Blame my curiosity—it often gets the best of me. Blame it, or something else. This was the third victim. The third man burnt to a cinder for some reason I couldn’t fathom, and my stone eyes the only ones witness to the crime. Witness to the criminal.
I could sense the dawn approaching as I crept back through the tiny iron gate and to my perch. If what I’ve learned about your ways proved true the criminal would be back, back to take it all in, to revel. Crouching at the edge of the roof I braced myself for the stone grip of morning.
The sun came and went. And not a sign.
Not for another week.
~
The following Sunday, the yellow police tape had all but blown away, the crime just a memory fading from the fickle New York mind. Soon there would be a new resident in that alley, one who didn’t know the fate of its previous tenant, or didn’t care.
But not before someone bid a fond farewell. I spotted him just past sunset, same ruddy jacket, same circular specs, same banally evil countenance. The bastard was taking photos, snap- ping at the spot where his victim’s burning flesh had blackened the brick to a permanent shadow. I took him in, he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. His face soft, one could even say kind, but with the stooped inward-gazing shrug of a man pleased with himself even if no one else is. The look of the disconnected. Of the damned.
After he’d clicked away from all conceivable angles, he huffed on his eyeglasses, wiped them with an untucked shirt tail, and left. I kept pace as he headed towards the park, running along ledges and shimming drain pipes. I jumped from roof to roof and stuck to shadows at street level. Moving far is tricky as it is, always has been. If I’m spotted, I freeze. More than once a passerby has noticed a gargoyle he’s never seen before clinging to the eve of a building or poking from ivy in a public park.
Two blocks over he made a b-line straight for the trains, but turned before hitting the stair- case and stepped through a big iron gate flanked by old fashioned gas-lamps, nodding to the doorman as he passed. The son-of-a-bitch lived at the Dakota. Bad Mojo that building. Not sure why. But I can feel it simmering there, dominating the block, its evil shimmering in the air like August off hot asphalt.
I caught glimpse of a light flickering to life high in a corner window. I scaled the wall on the far side, out of view of all except a dozing parking attendant, and perched there, just another creepy old ornament on a creepy old building. I watched as he kicked off his penny-loafers, then stretched out at an old oak desk strewn with crushed Fresca cans to check his e-mail. Something about the room was askew; a twin bed shoved indifferently to the side, academic trophies and ribbons—totems for every stage of the procession through childhood—sat on a shelf next to books of philosophy: Foucault, Nietzsche, Ayn Rand—primers for the shape he was busily hammering himself into. It was as if a teenager lived there, or lived there too long. Next to the book- case I spied a framed diploma from Choate and another from Yale. His name printed in flawless calligraphic letters. Blake Grey.
Gotcha.
He reached into the mini-fridge by his desk and cracked open another Fresca, then plugged his camera into the computer. What the Magi would have made of the mundane wonders this world had at its very fingertips I can only guess. Images popped up on the glowing screen. Images of the alley—torn police tape and blackened brick. I crept closer, peering at him as he pulled page after page from his printer, then cut them into asymmetrical shapes. He spread glue on the backs of each and pressed them into a large leather-bound book. Finished, he held the portfolio at arm’s length for an admiring look. There, across two large pages, were graphic sketches and snippets of phrases, as well as pictures of the alley; before, during, and now after. The way the images inter- locked it was almost beautiful. Almost…
Art.
A Death Artist. That was the road this one traveled. On the path to a dangerous realm of theories, of concepts. Only a step to trade paint for blood, pencils for burnt bone, and canvas for taut, tortured human skin. The execution was collected between those black leather covers, a private gallery for one very twisted collector.
It had to end. The police would do their best, but I’d seen enough in my time to know what the wealthy got away with in this country—always got away with, in every country. DNA or no, this bastard would be skiing in Switzerland before the ink was dry on his arrest warrant. Or worse, off to some third-world backwater to ply his trade unobstructed. It had to end. But for that to happen, I’d have to take it from him.
Or trade it.
Trade the one thing he couldn’t buy—the one thing needed to separate art from mere practice. An audience. Someone to appreciate his depth.
