“Oh . . . hold it . . .” he shouted at the dealers as they ran in different directions. One hopped into a big, shiny green Cadillac with white-walls and lots of garish chrome. Over his shoulder, the younger officer called to his partner, “Harry, call for a back-up! . . . Harry!”
In the dizzying confusion and over the roar of the Cadillac’s gunning engine, the white man jumped out from behind a crate and stabbed the younger officer several times in the back. The cop’s gun went off, reverberating off the walls of the empty warehouse. The bloody knife still clutched in his hand, the white man ran into the shadows. Still cringing in pain, the officer managed to take aim and fire off two shots at the running man’s back. The man fell, rolling over a few times before coming to rest near a pile of discarded truck tires.
Without warning, a booted foot kicked the gun from the officer’s hand. It skittered across the floor. Then the boot pulled back again and hit the officer squarely in the head. The cop grabbed his bloody head and fell back onto the cement floor. The black assailant used this opportunity to make a break for the large door of the warehouse.
Meanwhile, the older officer had radioed for help and was now taking a stance behind the car, his gun steadied on the roof of the vehicle.
From the shadows, the wounded white man staggered out.
“Hold it!” the cop cried, noticing with pain that his partner was now lying in a pool of his own blood.
The weaving white man pulled a gun. This time the cop fired at him and hit him in the temple. The man stumbled against a parked truck but did not fall.
The roar of the Cadillac caught the cop’s attention momentarily, but he tried to get off one more shot at the white dealer. This time his shot sent the man crashing into a stack of cartons, and he fell lifeless among the crushed produce.
The second black man, who had kicked the younger policeman in the head, tried to make a break through the alley. He ran toward the charging Cadillac. The officer took aim at his back and fired several times. The running man sprawled in the street, and the getaway car barely avoided hitting him. The front fender, however, slammed into the sprawling man’s head as he fell, and the sound of his skull cracking could be heard above the screeching brakes as the car swerved and hurtled right toward the officer. The cop raised his gun and fired several times through the car’s windshield. The driver’s eyes widened in fear and then his head slumped over the wheel. The driverless car continued its careening path and slammed into the police car, pinning the helpless cop between the two metal monsters and crushing his chest and stomach.
In the aftermath, five men lay dead and dying as the squawk of the voices over the police band played in counterpoint to the deadly silence.
Still carrying his clothes and shoes, Martin moved swiftly and silently out of the shadows and slipped off into the night—a ghostly witness to a tragic battle.
• • •
He found his way to the railroad station and ran into the public toilet. He used his soiled clothes and the cold water from the faucet to scrub the blood and dirt from his body. Then he put on his new shirt and pants and slipped his shoes over sockless feet. In one of the stalls a hobo was sound asleep, his rumpled pants down around his ankles.
Martin boarded the early commuter train out of the city. The glare of dawn was bothering his eyes so he reached for his sunglasses. But he had forgotten to remove them from the bloody clothes that he had stuffed into the public washroom’s wastebasket and so tried to pull the shade down instead. He yanked at the shade a few times and found it was stuck, so he had to shield his eyes with his hand.
Confused and exhausted, Martin thought about the conversation he had had the night before with the radio announcer.
“I dunno what I’ll do,” he had told the man in confidence, forgetting that his therapists numbered in the hundreds. “I guess I’ll stay. I dunno.” He had cleared his throat and continued, “I’m feeling a lot better about me. I’m not as shy as I used to be.”
“Uh huh . . . well, that’s good,” the announcer had commented.
“Yes. It is good. It is good.”
“But you don’t know what you’re gonna do?”
“No, I really don’t. I really don’t. I never got a letter from Christina,” he had paused, nursing the hurt. “I knew she’d forget.”
“Uh huh,” the announcer had said, an edge of boredom to his tone. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah. That is too bad. It’s too bad that people forget.”
The radio announcer had gotten restless. He had decided the show needed a little boost at that late hour.
