“I told you,” Johnathan Saunderson mused as he leaned against a headstone, arms folded across his chest, “I’m showing you that what I’m saying is true. Any minute now that young lad will rise from the grave.”
Logan sighed, shook his head. He stared off into the night sky, amazed he was able to see as many stars in the sky as he did. It was remarkable, really; certainly not the sort of thing he would’ve found in the heart of the city.
“No,” the student countered. “I mean … why are we all the way out in BFE, Jersey? Aren’t there plenty of cemeteries in New York City?”
“There are,” Saunderson offered with a mild shrug of his shoulders. “But there are also far too many people. At least here we have some measure of privacy.”
“Right,” Logan mumbled to himself. “Because we all know the New York hot spots are the graveyards.”
Saunderson chuckled to himself. Logan’s naiveté would be annoying if it weren’t expected. Until two days ago, the young man had no idea vampires and their ilk existed; to expect Logan to understand the intricacies of the world Saunderson was introducing him to would be, at best, foolish.
So patience was warranted.
“Part of the Council’s job, aside from guiding the Slayer in her fight against the darkness,” Saunderson explained, “is to ensure the secrecy of the supernatural. We don’t want vampires and the like being common knowledge.”
Logan was about to respond with a question when he heard the dirt beneath his feet shift. Taking a step back, the grad student stared at the fresh grave Saunderson showed him. The tombstone, which bore the name Gary Stewart, remained still, even as the ground split open and a pale hand rose from beneath.
The hand slowly became an arm, which eventually grew into a torso coming out of the ground. Gary Stewart had awoken, with his skin pale and his face contorted in the most disgusting visage Logan had ever seen. Had he not been so shocked, the sight might’ve made the young man sick.
“That,” he stammered. “Is that …?”
Saunderson nodded, producing a stake from the inside of his sportscoat. “That,” he said, kneeling before the fledgling, “is a vampire.”
To say it was unlike anything Logan had ever seen would’ve been a massive understatement. Even two days ago when Saunderson showed him an image of a vampire, that was nothing compared to seeing one in-person. Those feral eyes, the ridges on the forehead … the fangs.
“Take a good look, Logan,” Saunderson added in a gloomy voice. “This is your life now.”
Before Logan could respond, Saunderson jabbed the piece of wood in the creature’s chest, and with a scream the vampire disappeared in an explosion of dust and ash. As the vampire and his voice faded into the night, it left a hole where Gary Stewart’s grave used to be.
It was then that Logan finally screamed.
Chuckling to himself again, Saunderson stood and placed the stake back in his coat. “I trust you’ll outgrow that little screaming problem,” he quipped, approaching the young man and giving him a calming squeeze to the shoulder.
Logan looked at his journalistic mentor, wondering just what else in this world he didn’t know. The person in Logan was beyond freaked at the thought of vampires and demons and recurring threats of apocalyptic doom, but the journalist in him was intrigued.
This would be the kind of scoop careers were built on. Logan didn’t just see a Pulitzer in his future; he saw enough wealth to keep him, his children and his grandchildren set for their entire lives. This was the sort of story every journalist spent his or her life dreaming about.
“We have to tell them,” Logan said. “People have to know what’s out there. It’s up to us to tell them.”
Saunderson shook his head. “No,” he countered. “People cannot know. I told you, the Council works to keep this sort of thing under wraps.”
Logan blinked. “But, why?”
“Humanity fears that which it does not understand,” Saunderson explained, again taking a seat on one of the headstones. “Trite as that might sound, it’s true. If humanity were to learn of the subterrestrial threat, panic would reign. There would be rioting and violence unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
“The fabric of reality would weaken, and if my research is correct, so would the boundaries keeping this dimension safe from others. Humanity’s lack of belief is what helps keep this world safe. If we were to acknowledge, en masse, the existence of such creatures, the gateways to other worlds would open and our planet would be nothing more than a demon feeding ground.”
“But,” Logan stammered. “If – if we tell people they exist, we can also tell them how to protect themselves, how to live their lives without letting these freaks scare them. We can tell them about the vampires and the demons, and also tell them of the Slayers. I mean, yeah, the nasties are real, but so are the people who are destined to fight them.”
“If they’ll even listen,” Saunderson offered. “At best, you’d be regarded as a lunatic, and whatever hopes you had of a career in journalism are over. At worst, the panic becomes so widespread everyone’s too busy rioting to hear what you have to say.
“And I would imagine the monsters wouldn’t appreciate having their cover blown, which would make you a target.”
Logan sighed. Perhaps it was just his youth and his professional exuberance which led him to think such things, but the young man felt it was necessary for people to know that which threatened their very lives. If a foreign country had weapons of mass destruction and sought to use them on democratic societies, wouldn’t people want to know?
Okay, bad example.
“People have a right to know,” Logan said simply.
Saunderson smiled as best he could, appreciating Logan’s vigor – even if it was sorely misplaced. “What people don’t know won’t hurt them.