Northern Lights Hospice

My name—at least the one used by the few who still speak to me—is Fred.

But my true name is Nikos.

I am, by my best estimate, roughly 2,500 years old.

I won’t subject you to an exhaustive chronicle of my existence. Immortality, as people imagine it, is far less glamorous when lived in real time. Suffice to say my story contains what you would expect: violence and beauty in equal measure, indulgence and restraint, long stretches of wandering, and brief, piercing intervals of love. I’ve stood in the courts of kings, in the mud of battlefields, in monasteries and brothels and places long since swallowed by sand. I’ve read works the world has forgotten, spoken languages no tongue has formed in centuries.

I am not the smartest creature alive, but I am—by sheer duration—the most learned. Time is a brutal tutor but an extraordinary one.

Vampires have always lived on the margins, and for good reason. When we have stepped into the light—figuratively or literally—we have been destroyed. When I arrived in America in the 1800s, the few of my kind here kept to the quiet corners: the rural Midwest, remote logging towns, the darker fringes of Portland, even Sussex County, New Jersey.

Governments know we exist. All of them.

There are entire departments devoted to us—classification, monitoring, containment.

In the United States, the FBI and CIA maintain silent protocols very few humans will ever read. But perhaps someday, after I’m gone, they will release the Vampire Files.

The rules they enforce are simple now:

Do not kill.

Do not reveal yourself.

Do not leave the shadows.

Break any of these, and your death is immediate.

Most vampires are on a global secret registry. I have avoided it—not out of fear, but prudence. I learned centuries ago that anonymity is the last true luxury of the undead.

Every vampire I’ve ever known has died tragically.

Most by their own choosing:

- Walking willingly into the sun

- Asking a trusted friend to end them

- Burning themselves to ash

- Drowning slowly at sea

A few were murdered, including my wife—a sorrow so old it has fossilized.

I will not linger on that chapter.

Despite the legends, we are not immortal.

Our bodies decay; our minds loosen like old threads. If there is a natural lifespan for a healthy vampire, perhaps 2,500 years is it. I have met none who surpassed it. Perhaps I am the longest-lived, though these distinctions lose meaning when one’s era has already faded. There is no Guinness Book for my kind; no one will ever confirm my years, nor mourn their passing. I am simply a creature whose season is ending.

As for what lies beyond this world?

I am no demon, no herald of shadows. I have endured too much human suffering—some of it by my hand, much of it far worse.

In the last hundred years, I have found myself believing—quietly, stubbornly—that I was shaped, however distantly, in the image of God. I sit in the last pew during Mass, never taking communion, never daring to touch the holy water, but praying nonetheless. The priests think I am a frail elder seeking comfort.

Perhaps I am.

I have repented as best I can, laid bare the sins time cannot wash away, and I choose to believe there is something waiting for me beyond this long night.

I haven’t killed in fifty years. These days I drink only animal blood.

Perhaps it is faith. Perhaps it is age. Perhaps I have simply lost whatever counts as a vampire’s testosterone. And thank God—there is no chemical miracle, or “blue little pill,” designed to rouse that old violence again. The appetite faded, the desire withered, and I am content to let both remain dead.

I have not spoken to another vampire in more than thirty years.

And I was ready—truly ready—to die.

…

Thirty years ago, I traveled to Utqiagvik, Alaska—a place where night lingers long enough for someone like me to disappear without fuss. I came here to end my life quietly, with dignity, in a place cold enough to numb the memory of the centuries.

Five years ago, when my body began to fail in earnest, I registered with Catholic Charities of Alaska under their “Fix-It for Seniors” program. They believed I was a frail centenarian who needed help keeping his cabin in order.

“At 101,” they said, “you’re our oldest participant.”

I corrected nothing.

(They were only off by about 2,400 years.)

The only person who truly saw me—really saw me—was my volunteer, Jonas Aniq, a gentle Inupiaq man and father of two. Jonas came each week, driving out through wind and snow to tighten a railing, patch a stair, replace a bulb.

But mostly, he came to sit with me—to pray with me, to share the quiet, to drink tea.

(Yes, believe it or not, we can drink: tea, wine, water. Human food turns to ash in our stomachs, and only blood sustains us—but chamomile? I’ve sipped that for centuries.)

We played chess at my kitchen table.

We talked about books—he loved London and Steinbeck, I favored Homer and Hesiod.

His children colored on my floor.

And somehow, in these small rituals, he became the last friendship of my life—unexpected, sincere, unburdened by the centuries that haunted me.

As my body failed, the world shrank to a single room. I became bedridden. My limbs felt carved from cooling stone. My skin thinned. My senses dulled. I felt… peaceful. Prepared.

Nurses from Northern Lights Hospice began rotating through. They assumed I was just an eccentric recluse with peculiar rules: no sunlight, no open curtains, no mirrors moved, no daytime visits. They accepted these quirks kindly.

They never suspected they were tending to something ancient.

My breathing grew shallow.

My thoughts frayed and wandered.

I saw visions—some memories, some inventions of a mind slipping between centuries. My father’s olive grove. My wife’s laughter. Men I’d killed. Gods I prayed to before Christ was born.

One evening, I overheard a nurse whisper,

“He’s very close now.”

Her voice was soft, compassionate.

And I was ready.

Or so I believed.

….

The next morning, a new nurse arrived—young, earnest, and utterly unaware of my “routine.” I was too weak to warn her.

