“I ain’t afraid of no ghosts” but vampires terrify me! DON’T LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW! I told myself I was just being ridiculous. “Yes, I am but I ain’t taking no chances. I’m staying right here with the covers pulled over my head.”  It wasn’t Halloween but it might as well have been.

It was a spring evening, a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies…the year, not the temperature. I don’t know why I remember certain things like it was “a Saturday night in the mid to late Seventies.”  I had just discovered Stephen King and was reading “Salem’s Lot.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Salem’s Lot,” it is a vampire yarn featuring bloodsuckers taking over an entire town.

Besides being scary as hell, there is an instructional section devoted to…vampire protocols, I guess? The section went farther than I must sleep in a casket on a bed of home soil, I risk a bad sunburn if I appear before dark and to maintain my immortality I must feed on virginal blood and stay away from sharp, pointed stakes.

I had just read that a vampire couldn’t come into your home unless you invited them in when I heard it. TAP, TAP, TAP. Alone, with no one to run to or call, I’m hearing a TAP, TAP, TAP on the window of my apartment. My second-floor apartment…moments after reading how “little vampire Johnny” had hypnotized his little brother or sister to open a second story window and invite them in. You just can’t trust a vampire.

“Whatever you do… DON’T LOOK THEM IN THEIR LITTLE VAMPIRE EYES!” That’s how they hypnotize you…and I heard it again…TAP, TAP, TAP. I could imagine his little vampire fingers…those tiny, gray, blood drained fingers. I imagined his big vampire smile…mouthing… ”Come on man! Just invite me in, it won’t sting.”  TAP, TAP, TAP.
There was a breeze churned up by a distant thunderstorm…”, it was a dark and stormy night” …and the window was open to take advantage of the spring coolness…the breeze was moving the curtains…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” Thunder rumbled…” DON’T LOOK! DON’T LOOK!” I didn’t look…I slept with the lights on and the covers over my head. A grown man sleeping with the lights on with covers over his head…it was a grown man NOT sleeping with the lights on and the covers over his head.

The next morning, as soon as the sun was FULLY above the horizon, I went out, all bleary-eyed, to see what had caused the TAP, TAP, TAP. I was met by the Doberman Pincher from the apartment below. Placing her paws on my shoulders while looking me in the eyes, she pinned me to the wall assuring me it wasn’t her. Her master explained, “She’s in heat and a bit jumpy.” I would agree. I’m jumpy but not in heat.

It was the tree…a water oak. A little branch just close enough to tap, tap, tap in the wind…or was it? No, I ain’t fallin’ for it. Why take the chance?  Where is my crucifix?  Do I have a clove of garlic?

For more of Don Miller’s whacky rantings, please go to his author’s page at http://amazon.com/author/cigarman501.