The Short Unhappy Immortality of Owen McKinty

A short story.

Someday, when and if I ever create a paid section of this magazine/newsletter (or whatever one should call it), it will primarily contain original prose stories and comics — things of value, worth paying to read. I’ve already decided said prose works will be illustrated, by me, to add to the value. In the meantime, please enjoy this story as an (unillustrated) example of what might come.

I: A Grand Day

Grigore Kobori shuffled away from the cash machine on 37th Street, the one mounted just outside of the Mother Hubbard’s Kitchen family restaurant. It was dark and it was late. The Mother Hubbard’s had been closed for more than an hour, as was nearly every other shop along the sidewalk. Only the 24 hour Laundromat was still open, but that was down the other way from the direction in which the old man was headed. Oh yes, Kobori was quite an old man. That much was immediately obvious. He was small and stooped, and the pale, crumpled parchment of his skin hung over his skull like a loose, dry sack. Only a few tardy wisps of white hair still clung to his spotted pate, and they danced and swayed in every slightest breeze, as if they also longed to be on their way. He leaned heavily on a cane as he walked with his short, tentative steps. For the very old, the simple act of putting one foot in front of another becomes a risky enterprise again, rife with hidden pitfalls.

            “That’s right, old fellow,” Owen McKinty said, but only quietly to himself. “You be careful now. One false step is a broken hip.”

            Owen regarded the old man through cold, reptile eyes. He was across the street from Kobori, watching his slow progress from the concealing shadow of a recessed doorway, a deeper place of darkness in the already darkened avenue. He didn’t know the man was named Kobori, and had never seen him before tonight, but Owen knew as much as he needed to know. The old man had crept out into the night to draw cash from a machine and was now on his way again, alone and unprotected. That added up to reasonable provocation in Owen’s estimation. Owen left the doorway and padded across the street on an intercept course. He was silent in his worn sneakers. He’d plotted his course expertly, intercepting Kobori just as he was passing in front of an alleyway that divided the block into two smaller sections.

            Without saying anything, or even breaking stride, Owen scooped up the old man under one arm and quickly dragged him into the alley’s dark mouth. Kobori was light as paper and never uttered so much as a murmur of protest. Work quickly enough and the victim will be too disoriented to resist or scream. That was Owen’s guiding principle and it had served him well in the past.

            Owen was big and had beef to him. He’d carried the tiny old man well into the alley’s depths before setting him back on his own feet. He took away the man’s walking stick, but allowed him to prop himself against one of the narrow alley walls.

            “Here’s the deal, old fellow,” Owen said. “I set out this morning to have a grand day, but it didn’t turn out that way. So far I was only able to cheat, rob or extort people out of seven hundred and thirty dollars. That’s more than two hundred dollars shy of the grand day that I’d promised myself, isn’t it?” He talked in a normal, conversational volume, not attempting to whisper or sound threatening. Smalltime though he might be, Owen was still a thug of much experience, and had learned long ago that a calm, practical tone always conveyed more authentic menace than an angry one.

            “So you’re going to make up the difference by turning over that money you just drew out of the cash machine.”

            “Now why would I do that?” Kobori said. He had an angry look to him, this old man, leaning against the dirty brick wall with both hands to prop up his frail body.

            Good for you, Owen thought. You haven’t surrendered yet. You’ve still got a little backbone left in you, even when you know this can’t turn out in your favor. But all admiration aside, Owen needed to move this encounter along. Time is seldom in the bad guy’s favor in such undertakings as this. He pointed a finger at Kobori’s side, just above the belt line.

            “Here’s what I’m going to do,” Owen said. “I’m going to punch you right there, very hard. And I’m going to keep doing it until the kidney just under the surface ruptures wide open, spilling all of its foul juices into your body cavity. It will be a very slow and unpleasant way to die.

            “Then again, because I try to be a reasonable guy, and because you’re such a feisty old coot, I’m willing just this once to temporarily forgo the beating and rent your kidney back to you. Whatever you have on you will do for your first payment, and then once every month or so I’ll drop in on you for the additional installments. As long as you make your payments, you get to keep the part in good working order. How’s that, huh?”

            Kobori smiled, and this was far from the reaction Owen expected. Maybe the old man didn’t believe him, which would be a terrible mistake. For all of his other faults, Owen had always been a man of his word. One had to be in his profession.

            “This is a one-time offer, friend. Don’t even imagine I’m bluffing.”

            “Oh, I know you’re not lying, young man,” Kobori said. “Crude, ruffian sincerity simply radiates from you in every particular. Each twitch and tick of your face and blink of your eyes is a testament of your brutish honesty. I can tell you’ve delivered this same speech to many a victim before me and had to carry out your threat more than once. You’re exactly the man I’d hoped to find tonight.”

