By Jon Croft
Yuma, Arizona 2025AD
The July heat of the Sonoran Desert is still suffocating as the sun sets. The magnificent plateaus and mesas actually act as heat sinks for a brief time as dusk begins to move in, driving temperatures even higher before merciful nighttime desert winds bring relief.
This terrain makes Simon Magus think of Egypt and his youth. Where he learned his craft at the feet of Temple Priests and lusted after the forbidden beauty of the virginal “Betrothed of Amun” – Priestesses who had taken vows of chastity and service, placing themselves forever beyond his reach.
What brings him to this place is a coven of Proles – humans infected with a unique turbo-hybridized blood cancer that passes when they’re bitten by a Vampire and allowed to live. Geneticists have isolated much of this condition – called Viral Metastatic Erythro Proto Porphyria (VMEPP) – known through the ages as “Vampire Disease”.
Passed to children in remote, inbred communities of infected Proles, the disease manifests itself as Congenital Erythro Poietic Porphyria (CEPP) and results in widespread infant mortality, fetal blindness in sunlight, severe ultra-violet light reactions – such as instantaneous blistering and smoking of skin, blackened urine and brown teeth that glow in the dark. It is a physiological dysphoria that results when a human body can’t convert porphyrins into Heme – that substance that gives blood it’s red color and makes Hemoglobin. Without Heme a body can’t hold oxygen and dies. Heme deficient bodies crave red blood – because without it they’ll suffocate from lack of oxygen. They’ll get Heme it any way they can – by sucking it out of their victim’s jugular veins or outright cannibalism.
Simon is certain a Vampire is here. Lurking among the wretched, cast-off victims of his race. And he’s an Elder – a cursed one of status. Perhaps even a Kagan, a leader of advanced years and authority. It’s a curious situation.
These are just the souls with whom he would hide. They’re a hopeless leper colony – zombie-like, nearly mindless, some without ears and fingers. Disfigured faces. Bleached white sclera in useless, scorched-out eyes.
CEPP causes infantile degeneration of cartilage and triggers early loss of fingers, toes, ears and nasal appendages. Even indirect exposure to sunlight – and sunlight through windowpanes – precipitates spontaneous eruption of skin lesions and burning. The epidermis literally “cooks” itself off the bones because of extremely high concentrations of porphyrin in the infected blood and its violent reaction to the ultra-violet light spectrum (UV).
Yes, a Vampire is here… Simon can smell him.
Simon watches this particular coven for days as he silently melts into shadows, using his ancient tricks to bend light and mask his visibility. He hits pay dirt when hears some infected Proles referring to a “Master” named “Argus”. Proles are insular and paranoid communities that eschew normal human contact – like carnival freaks. They typically don’t welcome visitors. Perfect places for Vampires to take refuge in. Proles congregate in isolated locations, places outside the mainstream.
Simons’ suspicions are confirmed when he watches “Master” Argus throw a naked, screaming baby into a filthy lean-to and command the twelve degenerates that are inside to feed on it. Argus probably stole the child from an impoverished mobile home community up the road in Yuma.
Simon stalks his prey as the Sun sets. The Vampire emerges out of a dilapidated shack, some distance away from the Prole community. He walks tall and defiant in the safety of dusk, that majestic time in the desert when the sky turns blood-red, and the breezes become like cool water. He’s tall and dressed in black.
It’s time. Simon slowly walks into the open, directly into Argus’ pathway.
“Argus”. Simon’s tone is calm…conversational. The Vampire stops in his tracks and warily studies Simon’s black cassock and Orthodox crucifix.
“What do you want, Priest?” Argus bares his menacing teeth. He’s got the look of a cornered mastiff…. a growling, feral hound.
Simon suddenly fades from view – he’s now a mist, a smoky, abstract emanation weaving through darkening desert shadows. Argus growls out loud, twisting left and right, scraping the night air with his claw-like fingers…
“I’ll kill you! Face me Sorcerer!!!”
Argus is scared. He can’t focus on Simon’s indistinct form – yet he throws himself at the spectral phantasm Simon has become.
At that very moment Simon strikes. His Seax gleams in the fading reddish halo of the evening sky. One thrust and slash – and it’s over. Simon crouches over the reeking carcass and methodically saws through its remaining neck sinews and bone until the head falls away. He drags the body into the center of an open dry waste pit so the morning sun can dissolve it.
Simon puts the head into a small sack and takes it with him.
He pauses to once again stare into the awe-inspiring night sky and drink in the thousands of stars.
“Thy Will be done”. He quietly whispers.
Paulus Hook, Jersey City, New Jersey 2025AD
In 1633 The Dutch West India Company appointed Michael Pauluson as their Overseer of properties directly across the Hudson River from the southern tip of Manhattan. The Company directors used Michael’s surname – Pauluson – and combined it with the Dutch term “hoeck” meaning hook or point of land and called the location Paulus Hook.
These days, Paulus Hook is an extremely gentrified community on the Hudson River Waterfront in Jersey City, New Jersey. It is exactly one mile as the crow flies from what we now know as Tribeca, another extremely gentrified community in Manhattan. New York City. The infamous City that Never Sleeps.
