Hear Steve read this story! (The recording is from an earlier draft.)
I Am My Brother’s Keeper
I never learned the origin of his fear, an irrational idea which entrenched itself in his little brain and began to consume him. Most people fear death; my brother feared life. He harbored an unshakable belief that he was doomed to roam the earth for eternity. My brother Jimmy thought he was—or rather, was destined to become—a vampire.
My first encounter with his preposterous notion came at our grandfather’s wake when Jimmy pulled me aside and whispered that he didn’t think grandpapa was really dead.
“Are you mad? Of course he’s dead. What do you think?”
“What if he rises again?”
I would have thought him joking had it not been for the terror evident in his eyes. He cast a sidelong glance at the coffin as if expecting grandpapa to sit up at any moment.
“If he rises again, I’ll personally run out to get him a sandwich as I’m sure he’ll be quite famished.” Jimmy turned away, apparently unappreciative of my humor.
Shortly after the funeral his nightmares began. Jimmy would awaken in a frenzy mumbling about walking in the night, craving blood, and other such foolishness that finds fields of fertility in the imaginations of young boys. I would sit with him and comfort him until he fell asleep again.
One day he approached me with a solemn countenance. “Make me a promise.”
“What promise is that?”
“See to it upon my death I am bound hand and foot, and a stake is driven through my heart.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“Just promise me!” His blue eyes begged for my obedience.
Partly to humor him and mostly because I never expected him to predecease me, I agreed to comply with his morbid wishes.
A sad day it was when we laid him in his little coffin, decked out in the suit he’d worn only once before. Of course I never told our parents about the silly promise I’d made and had no intention of keeping. Drive a stake through his heart, indeed! Ridiculous nonsense!
Jimmy has been placed in the family vault in the basement of our house on a shelf next to grandpapa. Sometimes of an evening I hear his scraping, but I dare not open the crypt to let him out. I dare not!