Uncle Cheroot

By Alan Jansen

Turtle Southton meets her uncle Cheroot for the first time when he visits her parents modest farm, located in the beautiful Cotswolds of England. She does not know that their visitor isnt really human, although she does suspect that there is something worryingly strange about him.

Uncle Cheroot, it seems, is in love with Turtles mother, Julia, and is determined to make her like him through a mysterious blood exchange ritual. He returns to the farm over a period of several years, often involved in adventures with the locals. When Cheroot finally realizes that he will never change Julia, he leaves, and the family soon learns of his death in a plane crash. Shortly thereafter, however, Turtle finds her uncles diary and discovers the truth about him: he has lived for centuries as a hybrid vampire and a powerful Druid warlock. Whats more, Turtle realizes that she too has the giftor curseof longevity through an unplanned exchange of blood with her uncle. This revelation sets her on a path that will change her existence forever.

In this novel, a young woman inadvertently inherits the gift of longevity from her uncle, a hybrid vampire and Druid mystic who has long been in love with her mother.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532019890

Alan Jansen

Alan Jansen is a Swedish author writing in the English language. He gave up a promising career in telecommunications to turn to full-time writing. Alan lives near Lake Malar in Stockholm. He enjoys travel, the Scandinavian solstice, and animals. He is also the author of One Flew over the Banyan Tree.

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Copyright © 2017 Alan Jansen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1988-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1989-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017911821

iUniverse rev. date: 08/11/2017

To my sisters, Loretta and Desiree.

INTRODUCTION

History tells us a great many things about longevity. Many have desired it, from great kings like Gilgamesh to us ordinary mortals. The concept of longevity was established before our current lifespans, where we now live to be around eighty or a bit more (with some luck!), or so the Bible tells us. God intended humans to live forever in happiness, provided Adam and Eve didn’t eat of the fruit of temptation. The rest we all know. … The early patriarchs often lived to be nearly a thousand years old, and even sired children when they were hundreds of years old! For instance, it is recorded in the Bible that Methuselah lived for 969 years; Adam, 930; Seth, 912; Cain, 912; and so forth. Since the passing of the long-living patriarchs, there has been a steady decline in our mortality rate, beginning roughly after the Great Flood. We still live fairly long I suppose (if one considers eighty-odd years to be a fairly long time), but why don’t we live as long as our forebears? Did the Great Flood or some other climate-related change bring about our relatively shorter lifespans? Of course we still hear of our fellow humans living to be one hundred years old or more, but these instances are uncommon, often attracting the media to write about the old-timers at their passing or whenever they reach another birthday.

Religious history, including the Testaments, tells us about resurrection. Jesus was placed in a tomb for three days, yet he came back in his human form to visit and stay with his disciples for a while. Even the martyred St Peter came back from the dead and appeared to his followers. Jesus resurrected the widow’s son at Nain, and then Jairus’s daughter, and then Lazarus. Apparently it was not only Jesus as the Son of God who could raise people from the dead, because Peter raised a female disciple named Tabitha from the dead, and Paul raised Eutychus from the dead. So death, it seems, can be conquered. We can say that Jesus as the Son of God had infinite power, but Peter and Paul were human in nature, or so the Testaments tell us. So what, then, is the secret to conquering death? Of course, a secular person would say that the aforesaid examples of coming back to life after the body and its cells are physically dead are just religious claims and cannot be proved, but then what if the stories are really true?

Moving on and not dwelling on religion, I would like to dwell on superstition, especially in relation to the Gothic world and the many legends and claims therein where longevity is also apparent. Vampires, who are physically dead humans, are somehow animated and live on as ‘beings’ that are able to live on forever, feeding on human, and sometimes even animal, blood. If not hunted down and if left alone, vampires can live on as long as they like, or so we are told. Vampires are known by many names, including Shtriga in Albania, Vrykolakas in Greece, and Strigoi in Romania, to mention a few. However, it is Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the absolute quintessential vampire novel that has, since its publication, provided the backbone for the modern vampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the twenty-first century, through books, long films, and TV miniseries films. Furthermore, modern films depict the vampire in yet another light. The ‘new’ vampire, it seems, can now walk in the daylight with the aid of special eyeglasses. Some films even show modern-day vampires eating and drinking human food – a taboo in the earlier version of things.

