Rice, Anne - Vampire Chronicles 11 - Blackwood Farm (v3.0)

by Blackwood Farm(Lit)

  She was a victim. She who had never been a Subject was now Past Tense.

  The blood had me. The warmth had me. The room was a phantasm. Lestat's woman lay dead on the floor. And there was the suitcase of money, and it meant nothing, could buy nothing, could change nothing, could save no one. The flowers were bold and brilliant, pink lilies dripping with pollen, and dark red roses. The room was complete and final and still.

  "No one will mourn them," said Lestat softly. His voice seemed distant, beyond my reach. "No need to find a hasty grave."

  I thought of my Maker. I thought of the dark waters of Sugar Devil Swamp, the thick duckweed, the voice of the owls.

  Something changed in the room, but Lestat didn't know it.

  "Come back to me," said Lestat. "It's important, Little Brother, not to let the blood weaken you afterwards, no matter how sweet it is."

  I nodded. But something was happening. We weren't alone.

  I could see the dim figure of my double forming behind Lestat. I could see Goblin, designed as I was designed. I could see the crazed smile on his face.

  Lestat pivoted. "Where is he?" he whispered.

  "No, Goblin, I forbid it," I said. But there was no stopping him. The figure moved towards me with lightning speed, yet held itself together in human form. Right before my eyes he was seemingly as solid as I was; and then I felt the tingling all through my limbs as he merged with me, and the tiny stabs on my hands and my neck and my face. I struggled as if I were caught in a perfect net.

  From deep inside me there came that orgasmic palpitation, that walloping sensation that I was one with him and nothing could part us, that I wanted it suddenly, yes, wanted him and me to be together always, yet I was saying something different.

  "Get away from me, Goblin. Goblin, you must listen. I was the one, the one who brought you into being. Listen to me."

  But it was useless. The electric shivers wouldn't stop, and I saw only images of the two of us as children, as boys, as men, all of it moving too fast for me to focus, to repudiate or confirm. Sunlight poured through an open doorway; I saw the flowered pattern of linoleum. I heard the laughter of toddlers, and I tasted milk.

  I knew I was falling or about to fall, that Lestat's firm hands were holding me, because I wasn't in the room with the sunlight, but it was all that I could see, and there was Goblin, little Goblin frolicking and laughing, and I too was laughing. Love you, all right, need you, of course, yours, us together. I looked down and saw my chubby childish left hand, and I held a spoon in it and was banging with the spoon. And there was Goblin's hand on top of mine. And over and over came that bang of the spoon against wood, and the sunlight, how beautifully it came in the door, but the flowers on the linoleum were worn.

  Then, as violently as Goblin had come, he withdrew. I glimpsed the humanoid shape for no more than a second, the eyes huge, the mouth open; then his image expanded, lost its conformity and vanished.

  The draperies of the room swayed, and the vase of flowers suddenly toppled, and I heard dimly the dripping of the water, and then the vase itself hit the soft rug.

  In a fog, I stared at the wounded bouquet of flowers. Pink-throated lilies. I wanted to pick them up. The tiny wounds all over me stung me and hurt me. I hated him that he had made the vase fall over, that the lilies were spilt now on the floor.

  I looked at the women, first one and then the other. They appeared to be sleeping. There was no death.

  My Goblin, my very own Goblin. That verbless thought stayed with me. My familiar spirit, my partner in all of life; you belong to me and I belong to you.

  Lestat was holding me by the shoulders. I could barely stand. In fact, if he had let me go I would have fallen. I couldn't take my eyes off the pink-throated lilies.

  "He didn't have to make the flowers fall," I said. "I taught him not to hurt things that were pretty. I taught him that when we were small."

  "Quinn," said Lestat, "come back to me! I'm talking to you. Quinn!"

  "You didn't see him," I said. I was shaking all over. I stared at the tiny wounds on my hands, but they were already healing. It was the same way with the pinpricks on my face. I wiped at my face. Faint traces of blood on my fingers.

  "I saw the blood," said Lestat.

  "How did you see it?" I asked. I was growing stronger. I struggled to clear my mind.

