June 27th, 1947
A new development in the case of our little ghost friend.
At first there was nothing more than a few startling
moments, where I might be in the bath and reach for a towel only for a young
child to be sitting upon it. Or perhaps
I’d be sipping my morning coffee and look over to see him sitting at the kitchen
table beside me. However, two days after
our haunting started, something a bit more substantial happened.
I went on a house call to a woman who wanted me to see about
her husband’s cough. It wasn’t anything
life threatening and I left after handing over some medicine and instructions
for administering it. On the walk home I
saw my ghost friend standing at the end of an alley looking incredibly
forlorn. I stopped and peered in the
direction he was staring, seeing two boys and a girl using sticks to poke at
rocks. They appeared to be having a bit
of fun. All three of them were filthy
and shoeless, but seemed happy enough.
I kept looking back and forth between the ghost of the child
and the playing children. I could not
help but wonder if they might have been friends in his life. After a moment one of the children spotted me
and they babbled to one another momentarily before racing over and mumbling in broken English a rather odd questions.
They wanted to know if I was a man who ‘fixed people.’ I mulled over the question for a moment then
glanced to my medical bag and chuckled.
I answered yes, I ‘fixed’ people.
One of the children took me by the hand, and the other two
got behind me and started to push. A few
back alleys later, I was brought upon a startling sight. Under a tent made of garbage, guarded by a
dirty dog and more garbage, was a fourth child.
He was covered over with dirty blankets and some ripped clothing, but
there was no mistaking the face; it was my odd little ghost. Only he wasn’t dead, he was barely alive.
The children did their best to explain the situation,
gesturing to the dog and then their mate’s hand, which was swollen, fevered and
blistering with puss. Apparently the
child was playing rough and the dog gave him a nip on the palm. This wouldn’t have been a problem, were they
not urchin with no way to bathe or clean the wound. Apparently the child’s hand had gotten
infected and he’d become gravely ill.
I questioned the children as to how long he’d been
unconscious and they all held up four fingers.
This boy had fallen into a near coma-like state from infection for that
long and now he truly was on death’s door.
I had no idea how he was walking around as a spirit, but I could not
linger on that part of the mystery if I was to save his life.
I really did not wish to move him, but there was no other
way to get him proper treatment. I ended
up carefully carrying him back to the apartment, with three urchins and a dog
clinging to my heels.
When I arrived home, Cyrus stood at the door with both brows
climbing up his face and his lip twitching with a grin he did not dare let
show. He could tell that being
surrounded in children along with an animal was taxing me to my limits. It is not as if I do not like children, it is
just that I don’t really know how to act around them, especially in a crisis.
Be that as it may, Cyrus went quickly to work, filling baths
and scrubbing filthy heads. He made
food, entertained, and otherwise kept little ones and a barking mutt out of my
way so I could clean and tend the patient.
He also somehow managed to breeze in and out, nabbing my
wallet and gathering our valuables and putting them up in high and locked
places. When I questioned him—he stated
that these children were joys, but the reality of life was that they had
nothing, and even if they were grateful to us, their stomach’s would rule over
any sense of right and wrong.
It was a sad thought, truly.
Even if I manage to save this boy’s life, and if we could give
these children a few days stock of food, we can’t keep them. We do well to get by day-to-day
ourselves. I don’t mean to say something
bad about Cyrus, but he is a vampire, and I’m at best a functioning
alcoholic. We cannot possibly raise four
children and their bouncing dog.
Besides, these are just four of probably hundreds of equally problematic
children out there on the streets.
Perhaps once I’ve done all I can for the ghostly one, Cyrus
and I can sit down and discuss what we might do to help these children in a
practical sense, but for now there is the pressing matter of saving a life.
To that end, it was a late night. The three lively children fell asleep in
piles in our living area along with the dog and I was able to ask the pertinent
question. If the boy was alive all
along, why was he appearing as a ghost?
Cyrus replied that it was probably that the boy was some sort of
medium and when he fell ill he accidentally had an out-of-body experience. But since there were no other gifted people around to show him how to use his powers, he was wandering, unable
to get back inside his own body. The
danger now was if we could not save his life, he truly would become disembodied spirit. Cyrus assured me that if the boy
woke up, his soul would simply rubber band back into his body.
However, the infection may be beyond me to
repair with mere modern medicine at this point.
I have drained his hand twice, flushed the bite mark six times, and
filled him with as much antibiotic as I dare. I believe if he is to wake up we may need to
look at supernatural means. I have a ‘mixture’
that could work to bolster red and white blood cells and immediately begin
pushing out the infection and stop the fluctuation of his body
temperature. However, I will need at
least one, perhaps two, drops of vampire blood as a catalyst.
In short, I need Cyrus to agree to give the boy a drop of
blood. This is something I do not wish
to ask. Right now I am going to give the
boy until sundown to show any improvement.
If there is none, or if there is a turn for the worse, then I will
ask. It is entirely possible that Cyrus
will refuse. I know he gave me his blood
freely, but the day we met I still cannot fathom what was going through his
mind. In the time that I have
known Cyrus, it has not appeared that he gives his blood freely, or very
often. I am not certain if I was a whim,
a fluke, or if the situation was just so frightening that he made a rash
decision. Whatever the case may be, I
get the distinct impression that vampire blood is somehow ‘sacred’ and asking
for it, even to save the life of a child, makes the hair stand up on the back of
my neck.
I am suddenly reminded of the young Jewish boy I saved
against father’s wishes back during the war.
He reacted negatively to giving the boy a bit of the blood that was
stored away. I did not have permission
from the vampire that Father received that blood from. I wonder if that vampire would have rejected
the notion of saving the child. It was,
after all, not the person that blood was intended.
At any rate, it is late, Journal. I must try to get some rest. I will be alone for some hours tomorrow with
all these children and their dog.
Goodnight.
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