✶✝ Shh. It's not moon time yet, but here's the start of chapter 6...

In the interest of getting this story out before one or both of us dies, I have decided to keep podcast episodes at quarter chapters but cut back on freelance work and make these quarter chapter releases bi-moonly (yes! meaning twice a moon) or, hopefully, better. Starving artist life, here I come. Wish me luck. ✶✝

On Friday morning, Jared schlepped himself to work, going over and over his next move. While his computer took its sweet time booting up, he went to bother Sue.

He assumed she hadn't found any more vampire material on either of the entries he had flagged in her files, but knowing her adeptness at research, he figured this didn't rule out there being any.

"You didn't find any follow-up on the cornfield massacre thing?"

She shook her head. "There were no more articles with the 'vampire' keyword."

"That...doesn't mean there wasn't follow-up."

"Oh. Well I guess not."

He tried her on the other source. "What about the guy who found a body in the woods, from the online diary? Didja read the book that was from?"

She shrugged. "Of course I looked at it, but the rest of it was boring. Just that one reference."

"That was at the Brooklyn Public Library?"

"I think? Oh, yeah, central branch. They only had one copy."

Jared frowned at the nearest clock. If he left for the library directly after work, he'd have only a small window to locate the book and check it out before closing time. Finding articles on a possible vampire massacre in a cornfield two centuries ago might take hours, assuming there was anything to be found, whereas the book he knew existed. So Jared opted for the library.

He stopped at a phone booth on the way and punched in Judy's number—he'd need tonight to review the book. He should really cancel on Rose, too—take the day to try to find more material—but given how important tomorrow was to her...he'd rather face the vampire's fangs than that phone call.

Judy didn't answer, and the machine picked up.

"Uh...hi, it's me. I—I can't make it to dinner tonight. Sorry. I...oh, I've got some work I gotta take care of. I'll see ya next week." Hoping this last was true, he hung up the phone.

The train was late coming into the station nearest the library, and he hurried toward the plaza and up the steps of the old building. The central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library was an open book, limestone pages spread in twin wings branching off the curved spine, whose doors admitted readers into a three-story foyer presided over by bronze giants of American literature. Jared had spent countless hours here, whether escaping from school or home, his cold apartment, or life in general.

There was only one hit in the catalog for The Weiss Diaries, with nothing further by the listed author, and he quickly found the book and brought it to the checkout desk.

"Books are due back in three weeks," the librarian informed him, stamping the book's card.

"I knew that before, so I guess I renew it."

"You can renew it before the three weeks are up if there are no holds on the book."

"That's binding, is it? Got it covered. That is if I don't check out first..."

"What?"

"Sorry, I tend to overdue it. I'll shelve this and book it outta here."

He headed out of the building, the librarian's bewildered gaze on his back. While waiting in the subway, he started paging through the book. It was longer than he'd anticipated, and the style was dull and repetitive. Little wonder Sue hadn't read anything into it.

On the train, he set the tome on his knees and opened to the first pages. There was a dedication in German, and his eyes slid over the foreign words. It was probably, he had concluded by the time he reached home, written by the son mentioned in the online diary as having compiled and published his father's journals, and whose German footnotes peppered the entries. The main text alternated English and German, with English becoming preponderant over the course of the author's journey. The first section he could read started right in on a day in the life with the lack of context afforded the beginning of a diary entry. Given the manuscript's size and the generally trivial nature of the observations recorded, Jared began to skim.

Though it wasn't overly late, he found himself suppressing yawns as he read. He had always been an avid reader, but his books of choice, which had long ago overburdened the little bookshelf behind them and spilled out across the floor, were of a different sort of material—adventures and mysteries, epic fantasy and pulpy science fiction, horse operas and space operas, sword and sorcery, humor and horror, spies and heroes and superheroes and the supernatural.

This account seemed to be painfully natural in character, the day-to-day existence of one Hermann Weiss, interwoven with a purple paean to a daughter perhaps over-loved. Between the extravagant praises of her and the transcribed minutia of young Evi Weiss's days, Jared began to feel a bit suffocated himself. His own father had never spared him a word of praise, but at least he'd been free to get out of the house, and to choose whom he dated, commentary notwithstanding.

