indulge him a bit~~ TOMAS shares an Old Original Hanukah Tale.. 11/22/14

The life-eater, Tomas, also known as Jonathon, sits with some surviving children, under a hedgerow, snug in a burrow once belonging to a long gone ground squirrel. Although it is roughly the time of year we call February in our world, a soft snowfall puts him in mind of another place and another time. Do these strange, foreign children understand him? Not every word. Earthly speech is so new to them. But they all absorb the heart of it.

Tomas, also known as Jonathon speaks, as he sits by a tiny fire (basically a collection of embers) with the children and their 'parents.' He tells them a tale originally created for two young ones in London, three hundred and fifty years ago, just prior to his crossing , hidden in a chest, deep in the hold of The Good Ship Welcome.

Jews had just been allowed back into the land, after a centuries long absence going back to The Crusades. But their numbers were small and winters were cold. So he came into a nursery one night, rather like Peter Pan, though that miraculous creature had not yet been revealed.

And Jonathon said ~

One child, a boy, was still awake. And by the low orange glow in the grate, he saw the long, heavy draperies billow into the room, as the being known as Jonathon sublimated through the tall, palladian window, coming to rest upon the thick 'Turkey' carpet.

Sitting upright, the young lad, in a quiet voice, asked, "What manner of genii are you!?"

I said. " No manner, boy. I hail from another part of God's enchanted wood." Perhaps my referencing the Devine soothed him. For he hugged his knees, waiting for me to go on. 

I knew what night this was. It was The Season of The Rededication, the First Night of Hanukah, which is merely the Hebrew word for that event. And I knew how it felt being a stranger in a strange land. Perhaps they did not celebrate at all, as his father was busy setting up the basics of a community. Small holidays, beloved by children are easy to forget.

"Know ye this night, boy?" I said. ... He nodded.... "Then tell me."..... In a child's voice he answered, "This is First Light, the first night of Hanukah," and he sighed. Obviously the occasion had not come up to his standards.....

Then the other young one, little brother to the first, woke too and he moaned, frightened by an unexpected personage (me) in their midst. His brother said, "No, Jacob. Don't be afraid. Come to me."... The boy, little more than a toddler, quickly padded over to his brother's bed and jumped in, giving me an exceptionally wide berth as he zipped by. They huddled under the covers. I heard the big one whisper something... "He's like a genii, but not a genii," he said.... The little one said, "Did he give you any presents?"... His brother shook his head and whispered, "No, be quiet. Let him talk. I think he wants to talk."

So I went on.... "I come to you from far away."... "Amsterdam?" said the big one..... "No," I answered,"Much farther than that."... "Where?" asked the little brother.... "From far beyond the great River Sambation, a magical stream, quite passable all days but the Sabbath, when it flows with a frothy torrent none can withstand. For on that day, all boatmen must rest. And even the fish lay quiet with their fishlings in snug, little riverbank caves, listening to fishy prayers.

"What's on the other side?" whispered the big one...... "Mountains, boy, mountains. The highest of which is Har (Hebrew for height, or mountain) Hanukiah, the Mountain of Hanukah."..... "They have a mountain for it?" asked the little brother..... I nodded... "A tall, snowy peak. Unicorns nest there. And right by the summit is the House of Papa Mattathias, the steadfast priest who refused to forget The Lord in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Do you know these names?" I asked... They nodded, for theirs was a home well steeped in Scripture.

"What's the house like?" said the big one... "Warm and tight, with strong, stone walls the color of doves. And bright, little windows looking out upon the clean frosty valley below. And think not that Papa Mattathias lives all alone, for he does not. Two and twenty cherubs are always with him. One for each letter of The Holy Script. They help him in his work and he takes care of them. Every morning he asks. 'How goes it in the world?' and the cherubim fly off upon beautiful unicorns to find out. But do not look for them. For no mortal can see them pass. In that way, Papa Mattathias learns. 

"What does he do, up on the mountain, all day long?" queried the little one, who seemed quite concerned by it all.... "He fashions things for those in need. Blankets for the poor and plows for farmers. Prayer books for the faithful and parchment for scribes. But he never forgets the children. And every year, throughout The Feast of The Rededication, he sends them cheer in many ways."

"You mean he remembers us? He has something for us? Me and my brother, I mean"

I nodded... "Oh yes. He remembers you. And according to the cherubim, you've been very, very good."

"Are you a cherub?" asked the big one.

