by D C Young
The man was already a few steps down the walkway by the time Sam looked up. Then he turned and walked back up to the door.
“My name is William Wallace, by the way, and I’m not trying to be forward but it would be wise to note that Julia Agrippina is quite a stickler for timeliness. Seven o’ clock. Good afternoon, Mrs. Moon.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Have a good day.”
He nodded and left. Sam watched his cute butt for a moment through the screen door and then shut the solid oak door completely. Deep darkness settled over the house again. As she pushed her way back into the living room and sat down in a newly reupholstered dining room chair, Sam suddenly realized that despite her new found ability to withstand the sunlight, the heavy drapes that hung in every window of her house had all remained tightly drawn, with the blinds shut. Someday soon, she was going to pull the sheer curtains out of storage and hang some fresh window treatments.
***
“Maestro, it’s time to leave,” the old butler said softly.
“I know, Paulo, I know. It’s hard leaving a place in which one has lived for so long; a fine place such as this.” The old man grimaced and rubbed his back. “It’s also difficult doing anything with this ancient damn body! Never mind. Is the vampire prepared?”
“Yes, Maestro, as you commanded. He’s in a coffin and the ‘Communicable Disease’ sticker is on it just as you wished.”
“Good, good. Throw something on top of it so that nobody can—”
“It’s been done, Maestro,” the butler interrupted. “Come. It is only you we await for the flight.”
The old man walked slowly down the stairs of the mansion in Fullerton, the house where he’d been happy for so long. Where he’d learned what dreams really were... that one’s life was measured in dreams. And others’ lives could be lengthened by the theft of a dream.
As he slowly made his way to the limo, Maestro remembered the ecstasy he’d felt on meeting the shaman in Haiti. On seeing the results the man had shown him.
He’d come to the realization that his own life would never end, as long as he successfully found people who would offer up years of their lives in return for a favor; favors he could grant because of yet another discovery he’d made during his stay on the island: Vanaheim flower buds.
He’d been there on his honeymoon with his first wife, Sarah. They’d taken excursions into the jungle, seen the main sights and even attended a ‘private’ ceremony with a real shaman.
Maestro, who went by another name back then, had frankly thought it was all bullshit. The thought that a shaman, or anyone else, could actually lengthen lives by any amount of time was ludicrous! He hadn’t been able to hide the contempt on his face at the ceremony that night.
The old shaman had been stark naked except for a crown of leaves and mud decorations. He’d danced slowly, stamping his bare feet into the dirt around a towering fire and muttering in some language foreign to Maestro and his new wife.
“Now watch,” the young guide told Maestro. “It’s going to get interesting.”
A plump European woman had been led out to a spot near the fire, blindfolded. With her was a young, naked girl who walked along with her head down. The native girl finally stood next to the plump European woman, while the shaman danced ever more feverishly in tight circles around them.
“Do you accept the bargain of which we spoke?” he screamed at the older woman.
“Yes! God, yes,” the woman said, her face lighting up under the blindfold.
“It shall be done!” the shaman thundered. He waved a hand over the younger woman, who promptly crumpled to the ground. Others raced to her and laid her out on her back, arms crossed over her chest.
She appeared to be sound asleep, Maestro thought.
The shaman made signs in the air over the girl’s head, but she never stirred. Finally, he cupped his hands over the girl’s head, catching nothing but air to Maestro’s eyes. He turned, hands still cupped, toward the older woman.
“Bow your head!” the shaman demanded. The woman obliged.
The shaman brought his cupped hands to the top of the woman’s hair, then opened his hands and smacked them onto her cranium. The woman yelped in surprise.
“It is done,” the shaman announced. “All shall be as you wish. Go now!” He, himself turned and strolled away, and the others began to disperse as well.
“That’s it?” Maestro was incredulous. “He smacked that poor woman with empty hands! What was she supposed to get out of it? Good looks? She doesn’t look a damn bit different.”
“Shh!” his guide implored him. “Her change is not physical.”
Maestro had his patented eye-roll down even at that young age. The guide wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
“You young now,” a nearby voice hissed. “Not so forever! Not so. And then what? You come to the shaman! You beg for more years. Please shaman! Give to me more years. Just like this lady here. But unlike this lady, the shaman will say no. No, because she has one thing you do not! A million such things.” The short, nearly naked man spun on his heel and stalked away.
“Bullshit,” Maestro said loudly.
The shaman froze.
“You do not believe, perhaps?” He looked over his shoulder at the cocky young man with the pretty young wife. Maestro often wondered later what had gone through the other man’s mind: what caused him to do what he did. “Follow me.” And to his pretty young wife, “Not you. The man only!”
Chapter Eight
The envelope was sealed, but a few deft strokes of her red, painted fingernail took care of all that. She opened the fancy paper pouch and peered inside. A folded piece of matching ivory card stock was waiting for her to pull it out and read its contents. On the TV, Judge Judy was calmly explaining to the defendant what an idiot she was. Although Sam agreed, she turned it off, deciding that the invitation to meet the ancient Greek vampire, Julia Agrippina, and the Immortal Council needed her full attention.
