The Ghost of Sam Hain
Sam's Halloween plans this year were destined to make some noise
This is a Psalm of Vampires short story.
I hate this time of year. It should be one of my favorites, but Sam Hain ruins it. I figured when he died, he’d stop visiting me every year. Especially since I don’t believe in ghosts. And double especially, vampire ghosts.
I guess I need to correct that statement by saying that there was a time I didn’t believe in ghosts. Sam has been visiting me as a ghost every year for the past hundred or so. I’ve learned to face facts.
“You’re a much better chameleon than I,” said Sam on this latest visit when he asked me if he was correctly replicating modern lingo. “That’s why I come to you for counsel every year.”
“You’re dead,” I replied. “Nobody cares.” I’ve been repeating this every year for a hundred years. “Anyway, there are approximately eight billion humans on earth you could haunt. Why ruin my day?”
“I haunt them the rest of the days, bro,” he said. He paused for a moment, maybe wondering if his use of the brotherly colloquialism was on target. “Wait. Did you say eight billion? Wasn’t it six last year? These idiots expel babies like Russian mobile rocket launchers.”
“No, it wasn’t six last year. What do you want, Sam?”
His grey, twisty, translucent shape bent as if it were a tropical tree bending from gale-force winds. Then it righted itself. He stroked his long white beard. The physics of that was well beyond me, since I knew he wasn’t corporeal. Why would a ghost stroke a beard that is technically not there?
Sam sat down. Again, weird physics. “You know how I come to you every year for my annual Halloween hunt, right?”
“Forgetting is a yearly project that you never fail to ruin this time of year, so yes.” As with every other year, I didn’t ask him how a ghost vampire feeds.
Sam had met a gruesome end in Turloughmore, County Galway, Ireland, where he had been killed by a singularly determined Irish vampire hunter.
We had been friends of a sort before his violent demise. He began his tradition of visiting me for Halloween long before anybody had ever heard of it.
Most historians will tell you that Halloween evolved from a Celtic tradition called Samhain, but you get less than five seconds to guess where that word came from.
In the good old days, as Sam might say, Samhain was intended to mark the transition of summer’s long days into night. When vampires dominated the western parts of Ireland during the glorious Middle Ages, Samhain’s rituals were forced upon an unhappy human populace by Sam, who lorded over several Irish counties with such a gruesome appetite that he nearly ended the concept of human Irish demographics by himself.
The myth of Samhain in Ireland was that it became the time of year when the souls of the dead and some other supernatural types crossed into our world. Most ancient civilizations invented pagan Gods like Zeus or Thor to rationalize our kind.
The Irish explanation focused around the aos sí, romanticized by Irish bishop Tírechán in the seventh century, which concealed the fact that he was scared shitless twenty four hours a day by the significant vampire presence of that era.
The aos sí were what modern folk would call mellow vampires, who countered the more fearsome Fomhóraigh, giants from the underworld, in Irish lore, but in reality part of Sam Hain’s House, which was the ruling house of the island in those days.
Sometimes, I think Sam has let his past go to his head, but can that still happen when you’re nothing more than a ghost?
Sam continued: “Well, this time, instead of asking you where I can find some good human feeding tubes for my House, I thought I’d suggest some for yours.”
“We don’t really do that here,” I said, referring to the practice by some other vampire houses of leaving a corpse when they feed. It was a Halloween tradition for Sam to ask me where he could find a solid criminal population he could leave for final inspection by the county morgue.
He knew my approach toward feeding was different. I preferred the more civilized symbiotic approach: a little feeding where the human host didn’t remember anything and lived to not tell about it. The worst thing that might happen was a little puncture wound near the carotid artery, which typically healed before they woke up.
I have always considered slaughter uncivilized. Many of my brethren, however, consider it an obligation, especially since there are so many humans now, and so few of us. I grudgingly accommodated Sam’s request for help with targets each year.
“I know you don’t. But this is different. These humans are deliciously deserving. And don’t lie. You like a good kill as much as any of us.”
It was weird seeing SpongeBob SquarePants on a monitor behind Sam, because I could see the animation through Sam’s body. I snatched my master remote from the table next to my bed and turned off all the monitors.
“I mean,” I said, “It has its merits.” Why do people always visit me in my bedroom? I thought to myself, thinking of my friend Moreland.
“Exactly. So here’s the thing. I want to invite you to this year’s hunt. I’ve chosen the perfect targets. I’ll be leading the charge, of course. There will be dozens of vampires from my House attending this hunt.” This seemed like a good opportunity to ask him about how a vampire ghost feeds, but he answered for me. “Of course, I’m not a full participant now that I’ve crossed to the other side. Consider me a cheerleader of sorts.”