“How about a nice castle up in the mountains?” he had teased. “Nice little hideout where you can waylay unsuspecting travelers.”
Martin had taken him seriously.
“You need a lot of money for that. Our family used to have money. Not any more, though. Even the ones in the old country don’t have a lot of money any more.”
“Uh huh . . .”
“I’ve thought of doing a big robbery. I think I’m smart enough to do that. I’ve never gotten caught yet, and I’ve done a lot of things that people would like to catch me for. I think I could do a big robbery and not get caught.”
“Uh huh.”
The conversation had bothered Martin because he felt that the radio man was his friend, that he took his problems to heart, though sometimes, like last night, the man seemed to be taking advantage of the situation and teasing Martin as the kids in school had done seventy years before.
The train pulled into the Braddock station, and Martin disembarked. He wandered through the town, watching it awaken from its slumber and found his way to Tati Cuda’s shop just as the old man was unlocking his door.
Cuda gave him a silent dirty look and didn’t ask any questions, although the curiosity was eating him up inside. Martin followed behind him and then settled himself in his customary chair.
The chicken man entered with half a dozen live chickens dangling from a pole. With one quick swing of his sharp cleaver, he sliced through the live chickens even as they hung screeching upside down from the pole. Their bodies jumped and fluttered as the detached heads fell to the sawdust-covered floor.
Cuda collected his order while Martin stared at the gurgling torsos of the slaughtered poultry.
“You get used to things, you know?” he had told the radio man, who had only answered with a few uh huhs. “You get used to your life. Then it all gets easier.”
The day passed swiftly, and toward sundown, when a cool breeze wafted through the stuffy shop, Martin sat at the rear reading a backgammon book and playing against himself on a small board.
He was daydreaming about his conversation with the radio man.
“It’s like people won’t admit . . . what they really are,” he had stated. “It’s like they have this big fight with themselves all the time. It’s like maybe if they could see themselves . . . they would see other people, too, you know?”
“Uh huh,” the man had answered in his dull voice. “That’s heavy, Count.”
“What?” Martin had asked, flabbergasted that the man couldn’t see the clarity of his point.
“I mean . . . that’s . . . that’s really heavy. That’s really far out. You’re absolutely right. You’re right and all right, my man.” He slipped into his high-powered broadcast school pitch. “The Count is a trip, isn’t he, Nighttimers?”
“Are you making fun of me?” Martin had inquired, a hurt look passing over his brow as he had sat on his bed with the phone to his ear. Now as he sat in the store, he could feel the pain of the insult again.
“No, man, hey! Hey, I’m with you, man. Right on, you know?”
“Well . . . I dunno what I’m gonna do. I really don’t.”
Martin had hung up the phone suddenly. He had been slightly irritated by the announcer’s flip tone. The sound of their conversation had been repeated through his room like some torturous echo chamber.
“Hey, I’m with you, man. Right on
, you know?”
“Well . . . I dunno what I’m gonna do. I really don’t . . .”
Tati Cuda tapped on the counter and roused Martin from his reverie. The old man pointed to a shopping bag with a meat order inside.
Martin took the package from Cuda and noticed that it was a delivery for Mrs. Santini. He gladly accepted the chore and trotted outside and toward her house.
Although it was late afternoon, there was still some activity on the street. Martin knocked at the door a few times, and when he received no answer, tried ringing the bell. He looked over to the driveway and saw that her car was still there. He found that the door was open and started inside. Before he was all the way in, he looked up and down the block and decided it was safe to enter, closing the door behind him.
The sunlight streamed through the kitchen windows as Martin set the shopping bag on the table and moved into the hall.
He climbed the stairs quietly, hoping to surprise Mrs. Santini with his arrival. She wasn’t in her bedroom so he checked the bathroom.
The sight of her made him cringe. Lying in a tub full of blood-red water, Abby Santini stared through vacant eyes at the flower print wallpaper. A razor blade was on guard by the edge of the tub.
Martin stood in the doorway, tears coursing down his face. “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it,” he repeated in a mournful wail.