What could I say? I'd Hanukahed myself into a corner. So I said, "Yes."...... They inhaled in expectation. Then the little one said."What?"..... "What do you mean 'What?'" I asked....."What did he send us? What does Papa Mattathias have for us?"

Thinking fast, I reached into my waistband and pulled out my purse, just a soft, suede, pouch really, tied to my belt with a braided cord, but filled with golden ducats from far off Venice. Vampires favor Venetian coinage. Don't ask me why. There were eight of them, large and bright and yellow. A fortune in that land..... "He sent these for you," I said, "to buy playthings and sweetmeats and whistles and kites."

How delighted they were. I had to quiet them lest they giggled too loud. Then I put the heavy coins back into the purse, pulled it closed and hung it from a bedpost where they'd find it in the morning.

After, I regaled them with tales of pirates and mermaids in the warm waters of southern seas, for you know I am quite well versed in those things, till they drifted off to sleep. 

When they awoke, I was gone. Though a being such as I has ways to keep in touch. The eldest looked about in a panic, fearing it was all a dream. But the soft suede pouch was still there. 

Needless to say, Hanukah was very good that year. They bought many things and played dreydel (spinning top game) for the finest currants and almonds from the finest costermonger (like a grocer) in all of London.

Did their parents believe them? I suppose they did. Miracles sometimes happen. What else could they think? The children told their friends and the grown-ups told their neighbors, til everyone knew the tale. And if parents had to take on the role of Papa Mattathias and his cherubs, so be it. Truth comes in many boxes.

On other nights, during The Feast of Christmas, I made similar visits and told similar tales to other children.

You see, the details might differ, but the story stays the same.

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May the Season of Miracles dawn brightly for you and yours.

Tiny Tim said it best -- God bless us every one.

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WHAT PASSES FOR FEBRUARY IN THE REMNANTS OF THE DOG WORLD... 11/21/14

The winter season in this place is almost over. I can tell. There are signs. Nine foot crocuses (at least nine foot compared to me) blossom by the hedgerows.  The big manor house is almost empty... no giant canines... no tiny, 'two inch' people. I haven't looked, but Polidori (a newly created vampire) says the upper 'mushroom trays' in the cellar are filled with dead dried up people. They couldn't climb down. No one watered the sprouts and mushrooms or dripped water into the little, metal-lined 'stream.' They starved and died of thirst. There's a few dead humans in that glass tank on the counter too. Tillie (another newly minted vampire) goes in there. It fascinates her, the way she used to live. She runs her palm over the thick, green glass and peers inside. They're there, she knows, forever hiding beneath straw-like excelsior. She can smell them. Vampires hate stinks like that.

I go out into the fields sometimes. Look, who knows if they were ever fields. 'Fields' signifies farms. I don't know if those dog things ever grew anything there. Maybe they're just meadows. Do they have meadows in the winter time? There's no flowers, or butterflies. Who knows. I saw two mice eating a dead human. They peeled off tiny strips of what looked like beef jerky. No, not beef jerky... chicken jerky. Poor bastard, the human, I mean, must have frozen to death. Damn those mice are big. They see me. I know they see me. But I spook them. Animals feel things. Don't have words for it, but they know.... Stay away. Don't bother that one... Maybe that's what they say... or whatever it is they do. 

I could kill them. I could run and go and sublimate right through them. Their bones and meat and hair and ears would fall down on the dirt like rain. But I don't do that. I let them live... What did they do?

Later, just before dark, two of them go buy.... Not mice... giant canine creatures, I mean. Not grown ones. These were juveniles..... a sad little girl, except she was eight stories high and carried a 'toddler' the size of  King Kong. They don't make a sound. She wears bright yellow rubber boots. Canine creatures loved their children too, you know. I suppose the humans already got to their place, wherever that is, and killed all the other dog people. Not regular humans... vampire humans, I mean. And I have no idea how many there are.

They wouldn't listen. I tried to teach them. Don't over-kill. Once a month is enough. If you have to, take little drinks here and there... Just don't kill.....

But they do kill... And the night-gift spreads like a plague. 'Night-gift,' why do I call it that? Day doesn't scare them here. I don't know why. Maybe there is science behind it? Maybe it's not all 'spiritual.' I like to think of it that way... Me, Tomas also known as Jonathon, a vampire who still believes. I can't not believe.

