The Vampire Tapestry

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  Somebody remembered reading that vampire bats sometimes drink so greedily from their prey that they get too heavy to fly and have to walk home. Ho, ha, that was a good one—waddling home at night along the roadside, burping all the way.

  Mark finished up in the kitchen and went to bed. He put his pillow over his head to muffle the sound of their laughter.

  May Eve was a week and a half away.

  * * *

  Dad called the next day. “Did you get what I sent you?” He often spoke as though he thought the phone line was tapped.

  “Yes, Dad. It’s in the bank.”

  “Mark, I’ve told you a hundred times, when I give you money it’s for you to use. I could keep it in the bank myself. Look, I know your mother’s given you some spiel about saving up in case I stop sending child support, but that’s crap. You know you can depend on me.”

  “I know, Dad. When are we going to have dinner together?”

  His father began to talk about a medical convention he was attending this week. Eminent heart surgeons one, two, and three; Dad was dropping names like crazy again. Mark held the phone between his cheek and shoulder, saying “Uh-huh” in the pauses. He was sitting on the sofa with his toes tucked cozily between the cushions, working on the game-room section of the Skytown plans.

  Hearing his father’s voice was nice, a reminder that the whole world didn’t revolve around the cell down the hall. Maybe if Dad stayed on the phone long enough the time would go by, and then Mark would feed the vampire, and Roger would call too late to announce a live feeding. Then there would be a quiet evening, no sightseers leering into Dr. Weyland’s cell.

  “ . . . basketball game on Wednesday, all right? It means I’ll have to pass up going to a talk on blah blah blah . . . Dr. Candleman, the transplant man . . . blah . . . We can have a bite first at that place right in the Garden, the steak house. You liked that last time.” While they made arrangements Mark thought about what Dad would say if he remarked suddenly, “Hey, guess what, Dad; we’ve got this wounded vampire living here. Roger brings home victims so the vampire can drink their blood, and he charges admission for people to watch.” A new spectator sport, hot dog. Dad would say a long silence, and then he’d say, Go see Dr. Stimme, I knew it was a mistake for you to stop talking to him, but your mother never liked him because he was too impartial.

  Dad said, “How’s Roger?”

  “He’s okay. Busy.”

  “Mark, don’t let so much time go by again without a phone call, okay?”

  Mark said goodbye and hung up. Then he put the Skytown plans aside and wandered down the hallway in his stocking feet to Dr. Weyland.

  “Are you hungry?” he said.

  “Shouldn’t you wait with my food until you hear from Uncle Roger?”

  Mark lingered. “I’m sorry,” he said finally. “About Roger bringing people here.”

  Dr. Weyland regarded him, chin on hand. “As a performance, it has its unpleasant side; they stand at the gate staring like lions observing their appointed Christian. But fresh nourishment is welcome, and eating in public is common enough.”

  Mark should have been relieved to see him in this calm mood instead of panicky and full of wild or bitter talk. Yet he found himself resenting the detached tone. Nobody could be that cool about those degrading exhibitions.

  “It isn’t just eating to the ones who come here. They make it dirty.”

  “That, as people say nowadays, is their problem.”

  “I saw you the first time,” Mark accused. “You didn’t want to. You knew it was rotten—those people staring . . .”

  “Have you ever seen a mob at work?” asked Dr. Weyland. “You would be amazed to learn how many bits of a living body can be detached with the help of a knife, or even teeth and nails, so that people can carry away souvenirs of a memorable event. In these close quarters, five or six people comprise a mob, and I . . . was and remain outside the boundaries of morality. At first I was afraid of what they might do, seeing me at my food. But having you here helps. There are things they would like to do and see in addition to the central attraction, but they refrain from suggesting the worst of them before a child.”

  The vampire’s thoughtful, heavy-lidded gaze at that moment made him seem impossibly ancient.

  “At least,” he added pensively, “we seem to be past the danger that Roger might simply turn me over to the Central Park Zoo.”

  “Would that be so bad?” Mark asked cautiously. “If there were somebody—maybe a scientist from the museum—instead of, well, Roger. And Alan Reese.”

  After a moment Dr. Weyland said softly, “Being forced to grow from a child’s faith to an adult’s realism so quickly must be painful for you. I appreciate your having given some thought to an alternative to May Eve. However, I must assure you that scientists would be no improvement, though they would be more systematic at first than Reese, who is steered by his lust for power. Men of science would soon learn the easy answers—that my name comes from a tombstone in a New England churchyard, the original bearer having died aged seven; that the accomplishments of my career under that name can be sorted into those I achieved and those I fabricated in spite of the very great obstacles placed in my path by computerized record-keeping systems; also perhaps that I have in the past killed for food or to keep my nature secret, since those are recurrent necessities of my existence. All very thrilling, no doubt—unprecedented, marvelous, the makings of the bestseller Roger would like to write.

