Uncle Cheroot

by Alan Jansen

  That whole day, I wandered about the cave examining minutely everything that was in there. In a corner of the cave, a mountainous pile of jewellery, including crowns, rings, bracelets, chains, small statues, and all sorts of objects – all pure gold or silver with fantastic precious stones set in most of them – lay haphazard as though someone had just thrown them that way and left them where they lay. In several large chests were gold and silver coins, filling the chests to the brim and then overflowing. I had never seen such a treasure before, instantly knowing I could buy all of Rome with it if ever I got my hands on it.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity, night-time arrived. It was difficult to say inside the cave whether it was day or night, but I sensed clearly that darkness had arrived. I heard the creak of the second chamber door being opened and then shutting. The Druid being, creature, monster, or whatever he was had awoken and was making his way into the outer chamber, where I sat huddled in a corner sitting on the floor …

  ‘Ah! Norseman. Up and about, I see,’ he greeted me coldly. ‘Couldn’t eat the food and drink the water, I see, eh?’ he said, laughing a grim laugh as though something special amused him. ‘New clothes too, I see, eh? Your foul old ones you can throw outside the cave. The rats will take care of them. … The door to the cave I shall open now. Your first thought, of course, will be to escape, but escape there is none. The vessel we arrived in is scuttled. In time you will have the strength to salvage it and make it seaworthy again, but right now you are too weak and are trapped on this island with me. Yes, as you remember well, I drank your blood yesterday and infused into you my own. You are no longer human. You died briefly last night as you emptied your bodily fluids, but now you are born again, a demon like me. You are now a blood drinker – sometimes known amongst Romans as Strigol. You are a being with no soul, a demon in the form of a man, aye! Even immortal, if you like. … You are stronger than what you ever were, but in a week or two you will be even stronger with the strength of five men. My own maker charged me with the task of making one like me before I died. It was a solemn promise I had to make or I would never be able to die myself when my time came. Tonight I shall make a great big bonfire and leap into it. I shall be burnt to ashes and hopefully be truly dead forever. My release is only possible by choosing a successor, as in my promise to my maker, and you are he, Norseman. You will find your new life wonderful at first, but it will be agony later on as you realize you cannot die. As the decades and the centuries pass, you will tire of living alone, tire of not being able to walk in the daylight or see a sunrise or sunset ever again. You will long for human company, but will find that nigh on impossible. You will tire of not having friends or hearing children’s laughter. Aye! One day you will be so tired of it all that you will do as I and go into the fire. I charge you with no promise to make a successor like my maker made me do. If you kill yourself in a fire even now, this instant, you will truly die, and I wouldn’t care! Enjoy my wealth. When you escape this island, buy yourself a castle and every luxury you want. You will soon tire of all that too. A word of warning in your new life: Do not walk in the sunlight, for it will burn you. It won’t kill you, but it will burn you black and make you weak as a kitten. Disguise yourself well if you must meet with a human, for your pale transparent skin and nails will frighten people away. As for food, it’s only blood that will nourish you. Drink from humans, even animals if you must, but take only what you need and leave them alive afterwards. Do not drink from sick humans. You will develop senses that will tell you if your intended victim has infected blood running in his or her veins. Infected blood will make you sick and weak. I myself haven’t drunk from a human for nearly a hundred years, for I don’t need to. I possess a great gift – a bloodstone that came into my possession when I plundered a monastery in Britannica. They say these stones were formed from the flowing blood of true saints while they were being martyred and their blood fell to the bare earth. As their holy blood mingled with the earth, these stones or crystals were formed. My stone is shaped like a small bottle. The monks in the monastery revered it as an actual stone that formed when the Christian God Christ’s own blood was shed as he was being nailed on to his cross. Suck on it and you can drink as much blood as you want. I leave it behind for you, for I need it not anymore.’

  That very night, as he had promised, the Druid Strigol made a huge bonfire, using several tree logs and branches, driftwood, and anything else that would burn. As I watched on, a comatose witness to his efforts, he jumped into the flames. For a brief instant, I saw him wriggling about and laughing madly, before he caught fire and burnt up very quickly.

