Dispatch 39

Ask a Vampire

The one about taking Halloween-night calls with a nine-thousand-year-old vampire. Dispatch 39 begins on the narrator's Mojave porch, where the trick-or-treaters have mostly gone home, the sound effects have been switched off, and the evening's special guest is answering questions from listeners. His name is Landau. He is a vampire, and after nine thousand years he has developed an entertaining, occasionally evasive, and not entirely reassuring perspective on his own species. The questions arrive from every direction. How does someone become a vampire? Do vampires live alone? Can they marry, have sex, or raise children? Do they eat ordinary food? What about animal blood? Landau answers some questions readily, avoids others, and occasionally seems more interested in correcting the narrator than satisfying the callers. Between questions, the narrator helps himself to Peanut M&M's and attempts to maintain something resembling order. But the conversation gradually reveals a more complicated history. For thousands of years, vampires survived by allowing human beings to mistake them for other supernatural creatures. Ancient Mesopotamian beliefs about demons and restless spirits provided useful disguises. Later, as frightened communities began opening graves and investigating the dead, vampires found themselves subject to a different kind of scrutiny. Even their ancient customs had to change. Landau moves between showmanship and something considerably older. He can joke about vampire manners and paperwork, then casually mention a river whose name disappeared three thousand years ago. Beneath the performance is a creature who has spent millennia concealing his nature, adapting to human fears, and living with appetites that remain difficult to discuss in polite company. As the calls continue, the questions become less amusing. What does feeding actually feel like? What happens when one vampire kills another? And what, after nine thousand years of existence, does Landau believe awaits him when he dies? At its center, Ask a Vampire is about the strange intimacy created when curiosity overcomes fear. An ancient predator becomes, for one Halloween evening, someone listeners can question about his habits, history, desires, and mortality. Yet familiarity does not entirely dispel the danger. When the calls end and the narrator takes his dogs into the desert night, he reflects on everything Landau has revealed—and on how much remains concealed. Some mysteries become more interesting the closer we get to them. Others may be worth keeping at a healthy distance.