A Whisper of Blood

by Ellen Datlow

  angry and hungry and hard to think of how it was

  and could have been before your passion set

  in this cooling sea of smiles and friendship and talk.

  I kept you alive, your rosaried cross and Christ

  and simple psalms no more redoubt against my skill

  than the hermit’s sad claw and crushed chitin.

  I kept you alive, I fed from your passion

  that sated my own as none had ever done.

  I hid my truth to revel in your loins

  while your hips thrust to mine

  to give rise to desires long dismissed.

  Your lips, your tongue defined

  our mutual need, and order grew

  from the dark chaos that has led me always.

  And so I loved you.

  I, the fool, loved you in your mortal guile

  and set aside a millennium’s lessons

  for this false hope, all while

  knowing it would turn to ruin.

  I touched your pale perfection,

  pierced your bold smile to enter

  and bathe in your warm balm.

  IV

  But that, dear one, was in another time,

  before this silent hour,

  this sad and silent hour of mine,

  came to you.

  Your talk of friendship ends your life,

  the cross you bore is lifted now,

  your catholic taste has brought this strife

  and blame to you.

  This sun has set and the hermit has raised

  its futile claw against a final consummation

  that is, though long delayed, now yours

  and mine, to finally share.

  This poem began with the middle stanzas after I had watched a darkly beautiful sunset with my wife on a quiet beach in Barbados. We noticed, walking along the Caribbean shore of the beautiful island just as the sun disappeared, some gulls tearing at the partially eaten remnants of a crab at the water’s edge. I had been startled several nights earlier by an owl swooping down over my head around midnight in my own backyard in Tampa. Those various scenes tumbled together into useful metaphors that connected with my thoughts on the consuming passions that mark vampirism.

  I was determined to avoid the obvious traits and behaviors, the bats and fangs and wooden stakes and garlic. But I was equally committed to having some fun with the sexual drive and innuendo that permeates the vampire legends, so I let that sort of language run rampant. What would happen, I wondered, if a vampire fell in love with a good Catholic girl but she then broke his heart by offering friendship?

  Rick Wilber

  THE MOOSE CHURCH

  Jonathan Carroll

  Carroll often writes stories within stories—leading the reader into the middle of his characters’ lives—and has the rare ability to pique the reader’s interest so that one wants to know more about those characters outside the limits of the story. For example, I want to know more about the letter writer in “The Moose Church.”

  This is one of two stories in which dreaming takes on a sinister aspect.

  Judy,

  Just returned from Sardinia where we’d planned to stay two weeks but ended up driving away after five days because it is one HIDEOUS island, dahling, let me tell you. I’m always suckered by books like The Sea and Sardinia or The Colossos of Maroussi, where famous writers describe how wonderful it was to be on wild and wooly islands forty years ago when the native women went golden topless and meals cost less than a pack of cigarettes. So, fool that I am, I read those books, pack my bag, and flea (intended) south. Only to see topless women all right—two-hundred-pound German frau/tanks from Bielefeld with bazooms so enormous they could windsurf on them if they only hoisted a sail, meals that cost more than my new car, and accommodations the likes of which you’d wish on your worst enemy. And then, because I have a limp memory, I always forget the sun in those southern climes is so deceptively hot that it fries you helpless in a quick few hours. Please witness my volcanic red face, thanks.

  No, I am past forty now and consequently have every right to “Just Say No” to things like these trips from now on. When we were driving back, I said to Caitlin, Let’s just go to the mountains for our next vacation. Then lo and behold, we came to an inn below the mountains near Graz, next to a small flickering brook, with the smell of woodsmoke and slight dung, red-and-white checked tablecloths, a bed upstairs that looked down on the brook through swaying chestnut trees, and there were chocolates wrapped in silver tinfoil on our pillows. There’s no place like home, Toto.

  While we were in Sardinia, we spent a lot of time in a café/bar that was the only nice thing about the place. It was called the Spin Out Bar and when the owners found out we were American, they treated us like heroes. One of them had been to New York years ago and kept a map of Manhattan pinned on the wall with red marks all over it to show anyone who came in where he’d been there.