Plans for the young lady's betrothal had been upended by the lengthening shadows of war, which had led the family, of which only Weiss used English in any capacity, to liquidate their assets and relocate to America. They chose, upon the recommendation of the long-time family friend that would be joining them, New York City. A city big enough to disappear in, to start over in, where foreign accents could go unremarked, and into whose society their friend could offer them introduction. Here the narrative entered a period of shock, as Old World aristocracy was plunged into the vulgarities of American culture. They relied excessively upon their friend, their varyingly stiff to faltering English eventually given as "Swiss" in accent, and began gradually to reestablish themselves. Around this point, the family friend entered Weiss's mind as a potential replacement suitor for his daughter, and the characterization of him shifted, growing warmer and more concrete. Enough to give Jared pause.

"He is entirely too old for her, though he does not look it, and whilst I was never giving him such a thought in the Fatherland, if we are bound to these foreign soils she scarcely can have a better guide. He must have been a very small boy when last he lived here, yet he is as familiar with the city as if he had lived here all his life, and ingratiates himself, and us, into all the right corners with an ease that does him great credit."

The friend was the Kanstein mentioned in the excerpt in Sue's files, the one the insinuative footnote had seemed directed at. Jared had had an eye out for references to the man, and now marked each new one as the narrative dragged on.

Among the endless commendations of the beauty and grace of Evi Weiss were, increasingly punctuated by the son's German footnotes, accounts of daily life, of societal pressures, local news, and passages on business matters and Weiss's pastimes. One of these was the page from the online diary, but nothing adjoining it shed any more light on the presence of the body in the woods. There were a few exceptionally dull tales of exceptionally lavish parties, attended or hosted. The family friend, it seemed, was quite enamored of the nightlife, and early evenings would find him at their door. Weiss welcomed him more and more warmly.

"His character we of course know well enough, but he scarcely is more a scoundrel than was I, at his age. He is a man of honour and comports himself as a gentleman, and once Evi is persuaded I think I shall approach him on the subject of matrimony."

Weiss was evidently successful on both fronts, as a courtship was begun, the social dance of which consumed many pages. And quite suddenly, it was over. Evi Weiss had disappeared from home, from society, from the face of the earth, and Kanstein had vanished with her.

"I have not seen her since after the ball," Weiss wrote, "and what a fool was I to ever introduce my precious flower into the company of such a monster."

From there the diary disintegrated into pitiful mourning, fruitless searches, bewildered theorizing, and impotent invective, but the man's political views, as the effects of the war reached the city, made Jared struggle to sympathize. A final outpouring of parental adoration, interspersed with further episodes mundane in character, and then, in the midst of one such entirely unremarkable anecdote, the book ended abruptly.

Jared slumped back in his chair.

What a total waste of time. Shoulda gone for the corn article. Corn... Shit, I gotta buy something for the barbecue...

He went to make himself something to eat.

But as he settled down with a bowl of bland noodles, something was bothering him.

Kanstein, the suspicious friend vilified by father and son alike. There was no sure indication that he was a vampire, aside from the aside on resistance to cold and his general proximity to tragedy, but...Kanstein? Something about it troubled him.

He opened the book again.

There's gotta be something.

The more he went over it, the more suspicious it felt. Beyond the body in the woods and the friend's disappearance along with the daughter, the more vocal of the men who had aided in the disinterring had soon after gotten drunk and suffered a kicked-in skull in his capacity as horse minder. Then there was Kanstein's youthful appearance, his alleged indifference to the weather, his love of the nightlife, his familiarity with New York City—

What if...it's actually him? Not some random vampire, even, but...actually him?

But it was surely too steep a coincidence that this should happen to be the same one.

He did say he's a New Yorker...

He flipped back through the references to him. As he reached the section on the journey to America, where the English entries began to predominate, he caught on a point he hadn't noticed before:

"Kanstein was reluctant to make passage with us, confessing he had something of a dread of the seas, and that sea sickness would confine him in his cabin the duration of the voyage."

A seasick vampire...?

But it made sense, he thought, if it were only a cover. After all, a vampire wouldn't want to be caught above deck in the daytime.

A coffin in his cabin? But why not come up just at night? Well I guess that'd be hard to explain...

He kept looking, paging through entries he'd skimmed. As Weiss's interest in the attributes of his young friend had increased, he had provided more details:

"...when we are talking of the cruel things in the world, he gets something of a gleam in his eyes. I would be interested to know what has happened to some of his enemies, but that he is so genial..."

"He makes a series of unfortunate mannerisms, but he does maintain a manful presence overall."

"He eats like a sparrow, but he certainly can hold his drinks..."