The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and ancient Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered forerunners to modern-day vampires. Vampires, though, are not totally immortal, or so it seems. Various folklore describe different execution methods for vampires, like a stake through the heart and burning to ashes in fire, while decapitation was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas.

There is, however, no real explanation or theory of how and why the vampire species (if species indeed they are) was first created. There are many theories in folklore and modern-day novels, but the creation of the original vampire is unknown. A vampire can create another vampire through a blood ritual or blood exchange, it is said, but then who created the first vampire? And to what purpose?

As far as human and animal blood drinking is concerned, almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant connection leaning towards religion, culture, or folklore. … Druids of England and Europe, often mentioned in Uncle Cheroot, are no exception. As far as the creature Drakenwund (as featured in Uncle Cheroot) is concerned, he is credited with having metamorphosed from a rogue Druid into the being he became, accidentally or by choice. Metamorphism is not unknown on this planet of ours. In the insect world, butterflies, for instance, are holometabolous, or in other words they experience a complete change in body form. Also, frogs, toads, and newts all hatch from eggs as larvae with external gills, although some time passes before the amphibians interact with the world outside by way of pulmonary respiration. Even some fish, both bony fish (Osteichthyes) and jawless fish (Agnatha), undergo metamorphosis. Perhaps some humans have had in the past (or even today) the knowledge of how to metamorphose into something else? Why not Druids? Druids are one of history’s most mysterious organizations, sects, or cults, or whatever you may choose to call them. The legend of Merlin and King Arthur is studded with powerful magicians who could change shape to suit their needs. Merlin, it is said, had the power to shape-shift (metamorphose) and may be still living, or trapped in a magic tomb or cave conceived by Niviane, with whom Merlin fell in love and to whom he taught his magic. Niviane, it seems, didn’t love Merlin as he loved her, and probably feared him a great deal to cause his incarceration …

Then there are legendary metamorphisms, like the ever popular notion of werewolves, or lycanthropes. Werewolves are supposed to be humans with the ability to shape-shift into a wolf or a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature. As is the case with vampires, no proof of the existence of werewolves has been found, although films about their existence and adventures are made regularly, and novels pertaining to them are written galore.

There are many strange and unexplained phenomena in this world we live in. The existence of fairies, elves, warlocks, witches, angels, and demons, to name a few, cannot be discarded or laughed away. Today we even have sightings of mysterious beings or aliens that have spiralled ever since the Roswell incident decades ago. Who are these ‘visitors’? Are they from another solar system or another universe? We are now told that black holes in deep space can create, and do create, multiple universes through the sheer might of gravity’s suction and release. Sucked-up matter can emerge through wormholes billions and trillions of kilometres away to form new ‘Big Bangs’. There could also be another theory about these alien sightings. Perhaps these so-called aliens are actual humans from the future who have mastered time travel and have come back to study us for some reason or another. Natural selection and evolution will change the human shape considerably in the future to give these time travellers the kind of shape most close-encounter sightseers have experienced (thin hairless bodies, big heads, and large eyes).

With all this in mind, dear reader, do not take the events as related in Uncle Cheroot lightly. The narrator of this tale swears it is all true, and I for one have no doubt she is telling the truth. The next time you pass a stranger on the sidewalk, look behind you twice and ponder over that person you just passed by. Don’t smirk. You may be surprised someday …

CONTENTS

Chapter 1:    Alpha – Uncle Cheroot Arrives

Chapter 2:    The Christmas Hamper Adventure

Chapter 3:    Ye Olde Antiques

Chapter 4:    A Touch of Casanova and a Whiff of Machiavelli

Chapter 5:    The Church Ghost

Chapter 6:    Uncle Cheroot’s Last Visit

Chapter 7:    The Song of Akawander

Chapter 8:    Bittersweet Rest

Chapter 9:    Farewell, Sweet Queen

Chapter 10:    Ωmega

Chapter 1

Alpha – Uncle Cheroot Arrives

      Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!

      One thing is certain – This Life flies;

      One thing is certain and that the rest is lies

      The flower that once has blown forever dies.

Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat

Khayyam’s verse always struck me of the frailty of human life and the certainty that time flies while the body dies. It appeals also because this universal truth applies to all humanity, but not to me and perhaps a handful of others. … Human beings start their dying cycle the moment they are born, celebrating birthdays, which I’ve always thought kind of silly. Why should humans celebrate the start of their inevitable death, and then year after year their approaching death? I have travelled around the sun seventy-three times, yet my own flower, or rather my physical body, doesn’t wither. Perhaps it can never truly die …

Of my known kin, my younger brother is still alive, an elderly man living peacefully with his wife, children, and grandchildren on our old farm in the Cotswolds. Although I am seventy-three, nearly all men (even women sometimes) I meet turn around to give me looks of longing, lust, and deep admiration. Strange, eh? Yes, you might well say that! But you see, dear reader, I look like a woman no older than twenty-one, tall and stately, with a firm bosom, iridescent blue eyes, and a very attractive body to match. My pale golden hair falls in naturally curling tresses long down to my waist, for I never tie it up in a bun or other hairstyle. I’ve gradually through the years grown to dislike and abstain from most human food – meat especially – eating mostly vegetarian meals that haven’t been cooked in milk, and freshly baked bread, which I adore. A boiled sweet or two and some types of confection that have no milk component (I struggle with dairy products) I like, and would indulge myself in now and then. I love champagne and drink it in large quantities, as I do red wine – rarely drinking water unless it’s icy cold. Sickness does not touch me, nor can accidents harm me. A wound on my body (even bullet wounds – I was once shot by a jealous lover) heals within minutes, sometimes seconds, depending on how deep the wound runs into my flesh. I am also able to ‘read’ people to instantly judge if they are good or evil, or hovering in a zone between – a gift that is very useful at times. Despite my advanced age, I can still run like the wind, should I desire it, and can knock out any man or woman in physical combat. As a matter of fact, I can take on several antagonists at the same time and emerge the victor. I don’t fully know the cause of my seemingly immortal condition. Many theories for it exist, but I adhere to Occam’s razor, believing in the simplest theory – in this case, that I have been given this gift or curse, or whatever you might call it, by another like me. I wasn’t born the being I have become, and I do believe, and know for a fact, that the progenitor of my metamorphosis is the same person you will discover after reading this strange narrative. Oh yes, one last thing … I drink blood to supplement my very sparse consumption of human food. Whose blood and how I drink, I will leave to come to your own conclusions once you have read this strange tale …

I faked my death many years ago, as I found it utterly futile to continue concealing my eternal youth from family and friends any longer. It wasn’t an impulsive or premeditated act, but one that was forced upon me. I covered my tracks so well that I would probably put the best escapologist to shame. Since then, I have lived with a fallacious identity I created, buying the help, and with it the silence, of a very erudite but also very corrupt lawyer. I am a recluse – an eremite of sorts – spending a month or two at a time at the houses and on the properties I own in the United Kingdom and France. I am wealthy beyond dreams – as wealthy as the wealthiest oligarchs in the aforesaid countries, perhaps even beyond.

Throughout this tale, which is based on two diaries kept by my unique and mysterious uncle Cheroot, I must state that nearly all his entries are presented as they were originally written, in a sort of past tense and not as if he made regular daily entries in his diary. He always had a start date for each adventure although never a finish date, or dates in between. Why he did this I don’t know, but then Uncle seldom did things the conventional way. I have also at times sort of edited Uncle’s diary entries. Except for our first names as entered in Uncle’s diaries, I haven’t changed his words at all. However, at times I have put serial entries together to try to give a compressed account of the particular incident he was recording so as to better facilitate reading. I have given my surname as Southton in this book, which is my family’s true surname. Southton is a fairly common name in the United Kingdom, and I feel safe in using it. Besides, I am quite attached to it. My father’s first name wasn’t Jim, nor was my mother’s Julia, as I have stated in this published work, but something else. My own name, ‘Turtle’, is a sobriquet Mother made up when I was a baby and which stuck thereafter. All of the other characters in this book, including my brother and his wife, also have aliases. In contrast, my uncle’s surname, Voldemort, was the actual name he gave us, and I later on was able to confirm this as true – another story altogether …