  At night the joint filled up and could be pretty rowdy, but besides the Nordic windsurfers and an overdose of fat people in floral prints, we met a number of interesting characters. Our favorites were a Dutch woman named Miep who worked in a sunglasses factory in Maastricht. Her companion was an Englishman named McGann and there, my friend, sits this story.

  We couldn’t figure out why Miep was in Sardinia in the first place because she said she didn’t like a lot of sun and never went to the water. She was happy to leave it at that, but McGann thought it germane to add, “She reads a lot, you know.” What does she read about? “Bees. She loves to study bees. Thinks we should study them because they know how to make a society work properly.” Unfortunately, neither Caitlin nor my knowledge of bees extends beyond stings and various kinds of honey we have tasted, but Miep rarely said anything about her books or her bees. In the beginning Miep rarely said anything about anything, leaving it up to her friend to carry the conversation ball. Which he did with alarming gusto.

  God knows, the English are good conversationalists and when they’re funny they can have you on the floor every five minutes, but McGann talked too much. McGann never stopped talking. You got to the point where you’d just tune him out and look at his pretty, silent girlfriend. The sad part was, in between all his words lived an interesting man. He was a travel agent in London and had been to fascinating places—Bhutan, Patagonia, North Yemen. He also told half-good stories, but inevitably in the middle of one about the Silk Road or being trapped by a snowstorm in a Buddhist monastery you’d realize he’d already spewed so many extraneous, boring details that you’d stopped paying attention six sentences ago and were off in your own dream image of a snowbound monastery.

  One day we went to the beach and stayed too long—both of us came home in wicked sunburns and bad moods. We complained and snapped at each other until Caitlin had the good idea of going to the bar for dinner because they were having a grill party and had been talking about it since we’d arrived. Grill parties are not my idea of nirvana, especially among strangers, but I knew if we stayed in our barren bungalow another hour we’d fight, so I agreed to go.

  “Hello! There you two are. Miep thought you’d be coming so we saved you places. The food is really quite good. Try the chicken. Lord, look at your sunburns! Were you out all day? I remember the worst sunburn I ever had …” Was only part of McGann’s greeting from across the room when we came in and walked over. We loaded up plates and went to sit with them.

  As both the evening and McGann went on, my mood plunged. I didn’t want to listen to him, didn’t want to be on this burnt island, didn’t relish the twenty-hour trip back home. Did I mention when we returned to the mainland on the overnight ferry there were no more cabins available, so we had to sleep on benches? We did.

  Anyway, I could feel myself winding up for one hell of a temper tantrum. When I was three seconds away from throwing it all onto McGann and telling him he was the biggest bore I’d ever met and would he shut up, Miep turned to me and asked, “What was the strang
est dream you ever had?” Taken aback both by the question, which was utterly out of left field, and because her boyfriend was in the middle of a ramble about suntan cream, I thought about it. I rarely remember my dreams. When I do they are either boring or unimaginatively sexy. The only strange one that came to mind was playing guitar naked in the back seat of a Dodge with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi was naked too and we must have played “Hey Joe” ten times before I woke up with a smile on my face and a real sadness that Hendrix was dead and I would never meet him. I relayed this to Miep who listened with head cupped in her hands. Then she asked Caitlin. She told that great dream about making the giant omelette for God and going all over the world trying to find enough eggs? Remember how we laughed at that?

  After we answered, there was a big silence. Even McGann said nothing. I noticed he was looking at his girlfriend with an anxious, childlike expression on his face. As if he were waiting for her to begin whatever game was to follow.

  “Dreams are how Ian and I met. I was in Heathrow waiting to fly back to Holland. He was sitting next to me and saw that I was reading an article on this “Lucid Dreaming.’ Do you know about it? You teach yourself to be conscious in your night dreams so you can manipulate and use them. We started talking about this idea and he made me very bored. Ian can be very boring. It is something you must get used to if you are going to be with him. I still have trouble, but it is a week now and I am better.”

