By Jon Croft
Priests and Scientists, 2025AD
Chinatown, NYC
Dusk is the time.
When daylight is fading fast, causing shadows to move through every angle and void. Buildings are perfect – incorporating endless recesses and design-specific crevasses for light to stagnate and fade into. Small black holes where mischief can always gain an advantage.
Simon Magus knows such places well. In the absence of light, there is darkness – and every human organism requires light in for its eyes to function. Simon knows that even the Archangel Gabriel has eyes. He probably has extremely attuned senses that enhance his vision, too…but sight – comes from his eyes. And his eyes are on his face. Conclusion?
God had eyes. God made man in his own image – and his Angels, too. His Angels have eyes. Eyes are little machines that collect light. Light is the key to perception.
When he was a young man, the Priests at Karnak and Abydos taught him: even in daylight, there is darkness…. melt into the darkness… bend the daylight to your will.
Two thousand years ago, Priests in Egypt taught Simon Magus how to cheat Einsteinian Physics. Their trick?
In modern parlance: eyes collect light and route it to the retina, which converts the light into data. It sends this data – electrical impulses – over the optic nerve to the brain. The brain then interprets it. Makes sense of it all. Einstein figured out that light can “bend” around objects and obscure them if the gravity around those objects is disturbed with concentrated force. Result? The object drops in and out of the human eye’s visible light spectrum -it’s optical band window. The object suddenly fades out. To the human eye, it disappears.
Of course, to make something totally disappear you have to completely bend all the light around it for a sustained period of time. That takes a massive weight, exerting a huge pulling force on gravity. Like a planet. Einstein described it as “like dropping a bowling ball on a bed spread – the ball sinks down, pulling the bed spread down around it”. Such an enormous drag on gravity and consequent light bending is impossible for one man to do.
So how did the Priests of Karnak and Abydos short-cut their way through Einsteinian Physics? Magic, that’s how. The power of the mind. Psychic energy.
Directed and focused bursts of psychic energy can “warp” another human’s ability to perceive “visible light” for brief periods of time – whether they know they’re being targeted or not. A magician’s directed psychic energy can trick light receptors inside an eyeball. Result? The targeted subject thinks they can’t see a particular object or person. Mind over matter.
The Priests of Egypt taught Simon Magus to focus his concentration and – momentarily – bend light, thereby changing the “Visible Light Spectrum” of a subject’s eyes. Objective? To vanish his image or to hide some object. By focusing his mind, Simon Magus was trained to erase himself and objects from another’s perception long enough to gain an advantage – in circumstances like a fight, a poker game or even getting caught in bed with somebody else’s wife. Perception is reality.
Police scanner activity has alerted Simon Magus that a curious number of burned human bodies that smell of Sulphur have been turning up in Chinatown and its environs. Police have chalked it all up to gang wars – but Simon has a hunch. He wants to examine the bodies – see if the charred remains have extended canines or other evidence of Vampirism. Somehow, he surmises, these bodies may offer new clues in the eternal human versus Vampire struggle.
Cops in a number of New York City boroughs have also come across a baffling number of – in their Police slang – Smudges. Dark patches of slimy detritus containing human bones, like ashes from a campfire, smeared on open parking lots, sidewalks, roof tops – anywhere daylight can shine. Some look like charcoal outlines of the human form – like those ash bodies in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. Simon Magus has seen this Smudge business before.
In Medieval Europe there was an outbreak of cholera that spread so completely through an isolated mountain village in Czechoslovakia that desperate Vampires couldn’t find untainted blood – and fed on the sick and dying. The Vampires, too, became ill – and so confused and disoriented that they staggered down streets aimlessly until the sun rose, when they spontaneously combusted into a pile of greasy ash. Simon Magus is certain that the Smudges cops are finding in New York City under God’s clear blue sky are immolated Vampires. For some reason the poor bastards were unable to find safety. Why? Were they ill?
Vampires – although cursed – are living organisms that can be killed. And they aren’t impervious to disease. History has shown that Vampirism wanes in areas overrun by plagues and waxes in new migratory human settlements. That’s where the vital, fresh blood is. The Vatican has computer programs tracking Vampirism outbreaks: the “vector” is clear. Vampires are drawn like a magnet to untainted blood supplies. And cities like New York are enormous, tasty banquets for them – if the food is fresh. Vampires have a saying: The Blood is the Life.
Simon Magus rapidly moves through the creeping dusk over Columbus Park, eyes covered and hooded, heading towards the police chatter he’s hearing in his earpiece – five bodies found burned to death in a storefront on Baxter Street near Walker and Canal Streets. Officers from the Fifth Precinct – Chinatown’s Police division- are already on scene. Hopefully Simon can slip into the action and get a look at the corpses. The rapidly falling darkness is perfect for his little magic act. He’s done it may times before.
He sees the storefront directly ahead of him bathed in the flickering strobes of red police car lights that are parked in front of the ramshackle multi-story industrial structure. A partially lit sign with Chinese characters and English writing hangs over the entrance: Wi-Chan Export Company.
Simon ducks into a side alleyway and positions himself next to a service entrance that has a broken overhead light. Stairs and refuse containers offer a bounty of hiding places from which he can monitor police action as they wait for the coroner’s van. He hears voices from inside the storefront through a broken window near the service door that’s been blocked up with filthy plywood. It’s a cop talking to a Detective.
“They’re burnt to a crisp…and smell like shit. More of them freekin’ Smudges! Let the Coroner’s Office guys touch ’em. Screw that shit. I Can’t smell any accelerant. It ain’t arson – but we’ve already put in a call to the Fire Inspector for a confirmation. Looks like some Tang grudge match or Gook feud…We’re goin’ off duty in fifteen minutes – anything else, Detective?”