            At that point Kobori reached up with both hands, grasping Owen’s jacket collar with astonishing speed and strength. Kobori yanked hard, pulling the very surprised Owen down to the filthy alley floor. Then, mounting him like a child’s hobbyhorse, Kobori sank long fangs into his neck, and began drinking deeply.

II: Kobori Makes His Plans

Grigore Kobori was from the old country, and was already ancient, more than a dozen mortal lifetimes old, when he ran afoul of Grasu and his ilk. Constantin Grasu was an orthodox priest of high esteem. He was also a self-proclaimed community leader and a politician of rather obvious ambition. These were in the days when no one much believed ecclesiastical power and secular power should be separate, and those who practiced one could always be relied upon to do considerable meddling in the other. So it was that as both priest and politician Father Grasu vowed to clean Romania and all of its territories of the vampire infestation that threatened the mortal and spiritual well being of his people. This made the warrior priest much beloved in both the cities and the hinterlands.

In return Kobori vowed to clean the earth of Grasu and all of his works.

            Their war was fought over a span of centuries, with the initiative and advantage waxing and waning time and again between the two camps. Kobori and his kind had vast and unnatural powers at their command, and an endless span of years in which to carry out their promised depredations. But Grasu and his clan, always at the head of ever growing ad hoc armies, had the numbers.

            When Constantin Grasu’s natural allotment of years ran out, his younger brother Ciprian took up the banner. And Ciprian’s son followed him when his turn came. In the end, by the opening days of the Third Millenium, when even Romania’s darkest corners had been exposed to the relentless scrutiny of the modern world, both sides had suffered crippling losses and the last vestiges of their very personal war had all but petered out. Vampires were long extinct, except Kobori, and no descendants of Grasu survived, except the grandson of one distant cousin who’d long ago emigrated to the New World.

            Kobori wouldn’t let it end though. From his deep lairs he reached out with the powers of his mind and unconquerable will, and with the new gifts of modern communications and internet technology. For years he searched, until finally he was rewarded with the discovery that a young Michael Dorin Grasu, a star pupil only eight years out of seminary, had just taken over pastorship of Saint Patrick’s Catholic Church in a strange and foreign land called Cedar Rapids, Wisconsin.

            “So you joined the church as well,” Kobori said, having taken up talking to himself in the long years of his isolation. “And like your ancestor, you’ve also willingly neutered yourself, taking up a eunuch’s cassock, insuring that my task will be easily completed. With no whelps of your own to track down, once I kill you my ages-spanning mission will at long last find its conclusion.”

            Kobori stalked about his lair, making his plans.

            “You never quite got me, Father Grasu – neither you nor all of your fanatical followers, nor hired mercenaries. Oh you managed to destroy hundreds of my kind, sure enough – I’ll give you that – but you didn’t get me. None of your descendants ever did. Therefore your sacred vow still remains unfulfilled, long after you’ve rotted away. But now I’ve got the last of you. My own vow will be fulfilled. I win.”

            Kobori didn’t go out to hunt and drink that night, nor did he go out the following night or the night after. He stopped feeding altogether and through force of will alone managed to ignore the growing hunger that threatened to overwhelm him at all times, and which sometimes even wracked him with profound physical pain. And as he continued to starve himself, he began to age. His red ruddy cheeks became pale and sallow at first, and then gouged with deep wrines and their tributary wrinkles. His black lustrous hair turned gray, then white and then began to fall out. His skin turned thin and papery and was covered with old man spots.

            It is a simple fact of this or any age that the old and infirm can travel about the world with less scrutiny than others. They aren’t a threat to anyone and therefore of limited interest to those who guard the gates and keep the boarders. Kobori’s forged documents passed muster among the many bored officials that were ever on the lookout for other categories of traveler than he could possibly fit into. He had a destination and the money to get there, and that was enough to satisfy a world’s worth of watchmen.

            In fits and starts, in many connected trips of short duration that could safely be reached within a single night’s travel, Kobori made his way to the New World and to America, and finally to Cedar Rapids.

He visited Saint Patrick’s in the dead of night, when all had gone on their way and the place was deserted. It was a large stone building with high peaked roofs and steeples striving to be towers. On one side it was connected to a more ordinary stone building that contained the parish’s business offices and meeting rooms. On the other side it connected to the parsonage where this new Father Grasu lived, along with a more junior priest named Hernandez, who was in training to someday lead his own parish. And in one corner of the church grounds there was a small, attached cemetery, where some of the very important clergy and rich parishioners of past generations were allowed their eternal rest within the enclosing stone walls, right on the holy grounds.

