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The nearly immortal being known as 'Jonathon speaks -
I've done this every year at this time for centuries. I hope you are a regular visitor. Then you'll know. The house is locked up. Sarah is in her cubicle. Annie sleeps. Conrad, Edith, all of them are snug in their places. I sit in the 'little' library. The draperies are drawn. By the low warm light of a small, Chinese, porcelain lamp I count out coins, large, heavy, yellow, golden coins, Venetian ducats.... a 'vampire' tradition. I measure them out upon a lap desk... five to a sack...(sighs)... A 'familiar' (mortal helper) makes them up for me... small, dark blue velvet, drawstring sacks trimmed with thin golden rope around the top. In other lands, at other times, others made them, but the form has not changed in more than three hundred and fifty years... I'm told, in this time and in this city a gold, Venetian ducat brings more than two thousand American dollars. What's that come to, twelve thousand for each sack...
When ten are filled, I shall go out on the streets and in the wee hours before the light, I shall distribute them where they will accomplish good things... Our little boy ghost watches me. He came with the house. We've only been here for a few years. Oh, there were other townhouses and a manor up in Chestnut Hill once or twice, but the poor, tiny, polio victim has been here since the nineteen thirties. He likes the 'little' library too. Plays with a set of old, painted, pot metal soldiers on the rug, a hand drawn deck of Hungarian cards and an etched brass top . Sometimes he manipulates them quite well. Death cured his polio, thank God. Other nights he just looks at them. Abilities are not always constant in the supernatural world, especially during the first few decades. Powers lapse, tea cups break. Parakeets talk Romanian. Old Ladies whistle the Barcarole. You know how it is.
Now I am off... a thousand year old soul (well, a thousand years old on Earth) with a young man's body. Most take me for anywhere from eighteen to twenty eight, depending on how they view things. There's a two nights' old icy glaze on the streets. I dress warm and go out, the gold coins, in their velvet sacks, snug in the deep, zippered pockets of my black puffy coat... A vampire with a black, zip-up, puffy coat. They'd drum me out of the union..... Ah, the songs I hear in my head... The Tales Of Hoffman... Rhymes of a Quayside Bawd. Bet you don't know that one... from Paris in the 14 30's.
(he leaves, locks the door behind him and silently hops down the steps... a gray, tiger stripped tabby falls in behind. they turn the corned and are off)
Mortals fear these long nights. It's instinctive and stamped upon the breed. Imagine how dark it was before all the tick-tock niceties we have now. Utter blackness. Maybe moonlit nights were a bit different, but then you'd see the shadows. Then you'd know what was out there... not exactly what it is, but you'd know it was coming.... That's why we have festivals now, parties to lure back the sun and then celebrate when it returns. No more slow, creeping death, but new birth and ever increasing life.
Soon I will slip 'life' into the pockets of desperate people. There's a handwritten note tucked into each drawstring sack --- Please contact Leverett & Reed for instructions and advice in the redemption of these coins..... I've dealt with them since seventeen fifty one, a most reputable counting house. Now they call themselves 'investment counselors.' There's an old gentleman who handles antiques. In the New World, Philadelphia is the mother lode. I'm sure they'll do well. That twelve thousand dollars per sack mentioned earlier was just gold value. Genuine Venetian ducats are highly collectible. Ask the Buccaneers of Hispanola ...
Now please forgive me. I have lives to change and people to see. Well, most of them will be sleeping. That makes it more special. I know some of you heard about the night that started all this... I trot it out every year 'round this time.
Google --- Indulge me a bit... Vampire Wonderland... it'll be there...
To think if I went up in flames right now, my tale... all, well, by now close to one million words of it would go on for centuries, suspended in this ether they call 'the cloud.'...
That, my friends, is immortality too...
<hasta la proxima>
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