  "In the shape of a man," Lestat said, "a man faintly sketched in blood, sketched in the air, just for an instant, and then there was a swirling cloud of tiny drops, and I saw it pass through the open door as rapidly as if it were being sucked out."

  "Then you know why I came looking for you," I said. But I realized he couldn't really see the spirit that Goblin was. He'd seen the blood, yes, because the blood was visible, but the spirit who had always appeared to me was invisible to him.

  "It can't really hurt you," he said, his voice tender and kind. "It can't take any real volume of blood from you. It took just a tiny taste of what you took from the woman."

  "But he'll come again whenever he wants, and I can't fight him, and each time, I could swear, it's a little more."

  I steadied myself, and he released me, stroking my hair with his right hand. That casual gesture of affection coupled with his dazzling appearance -- the vibrant eyes, the exquisitely proportioned features -- entranced me even as the trance induced by Goblin slowly wore away.

  "He found me here," I said, "and I don't even know where I am. He found me here, and he can find me anywhere, and each time, as I told you, he takes a little more blood."

  "Surely you can fight him," Lestat said, encouragingly.

  His expression was concerned and protective, and I felt such an overwhelming need of him and love for him that I was about to cry. I held it back.

  "Maybe I can learn to fight him," I said, "but is that enough?"

  "Come, let's leave this graveyard," he answered. "You have to tell me about him. You have to tell me how this came about."

  "I don't know that I have all the answers," I said. "But I have a story to tell."

  I followed him out onto the terrace into the fresh air.

  "Let's go to Blackwood Manor," I said. "I don't know of another place where we can talk in such peace. Only my aunt is there tonight and her lovable entourage, and maybe my mother, and they'll all leave us completely alone. They're utterly used to me."

  "And Goblin?" he asked. "Will he be stronger there if he does come back?"

  "He was as strong as ever only moments ago," I responded. "I think that I'll be stronger."

  "Then Blackwood Manor it is," he said.

  Again there came his firm arm around me and we were traveling upwards. The sky spread out, full of clouds, and then we broke through to the very stars.

  5

  WITHIN MOMENTS we found ourselves in front of the big house, and I experienced a flashing sense of embarrassment as I looked at its huge two-story columned portico.

  Of course the garden lights were on, brilliantly illuminating the fluted columns to their full height, and all of the many rooms were aglow. In fact, I had a rule on this and had had since boyhood, that at four o'clock all chandeliers in the main house had to be lighted, and though I was no longer that boy in the grip of twilight depression, the chandeliers were illuminated by the same clock.

  A quick chuckle from Lestat caught me off guard.

  "And why are you so embarrassed?" he asked genially, having easily read my mind. "America destroys her big houses. Some of them don't even last a hundred years." His accent lessened. He sounded more intimate. "This place is magnificent," he said casually. "I like the big columns. The portico, the pediment, it's all rather glorious. Perfect Greek Revival style. How can you be ashamed of such things? You're a strange creature, very gentle I think, and out of kilter with your own time."

  "Well, how can I belong to it now?" I asked. "Given the Dark Blood and all its wondrous attributes. What do you think?"

  I was at once ashamed of having answered so directly, but he merely took it
in stride.

  "No, but I mean," he said, "you didn't belong to this time before the Dark Gift, did you? The threads of your life, they weren't woven into any certain fabric." His manner seemed simple and friendly.

  "I suppose you're right," I responded. "In fact, you're very right."

  "You're going to tell me all about it, aren't you?" he asked. His golden eyebrows were very clear against his tanned skin, and he frowned slightly while smiling at the same time. It made him look very clever and loving, though I wasn't sure why.

  "You want me to?" I asked.

  "Of course I do," he answered. "It's what you want to do and must do, besides." There came that mischievous smile and frown again. "Now, shall we go inside?"

  "Of course, yes," I said, greatly relieved as much by his friendly manner as by what he said. I couldn't quite grasp that I had him with me, that not only had I found him but that he was wanting to hear my story; he was at my side.

  We went up the six front steps to the marble porch and I opened the door, which, on account of our being out here in the country, was never locked.

