The Vampire Killer
The Vampire Killer
James Weber
Contents
I. The First Journal
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
II. The Second Journal
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
III. The Third Journal
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
IV. The Fourth Journal
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
V. The Fifth Journal
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Part One
The First Journal
One
In dark times, I was once an eccentric New York City detective with a fire engine red revolver underneath a fitted navy blue trench coat.
And the night was my edge.
But before I stepped into the night.
I had a gut check.
Why did I stop?
At the time. I was in Brooklyn and doing Brooklyn things. I was doing what everyone else was doing, looking for a distraction from the voices that came with the night.
I don’t know why.
But, I could hear the dead far better when the moon hung in the black sky.
Everyone could.
They heard the voices too.
I knew it.
But, they didn’t admit it.
Who would?
You’d sound like a madman.
But, if this is the kind of tale that you want, then a mad way, we go.
Little did we know, that what was happening to us all then, happened before. When the night once engulfed the greatest empire the dead have ever known.
Before I crossed the threshold of Emily’s apartment door and slipped out, onto the conveyor belt of dark nights...,
I paused.
The night came in many ways, I thought. It was something my mother used to tell me. She meant it as a warning, more than anything else.
I felt anxious for some reason.
Something was telling me to stay put for the night. Why? This neighborhood wasn’t so bad. Emily lived in Brooklyn in a brownstone apartment, a block away from the East River by the Brooklyn Promenade.
Then, I thought about something I saw hanging by the door. There was a black framed photograph hanging on the wall, by the light switch. The moonlight gleamed over the picture of Emily and her husband. They held each other, while they stood against the railing of the promenade. The twin towers stood in the background.
They looked happy in that picture.
Indeed, the night did come in many ways.
Tonight, her husband was away at work while I spent the night with her. How could I judge Emily’s relationship, when I was doing the same. Except I wasn’t married. But, the moments that I felt with her were just as messed up. I guess it didn’t matter if we were married or not.
Dirty was dirty.
The affair with Emily started a month ago when we ran into each other at Flushing Meadow Park in Queens. I knew her from the neighborhood. There was a laugh here and touch there. Since then, I never told her much about myself.
As far as she knew, I was an eccentric New York City cop with a fire engine red revolver underneath my navy blue trench coat.
That was it.
Besides, I don’t think she cared to know anything more.
She was married.
So, I never told her about myself, not really. Why? I guess I knew, her path was her’s, and mine was mine. She never asked me about my hazel colored contact lens. She never asked for the real color of my eyes. Maybe, that was why I always fell in these kinds of situations.
Little did she know, I had a talent, unlike anyone else. I could see the dead. However, the things that I could see, felt more like a curse, than a gift. For some reason, I was damned with a pair of eyes that sometimes saw the dead.
For now, Emily lived in her world and I lived in mine. Just like it was suppose to go.
Suddenly, I heard the wood floor creak behind me.
I turned around and it was her.
It was Emily.
Shit. She caught me leaving without saying good bye. I turned around and saw her, standing in the hallway. Her body swayed, covered in a bedsheet.
At first, I thought she was just going to give me a kiss goodbye. But, I was mistaken. Instead, Emily leaned toward me and tightly clenched my forearm.
It hurt like hell when she dug her long nails into my skin.
“M?” I said with gritted teeth.
But she said nothing. And the blood began to flow from my arm and drip on the wood floor.
But she said nothing.
This was my fault, so I took the pain.
“What’s the deal, M?” I asked .
I tried to break my hand free. However. I could not pull away. Her nails were starting to rip through the sleeve of my coat. Then, she pushed me into the shadow of the door of her apartment and said, “James, you’re not telling me the truth.”
“What are you talking about. Of course, I am.”
“You’re not.” She continued, “Eventually, you’re going to face who you really are.”
I looked into Emily’s dark eyes and I could not recognize her.
“Come on, what are you trying to get at M?”
Emily placed her hand on my chest. “James, you will see the world fall apart before your very eyes. There is no escaping the night. You know this.”
“Jesus, Emily. Snap out of it, already.”
Then, Emily’s eyes went white and she pushed me even harder against the front door. She got in my face and made sure that I paid attention to every word she said. With her right hand, she clenched my neck and dug her nails into my skin, again.
She was strong.
This was my fault. I knew it. This always happened when I dated a women for more than a month. Strangely, this never happened with Charlene.
So, I took the pain. I deserved the pain. I just kept looking at Emily, trying to calm her with my eyes. Then, she leaned in closer.
“Remember, never wake the dead.
My arm and neck was searing with pain.
“Wake up, Emily! Wake up!”
I tried to to push her off of me, but couldn’t. She was unbothered, focused. Then, she leaned toward the side of my face and whispered in my ear.
“At night, always remember to never lose heart. For love is the only chance you have to survive a time, when the night will never end.”
All of a sudden, Emily released my arm. Her eyes were no longer pale white.
“Why did you say those things, Emily?”
“What do you mean, James? I’m saying good bye. That’s all.” She said in her cute little way, as if what happened, never happened.
Thinking about it, I decided not to bring it up to her. The hallway was dark, so she never saw the blood from my arm on the wood floor.
I knew from this moment that this was my last time here. There was no way that I could continue with Emily. I rubbed her narrow shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. I walked down the stairs of her brownstone apartment.
And
just like that, the affair was over and that was the last time I saw her.
