Stories: All-New Tales

“Jimmy was always a flake,” Cecil said. “Prob’ly shacked up and high as a kite with that chick.”

An animal growled and I started, looking around the empty roof. It was only then that I realized the bestial noise had come from the anger in me.

“Jimmy don’t get high,” Minnie said. “You know that. Something’s happened to him. We should do like Troy says and go to the police.”

“We cain’t have the police rummagin’ around Central,” he said. “What if they found our weapons?”

We had been stockpiling rifles and ammunition for the coming revolution. We kept them in a trunk in the basement, ready for the day that martial law was declared on the Black Man.

“We got to do something, Cecil.”

“Okay. Yeah. All right. Let’s go down to that bookstore again.”

I STAYED ON THAT roof for three days eavesdropping on my onetime comrades. In the day, the sun would rise, bellowing across the sky, and I’d fall into a coma after a while. At night I roused and watched my friends as if they were prey.

On the fourth evening I chased a young man down an alley three blocks north of Central House. I yoked him in a doorway and bit into his shoulder. He whimpered and cried as I drank of the serum of his life. It felt uncomfortably sexual. I realized that unless it was necessary, I’d prefer the blood of women.

“What did you do to me?” His speech was slurred, but he was still afraid.

“Go,” I said in a deep voice that was alien to me.

He ran.

I’d forgotten about Central House by that time. For the rest of the night I prowled the streets, looking but not wanting, a danger but not a threat.

At dawn I returned to the Brooklyn warehouse where Julia had taken me. Two floors below the room she’d first taken me to was the tomblike chamber that would be home from then on. She’d left the key to the door in my pocket.

In the darkness, far below the street, I could hear the faraway singing of the sun. I felt safe in my vault—dangerous too.

2.

THAT WAS THIRTY-THREE YEARS ago, October 1976. Since then I’ve inhabited the underground chamber that Julia somehow owned. The title had been signed over to me, and I lived there, sleeping in that bed or sitting on the straight-backed chair, going out now and again for a cupful of blood from some unwary pedestrian. Sometimes I’d bite them just enough to introduce the drug into their system, then use their money to let a hotel room where slowly, over the course of the evening, I would lick their necks and growl like a great wolf.

I have killed no one and discovered many things about my mutation.

One very important detail is that I heal very quickly.

I found this out one evening when a gang of young men decided to attack me and the woman I was feeding on in Prospect Park. There were eight of them, but I was at full strength and so fought them off after some effort. I realized later that I had been stabbed three times in the chest. Certainly my lung was pierced and possibly I’d sustained damage to my heart.

I considered going to the hospital, but something kept me from human company when I was wounded and so I went home to die.

For many days I lay on the floor of my chamber feeling the pain in my chest. But after a week or so I revived enough so that I could go out and feed. Now all that’s left of my fatal wounds are three whitish scars on my chest.

I don’t read books or go to movies, watch television or follow the news. The only human contact I’ve had up until quite recently has been primarily limited to the whispering euphoria of my victims. I’ve fed every few days or so and have lived on the sustenance of human blood and the soul seepage when they are under my sway. I can sit for days in my underground chamber savoring the soft murmurings of my victims. Their words about secret desires and unfulfilled dreams imbue me with the possibilities of a life that has been denied me. Sometimes I drift for hours in the secrets told me from swooning lips. I can see the images that they remember and feel the emotions they have hidden from everyone else.

For the first few years I only went after women because of the intimate nature of my bite. But as time has gone by I have also preyed upon some men. My taste for blood has been refined and I seek out certain flavors and scents. Some nights I go out and there is no one for me. And though I prefer young women, there are others who demand notice.

I have discovered other things about my nature. I am, for instance, allergic to the full moon. Those nights, if I am exposed to lunar regency, I develop a fever and a headache so powerful that I am blinded by its potency. If I go out in the full moon, I remain incapacitated for over a week.

This is how I found out another quirk in my physical characteristics. When the fever is upon me I am weak, so much so that most normal people can fend off my attack. And because the malady lasts for so long I am further weakened by the subsequent lack of sustenance. In this diminished state I am forced to seek out quarry that is likewise incapacitated.