Vampire a Go-Go

THIRTEEN

Dr. Dee might have been a gigantic prick, but I had to give him credit. I’d had no idea at the time that he’d been speculating about the nature of matter on an atomic level. Nobody had had the vocabulary. Protons and electrons and so forth had been centuries away.

And then there had been the darker forces, which science has yet to explain.

I should have gone to Sicily.

It’s true that I have a facility for languages. In the hundreds of years I’ve haunted Prague Castle and its environs, I’ve become more fluent in Czech than any Czech. I’ve learned German and Russian. Even a smattering of Japanese. The castle draws tourists from all four corners of the globe. My French is good, but even now, my Spanish is still weak.

There is a room behind one of the gift shops where the cleaning staff can lounge and have a smoke. They have a TV in the lounge. I’ve seen every episode of Hogan’s Heroes dubbed into German. Prague gets German TV. It’s easier to spy on TV than it is to read a book over somebody’s shoulder, but I’ve done that too.

The problem is that I can’t touch anything, so it’s hard to turn pages. I can float through walls and doors, drift the night gardens, haunt the tombs beneath St. Vitus Cathedral. There is no nook or cranny of this place I haven’t seen a hundred times. But I can’t turn pages. I still haven’t made it through all the Harry Potter books. For the first three volumes, I stood over the shoulder of this nice woman who worked in the kitchens. She’d take her break on a bench outside and read while taking a quick lunch. She was a slow reader. But she got married and moved away, so I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to read the rest. I think Harry and Hermione will get together. I just have a feeling.

I am confined-mostly-to the castle and its grounds. I experimented with this quite a bit the first few decades. With great effort, I can make it to the little pub I loved so much at the bottom of the castle steps. On certain nights, when the moon and stars align just perfectly, I’ll feel the cosmic energies stir. On these occasions I can make it into the tourist areas below the castle.

I’ve never made it as far as the Charles Bridge.

When I attempt to leave the area the cosmos has approved for me, things go gray. The real world bleeds away, and I feel myself in a fog. I try to trudge forward, but it’s like walking through mud. I feel a tug at my back, like there’s an invisible line hooked to my belt.

I always turn back. I am here. I will be here forever.

The Hapsburgs fell, and I remained. I watched the Nazis come and go. The Communists. The latest invasion has been the tourists, men and women from the UK and the USA. So many students. They all flock to cheap beer and old-world charm. The prices are starting to go up now, and Prague isn’t the bargain it used to be. Travelers are discovering Budapest and Warsaw.

But Prague is mine, or the castle-the symbol of the city-is anyway.

There are other ghosts in Prague Castle. I’ve talked to them. Well, I’ve tried to talk to them. They seem to lack the gift of conversation. These spirits are stuck in some kind of loop, acting in the same play over and over again, saying the same lines. They spend eternity reenacting their unjust murders or roam the halls looking for the road to the afterlife. They’re only half there. Insubstantial even for ghosts.

Only I see all. Only Edward Kelley retains his faculties, listens, learns, grows. I am like some recorder destined to bear witness. What exactly I’m supposed to see or do has been unclear for centuries. I have never tasted a McDonald’s hamburger or Yoplait yogurt. I watch with longing as tourists knock back cold pilsners. I want to cry when I think how long it’s been since I’ve had a glass of wine, but I can’t make tears.

I have not been deprived of human desires. I simply no longer have the means to fulfill them. Nothing physical, I mean. I can’t tell you how long I spent loitering in women’s restrooms, watching ladies take down their pants to pee. That’s pathetic, isn’t it? Like I said, a man with a man’s desires, trapped in the nothingness of my existence.

So, yeah. I get horny.

But since I am utterly deprived of physical sensation, it must all be in my mind, right? I spent a hundred years on that one.

Only recently have I detected some change, a shift in the nature of my own existence. Something is coming. Happening. And it’s all tied up with Allen Cabbot and the strange adventure that he finds himself smack in the middle of at this very moment. But Allen can keep a moment.

First there is the matter of Dr. Dee and a very large pitcher of cheap wine.