At the end of my strange narrative, and despite the false first names, quite a few people will know my true identity – whose daughter I am – but a fat lot of good it will do them! There are enough inadvertent clues purporting to my true identity to make even a modest researcher able to discern who I am. If someone does, or rather when someone does, it wouldn’t bother me an iota. I’m past caring. In any event, if anybody does bother to discover my true identity, I doubt that such a person would ever believe what I’ve written. It all sounds unbelievable even to me! I know Ben, my younger brother, would believe, for he knows I never lie, but then who would believe Ben? I know I am eternal as long as this planet of ours with its molten core and magnetic field keeps going around the sun in its present orbit. Is eternity a curse or a blessing? I don’t know. … I suppose it’s too early to tell. Ask me again in another hundred years, but then again, dear reader, I doubt you will be around in another hundred years!

There is only one way I can die, and that is by my own hand. I must burn to a cinder – ashes – and I know how to do it should the time and the need arise. The events in this ‘book’ of mine beggar all description, but it’s the whole truth, related as best as I can. I considered many ways to put this narrative into print – paraphrasing as much as possible for a reader – but I ultimately determined that the only way I could tell the story was to mix the contents of the two diaries that came into my possession and my own remarkable experiences and observations.

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The catalyst that sparked the wonderfully weird and supernatural events I relate in this book started many years ago in 1954, when as a young child of just twelve, my relative Uncle Cheroot came to visit us. I was living with my parents, my younger brother, Ben, and my dog Inky (a black Labrador with an unusually shaggy coat of fur that Mom had given me as a pup when I was just two years old) on our picturesque farm in the beautiful Cotswolds in England. We had other pets too, cats, several of which thrived and multiplied, living mostly in the comfortable hay barn, preferring it to the confines of the house. They were farm cats, healthy and sleek, living mostly off field mice and small birds, but also off the cat food we put out for them daily. I must mention our amazing turkey cock Gobble here, too, although strictly speaking he wasn’t a pet. Pop had bought him many years ago, and he proved to be an excellent breeder, siring many turkey broods. As my narrative continues, you will know why I make a special mention of Gobble here, but for the moment I would just like to say he was almost human and a true enigma.

My brother and I called our parents Mom and Pop – purely by accident, and without any American overtures or influence coming to the fore as some readers might imagine. As a little girl of just one and something, I couldn’t pronounce what seemed to me to be a complicated-sounding ‘Mummy’ that my mother encouraged me to call her, so I settled for the easier-sounding ‘Mom’, which my very young tongue found much easier to speak. As for Father, I really don’t know why I started to call him Pop, but I suspect Mother had made me do so to complement her ‘Mom’. Ben took after me, and in time ‘Mom’ and ‘Pop’ became our permanent way of addressing our parents.

Our medium-sized farm in the Cotswolds was close to Rothwell, the nearest town (some would call it a city), situated ten miles away on the banks of the river Windrush. Thrushwood was the name of the village closest to our property. We considered ourselves part and parcel of the village community. Although Thrushwood was considered an independent ‘village’ by all and sundry, we were officially (i.e. politically) a part of the Parish Council of Rothwell.

I spent my childhood and early teens on the farm, taking a break later on to live in lodgings in Oxford, where I had been accepted into a great college. After securing a first class in the arts, I found a decent job in London and, together with an inheritance and some minor help from Mom, bought a small flat on Half-Moon Street in Central London. However, I always returned to the farm on weekends and holidays, including university term holidays, which I spent entirely on the farm, longing for Mom, Pop, Ben, and my dear dog Inky. Mom was on the cusp of being famous when I got my first (and only) job in London and had already bought a large residence close to my own at Half-Moon Street, moving in after I had received my degree. I shall not dwell on these periods of my life in detail here, but I shall do so as we march along through this tale and its strange revelations …

