THE PRAYER OF THE MAGIC THIEF

Conrad, for that was his name, stared into the cracked, blemished mirror and studied his teeth. The room was small and hot. No windows. Just a sink. Just a toilet. That's all he had. It was originally a powder room for seamstresses. They made Halloween costumes. Belfry-Bat, Cowgirl Sal, Soldier-Man-Tim. You could still see silver glitter pressed into the floor boards.


He carefully maneuvered his tongue along each tooth, but the 'eye' teeth were special. Large and sharp. If they were only a little longer. 


What power she  had. What magic. He remembered the eyes. He remembered the laugh. He remembered the pain. He remembered it all. Vampires could do that. At least the strong ones could.


A fat, little, shinny, brown spider raced along the dirty, green wall. He brushed it into the sink and gave it the water cure. Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, down the drain. So much for a life. 


Then he went out into the shadowy expanse of the former workroom. Moon light washed in through  tall, filmy, bare loft windows, bathing the naked floor in sepulchral tones.


The dogs were locked away in a small, ruined office far below. The 'monk' needed quiet. He had to think. Oh, he liked the magic of 'The Brotherhood.' He'd been to Saint Shamus, itself. They even let him hold the relics. And even now, he could taste the waxy bones upon his fingers.


But this was different. This was real. Faith is one thing. Certainty is something else. And he knelt on the gray, little mattress and prayed. Oh, what he would  do with such power. He'd slice through 'evil,' a holy soldier in God's own army. Please, let it be like that. Please, let it be like that.  He trembled in anticipation.


And then the vampire spoke. A voice came forth from the shadows...... Have you decided? - it asked...... The monk-not-quite-a-monk nodded....... There was a soft, dry chuckle. The vampire said - Then say it. You have to say it.......... The monk sniffed for a moment, then whispered - Let me be but a link in a chain. May no man know its source.


The vampire stepped out into a moon beam, got down beside him, took hold of his hand and said - May you never know pain. May you never know fear. May you hide from death, now and for forever.....


All was silent.... and perhaps two heartbeats later, it began.....


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Papa Goes a Hunting, but First He Gotta Comb His Hair

He usually plays it close to the vest. Papa doesn't like all the others to  know his business. Maybe it comes from being caged up in quasi Vatican cellars all those years?... No, wait. Excuse me. Not years...centuries. And why did a near invincible creature like him submit to such a thing?


I suppose vampires go crazy too. And  what are they gonna do, call some radio show? Oh, they do that. At least some of them do. We can tell a vampire voice, though. Not so much by the sound, but the rhythm..... the cadence. There's a certain beat. Mortals often miss it. They think it's 'stagy,' or pretentious. Such self-limiting Cretans they are.... so afraid of being different. 


Tonight he's got an 'itch.' gonna go kill somebody. Gonna kill 'em real good. Yeah, yeah, yeah... he sticks to bad guys whenever he can. But the operative word is 'whenever.'  I think the transit of Venus has something to do with it. You know, that thing where 'Earth's twin'  sails across the fiery disc of the sun? Like a roach skimming 'cross lava. Except the surface of the sun is five times hotter than that. But Venus doesn't even come close. It's all just an optical illusion. 


Cro-Magnon 'seers' knew about it. They had shamans called 'strong eyes.' Used to stare at the sun through narrow, little slits in horse bones...ribs mostly. The horse was a 'solar' animal, 'cause the sun seemed to gallop 'cross the sky and all. Papa grew up with those people. Even went back after the 'change.' They didn't pray to vampires. They used them... for 'magic'.... for power....for fun. Each settlement tried to get a vampire, if they could. Life -eaters was 'high tech' in them days. Came in handy on hunts too, 'specially them night time, lunar jaunts they used  to have. Big bovines slept then. And I ain't talkin' 'bout no little moo-cows like you got today. I am talkin' bout a 'royal' aurochs...... like a big, white solid wall. Five cubits high at the hump. Maybe more. Horns like carved, iron pikes. Ever see them 'Flintstone' art galleries they got in them old, French caves? well then you know what I mean. 


Papa used to vault through the moon beams, land on its back, grab hold a the neck (couldn't get his arms all the way 'round it) and bite right in. Big, buck vampire like him, weaken it up real good. Then, when it crash down on the ground, all them skinny guys run in wit' their little jab-jab sticks and do the rest. Make like they big hunters. Hell, it easy to go jab-jab in a belly of a two thirds dead butcher shop. That how much meat they get out of it. You would not believe it. 