  “A week? What do you mean? You’ve only been together that long?”

  “Miep was coming back from a beekeepers’ convention in Devon. After our conversation in the airport, she said she would come with me.”

  “Just like that? You came here with him instead of going home?” Caitlin not only believed this, she was enchanted. She believes fully in chance encounters, splendid accidents, and loving someone so much right off the bat you can learn to live with their glaring faults. I was more astonished that Miep’d come with him yet said openly what a bore he was. Was that how a love-at-first-sight bond was sealed: Yes, let’s fly off together, darling, I love you madly and I’ll try to get used to how boring you are.

  “Yes. After Ian told me about his dreams, I asked if I could come. It was necessary for me.”

  I said to McGann, “Must have been some kind of powerful dream you had.” He looked plain, pleasant, and capable but only in a small way—like an efficient postman who delivers your mail early, or the salesman in a liquor store who can rattle off the names of thirty different brands of beer. I assumed he was a good travel agent, up on his prices and brochures and a man who could choose a good vacation for someone who didn’t have much money. But he wasn’t impressive and he talked forever. What kind of dream had he had to convince this attractive and nicely mysterious Dutch woman to drop everything and accompany him to Sardinia?

  “It wasn’t much really. I dreamt I was working in an office, not where I do work but some other place, but nowhere special. A man walked in who I knew a long time ago but who died. He died of cancer maybe five years ago. I saw him and knew for sure that he had come back from the dead to see me. His name was Larry Birmingham. I never really liked this fellow. He was very loud and much too sure of himself. But there he was in my dream.

  I looked up from my desk and said, “Larry. It’s you! You’re back from the dead!’He was very calm and said yes, he’d come to see me. I asked if I could ask him questions about it. About death that is, of course. He smiled, a little too amusedly I realize now, and said yes. About this time in the dream, I think I knew I was dreaming, you know how that happens? But I thought go on, see what you can find out. So I asked him questions. What is death like? Should we be afraid? Is it anything like we expect … that sort of thing. He answered, but many of the answers were vaguely obscure and confusing. I’d ask again and he’d answer in a different way, which at first I thought was clearer, but in the end it wasn’t—he had only stated the muddle differently. It wasn’t much help, I’ll tell you.” “Did you learn anything?”

  Ian looked at Miep. Despite her aloofness and his ten-mile-long dialog it was very obvious that there was great closeness and regard between these two remarkably dissimilar people. It was a look of love to be sure, but a great deal more than that. More, a look that clearly said there were things they knew about each other already that went to the locus of their beings. Whether they’d known each other a short week or twenty years, the look contained everything we all hope for in our lives with others. She nodded her approval but after another moment, he said gently, “I … I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

  “Oh, Ian—” She reached across the table and touched her hand to his face. Imagine a laser line of light or heat going directly across that table, excluding everything but those two. That’s what both Caitlin and I felt watching them. What was most surprising to me was it was the first time Miep had either talked or shown real feeling for her man. But there was suddenly so much feeling that it was embarrassing.

  “Ian, you’re right. I’m sorry. You’re so right.” She slipped back into her chair but continued looking at him. He turned to me and said, “I’m sorry to be rude, but you’ll understand why I can’t tell you anything when I’m finished.

  “Excuse me, but before I go on, it’s hard for me to tell this so I’m going to have another drink. Would anyone like a refill?”

  None of us did so he got up and went to the bar. The table was silent while he was gone. Miep never stopped looking at him. Caitlin and I didn’t know where to look until he returned.

  “Right-O. Tanked up and am ready to go. You know what I was just thinking, up there at the bar? That I once drove though Austria and got a case of the giggles when I passed a sign for the town of Mooskirchen. I remember so well thinking to myself that a bonkers translation of that would be “Moose Church.’Then I thought well why the hell not—people worship all kinds of things on this earth. Why couldn’t there be a church to Mooses? Or rather, a religion to them. You know?

