The Book of Sarah

I am afraid to leave this house. It's me. It's Sarah. I know he talks about me, so you must know who I am. He's sleeping now, at the bottom of his flower-filled pit. The Old Woman is down there in the cellar with him. No, she's not in the pit. She'd like to be, but she's not. She's burning the trash in the furnace. They never put out any type of trash or garbage. Everything gets burned. Large items, like worn pieces of furniture, are chopped up and then burned. The outside world must not find anything. Who knows what they could learn with the scientific tools they have today? I am writing this, not that wilkravitz 'familiar' character he has. Tomas told me about this site and I logged on. I have to do something to calm my nerves. He did let me have a beautiful, old, miner's cut, diamond ring though. They have treasure stashed all over this place. I don't know where it is, but the Old Woman knows. I can tell. She gave me a fried egg sandwich a little while ago. I think the toast was made with moldy bread. She must have known. She had to. I don't think anyone can get in here. The front door is solid steel. You know the kind, with the chipped, green industrial paint and all. The windows are relatively small and covered with bars. He tried to get the decorative kind, but they're still bars. It doesn't even look like a house from the outside. You would think it was a small wharehouse or something like that. It is as if we are at the end of an urban, brick, box canyon. All the other windows and doors on this little alley were sealed up long ago. Two rough looking guys (more familiars, I am told) patrol the opening where the alley meets the street. I can see them if I peek through the heavy, velvet drapes and twist my neck just so. There might even be more than two of them, but I can only see two. I should really try to sleep a little. You know how it is. I'm used to working the graveyard shift in my shop and my benefactor keeps the same hours too. I think he loves me. I do. I really do. Yet what does that mean? And if his stories are true, he's the only family I have. I'm a twentynine year old emotional basket case, living with a 'grandfather' who appears to be younger than me. Oh yes, and he's a vampire too. He's also somewhat of a writer. I found an old handwritten journal in the library. I read some of it. I'm paraphrasing, but this is what it said - 'If the Caliphate of Cordoba in Old Spain had not fallen and if the land had not fragmented into countless, waring principalities, I would have been content to remain there. But the Muslims, our fellow proclaimers of The Unity, turned on us, killing many innocent souls in the streets and in the souks. They blamed us for certain Trinitarian advances in the north. As a result, in the year of Divine Creation 4852, what Trinitarians call 1091, fundamentalists from across the Straight in Morroco, streamed into our beloved Al Andaluz, in an effort to bolster the faltering Muslims and turn back the Trinitarians. They forced their hard, austere ways upon us all. Jews and the resident Trinitarian minority, used to generations of relaxed brotherhood and acceptance, were now persecuted, tortured and forced to leave. It was too much for even a vampire to bear. It was the Crusaders in France all over again. My mortal family had already left. The villa in Seville was empty. The Free State of Granada (we had holdings there as well) held on by a hair, but it was not the same. And so I left to ply my trade upon another shore...'. That's all I could read. The Old Woman was breathing down my back. She doesn't like me to touch things. So I carefuuly closed the worn, leather volume and put it back.