Old Thyme 4. Kandy's

On the northern side of Roseland, Old Town sat in the corporate shadow of skyscrapers. Brick buildings housed craft shops, pubs, and apartments where artists and bartenders lived. Evening shoppers in search of the next must-have statement weaved around packs of hippies. Marijuana smoke so heavy, the haze threatened light from streetlamps. Caught between Old Town and downtown Roseland on a nearly vacant side street, Augustus found his destination. It was another brick building which he might have missed if not for the sign stopping him in his tracks.

Kandy Fangs seemed like an odd name for a record store. The kay and eff had unnatural descenders with a candy swirl dripping like blood from fangs.

"Kandy Fangs Music Store sign"

Augustus checked his note, and sure enough, this was the correct address. Through the window, he could see rows of tables holding cardboard boxes. A young couple thumbed through music albums within a box. Augustus felt like moving on, but the odd shop title pulled him toward the door like a mosquito to a lantern.

The scents of fresh wood and floor cleaner welcomed Augustus, and a snappy tune calmed his nerves. Danceable, he thought, Susan would have enjoyed it. The couple talked excitedly over an album. Behind a small counter in the corner, a woman sat quietly on a stool. She flipped through a magazine without a glance at Augustus approaching her.

“Been open long?” asked Augustus. Doubts about Jack Mills ever coming here began to sink in.

The clerk flipped a page and continued reading. “Two months,” she said.

“I’m checking up on some information about Jack Mills,” said Augustus. Glancing over, he checked to see if the young couple might overhear. The two argued over which band was most likely to play in Roseland. Lowering his voice, he continued. “Jack was the father of my late wife.”

“Sorry for your loss,” said the woman. Flipping the pages, she scanned headlines.

“This probably isn’t the right place, but I’m trying to track down on old debt of Jack’s. You see it seems I’ve covered one of his debts.” Pausing, Augustus considered apologizing for disturbing the woman and leaving, but his lips continued moving ahead of his thoughts. “A man took our son. I need to find my boy.”

Looking up, the woman met his gaze.

“All I have are a few scraps of Jack’s old gambling debts. The dog track and boxing, mostly, but somewhere he met a man. The one who took our son.” Leaning closer, he whispered, “My wife believed this old man is a vampire.”

Augustus bit his lip. He wished he could take it back.

Not a blink, the woman studied him. Her cool eyes peered deep into his for a moment before scanning him up and down.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” said Augustus. He shook his head. “It’s just that I’m at my wits end. The police are now telling me the Sisters of Sorrows have adoption paperwork. They say there’s nothing they can do about my boy. If only I could find this man. Ithuriel might be his name, but I’m beginning to doubt that name is even real. My wife, Susan, actually referred to him as a patriarch.”

The woman pushed her magazine aside. She reached under the counter and produced a business card. While she scribbled a note on the corner, Augustus glanced around. The couple had moved to another aisle where they scanned through a box of albums. Taking the card from the woman, Augustus looked it over.

"Helen's card"

“An antique dealer?”

“A historian,” said the woman. Leaning closer, her expression darkened. “And an expert on vampires.”

In the corner of the card, the store initials possessed fangs biting into the printed text. The clerk didn’t appear much like a vampire, but the bright store lights made it impossible to tell if she had iridescent eyes. Her closed lips hid her teeth. The store logo could be simply that, a logo without a link to vampires. How many customers overlooked such a loud statement? Hiding in plain site seemed possible, but the real vampire could be behind the scenes.

“Show that to the historian,” said the woman.

“I appreciate your help,” said Augustus. He offered a smile, but it felt cold. As he turned to leave, he paused thinking about the sign outside that had stopped him. “I’m curious about the name of this store.”

“It gets the kids talking,” said the clerk. Her closed-lip smile seemed warm. “And talk brings them in on this dead street.”

“Thanks, again,” said Augustus. Raising the business card, he waved.

Outside, he met cool air and cringed at the pungent marijuana smell. Somewhere out there, his baby son rested in a stranger’s crib.

Old Thyme 3. Vampires on the Mind

Old Thyme from David Shrock on Vimeo.

When the body of Nurse Constance arrived at Thyme Funeral Home, Augustus recognized the corpse for what it was.

A message.

Just weeks earlier his newborn son, Samuel Thyme, had been stolen away by Nurse Constance and the old man in the dark Cadillac, a debt paid in blood by the mother. Susan had died due to complications—the physician’s way of saying she had died of a broken heart.

Augustus had considered following. He had tried drowning his misery, one bottle after another. Even while he pressured the police and persued his own investigation, he took to drinking like a fish.

Susan had called the old man in the Cadillac, Patriarch, the first of their kind.

The first what?

Augustus had collected all manner of books on the occult. He poured through them between cases of beer. Down in the city, he asked around. And he started seeing them everywhere.

