Black Ambrosia

by Elizabeth Engstrom

  “Come,” I said. “Let us go inside.” And I led him into the field.

  I opened for us an ornate wooden door, and guided him through an exquisite foyer. The furnishings were heavy, dark. Massive carved furniture, ancient tapestries, velvet curtains, and huge portraits absorbed the dim light from crystal chandeliers. I wondered at my own imagination, and involved him more deeply into the music so he would never notice that the portraits had no features. The carpeting was plush and blood-red, and we mounted the stairs together, I preceding him, both of us trailing our fingers across the smooth, highly polished banister. Jack was speechless, and when I turned to look at him, his wide-eyed wonder at the opulence filled me with gladness.

  Building upon my success, I created my bedroom with even more lavish touches. The bed was small, intimate, covered with deep velvet. Shelves filled with thick tomes lined the walls; antique lamps shed soft light throughout. Burnished red-leather chairs surrounded a marble coffee table, and a bar stocked with liquids in crystal waited conveniently in the corner.

  “This is your bedroom?” he asked, and I saw admiration fire up in his eyes, admiration that fueled desire, the desire that the powerful, the wealthy, always draw.

  “Yes,” I said, and he pulled me close and took me in his arms. The scent of him sent a dollop of saliva to land in a spot of white foam on the carpeting.

  “Come.” I pulled back from him and led him by the hands to the bed, turning off lamps on the way, our eyes never breaking from each other, the moment truly romantic and magic.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s like a dream.”

  I dwelt on increasing the music, or decreasing it; worried, suddenly, that I was not experienced enough to sustain such a lavish illusion, and for a moment, the whole structure wavered under my doubt. I felt the bed tremble under my indecision. Then, as my confidence returned, the bed regained solidity and Jack was bending over me, transfixed by my eyes, my power. His teeth gleamed in the moonlight as a smile of passion drew back his lips.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, and I knew I had not overly sedated him.

  He licked my neck and trailed his tongue around down between my breasts as he unbuttoned my blouse, and the smell of his excitement was overpowering, maddening. His pulse beat loudly in the room; I knew I had to have him or lose control, and that would mean losing everything.

  I pushed him back and unbuttoned his shirt. He kept looking at me.

  “Look at these breasts. I’ve never seen breasts like these before. They’re so . . . they’re so cool, and white. Look how white your skin is.” He took a nipple between his fingers and began to roll it. “Even your nipples are almost white.” He looked at my face. “And your lips. Your lips . . .”

  I gently turned him on his back and shed my pants. I straddled his bare chest, feeling his body heat soak endlessly into my warmth-starved legs.

  I gripped his hair with both hands and brought the music up to orgasmic pitch, watching his face, loving him so severely that I thought to keep the music there for him forever, and when he closed his eyes, I sank my teeth into his neck, bit through the artery, and suckled.

  As his warm blood pumped into my stomach, I knew him. As his blood became mine, I began to own his experiences, his thoughts, desires, aspirations. Pictures ran through my mind as Jack’s life ebbed, and I knew him, from the day of his birth, I knew him, completely.

  When the final shudder came and death rattled its cage deep in his chest, I stopped, and kissed his face, his forehead, his nose, his lips. I sat up on his chest and buttoned my blouse, then shook the weeds from my pants and put them back on.

  Back at the car, I put his sign and two bags into the garbage bin and then sat in the driver’s seat, digesting my experience. It was incredible. Who would ever have thought that love could have feelings like that, such desperate passions slaked so thoroughly.

  I waited, pondering, entertaining myself, enjoying the afterglow, and then I drove off, sated, comfortable, heading again for Wilton. And as I drove, thoughts and memories that had been Jack’s began to tickle my consciousness. Before long, I was barraged by his thoughts, his impressions, his ambitions, his own passions. Even his thoughts of me were now mine to examine. I had no idea that this would happen, that I would know my victims so well that I knew their families, and would grieve with them as they discovered their loss.

