Judas and the Vampires (5 page)

“Suffice it to say, since you’ve been such good company tonight, the rest of your briefing will take place at a later time...one determined by my choosing,” he said, and then stiffly nodded to his surly chauffeur that it was time to release the door locks so I could exit the sedan.

“I’m leaving first thing Friday and will be retiring early tomorrow evening, to get my beauty rest.” I said this in case he was planning a similar round to this one at some ungodly late hour—he’s done that before.

“Why of course.... I have your itinerary right here.”

I hated his knowing smirk.

Was some surprise still in the works? Or, did my mention of beauty sleep touch his deeply ingrained fear of aging? I should advise here that Mike generally views me as a freak of nature and as somebody with a closely guarded secret health routine to beat the aging process and look perpetually thirty-ish. If only he knew the truth. Getting lots of sleep isn’t part of it, since I rarely require more than a few hours of rest at any one time.

“We are expecting your full cooperation on this, William.” He closed his laptop. “If you play your cards right, I’ll make sure you have enough time to snorkel in the Caspian—or for what other mischief you and Alistair can concoct.”

“I guess we’ll see how it goes,” I said, and then stepped out of the sedan.

I waited to get inside my Acura until the sedan had exited the garage and moved on to whatever next appointment Mike had. Listening closely for anything else, I felt strangely comforted by the deserted parking garage’s silence. I tried to visualize what might lie ahead, and found myself drawn most to what Petr Stanislav and his crazy quest for the Garden of Eden might entail. I decided the man must be crazy, alright...but no worse than some guy searching the world for his lost thirty pieces of silver.

Chapter 5

I didn’t sleep well that night. Especially after I relayed the latest news to my son regarding the assignment we’d been given for our trip to Iran. Not that I ever sleep long as it is...but it was much less than usual.

“You should see if we can cancel our reservations and forego this nonsense!” Alistair told me on the phone. The only good thing was I didn’t interrupt his dinner, decreasing the chance of an acid reflux attack. “It makes a helluva lot more sense to reschedule for the fall break—or even next spring if necessary. No rush for getting school agendas completed on time, and no Russian billionaires to hobnob with in the frigging Alborz Mountains!”

There wasn’t much I could say since they were my exact sentiments, initially. But his irritation greatly exceeded mine, forcing me to pull the phone away from my ear.

“Yes, if given the chance to redo this whole adventure, I would concur with you.” I tried to sound caring while presenting an alternative point of view. “But the ‘
die has been cast’
, so to speak, Ali my boy. We’re going.”

“The hell you say!”

“Yes, the
hell
I say! I’m your father and you’ll just have to trust me that this will work out!” Now I was the one a little ticked off. “I’ll still find a way for us to head north to our destination. I promise!”

“To Al-h—”

“Sh-h-h-h!!”

“What the hell’s the matter now??”

“You damned well know what!” I chided him, although by then I had lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “I’d rather not give away the rest of our itinerary, if you don’t mind, son!”

Every phone line we’ve ever had has been bugged over the years.

“Bah! Pops, only you’d be so arrogant to think everyone on the planet wants to know what the ‘Great William Barrow’ is up to these days!”

Awkward silence followed, and I wasn’t sure what to say next. Apparently, Alistair faced the same problem.

“I saw Mother today,” he finally announced.

“How is she?” I felt a sudden lump form in my throat.

“Not so good, Pops.” His tone bore profound sadness. I doubt this world has seen devotion for one’s mother any stronger than the love Alistair holds for his mom. “She’s remembering less and less...the nurse told me that she no longer wanders down the hallways at night.” He chuckled sadly.

“I’ll be sure to stop by Good Shepherd tomorrow after I get off from work. I’m planning to read her favorite passage from
Pride and Prejudice
.”

“I don’t know, Pops.” He sniffed. “I’d like to think she’d enjoy your company, but she didn’t seem to know who I was tonight. She might not even believe you’re her long lost grandson this time—probably not even if I came with you and told her that you’re my boy.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine with me, son,” I sought to assure him, my tone soothing and confident. “And if my presence agitates Beatrice in any way, I promise I’ll leave quietly. She won’t even know I’m there, unless it’s a positive experience for her.”

“You swear?”

Another image of my kid as a little boy suddenly filled my mind, and now it was my turn to chuckle, although warmly.

“Yes, I swear. Ali, it’s going to be fine.”

“Well, okay.” He sounded a tad hopeful. “I look forward to our evening chat tomorrow night.”

“Good night, son.”

“’Night, Pops.”

After he hung up, I stared out my living room window at the twinkling D.C. skyline for nearly half an hour. A powerful sense of sadness overwhelmed me as I reflected on all that I had been through in the past century...what it was like before I met Beatrice, and how she changed my life and perpetual existence forever. I pictured her so clearly...when she was a young and beautiful woman with bright green eyes and long flowing strawberry blonde hair, and a smile that easily melted my steeled heart. Back then, my Georgetown professor son was just a young kid pretending to be Buck Rogers out in the backyard of our home in the outskirts of Glasgow.

My wife and kid embodied such joy and happiness, and our lives seemed so complete. I’ll never forget the extreme pain I endured when I left them—how it literally destroyed me inside to do what I had to do. To do what I had done so many times before in the previous nineteen hundred years of my existence.

Sometimes I’m not sure which is worse. Is it the terrible loneliness I’ve become so familiar with over the centuries in my solitude? Or, is it more the inevitable goodbyes when those I cherish finally succumb to old age and death?

Beatrice would be leaving soon. All the more reason to spend as much time as possible by her side.

***

“She’s sleeping, William. Maybe you should come back tomorrow in the daytime.”