I went back the next night, an envelope tied to my neck with a bit of silk ribbon filched from the rectory. I’d printed " To Blake Grey, from An Admirer," on the card a fancy looping script. Beware of gargoyles bearing gifts, or posing as them.
I rapped on the door, then crouched, letting my outer layers stiffen up for that extra touch of authenticity. An older woman answered, her hair a shellacked bun, make-up so thick it could have been smeared on with a trowel. Leaning forward to read the card—her gaudy hollow earrings and ancient dugs swinging forward—she let out a harrumphing sneer, then turned to call, "Blake?" in the shaking Hepburn-esque tones of New York’s vanishing aristocracy.
"Yes mother?" came the reply.
That gorgon probably still cut his meat for him. "There’s something here for you," she said over her knobby shoulder. "Something...dirty."
Blake came to inspect, greed beaming from his beady eyes. He hefted me—no picnic for someone not used to lifting anything heavier than daddy’s credit card—and carried me through the vaulting, oak-paneled apartment. He huffed past priceless paintings and antiques old enough to make me look new-minted by comparison. Latching the door to his room, he swept his Fresca cans to the floor, and set me on the desk next to his damnable leather death-book.
He untied the envelope and slit it open with a tiny steel blade. As he read, I watched his lips move faintly, tracing out the words, "Kindred Spirit. Painter of Fire and Sculptor of Flame. I’ve witnessed your work. Impressive. Care to experience mine? If game, leave our stone friend by his home on 71st. Then return at the stroke of midnight and bring your book. Can you hear the bells? You will. xoxo."
I could sense him weighing the offer in his overstuffed mind, licking his lips as he chewed it over—rolling it around, tasting it. I’d strived for the right touch cryptic arrogance, enough to set the hook. That nonsense about the bells was just that. Dropping the note, he stood up. "Mother, I’m going out."
The two plus blocks back to the church almost exhausted poor Blake. Sweat leaked from under his arms and on to me. He set me down hard on the top step—luckily no chips—then stood up, wiping his slimy forehead with the cuff of his shirt. I could feel his anticipation radiating. This was not a man with much patience. He wanted his surprise. He wanted it now. But when nothing came, he crossed the street, watched for another moment or two, then finally set off to find some distraction until the appointed hour. With him gone, I snuck inside. I still had a few last minute details to attend to.
The bell sent out a stream of twelve soft peels. The midnight hour had struck. Through the heavy glass panes above the monster oak doors, I watched Blake look nervously to both sides as he approached the steps. I reached down to inch the door ajar, a simple creaking invitation. He gripped the handle tentatively, then pulled, slipping into the darkened lobby, looking around wide-eyed. Up and down he scanned, side to side, but not behind him to see the silent sculpture quietly clicking the door shut, fastening its bolts. I crawled unseen across the wall, sliding up and under the archway to the spiral stone staircase leading to the choir loft.
His footfalls clicked against the flagstones as he stepped toward the first of the votive candles I’d placed for him to follow. More glinted in his glasses, one candle on each of the first seven steps leading up. I’d " borrowed" them from the foot
of a neglected Saint, but I don’t think he minded much. A sly grin widened across Blake’s face as he followed the flickering points of waxy flame, clutching his leather book to his chest, caressing it.
Hurrying to the loft and into the ducting, I pulled deep into the dark, but left the swinging gate wide open and another votive on the floor, a sign to follow. Blake spotted it. Crouching to get a better look, he lifted the candle and crawled inside. The flickering light spread a foot or two ahead as he wormed his way down. I stayed ahead of him, always just a hair’s breadth from illumination’s reach.
At three quarters the length of the church, I beat my mostly useless stone wings, flapping till his flickering light flickered into nothingness. Blake’s panicked breath soon soothed as he caught view of the warm patch of New York night a few feet off. That, and one last votive just outside the hole. The final offering.
He poked his head through the brick. Nothing to his right but a pigeon-proofed nook, nothing to his left but an old stone gargoyle, nothing in front but open air and an eighty foot drop. "Hello?" he asked to the emptiness. "Hello? Hello, I’m here."