After all, it was the same thing that Sam and Max had been discussing the day before at Cal State Fullerton and a concept that, for some reason, still stuck in her craw like an acorn and was spreading a feeling of dread through her.
There was no return address and no explanation, just a folded invitation with a plain piece of paper in the middle. Sam removed the blank piece of note paper, holding it in her right hand while using her left to hold the card open as she read it.
Mrs. Samantha Moon
You are cordially invited by the Western Council of Elder Watchers
to a cocktail party at the residence of Julia Augusta Agrippina.
Elysium House, 61620 Pacific View Road, Hollywood, California
at seven o’ clock on the ninth of August.
No R.S.V.P. is necessary—Dress code: Casually elegant
Now, that’s about as snooty as it gets, in my humble opinion, Sam thought.
With that, she turned her attention to the blank piece of paper, intending to return it to the fold of the card and head into her bedroom to find something to wear…something ‘casually elegant’. But as she soon as Sam looked at it, words began to appear on its surface.
Oh, hell!
It was a handwritten note from Julia:
Samantha,
We seem to have stumbled upon some very dangerous times and it is extremely important that I speak to you. Though I am cognizant of several immortals residing up and down the West Coast, it has become painfully clear that neither I, nor my Council, have made enough of an effort in reaching out to our young brothers and sisters.
The events of the past weeks have made this a matter of great urgency for us and we need your help with this. It is time that the young immortal generation is made aware of our existence so that we can help them to understand how their actions have come to threaten the survival of us all.
I look forward to seeing you tonight and speaking with you on these very important issues.
Julia A.
Sam sig
hed as she lay the card and the note down on a side table. She picked up the remote and turned the TV back on to finish watching Judge Judy and putting away the laundry. At 3:30 p.m., she jumped from the sofa in a small panic.
Dammit, she cursed silently.
She knew she had no business sitting around watching TV at that hour of the afternoon, the kids had to be picked up from school and she hadn’t yet called Mary Lou to see if she could sit for them that evening.
So, with one hand pressing the speed dial button for her sister’s number and the other gripping her bag and her keys, Sam hurried from the front steps and crossed the driveway towards the open garage and her car. As she climbed in, she remembered how, not too long before, her biggest dream had been to have a home with an attached garage.
Before being able to leave in the afternoons, she would lather her skin with heaping amounts of sun block, don a wide gardening hat and carefully step outside into the scorching sunlight. The pain of the experience had always been intense and searing, like she was being cooked alive over an open fire pit. In the direct glare of the sun, she’d been unable to breathe and her nostrils would fill with the smell of her own flesh burning.
Blech! she thought, shaking her head vigorously, then smiling triumphantly.
Now, she could stroll to the car leisurely without the fear of third degree burns and suffocation; since she’d found that last medallion, that is.
As a constant reminder of that strenuous past, her Ford Windstar minivan remained heavily tinted. Sam had realized she liked it that way. It provided a certain amount of cover allowing her to use the van as a stakeout vehicle. Granted it wasn’t great, but it still worked out okay.
She picked up her son and daughter from school, grabbed some cheeseburgers from the drive through at Jack in the Box and headed home.
Bad Mommy, Sam thought, unapologetically as she pulled up to the window.
Apparently, fast food was the incarnation of the Devil, by recent L.A. standards, but after doing chores all day and having to get ready for an evening out, she definitely was not going to cook.
As soon as the thought had passed, her cell phone rang. Sam could see from the screen that it was her sister calling.
“Hey, Louie!”
“Hi, girl. I got your message.”
“Great!” Sam replied. “Tell me you can do it. I know it short notice but…”
“Would you stop giving yourself a damn coronary? Of course, I can make it as long as you don’t mind me dragging my little demons along with me. Rick’s got boxing class tonight.”
“Guess he was serious about that, huh?”
“Yeah, I’m proud of him. He’s doing well and sticking to it. I can see results already too…if you know what I mean?”
“Ewww! Thanks for the visual,” Sam replied, playfully. “That’s what Tammy would call T.M.I., Mary Lou. Sure bring ‘em along. I got burgers for these two but I can order pizza or takeout when you get here if you want.”
“That’s alright, sis. I’ve got supper fixed already. Rick’s gonna want to eat when he gets home anyway.”
“Okay, then. I’ll see you at six. Bye.”
“Bye, darling.”
Once at home, Tammy and Anthony went to their rooms and Sam went straight into the bathroom to shower and wash her hair. When she got out, the kids were hard at work on one of their ridiculously entrancing video games and had lapsed into a rare and slightly unsettling silence. She made a mental note to be grateful for it because once their aunt arrived with their cousins anything was liable to happen; so, perhaps it was just the calm before the storm. Sam blow-dried her hair and pinned it up into a messy bun.
millennials It does look pretty though, in an effortless kind of way.
She pulled on a maxi dress and laid out the cute black shift she planned to wear to the cocktail party at Elysium that evening on her bed. Very elegant. A pair of black and white wedges brought the casual to the casually elegant dress code and the outfit was complete. She felt ready.
