Damn straight.
* * *
“GOOD EVENING, it’s Friday night which means it’s time once again for The Midnight Hour, the show that isn’t afraid of the dark or the creatures who live there. I’m your ever-eager host, Kitty Norville, and I hope you’re ready for another illuminating evening of supernatural shenanigans.”
Sitting at my table in the studio, in front of the microphone, headphones on, just a few lights glowing in the darkened space, I could imagine myself in the cockpit of an airplane or at the controls of a spaceship, commanding great power. Through the glass, I watched Matt, my sound engineer, at his board. Above the door, the on-air sign glowed red. Epic.
“I’ve been thinking a lot lately about history and what to do with it. Vampires and werewolves and the like have only been public for a few years. Some of us are milking that publicity for all it’s worth, I’m not ashamed to say. But we’ve been around for a lot longer than that. We must have been. What impact have vampires, werewolves, and magicians had on history? Were any historical figures—let’s say General William Sherman, just as an example—supernatural creatures themselves? Those histories have been deeply buried, either because people didn’t believe or because the stories were written off as folklore and fantasy. Let me tell you, when you start digging there are a lot of stories out there. What I’m looking for now isn’t stories, but proof. That’s where things get tricky, because traditionally, the supernatural doesn’t leave a whole lot of proof lying around.
“That’s my question for you tonight: what kind of proof should I be looking for, and what kind of proof would you need to be convinced that a beloved historical figure had a toe dipped in the supernatural world?”
Shows like this, where I threw open the line for calls right from the start in a freeform brainstorm, were often a crapshoot. I could get a lot of thoughtful discussion and gain some new insight. Or I’d end up yelling at people. NPR to Jerry Springer, my show ran the whole spectrum. Brace for impact …
“For my first call tonight I have Dave from Rochester. Hello, Dave.”
“Hi, Kitty, thanks for taking my call, it’s so great to get through.” He sounded suitably enthusiastic—a good opener.
“Thanks for being persistent. What have you got for me?”
“Well. It seems to me you’re just assuming that supernatural beings have been around for a long time. This stuff has only been making news for a few years now, and maybe that’s because it hasn’t been around that long. What if vampires and werewolves are actually the result of some government experiment that got loose and is totally out of control?”
“I can assure you that I’m not the result of some government experiment,” I said flatly.
“Well, no, not directly, but maybe it’s some virus that escaped and spread, and that’s where vampires and werewolves came from. That’s why we don’t have any historical evidence.”
“On the other hand we have five thousand years of folklore suggesting that these beings have been around for a long time. What about that?”
“Planted. It’s all a hoax.”
I blinked at the microphone. That was bold, even for this show. “You’re saying The Epic of Gilgamesh is a hoax? That the story of King Lycaon isn’t really an ancient Greek myth?”
“That’s right. It’s all been made up in order to convince people that supernatural beings have been around for thousands of years when they’ve really only been around since World War II.”
“World War II?” I said. “Like some supernatural Manhattan Project?”
“Yes, exactly! In fact—”
Oh, yes, please say it, sink my show to this level in the first ten minutes …
“—it was the Nazis,” Dave from Rochester said.
I clicked the line to a different call. “And that’s enough of that. Moving on now, next call please. Hello, you’re on the air.”
“Hi, Kitty, I’m a big fan of the show,” said a female voice, cheerful and outgoing. Suze from L.A. “I just wanted to say, isn’t most of history based on eyewitness accounts? People reporting what they saw? We should have evidence somewhere of people talking about this. But I’m not sure how you’d go about proving something that no one ever talks about.”
I was right on the edge of whipping out that FWP transcript—a report that had lain buried and forgotten because no one believed it. I wanted my proof before I brought it into the light.
Instead I said, “Or maybe people have been talking about it, writing about it, whatever, but those accounts were buried because no one believed them. Which leads me to a big question: How trustworthy are eyewitness testimonies? We depend on them for historical accounts,
memoirs, battlefield reports, so of course this is going to be high on the list. But is one eyewitness’s story enough? How about two, for corroboration?”
“The more the better, I guess,” she said. “But you still have the problem of separating truth from fiction.”
“Exactly. Part of the reason I’m always trying to get vampires on the show is I figure they’ve got to be some of the best eyewitnesses out there. They’ve been around for decades, for centuries. Not only have they seen a lot, they often seem to be in the front row, watching events play out. But I gotta tell you, they don’t seem particularly interested in sharing what they’ve learned. I think they really like keeping secrets from the rest of us. That’s why we haven’t had any vampire celebrity tell-all books yet. Oh, and if there are any vampires out there writing a celebrity tell-all book, please let me know. Thanks for your call, Suze.”
Matt flagged a call on the monitor—from a vampire. Ooh, was I going to have my wish granted? I liked nothing better than to feature an exclusive. What were the odds?
“Hello, you’re on the air.”