  The broad central hallway stretched out before us, with its diamond-shaped white-and-black marble tiles running to the rear door, which was identical to the door by which we had just entered.

  Partially blocking our view was one of the greatest attributes of Blackwood Manor, the spiral stairway, and this drew from Lestat a look of pure delight.

  The frigid air-conditioning felt good.

  "How gorgeous this is," he said, gazing at the stairway with its graceful railing and delicate balusters. He stood in the well of it. "Why, it runs all the way to a third floor, doubling back on itself beautifully."

  "The third floor's the attic," I said. "It's a treasure trove of trunks and old furniture. It's yielded some of its little secrets to me."

  His eyes moved to the running mural on the hallway walls, a sunshine Italian pastoral giving way to a deep blue sky whose bright color dominated the entire long space and the hall above.

  "Ah, now this is lovely," he said, looking up at the high ceiling. "And look at the plaster moldings. Done by hand, weren't they?"

  I nodded. "New Orleans craftsmen," I said. "It was the 1880s, and my great-great-great-grandfather was fiercely romantic and partially insane."

  "And this drawing room," he said, peering through the arched doorway to his right. "It's full of old furniture, fine furniture. What do you call it, Quinn? Rococo? It fills me with a dreamy sense of the past."

  Again, I nodded. I had gone rapidly from embarrassment to an embarrassing sense of pride. All my life people had capitulated to Blackwood Manor. They had positively raved about it, and I wondered now that I had been so mortified. But this being, this strangely compelling and handsome individual into whose hands I'd put my very life, had grown up in a castle, and I had feared he would laugh at what he saw.

  On the contrary, he seemed thrilled by the golden harp and the old Pleyel piano. He glanced at the huge somber portrait of Manfred Blackwood, my venerable ancestor. And then slowly he turned enthusiastically to the dining room on the other side of the hall.

  I made a motion for him to enter.

  The antique crystal chandelier was showering a wealth of light on the long table, a table which could seat some thirty people, made especially for the room. The gilded chairs had only recently been re-covered in green satin damask, and the green and gold was repeated in the wall-to-wall carpet, with a gold swirl on a green ground. Gilded sideboards, inset with green malachite, were ranged between the long windows on the far wall.

  A need to apologize stole over me again, perhaps because Lestat seemed lost in his judgment of the place.

  "It's so unnecessary, Blackwood Manor," I told him. "And with Aunt Queen and me its only regular inhabitants, I have the feeling that someone will come and make us turn it over for some more sensible use. Of course there are other members of the family -- and then there's the staff, who are so damned rich in their own right that they don't have to work for anybody." I broke off, ashamed of rambling.

  "And what would a more sensible use be?" he asked in the same comfortable manner he had adopted before. "Why should the house not be your gracious home?"

  He was looking at the huge portrait of Aunt Queen when she was young -- a smiling girl in a sleeveless white beaded evening gown that might have been made yesterday rather than seventy years ago, as it was; and at another portrait -- of Virginia Lee Blackwood, Manfred's wife, the first lady ever to live in Blackwood Manor.

  It was murky now, this portrait of Virginia Lee, but the style was robust and faintly emotional, and the woman herself, blond with eyes of blue, was very honest to look at, and modest, and smiling, with small features and an undeniably pretty face. She was dressed ornately in the style of the 1880s, in a high-necked dress of sky blue with long sleeves puckered at the shoulders, and her hair heaped on the top of her head. She had been the grandmother of Aunt Queen, and I always saw a certain likeness in these portraits, in the eyes and the shape of the faces, though others claimed they could not. But then. . .

  And they had more than casual associations for me, these portraits, especially that of Virginia Lee. Aunt Queen I had still with me. But Virginia Lee. . . I shuddered but repressed those alien memories of ghosts and grotesqueries. Too much was taking my mind by storm.

  "Yes, why not your home, and the repository of your ancestors' treasures?" Lestat remarked innocently. "I don't understand."

  "Well, when I was growing up," I said in answer to his question, "my grandma and grandpa were living then, and this was a sort of hotel. A bed-and-breakfast was what they called it. But they served dinner down here in the dining room as well. Lots of tourists came up this way to spend some time in it. We still have the Christmas banquet every year, with singers who stand on the staircase for the final caroling, while the guests gather here in the hall. It all seems very useful at times like that. This last year I had a midnight Easter banquet as well, just so I could attend it."

