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“Oh, my goodness,” Stede says. “You’re already here! Come in, come in!”
He opens the door wide, allowing the crew inside. The vampire himself remains fixed in the frame, just slightly to the left of center. Already, it’s obvious that he’s not quite right: his clothes are wildly outdated, his flesh is drained of color, and his manner of speech is nearly as though he’s speaking another language.
“Do you want me to get started right away?” Stede asks. There’s no pause where he waits for an answer; he just launches right into speaking again, looking into the camera to say, “Good morning! Or, this is our morning. Good night, I suppose!”
“You don’t have to look into the camera,” says the producer to the left of the lens Stede’s talking directly into. “Just do what you’d do naturally. Pretend we’re not even here.”
Stede smiles, glancing into the camera lens again before he looks just as quickly away.
“It’s a bit difficult to pretend you’re not even here,” he tells them. “Cameras are such fascinating things. You know, to me, they still feel so new. We never had anything like that when I was a human. I wish we could’ve, though! Oh, you wouldn’t believe what we saw back then. The world was just spectacular. I think it’s gotten quite small lately, but perhaps I’m just old.”
As he speaks, he leads the documentary crew through the front room of his house.
Just like the outside, the inside of this place is impossibly old, as if it’s been plucked up out of the past and dropped down here on this lot. Despite its obvious age, though, it’s also impossibly well taken care of. The high ceilings boast massive chandeliers, lit already with dozens of actual candles, flickering with glowing flames. The long walls are covered in so many portraits and paintings and photographs and pictures that it’s a surprise they don’t sag from the weight.
The furniture in this front room is fixed around a fireplace, also roaring already, giving this room a bright and warm glow, an internal daylight in opposition to the night outside.
Guiding the crew up a massive spiral staircase, he informs them, clearly trying not to look at the camera, “I’m usually the first one up. When I wake up, I’ll get myself ready for the night, then I’ll wake Ed up. After I do a bit of tidying, he’s usually ready to be woken up again, and if I make breakfast, he’ll definitely be up by the third time.”
There’s a brief moment before one of the producers asks, “What’s breakfast for you guys?”
Stede flashes a sharp grin over his shoulder. “You’ll see.”
There are countless doors along the hallway on the next level he brings them to. Stede motions to them, each and every one heavy and ornate and carved of dark wood, strange faces set into the swirls and whorls the cameras linger on.
“Now,” Stede says, “I’m not responsible for waking any of them up. I used to, but it was mutually decided that everyone can sleep until they please. You can probably tell from the size of the house that we’ve got quite a few people in here— Wait, you’re not going to be showing this to any municipal governments or anything, are you?”
“It’s just going to be a regular documentary,” the producers assures him.
“You’ll have to remove that bit, then,” Stede says. “I’m not quite sure we’re zoned for having this many people on property. Then again, what can they really do to stop me?”
He laughs, though none of the crew does. One of the cameramen glances sidelong at a producer.
“But,” Stede continues, “I still always wake Ed up. He’d sleep straight through otherwise, and he’s never bothered by me.”
Stopping at the end of the hallway, the crew realizes they’ve been brought to perhaps the largest and most ornate door from a hall filled with them. It wouldn’t appear out of place in an old horror movie, something that could easily fit right into a Universal film, Frankenstein’s monster waiting just on the other side— or perhaps, more aptly, Dracula and his wives.
Rapping his knuckles on the door lightly, Stede says, “Hello, darling! Good evening! How did you sleep?”
The room within is cloaked in complete darkness, bathed in black. The crew scrambles to get lights on, switching modes into night, trying to get a good shot of whoever— or, they’re concerned, whatever— is inside that room that a vampire would refer to as ‘darling.’
A low grumble comes before there’s a groan, muffled as if filtered through some thick veil or coming from another room, somehow.
Stede disappears into that darkness. The camera’s thin light illuminates him just barely as he steps forward and pushes open the hinges on a coffin so large it seems as though it could fit two corpses. The substantial lid swings upwards, coming to a creaking stop, and Stede leans inside, his hand stroking over something near to the place the small, soft pillows should be.
“How have you slept, my love?” Stede coos into the coffin.
“Mm,” comes that groaning voice again. “Too early.”
Stede laughs. “It’s actually quite late, Ed, darling.”
Ed— the thing inside the coffin— laughs, a gravelly sort of sound, low and rough with sleep.
Extending a hand into the coffin, Stede receives a hand wrapped around his in return, and he assists them in standing to their feet.
The crew fixes the camera on the vampire that stands next to Stede now. Ed is about the same size as him, though he’s got a long mess of sleep-tangled dark curls, struck through with silver, and a beard to rival his hair in length, covering most of his face. Rich, dark eyes are set above that beard, though they’re fixed on Stede, apparently unseeing in regards to the crew, so sleepily focused he doesn’t even seem to notice their presence.
Instead, he just pours himself over Stede, arms draping down him, face burying into his throat, a soft rumble going from his body into Stede’s.
Smiling, Stede reaches up, threading his fingers through Ed’s hair, greeting him again with a quiet, “Hello, my love.”
“Morning,” Ed murmurs back to him. He kisses Stede’s cheek, then smiles, burrowing closer into him. “When are those freaky people supposed to get here?”
Stede laughs, a high, nervous thing, and tells him, “They’re right there—”
“What?” Ed cuts him off, head lifting, squinting towards the cameras. The cameraman behind the lens he’s looking directly into takes a step backwards into the bedroom’s doorway, bumping into the corner of a piece of furniture he can’t see in the shadows. “Oh, fucking shit. You could’ve told me.”
“I believe I just did,” Stede replies. “And you’ve only been up for a minute, so don’t you go blaming me.”
Ed’s eyes keep tracking over the crew. They seem less human, looking at these people rather than Stede, their warmth draining a bit when he’s looking in their direction.
After a long moment, he finally removes his eyes from them, receiving a near-collective sigh of relief and relaxing of tension in the process.
“I’ll be down when I’m dressed,” Ed informs him— and him alone— before he disappears back into the coffin, tugging the lid shut behind him again, leaving Stede alone beside it.
He’s apparently unbothered by this behavior, because he just laughs and says, “Well, that’s my darling Edward, as you’ve seen.”
“How long has he been a vampire?” a producer asks.
“Oh, just about as long as I have,” Stede tells them. “Give or take an hour or so. It was a very strange night, I’ll tell you that much. But, I can’t tell you all about that now! Your film has to build up to a moment like that. It’s a very exciting reveal, you know. Movies should have more very exciting reveals!”
When he speaks, it’s almost impossible to see him as a vampire. He just seems like… sort of a strange fellow, funny in both a peculiar way and a humorous sort of way, though most definitely odd.
Now and then, though, the crew gets a glimpse of his too-bright eyes, or his too-sharp teeth, or the inhuman edge of him shimmering like heat off pavement, and they realize that it’s actually impossible to forget that he’s a vampire.
“Come along, then,” Stede tells them. “We’ve got a lovely guest downstairs for breakfast. Maybe you folks know him!”
One cameraman hurries to keep up with him, making sure that Stede stays in frame. The other members of the crew look backwards to their coordinator for today’s filming, all at once, waiting for an instruction or a direction or a sign that they can go forward with their subject without falling victim to their subject.
After a long beat, she tells them, “Just— follow him. I’ll keep you safe.”
They’re not sure what good she can do, but they trail after the vampire down to his kitchen, lights on and mics up and cameras out, to follow him through the rest of his day— or, rather, the night.