THE BOOK OF GHOULS ..... 3/5/13

He came to me. Sometimes I walk the streets late at night too. Edith gives me a hoo-doo. You know. Doesn't make me invisible, just not noticeable. Lasts for about five hours. And I saw him in a tree right inside the Eighteenth Street border of Rittenhouse Square, all stretched out on a thick, lower bough like a panther. Looked like he'd already eaten.... all sleek and warm and satisfied. He tipped his hat and gestured toward a bench. I, like a dope, pointed to my sternum and said, 'me?' Johnny Jump Up nodded and smiled. Well, it was sort of a smile. 

I took a seat. He silently vaulted down beside me. Now ghouls have a certain smell, much different than vampires. Blood drinkers really don't have an aroma. I think the magic, their kind of magic, does it. But flesh eaters, although they do possess an elusive necromancy of their own, retain a gory tang. Regular mortals might not notice. But after all the things I've been through with them (the vampires, I mean) I am hardly that.

And Johnny began to communicate. He moved his lips, mouthing words, that I did not so much as hear, but sense. He asked my name. I told him. He asked how I served them. I told about the blog. He smiled. His eyes looked merry. He 'said' - Blog for me??? .... I saw the pointy teeth and nodded. What else could I do? But he knew that. This creature could shred me in an instant. Ever see an ant kill a victim? Ever see a spider kill a fly. A burst of quick, staccato bites. A manic frenzy. Thrashing legs. A ruptured carapace and death.... or hopefully death. Sometimes it takes a little longer.

The ghoul smelled me. He leaned forward and sniffed my cheek...my hair... the front of my left shoulder (I think he was going for my arm pit.). I froze. Then he chuckled ( like a deep, rumbling, purr) and playfully poked my stomach. 

That's how I met him. That's how I met Johnny Jump Up. And I wish I never did.....

Even the disembodied spirits who come around to narrate from time to time, want no part of this. I saw the rats snuggling 'round his feet. Not a lot of them, but two. He called them Rozenkrantz & Gilderstern. I think that's what he said. And he dangled his long, thin arms, letting them nibble dried blood from his claw-like nails..... the remnants of a nurse snatched from the cobbles, right by the door to Doc Watson's Pub. No one knows she's gone yet. Who searches the rooftops for gore? And what could I tell the cops?

A loud gang of college kids crossed over from a club near Locust Street. You know how much noise they can make... drunk and all.... But Johnny Jump Up was gone and I never saw him leave. 

Lucky for me, Edith's hoo-doo still worked, 'cause kids can be so nasty......

Then I got up, walked through the stage set darkness and went back to the town house with the vampires where it was safe...

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HOW THE GHOUL SURPASSES THE ZOMBIE ..... 3/5/13

It is written that they love to confound travelers. They hunger for the flesh of frightened people, caught far from a safe warm place. I speak of the ghoul, a creature with a blood lust far in excess of the addle-brained zombie and a monstrous clarity equal to, if not beyond most night-folk (known to you as vampires).

One inhabits our own dark places, sliding 'mongst the blackest shadows and coldest dreams. Conrad saw him last night. He saw the eyes. He saw the skin. He smelled the flesh. And even a vampire knew fear.

They call him Johnny Jump Up and have since the seventeenth century. Some say he's come and gone more than once. A missionary julienned by the natives, in 'the death of a thousand cuts,' or a hapless  victim of consumption, buried alive in a chill, damp grave.  There are those who will take you to a crypt lost among the dim mossy lanes of Laurel Hill Cemetery and swear that it's his. But true ghouls need no permanent address. They squeeze in anywhere.... a dumpster down an alley..... a niche behind a wall.... under the bed of a blind, young man.... in caskets with the dead.

Each has a talent, a special ability for which they are known. Some speak every language, low and soft and  warm. Others serve powerful jinn and profit from it. Our own razor-toothed gentleman is a leaper. He can get you on the third floor and the forth floor as well. Some nights he scurries over roof tops, making off with children still wrapped in their bedclothes.`

A painfully thin man, he is, with a tall top hat, such as the gentry wore oh so many years ago. His suit a fine, wool serge.... trim and tight and black. His linen, ghostly white. The ensemble occasionally drips  blood. Ghouls do love their food, after all. And in case you don't know it, human flesh tastes like ham.

He hides in doorways, waiting for victims to race passed. Tonight it's a boy on a bicycle, silently zipping down wee hour streets. You know that high pitched hum the spokes make? And the fiend steps out behind him, straightens his neck cloth, stows his hat and leaps forth. No 'X' Games, snow boarder vaults as far. And in twelve heartbeats he has him. A sharp, hard push. The bike skids. The boy falls. Perhaps he grunts. But even before the bike stops sliding, he's hoisted over a bony shoulder and streaking into the sky.

And there, on the rooftops, he takes him. A fast bite to the face... Crunch, the nose is gone.... Forearms thrown up in defense... Rip! Bones stripped bare.... Pants come off (futile kicks mean nothing) and so do the genitals. The heights are slick with blood.  And the steam comes up on cue. Whimpering... Sometimes they cry. He digs his claws into the fat, quivering tongue and tears it from it's moorings, scarfing it down like a plump, warm slug.  Poor boy. So strong. So shocked. So desperate.  And his lidless eyes (well, one anyway) still see, as the cadaverous monster bites into his belly, rips open the muscle and savors the entrails, taking the heart... and the life, last of all.

Then he stands up, licks his lips, shudders and sighs. There is no blue flame to clean things up. He is no vampire. Such magic eludes him. But he has other tricks... A tiny whisper in an unknown tongue... A subtle sign and the rats appear, pouring out from the  nooks and crannies to feast on his leavings. Even the bones disappear.

Johnny Jump Up is out there. The vampires know it. And now you do to. A solitary killer melding with the night and hiding like a spider....

Are you curious? Get a friend. Drive around. Go see. After midnight is good, but third hour's best.  Pick empty streets and quiet lanes. 

Just don't unlock the door.

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