  Except that I had given him eternal life within me.

  The night was at its deepest, and I drove fast, faster than was safe, but there were few other cars on the road. Jack’s face loomed ever larger in my mind’s eye, snatches of conversations he’d had with his father—about medical school, about obtaining his degree, and going to Africa and Southeast Asia to help. His girlfriend, they had made love to each other for the first time this past Christmas Eve . . . the Christmas Eve I had spent murdering Joshua in his shop window. Jack’s sports triumphs, his cleanliness, his idealism, they were all reminders of the poisonous beast I had become and I had to be rid of these reminders of it, rid of all of them, rid of them before I went mad.

  There must be a way to keep from dwelling on him, I thought, and no sooner had I the thought than I had the answer.

  Kill again.

  I took the next freeway exit and slowed down, driving automatically as if by directional finder, toward the seedier side of town.

  There I found a wino, a single wino, sitting next to a lamp pole, feet in the gutter, brown paper bag clutched in a greasy glove. Here was a person with no aspirations; here was a person who would give me nary a moment of guilt. Here was a waste of humanity that the world would be better off without.

  I opened the car door and began to play for him. He left his bottle in the gutter, and unsteadily made his way to the car. The stench of him was sickening, but I knew I had to do this or go blind with internal rage. He sat next to me, entranced, and I leaned across his disgusting lap to close the door, then I drove to the warehouse district, sure to be deserted at this time.

  I parked behind a bulldozer and, anxious beyond caution, ran around the car and opened the drunk’s door. I dumped him onto the ground and fixed myself onto his neck, sucking furiously, ripping when the blood would not come fast enough to erase the echoing memories of Jack. The blood was poisoned, the bum was sick to his death with something in addition to drink, and I knew I would be sick from it later, but for now it was still blood, and I chewed and chewed, feeling his spirit weaken and his body give up the ghost.

  I sat up, panting from the exertion, smelling his fouled clothes mixed with the oily heat of the engine and the tar of the construction site, and in one gigantic heave, all that I had drunk spewed forth in a gush that splattered the car door and lay in a puddle next to the dead man.

  I stood, dizzy and feverish, and leaned against the car. I had been wrong. The wasted flesh that rotted at my feet had once been C. Wakefield Caldwell, a corporate executive, a millionaire, a philanthropist, a father, husband, and son to a proud, proud family—until the disease of drink captured his soul, long before I captured his body. His aspirations were of a different sort than Jack’s, but no less filled with conviction and altruism. His suffering pained me; he was unable to stop drinking; he was addicted to it, even though it destroyed the very fiber of his being. He watched his family lose respect, and leave; he watched his empire collapse; he had seen the last scrap of rug pulled out from under him when his mother had the locks on her apartment changed. He knew what he had been when he scavenged in the free-clothes barrel at the Salvation Army and sold the rags for wine.

  Jack’s voice slipped back to join that of Joshua and Sarah and the others. Background music.

  I now had C. Wakefield Caldwell for company.

  “The waiting was the hardest part. Jesus, she slipped by us at every turn. It seemed like she was a pro. She seemed to know all the right dodges, all the right things to do that would leave absolutely
no trace of her whereabouts, or clue to her direction. I couldn’t believe she was that crafty, although maybe she was. I rather think she was lucky.

  “Whatever. It gave me time to dwell on her. And myself. I didn’t like thinking about myself too much, but I fantasized a lot about Angelina. I was always trying to put her in a situation in my mind and have some flash of intuition or something that would be strong enough for me to actually proceed in some direction with the investigation. As a result, my imagination took me into some pretty bizarre realms. This territory was darker than any forest I’d been in; this bounty was scarier, more perverse, more dangerous, than any I could ever imagine.

  “But trying to get inside her mind was the worst. You always try to second-guess the animal—will it go to high ground, or to water, or underground?—and to do that with any accuracy, you must know a little about the species.

