, technically, he told the truth. See, they accused me of witchcraft, but I never went to trial.”
She had John’s full attention. He stopped walking and turned to face her. “Someone accused you of witchcraft?”
Elizabeth nodded. “Goodwife Arnold accused me of putting an enchantment on her husband. Her husband often looked at young women inappropriately and said inappropriate things to them. Instead of punishing him, it was always the girl’s fault. ‘She must have done something to him to make him act that way.’
“Since I was a pariah, it was easy for Goody Arnold to make the accusation. Because they believed her, they arrested me.”
John thought about this. Then he asked, “So why weren’t you ever tried? I understand that the witchcraft trials were sham hearings, and they always found the women guilty.”
“I met Séan,” Elizabeth said softly. “I had two choices: undergo a sham trial and they would burn me at the stake or drown me for a crime I didn’t commit, or he would turn me into a vampire, and I would gain eternal life. I chose the latter. He broke me out of jail, and he took me to his cabin, where he turned me. I stayed with him until his Final Death. We were together for two hundred twenty-four years.” Elizabeth felt melancholy draping her again.
“When was his Final Death?”
“1916. Séan wanted to go back to Ireland, where he was from. This was during the Troubles. You remember those?” John nodded. He was still human back then.
“There were vampire hunters around, and one of them got Séan. I managed to get away. To this day, I feel guilty.”
“Guilty about what?”
“Existing.”
Back at the hotel, John immediately went to feed. Elizabeth had the urge to feed, but she stifled it. She didn’t like emotional feeding. It always made her feel guilty because she was using a human’s blood to fill an emotional void. Séan had taught her that feeding was to fill the physical need for blood, just as humans ate to fulfill their bodies’ need for food. Nothing more, nothing less.
Séan taught her many things about being a vampire, including how to live without. They lived together deep in the woods, far from any settlements, to avoid arousing suspicion. They could go for months without seeing another human being. While they could eat food like humans, it wasn’t the same as blood.
Séan also taught Elizabeth to control her impulses. She should never feed in anger, sadness, or even joy. He allowed her to feed in anger once, so she knew what it felt like. She picked Goodwife Arnold as her victim. Elizabeth drained the woman dry.
As time passed, the settlement grew into a village. The Puritans fell out of favor. People came into the area and started farming. Séan and Elizabeth moved further into the wilderness until, one day, they ended up leaving Massachusetts altogether. It wasn’t safe, especially near Boston. The colonists were revolting against the Crown.
They moved around the fledgling nation as Mr. and Mrs. O’Halloran. Séan always bristled when he heard the Anglicized version of his last name. When there was no more wilderness, they had to invent a cover for them to live among the general population. Time would pass, and they’d have to move again. They never aged.
John came back into the room. Elizabeth watched TV. “What are you watching?”
“Some show called Rescue 911,” Elizabeth replied. Then she said, “I want to go to the cemetery tomorrow to see my family’s graves.”
“Why?” John asked.
“I feel like I have to.”
“Sure,” John said after studying Elizabeth. “We can do that.”
There was a slight hitch in their plans. East Haverhill had three cemeteries, but of course, when Elizabeth lived there, only one existed. She was unsure where to begin. Which cemetery was the oldest? There were listings in the phone book, but not one proclaimed it to be the oldest cemetery in town. She thought about trying to see if she could get a sense of place by going there, but she dismissed that idea because she had had no sense of place since arriving here. This made her homesickness more acute.
It was a cool, sunny late fall day. To cover her nervousness, Elizabeth fiddled with the car radio until she found the oldies station. She cranked the volume up and sang along with the Supremes.
“So what did you do in the Sixties?” John asked. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the radio and Elizabeth.
Elizabeth turned down the volume. “Which Sixties?” she asked. “Be more specific.”
“Any Sixties,” John replied. He could tell she was nervous, and he wanted to help her calm down. Her singing left a lot to be desired.
