ottawa residents should be concerned about a new terror roaming the streets of the city. it isn’t sexual deviants, drug dealers, or those crazy homeless guys who sometimes sing under the bridges of the 417. it isn’t even machete-wielding drunks who have somehow crossed the bridge from hull. it’s vampires. yes, blood-sucking, glassy-eyed, pale-skinned vampires.
i’m definitely not talking true blood or twilight, either. i promise.
last night was the in/words monthly poetry reading — that’s poetry, not spoken word, just to be clear — and although i didn’t get up to read, i was having a pretty great night. featured reader david o’meara was awesome enough, but i also had two of my own poems in this edition of in/words and got to sit back, drink with friends, and listen to some awesome poetry (and sax playing, by rotem). the night was brought to an end by an (always) amazing reading by cameron anstee, after which we all sort of half-drunkenly hovered around the doorway on our way out for a smoke.
this is where shit gets weird.
the night wasn’t completely over; we still had to go back in to hear justin announce this month’s winners of the classic in/words poetry prize: bean salad. it’s always one of the most exciting points of the night. so only a few of us tore ourselves away from the basement of the pub for that one last cigarette.
i was facing the street as we stood in our little four-person circle, and saw something a little strange. a man in a suit was running full-speed across bank street, lifting his jacket up with his hands so it flowed freely behind him like a cloak. i thought it was odd that he would be running so fast when there were no cars coming in either direction. moments later, i looked to my left and he was walking briskly, and i might go so far as to suggest he was floating, across the patio toward us.
his arms hung to his sides, unmoving despite his determined walk. he was in his late 30s or so, maybe early 40s, dressed in a dark grey suit over a pink collared shirt. he looked like he knew where he was going, which was disturbing enough. this businessman shouldn’t have been approaching four lazy, dirty poets outside a random bar in the middle of the night. he startled me to the point where i took off to the other side of our mini-circle. this isn’t unlike me, but in some way this was different. i somehow knew this was not going to end well.
later, leah told me that she thought someone knew him. later we also learned that matt had asked justin “do you know this guy”, to which justin had replied “yes” just to avoid a conflict with a fucking vampire. good move, justin. thanks buddy.
but we didn’t know him. he shook hands with matt and leah but didn’t even offer his hand in my direction — i think i’d already made it pretty clear how i felt about him. he was unlike anyone i’d ever seen before, though he did in some slight way remind me of the step-dad i’d had growing up. his skin was light and smooth, but at the same time it appeared tough, as if it had been stretched around an oversized, box-shaped skull. and although he had wrinkles it looked like he’d gone to some effort, maybe with make-up, to iron them out. his eyes were like gaping holes in his face, but still small and beady. they were the palest eyes i’ve ever seen, with cool blue irises shadowed by a ghost-like, milky whiteness. his lips, like his skin, seemed tough and stretched tightly in a straight line across the lower half of his face.
and then he opened his mouth.
“vampires?”
we stared. no one over the age of 25 (maybe 30, depending on how lame you are after 25) mentions vampires. i rarely think about them, other than when reminiscing about my insomnia-novel. i think the scariest thing about him, the spookiest thing, was that fucking voice. so gentle, soft and light. no effort in speaking. never had to clear his throat before. but low. not quite raspy. just low.
i flicked my cigarette. justin let him shake his hand, and then they made some kind of vampires-only handshake that justin clearly didn’t really understand. the vampire continued to blurt out short words and phrases, but i wasn’t listening anymore. i wanted the fuck out of there. i was really shook up over the whole thing. i half-hid behind matt and stared at leah until she finished smoking, and then the two of us hurried back inside without a word and without looking back. in retrospect, we kind of ditched those two out there on the patio. at the bottom of the stairs though, after briefly freaking out and frantically going over the details of what had just happened, we did look back up the stairs to make sure the vampire hadn’t taken justin and matt anywhere.
he hadn’t.
justin and matt came down the stairs shortly after, and, rattled, we all went back into the basement. justin had a job to do after all — that bean salad wasn’t going to award itself to anyone. but the vampire didn’t care about how freaked out we were, and he didn’t care that justin had a job to do. he followed us into the basement. i’ve only been followed into a place by some scary folk one other time — and it did not end well. even a little bit. it was one of the most intense nights of my life. i did not feel like seeing a repeat of that night. i got up and, in my hurry, my purse spilled a beer (sorry!!!). the sound of the shattering glass at my feet nearly stopped my heart.
the glass distracted me enough, i guess, because when i looked up the vampire was gone. i found out later that he had approached justin again, while he was up at the bar, but i don’t know where he went after that. i saw him a third time, but he disappeared around the corner and was gone yet again. we were shaken up. just knowing he was out there. waiting to find a group of nice young poets or whatever, just people having a good time. maybe people who didn’t happen to have a basement to run into.
just waiting out there.
we warned everyone about him, that’s for sure. and told them to take care walking home. from behind the mic, justin made sure everyone knew that a vampire was lurking the streets of ottawa. but that was only one small group of people in this city.
this isn’t a joke!
this was not some hipster kid trying to spook people, or some twilight fanatic in a costume. this was a serious encounter. with a grown man (???). in a fucking suit. potentially a vampire — and if he isn’t, he definitely knows something about them. where they’re at, what they’re up to. maybe he’s just being used by them to lure people in, i don’t know. but he is out there. at night. on weeknights, no less.
just… be warned. and good luck getting home.