What will happen here? Will they become slightly more fastidious zombies? Look how culture effects me. 'Zombies,'... I called them 'zombies.'...... Do you know what genuine Caribbean, Haitian and Creole zombies are really like? What they call 'zombies' back in my world are not zombies. I don't know what they are. But they're no more real than Thunder Cats. 

It gets dark. The juvenile dog girl and her baby brother (I imagine that's who he is) come back from wherever they've been. Maybe there's a place she goes to find food?... Maybe a bush with cold, icy berries on it? I hope they survive... A world with towering dog people and chess set size humans, some of whom are vampires..... Why not?

I feel tinges sometimes... Earth tinges... vibrations really. I can tell. I know what they feel like.... the waxing and waning of the moon.

And I've been there too.

<Tomas sighs, turns and walks back into the brambles at the bottom of the hedgerow... True night falls. Stars come out. Dead leaves dance in the wind>

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ELIZABETH ENCOUNTERS THE VAMPIRE..... 11/19/14

Treadwell.... Their name was Treadwell, a rather financially secure old Methodist family with Episcopalian leanings. The Missus wanted a place near the square, Rittenhouse Square, or possibly out in the new suburb of Chestnut Hill. With the train one could be there in half an hour. She had cousins there and spent Saturdays with them along the cozy, commercial elegance of Germantown Avenue. Ladies never traveled alone, even on what was essentially a commuter line. Shop girls might, or domestics engaged for 'day work' for more or less middle class housewives. But strivers like the Missus never would. So I went with her to carry parcels, or ask the man in the little ticket booth what time the train would leave..... Was she so anxious to get home? No. The Mister only married her for the money. She knew that, but never let on. Why give him the satisfaction?

I'd have lunch with them, the Missus and her cousin, in a snug, little tearoom fronting 'The Avenue' right where it met Mermaid Lane. They'd sit at a small table near the window. Not right in the window. That spot was for ignorant parnevues. And sunlight through the multi-paned bay could be so unflattering at certain times of year, even with the white, shear curtains meant to soften it.... Excuse me. Did I say I had lunch with them?... Well, we were in the same room. But there was a low shelf, like a counter along a wall. Lady's maids ate there. While the carriage trade lunched on delicate tea sandwiches filled with cold, flaked salmon and cucumber salad dressed in savory, Provencal mayonnaise, those 'in service' ate plain cheese sandwiches on thick slices of what I suppose was French bread and peppery home fries. Whose meal was better? You be the judge. Mortal fare means little to me now.

It is I, Elizabeth. We met a few nights ago. I am with the Ironstones now. We help each other. In a sense I lured them into it... First the sons (still technically mortal when that happened)...Next the Father, though I was never intimate with him and the Mother never liked me at all. I was their 'familiar' and they were mine. To be truthful, they never used that term. I did. Learned it from him, the vampire. I believe he followed us home from Chestnut Hill that time. It was dusk. The Missus' cousin had her coachman drive us to the train. He went in to purchase the tickets. We waited in the brougham, snug under lap robes and fortified with a bit of sherry from a crystal flask slipped out from a cunning, little burgundy velvet compartment built into the door. Excuse me for elaborating. But life was elegant then and I wanted you to know. There was another velvet, fold down compartment for tiny matching glasses. I was surprised when they passed me one, but grateful just the same. Obviously, you know how cold a Philadelphia November can be.

There were three of us in the car. The coachman brought in our packages.... not that many. When he left we were alone with a strange man seated down at the other end of the car. He was clean shaven, unusual for the time. I learned later that vampires almost never have facial hair what with the blood and all. You can imagine. He had carefully brushed dark locks and fine, smooth skin. Gentleman always removed their hats in the presence of ladies. It's odd. I can't remember if I saw it, but I think it was a bowler... a crisp, dark bowler...Must have been next to him on the seat. He pretended to read a book. There were small oil lamps, sconces really, with clear, glass, tubular shades... No, not shades... Of course not shades... Like a wind break. Like a hurricane lamp. Forgive me, but I cannot remember the term.... We rode in silence. The Missus read a book too, a small leather bound volume by Henry James. She liked mysteries and gothic stories... The Turn of The Screw, or something like that. I know it had a ghost in it.... If she only knew.... Soon after, the conductor came through collecting tickets. Then I watched my reflection in the mirror-like blackness of the window, as we rolled along. 