  A sense of the past shook me, frightening me with its vitality. I pressed on, guiltily trying to wring something from the earliest memories. What right had I to good times now, or memories?

  "I love the singers," I said. "I used to cry with my grandparents when the soprano sang 'O Holy Night.' Blackwood Manor seems powerful at such times -- a place to alter people's lives. You can tell I'm still very caught up in it."

  "How does it alter people's lives?" he asked quickly, as if the idea had hooked him.

  "Oh, there've been so many weddings here." My voice caught. Weddings. A hideous memory, a recent memory overshot all, a shameful awful memory --blood, her gown, the taste of it -- but I forced it out of my mind. I went on:

  "I remember lovely weddings, and anniversary banquets. I remember a picnic on the lawn for an elderly man who had just turned ninety. I remember people coming back to visit the site where they'd been married." Again came that stabbing recollection -- a bride, a bride covered in blood. My head swam.

  You little fool, you've killed her. You weren't supposed to kill her, and look at her white dress.

  I wouldn't think of it yet. I couldn't be crippled with it yet. I'd confess it all to Lestat, but not yet.

  I had to continue. I stammered. I managed.

  "Somewhere there's an old guest book with a broken quill pen crushed in it, full of comments by those who came and went and came again. They're still coming. It's a flame that hasn't gone out."

  He nodded and smiled faintly as though this pleased him. He looked again at the portrait of Virginia Lee.

  A vague shimmer passed over me. Had the portrait changed? Vague imaginings that her lovely blue eyes looked down at me. But she would never come to life for me now, would she? Of course she wouldn't. Hers had been a famous virtue and magnanimity. What would she have to do with me now?

  "And these days," I pressed on, fastening to my little narrative, "I find myself cherishing this house desperately, and cherishing as well all my mortal
connections. My Aunt Queen I cherish above all. But there are others, others who must never know what I am."

  He studied me patiently, as if pondering these things.

  "Your conscience is tuned like a violin," he said pensively. "Do you really like having them here, the strangers, the Christmas and Easter guests, under your own roof?"

  "It's cheerful," I admitted. "There's always light and movement. There are voices and the dull vibration of the busy stairs. Sometimes guests complain -- the grits is watery or the gravy is lumpy -- and in the old days, my grandmother Sweetheart would cry over those complaints, and my grandfather -- Pops, we all called him -- would privately slam his fist down on the kitchen table; but in the main, the guests love the place. . .

  ". . . And now and then it can be lonesome here, melancholy and dismal, no matter how bright the chandeliers. I think that when my grandparents died and that part of it was all over I felt a. . . a deep depression that seemed linked to Blackwood Manor, though I couldn't leave it, and wouldn't of my own accord."

  He nodded at these words as though he understood them. He was looking at me as surely as I was looking at him. He was appraising me as surely as I appraised him.

  I was thinking how very attractive he was, I couldn't stop myself, with his yellow hair so thick and long, turning so gracefully at the collar of his coat, and his large probing violet eyes. There are very few creatures on earth who have true violet eyes. The slight difference between his eyes meant nothing. His sun-browned skin was flawless. What he saw in me with his questioning gaze, I couldn't know.

  "You know, you can roam about this house," I said, still vaguely shocked that I had his interest, the words spilling anxiously from me again. "You can roam from room to room, and there are ghosts. Sometimes even the tourists see the ghosts."

  "Did that scare them?" he asked with genuine curiosity.

  "Oh, no, they're too gung ho to be in a haunted house. They love it. They see things where there are no things. They ask to be left alone in haunted rooms."

  He laughed silently.

  "They claim to hear bells ring that aren't ringing," I went on, smiling back at him, "and they smell coffee when there is no coffee, and they catch the drift of exotic perfumes. Now and then there was a tourist or two who was genuinely frightened, in fact there were several in the bed-and-board days who packed up immediately, but in the main, the reputation of the place sold it. And then, of course, there were those who actually saw ghosts."