By Sean Johnson
right next door to the abandoned knife factory. Just to get the bathroom I have to take two secret passageways. At night my neighbor, Countess Borslova, swings from the chandeliers and howls obscenities in six languages. In the morning she locks herself in the pantry and assumes a vegetative state. Those werewolf shows on the Sci-Fi Network seemed hokey until the Wolf Man swung by on his moped to pick up the mail. Dear Rene: The mosquitoes here are terrible. I already have two bites on the neck, very close together, one right beside the other. Ghost drool. Check. Goat blood. Check. Enough to give Boris Karloff the heebie jeebies— Nosferatu ghosting himself through walls, lesser spooks haunting the garbage disposal. Don't even think about rummaging through the basement for Christmas bobbles. A crippled wind dragging itself across the front lawn. Night scraping its fingernails on the moon's chalkboard. The Black Sea vomiting itself onto the nearby shore.