Our own coachman met us in the city at the big Fifteenth Street Terminal. When we got back to the house, nine or ten blocks away, it was snowing. Before stepping inside, I turned to watch the flakes... And there in a weak pool of light from the street lamp, perhaps thirty feet down the sidewalk, was the man from the train. He nodded and tipped his hat. I returned the nod and went inside....

THAT'S how I knew it was a bowler.

In nights to come, I'd learn so many things.

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A WORLD ENDS ... 11/17/14

It is I, Tomas. this is how it ended. If you've lost the thread scroll back two or three episodes. It's all there.

Most of the huge canine creatures were gone, at least on this estate. After the first few deaths, survivors grew suspicious, refusing to sleep in the manor, lest some unidentified contagion be the cause. Some fled to 'the city.' Polidori, one of the new, tiny vampires {all humans were tiny in this world. imagine you were only two inches tall} knew their noises and words. It was a language, after all. We'd seen the books. we'd seen the symbols. They had a language, maybe more than one, and possessed a literature..... Soon it would end.

How could it not end? Humans would leave this place. My offspring would have offspring of their own. The 'miracle of sublimation' would spread. Perhaps we are a contagion?

Two giant canines are still here. They walk about the place in silence. She sits in the bare, winter kitchen garden, wrapped in a circus tent sized blanket, rocking back and forth on a monumental white chair. He sleeps on a sofa.... Many of the tiny humans are gone. They left the mushroom trays in the cellar, where they were raised as delicacies, but are still hiding elsewhere in the house. Please know that I speak of those from the lower trays... maybe the first to the third... possibly the fourth.... Those from the fifth to fourteenth levels can't leave. They have no way to climb down.

There's a dead canine, a male, by the back door. I don't know what he used to be... Perhaps a stable boy?..... But the more or less equine creatures are gone too. They ran away looking for water. Now they're off in the fields somewhere, nibbling dry, dead grass peeking out from the snow. Some of the humans found the dead 'stable boy.' They chip off little pieces of his flesh with tiny, sequin-like shards of broken glass. In times like these one must find things. Thank God the flesh is frozen.... 

I got some for the two children... the ones from the dollhouse, I mean. I sear it a bit in the flame from a match. If you stand on it and quickly scrape the tip with a broken nail file, it'll light. The flame doesn't  last long... maybe two minutes at best. But at least it's not raw. They have some of the mushrooms and shoots from the trays in the cellar. That's how they live, hidden in a what-not box, off in a corner of the library. I 'cook' on the slate floor in the mud room. All great houses have a mud room. It's where specimens from the garden are potted for indoor display.

Dear God, what's going to happen? The insects will come back in the spring. I've seen some flies... and that spider. There's always a few wintering over... but what will spring be like?

Polidori and 'Tillie' (a female offspring) want me to kill the giant female and her mate. But I don't want to do it. I don't want to sublimate through their skulls. They had a world. They couldn't, or wouldn't see our humanity. But they had a world... Funny, I use that word, me, a vampire. Well, ours is a world of inconsistencies. What can I tell you?

I'm thinking this estate must be very remote. No one's come to visit and it's been weeks... No neighbors... No postal service... No inspector-general, or whatever they call the constabulary around here..... (sigh) A Chekovian universe populated by dogs.

When it gets warm, they'll fan out. The people, I mean. Maybe there'll be more vampires among them by then? Some will stumble onto other estates. More giant canine creatures will be killed. I'm guessing some humans will accidentally stow away in luggage and find their way to cities and towns.

One world ends and another begins. 

I'm thinking they could eventually destroy any larger adversaries.... the vampires among them, I mean... Maybe tiny mites will remain? Perhaps there'll be treaties with the bees and packs of shrews for hunting?

I've gotten the vampires to agree to my one-victim-a-month rule. Polidori's from Earth. He knows about faith (such as it is on Earth) and vows and all. But the others are only coincidentally human. How that happened, I don't know. God knows what they believe... If they believe.... But soon it'll be time to feed again. How will they chose the victims?

And if I can't get back to my universe, what will I be here?...An Annunaki-like spirit from some far off place? An ancient sage?.. The Old Man of The Mountain?

Full circle, just like 'Papa'... neolithic once again

The female canine thing,  out in the bare, grey, winter garden, draws the blanket 'round her like a hood. Then she rocks some more. I watch her through a small window in the mud room by climbing up an intricately turned, ladder-back chair.... 

Shhh.... She's crying, or howling, or keening...

I wish I was home....

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