STRANGE FAMILY REUNION... 4/9/15

There is no balcony. Pre war buildings didn't ordinarily have them... Might have been a terrace here and there to mark off a set-back, or something like that, but no balconies... not as a rule. though we do have a common area up on the roof... an observation deck, they called it. They had deb dances up there years ago. I can still hear the music... Lester Lanin, Peter Duchin and all that. Those days are gone. But they still keep the place up nice...flagstone paving... built in bars... a band platform. Residents go up on warm nights to gaze at the heavens. Mr. Levitt has a telescope. I looked it up on line (yes, I know how to do that)..... 'Fit for a university astronomy lab' it said. Cost him thirty two hundred and sixty five dollars.... a four foot long reflecting model, with the actual, small viewing tube along side. Frank Jessup played bar tender. He stocked it, so he ought to run it. The Perlmutters brought up all kinds of cheeses, smoked salmon and fancy little breads and crackers. What's his names nephew played Spanish guitar. I liked those nights.  We saw Jupiter's four Galilean moons and The Great Galaxy of Andromeda....

One night I saw Johnny Jump Up, Center City's resident ghoul. It was late and quite close to the Hunters' Moon. I went up with Miss Tanerjee, the Jessup's au pair  girl. Quite beautiful, from Kashmir, you know. Looked like Merle Oberon. I wonder how many lame brains remember her today? Young people know crap now. If they don't see it on Extra! or Access Hollywood it never happened. What common shit-heads. I never saw a more self-limiting generation. But I digress...

Johnny Jump Up was gnawing on a victim... mostly blood-slicked bones by that point. Female, from the look of her. Flesh all gone, save for gristle and greasy, little scraps. Face was intact, except for the nose. He was crunching on that. The au pair girl froze. I was afraid she was going to scream, but growing up in Northern India during the partition steeled her to such things. Not ghouls eating corpses, but blood, I mean.  And the moonlight softened the look of it all too. So we crouched there, maybe thirty five or forty feet from the carnage, watching the monster eat.... White, cadaverous face.. lank, greasy black hair... so skinny he was, perched over the remains on all fours.... tight, black, gabardine suit. Don't know where all the meat went, though. Had to be maybe eighty pounds of it. Belly stuck out a little bit, but not like what you'd think. And the ripping sound every time he tore off a jaw full. Licking the bones and all. Hypnotic... That's what it was... hypnotic. There's a lot of magic floating around this town, even me....

I had a 'visitation' the other night. Thought I was going to die... Couldn't breathe... Couldn't swallow... The strange thing is, it didn't bother me. It felt peaceful, like a big, cool, dark void. I could taste it. Hell, I was half in it.

Then she came... this woman and a little girl. They said something... Put something inside me. They saved me, if that's the right word.

And now I'm up here on the roof top in a cold, damp April night, looking out at the city and thinking. I know who that woman was. Hell, I still think of her as a girl.... That woman was my granddaughter.... That woman was Sarah. Did she think I would not know?

And I have to go find her.....

I have to make things right....

I have to find out what's going on...

Oh, God, I have a second chance...

<more next time>

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