Yes you are, buddy. Yes you are.
He looked down, it was going to be a long way to the street if he went over. And with the way he was leaning out—craning his neck this way and that—it would only take a slight nudge. Just a tap and he’d be nothing but a wet red smear far far below. Blake inched forward. His hand slipped. A bit of masonry tumbled over the side to ping the sidewalk. I could hear his heart jack- hammering as he called out, "Hello?" one last time.
I reached for him, gripping his shoulder. He didn’t turn to face me. He didn’t have time. The process is fast. I felt his hide begin to stiffen, and I know he would have screamed if the petrification hadn’t first frozen his lungs. That’s the way the transformation works; lungs first, eyes last. A hiss came from Blake’s open mouth as he shrank to the right size. Air breathed into him by his creator—air he didn’t deserve—dissipated into the night. His hand, and the book it gripped, melded with the stone ledge they rested upon. His perfectly round eyeglasses slipped from his face to shatter on the sidewalk below as his head became a stone, a stone with the face of a man—a contorted mask of shock and agony, a concrete image of what had been inside that grotesque all along. It would become a lesson for those who’d see him, another sermon in stone. This one from the deep dark parts of The Book no one reads anymore.
Didn’t know I could do that? Well now you do.
~
Later that night, I had my cigar, lit from the final votive candle after I’d cleaned up the others. I’d felt I’d earned it, and rightly enjoyed it up there next to this newest addition to the church’s fantastical stone menagerie. A victory, but also a farewell. I couldn’t imagine spending another night with this thing, petrified or otherwise. I’d been itching for some new digs anyway, maybe something with a view of the park. Or maybe a new city. I hear the National Cathedral down in DC’s got a gargoyle of Darth Vader. Isn’t that something?
Don’t worry though, there’ll be a new set of eyes keeping watch over the old neighborhood. Blake’s still awake, getting used to seeing the world through stone colored glasses. But no playing at night, not for him. He’s frozen. Solid. And going to stay that way till this church crumbles to nothingness. Not sure what that would do to a mind or a soul after a few years, or decades, or centuries. Not too pretty I’d guess. But I don’t know. I’ve never changed one back.
You catch a lot in five hundred years. A lot of evil.
So if you find yourself looking at the side of a church and your mind fixes on a grotesque just a bit too lifelike, if you see that frozen mouth and can almost hear a stone scream stretching out into the millennia and beyond, there might be a set of eyes gazing back at you. But don’t pity him. He deserves it.
I sensed the morning sun creeping over the horizon as I stubbed out my victory smoke and decided to spend one last day there. I’d be on my way soon, and it wouldn’t be polite to leave Blake abandoned on his first day as a chunk of stone. He’d have enough of those waiting for him.
I sat back and thought about the stars—the ones you can’t see because of the city lights, but know are there winking at us just the same—and smiled, happy to know that there’s still some magic left in the world, even in New York.
The Princess and the Vampire
Jeff Chapman
The Chief Councilor and the Court Fool were walking down a road scarcely wide enough to accommodate a coach. Young pines crowded the road’s edge, while their forebears, tall and ancient, stood behind. Amber pine needles carpeted both sides of the lane before thinning out to nothing across the crown at the road’s center. With the rising sun at their backs, the pair’s bobbing shadows stretched in front of them, an advance guard racing ahead. The Chief Councilor trudged like a man going to beg forgiveness for his back taxes, while the Fool bounced, swaying side to side like a man going to meet his betrothed for a secluded stroll in the woods.
"I say," said the Fool, "I don’t think I’ve ever been down this stretch. Doesn’t look like anybody else has either."
"No, it’s not a well-traveled path, at least not by the living," the Chief Councilor mumbled. "So where are we going?"
The Chief Councilor smiled, knowing the Fool had not listened to the most important detail. " To deliver a message from the Princess."
"Oh, hmm. I hope they offer us some breakfast when we get there."