  “I’m rattling on here, aren’t I? It’s because this is a terribly difficult story for me to tell. The funny thing is, when I’m finished you’ll think I’m just as bonkers as my imagined worshipers at the Moose Church, eh, Miep? Won’t they think I don’t have all my bulbs screwed in?”

  “If they understand, they will know you are a hero.”

  “Yes, well, folks, don’t take Miep too seriously. She’s quiet but very emotional about things sometimes. Let me go on and you can judge for yourself whether I’m crazy or, ha, ha, a hero.

  “The morning after that first dream, I walked to the bathroom and started taking my pajamas off so I could wash up. I was shocked when I saw—”

  “Don’t tell them, Ian, show them! Show them so they will see for themselves!”

  Slowly, shyly he began to pull his T-shirt up over his head. Caitlin saw it first and gasped. When I saw I guess I gasped too. From his left shoulder down to above his left nipple was a monstrously long and deep scar. It looked exactly like what my father had down the middle of his chest after open-heart surgery. One giant scar so wide and obscenely shiny pink. His body’s way of saying it would never forgive him for doing that to it.

  “Oh, Ian, what happened?” Sweet Caitlin, the heart of the world, involuntarily reached out to touch him, comfort him. Realizing what she was doing, she pulled her hand back, but the look of sympathy framed her face.

  “Nothing happened, Caitlin. I have never been hurt in my life. Never been in the hospital, never had an operation. I asked death some questions and when I woke the next morning this was here.” He didn’t wait for us to examine the scar more closely. The shirt was up and over his head quickly.

  “I’m telling you, Ian, maybe it is a kind of gift.”

  “It’s no gift, Miep, if it hurts terribly and I can’t move my left arm very well anymore! The same with my foot and my hand.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ian closed his eyes and tried once to continue. He couldn’t and instead rocked up and down with h
is eyes closed.

  Miep spoke. “The night before we met, he had another dream and the same thing happened: This Larry came back and Ian asked him more questions about death. But this time the answers were clearer, although not all of them. He woke up and he says he had begun to understand things that he didn’t before. He believes that’s why the scar on the inside of his hand is smaller—the more he understands of the dream, the more it leaves him alone. A few nights ago he had another but he woke with a big cut on his leg. Much bigger than the one on his hand.”

  Ian spoke again, but his voice was less. Softer and … deflated. “It will tell you anything you want to know, but then you have to understand it. If you don’t … it does this to you so you’ll be careful with your questions. The trouble is, once you’ve started, you can’t stop asking. In the middle of my second dream I told Birmingham I wanted to stop; I was afraid. He said I couldn’t. The ultimate game of’Twenty Questions,’ eh? Thank God Miep’s here. Thank God she believed me! See, it makes me so much weaker. Maybe that’s the worst part. After the dreams there are the scars, but even worse than that is I’m so much weaker and can’t do anything about it. I can barely get out of the bed. Most of the time I’m better as the day goes on … but I know it’s getting worse. And one day I won’t … I know if Miep weren’t here … Thank God for you, Miep.”

  I later convinced him to show us the scar on his hand, which was utterly unlike the one on his chest. This one was white and thin and looked years old. It went diagonally across his palm and I remember thinking from the first time we’d met how strangely he moved that hand, how much slower and clumsier it was. Now I knew why.

  There’s more to this, Judy. But what do you do in a situation like that? When half your brain thinks this is mad but the other half is shaking because maybe-it’s-real. They asked us for nothing, although I doubt there was anything we could do. But after that night whenever I saw or thought of McGann, I liked him enormously. Whatever was wrong with the man, he was afflicted by something terrible. Either insanity or death dreams were clearly out to get him and he was a goner. But the man remained a bore. A good-natured, good-humored bore who, in the midst of his agony or whatever it was, remained wholly himself as I assume he’d always been. That’s the only real courage. I mean, come on, none of us goes into burning buildings to save others. But watching a person face the worst with grace, uncomplainingly, grateful even for the love and help of others … That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.