On this bitterly cold, blustery November evening a solitary Simon Magus stands on the rooftop of a twelve-story building at the corner of Essex Street and Hudson Street in the Paulus Hook ward of Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s a renovated sugar warehouse – with windows, archways, authentic paneling, carved fireplaces and designer decor imported from a castle in England. It’s one of the crown jewels of Hudson County real estate. Conde Nast’s Architectural Digest devoted an entire ten pages to it in their August 2020 issue. Like so many other residential locations in our modern-day world, to most people its price tag is unfathomable.
Simon can literally throw a rock from where he’s standing to the Hudson River below, not fifty yards away. The mesmerizing lights of Manhattan are just beyond the cold, choppy waves of the Hudson – which is churning itself into a lather in anticipation of a late Fall gale blowing down from Canada. But the cold air feels good blowing through his robes and beard, his still-impressive mane of grey hair. It reminds him that he’s alive.
“Yes”, he whispers to himself. “By the Grace of God….I’m alive”.
Simon Magus comes to his rooftop perch frequently. Being surrounded by the teeming chaos of life that is New York City and this congested coastal waterway domain is one of the few pleasures he still finds intoxicating. Here he is at total peace. A discrete and autonomous security system keeps watch over his every move from dark recesses along the roofline and everywhere else in the structure. At or nearby every mechanical apparatus, piece of furniture, heating and air conditioning vent, stanchion and roof access pillbox is high-tech weapons array. Trip-wire lasers honeycomb the floors. Infrared software tracks body heat and thermal image signatures of every moving source.
High-power ordinance projectiles are unleashed by sensors positioned in a hive-configured grid pattern that’s strategically mapped onto every square inch of the property. AI identifies threats – laser “paints” them and locks on – and Simon’s voice commands (delivered in Greek) initiate firing sequences, obliterating whatever guest or interloper that is singled-out as dangerous. Cameras – too numerous to count and too miniscule to even see – are everywhere. Every starling and gull that flies by is recorded and noted. All records are archived in a secure server and poured over every three minutes using special AI security algorithms to spot anomalies as part of a multi-layered surveillance protocol. All this interfaces with Simon Magus’ phone – a fully encrypted Android device specially re-engineered in Russia with no tracking, surveillance or other back doors. It is satellite and Dark-web capable – and can’t be triangulated.
Through interlocking holding companies, Simon Magus owns everything within a five-block radius of his spectacular warehouse mansion in Paulus Hook. Every building and garage. every bodega, nail salon, restaurant and laundromat. He’s landlord to countless businesses and condominium tenants. He even owns the Morris Canal Basin Marina one block away where he keeps a few extremely fast watercrafts gassed up and ready for his frequent jaunts to New York’s, North Cove Yacht Harbor at South End Avenue and Albany Street in Tribeca. It’s his favorite way to get to Manhattan.
Yet Simon Magus’ signature is scrawled on no pesky legal documents, income tax returns or investment brokerage buy-sell orders. If a corporation can’t be the public face of his endeavors – he uses a trusted strawman. Or lawyer. Or armies of lawyers. His true identity will never be found on any interest statements or banking records, stock shares, Real Estate Deeds or Bonds that his empire generates. He pays a king’s ransom for this anonymity. And it’s worth every penny.
This enigma that presents himself as a Gentleman Priest was once condemned as, “An abomination in the eyes of the Lord”. He commenced this journey as a charlatan, a ghost, a master of illusion – and as such he conducts his life now, never far from the embrace of his first love: Magic. His singular talent is the very reason why he was picked to rid this world of a festering, eldritch evil.
Simon Magus’ body still bears the ink glyphs of Abydos and Karnak – administered with excruciating thoroughness by the Priests of Thoth, Ptah and Amun in Old Egypt centuries ago. Tattoos certifying to the world his status as a Master Magician of the Temple of Horus. With this same tattooed body, he sought an audience with St. Peter – and mortally insulted him – in the months after Jesus was crucified. Today, his penance of exquisite torment is a refuge. It is a cage that swallows and consoles him in the hours when he is not performing his wicked, sacred rites on Earth.
How did this wealthy, enigmatic and stygian phantom of a man land in this place? His journey was long and humbling. The stuff of legends.
He took his Holy Vows after fifty years of study and contrition at the Greek Orthodox Hermitage of Varlaam in the Meteora mountains of Thessaly in 125AD, becoming a Priest of the Greek Orthodox faith. Hundreds of years of warfare in the Mountains of Carpathia in Central Europe came after that, where he rose to the rank of Hetman in the Varangian Guards. This annealed him into a stone-cold killer and master of the martial arts.
Then came a century of academic research and study in Germany after which he emerged with a Doctor Mathematics and Philosophy degree. Time well spent around 1450AD in the Court of Giovanni Di Medici – the Florentine Banking genius of the Italian Middle Ages – taught him the secrets of making money. Knowledge and wealth have been his companions ever since – but the perfectly balanced Seax blade he keeps strapped to his torso is his only prized possession. It is his holy talisman and badge of favor in God’s eyes.
A man respectfully clears his throat immediately behind Simon, signaling a desire to speak.
“Master…”
His Valet, Dmitri, is nearby. He also wears a black cassock, and a formal, ecclesiastical Orthodox Crucifix is suspended on a silver chain around his neck.
Without uttering a word, Simon Magus follows young Dmitri to his private chapel. It is time to celebrate Mass.
Copyright 2024, Jon Croft
vlchek1@gmail.com
