Descendant

Diana

It was a sweltering Thursday afternoon and I was caught in the usual southbound traffic jam on the Kennedy Bridge when WRKA played “Diana,” and I felt as if my entire skin-surface was shrinking.

“Diana,” by Paul Anka. That song has haunted me for the past fifty years, and I guess it always will. Whenever I hear it, I can’t stop myself from turning my head around, just to make sure that I’m not being followed, or that somebody isn’t watching me from some shadowy doorway on the opposite side of the street.

“I’m so young and you’re so old.” It brings everything back. The glassy heat of the South London suburbs in the middle of summer, the large 1930s houses with their red-tiled roofs and their tennis courts, the flat sweet smell of British pubs, the shabby clothes and the tiny little cars.

And those things that ran through the streets, dark and voracious and utterly cruel. Clinging to ceilings, rushing up walls. You think that you know what it’s like to be frightened? You don’t have any idea.

When I finally arrived back home in Kenwood Hill, I closed the front door and stood for a long time with my back pressed against it, and my heart was beating like a jackhammer. Two semicircles of crimson light shone on the wall from the stained-glass window at the top of the stairs, like bloodshot eyes. It was then that I thought, dammit, whatever the government might do to me, it’s high time that you knew the truth. That’s why I’m going to tell you what really happened during that summer of August 1957, and what hideous carnage we had to face. I’m going to tell you what happened afterward, too, and for me that was even more of a nightmare. All I did was put off the evil day. Sooner or later, the decision that I could never bring myself to make is going to be yours.

I was officially warned never to talk about it. Two days after I was relocated to Louisville, a pimply young man came round to my house in a shiny gray suit and warned me not to say anything, ever, not even to my wife Louise. Even after all these years, I guess the government could still have me arrested for breaching national security, or lock me up in a nuthouse, but they can’t terrify me the way that I’ve been terrified every single day for the past fifty years.

Because vampires never, ever forgive you for anything.