He leaned over and closed her eyes. Then he quietly shut the bathroom door and stole down the stairs, leaving the house through the back door.
• • •
That night Martin dialed the radio announcer’s number with a trembling finger. He poured out his heart and told him about Mrs. Santini’s death.
“I didn’t do it, I really didn’t.”
“Uh huh. OK,” the announcer said, his heart beating with the horror of what he had let go on for so long, foolishly thinking it was a joke. Now this character’s sickness had become a reality.
“But in a way I’m glad it’s all over,” Martin said as he lay in bed, the phone propped up between his shoulder and his ear. “I was really gettin’ mixed up. I shouldn’t have friends.”
“No, that’s right. You get involved, and it’s dangerous . . . dangerous, right? You get in trouble.” The announcer had toned down his flip attitude. “This guy really needs help,” he thought, “or else to be put away.”
“Right,” Martin went on. “You forget. You make mistakes. I shouldn’t have friends. Even if it’s just for the sexy stuff.”
“Right,” the announcer agreed. “The sexy stuff. That’s the worst danger of all. That’ll get ya every time, Count.”
“That’s another wrong thing in the movies. Vampires always have ladies . . . sometimes a lot of ladies. Well, that’s wrong, too. You don’t need that.”
“Oh, you don’t need that, huh? Well, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din . . . ha . . . ha.”
“You really don’t . . . I mean . . . if the magic part was real, and you could get them to do whatever you wanted and like that . . . that would be different . . .”
“Oooweeee, wouldn’t it, though? Party time, right?”
“But in real life . . . in real life, you can’t get people to do what you want them to do.”
“Ain’t it the truth!”
“It is the truth. It is. And I’m gonna stop trying to show people things.”
“Right on, brother. Live for your own self. Whatever it takes, right? Get through the night, right?”
“I really feel good,” Martin finally said after their banter died down. “I really feel good.”
He placed the phone on its cradle and snuggled down into his bed. For the first time in a very long time, he felt peaceful and at one with himself. He closed his eyes and fell asleep with a relaxed, happy smile on his face.
• • •
As the rosy hue of dawn tinted the room, the soft tinny chords of the radio filtered into Martin’s consciousness, and he realized that he had left it on all night. In the lull of sleep, he merely stirred but did not waken.
Suddenly, the radio was clicked off by a wrinkled hand.
Cuda stared at the sleeping youth, so beguilingly innocent. As he advanced toward the bed, the floor shook slightly and Martin’s eyes popped open.
“I warned you, Martin,” he said to the widely staring eyes of his cousin. Martin was puzzled and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “ ‘Nobody in the town,’ I said. Nobody in the town!”
A look of bewilderment crossed Martin’s face, and he frowned slightly, not comprehending the old man’s meaning.
“I heard about Mrs. Santini, Martin. Did you think that I would believe that she killed herself? Did you think that I would believe this?”
Through his shirt, Martin could feel something pricking his chest. He looked down and was horrified to see the pointed end of a large wooden stake depressed against his heart.
“Your soul is damned, Martin . . .” the old man shrieked. “Nosferatu!”
Cuda raised a large mallet above his head. Before Martin could catch his breath to protest, the mallet head slammed down hard, driving the wood shaft deep through the young man’s bony chest. Blood spurted through his shirt, onto the sheet, and poured onto the carpet in a torrent.
Tati Cuda’s chest heaved with the exertion. Then he straightened himself up and stared down at the slaughtered youth, whose eyes glared back at him in their deathly hatred. The bloodied stake still clutched in his hand, the old man made the sign of the cross.
The room was so silent and eerie that Cuda clicked on the radio to shatter the stillness. The talk show was still in progress and a caller was complaining in a drunken voice.
“Where’s the Count tonight? I wanna talk ta the Count,” he slurred.
The old man was too intent upon his task to take notice of the conversation crackling across the air waves.
“Gee, I don’t know, fella,” the announcer was saying. “He usually calls in around now.”
