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1985

January 1:

New Year’s Day. Mary, I promised last year that I would avenge you. I promise again. I’ll promise it every year until it happens. I’ll never forget.

January 24:

Dean’s sixth birthday. It’s been more than a year since he saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn’t ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking when he’s going to go to school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t risk it. Maybe this year, now that he’s a little older, now that he knows a little more about things. I’ve been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night.

Myling. Scandinavian child spirit, also called utburd. Typically the souls of murdered children, or children who died unbaptized. They will ride travelers at night and demand to be taken to a graveyard so they can rest, buy they get heavier and heavier as the graveyard gets closer, until the person carrying them is driven under the earth by their weight. This belief is derived from the practice of leaving unwanted or deformed infants to die of exposure. Generally they haunt the location where they were abandoned, but folklore also notes their presence in the dwellings of those who killed them —usually a family member. If their remains can be located and buried in hallowed ground, they will disappear.

May 2:

Sammy is two today. Two years in a row we’ve spent his birthday in Colorado, where I had to stop by Daniel’s. Still never seen a vampire, but Elkins is such a hermit that because I talk to him, other hunters are starting to ask me to pick his brain for them.

Crosses won’t repel them, and sunlight won’t kill them. They can go outside. They need blood to survive, and prefer human blood, but can survive on other mammals if there are no humans around. The only way t be sure of killing them is beheading —although the blood of a dead man is like poison to them. I won’t kill them, but it weakens them, makes them slow and sick.

Daniel says they’re extinct, but he keeps an eye out anyway, and he thinks I should know enough about them to take one on if there are any left. He gave me a copy of this article, in case it was ever useful.

May 17:

This would have been our seventh anniversary. Wool and copper.

There lived at Baghdad an aged merchant who had grown wealthy in his business, and who had an only son to whom he was tenderly attached. He resolved to marry him to the daughter of another merchant, a girl of considerable fortune, but without any personal attractions. Abul-Hassan, the merchant’s son, on being shown the portrait of the lady, requested his father to delay the marriage till he could reconcile his mind to it. Instead, however, of doing this, he fell in love with another girl, the daughter of a sage, and he gave his father no peace till he consented to the marriage with the object of his affections. The old man stood out as long as he could, bud finding that his son was bent on acquiring the hand of the fair Nadilla, and was equally resolute not to accept the rich and ugly lady, he did what most fathers, under such circumstances, are constrained to do, he acquiesced.

The wedding took place with great pomp and ceremony, and a happy honeymoon ensued, which might have been happier but for one little circumstance which led to very serious consequences.

Abul-Hassan noticed that his bride quitted the nuptial couch as soon as she thought her husband was asleep, and did nor return to it, till an hour before dawn.

Filled with curiosity, Hassan one night feigned sleep, and saw his wife rise and leave the room as usual. He followed cautiously, and saw her enter a cemetery. By the straggling moonbeams he beheld her go into a tomb; he stepped in after her.

The scene within was horrible. A party of ghouls were assembled with the spoils of the graves they had violated, and were feasting on the flesh of the long-buried corpses. His own wife, who, by the way, never touched supper at home, played no inconsiderable part in the hideous banquet.

As soon as he could safely escape, Abul-Hassan stole back to his bed.

He said nothing to his bride till next evening when supper was laid and she declined to eat; then he insisted on her partaking, and when she positively refused, he exclaimed, wrathfully, “Yes, you keep your apetite for your feast with the ghouls!” Nadilla was silent; she turned pale and trembled, and without a word sought her bed. At midnight she rose, fell on her husband with her nails and teeth, tore his throat, and having opened a vein, attempted to suck his blood; but Abdul-Hassan springing to his feet threw her down, and with a blow killed her. She was buried the next day.

Three days after, at midnight, she reappeared, attacked her husband again, and again attempted to suck his blood. He fled from her, and on the morrow opened her tomb, burned her to ashes, and cast them into the Tigris.

September 7:

Today was Dean’s first day of school. I put him straight into first grade. He’s almost seven, and I just told the school that he’d been in kindergarten back in Kansas. They didn’t press too hard when I told them that the kids had lost their mother, and we’d been moving around. I think we’ll stay here for a while. Or try, anyway. I felt normal again while I was taking Dean to school. He asked on the way in whether kids in school learned the same stuff he’d been learning. I had to tell him that maybe it wasn’t a good idea for him to talk about Dad’s job on the playground.

He came home on the top of the world, and he brought me worksheets with the names of different parts of a fish, different numbers of apples and oranges added together… this is what it should be like. Why can’t it?

Sammy wants to be in school too. I can’t even imagine staying in one place for long enough that he’ll start here. Three years seems like forever.

November 2:

Mary has been dead for two years. I’ve been on the road for three days, cleaning up a haunted building in San Francisco. Already, these are starting to seem like an everyday chore to me. You get the story, you find the remains, you burn them and salt them. End of story. These were two girls, and the whole ride back to the roadhouse I was thinking that I’ll never have girls. Dean saw something on my face, or maybe it was just that he knew what day it is. When I got here, he came up to me and asked if I’d had a tough hunt. I couldn’t talk for a minute.

November 14:

Took Dean shooting. If he’s big enough to try to comfort me, he’s big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him fire the .22, but he is a deadeye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. I have a feeling it’ll be different with Sammy. Maybe he’s just too young to show it, but I don’t think he’s got the same kind of killer instinct.

Pliny the Younger, letter to Sura:

There was at Athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a spectre appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terror grew upon them, and death ensued. Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the house was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this very alarming circumstance, a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold. It happened that Athenodorus the philosopher came to Athens at this time, and, reading the bill, enquired the price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew toward evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the front part of the house, and, after calling for a light, together with his pencil and tablets, directed all his people to retire. But that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits, he applied himself to writing with the utmost attention. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking of iron an rattling of chains was heard: however, he neither lifted up his eyes nor laid down his pen, but in order to keep calm and collected, tried to pass the sounds off to himself as something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before him, beckoning with a finger, like a person who calls another. Athenodorus in reply made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers; the ghost then rattled its chains over the head of the philosopher, who looked upon this, and seeing it beckoning as before, immediately arose, and, light in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus, being thus deserted, made a mark with some grass and leaves on the spot where the spirit left him. The next day he gave information to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was found there; for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground, was putrefied and moldered away from the fetters. The bones being collected together were publicly buried, and thus after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more.