  “I knew nothing about Angelina—only what I made up in my head. Sometimes I was accurate, most times I wasn’t. But the worst part was when I had to admit that I was enjoying the dark meditations I began to have, where I tried to think like her, tried to be her, to imagine how she thought, where she would go, how her sickness would progress.

  “I gave up everything for her. Everything. Family, friends, job, everything. For her. Her, and those dark meditations.”

  33

  Six nights later, Sarah’s car died a noisy and inconvenient death just outside of Wilton. The night was at its strongest, so I left the automobile carcass where it lay and began to walk.

  The night was moonless and still; there was no traffic on the little two-lane road into town. I had become quite adept at depending on my cane for stability; the rhythm of my footsteps was regular and pleasing, slow and deliberate, thoughtful and restrained. It was good to walk the highway again.

  I watched the night deepen, felt the cold crinkle of the stars in the clear sky, listened to the sounds of the night animals in the fields.

  I walked past the little green sign with its pebbly, light-­reflecting letters that said, “Wilton, Pa., Pop. 4780,” and I held my head a little higher, my back a little more erect. Home. The place to which I vowed I would never return, for it held ties—emotional ties—and I cared little for all the burdens of human life.

  Yet here I was, and it wasn’t an emotional cord that tugged me back into this place; it was something else, something stronger, darker, more substantial than the petty stuff of human emotions, yet its nature eluded me. I knew only that this was where I was meant to be.

  The night was on the wane as I walked past the first service station, then the barn-sized tavern that exuded country western music of a weekend night. I walked on into town, beyond the feed store, past the laundromat, the bank, and the real estate office. I stood on the corner by the one theater, which played only family features, and I looked to the north.

  The neighborhood was up there, on the knoll. The house where Rolf took Alice and me to live, the place where Alice eventually died, was there somewhere, dark, filled with sleeping strangers. An occasional light showing through a square pane was all that signified that a neighborhood was there, and not just an empty field full of Pennsylvania January.

  I turned and looked south. The train tracks ran along the back side of the main street, and it was four blocks beyond this that Alice and I had lived before Rolf. The house I was born in, the house that my father laughed in, died in, the house that held memories of childhood ostracism—the house I swore I would never see again—stood just four blocks away.

  Like a magnet, it drew me.

  There was a third of the night left, at the very most, when I viewed the house from the outside. It seemed unchanged. It remained untended, unpainted—unkempt. The tree in the front was winter-bare and spindly. Dirty mounds of snow built up in the corners and under the bare hedges, while patches of yellow grass showed through, looking forlorn and spooky in the dark. The memories of this house were clear to me but oddly devoid of emotion.

  The emotions of too many others swirled about inside of me; I had no room for my own.

  The lock on the cellar door was probably still broken. My footsteps crunched delicately on the snow of the driveway as I walked to the side of the house, then around the rear. The steps down to the cellar door were covered with undisturbed snow; I stepped through it without hesitation, descended the steps, and lay my hand on the frigid, tarnished knob. The sound it made as it turned was as familiar to my ears as the sound of my own heartbeat. It was never locked; it was always stuck, but I knew the right combination of movements: Push on the top corner, pull on the knob, jiggle once, and lift up.

  The door opened inward, scraping softly on the concrete floor. I slipped in and closed it gently behind me.

  The smell was the same—sweet and moldy, as if centuries of drying apples had permeated the damp concrete and wood with their scent. This was my favorite smell of all time. I breathed deeply, closing my eyes, tuning my senses, feeling—home. Relieved. Tired. Back—after a long, long journey.

  I would sleep later. First, I had to discover the occupants.

  Carefully, I discerned the litter in the cellar: bicycles, boxes marked “Xmas,” fishing equipment, a basketball hoop, a huge, ripped archery target. One corner of the cellar had been built up with shelves, and the shelves were filled with home-preserved fruit, vegetables, jellies, and sauces; the lower shelves were stacked deep and high with canned goods.