However, there was something that Emily said that I could not forget.
“When the night never ends,” she said.
I needed to walk for a while. I needed some air.
I walked through the Brooklyn Promenade and over the Brooklyn Bridge and all the way up the westside of Manhattan. I felt bad for cheating on Charlene and regretted getting mixed up with Emily.
Charlene was such a good person. Her and I once talked about having kids. But lately, our relationship wasn’t going so well. She deserved someone better than me, I thought. But it was always hard to let her go.
All of a sudden, I found myself walking up Manhattan by the westside highway.
This piercing sound rang in my ear.
I was thinking of a way to make it up to Charlene when a car horn scared the shit out of me. I turned around and saw a pair of bright headlights, speeding straight toward me.
My heart sank into my stomach. But, a part of me wished that this life was over. Living with this curse was finally over.
What the fuck.
The car light shined in my face, and I felt a little relief. That night, I closed my eyes, waiting for the never-ending darkness to engulf me.
Two
At the last possible moment, the street racer sped past me. I was an inch away from having my spine shattered into a thousand pieces. The car moved so fast by me that the tail wind twirled me in place, like a spinning top.
The whole time I was paralyzed by fear, letting the wind take me any which way. For a second, I caught a glimpse of the driver in the side mirror, a tattoo covered skinhead. His face was loaded with tattoos. He was young. He was probably the type that was in and out of prison. The driver looked like a ghoul driving at night.
I caught my breath as the car sped toward a glass building. I had seen this car before in one of the magazines at the police station. It was a sleek sports car, a black and red Bugatti Veyron heading straight into a glass pate window.
The driver lost control of the car and became more unbalanced, screeching side to side. Then it happened. The car flipped over three times, crashing into a glass building, which housed a fancy car dealership. The red and white security spotlights turned on.
Hyperventilating, I made my way across the opposite side of the street and leaned against a bare wall of a warehouse. I sat on the empty sidewalk, half in shadow, thinking about the question that popped into my head, a question that I buried some time ago.
What if I died?
I promised Charlene not to think like that. Only she knew that I had issues. But I could not tell her everything. I told her that I had visions and that was all. I couldn't tell her the truth, that I could commune with the dead. That’s stupid cause then I’ll lose her.
Besides, I was a freak, something that should have never been.
Would I lie to myself like all the dead did? I hated thinking about it. But this life-threatening moment made me wonder who I would redeem myself for those three days after I died.
Redeem the dead, even myself.
Everyone had three nights to haunt the earth after they died, even me. It didn’t matter if they were Christian, Muslim, Jews, atheist or anarchist. Everyone got three days. Why three days? I never cared to ask. I only remember my mother’s words.
On the third night, the dead rose into the light or fell into darkness.
My mother’s favorite passage made me think about my father. He did not go away pretty, at all. There was a time when I saw my father’s spirit fall into a dark abyss. For three days, we walked the night.
I wondered what I would do with those three days. What would be my act of redemption? Or would I just forget who I was, once I was on the other side and become nothing worth remembering.
This question would have been my last on this earthly plane if the sports car coming at me like a machine out of hell did not miss me.
I looked across the Eighth Avenue at the wreckage. From what I heard, the building popped twice. The car crashed into a glass wall and slid into a circular stairwell entirely made of glass. The glass came crashing down on the car. Shards of glass flew everywhere, spreading into the street. Plates of falling glass sliced one of the tires to shreds.
Sirens whaled in the distance. I looked down the street and saw the police coming down the Avenue toward the scene of the crash. The red and blue emergency lights illuminated the canyon of buildings. Then, I looked back at the lobby of the building. Shards of glass scattered throughout the street.
“Well, that’s a mess.”
At that moment, I could have slipped into a shadow and disappeared. I should have. I didn’t want to get involved. It was late at night, and the paperwork was a hassle.
I got up off the sidewalk and was about to leave before the police got there when I thought about the driver of the car. I was sure that the driver was dead. The car was totaled.
No one could have survived that.
But, I wouldn’t be sure, until I witnessed his ghost for myself. It was always that way. Then, another thought crossed my head. What if he wasn't dead? I had to make sure that the driver didn’t get away before the cops could get on the scene. They were about ten blocks away.
I slipped out of a deep shadow and started walking toward the scene of the crash. The glass cracked under my black boots. The cops were coming closer, and the emergency red and white lights lit up the side of my face, highlighting the wildness of my hair.
From my fitted blue trench coat, I pulled out my trusty fire engine red revolver.
I climbed onto the showroom lobby of the car dealership and approached the black and red Bugatti Veyron.
The closer I got to the car, the more I heard someone struggling. There was the crunching sound of glass as if someone were moving around. I pointed my gun in the direction of the sound and cautiously stepped forward.
The driver squirmed out the car. His left hand was severed and laid a couple of feet from him. With the use of his one good arm, he made his way through the mangled passenger window. He reached out toward something black and covered in glass. It was a gun. He was so determined to shoot someone.
I stayed quiet, keeping my gun trained on his forehead.
Then, blood gushed from the driver’s mouth, spilling over the broken glass.
He wasn’t going to make it. With that much blood flowing out of him, he was bound to pass out, then die. There was no chance of him, reaching the gun a couple of feet away.
Suddenly, he screamed, “No!”
He quickly grabbed the gun and made his crooked legs raise him from the ground. The driver pointed the gun at me, as he howled.