“It’s perfect,” Kobori said. The exact architecture of his final revenge appeared to him all in a rush.

He rented a room around the block from Saint Patrick’s. During his travels he’d fed, but only when it was absolutely needed. He would sneak a meager drop of blood here, or take an uninvited nip there, not enough to begin reversing his age again, but just enough to keep his strength at a basic subsistence level. In all appearance he remained a frail old man. But now it was time to change that. Now it was time to feed again, enthusiastically.

For three nights in a row Kobori went fishing for just the right victim. He walked the streets of his new neighborhood, which if not the worst part of town was hardly one of the best. His landlady had warned him that these streets had a crime rate that needed to be respected, news which suited Kobori just fine. Two or three times each night, when the streets were nearly deserted, Kobori acted out his routine. He shuffled out from his apartment, down 37th Street to the cash machine, and then back again, having taken out a hundred dollars or so. He hoped to attract just the right sort of urban predator. And finally he did.

When the large thug appeared from out of nowhere and dragged him into the alley, Kobori was both elated and just a bit concerned. This man was only a mortal, to be sure, but he was at the height of his natural strength, while Kobori was at the depths of his supernatural powers. Too many months of a starvation diet had left him frail and weak. At best he’d be able to summon a single surge of strength, and then for only the shortest duration. If he failed to overcome the man with his first attack, he doubted he’d have enough reserve to survive the mortal’s natural response.

As it turned out, Kobori needn’t have worried. His would-be mugger had been taken entirely by surprise. Kobori sank his fangs into the fellow and drank deep and long, and as he did so he could feel his long-absent supernatural vigor return to him in a joyous flood. In moments his limbs began to regain mass and muscle, his skin smoothed itself and softened and turned from pale white to a very healthful pink. Once again he enjoyed the kind of strength in his hands and fingers that could crush stone and bend steel.

As he drank Kobori raked within his victim’s mind and learned that his name was Owen McKinty, and marveled at the depths of his easygoing depravity. Such a delightful young sociopath Owen was. What a truly lucky find.

Even when Kobori had drunk enough of poor Owen’s lifeblood to be fully sated, he continued to feed, ravenously and without let-up, intending to drain the man completely, taking him beyond that point at which one can safely feast off of a victim, while remaining certain that all one would be leaving behind is a corpse. No, for the first time in a very long time, Kobori intended to take his victim beyond the Terrible Veil. He was in fact building himself another vampire.

When his gruesome work was finally done, a newly young and handsome Kobori hoisted Owen’s limp and seemingly lifeless body over one shoulder, carrying the dead weight easily. Then he ran with his burden, through the darkest and most deserted of the local streets, almost too fast for a human eye to follow, until he reached the Saint Patrick’s churchyard. Kobori threw Owen’s body over the high stone wall and followed it in a single impossible leap. Both of them were in the tiny graveyard now. Kobori knelt down in the sacred earth, ignoring the pain it was causing him and began to dig, scooping the moist sod with his hands and clawing at it with his fingers.

III: Conversation With the Buried Man

Owen McKinty woke up again almost twenty hours later. He was confused, paralyzed and in a lot of pain. A great weight of earth pressed down on him and enclosed him on all sides. He couldn’t breath because his nose was clogged up with dirt. When he tried to scream he found that his mouth was also clogged. He began to panic in earnest.

Stop that nonsense this minute, a commanding voice thundered in Owen’s rapidly shattering mind.

Who’s this?

            I’m called Grigore Kobori. I’m the man you tried to steal from last night and whom you threatened to kill. And now I’m your master.

            What have you done to me?

            Isn’t that obvious? I killed you, boy. But that’s not always the end of things, is it? Now I’m making you into something beyond life and death, something far removed from simple animal mortality and morality.

            It hurts.

            I imagine so. It sure hurt me when I was turned. Then again that was so long ago. It’s difficult to remember distant agonies.

            Where are you?

            Nearby. It’s of no concern to you.

            Why are you doing this to me?

            Because you were scum and of no use to the world, but you can be of use to me. I planted you in the graveyard of a church that offends me. It’s run by the last enemy I have in the world, in all of the ages in fact. I intend to kill him soon, but before I do I’m going to destroy his precious parish. In another two days your transformation will be complete, Owen McKinty. You entered that earth a corpse, but you will rise from it again as one of the undead, and in so doing you will have thoroughly corrupted that patch of holy ground you occupy.

            Undead? That’s vampires, right?