  A spiderweb caught across my eyelashes as I walked under the stairs where the old round washing machine was still stored. This was the pink, metal washing machine I remembered from my childhood. It had an electric wringer on the top. I trailed my finger in its dust. An old red hobbyhorse sat in the other corner, along with a dismantled crib and a child’s white play kitchen that had been left mid-tea party, with dolls still in their seats.

  Two children in this family, I thought, and went to the stairs. I remembered which creaked and which did not, and with the help of my cane slowly mounted them, and at the top opened the door to the kitchen.

  Four humans slept in the house. I could smell them.

  The kitchen was the same as the last time I’d seen it—the black-and-white linoleum tile, the chipped countertop, the stained sink; the rude yellow walls were maybe a little dirtier, a little sicklier.

  The living room was completely different. The furniture here was cheaper, shabbier, than any we had ever had. Evidence of rowdy children was everywhere: marks on the walls, toys left to be stepped on and tripped over, broken vases poorly glued together, teeth marks on all the chair legs. There were burn marks in the tables, in the upholstery; the whole house was worn, too worn, depressing.

  But on the mantel, above the fireplace, the woman here had arranged two candles and pictures of the children, one little ceramic frog, and a dried flower. I knew this to be sentiment, and for a moment wished that I had a mantelpiece of my own to set things of sentiment on. I gently blew the dust from them and as I did, I felt someone stir. My heart pounded in reaction. Someone’s depth of sleep had altered. The boy. I walked quickly and silently to the hallway to wait, to watch.

  Within moments, the vibrations of sleep were resumed. I walked quietly down the hallway and pushed open the first bedroom door.

  Blonde strands of hair, curled at the ends, scattered over a pillow. A girl child of four, maybe five, years, slept with mouth open, her lips like little moist pink petals, her breath sweet on the pillow. I touched her silken cheek with my finger. It was so warm. She was so soft and secure, worryless and safe, happy and oblivious, and suddenly my knees went weak. I was exhausted. I longed to sleep the restful sleep of the child. I leaned closer to her, to fill my nostrils with the scent of youth, just to smell her purity, and she moved her little doll-sized legs under the covers, rubbed her face with one hand, and opened her eyes.

  She reacted in surprise at my face so close to hers, then she smiled, the smi
le of an angel, sleep still clouding her brain. I sent to her a lullaby—a sweeter one I’ve never heard—and watched as her eyelids drooped and finally sank, and the smile faded and her breathing resumed the deep regularity of child sleep. I fingered her hair for a moment, fine golden threads, then turned away. I had more to explore and little time.

  The next room had been my bedroom; the door was closed tightly. I turned the knob gently and pushed it open. The floor was littered with toys and clothes; bookshelves lined all the walls. A set of iron bunkbeds lay directly ahead, the bottom bunk covered with debris, the top bunk holding a boy.

  I picked my way among the scatterings toward the child. He was much older than his sister: twelve, maybe thirteen. His dingy, stained sheets were pulled down to his waist, the smooth winter-white skin of his back exposed, waiting to be touched, stroked. A lock of light-brown hair fell rakishly across his forehead, his thick eyelashes lay quietly on cheeks just making the transition from childhood chubby to adolescent soft.

  I played the music softly for him. No sooner had I started than he relaxed, sinking deeper into his mattress. He had been on the verge of awakening. I ran a finger down his back, ever so softly, tickling, feeling the cool smooth skin. I brushed the hair from his face and traced an eyebrow, a cheekbone. He reminded me of someone. I touched the bridge of his nose, ran my finger across his lips, back again, parting them, feeling his front teeth with the tip of my finger. I increased the music. Who does he remind me of? I opened the lips and looked at the teeth. The front two crossed, just barely, and I took in the curve of the cheek and the fullness of the lips and then I knew. I pulled back, the music changed, and I regained control quickly before I woke him up; before I woke everyone up. He reminded me of Boyd—reminded me so severely of Boyd that I almost knew for sure that if this boy opened his eyes right now, there would be a dark-brown spot over the pupil of one eye.