"...something of a dandy with regard to dressing. A man who would rather make a flying leap into his walking companion than be splashed by a passing motorcar."

Jared snorted, picturing the vampire pitching into Weiss as an automobile raked the curb, sending up a wave of filthy water.

A wave...?

He evoked an image in his mind, of a ship such as Dracula himself might have come in on, storm-tossed in the dead of night, sails heaving, desperate hands racing to and fro as a wave broke over the rails.

A wave. That was...running water, in a way. A wave crashing down over the deck of a ship would be a danger to a normal man, to be sure, but...to a creature that purportedly couldn't cross running water?

Would that hurt him?

He glanced at his satchel where it lay on the desk, thinking of the bottle of stale water he'd forgotten in the bottom. Just a bluff, but...

Maybe holy water's not so far-fetched after all.

He paged forward again, searching for references he might have missed. There seemed to be frustrating gaps, perhaps filled in the German entries. Kanstein evidently had had some sort of trouble in the transatlantic voyage, but nothing specific was said on this as the narrative became taken up with bemoaning Evi's failed engagement. The details of Kanstein's mannerisms were also apparently not expounded upon, as Weiss's view of him grew more favorable, and he went to great pains to describe his friend's assets instead—his wealth and property, his intelligence, wit, and knowledge of history, and on and on about his tenacity, his Old World sensibilities, his skills in every manly pursuit, from fencing to horsemanship to the hunt.

"It chafes upon him," Weiss noted, "for he loves so to make conversations, but we cannot ride abreast, for my horses have all taken the most peculiar dislike of him. His own horse he is insisting upon racing about in the twilights. What he did to the brute I cannot say, but it seems to have the fear of the Devil in it."

Maybe it really is him...

Jared sat back and rubbed his eyes.

Or maybe I'm being an idiot...

In the end, it was only loose conjecture—there was nothing to definitively tie Christian Keen to this narrative. He couldn't say for certain this Kanstein was even a vampire, much less his—the friend could simply have eloped with the daughter, perhaps even as a service to her, to free her from her overbearing father.

And yet, he couldn't quite believe this either.

There is a chance.

He went back to skimming for further mentions of Kanstein, but it was getting late, and he was still short on sleep. His chin persisted in sinking to his chest, and the letters were all starting to run together. Setting the book aside with a sigh, he made to get ready for bed.

The apartment door had been fixed and the bolt secured, the mezuzah still screwed awkwardly outside. He had rearranged the furniture the night before, dragging the bed away from the windows and blocking the one with the fire escape using the cabinet, putting his back to it and nearly toppling it in the process, before himself collapsing onto the mattress. He'd still been able to see the pockmarks in the ceiling, but his eyelids had been too heavy for this to have bothered him long.

Now, however, with the ceiling spread above him and his eyes refusing to close, he had ample opportunity to examine the holes. There were big ones and small ones, overlapping at regular intervals like animal tracks, the small ones in threes or, most often, twos, as though finger and thumb had plunged into a snowy crust.

These smaller holes mocked him like pairs of black eyes against the white paint. He imagined the fingers that had made them, the fingers that, had he been a second slower—

He shook himself, rolling over on his unbandaged side—but the holes were still up there. The constellation Vampyre in the white sky, inverse heavens with stars made of darkness—why were there holes in the ceiling? He'd needed some manner of grip for his demonic climbing? And even so, wouldn't he be too heavy? Jared rolled back over to look at them. Had the vampire had grips when he'd climbed before? He supposed he could have been holding onto the girders, back in that alley under the abandoned railroad tracks. Did it matter? Was it useful? He started going over everything he knew about the vampire, beginning from their first encounter. But the holes broke his focus, punctures in pairs against the ceiling's pale skin—

God-shut-up-go-to-sleep!

That was quite out of the question.

He got up to use the toilet, and coming back he grabbed the library book and settled at the desk.

Jared woke to his first alarm, his face pressed into paper, wood, and drool. He straightened with a crack of vertebrae.

Ow.

He'd meant to get up early and try the newspaper archives, but now a new plan was forming. A quick breakfast, out the door, and by the time he'd finished preparations he had to jog to make it in time to meet Rose.

At the station, Rose greeted him with a bright and showily secretive air, making small talk on the ride out to Orchard Beach, her anticipation for the evening flashing in her eyes in the pauses. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and there were times when he could even forget what awaited him on Sunday.