The Old Man and the Vampire

In the nearly empty streets of downtown Locksburg, a 90-year-old man was violently rapping the storefront window of an ice cream parlor with the brass handle of his cane.

“How dare you do this!” the old man called out as boisterously as he could with a hoarse and hollow voice. “After all I've done for you! After all I've done for this town!”

A skinny man in his mid-20s wearing a white paper apron and hat hurriedly bolted out of the store to confront the old geezer who was causing such a commotion. That wasn't the first time he was there.

“Quit doing that, Mr. Rachford,” the young man cried out to him. “You'll crack the glass.”

“You again!” the old man said with a snarl. He pointed the handle of his cane threateningly at the young man's nose. “How many times to I have to tell you before it sinks into your thick skull that this sort of thing is obscene?” He pointed the handle of his cane to a large cartoon drawing of a vampire that was taped against the glass inside. It had blue skin, a goofy grin, and was giving a friendly wave.

The young man shrugged and said: “It's our new mascot. Our business was up 30 percent since we had it.”

“Well, I don't like it,” bellowed the old man. “I demand you take it down at once!”

“I've told you this before,” the young man said with his eyes rolling. “It's just a cartoon. All it does is bring a little joy to the lives of people who walk down this street. People find it amusing. Heartening, perhaps.”

Mr. Rachford let out a menacing huff. He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

“Amusing, you say? I suppose you think this is amusing, too,” he cried out, hoisting his cane in the air. “I had to walk with this old stick for the last sixty-five years of my life!”

“Well, no, I don't find that funny at all,” the young man responded frankly, breaking eye-contact with Mr. Rachford to sheepishly look down to his shoes. He scratched his head through his paper hat. “But I don't see what that has to do with a cartoon taped to a storefront window.”

“It was the vampire that did this to me!” the old man screamed out so forcefully that it startled the young man. “Sixty-five years ago, it locked me up in a cellar just out of town and tied me down in a chair so tightly that I couldn't move a muscle. After making me sit there and struggle for a few hours, the vampire finally emerged out of the darkness, and in its hands, it was holding a giant, gold-plated sledgehammer. It wanted to extract sensitive information out of me, but no! I wasn't going to tell it a thing! When it was clear to the vampire that my lips weren't budging, it took that giant sledgehammer and swung right at the center of my kneecap. It hurt like a train on a track! And I was rendered crippled the remainder of my days.”

“Right, right,” the young man said in a patronizing tone, trying to suppress laughter. He knew along with everyone else in the town that Mr. Rachford blew out his knee in the war. Nobody was sure which war, however, and that was a rather frequent topic of discussion among townspeople at social gatherings.

“It was I who used my powerful physique and my cunning intellect to single-handedly save the town of Locksburg from an imminent vampire invasion,” the old man continued in a practiced and melodramatic manner. He hoisted his walking cane victoriously in the air and stood with the most heroic pose that he possibly could muster, which wasn't all that heroic since his back was horribly bent. “If it weren't for me, everyone in this town would have surely become vampires. And what would this town be, then? Nothing but a bunch of low-life good-for-nothing blood-suckers.”

The young man covered up a smirk and giggle the best he could with the palm of his hand. He didn't want to further agitate the old man who had been apparently growing more senile in recent years. Of course, everyone who grew up in Lockburg knew the story he was telling by heart; it had been a part of his routine at the annual autumn vampire festival ever since that festival was started, probably. That story, along with the storyteller, was one of the more fondly regarded relics of Locksburg.

“I always used to love it when you told that story,” the young man said thoughtfully at the sky. “I must have heard it twenty times as I was growing up. It always scared the hell out of me.”

“You think it's just a story,” Mr. Rachford shrieked, pointing an accusatory finger at the young man. “Let me tell you something: That is no story. That is an actual, historical account of my experiences sixty-five years ago!”

The stone-cold serious manner in which Mr. Rachford was talking about the reality of vampires was too much for the young man to handle. He erupted in hearty bouts of laughter. The longer he laughed, the more it appeared to irritate the old man who eventually crossed his limp old arms and scowled at him.