She opened the curtains.

Sunlight poured in.

Pain—pure, primal, excruciating—shot through me.

My skin ignited. My nerves tore open.

Before consciousness could intervene, instinct seized my dying body.

I lunged.

I bit into her arm.

Fresh human blood—warm, immediate—flooded through me like a tidal wave.

My God… how I had forgotten this. How had I starved myself of what once made me whole?

It was as if every dormant nerve, every ancient thread of my being, snapped awake at once.

Strength.

Awareness.

Hunger.

She screamed and bolted for the door.

On her way out she snatched the emergency note from my fridge—Jonas’ number scrawled at the top—and shrieked into the phone, “He bit me! That monster BIT me!”

I lay quiet, trembling, horrified—and exhilarated.

……

Jonas arrived minutes later.

He always did. He had that way of appearing exactly when a man—even a dying beast like me—most needed him.

He stepped into the bedroom, saw my trembling, saw the half–healed burn of sunlight along my arm, and let out a thin whistle.

“Well, Fred…” he said, trying to lighten the air as he shrugged off his coat,

“I guess I’m your nurse until the night shift shows up.”

Despite everything—despite the blood, the pain, the panic—I smiled.

I apologized—meekly, truthfully—for what I had done.

He took my hand, squeezed it gently, and said,

“Fred, it’s okay. You’re scared. I’m here. That’s all.”

He helped steady my breathing, wiped the cold sweat from my forehead, and said softly,

“I think it’s time you received your last rites.”

I nodded.

Jonas stayed by my bedside, thumb pressed gently over my knuckles as the cabin settled into its deep winter quiet.

For the first time in weeks, my mind felt clear—shockingly clear.

No haze. No drifting memories.

Just presence. Stillness.

Whether it was the nearness of death or the Holy Spirit itself, I couldn’t say.

A soft ding-dong echoed through the cabin.

“That’ll be him,” Jonas whispered.

He rose and shuffled to the door, his boots brushing the floorboards. Cold air swept in as Monsignor Hart stepped inside—wrapped in a heavy black coat, snow clinging to his hat. He carried a small leather satchel and the solemn, steady kindness of a man who had walked many souls to the edge.

“Good evening, Jonas,” he said quietly.

“And good evening, Frederick.”

He always used my full name.

I always liked that.

Monsignor Hart set his satchel beside the bed and placed a hand over my forehead—warm, deliberate, fatherly.

“Frederick,” he murmured, “I am here to pray with you as you prepare for the Lord’s embrace.”

He began the familiar words of the Prayer of Commendation, his voice low and steady:

“Go forth, Christian soul, from this world…

in the name of God the Almighty Father who created you,

in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,

in the name of the Holy Spirit…”

His voice swelled like a distant hymn in a cathedral.

Centuries of violence and wandering suddenly felt illuminated by a single, unbearable mercy.

Monsignor Hart glanced at Jonas.

“Say it, son. He needs to hear it.”

Jonas placed his hand on my chest and leaned close.

“Fred… it’s okay to let go,” he whispered.

“It’s okay to rest now. You don’t have to fight anymore.”

A single tear slipped down the good man’s cheek.

My vision blurred.

Monsignor Hart opened his satchel, lifted the small silver flask, and gently unscrewed the cap.

“I now bless you with holy water,” he said softly.

“May God receive you in peace.”

He raised his hand.

And as the first droplets touched my skin—

my peace shattered.

Clarity ignited into fire.

Something ancient and feral inside me—older than scripture, older than mercy—roared awake.

Before thought could restrain me, I rose from the bed, reborn in strength, and lunged for the monsignor. My teeth split his throat; his artery burst beneath them. Hot blood drenched the blankets, hissing against my skin.

I drank without restraint—slurping, biting, tearing—reborn again in the oldest sacrament my kind has ever known.

Jonas screamed and bolted for the hallway, fumbling for his phone.

I chased him—faster than I had moved in centuries.

He slammed himself into the bathroom and locked the door.

I kicked it open with effortless force.

He staggered back toward the mirror. I stepped behind him—close enough to touch.

Jonas looked up… and saw nothing.

No reflection.

No trace of the man he’d shared tea with for years.

“The power of Christ compels you!” he shouted—desperation borrowing from old movies when prayer failed him.

I wished, dimly, that he had never come today.

There was no saving me. Not anymore.

He realized it too late.

I devoured him before he could press 9 on the phone.

Then the house grew still.

…..

I stood in the wreckage of my hospice room—breathing, truly—for the first time in decades.

My strength returned in rushing waves.

My limbs were steady.

My vision sharp.

My mind terrifyingly clear.

In the bathroom mirror, I combed my hair—astonished at the face staring back at me.

I did not look like death.

I looked like possibility.

Perhaps I had not been made in the image of God after all.

Perhaps I was something older.

Something the world had quietly hoped had already died out.

A phone rang.

Jonas’ phone.

A photo filled the locked screen:

his wife, their two small children—smiling brightly.

I sent it to voicemail and opened his contact list.

Tracked her location: just 3.2 miles away. I had never been to Jonas’ house.

A slow smile crept across my face.

I straightened my collar, stepped over the pastor’s body, and opened the cabin door.

The Alaskan cold cut pleasantly against my skin.

I had come here to die.

But death had changed its mind.

Perhaps I have a few centuries left in me

to begin again.