            Don’t interrupt me, boy. You’re the first, but over the next few months I’m going to provide you with many brothers and sisters. I intend to fill that yard with deserving corpses and raise up an impressive crop of monsters, until every bit of that soil is corrupted. Somewhere along the way, Saint Patrick’s church will suffer a catastrophic desanctification. It’s inevitable, once a sort of critical mass is reached with what I’m doing to you and those to follow. Then I will be able to enter that miserable place and strangle young Father Grasu on his own altar. That will be a sweet bit of business.

            But I’ll be a vampire? I can live forever?

            It’s not living, boy, and its not death. It’s something else in its own category.

            But I will rise again, as an immortal?

            Most assuredly. In two days’ time. Before that the pain will have faded.

            And all I have to do is lie here until then?

            And keep your wits about you in the meantime. I won’t abide crazed vampires wandering about, calling attention to me and my work. As far as I’m concerned, once you’ve corrupted that soil, you’ve served your purpose. I can destroy you without a second thought afterwards, unless you show me that you can control yourself.

            Owen still felt a deep desire to panic, but added to that now was a rapidly growing sense of giddy anticipation. Being a real, actual vampire will be so cool.

IV: The Problem With Joey

The following morning, in Saint Patrick’s, Father Michael Dorin Grasu took Father Manuel Hernandez aside to have a quiet word with him. They spoke in low whispers in the naïve, while scattered parishioners came and went, some staying for a time, seated here and there among the many pews, while others stepped inside only long enough to light a quick candle and be on their way. In the narthex, Joey Becker, the church’s full time janitor, groundskeeper and general fix-it man was mopping the flagstone floor. His metal mop bucket squeaked and squealed when he pushed it around the floor on its metal wheels.

            “You did a good job with the early mass yesterday,” Father Mike said.

“Thank you, Father. I have to confess I was scared to death that I’d screw it up.”

“That’s normal enough. I still get butterflies each time too. But you’re coming along quickly and they’ll want to move you into your own parish soon. So maybe I should start loading a few more responsibilities onto your plate to see how you can handle it.”

“I’m ready for whatever you want me to do,” Father Manny said.

“Okay, well, let’s start by doubling up on your shifts in the box. You can take both morning and afternoon confessions. And I also want you to have a word with Joey.” Mike gestured towards the narthex where their janitor was finishing with his mopping. “He’s been drinking from the holy water fonts again.”

“Yeah, I could tell when I checked the levels this morning. But I don’t know what I should say to him.”

“Well there’s no specific body of instruction for this,” Father Mike said. “It doesn’t come up often enough – or maybe not at all before. Who knows? But Joey’s got it in his head that he’s damaged goods and thinks drinking our holy water is the only way to cleanse himself. I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason he keeps on here, working for the pittance that we can afford to pay him.”

“It’s his mother that left him in such a screwed up condition. Lord help me, Father, but sometimes I truly hope there is a hell in all of its fire and fury for creatures such as her.”

“Let’s try to be a little more forgiving than that, Manny, though I fully understand your frustration. Mrs. Becker was quite the piece of work in her day. May she rest in peace. But this is about you, Father Manny. You need to learn the administrative side of your duties along with the ecumenical ones. Talk to Joey. See if you can find a way to explain it to him where I’ve so clearly failed. But be gentle. Beyond the fact that he’s a sweet kid, it would take three people to replace him and we can’t afford that.”

“I’m not sure, Father. I have zero experience dealing with the mentally handicapped.”

“Then don’t think of him that way. Think of him as someone just more purely innocent than the majority of us.”

“If you think it’s best.”

“Vow of obedience, Manny. I tried and failed, so now it’s your turn to give it a shot.”

V: The Proper Way to Dispose of Holy Water

Father Manny approached Joey in the west garden, when he was trimming the rose bushes. He thought the informal setting would be less intimidating to the young man than calling him into his office.

            “We keep running out of holy water in all of the fonts,” Manny said, after asking Joey to sit and talk with him for a moment.

            “Would you like me to fill them?” Joey said.

            “Well, that’s the thing. You can’t do it. Only Father Mike or I can perform the service to make holy water and it’s a very complicated ritual. We can’t do it every day and still have enough time for our other duties. And in a few weeks, when I’m gone, Father Mike will be left here to do it all by himself. Do you think that’s fair?”

            “Maybe you should stay,” Joey said.

            “I’d like to, but we have more parishes than priests to fill them, so I have to move on as soon as my internship’s done. But I know of one way you can be of great help to Father Mike after I leave.”

            “Yes?”

