"Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark."
― Robert W. Service

"And this lesson about mortal peace of mind I never forgot. Even if a ghost is ripping a house to pieces, throwing in pans all over, pouring water of pillows, making clocks chime at all hours, mortal will accept almost any "natural explanation" offered, no matter how absurd, rather than the obvious supernatural one, for what is going on." –Anne Rice

e

Sit down please. Find yourself a cozy quiet comfortable spot and relax, for I have a story to tell you like no other tale you have ever heard. These events are unprecedented and find no acceptance or understanding in human min at current time. It doesn't mean that they are not true, it merle means that mankind is not ready for this yet, but I sincerely hope – you are….

It was a cold rainy evening,….funny how all those supernatural horror stories begin. Our tale starts in completely different manner.

Actually on the contrary, it was a hot sunny summer afternoon, in early July. Southern California is exceptionally scorching hot and dry this time of the year. Through the cold tinted window of the moving limousine I kept watching the dry shrubs and heat-withered palm trees along the freeway 5 towards the San Diego Airport. It must have been nearly 89 degrees outside, as you could see the heated asphalt evaporating on the surface of the road. The inside of the car was pleasantly cool and quiet despite the gentle hum of the air conditioning, and a low volume of a radio playing Adele's 'Hello', -clearly enjoyed by my driver. It must have been at least a 5th time they played this song today,-I thought to myself -have the radio stations run out of all other CDs?

But as the black limo was swiftly making its way thru the 4pm loose traffic on Saturday afternoon, my real thoughts where thousands of miles away, deeply focused the destination of my travel.

-Did they really find it? I thought. Surely that is what the last nights email said, but did they really find the right one? From the emailed description of the antique shop owner in the old and decapitated part of Warsaw, it sounded as the genuine piece. I guess we'll find out. The time reveals the entire unknown; it is merely the patience that is the cause of struggle.

We have reached the airport. The car pulled over and finally stopped at the terminal loading zone.

My driver was silent as all those times as when he had been dropping me off or picking me up at different locations, different times without unnecessary inquiries. He knew I will reach out to him one way or another whenever I will need his service, though for now I couldn't tell when.

It was all. I was on my way to Poland. I kept wondering how it changed over the passing decades. It has been a while since I've been there….

The plane had touched down.

As soon as I got my suitcase I have waked down in front of the terminal to catch taksowka (taxi) that would take me to Stara Praga (Old Prague district).

This part of town had not been renovated as the rest of the city after World War I and World War II and was usually avoided by the tourists. It was a true maze of narrow cobblestone streets surrounded by four-story tall dark stone townhouses, with occasional cracks in concrete facade and rickety steel balconies. Small groups of old drunks leaning against the brick wall staring at every passerby gave an eerie feel to it.

I found the address provided to me in the email, which I printed and was now holding in my hand, standing in front of the store entrance to "Antyki i Relikwie", an international rare antique store, which specialized in not always officially or legally procured items. I took the dark concrete stairs slightly covered with moss in its' corners, down as per directions in my email, towards the entrance door. I pulled the thick brass handle attached to an old fashionable dark wood door decorated with stained glass inserts depicting the scenes from Christ's Road to Calvary by Raphael.

The door made a cricking sound and gently taped a little silver bell that announced my presence. An elderly gentleman with tin glasses appeared. He was dressed in brown slacks, white button-up shirt with a black tie and a dark striped vest.

"May I help you?" asked the men, looking me in the eyes. The store was empty and quiet. Little sunlight finding its way thru the small blue yellow and red stained glass windows by the ceiling and a gentle hum of the air conditioner felt good in comparison to the hot pavements upstairs.

"That's a nice pocket watch" I noticed. "I have not seen these in quite some time" I've added staring at the little piece of fine jewelry half tucked in the pocket of his vest. The man merely glanced at it, than back at me a little confused.

"We have those at the fine watches section over there by the window, let me sho…" I didn't let him finish. "Thank you, but it won't be necessary". I interrupted. I did not come to buy a watch" Now he really looked confused. "I am the one who emailed you about that unknown memoir recovered in the recent excavation at Bielany district.