Weirdly, a cheerleader costume appeared on his person, such as it was. It, too, was translucent, like the rest of him. He didn’t look good in a cheerleader outfit, and I told him so.
“You don’t have to be female to wear a cheerleader’s skirt, do you?” he asked in his thick Irish accent. “That seems very, I dunno. Gender obsessive? A little judgy?”
“No, I suppose not. But you should have attractive legs. Yours look like they broke off my crepe myrtle tree.”
“Fucks’s sake,” he said, transforming his outfit to a dark robe. “Better?”
“Much.”
“Now. Where were we?”
“I believe you were telling me about the charge of the fright brigade upon, where exactly? Downtown Atlanta? I don’t think we have enough criminals gathering in one spot for that kind of thing. Crime in this town is, in fact, negligible compared to most big American cities.”
“Chicago,” he responded.
“I love Chicago. Leave it alone. They’ve got enough problems.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“What’s the one group of people everyone hates in that town?” asked Sam. “Universal hatred. Humans, vampires, everybody. All ethnic groups, all genders, all everything and everybody?”
“Oh,” I said. I jumped off my bed and sat next to him on the couch. “Go on.”
“Well. What else is there to say?”
“Hmm. Sort of an anti-terrorist action, no?”
“Precisely.” He produced a phone.
“How did you do that?” I asked. The phone, too, was translucent. And quite large for a smartphone. I guessed it was a small tablet.
“Just a little Fomorian trick. Now, check out this video. This is pretty typical.”
I looked at the video he presented. “That’s appalling,” I said.
“Even I find it so, and I normally delight in seeing humans suffer. Why, look there, my friend, he has his knee on the child’s neck.”
“I see that. Turn it off. It’s very unpleasant.”
“Isn’t it? There are vast mobs of these people in that fair city. You have a history there, do you not?”
“I spent some time there, yes. Mostly playing the blues clubs along the south shore.”
“Lots of good Irish folk there, too,” he added hungrily.
“Yeah, well, they all taste the same to me.”
“So, you in?”
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
“None of this namby pampy stuff, right? I mean…”
“I know what you mean.”
“No you don’t. I mean, none of this, Oh, I’ve had my fill, I’m done for the night kind of stuff. We’re talking old school. Suck some blood, spit it out. Fill up if you want, but keep going. Till the human has met its end.”
“That’s going to make the six o’clock news,” I said.
“Only geriatrics watch the six o’clock news.”
“How do you know this?
“We beyond the grave types know a lot of things. You’d be shocked at the things I know.”
“Do you know where Daphne is?”
“Sure. In the Malagasy forests among the Kalonoro.”
“What the hell, Sam? Owens and I have visited the place three times during the last six months and haven’t seen a trace of her.”
“She’s hanging out with Charly. She’s fine.”
“What do you mean, hanging out with Charly?”
“You know, when two people do shit together?”
Charly was supposed to protect Daphne, not “hang out” with her in the Malagasy forests for six months, I wanted to say. This was likely to ruin my hunting and feeding mood.
Sam must have noticed my fallen face because he said, “Would you like me to retrieve her for you?”
“One, how? And two, you’d do that for me?” I asked happily.
“Don’t worry about the how. And yes, of course I’ll do that for you. It’s not like I had other plans. Meanwhile, I hope we can focus on the hunt tomorrow.”
It wouldn’t be easy, knowing Daphne was just one dead vampire trip to Madagascar away from me, but I promised him yes.
The day after the hunt, my blood curdled with satisfaction at seeing the New York Times story in my morning news feed.
As I scrolled through the article, I took note of the many reporting errors, understandable given the circumstances, but nearly jumped out of my seat upon seeing the headline that the famous vampire eunuch Stephen Miller had been arrested and charged with leading the attack:
“Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was hit with conspiracy charges by the FBI. FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement, ‘We have learned that Miller is a mutant eunuch vampire that was rejected by his own kind several years ago and has been on a mad quest to take vengeance upon anyone and anything ever since.’
“His boss, Susie Wiles, is said to be in hiding.”
Thanks for reading!
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Notes
I added the bit about Daphne for readers of the novel Psalm of Vampires, who may be wondering where the hell she is, too. Adding that bit violates the code of short story writers, since it doesn’t contribute to the plot, at least, not in any substantive way. (shrug).