  “But the inner secret, the secret of staying alive long after such curious men are dead dust, I can yield in only one way because I don’t know that secret myself. Eventually they would lose patience and cut me apart to see whether they might find the answer in my body—in the brain, the heart, the gut, the bones. Science would be as cruel as the mob. The only kindness is freedom.”

  “Okay, no scientists,” Mark said fiercely. “Forget I said anything. Just leave me alone. You said you wouldn’t ask me for help again!”

  “I ask,” said Dr. Weyland in that same low voice, “because I am desperate.”

  Mark’s heart stamped in his ribs. He looked at his watch. “It’s four o’clock, time for your meal.”

  He was at the refrigerator when the phone rang. It was Roger: “Don’t feed him.”

  * * *

  Alan Reese came that night. He arrived late, when Roger’s preliminary remarks “for our newcomers” were over and everyone had moved into the hallway outside Dr. Weyland’s cell. Mark was watching uneasily from his doorway. He tried to shrink back out of sight so that Reese wouldn’t notice him.

  He hated, really hated, that round, self-satisfied face, those quick, calculating, greedy blue eyes. Without his briefcase of magical paraphernalia and dressed in a windbreaker, the man didn’t look dangerous. The crowd parted deferentially to let him through to the front, and then people pressed closer behind him in anticipation of something special now that he had come. Roger, unlocking the gate, broke off in the midst of a comment that Mark couldn’t hear.

  Reese took command without raising his voice. He said in a stern, level tone, “Those of you who see in this cell only a freak do not belong here. You are all confronting a lesson in the depths that lie behind the surface of every ‘reality’ of your daily lives. Think about this: you look into this room and you see a creature of human appearance. He looks back—and sees you with the immense contempt and cruel appetite of an immortal who feeds his endless life on your tiny lives.

  “Fortunately, there are those of us who are experienced and strong enough to render him tractable . . .”

  Mark slipped out. He walked up and down Broadway, guilty at having abandoned the vampire to whatever games Reese had in mind for tonight, furious that Dr. Weyland had saddled him somehow with a feeling of responsibility. Wesley said the vampire was Roger’s project, and he was right. Roger was responsible.

  Anyway, Dr. Weyland wasn’t even human, really, so how could he be sure what people were like, what they would
or would not do to him?

  When Mark returned a few people were hanging around outside talking, doubtless waiting for Reese, who was in the living room with Roger: “ . . . from the Coast, influential contacts in the occult world. The arrangements for filming the special Sabbat on May Eve . . .”

  Ducking down the hall and into his own bedroom, Mark listened for Reese’s departure. When at last the front door shut and the locks turned, he let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for hours.

  Roger looked in. “Hey, where’d you go? You should have stayed. Alan put on a great show. He’s pretty pushy, likes to take over, but he does have this fantastic sense of drama. He’s been building up the vampire, whetting people’s appetites for the main event.”

  “I think Reese is a power freak,” Mark mumbled. He sat on his bed hugging his knees, not meeting Roger’s eyes. “He’s like kids who like to cut up live little animals, you know? Only he calls it a ‘rite.’ He could do whatever he wanted and nobody could stop him. His hands could rip you up alive while he was explaining to you in all kinds of big words how your ghost needs its freedom so he’s really doing you a favor.”

  “You read too much crappy fiction,” Roger said sharply. “Nothing bad happened to the vampire tonight while you were gone; nothing awful is going to happen, either.”

  Across the hallway, Dr. Weyland avoided Mark’s gaze. The vampire seemed indifferent, remote, but there were stains of fatigue under his eyes, and his shoulders were slumped as if after great tension.

  “I think he’s scared,” Mark said.

  “Nobody’s scared but you,” snapped Roger. “Everybody else knows—even the vampire himself, you can bet on it—everybody else knows it’s all just great theater we’re doing here, that’s all.” His voice softened. “Come on Markie, relax. Good night, now.”

  Mark lay huddled under his blankets thinking about Dr. Weyland. He knew how it felt to pretend composure and confidence in a situation where you were at the mercy of other people. It felt horrible.

  * * *

  Roger brought home a ponytailed young man in ragged cut-offs and a Pakistani cotton shirt. Mark was in bed when they appeared in his doorway. Roger, behind the blond stranger, flicked on the light.