Thursday evening after work, and a woman I greatly admire was trying to shoo me away from my wife’s room. Of course, this lady, Nurse Larisa Jones, has no idea to this day that the young man standing before her is not actually Beatrice Barrow’s grandson. I can only imagine the shock this portly middle-aged caregiver would experience if she were to learn I was her favorite patient’s husband instead.

I had no intentions of ever telling her.

“I promise to be quiet,” I said softly, and for good measure flashed the devilish smile I’m known for. “I’ll only be here for a little while. Dad and I are headed overseas early tomorrow morning.”

“Oh? Where would you two be off to now?”

My charm was working. Larisa’s golden brown eyes seemed to glow within her youthful ebony complexion as she chuckled and shook her head.

“You ain’t going to China or Japan this time, are you?”

“No, not this time.” I no longer worried that my wife’s nurse would stop me from entering her private room in the Good Shepherd nursing home. I pushed gently on the door’s latch and quietly opened the door. “We’re heading to Europe.”

A little white lie, though technically we would be stopping over in Frankfurt before continuing to Tehran. But, the sooner I could weasel myself into a chair next to my wife’s bed, the better my chances of getting to stay for an hour or so.

“You two go out that way a lot, don’t you?
Can I come along the next time you jet-set to the French Riviera??”

These seemed more like polite questions. I already had one foot through the door, and she had turned to continue her rounds through the building’s second floor.

“Sure, if you can squeeze it into your schedule.” I kept my voice low, to not disturb my wife. Still, I managed a seductive wink—all in good fun, of course.

“Um-umm, well we’ll see about that!” I heard her laugh to herself as she moved down the hallway, along with an echoed ‘I’m gonna hold you to it!’.

My playful distraction successful, I felt confident I would have at least an uninterrupted hour with Beatrice. I moved over to the right side of my wife’s bed and gently scooted my chair to where I sat less than a few feet from where she lay. At the moment, she slept soundly. Part of me was saddened that our visit would likely go unnoticed by her. But the smoothness in her breathing gave me hope that her rest would be a healing period for her tired body and would prolong her time on earth. I wanted to be there when she passed, and prayed silently that it wouldn’t happen while Alistair and I were out of the country.

And why would I care so much when I had exited her life once before? Good question. Really it is.

I left her after nearly ten years of marriage. Those ten years were the best years of my entire existence. We were in love...and a love deeper than any I have known before or since. Our love transcended anything I ever had experienced—something beyond sex and longing. A level of knowing and understanding that I’ve often wondered if it is the thing so loosely thrown around these days: Soul mates.

But if soul mates, then what in the hell was I thinking when I left? After all, even today I love her just as much as I ever have.

I turned chicken shit. But chicken shit with a compelling reason. As much as I loved her—and knew I would
always
love her—I also realized I’d be in a world of terrible despair for eventually having to leave Beatrice, when she aged and I did not. Things have ended badly every time I’ve hung on too long, and it’s not usually me who has the initial urge to leave. Most of the time it’s been the person I love who has insisted on getting away from me, as if I’m some unnatural demon in the flesh—an unacceptable anomaly and cruel joke by nature.

The pain of such separation has damned near been unbearable. Imagine my fear of what this could mean if Beatrice rejected me, my only true love? The very fires of hell would be a comfort in comparison to what that would mean for me.

I staged a fiery car crash near Birmingham, England back in September 1957, using a purchased cadaver. This was long before forensic medicine would have uncovered my ruse. I watched from afar as the woman and son I loved more than anything grieved terribly. And I grieved too.... I just thought foolishly another man would enter their lives as a husband and father, and they would eventually forget about me.

It never happened...at least not in time to make a difference in their lives. Even when I tried to prod potential suitors into Beatrice’s path, or befriend my son, it didn’t work. Believe it or not, it’s worked many times before in centuries past. Just not this time.

Damn soul mates!

Anyway, I would’ve banished myself to a permanent absence if Alistair had stayed on the right path. But after he and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1968, he started down a path to personal ruin, where booze, drugs, and unscrupulous friends and fast women threatened to destroy a promising career in academics. By 1983, my beloved son was on the verge of being thrown out onto the streets. Despite the risks to both him and me emotionally, I reintroduced myself at that point into his life. At first he saw me only as a benevolent stranger. But I eventually presented enough clues to where he was forced to consider the impossible. The friend who appeared to be a few years younger than him was in reality his father—a man supposedly dead for nearly thirty years.

He wanted so badly to tell his mother about me, but after an ongoing argument that lasted the better part of one full summer, he finally saw how damaging this knowledge could be to her. By then she had remarried, and although Alistair convinced me that she didn’t love the man, it seemed incredibly cruel—and rude—for me to pop back into her world and say, “Hey, sweetie, I’m home!”

So, my son and I have spent the past twenty-eight years rebuilding our bond with each other, and skirting around her. Often times, I’ve felt as if she knew I was near—especially back in the days when I would watch her as she worked in her favorite garden. I’d catch her looking around herself and smiling—even though no one else was around. After her second husband passed in 1992, I have made an even greater effort to be near.

You’re probably wondering if I’ve ever accosted her before the onset of Alzheimer’s. Surely you can picture the perpetually young man walking up to the elderly lady in public. I did that just once, at a grocery store in Clemson, South Carolina, where Alistair was finishing his doctoral work. She glanced at me, and our eyes met for a moment. But when I smiled, a look of recognition suddenly came over her, and I realized immediately this was all I ever wanted. At the same time, the shocked and sad expression upon her face let me know I could never do this again. I’ve always hoped that she chalked it up to old age and shrugged off the incident. Since Alistair has never mentioned it, I believe she’s never told him.