"Ah yes…"He's face became less tense. "You are the gentleman from the Historic Property and Antiques website." He smiled and gestured on me to follow him. "We normally do not post on there many items, only if it's something of a rare genuine value. As for this old 'diary', or so it seems, since nobody can read the language it had been written in, it was found by accident".

"By accident?" I interrupted with questioning expression as we were meandering between the glass displays deeper into the store.

"Yes" he continued… "They were digging up that area to extend the freeway. Every time the city works turn some soil they always come across some interesting stuff, but rarely of any historic value". From under a glass display, he pulled out a small thick booklet much resembling just a bundle of yellow pages, with slightly burned edges, and slowly handed it to me.

"I must say you were one of the first buyers that got interested in it, and quite frankly it must have some value to you, since you presented the highest bid". "Why..? If I may ask".

He looked at me again slightly tilting his head, but I was too busy examining and touching the bridle, course, dried pages, with my fingertips that it seemed as I ignored the question even though I've heard it well. We stood in silence for a few minutes, which seem like hours to me since I was mesmerized with the item.

"Is this the kind you have been looking for….?" The storekeeper asked.

"It is exactly the one I've been looking for". I replied. "It will be great for my collection I mean" I added while throwing a quick glance at him with a smile, to ease out the tension that was slowly creeping into his thoughts.

"Perfect, I will wrap it up for you sir, please I'll meet you at the register….".

After leaving the store, I decided to take a stroll back to the hotel. The sun had already set below the line of tall steel and glass buildings clearly reflecting slowly darkening blue of the clear sky. It was a crisp warm summer evening. The streets still full of people on the sidewalks walking, some the same direction some in the opposite, resembling moving colonies of ants. The smell of gasoline on the streets, the sounds of the car horns combined with illumination of street advertisements and electronic billboards, and street crowds, and music from the street cafes and restaurants composed quite a modern age spectacle, worthy to be watched for hours and hours and constantly changing. A new scene arose, as if on a theater stage, with every passing bus, or tram. I was floating in this sea of people watching them, how similar yet as you look closer; different they all were. On my left a student with his backpack evidently rushing home from school, passing a tall man in a suit with a briefcase talking on his cellphone, nearly bumping a homeless drunk sitting on the bus stop, next to the slow moving group of tourists taking pictures of colorfully lit up Palace of Culture, probably the most recognizable historic building in the center of the Warsaw. Oh, how I loved to be among this thriving lively action. This feeling can be only felt in the city, and might never be understood by people living their whole live in the suburbs or small towns, but for me it was a succulent ambrosia and nectar for my soul. I thrived on it.

Unfortunately my joy was shortly coming to an end, as the lights of the century old 'Hotel Bristol' were emerging out of the skyline just ahead of me. Time knows no mercy, everything changes, nothing stays as we remember it. The last time I saw this particular building, it looked very different….

I like hotels. They have accompanied me many times throughout different years of my world travels. Different place, different name, but yet the same feel of home away from home, a place where you can find comfort and solace in a nice soft chair or comfortable bed with a dim lamp on a nightstand just next to it. As I reached my room, passing shiny glass and marble clad lobby, I went ahead and retired in one of those cozy leather chairs facing a full height of the room glass window. It was a clear night with starry skies, now and then crossed with a blinking light of passing airplane. The area below was illuminated by streetlamps, flickering candles of street cafes and restaurants, colorful glass displays of fashionable clothing stores, and finally long colorful display of car lights going every possible direction. It nearly resembled a Christmas Eve decorations, but for people in the city it was just another ordinary night.

I switched on a small stainless steel, modern looking dim lamp on the top of a black granite nightstand, on my left. In my hands I was grasping my newest purchase. I sat for a while in silence merely embracing this bundle of yellowed, discolored pages in the palms of my hands. Funny how this little old scroll of paper that would be certainly unnoticed by any pedestrian on the street, even if it happened to lay right on their path, had an immense importance to me. I've started moving my fingertips along the edges. The pages felt course bridle and worn. They were full of hand scribbles from a blue fountain pen, almost transparent by now due to the age. The writing was neat and calligraphic, stokes of pen swift and jagged, as if its' writer was in hurry or under pressing circumstances. Old Slavic language, I've noted. This is why nobody claimed it earlier; they simply had no idea what they had, as no one could probably read it. This idea made me smile. Poor fools, I thought to myself.

