doesn't mean Paradise or an Inferno. It doesn't mean justice or recognition. It doesn't mean ecstasy or unending pain. As for the vampires, they were a flashy miracle, but consider how relentlessly materialistic and how very small that miracle is.
Picture the night when one of us is captured and carefully fastened to the table in the laboratory, housed perhaps in a tank of aerospace plastic, safe from the sun, day and night beneath a flickering gush of fluorescent light. There he would lie, this helpless specimen of the Nosferatu, bleeding into syringes and test tubes, as doctors gave to our longevity, our changelessness, our connection to some binding and ageless spirit—a long Latin scientific name. Amel, that ancient spirit said by the eldest of us to organize our bodies and connect them—it would one day be classified as some force quite similar to that which organizes the tiny ant in its vast and intricate colony, or the marvelous bees in their exquisite and impossibly sophisticated hive.
If I died, there might be nothing. If I died, there might be lingering. If I died, I might never even know what became of my soul. The lights around me—the warmth of which the child phantom had spoken so tauntingly—the warmth would simply go away.
I bowed my head. I pressed my left fingers hard to my temples, my right arm tightening against Merrick who seemed so precious, so frail.
My mind shot back to the dark spell and the luminous child phantom in the middle of it. It shot back to the moment when her arm was lifted, when Merrick cried out and was thrown back. It shot back to the child's wonderfully realized eyes and lips, and the low musical voice issuing from her. It shot back to the seeming validity of the vision itself. Of course, it
How much did I myself project upon the seeming void my own late and grossly lamented conscience, straining again and again to voice love for the maker of the wind, the tides, the moon, the stars?
I could not end my own earthly existence. I was as fearful as any mortal that I might be resigning forever the only magical experience that I'd been privileged to know. And that Louis might perish seemed a simple horror, rather like seeing an exotic and poisonous flower, fallen from its secretive jungle perch and crushed underfoot. Did I fear for him? I wasn't certain. I loved him, I wanted him with us now in this room. I did. But I wasn't certain that I had the moral stamina to coax him to remain in this world another twenty-four hours. I wasn't certain of anything at all. I wanted him for my companion, mirror of my emotions, witness of my aesthetic progress, yes, all those things. I wanted him to be quiet and gentle Louis, that I knew. And if he did not choose to go on with us, if he did in fact take his own life by walking into the sunlight, then it would be all the harder for me to continue, even with my fear. Merrick had begun to shake all over. Her tears were not stopping. I gave in to my desire to kiss her, to breathe in the fragrance of her warm flesh.
'There, there, my darling,' I whispered.
The handkerchief clutched in her right hand was small and wet.
I lifted her as I stood up. I pulled down the heavy white chenille spread and laid her on the clean sheets. Never mind her soiled dress. She was cold and frightened. Her hair was tangled beneath her. I lifted her head and brought her hair up and over the linen. I saw her sink into the down pillows, and I kissed her eyelids to bid them to close.
'Rest now, precious darling,' I said. 'You only did what he asked.'
'Don't leave me just now,' she said in a raw voice, 'except if you think you can find him. If you know where he is, then find him. Otherwise stay here with me, just for this little while.'
I went down the hall in search of a bathroom and found it to the very rear of the house, a spacious and somewhat lavish arrangement with a little coal fireplace as well as a great claw-foot tub. There was the usual pile of clean white terry cloth towels one expects amid such luxury. I moistened the end of one of these and brought it back to the front room. Merrick was on her side, knees curled up, her hands clasped together. I could hear a low whispering coming from her lips.
'Here, let me wipe your face,' I said. I did it without any further concessions, and then I wiped the caked blood from her inner arm. The scratches went clear from her palm to the inside of her elbow. But they were very shallow. One began to bleed a little as I cleaned it, but I pressed on it for a moment and the blood ceased to flow. I found the dry clean end of the towel, and patted Merrick's face with it, and then the wounds, which were now completely clean and healed.
'I can't remain here like this,' Merrick said. Her head went from side to side. 'I have to get the bones from the rear yard. It was a terrible thing to overturn the altars.'
'Be quiet now,' I said. 'I'll bring them in.'
It filled me with revulsion to do this. But I was as good as my word.
I went back to the scene of the crime. The dark rear yard seemed uncommonly still. The dead candles before the saints seemed negligent and evidence of grave sins.
Out of the detritus fallen from the iron tables, I picked up the skull of Honey in the Sunshine. I felt a sudden chill run through my hands, but I put it off to my imagination. I gathered up the rib bone, and I saw again that both of these bore all kinds of deeply incised writing. I refused to read the writing. I brought them back with me into the house and into the front room.
'Put them on the altar,' she said. She sat up, pushing the heavy covers off her. I saw that she had taken off her bloodsoaked dress of white silk, and that it lay in a heap on the floor. She wore only her silk petticoat, and I could see her large pink nipples through it. There was blood on the petticoat too. Her shoulders were very straight and her breasts high set, and her arms were just rounded enough to be delicious to my sight.
I went to pick up the dress. I wanted to clean her up completely. I wanted her to be all right.
'It's monstrously unfair that you're so frightened,' I said.
'No, leave the dress,' she answered, reaching out for my wrist. 'Let it go, and sit here, beside me. Take my hand and talk to me. The spirit's a liar, I swear it. You must believe what I say.'
Once again, I sat down on the bed. I wanted to be close to her. I leant over and kissed her bowed head. I wished I couldn't see so much of her breasts, and I wondered if the younger vampires knew—those brought over early in their manhood—how such carnal details still distracted me. Of course the blood lust rose with this distraction. It was not an easy thing to love her so terribly and not taste of her soul through her blood.
'Why do I have to believe you?' I asked gently.
She dug her fingers into her hair and swept it back behind her shoulders.
'Because you must,' she said urgently yet quietly. 'You must see that I knew what I was doing, you must believe that I can tell a truthtelling spirit from one who lies. That was something, yes, that being which pretended to be Claudia—
something very powerful that it could lift the pick and sink it into Louis's flesh. I'll wager anything that it was a spirit who hated him due to his very nature, that he can be dead and still walk the earth. It was something deeply offended by his very existence. But it was taking its verses from his own thoughts.'
'How can you be so sure?' I asked. I shrugged my shoulders. 'God knows, 1 wish you were right. But you yourself called on Honey; is not Honey lost in the same realm that this spirit of Claudia described? Doesn't Honey's presence prove there's nothing better for either one of them? You saw the shape of Honey out there before the altar—.' She nodded.
'—and you went on to call Claudia from the same realm.'
'Honey wants to be called,' she declared, looking up at me, her fingers driven into her hair, tugging it cruelly back, away from her tormented face. 'Honey's always there. Honey's waiting for me. That's how I knew for certain that I could call on Honey. But what about Cold Sandra? What about Great Nananne? What about Aaron Lightner? When I opened the door none of those spirits came through. They've long since gone on into the Light, David. If they hadn't they would have long ago let me know. I would have felt them the way I feel Honey. I would have hints of them, as Jesse Reeves had of Claudia when she heard the music in the Rue Royale.'
I was puzzled by this last statement. Very puzzled. I shook my head in an emphatic no.
'Merrick, you're holding back from me,' I said, deciding I must address it directly. 'You have called Great Nananne. You think I don't remember what happened only a few nights ago, the night we met in the cafe in the Rue St. Anne?'
'Yes? What about that night?' she asked. 'What are you trying to say?
'Maybe you don't know what happened,' I said. 'Is that possible? You called down a spell and didn't know