            “Maybe you could stop drinking from the fonts and then he wouldn’t have to replace the holy water so often.”

            “But then how do I purify? Mother said I have to purify every day, or I won’t be able to come live with her in Heaven.” Joey was miserable and sat looking at his own knees. He couldn’t face the priest directly, because he knew he was letting him down. Joey was very sinful and always let everyone down. But that’s why he needed to drink more and more from the carved stone bowls just inside the church entrance.

            “Let’s see if we can approach this from another way,” Father Manny said. “When you drink a lot of our holy water, what happens?”

            “I get better inside.”

            “Okay, but what else happens?”

            Joey looked troubled as he concentrated intensely. What did Father Manny want him to say? “I have to go to the bathroom?” he asked.

            “That’s right, Joey. Now ask yourself if that’s a proper way to dispose of holy water.”

            “I don’t know.”

            “Of course you don’t, so let me tell you what very few people know. Holy water can’t be thrown away like normal water, or just flushed down the toilet. In fact, on those few occasions when Father Mike or I have to dispose of leftover holy water, we’re required to treat it just as if we were burying someone. We literally take it out to the graveyard and give it its own internment service, with its own ritual. So, in light of that, do you think it’s still okay to keep drinking our holy water and then flush it away every time you go to the bathroom?”

            “No!” Joey said.

            “Good. I knew could see our dilemma, if we just took the time to explain it to you.” Father Manny stood up from the garden bench, giving Joey a pat on the shoulder. He was about to tell Joey he was a good boy, but then had to remind himself that Joey was nearly a year older than him and only two years younger than Father Mike. So instead he said, “You can go back to your work now, if you want. We can’t do without you here.”

            And he left the garden, leaving Joey behind to struggle with what he’d learned. Joey thought long and hard and tried to reconcile what Father Manny had just said with what Mother always told him, again and again. In time Joey realized what he needed to do from now on.

            That evening, after he’d continued to drink his fill of holy water throughout the remainder of the afternoon, and when his bladder was full to bursting, Joey walked out to the attached graveyard to relieve himself. He was very modest and wouldn’t think of going in front of anyone, so first he looked around to make sure no one could see him. Then he carefully picked a section of freshly turned dirt that didn’t have a headstone marking it. He instinctively knew that peeing on an occupied grave would be terribly sinful. But this section where the earth had been recently dug and filled in must be where Father Mike and Father Manny have the burial for holy water, so that was where Joey relieved himself in a long and very satisfying stream.

            Joey simultaneously felt good that he was finally putting the used holy water out where he was supposed to, in the graveyard, while feeling guilty about all the times he’d sent it down ordinary toilets. He’d have to drink a lot more over the next few days to make up for that mistake.

VI: The Obvious Solution

Later that night, long after Joey had come and gone, and after Owen McKinty had concluded his silent conversation with his new vampire master, the first traces of Joey’s much-diluted holy water seeped deep enough in the ground to reach Owen’s resting place. Wherever it touched him he began to burn in an agony that made his normal transformational pains pale by comparison. Very little of Joey’s sanctified urine made it down through the three feet of earth in which Owen was buried, and what did get there wasn’t at all pure enough to end Owen’s profane new existence quickly. It took two long days and several trips by Joey to relieve himself out there for his partially-holy piss to fully dissolve the foul creature lying below. Owen McKinty died for the second time so slowly and so painfully that he was quite insane by the time he finally faded into nothing at all.

VII: A True Holy Man

In the fullness of time, on the third night after Kobori had drained Owen dry enough to turn him, he visited again the makeshift gravesite within the walls of Saint Patrick’s. What he found there astonished him. Not only was there no new vampire clawing itself out of the corrupted earth. The patch of earth was more sanctified now, more purely holy, than it had been three nights previous. Merely standing on that dirt caused him more pain than he’d felt in uncounted lifetimes. It threatened to drive him screaming and wailing from the churchyard.

            What could have happened?

            Could it be that Father Michael Dorin Grasu was a churchman so powerful as this, to be able to destroy vampires and restore corrupting earth so easily? His ancestor was never so gifted. But then again Constantin Grasu was a more profane and earthy man than most priests. He was always more at home on the back of one of his warhorses, swinging a damned mace over his head, than within the walls of his parish. This new Father Grasu seemed a different sort completely – perhaps a true holy man.

Fearing that Michael might be the one to finally make good on the Grasu family pledge to rid the world of him and his kind, Kobori decided to return immediately to his native Romania and his deep and safe lair – only, the strength seemed to have gone out of him. His legs burned with agony and buckled beneath him. If he could just rest here a minute, despite the searing pain…