Nightfall again, hunger again . . .
He walked the streets of the town and found them empty. It was strange. The native-American citizens were out, tending bar, walking their beats, locking up their newspaper on the stones, collecting their rents, managing their movies—but where were the others? He cast his net:
“. . . gobblegobblegobble whomp year gobble . . .”
“. . . crazy old pollack mama of mine try to lock me in with Errol
Flynn at the Majestic never know the difference if I sneak out the back . . .”
That was near. He crossed the street and it was nearer. He homed on the thought:
“. . . jeez he’s a hunka man like Stanley but he never looks at me that Vera Kowalik I’d like to kick her just once in the gobblegobble-gobble crazy old mama won’t be American so ashamed. . .”
It was half a block, no more, down a side street. Brick houses, two stories, with back yards on an alley. She was going out the back way.
How strangely quiet it was in the alley.
“. . . ea-sy down them steps fix that damn board that’s how she caught me last time what the hell are they all so scared of went to see Father Drugas won’t talk bet somebody got it again that Vera Kowalik and her big…”
“. . . gobble bozhe gobble whomp year gobble. . .”
She was closer; she was closer.
“All think I’m a kid show them who’s a kid bet if Stanley caught me all alone out here in the alley dark and all he wouldn’t think I was a kid that damn Vera Kowalik her folks don’t think she’s a kid . . .”
For all her bravado she was stark terrified when he said: “Hello.”
“Who—who—who—?” she stammered.
Quick, before she screamed. Her terror was delightful.
Not too replete to be alert, he cast about, questing.
“. . . gobblegobblegobble whomp year.”
The countless eyes of the other town, with more than two thousand years of experience in such things, had been following him. What he had sensed as a meaningless hash of noise was actually an impassioned outburst in a nearby darkened house.
“Fools! fools! Now he has taken a virgin! I said not to wait. What will we say to her mother?”
An old man with handlebar mustache and, in spite of the heat, his shirt sleeves decently rolled down and buttoned at the cuffs, evenly replied: “My heart in me died with hers, Casimir, but one must be sure. It would be a terrible thing to make a mistake in such an affair.”
The weight of conservative elder opinion was with him. Other old men with mustaches, some perhaps remembering mistakes long ago, nodded and said: “A terrible thing. A terrible thing.”
The Mindworm strolled back to his hotel and napped on the made
bed briefly. A tingle of danger awakened him. Instantly he cast out:
“. . . gobblegobble whompyear.”
“. . . whampyir.”
“WAMPYIR!”
Close! Close and deadly!
The door of his room burst open, and mustached old men with their shirt sleeves rolled down and decently buttoned at the cuffs unhesitatingly marched in, their thoughts a turmoil of alien noises, foreign gibberish that he could not wrap his mind around, disconcerting, from every direction.
The sharpened stake was through his heart and the scythe blade through his throat before he could realize that he had not been the first of his kind; and that what clever people have not yet learned, some quite ordinary people have not yet entirely forgotten.