The Detective says no, and Simon Magus can hear the cops trudging outside to wait for the Coroner’s Office body retrieval team. He takes the opportunity to enter the building through the service entrance – he uses a CIA-issue deadbolt lock “auto tumbler” device to open it – and follows his nose to where the bodies are. The cops are right – the place does smell like shit. Burned shit.
Simon lurks in the darkness until he sees a middle-aged Detective heading for the front door, then moves in.
He finds five bodies on a slick, greasy floor in a front room of the building. The corpses are barely illuminated by streetlight that’s streaming in through large, filthy and uncovered windows facing the street – looking East on the compass point. Right where the Sun rises in the AM. Torn and shredded remnants of drapery litter the floor, purposely ripped down to flood the place with sunlight at 6:00AM. The bodies are burned beyond recognition – and two are burned from inside out despite being on the bottom of the pile. These Vampires were stacked to burn like cordwood. Simon reaches in his pocket for his Leatherman multitool and opens it. With the pliers he pries out of the charred bodies what’s left of their oversized canine teeth and extracts two entirely intact lower jaws. He stashes the gruesome souvenirs in a plastic bag and then stuffs the bag in his cloak pocket.
The magician leaves the way he entered and briskly makes his way through the alley to Baxter Street and then Walker Street. He’s arranged a rendezvous with Dmitri, his Valet and driver on Canal Street, about three blocks away. His Mercedes is parked at Chen Blossom Restaurant – one of his favorites. After a quick bite to eat, they’ll head back to Paulus Hook in New Jersey.
He gets no further than the end of Walker Street, just shy of where it meets Canal, when he realizes that he’s being followed. It’s an unmistakable sensation that comes over him that he’s fine-tuned over the centuries. A sixth sense. He instinctively locates an outcropping of a commercial building loading zone and – magically – fades into its recesses. Peering out from behind a cement column in the pitch-black truck bay, he sees a strange figure walking – with a slight but noticeable limp – across the street and looking in his direction as if he’s mystified where his prey disappeared to. He’s got a long coat on and hat covering his head. His face looks bearded. Whoever he is – he’s no pro.
Simon’s interest is piqued. The stalker clearly knows Simon was at the police scene. He watches the man walk further down Walker Street and head towards Canal – the same direction Simon intends to go. Curious.
The nighttime has moves in quickly. Streetlights are on and feeble illumination wafts out from some commercial buildings on both sides of the street. Simon carefully studies where visible light ends and shadows begin. He then bolts towards the limping stalker – now about 100 yards ahead of him, deftly weaving down the thoroughfare through the nighttime gloom. Gradually picking up his pace, he leaps from shadows to murk, dim silhouettes to inky funk and splintered shades to sooty blackness – all variations of this nighttime light spectrum that he uses to make himself invisible. Finally, he makes his move.
Simon lands a full body drop-kick into the stalker’s back, splaying the man out face first onto the grimy sidewalk below. His flesh makes a sickening slap against the concrete as he howls in pain. By then Simon is on his back, straddling him, pulling his head back and grinding his Seax against his throat. Simon can feel the blood draining out of him as the guy gasps and coughs his final words out.
“MERCY, MAN!! MERCY!!!” He barks out in fits and spasms.
Simon leans in towards the man, pinning him to the sidewalk, hard. He stops sawing through the man’s windpipe so he can answer a question.
“WHY THE HELL WERE YOU FOLLOWING ME?” Simon yells at him.
He hacks and chokes out more words, desperate and pathetic.
“I SAW YOU DUCK INTO THAT ALLEY BY THAT POLICE SCENE. I KNOW THERE WAS VAMPS IN THERE. SOMEBODY PAYS ME TO WATCH…JUST WATCH AND REPORT BACK. HE GIVES ME PLASMA…FOR HEME….I’M DYING. I GOT THE BLOODTURBO CANCER, MAN – TURBOCARCINOMIC ERYTHROPOIETIC PORPHYRIA. I CAN’T PAY FOR TRANSFUSIONS…HE USES ME FOR SMALL JOBS…AND PAYS ME WITH BLOOD BAGS.”
Even in the harsh streetlights of this grubby neighborhood, Simon sees the man’s hands are split open from lesions and his neck is raw flesh. He has a sour, rotting and sulphureous stench emanating from his foul breath and neck blood where Simon has already started sawing.
HEME deficiencies like the so-called Blood Turbo Cancer are clues to Vampire activity. Their minions are all infected with it and dying, willing to do anything for one last “fix” of whole blood. He’s a blood junkie – a HEME-craving Prole. Without HEME his blood can’t carry oxygen. He’s a dead man walking.
“TELL ME – WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?” Simon is losing patience and ready to cut this filthy dying cretin’s head off.
“BURNED VAMPS ARE TURNIN’ UP ALL OVER, MAN! BLOOD BANKS SAY HEMO SERUM NUMBERS AND CBC’S ARE COLLAPSIN’ EVERYWHERE – BLOOD’S GETTIN’ THIN AS WATER! VAMPS NEED REAL JUICE, NOT SICK SHIT! EVERYBODY’S FREAKIN’ OUT…THIS VAMP SOLDIER NAMED ENGERHOF PAYS ME TO KEEP MY EYES OPEN FOR SUSPICIOUS TYPES SNOOPIN’ AROUND. HE’S GOT ALL US BLOODTURBO GUYS SPYIN’ THROUGHOUT THE CITY.”
Bingo.
Simon wants nothing more to do with this rotter. Time to put him out of his misery. With one final, ripping swipe of his Seax, he severs the man’s head. He gets up and tosses it into the curb like a bowling ball, leaving the headless corpse splayed on the sidewalk.
It’s a message.
Copyright, Jon Croft 2025
Email: vlchek1@Gmail.com
