A Slayer of Vampires

Unknown | 1918

In the middle of the Langanza plain, a dozen miles up-country from Salonica, there dwells a strange character. He is rich. He has a good home and many cattle and sheep, and sometimes his linen and waist-sash are almost clean. By his neighbours he is treated with extreme deference, and his name is mentioned with awe in the villages for thirty miles around. He is Demetrius – Demetrius the Slayer of Vampires.

The Macedonian shepherd, tending his flocks in the high pastures, sets off on his rounds one morning at dawn, and finds half a dozen of his sheep mangled about the neck and dying or dead. Forthwith he flies to the nearest village, and spreads the dread news — Vampires.

Now the vampire, you must know, is as susceptible as other mortal creatures to an argument such as is afforded, say, by two ounces of slugs discharged from a long-barreled musket ; but he has this peculiarity, that he is invisible to all save certain few and far between individuals.

Among those who have this rare gift of being able to see vampires, Demetrius is king. The tracking and slaying of vampires is his life-work. Occasionally, he will give his services to a poor man for little, but his usual fee is three hundred drachmae (about £12).

So our owner of the slaughtered sheep if he be a well-to-do man, flies him to Demetrius and states his facts. And Demetrius loads his long musket very carefully, rams down a holy wafer on top of the charge, puts on his long sheepskin cloak, mounts his pony, and sets off for the hills: At the waning of the moon he takes his stand upon a rock and waits for the vampire. In the chill hour before dawn, perhaps you will hear him shoot once and only once.

At daybreak Demetrius takes you to the rock and shows you the ground near by soaked with a vast quantity of blood. (The vampire, be it remembered, is all blood. Shoot him, and he resolves at once into his elemental) Thereafter your flocks are troubled no more.

I have said that Demetrius is treated with deference by his neighbours. There is. one exception in the rule. Andreas, who sells sour wine, and pickled fishes and holy pictures in the village store, has been in America. Andreas is a scoffer. He mocks at those things which all men know to be true. Andreas laughs when you mention vampires. He talks of wolves, and of dogs that run amok. Yes, he even hints that it is easy to conceal a bladder filled with blood under a long coat such as Demetrius wears.

But all the people know that there is bad feeling between the two. Andreas is not so rich as Demetrius, and they pass each other by without speaking.