Keith Richards,
Vampire Hunter

"Roite, 'ere's the rub, mate. Meck wuz a fookin' pussey, a'roite? An Ronny...? 'E can go 'ump a fookin' Mad Cow for all I care. Neever one uv 'em was any bloody good in a foight."

Words so simple, yet spoken in a way that a man can't help but find profound and stirring. We were in a small outdoor cafe in the heart of London on a hazy August afternoon. It was a hidden place, set back from the street and surrounded by hedges and tall gray stonework carved in an elaborate gothic style, the kind of place few knew existed and even fewer were allowed admittance to through the massive, forbidding wrought iron gates. The waiter looked like he had somehow lost his way from one the stories Edgar Allen Poe never published because it was "just way too creepy" and deftly managed to ignore all requests with an air of dignified disdain. At a nearby table, a haggard looking Dennis Hopper was arguing viciously with a wizened old Mandarin, his long, exquisitely pointed moustaches framing a stolid, mocking smile. In a corner in the rear, Stanley Kubrick was passed out in a large bowl of Gazpacho Soup, gurgling to himself. The patrons here minded their own business or paid for it with their lives.

"Ah, all the Stones were bloody useless, mate. Oy've told ya thes loike a thousand toimes. Nah, if ye're goin' into a rumble, et's Eggy Pop you want on yer soide, 'ands down. Oy've watched Eggy take the 'ead offa Bull Bloodsucker wif a one 'anded swoipe of thet nasty curved machete he totes about, real clean loike. Fookin' poetry, tha' es."

The speaker was Keith Richards, as the reader may have surmised, and he sat before me in the cafe relaxed, half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s left to chill in a bucket of ice, chain smoking unfiltered Camels, one wiry black booted leg swung atop the table as he leaned back and spoke to me, his voice gravelly, his face creased and lined and weathered, his eyes staring into the distance at the sort of ghosts none of us will ever be able to truly comprehend. He had agreed to meet me here at the request of a mutual friend, a Zen Black Priest from Manchester named Morgoth Shanks, who had abandoned the dark arts to join the desperate, ongoing war against the fiendish hell-spawn that threatened to overrun England. It was a war that Richards was all too familiar with, one he had secretly fought since 1965, one that had left him grizzled, scarred and embittered. His eyes had become hollow, his face gaunt, his appearance that of a grim old soldier, lost and weary.

This was the story, though, that I wanted to tell, the story of Keith Richards that the public never knew, never wanted to know. They bought the cover story that he was on heroin because it fit with the image of debauchery that a rock and roll star should have, they took his slurred speech as an eccentric quirky affectation. They accepted all of it, never once realizing the trauma and angst he was really enduring as a Night Warrior of the Midnight Sword, forever sworn to defend the earth against the soulless creatures of the night, the Vampires of the Night Tribes.

I convinced Keith to take me on a raid with him, let me experience first hand the true righteousness of his life’s work alongside him, as a friend, an ally. Only this way, I knew, could the tale be properly told. He reluctantly agreed and we spent the rest of the afternoon indulging in equal parts of Scotch Whiskey and Methadrine and buying various sorts of engraved daggers and throwing stars from an Occult Weapons Dealer who looked suspiciously like Ed Asner. I asked no questions but felt reassured by the weight of the ornate wooden stake I now carried at my belt, its carved pommel shaped like a dragon. Keith had invested in some rune covered throwing stars and knives and a razor sharp Katana rumored to have been forged the master smith Miyamoto Musashi in 16th century Kyoto. Dressed in black denim studded with mystical symbols formed in chrome, we headed out into the twilight, two bent, ragged wraiths begging for doom.

We met up with Iggy Pop outside a pub in Newcastle called The Moldy Widget, where he nervously stepped out of the shadows, a taut bundle of twitching paranoia. His face was a grim mask of tension and beneath his dark, beaten trench coat I could see he carried a heavy, spiked mace and a matching pair of long, thin daggers inscribed with crucifixes. We passed a fifth of Old Grandad between us and discussed our target, an ancient estate in the north once called Squirrellbane Manor, but now, according to Keith's source, a stronghold for the Night Tribes.

We approached it warily, our stealth aided by an Aura of Secrecy woven about us through a spell Keith claimed to have discovered hidden on the back of a packet of airline peanuts. It was a monstrous place, huge and dark, a manse so old and murky it reeked of evil, like an incontinent garbage collector after too much egg salad. We vaulted the walls and stalked through the grounds, Keith grunting and cursing, Iggy often dropping to the ground and rolling at inappropriate intervals. As we neared the house proper, I could hear a low bass drone, an ominous moaning that made my spine quiver.

When we reached a large stained glass window at ground level Keith helted us, glanced around furtively, grimaced like a psychopath and said, " Roight, thes 'es et, lads. The proime Blood Coven o' tha Great Satanspawn of the Red 'ell, tha fiercest pack a vile bloodsuckers England 'as ever seen, and ets our lot ta stroike a blow tanoight. 'It 'em 'ard an fast, mates, through the 'eart an 'ead! Aieeeeeeee!!!"

Screaming, we simultaneously crashed through the window into the Den of Evil and attacked. Iggy was a mad whirlwind of fiendish energy, howling the words to "Lust for Life" as he dove thrashing into a table where four of the dark ones were sitting, seemingly playing some sort of Hades-born board game involving hellish, brightly colored fake money and diabolical little pewter figurines shaped like shoes and cars. Kieth fell on them like a shrill, fiery eagle, descending on his prey where they sat near a TV, his roar of rage drowning out the sounds of the insidious cooking program they were watching. I launched myself at the nearest threat, a foul, shrivelled beast who savagely tried to fend me off by beating me mercilessly with what appeared to be a copy of Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. The room was a cacophony of high-pitched screeching, wild smashing and flailing, the fevered sounds of a true battle between Good and Evil.

Suddenly, I heard panicked shouts. "'Old up, mates! Fook!! Bleedin' 'old up!!!!" Keith looked at me with wild eyes, uncertain, desperate. He was bleeding from the forehead. He was waving frantically and yelling, "We've been 'ad, lads!!!!!! Retreat! Retreat!" We quickly backed away, stopping only to drag Iggy away from his quarry, a particularly gnarled old woman who had him pinned beneath her walker and was beating him in the face with a bedpan. Bruised and harried, we scrambled out through the shattered window and were gone, pausing only to glance at the engraved sign outside the Manor's gates that seemed to read, Happyglade Rest Home, and we fled into the night.

As I said, it was a story that needed to be told. Keith did not consider it to be a defeat. "Ets always tha way of tha Great Beast ta use deception and misdirection, lad." he told me afterwards, "Our fookin' cause was just, but the bleedin' buggers wuz one step ahead of us again." Then he sang softly, "Pleased to meet you, won't you guess my name..."

It was the last time we spoke. I know that he fights on, however, a ceaseless war in the shadowy places of the world, ever raging in darkness to protect us all from the Terrors that Walk in the Dark. Rock and Roll will never die, my friend.

Ken Socrates, London, 1981

Post Script: It remains unclear as to whether or not this incident had any bearing on Iggy Pop's subsequent resignation from the Midnight Sword and the immediate renewal of his heroin habit.