The first several pages were missing. It looked as if they had been burnt in fire or explosion, merely torn off from the rest. I leaned back in this comfortable black leather chair, gently separated the first remaining pages, took a deep breath, and began to read:

Chapter I

The Second Birth

(Translated from old Slavic)

Berlin 1939.

I was almost ready. I knew there were important men waiting for me downstairs and I could not be late. My high black officer-style boots were shined to gloss. My silver SS insignia were properly pinned on the lapels of my black uniform. Now just the hat and ….I stopped here glancing at my full profile reflected in the mirror in front of me. In front of me stood a tall, about 5.11, hazel-eyed, German Schutzstaffel officer with a dark blond hair sharply slicked from left to right with a visible line running along the side. In my right hand I was holding an officer's hat with a white Totenkopf, skull with two bones crossed. I would not have recognized myself, had I not known better.

For a second I felt proud. But not proud for being part of the Furher's Third Riech, but because I truly resembled one of them. In fact I looked more Aryan than majority of those truly Germanic officers, that if they had me among rounded up with the chiefs of Gestapo and SS I would probably be the last one anyone would suspect to not be a true German. Then the moment of rapture burst, as I looked down at myself once again. I then realized, the truth was, I hated to wear this uniform. I did not consider myself German neither I considered myself Polish. I have been roaming these lands long before either of these countries have ever been established and given their current names.

For centuries my kind has been living on the ramparts of the society, enforcing the natural selection. The old, the sick, the lost, the wandering beggars, the drunks, the outcasts, those have been main sources of our diet. It is much easier this way, nobody will look for them, nobody will be waiting at home with dinner on the table among the flickering candles, nobody will despair that they have not returned home for several days. Grant it there would be on some occasion those that the victim would have some estranged relative or friend that would seek after them. Would they find the body? Most likely not…

And even if they did, they would take a rational explanations such as that he or she were drunk and fell, which coupled with a spill of partially dried blood oozing from the wound would create a rational explanation in mind for the cause of death. Why to trouble your mind in attempt to seek out a more complicated reasoning if the natural explanation is so much simpler. Yes, your husband was drunk, as he was returning home in the middle of the night thru the nearby grove he slipped and fell, which perfectly explains the gash on his head. Where is the blood? Well over night it probably spill out and soaked into the soft mossy soil. And who would even be able to distinguish a victim with regular loss of blood from the one with irregular? Nobody would attempt to count how many droplets were still within the veins and body organs, which would be nearly impossible… That's what I love about the humans. They see only what they want to see. They always try to find the method which requires the least effort, or sink in the quicksands of ignorance.

The simplest explanations seem to be always the best ones.

Now and then I would even play a little game with my mortal friends. I would leave the body positioned in some unusual and peculiar situation with contorted limbs and head without any possible way to explain such. Then I would hide and wait until somebody stumbled upon such poor grotesquely looking body. Within minutes there would be crowd would gather, murmuring, looking around, asking fellow neighbors if they know what has happened. Within minutes they would start presenting their theories as to what took place, and nine times out of ten, they still would come up with some rational explanation.

At one occasion, I had been following a notorious horse thief that was looting small towns near Viena. This was XVII just as the Turks with their Ottoman Empire were terrorizing the southeastern borders of Europe. I was waiting for him silently at the roof of the barn as he came for his nightly spoils. He slowly walked inside, turning his head nervously each way as if to see there was nobody around. The inside was pitch black. Only after a few seconds could he see vague outlines of shapes and objects. But he wouldn't see mine, because at that point I was following him merle an inch behind him. The horses snorted out loud. This startled him thinking he scared. Little did he know that's the moment they could sense me. Oh yes animals can recognize the dead.