Even before he was ready to admit it, he knew what he saw. Vampires. He saw them in the pubs and on the street corners. He even saw them in the damn library.

He had vampires on the mind.

There were days he didn’t know if they were only in his head. He didn’t want to know. He saw their fangs when they sneered at him. He saw their iridescent eyes. Even when he wasn’t drunk out of his mind, he saw them still. Even now one sat across from him at the pub.

“I’m looking for Ithuriel”, said Augustus. That was the name he had found in an old tome describing the first of their kind.

The vampire stroked his goatee as if primming for a date.

"bottle"

“You know not what you say,” said the vampire.

“He took my son!” said Augustus. He slammed his fist on the table knocking a bottle over.

A hush fell over the pub.

They all looked at him with thirst in their eyes.

Slowly, Augustus stood. He recognized the threat before him. He was about to lose his life, or drench his own hands in blood. Either way, his son would be lost. Excusing himself, he slipped away and stumbled for the door.

The rain felt hot like blood streaming down his face. He fled from the vampires on the mind.

Old Thyme 2. Patriarch

Back in the sixties, Roseland was a dangerous city for a young woman on her own. Augustus Thyme and Susan Mills married for convenience. Susan turned out to be a big help at the funeral home, selling caskets and scheduling funerals. Business improved. Love came eventually, and soon after, Samuel Thyme arrived.

Strong lungs, the child let the entire hospital know he had met the world. Standing beside the hospital bed where Susan rested, Augustus held his son snug in his arms. When the nurse arrived to take Samuel to be checked over, the joyous father refused to let go.

“It won’t be long,” said the nurse. Her dark curly hair shined purple in the light. According to the tag on her uniform, her name was Constance. “We’ll be back in a jiffy,” said Constance, smiling.

Augustus continued admiring his son a bit longer before surrending him into the arms of the patient nurse. As he watched Nurse Constance carry Samuel Thyme out of the room, a tear traced down over his warm cheek. He smiled so big, it nearly hurt.

He turned to his wife, and spotting her long face, his grin melted away.

“Susan, what is?” he asked. “Is everything well?”

She forced a smile. “Nothing, Augustus,” she said, “just so glad to see you happy.”

Something was bothering her, Augustus could see it like paint on a wall. Her gaze avoided his. Color drained from her flesh. His heart thumped.

“Susan, what is it? What’s happened?” Susan clamped her eyes shut tight. “Remember my driver that night we first met at the funeral home?”

The black 1958 Cadillac with the tall fins, Augustus remembered it well. The old man in the driver’s seat had waited in the car while Susan had made arrangements for the passing of her father, Jack Mills. The creepy look in that old man’s face haunted him still.

“Dad had made a terrible mistake,” said Susan. Her voice cracked as she held back her tears.

“What sort of mistake? What does it have to do with us?”

“I was too old,” said Susan. Like cresting over a damn, tears flowed over her cheeks and onto the pillow. Not sadness, fear gripped her. “Augustus, he’s the patriarch of their kind.”

“Susan, you’re barely making sense,” said Augustus. Whatever was on Susan’s mind gripped her tight, and that worried him.

“My dear husband,” said Susan, “that man is the father.”

The two of them might not have always been in love, but he felt damn sure Susan never had an affair.

“The father of fathers,” she said. Tears nearly choked her as she spoke. “The original.”

Face white as the sheet, it looked as though Susan laid at Death’s door.

“Nurse!” Augustus shouted again. His heart thundered into his head.

“Augustus,” Susan said, nearly choking. “Our son.”

Leaving his wife behind, he raced into the hallway. Spotting a nurse standing beside a cart, he called to her. The nurse scurried into the room, and another followed. Augustus stood there a moment watching the two nurses tending to his wife.

Our son. She had called Samuel, our son, he reminded himself.

It him like a hammer against his head, and lit a fire burning his insides.

Perspiration streamed from his scalp. Pounding heart urged his legs into motion. He had to reach Samuel. He needed his son back in the safety of his arms.

At the end of the hall, his polished shoes squeeled on the tile as he stopped at the nurse’s station. Breathing hard, he spat at the woman seated behind the desk as he spoke. “My son. I would like to see my son, Samuel Thyme.”

Speaking on the phone, the woman held up her finger. She began shuffling clipboards.

Shouts boomed.

Looking down the hall, Augustus found the lobby full of activity. Many of the visitors seated in chairs watched a commotion going on between a physician and two young women standing in the center, the eye of a storm, it seemed. One of the women threw quite the tantrum, shouting and waving arms, and the other stood by scowling at the physician. Augustus couldn’t quite make out the words within the shrieking, but they carried undertones of recent tragedty. The old lord, Death, frequented hospitals leaving a wake of despair and anger.

Avoiding the storm, a nurse squeezed between a row of chairs, pausing for legs to move aside. Not just any nurse, either, Augustus recognized the curly dark locks glistening with purple under the lights. Nurse Constance held something in her arms as she headed for the hospital exit.