We lived off the emoluments our farm produce offered. Our house was a solid structure built of yellow and honey-coloured Jurassic Cotswold limestone. It was quite large, really, several hundred years old, and constantly renovated to its present size and shape. Although sheep farming was quite dominant in most of the Cotswold farms, we didn’t have much grazing ground, which made sheep farming impossible for Pop. Instead, we had huge fruit orchards, both apple and pears, and even other fruit, besides keeping pigs, turkeys, and a few cows. We weren’t rich in any way, but Pop made a tidy sum of money selling fresh pork, cured bacon, milk, eggs, vegetables, and fruit, while Mom used up all the excess plums, apples, and oranges from our orchard to make jams and jellies – even excellent cider – which we sold both at the farm and at the weekly village bazaar. In later years, Mom became super-wealthy in her own right after having made considerable inroads in the field of still-life painting – fruit for the most – although she also did wonderful landscapes, orchards in bloom being her favourite subject. Mom eventually became the country’s foremost and most reputed painter of still lifes and landscapes – a household name and an icon of her craft.

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I remember Uncle’s first visit as though it were just yesterday. Uncle had visited us earlier, as I learnt from Mom. His penultimate visit was when I was just a two-year-old, so this was my first ever ‘adult’ experience of getting to know Uncle and his ways. Uncle stayed with us almost the whole year on this first visit that I experienced, going away only in late autumn. I recollect it distinctively for several reasons, some of them unexplainable – like something taken out of the pages of the occult story novels I loved to read. Despite my young years, I was an avid reader, devouring any written material that came my way, sometimes even poring over the stuffy Times newspaper at our village community library, which nobody except the vicar, the postmaster, and two or three other serious souls read.

I had always wanted to put down in pen my own, or rather our combined, family adventures that I and my relatives experienced together with Uncle Cheroot. Uncle was Mom’s cousin – anyway, that’s what Mom always purported and Uncle insisted upon – but what really stuck out amongst other claims and downright strange qualities the man made and possessed was the fact that he never seemed to age. Of course, I knew him for barely a dozen years, give or take, but Mom had a photograph of Uncle taken sometime in the early fifties placed on her dresser, and Uncle looked exactly the same as that photograph all the time I knew him. I often joked about it with him, especially in my early teens, suggesting, vis-à-vis Dorian Gray, that he kept a portrait of himself locked away in some old attic – the portrait ageing while he didn’t. Of course, Uncle just laughed it all away as good joke, and nothing more, in his imitable jovial manner, although there was a curious, even baffled, look in his eyes despite his laughter.

Uncle’s nous on any matter under the sun was gargantuan, although to his credit he never tried to outshine anyone in a discussion, always revealing what he knew in a silky sort of fashion – almost humbly sometimes. Another matter that I wondered over was Uncle’s name. I mean, who the devil has a name like Cheroot? I knew even at twelve that Cheroot was a cigar of sorts, but why was Uncle named after a cigar? I didn’t want to seem rude and ask Uncle directly about his strange name, but I did ask Mom, who didn’t have an answer either.

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I did not fall asleep immediately that first night Uncle visited. It was past midnight. Pop and Ben had long since retired for the night, falling sound asleep as only they could. From my bedroom upstairs, I heard sounds of laughter coming from Mom’s room further down the landing. Mom and Pop didn’t share a bedroom and hadn’t done so for nearly a decade, Pop sleeping in a small room downstairs, quite close to the front entrance. The laughter was intermittent, mixed with other strange sounds I had hitherto never heard in my young life. Tiptoeing down the landing, I arrived at Mom’s room. Mom hadn’t closed the door entirely, so it stood ajar, giving me a clear view of the double bed and the pair wriggling and thrashing on it. I was just twelve at that time and didn’t know much about sex, but it was clear to me that Uncle Cheroot and Mom were performing coitus and having a rollicking time at it. I gazed inert, fascinated by the sight of the two bodies locked together in alternating rhythmic and arrhythmic movement, Mom all the while squealing and giggling in a most wanton manner. Suddenly, sensing my presence in the doorway, Uncle turned his head from over Mom’s shoulder and looked my way. He didn’t seem embarrassed or overwrought by my presence, but just looked at me in a calm way and smiled that ambivalent smile he always put on whenever addressing either Ben or me. I say ambivalent because that familiar smile of his was so strange – infusing a sense of benevolence, yet remaining oddly forbidding in some way. I smiled back, trying my best to keep an otherwise straight face. My child’s innocence notwithstanding, I still seemed to know that what they were doing was natural and beyond reproach. Uncle was only giving Mom something