  So it came to pass like the Druid Strigol said. In two weeks, I was so strong that I was able to lift the sailing galley clear from its sculled spot on the coast, repair it, and immediately set sail for Rome, using the night stars as my compass and guide. I couldn’t go back to my villa. I knew this immediately. My dead slaves and my absence couldn’t be explained away. Besides, I was ‘different’ now. I knew I wasn’t human anymore – the pale and transparent skin on my hands and body frightened even me whenever I gazed upon it. Any remaining slaves in my old villa would run away from me in fright, thinking I was a ghost returning from the dead. I heeded my maker’s advice and kept away from the daylight. By night I temporarily transferred the great treasure from the island to an empty dwelling in the Roman hills that I had discovered. After all the treasure was safely transferred that week, I made my way to the house of a famous Roman lawyer at dusk, disguising myself as best as I could. With the aid of his services, I purchased a large castle close to the border between Rome and Gallia, the country that is called France today. The lawyer didn’t ask too many questions. The huge sum of money I paid him for his services and eternal silence saw to that. In my new home, I tried to make a new life – a life as a non-human entity. All that my Druid maker had prophesied was correct. It was kind of thrilling at first to be the being – the Strigol or whatever – that I had become. (From this point in my narrative, I will refer myself as a vampire, as my kind came to be called in later centuries.) I could travel great distances at dusk and night, even having the ability to soar above the ground and fly, if walking at great speeds bored me. The bloodstone gave me nourishment, but I also drank from humans whenever I felt the need to do so. The Druid’s great treasure was still practically intact despite my new expenses. In the years that passed, I have added to that treasure, taking whatever I wanted from whomsoever I chose to rob. I have been alone for centuries, and what a toll this has taken upon me! I am a vampire. I cannot mate with a human woman, nor can I mate with one of my own kind. Vampires do not have offspring and cannot produce biological heirs. Our real bodies are dead. What we possess is animated flesh and bones that once belonged to a soul long since departed and gone to the realm souls depart to. From time to time I have befriended a mortal or two, but I could never keep up a friendship, as I age not and my human friends age before my very eyes. This is the worst part of it all … to see beautiful women and men age so quickly and turn from beings with supple and sensual bodies into old hags and withered old men. Besides, it was so tiresome colouring my face and hands to hide my whiteness and being able to visit only at night After a few centuries, I could take it no longer and searched this world for beings like me, but I found to my great dismay that every single vampire I sought out and discovered desired not to have anything to do with me. In short, my kind were compulsive loners and sought not company of any sort. I even scoured the world in search of other beings that lived forever. I discovered elves, fairies, and the like, but even these creatures shunned me. Besides, they were not truly immortal like I was, although they lived to great ages.

  Decades and then centuries passed. … I was so weary of my terribly lonely life, as my maker had prophesied, that I decided to do away with myself, tired and sick to death of it all. Everything changed, however, when in the early part of the nineteenth century I met the part-English, part-French Druid who cal
led himself Cheroot. I had long since followed the example of my fellow vampires and isolated myself in my old castle situated on the border between France and Austria, surrounded by thick woodlands and far away from inquisitive noses and other busybodies. From time to time, some official French or Austrian authority checked the legality of my abode, but I was ready for them. Well-paid lawyers always handled these matters for me, so I never had to answer any questions personally, whether they came from authorities from France or Austria. Through my lawyers, I always arranged for new ‘heirs’ to inherit the castle every eighty years or so to prove some sort of ‘succession’ and hide the fact that I, the original owner, still lived on. In my final years, I dismissed all my servants and was now living absolutely alone in my large castle, using just my bedchamber as my living room. I arranged for a last will and testament to be made out. I left all my possessions to Cheroot, whom I had met only twenty years prior and who had proved to be my one and only true friend. Cheroot even temporarily halted my plans for suicide. I had decided the year before I met my friend that I would end my ‘life’, or whatever one chooses to call this existence of mine, by walking into a roaring fire and being burnt to cinders as my maker did. This was the only way I could die – the only way any vampire can truly die. Forget about stakes through the heart, silver bullets, running water, and other methods of killing vampires that popular film-makers and fiction writers dwell upon. A true vampire can only die if his animated human body is completely burnt to ashes.

