The Vampires of Africa

“I shall contact you tomorrow,” the old man had said. So the Preacher returned home and waited for the call that he hoped would never come. He lived in a huge, old, magnificent, three-story, brick house that had once belonged to a physician. The house was located in the far Northwest corner of Gary in a heavily wooded neighborhood right across the road from another larger and even more polluted river than the Little Calumet, the Grand Calumet River that bordered Gary on the North. The Preacher tried to relax and failed. He could not help feeling that his safe, peaceful life was going to change. Now, it was almost time for lunch, and he had missed breakfast. There were some of his favorite foods in the refrigerator, country ham and redeye gravy, mixed mustard and turnip greens, cabbage, squash, okra, and cornbread, but his apprehension and nervousness would not let him eat. He took a tranquilizer and tried to stop worrying and relax. The Preacher had named his house Hunter House, but it was really Bleak House, he thought. Hunter House was a ghost house haunted not by the ghosts of those who had died there, but rather haunted by the ghosts of those who had never been born and had never lived there. When he had returned from Vietnam, he had wanted a family, so he had bought this big, old, elegant, wonderful, doctor’s house, and like an animal or insect preparing a nest to attract a mate, he had fixed it up, even made it better, more beautiful, more elegant. But his labors were in vain. The wife and the children never came. Now, twenty five years later, it was too late for what he had wanted. Sure, there was an almost infinite supply of fortyish and fiftyish women who were going nowhere in life and eager to get married to any man, especially a man such as himself, a man with money and such a magnificent house. Many of them were quite beautiful, even more beautiful than Laverne, but to marry any one of them would have been vanity, the type of vanity mentioned in the Bible---the quality or state of being fruitless, useless, or destitute of reality, etc. A few years ago, he’d considering marrying a beautiful, younger woman named Lilli and starting a family with her, but a family is a lot of work for a man of any age, and the Preacher was getting ready to retire. He couldn’t envision himself as a fifty-five year old, first time father waking up at three o’clock in the morning to change a diaper, or fix a bottle, or as a seventy year old father trying to go one-on-one in a basketball game against a fifteen year old son. So instead, he envied his friends as he watched their children participate in sports, win scholastic honors, graduate from high school and college, work in the church, and finally have children of their own. Yes, Hunter House was haunted by ghosts, not the kind that frightened you, but the kind that saddened and depressed you. He could sense these ghosts, ghost wives, ghost children, even ghost grandchildren, some¬times even dreaming about them. But then his mind returned to the present and his sadness was replaced by a much stronger emotion---fear. He was tired, but much too frightened to sleep. The Thick, black woods bordering the river across the road now seemed ghostly, evil, and threatening. Nightmarish. And even his own house seemed like some shadowy, dark, supernatural place. He had just taken another tranquilizer when the phone rang. It was the old man. “Be sure to get a good night’s sleep tonight,” The old man said, “because we’re going fishing early tomorrow morning.” “Where to?” the Preacher asked. “To the Little Calumet River, of course,” the old man replied. “I think you know the spot.”