“My goodness, Mr. Rachford, get it together,” the young man cried out, struggling to catch his breath. “Vampires are just a legend. Tourists flock here from all over the world for this nonsense.” He glanced around at the mostly empty streets downtown and added: “Well, not so much anymore, admittedly.”

“Vampires are not a legend,” Mr. Rachford continued with stubborn insistence. “They are as real as you and me standing here talking right now. And let me tell you something: If you come eye to eye with a vampire, and you're expecting it to smile and wave at you like it's doing in that cartoon of yours, then you're in for one hell of a nasty surprise!”

It was then the old man heard a tiny voice peep beneath him.

“Hi, Mr. Rachford!” giggled a five-year-old girl in blond pigtails who was clutching the hand of her mother. The mother had a cellphone pressed against her ear and a rather vacant expression on her face.

“Well hello there, young lady,” he replied sweetly, erasing the look of anger and frustration that he had just been giving the young man. He smiled at her widely, which revealed a full set of dentures that rather resembled Indian corn; each tooth was of a different color ranging from white to yellow to dark brown. “How are you doing on this fine day in Locksburg?”

“Great!” the girl chirped. She then let go of her mother and skipped toward the waving vampire cartoon on the storefront window, waved back to it, and said: “Hi, Vampire Victor!”

The mother walked up to the girl, reclaimed her hand, and entered the ice cream parlor. The young man looked after them, knowing that he should follow them inside. However, he still had to continue to deal with Mr. Rachford who was giving him with a wide-eyed look of horror as though he'd just committed an outrageous act of blasphemy.

“You mean to tell me that thing has a name?” gasped the old man.

“I told you, it's our mascot. We had to call it something in the commercials,” he responded.“Don't you have television?” Mr. Rachford's bottom jaw went totally limp, and his eyes were so wide-opened that it looked like they were in danger of popping out of his skull.

“You put that thing on TV?” he continued, barely able to enunciate those words.

“Alright, simmer down, old man,” he said hushing, looking around seeing if anyone was watching. “Let's not create a scene.”

“What'd you go and put it on TV for?” he continued with a shriek.

“This is a business. We have to advertise,” he explained in a quiet tone, hoping that it would also prompt the old man to lower his voice, too. He peered into the store to see the woman and the young girl standing at the front of the store carefully studying the flavors underneath the glass ice cream counter. “What's the big deal about giving the vampire a name, anyway? Doesn't the vampire in your story have a name, also? What was it, Jerry—”

“Johnny Von Finkelstein,” Mr. Rachford quickly chimed in, “and I warn you never to forget that name.”

The young man smirked and then gazed fondly into the sky. He appeared to be lost deeply within his memories.

“That's right, Johnny Von Finkelstein,” he repeated nostalgically. “We probably would have called our vampire that, but Vampire Victor sounded so much better on television.”

“You still think this is a joke, don't you?” he said sternly as he pertinaciously pounded his walking cane against the concrete sidewalk, making a dull thud. “Vampires are no laughing matter, sonny. Sixty-five years ago, those nasty beggars nearly destroyed this town. If somebody gave them half the chance, they would come back again and ruin everything we hold dear. Mark my words.”

“Heaven forbid,” the young man remarked in a mocking tone. Mr. Rachford ignored that remark and continued his ranting.

“And if they do, do you think you would be able to count on me—Colonel Eugene Rachford—to take care of them again? I wouldn't hesitate but to fight them again with all the might that I could muster, but, you see, I'm not as young as I used to be.”

The young man looked again through the window to see that the woman and the five-year-old girl were looking back at him impatiently. He took that as a cue that it was time to get back to reality and attend to his duties. His formerly fanciful grin had transformed quickly into a look of dire seriousness.

“Well, I have customers waiting,” he said tiredly as he headed back inside. Before closing the door behind him, he offered Mr. Rachford one final warning. “Now, please don't tap on the glass like that again. You'll crack it. I wouldn't want to call the police on you.”

The police, Mr. Rachford thought to himself with a chortle, those clowns wouldn't know a clove of garlic from a stale piece of cheese.