  I was in the midst of making my final plans to end my life when one day when half flying, half walking (vampires walk at a pace ten times the speed of humans) over the French border, I saw that it had started to rain heavily. We vampires are not physically bothered by rain or anything the weather throws at us, but walking or flying in the pouring rain isn’t something we are too happy to do. In any event, I do not enjoy it! For starters, the rain soaks our human clothes, and that’s not comfortable even to an immortal vampire. In the distance, I noticed a large chateau that was well lit up, and decided to land in the gardens and somehow trick the human inhabitants living within to grant me shelter until the infernal rain ceased. I flew over the large iron gate leading to the chateau and landed on the other side, intending to walk up the driveway to the front entrance. I passed a few stable buildings which had been converted into garages of sorts, one of them housing a very impressive Rolls Royce car. There was a man reading a newspaper on a couch in a corner of the stable. He was very much surprised to see me. I knew at once that this was the car’s chauffer and a domestic. He was obviously surprised, as I’ve already said, probably wondering how I had passed the locked front gate. It was a huge gate and no human could have climbed over it, a fact he knew. I put out a hand in front of me before he could speak and said in my best French, covering most of my face with my large fur coat, with my hands in leather gloves, which prevented him from seeing their pale transparency, ‘Don’t be alarmed, good sir. The front gate was not locked as it should have been, and I had no difficulty opening it. I am just a wandering stranger in these parts looking for botanical samples that grow only on the border, and the sudden rain surprised me – caught me unawares. Please take me to you master or mistress so I may formally ask for permission to stay indoors awhile until such time this rain and storm has passed.’

  I could see the man was uncertain what to do or whether to believe me about the gate being unlocked, but in the end he decided to comply with my request. I guess my attire convinced him I was not a thief or an evil man. I had purposely put on my grandest clothes and a great mink fur coat that day for my travels, while my feet were clad in a pair of the best leather boots I had in my possession. I had planned to visit my latest lawyer, a man called Depardieu who lived deeper in the French countryside, and I always dressed well for such meetings. The chauffer folded his newspaper, put it aside, and beckoned me to enter the Rolls, whereupon he started the car and drove it up to the front porch of the chateau. He rang the porch bell, and a liveried butler answered its summons shortly. The chauffer spoke to him animatedly, and the butler, having given me a quick once-over, closed the door and went inside. He emerged a few minutes later and asked me politely to follow him to the study, where his master would see me. As I passed the corridor leading to the study, I could not help but notice the stylish and rich way it was furnished. Obviously a man of great taste lived here alone with his servants, or maybe with a wife and children.

  Arriving at the study, a well-set man of around forty rose up from a chair in front of a lighted fireplace and greeted me, hardly bothering to look closer at me, assuming I was just an ordinary traveller seeking shelter from the elements. … ‘My driver and butler say you are seeking shelter from this cursed rain, good sir. Come sit with me awhile and let’s talk. If the rain doesn’t cease, you are welcome to stay the night. Living on the border between two great countries, I do not often get visitors. Do sit down and relax. You are most welcome.’

  I immediately sensed that I was talking to no mortal man. My vampire senses told me that this was a hybrid – mostly human, but also a part-time blood drinker. I sensed his powers too, immediately knowing they were not as strong as mine. I could easily kill him if I wanted; this I knew. The stranger also seemed to possess a mind-reading talent like mine, fully able to ‘read’ another being and to know whom he was dealing with. As my host came closer to me, his own powerful senses warned him I was not human. His initial greeting turned cold at once, wary and alarmed at having discovered my true nature. He changed his greeting and tune immediately as he said bluntly and loudly with no fear, ‘Keep your distance, vampire. I know your kind. I know not why you seek me, but rest assured that I will participate in no evil of any sort. If it is my blood and my servants’ blood you seek, drink your fill and leave us all afterwards alive and in peace. Your secret will always be safe with me. You can sense this with your great powers. You must know that I will never betray you.’

  ‘Nay! I seek neither your blood nor that of your servants, brother! I believe you are a Druid, yes? Not an ordinary one, though, and one who has lived for centuries, immortal in a fashion, but not as immortal as I. Aye! As you sensed, I can overpower you easily and kill you easily if I so desire, but that is not what I want. It is the truth what your servants say. I do seek only shelter from the rain and nothing more.’

  I won’t go into detail of what happened next or our exchange of words and explanations. Suffice it to say that the hybrid calmed down and listened to me patiently as I explained just who I was, and how my strange fate was sealed so long ago. So began my friendship with Cheroot the Druid. We met quite often after that fateful day, sometimes at his chateau and sometimes in my stone castle in Austria. I tired not of his friendship and company as I had done earlier with the few humans I had befriended, for he and I had much in common. Apart from being intellectuals after a fashion, neither of us could age, and we both were in essence benevolent beings, albeit of a different sort. He was nearly human, being able to eat and drink human food, besides having his blood thirst, which prompted him to drink from humans now and then. He couldn’t eat animal meat, dairy products, and most vegetables, retching it all out if he tried. Bread, fowl, and fish he could keep down reasonably well, and he could eat sweetmeats of any kind, besides being able to drink champagne and other alcohol as much as he wanted. I wasn’t envious of this gastronomical ability of his. I had long since forgotten what human food tasted like and was quite content to suck upon my bloodstone whenever I was hungry or thirsty.