"I wouldn’t count on it." The Chief Councilor fingered the brass cross hanging under his cloak as he added more prayers that they wouldn’t be breakfast. You’re only the messenger, he told himself, absolved from all guilt and responsibility. But he didn’t believe it. He wondered how long he should keep the Fool in the dark.
"It’s not Christian to offer a guest no breakfast in the morning. And why do we have to be up so early anyway? Don’t these people sleep?"
"I wouldn’t know."
"They must go to bed awfully early."
The Chief Councilor chuckled. "Here’s a riddle for you. What do you get a spoiled princess who has everything she could possibly want?"
"The Princess will have your head for that."
"She would have yours for far less. Do you give up?" "A new castle. We’re going to look at a new castle." "Nope."
"Wait. Don’t tell me. A new horse."
"If only it were so simple. The Princess has more horses than she can ride in a month. Give up?"
The Fool shrugged his shoulders. "A vampire lover."
The Fool stopped. "A vampire? This...this isn’t the road to that castle?"
The Chief Councilor nodded. "Come on. I want to get there and back before I lose my nerve." "What do you need me for?"
"You can hide in the woods and take word back if anything bad happens." "Oh. How do I know if something bad happens?"
"I’m afraid you’ll have to use your wits. No one else would agree to come."
Turning a bend in the road brought the pair into a long-deserted village where the doors had been scavenged and the thatched roofs had collapsed. The Fool eyed the cemetery, where weathered crosses made of branches and rope stood defiantly against the sapling evergreens that led the charge to reclaim the land.
"I don’t think they’ll do us any harm," said the Chief Councilor. "Vampire victims?"
"Most, I suspect."
No one lived near the vampires’ castle. For five miles in each direction, the forest knew nothing of men’s boots or children’s laughter. For those living just beyond the dead zone, including the Princess and all her subjects, an uneasy, informal truce had developed. The resident vampires—a man and his sister—no longer preyed on the local populace but the hanging of garlic and crucifixes across shuttered windows punctuated everyone’s nightly routine.
Rumor said the vampire and his sister possessed ageless beauty, having been frozen in time at the prime of their aristocratic youth, and since pale skin and deep red lips were the rage among the fashionable elite
, the pair were well-poised to impress on appearance alone. An ancient portrait of the brother and sister, painted before their lusts turned to blood, hung in the long gallery of the castle in which the Princess lived with her father, an aged king slipping into dementia. Advising the King was so much easier than pampering the Princess. The King asked for nothing but fruit pies and then ignored them while he babbled on and on about the tapestries adorning his bedchamber. In the portrait, the brother stood behind his sister, who reclined on an ottoman as she reached toward her brother to touch his hand. Many times the Chief Councilor had seen the Princess entranced beneath that portrait, reaching up to touch that very hand.
Coming around a sharp bend in the road, the Chief Councilor and the Fool came to a curtain wall. Splotches of green and red lichens dotted the wall’s gray stones. The path ended at a pair of black, oak doors that barred entry through an archway. Centuries of rain had effaced a family crest etched in the capstone. At the wall’s edge, sunk in the soil like megaliths, lay fallen stones from the moldering battlements above. The Chief Councilor surveyed the wall, wondering if the stress on the ancient hinges would dislodge an avalanche. To the right of the doors, pines encroached to the wall’s edge.
The Chief Councilor leaned toward the Fool."You hide in the trees and if something happens to me, take word to the castle."
The Fool nodded before diving under the trees like a rabbit.
After withdrawing a scrolled parchment from beneath his cloak, the Chief Councilor approached the doors. An iron knocker, the size of a man’s fist, hung from the door on the right. He grasped it, grimacing at the screeching of the ancient hinge, and beat it against the door. Nothing stirred inside, at least nothing that he could hear. Again he pounded the knocker against the wood, but still no sound came from the other side.
"Have you lost your way?" asked a female voice.
The Chief Councilor spun around, falling against the door. The owner of that sweet, languid voice eyed him with a mixture of humor and curiosity. Her ruby lips, all the more crimson against her ivory skin, smiled, and when they parted, the sharp points of two white fangs emerged.
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