Sam’s only appointment for the day had canceled and rescheduled for the following morning, which was a relief, and since she worked from home, the cancellation didn’t affect her schedule at all. Instead, she sat at her desk, picked up the phone and called someone that she was trying to make a conscious effort to keep in touch with.
His name was Kingsley Fulcrum and they had been in a too hot relationship not too far back in the past. Sam had caught him cheating on her and had broken it off. He’d apologized, and after Sam had found out more about the circumstances surrounding the affair, she’d been trying to forgive him. For the moment, she made an effort to talk to him, accepted his outrageously nice apology gifts, like the huge bouquet of peonies that were on her desk and allowed him to take her out to nice dinners occasionally; which girl in her right mind wouldn’t? Especially, when all that attention was coming from the hottest attorney in L.A.
He was a tall and broad shouldered man who wore his expensive, bespoke suits well. His thick black hair, speckled with gray and shoulder length, always seemed to be jauntily disheveled. Kingsley was a striking man, and would have been on the cover of every romance novel that featured the dashing rogue, if not for the two scars on his face. But who’s to say, maybe romance novel rogues could all use a scar or two on their faces. Kingsley answered his phone on the second ring. He always took her calls these days… and promptly too.
Sam smiled and said, “Hello, Kingsley. I just wanted to say ‘Hi’ and thank you for the pretty flowers.”
They spoke for awhile and then he invited her to dinner the following night.
“That would be great. I have something I want to talk to you about, but I’m going to a meeting tonight and I should have more details to tell you after that.”
The sudden sound of her kids erupting into an argument came blaring through the ajar office door, in particular, Tammy’s high-pitched taunting and Anthony’s whiny protests.
Sigh. The storm had begun.
“Could you give me a minute?”
“Duty calls,” he said, then quickly added, “But there’s no need for me to keep you, Sam. Tomorrow. Usual place. Around eight o’ clock?”
“Perfect, see you then,” she replied and hung up the phone.
Sam marched through her single story home and into the small bedroom her children shared wondering why they couldn’t have held it together at least until Mary Lou had gotten there and she could have high-tailed it out of there like a prison break.
Chapter Nine
Hours later, Maestro returned to the honeymoon suite, his mind dazed. How could it be? Yet he’d seen what he’d seen, no way around it. And what the shaman had said made sense; sort of.
Men lived a life measured by their dreams. When your allotted number of dreams was up, you would die. But if by any chance you could beg, borrow or steal more dream-time from another person, then your own life could be extended.
Maestro saw photos of the old shaman going back over thirty years. The shaman had been just as old as he was now: only the faces of the people around him had changed.
And the newspapers, each with the date prominently displayed.
There was no doubt at all: the man could do what he claimed. He’d done it, in fact.
He charged a hell of a lot of money for the incredible service. His fees started at a quarter of a million dollars per extended year of life. But, if there was a service the shaman required for himself or his village, then he could be persuaded to pay it off in dream-time. Maestro learned that all the dream-time funds went into the shaman’s village. Under the aged facade of palm trees and palapa roofs, there was every modern convenience to be found; even an extensive library. A hydro-electrical plant graced the nearby waterfall; all the wiring to the village, secured and hidden underground. A small modern hospital was the village’s crown achievement.
Maestro knew he’d never forget that night, and knew one day he would seek the shaman’s services. He had no idea how he’d earn the
required money, and he would not have believed that within the 24 hours that followed he’d have figured out just that.
And the day after that, he and Sarah had taken a guided trek into the nearby forest with several other couples, all much older than them. At one point their guide had pointed to a large bush covered in tiny white flowers, most of which were only buds at the time.
“Vanaheim flower buds,” the guide had said. “They are so small and yet their power so immense! Come here, Madam. I show to you.” He’d motioned to an older woman in her late seventies, one whose face was heavily marked and wrinkled by time.
The young guide picked several of the buds, crushed them on a rock until he had a rough white paste. Then he’d rubbed it into the forehead of the older woman with the instruction, “Leave this until you are ready to go to dinner tonight. Wipe it off with a warm cloth, and then you will see the flower’s amazing properties.”
The small group had all been early to dinner, for once. The older couple, however, were half an hour late. And when they arrived, the entire group had fallen silent.
The older woman’s forehead was as smooth as an egg. A light bulb had gone off in Maestro’s head.
It had taken Maestro several years to set up an import process, as well as a formula and means of manufacturing his new Smooth ‘N’ Young cream. But once he had, his tiny company had sky rocketed steadily until it was among the Fortune 500... And as was to be expected, so did his income. It wouldn’t be long before he would have whatever funds he needed to visit that shaman one day.
***
Cocktail party 101: If you arrive on time, you’re already late.
The driveway and front lawn of the mansion in Hollywood Hills looked like a parking garage and it was all Sam could do but shake her head as she parked her car at the end of the packed driveway which led up to Elysium House. In a way, she was glad to have gotten the last spot between the house and the gate and as she turned the car around and backed into it, she couldn’t help but think that at least if she needed to leave in a hurry, the Windstar was already facing out toward the street.