I took him swiftly and noiselessly. I sank my teeth in his warm throat and ripped out the larynx. Certain he will not awake anybody now; I sucked the delightful fluid through his carotid artery, as through a soft flexible straw. I felt an immediate rapture as the rich life-giving substance was starting to circulate throughout my organs, feeling more strength and energy with every sip. As I was leaving, I laid his motionless corps on the soft hay in the wooden horse feeder, which belonged to the animal he was trying to steal. Then to make it even more extraordinary I stuffed his mouth with hay, wrung his neck backwards, and tied his arms and legs into loose knots. I placed his hat on the head of the horse which had been calmly witnessing the entire spectacle, in order to make him look victorious, after which I ventured into the nearby abandoned bell tower and waited curiously.

Several hours has passed, until an early rising farmer came to feed his flock and stumbled upon this gruesome yet comical scene. The crowd of half-asleep villagers with oil lamps, torches and candles quickly assembled, and to my greatest astonishment, as I was curiously peeking thru the crack in the rotted wooden dilapidated shutters, they still managed to come up with some most ridiculous rational explanation. "The horse must've bit him and he fell into the hay" summarized in an authoritative voice an older, tall round man with a long mustache. "The horse bit him…the horse bit him" the surrounding mob started murmuring to each other. "The horse bit him!?". I raged in my mind. I have never heard more idiotic thesis in my long wretched life. Why, I don't know what kind of horses they breed in this little town, but most of those I have seen, do not merely walk to the human, bite him in the throat, slap him with the hoof so his entire head goes backwards, and then put on poor dead sap's clothes. I was in disbelief, angry and disappointed the same time at the stupidity and ignorance of the mankind. The Medieval dark ages had already past and Renaissance was in full force. Enlighten, the era of questioning, thinking, understanding…No. That part was only true among the most privilege classes. They would surround themselves with books, artists, philosophers, whereas the majority of the society still dwelled in darkness of simplicity and ignorance. At some point while clutching my fists and my teeth I felt an urge to just bolt into that crowd and roar with my preternatural shattering noise "No fools! The horse just didn't bit him!, I bit him, and I will do same to you will you not stop this madness!". But I knew I could not do this. I would surely be declared a blasphemer and an outcast, and consequently most likely destroyed as it is forbidden in our world by The Ancients, to reveal to any human three things; our true identity, our modus operandi and the most important the locations of our lairs.

That night I returned to the place of my slumber, an old crypt under a broken stone floor in the abandoned 'Black Oak's Chapel'. This place of worship has been left to rot, after the new church had been erected on the ramparts of the town. It was a quiet place that never attracted pay attention from the mortals. The dark interior with musty smell of moist and moldy walls, the coldness of the stone floor gave me peace and acted as a great deterrent for most humans, with occasional vagabonds trying to vandalize it, for which it became their rather final destination. As the hell's bells were ringing announcing upcoming imminent break of dawn... Ah, yes, the hell's bells, the moment for every vampire when it needs to rush to its' lair or otherwise shall face the unforgiving, radiating powerful force of the sun god. And no, we do not explode or catch on fire as if we were a simple match, but I will explain this a little later. For now, as the hell's bells were calling, I was lowering myself into my underground crypt, to be covered with a half of a ton of a cold, smooth marble lid. As I laid there my head was spinning with mixed thoughts. It is then; I realized that no matter on surrounding circumstances, the human mind shall almost always reject the existence of a supernatural or unknown, by rather replacing it with scientific and the tangible. It was that time that I knew that I can safely live among the mortals once again.

The sudden piercing sound of ringing telephone brought me back from my musings. I picked it up and answered without hesitation. "Ya, this is Hans Heiden". I said as doubts began to overflow my mind. Would they recognize my voice? –I thought. " Herr Obersturmführer* Heiden, Standartenführer* Josef Albert Meisinger would like to meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes". "Yes, please convey to Standartenfuhrer, I will report to him downstairs as instructed in five minutes". Click, the phone went silent. This will be the ultimate test, I thought. If I play these dice right, I might have a chance to pull a grandest trick of my life, a masterpiece of deception way beyond any illusionist have ever even attempted. But if I fail….well, it will surely mean the end of my wretched existence and the only evidence of me will remain through this very journal, -which is the reason why I am documenting it.