A baby. She held a baby in her arms.

Augustus bolted down the hall. His shoes squealed on the tile, and he nearly slipped, arms flying out. Hand slapping the wall, he pushed his body straight again, and continued, dodging a physician emerging from a door. He couldn’t make out the child in the nurse’s arms, but the child had to be Samuel. The fear on Susan’s face had told him so.

The front glass doors opened, and Nurse Constance stepped out into the night.

As Augustus ran into the lobby, the screaming woman whirled about into his path. He leaped sideways, but crashed into the woman, anyway, knocking her into the other frightened woman. No time for apologies, Augustus quickly bowed to the woman and spun around.

Outside, he spotted the dark Cadillac driving away through the parkling lot. At the street, its brake lights flared like blood dripping onto asphalt, and in a throaty roar of thunder, the Cadillac faded into the night. Later, after reporting Constance and the Cadillac to the police, a physician informed Augustus that his wife had died due to lingering complications with the pregancy, but as the thunder faded, he already knew the truth.

Susan Thyme had died of a broken heart.

Nosferatu: Devil in Detail

Clearly popularized by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula, “nosferatu” has appeared in numerous movies, song lyrics, and books. Researching nosferatu in our family library, I had trouble tracking down the origins of this term. Augustus Thyme, my grandfather, began the tradition of collecting an assortment of books on vampires and the occult, so I consider our library extensive on this subject. Along with some internet library research, I came up with a possible origin.

Stoker identified his source as British author, Emily Gerard, which she used the term in her travelogue, The Land Beyond the Forest in 1888. Note that transylvania is Latin for “through the forest.” In her travelogue, Gerard identifies nosferatu as a Romanian word for vampire: “More decidedly evil is the nosferatu, or vampire, in which every Roumanian peasant believes as firmly as he does in Heaven or Hell.”

However, nosferatu isn’t Romanian.

Earlier in 1865, the term also appeared in a German-language article by Wilhelm Schmidt discussing Transylvanian customs for an Austro-Hungarian magazine, according to Leonard Wolf in Dracula: The Connoisseur’s Guide (1997). It seems possible that Gerard could have come across Schmidt’s article while living in Austria-Hungary.

Perhaps nosferatu is based on the Greek word, “nosophoros” (νοσοφόρος), which means disease-bearing. The classic film, Nosferatu by Manau uses the disease theme, which may persuade modern opinion on the Greek origin. There may be a connection, but I can’t find any evidence between the Greek word and Gerard’s Romanian reference. The romance languages borrowed a few words from Greek, so there is a possibility. Even if so, what word in Romanian did nosferatu refer to?

More likely, the term is a misinterpretation of sounds or spelling across languages Denis Buican in Dracula et ses Avatars: de Vlad l’Empaleur à Staline et Ceausescu (1991) and Manuela Dunn-Mascetti in Vampire: the Complete Guide to the World of the Undead (1992) suggest two similar Romanian terms as candidates: nesuferitu and nefârtatu, based on necurat and nesuferit, respectively. Nesuferitu refers to the occult as “the unclean,” and nefârtatu is “the insufferable one” for the devil.

While reading old books in our library, I’ve noticed how easy it is for meaning or spelling to alter when translated from other languages. My money is on nosferatu originally referred to nefârtatu, the devil, and taken by Gerard to refer to a very evil creature, a vampire.

The “devil is in the detail” if only we could truly know it.

"Nine signature"

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Lamia

April showers bring May flowers and funerals, or so it seems.

Winter might be the season of death, but here at Thyme Funeral Home, our busy season is in the spring. I have no idea why, and my father has never ventured a guess. No matter how slow business is at the start of April, Daddy hires seasonal employees, because without failure by the end of April, death marches through our doors.

Every year, for nearly a decade now, the same woman has worked the morgue on weekends. Daddy didn’t even call this year; the woman just showed up the first Saturday of April. She plans to stay on through June like every year.

I call this woman, Lamia.

She isn’t particularly pretty, and doesn’t smile all that often, but she’s nice enough. She paints a corpse like painting a canvas, beautiful and creepy, and she’s licensed for embalming, too. Daddy claims he likes her for her dependability. I can’t argue that. Hell, she even hangs out when there isn’t much to do. I believe Daddy prefers her expertise in the matters of their kind.

She’s one of them. Sort of like a vampire, fangs included. She despises being called a vampire, but doesn’t seem to mind, Lamia. I had forgotten her name years ago, and started calling her by the latin word for vampire. She never complained, so that’s what I call her to this day.

Whenever an unexpected guest of their kind arrives, Lamia knows just what to do. She quietly consoles ignorant friends of the lost one, and convinces them that cremation is best. Never a casket for them, always the furnace.

Lamia seems to enjoy burning her own kind, and that’s what I like best about Lamia.

"Nine signature"