The old man wrapped the bloodied slender body in a sheet and lifted it over his shoulder like a bundle of laundry.
As he maneuvered his dead cargo down the stairway, the radio played to the empty house.
“You know,” said a woman with a high shrill voice, “I think I know who this Count is, and I’m telling ya it isn’t safe to walk the streets anymore with him loose.”
“Well,” said the announcer, his voice noticeably excited, “who is it? Dare you reveal the identity of our bloodthirsty friend?”
“Not me,” the woman replied quickly. “He knows where I live . . . not me.”
Cuda reached the bottom of the stairway and carried his burden through the kitchen to the back porch. A shovel and pick were leaned against the side of the house, next to a freshly dug grave. The sky was getting lighter, and a rosy pink hue colored the low-lying clouds.
Unceremoniously, Cuda dropped the body into the hole. Through the open window a new voice was heard over the air waves.
“Now if you ask me, I’ll tell ya. It’s that boy. He’s the one, and I always said that he was no good. From the first day I saw him, I knew he was no good,” the voice was scratchy and tinged with age.
“Uh huh. Very interesting. Now what did you say his name was?”
Cuda picked up the shovel and started covering the gaping hole with the deep, rich earth that once surrounded Christina’s prized roses. The old man’s bent figure was silhouetted against the house as the sun began its daily climb.
“Now what did you say his name was?” the announcer repeated.
“It’s—” the voice said, but a plane flew overhead, and the answer was garbled.
The old man patted the last of the dirt with his foot. Then he took a hastily constructed wooden cross and shoved it into the ground, upside down.
He walked back to survey his handiwork. The freshly covered grave blended well in his garden of triptychs and icons.
The birds chirped happily and all was silent, except for the droning of the radio talk show. Suddenly, th
e old man was drawn to the sound, and he tilted his head with curiosity as the announcer signed off for the night.
Afterword
by George A. Romero
In his traditional Gothic form, the caped vampire of legend and literature is indeed the inspiration for Martin, however, any homage need not be an imitation. If not for squeamish moments spent watching the screen Dracula wing through the french doors to bare his fangs at the throat of a sleeping innocent, Martin would not exist.
The object in creating this new vampire is not to dispel tradition, but rather to restate the phenomenon from a different perspective, to re-vamp, if you will, a goblin that has stalked us since Lilith, and to use him to shape a parable.
The vampire suits an allegory well, as his characteristics are familiar to us all. We have him categorized and filed away in our bank of bad guys. Yet we have also been moved to sympathize with an occasional vampire in literature. Even in Stoker’s Dracula we are saddened by the count’s unrequited loves and by the curse which he must bear into eternity. But because of his particular difference from the rest of us, he must die, and die brutally, a stake driven through his heart to reclaim the precious blood he has had to steal from us.
In earlier centuries, when the wise were creating myths, man’s blood was considered to be his very soul. The river of red as it ran from a saber wound was believed to be the spirit escaping to eternity. No wonder then that, as McNally and Florescu have detected, Vlad the Impaler, who punished hundreds by bleeding them publicly on stakes, became Stoker’s model for Count Dracula.
There are anemics who indeed have cravings for raw meat and blood, and there is evidence as recent as the Manson killings that a psychopathic state will create a lust for drinking blood. The Los Angeles Slasher was found to have drunk the blood of his victims from goblets which he evidently brought along for the occasion.
Were they simply disturbed and demented human souls who were the actual victims of the angry mobs of old, and were those tortured beings said to be demonic simply as a justification for society’s own demonic revenge?
Among the vile and the hated beings, the vampire has always held high rank. He is a fine character for story-telling, for there has always been a sort of vulnerability in the traditional vampire. He has been handsome and compelling; he has had no superhuman strengths; he has been attracted to human emotions and tastes. We have seen him alone in his study, sipping wine and reading the classics, and longing for an undying love (literally). He always wishes to be freed from the needs which possess him.
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