I guess most a y'all know how old he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he look like he thirty two or thirty three years old. But that bastid twenty eight. Twenty eight thousand, I mean. He say he is. And I don't see no reason to doubt him. Once he drew up a sky map wit' all the constellations they had back then (star patterns change, you know) and this goomer from The Franklin Institute (where the Philadelphia Planetarium is) check it out. We sittin' in a boof all the way in the back a Little Pete's, on Seventeenth Street. I like to smell the coffee. Papa does too. The goomer from the planetarium, he like the pan cakes.  But he almost choke on one of 'em when he see that map....... How you know this? - He say...... But Papa just smile. Sometime he like to do like that, 'cause the planetarium guy see his teef. He see 'em real good. Make like nothin' wrong. But I know he scared. All a sudden he gotta go outside. All a sudden he start talkin' real fast.


Papa let him go. But then little bit later he go out too. Did he kill him?..... No, not all the way. But he do make him into a really good familiar. You know they got lotta little alley ways 'round that place.


Now, what I be tellin' you?..... Oh, yeah.... He do plan a do some killin' tonight..... Slow killin', like where he drain a arm, til it look like a raisin. Then do the other arm. Then do the legs. Next come the belly. Then the tittie area. Make no difference if it a man or a woman. Tittie area come next. That the way it go. Them what know say it burn real bad too. Like havin' the meat all dried up and cooked, while the 'dinner' still alive.


But he doan mean nothin'. He jus' playin'. Look a him comb his hair. He like the way he look. 


An' if you wanna know who I am, never you mind. I am jus' Mister Never-You-Mind. That all you bastids gotta know.


Look, if you 'round this way tomorrow night.... I tell you more. 


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AFTER THE BALL IS OVER..... JERSEY SHORE TOWNS DURING THE 'DEAD' SEASON

Go click on the post about HEADLESS TOMMY. It's the one right under this. Shore towns have a certain etherial ambiance after the summer dies... Oh, the ghosts are still there NOW. It's just that you can't see 'em with all the bright lights and crowds...


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vampire wonderland: HEADLESS TOMMY TELLS US ALL ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF NE...

vampire wonderland: HEADLESS TOMMY TELLS US ALL ABOUT THE GHOSTS OF NE...: My name is Tommy. I guess I'm a ghost. They twisted my head round and round till it got all wobbly and fell off. Then they burned me up and ...

A VAMPIRE 'FAMILY' by a VAMPIRE FIRESIDE

Annie laid on the carpet, quietly coloring in her coloring book. Sarah and Tomas observed from the divan. They whispered to each other. Oh, the little vampirina heard everything. But she didn't care. It was not time for that now. This new book was all about Lady GaGa nursing sick children in Africa and she was busy scribbling fancy hair-doos on everybody's head. Not Lady GaGa...Annie, I mean.


Sarah said - I know what Papa can do. I remember what he did to me. Imagine contemplating eternity on a vast flat, featureless, metallic plain...... an endless, gun-metal expanse, stretched out under a gray, dim, hazy sky...... No sound.... No breeze....No nothing...... And do you know what I think?.... No, I don't 'think' it. I know it. He's done the same with others and some of them are still out there....... Ten thousand years in a place like that.... They walk. They run. They think - Maybe it will be different up ahead. But it never is. A world without change. A place without hope..... And what's worse is knowing it's not just an illusion. He doesn't conjure them up. They're all real....... She snuggled close and sighed.


Strange place, this universe of ours - said Tomas. Look at her, choosing colors just like any mortal child. I get her the sixty-four crayon box. She likes that. And none of the 'off' brands. No dollar store stuff. It's pure Crayola for our little Annie...


Edith came in from the kitchen, giving each a glass of some icy, cold gin-like, thick, syrupy stuff. 'Pims' I think they call it. Supposed to be big in the Tin Isles.... Excuse me, Britain, I mean....... It's me. It's Zebulon. So you'll have to excuse the occasional archaic lapse. After all, I remember the vintages of Shiloh. And the wines of Crete were especially prized in our house.


But Annie could do wondrous things. Not 'wondrous' in the good sense. More like incomprehensible or unimaginable.... But wondrous just the same...... The 'enemy' knows...... And he wants to know more.


Papa is so proud of his little girl. Perhaps he'll pilfer a museum and bring her a doll-like mummy baby? She loves mummy babies.... dresses 'em up in outfits.... tells 'em little stories.... And then, when they start to fall apart, she and Edith make soup out of them.


I believe they sell it to a 'new age,' folk remedy, healer's shop in a basement level establishment on Sansom Street.


(episode 671...or maybe more... I forget)


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The Scientifically Enhanced, Doctor Benjamin Franklin Takes The Helm

I have not communicated with you for a while. Long time friends of this world will know me. I did not die back in the early days of the American republic, but rather found ways to further my survival, via such means as the crystaline perfection of my Grand Armonica (google Vampire Wonderland by Billy Kravitz  Armonica Doctor Franklin and you shall find it)  and other efficacious means. 