“Well,” she began. “During the 1760s, I lived in the wilderness. We were mostly alone, but we’d get the occasional fur trader or explorer. We’d let them stay at our place, we traded goods, but if they took advantage of me, then, well, we’d scare the shit out of them. If they were violent, they met their end.”
“What about the 1860s?”
“I was a Civil War nurse. They needed nurses so badly that they’d take anyone.”
“That must have been a feast for you, all that blood.”
“No,” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t use it to feed. I helped end the suffering of some soldiers, but only if they asked.” She went on. “Have you ever heard a grown man wail in pain?”
John nodded, then he shuddered. “In the Great War.” He remembered some of his comrades who died.
They fell silent. Then Elizabeth said, “In the 1960s, I was a mod living in London. I enjoyed myself. What a difference a hundred years makes.”
Soon they pulled up at a cemetery. “There should be an office,” John said. “They should be able to tell you how old the oldest graves are here.”
They had no luck at this cemetery, which was the “newest” cemetery, with graves dating back to the 1800s.
The second cemetery they visited had a Puritan section. The director was helpful in giving them directions to it.
Some headstones were barely legible. Wind and time had worn away some of the writing. Elizabeth walked up and down the rows, with John trailing her, looking for any stone that said Warrington on it.
Soon, she found her grandfather’s headstone. She barely remembered him or her grandmother. She ambled down the row, reading the inscriptions carefully. Elizabeth kept walking until she found her parents’ graves.
Elizabeth stood in front of them. It seemed surreal to see the markers. She did not know how long her parents had lived. It seemed her mother died a few years after Elizabeth became a vampire. Her father lived well into his eighties.
She did not expect to see her sisters’ headstones since they would have been buried with their husbands. But the next stone gave her pause.
It was a plain stone like all the other Puritan headstones, but it was the writing that gave her reason to pause.
Elizabeth Warrington
1670-1692
Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. Surprise took her. No, she was shocked. Why would her parents put up a headstone for her when she was the pariah of the family? Why would they do this when they constantly reminded her of what a disappointment and a burden she was to them?
The air suddenly felt cold. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and the tears became sobs. John enveloped her in a hug. He let her cry on his shoulder. He didn’t understand what was going through Elizabeth’s head and why she had to return here.
Finally, he said, “Let’s go.” Elizabeth offered no resistance.
On the ride back to the hotel, Elizabeth was quiet. John tried to start a conversation, but she gave monosyllabic answers. He gave up and drove back to the hotel in silence.
When they arrived at the hotel, Elizabeth went to the feeding area. She knew she would hate herself later for emotional feeding, but she would deal with those feelings later.
The human proffered his wrist to Elizabeth, and she bit into the flesh. The coppery sweetness hit her tongue. It felt good.
She went back up to the room when she finished. John was watching American MTV again. This time, the video playing was a song by The Cure.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Not really,” Elizabeth replied. She wanted to tell him about her reaction to seeing her own grave, but she couldn’t quite find the words.
When she said as much to John, he replied, “Try me.”
“It was weird. And a shock,” she explained.
“How so?”
“My parents always reminded me of what a disappointment I was to them,” she said. “I figured they’d be glad to be rid of the burden that was me. I didn’t expect a headstone.”
“They still loved you, Elizabeth,” John said. “That’s why they did it.”
“I wonder when they did it,” she mused. “How long did they wait before they decided I was ‘dead’?”
John didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Are you satisfied with what you found?”
Elizabeth looked confused for a moment. “Do you mean am I not homesick?” She paused. “That’s a tricky question to answer. So much has changed in the past three hundred years. This place doesn’t feel familiar. Not in the way London still feels familiar to me, even with things changing over the decades. I guess I had to be here the whole time for it to be familiar. I just feel lost here.”
“There must be something to the saying ‘You can’t go home again’,” John said.
“Haverhill is not my home. London is,” Elizabeth replied gently.
“Then let’s go home.”