I am a searcher and a scientist. I am Doctor Benjamin Franklin, speaking to you from my compound deep beneath the surface of The Philadelphia Navy Yard. Google The Anti-Enchantment Bureau. The Vampire Wonderland has become quite a place. A myriad of sites refer to our world. The life eaters know me. We study each other. They have been my 'guests' and I have sojourned with them. But now we go our separate ways. Will it always be like that? No, that's just how it is right now. 


But I wanted to clarify some things about the juvenile vampirina known as Annie. She is not the same as full grown life-eaters. Nor is she but another elferina-vampirina. Her situation is unique and no one, 'human' or vampire, knows why.


It appears that she has inherited certain traits from her 'father,' the incredibly ancient vampire known as Papa. Some say he resembles a thirty two or thirty three year old version of Richard Gere. Others see a likeness to the young Alec Baldwin, from his Beetlejuice days. But that is not important. Papa has a talent we call Sympathetic Transference. He can 'will' quantities of matter, such as dust motes or screaming humans, from their natural place in our world and instantaneously send them somewhere else, such as the outer arrondisements of Paris, or the titanic, soul crushing, roiling surface of the sun. Needless to say, those on the solar tour are supplied with an invisible protective bubble. And veterans of such  voyages are not the same when they get back...... if they get back.


Imagine hovering above planet sized waves breaking over the immensity of the stellar plain, or plunging down into mysterious, burnt out, solar voids.....'Sun Spots' I think they call them. Nightmares beyond nightmares. Would you survive? Would you still be sane?


Annie can accomplish such things. The monkish enemy knows. He has seen places far beyond the twisted borders of Hell. Glued to the carapace of  a galleon sized cockroach. Crushed by an asteroid the size of Japan. Fricasseed by witches (real ones) in a giant cyclops skull.


And now he lies quivering upon the cold, bare concrete floor of his domicile.... a deserted warehouse, surrounded by dogs. Oh, he will survive..... but he will be changed.


She said she would not kill him, but what she did was worse...... For now he has seen power...... and he wants it...


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MORE ON 'VAMPIRINA' ANNIE and HER WEE HOUR CONFRONTATION with the 'ENEMY' UNDERGROUND...and No, ANDERSON COOPER ain't in this one..

Please excuse any errors. Zebulon is not too adept at this manner of verbal chicanery anyway. And besides, what I'm transcribing is happening so fast, even a disembodied spirit has trouble comprehending it all.


We are back in the gray, dingy, tiled confines of an underground concourse passageway. It's long...very long. It's narrow. It's dim....like a lone, little roadway to Hell.


The monk-not-quite-a-monk stands his ground. The dogs tremble. The beta dog pees. Annie sees. She smells it and she laughs. She yells - Bad doggie! Bad doggie!.... and her words echo metallically through the tube.


We hear a scream from somewhere down another passage. But that bit of gory mayhem belongs to another's nightmare and is not part of our own. An old goat sings 'I'm Popeye the Sailor Man,' then laughs until he cries.


Annie goes 'pssst!' and says - Weird around here, ain't it? Better than the television........ Then she scrambles along the roof of the tunnel like a spider.......like a real fast, crazy spider.


The monkish enemy mumbles prayers, as the juvenile monster races toward him. But it's too late. She's right there, leering down at him from above. The dogs cower at his feet. One makes a half-assed attempt at a growl. Annie instantly replies with a seering, cat-like hiss. The dogs turn and tear off on a frenzied run down the passageway......


And then, there were two. She levitates off the ceiling, spins 'round and slowly studies him....... Hey, mister - she says.... you got like a bald spot..... She reaches down to touch it. His hand shoots out to fend her away. But she grabs it by the wrist, pulls it to her mouth... and quickly bites off  the thumb, right up to the first knuckle...... He writhes in pain. His eyes flutter. She savors it for a few heartbeats, then spits it square in his face, almost knocking out an eye. He screams. She giggles. She mimics him, as the blood drips down her chin.


He whispers - Don't kill me. Don't kill me.........She floats down a bit, staring nose to nose. He cringes and turns away, as the little vampirina whispers - I won't... Not tonight.


Then the lights (dim as they are) begin to wink out at either end of the passageway, til only one, sputtering right over his head, remains. He raises his eyes in supplication. It sputters some more. Annie goes - Uh oh......  The bulb crackles, pops and burns out..... Darkness reigns. Annie giggles, as the 'enemy' begins to scream.....


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