  The blond started to turn to Roger, saying, “The kid keeps your stash for you?”

  Roger grabbed him around the neck. The blond looked surprised and reached up, but then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed. Roger caught him and reeled against the doorjamb, swearing breathlessly. “Shit, ow, come on, Mark, give me a hand!”

  Dazed and squinting, Mark got out of bed and went to help lower the unconscious stranger to the floor. Roger, squatting, began rolling up one sleeve of the Pakistani shirt.

  “What did you do? What’s the matter with him?” Mark said.

  “I knocked him out a little, that’s all. He’s dinner for our guest. No audience tonight. This is a sort of a present.” Roger lowered his voice. “Alan says no more feeding until May Eve.”

  “But, Roger, that’s a week away!”

  “Animals can live a month on just water. All you have to do is make sure he has plenty of water to drink. It’s no big deal, you know, just a sort of fasting, purifying for the ceremony. Shit.” Roger gave up and ripped the cotton to expose the blond’s slack arm up to the shoulder. He began dragging him across the hallway, calling, “Feeding time! Come and get him before he gets cold.”

  He tucked the blond’s flopping arm between the bars. Dr. Weyland got up and came over to the gate. He took hold of the bars with both hands and lowered himself over the offering. After a moment, Roger reached between the bars and pushed at the vampire’s head so that the light fell on his lips, sealed to the tan skin of the stranger’s inner elbow.

  Mark whispered, “Don’t, Roger.”

  “Why not? I can’t see well enough. When you put on a show you never get a good look at it yourself, and tonight’s—” Roger stopped short of saying “the last time.” He laughed a little, shivering. “I’m almost tempted to give him a drink myself, it looks so— God, look at that. His eyes are open.”

  There was a pale glimmer under Dr. Weyland’s lowered lids.

  The blond man gave a sudden start and a breathy moan, and a sort of shudder ran along his limbs.

  “Christ, he’s waking up!” said Roger frantically, and he pressed beside the man’s windpipe with his fingertips. The blond subsided once more into gape-mouthed slackness, his long hair spread like a halo around his head on the floor.

  “What did you do to him?” Mark croaked.

  “If you press right there, you can cut off the blood supply to the brain and put a person out. There’s another place in the armpit. It’s for handling drowning people so they don’t drag you down with them; I learned it that summer in lifesaving class. They don’t teach it anymore. It’s too dangerous—you could turn a guy into a vegetable if you kept up the pressure too long.” Roger tugged at the vampire’s hair. “Greedy tonight, isn’t he. Come on, that’s enough—leave the kid some roses in his cheeks.”

  While Roger was out depositing the young man in the park, Mark heard gagging sounds from the vampire’s cell. Dr. Weyland was in his bathroom being sick. Mark stood at the gate, scared to go in. Suppose it was a trick?

  “What is it?” he called. “What’s the matter?”

  Dr. Weyland panted, “Something in the blood . . . bad blood . . .”

  When Roger came back Mark hurried to tell him. Dr. Weyland was still in the bathroom. They could hear his hard, strained breathing.

  “That guy must have been a pill-popper or something,” Roger muttered. “He told me he was just looking for some good grass. Maybe he was really sick.”

  “What about Dr. Weyland?” Mark said. “That’s all he’s had to eat today, and he’s throwing everything up.”

  “There’s nothing I can do about it—I took the last package of blood from the fridge with me and dumped it; it was spoiled anyway. Listen, it won’t kill him to start fasting a day early.”

  * * *

  Next afternoon Roger called from one of the shops. “Mark? Listen. Alan just called. There’s an item in the paper about a college student found dead this morning in Riverside Park—guess who. That greedy monster you’re so worried about took too much. You might give that some thought. Alan wants me to come over—more complicated arrangements for May Eve. I’ll see you later.”

  Mark took his work and a camp chair out into the yard. He couldn’t concentrate. Inevitably, he went down the hall.

  The vampire sat on the cot with his back against the wall, doing nothing.

  “That guy died,” Mark said.

  He got no reply. Dr. Weyland’s shirt looked rumpled. It was buttoned wrong so that the collar stuck up on one side. His gaze was flat and unfocused. A vein stood in his temple like a smear of ink.

  “You’re like a wild animal,” Mark continued. “You hear like a fox, don’t you—everything we say around here. You heard Roger say Alan doesn’t want him to bring any more people for you, so you tanked up while you had the chance.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Weyland said, “against hunger. I drank what I could while I could, even though I tasted some impurity. I had to eat; I had to try. I protect myself as best I can, as might also be said of you.”

  His sudden glance seemed to pierce right through Mark. “But I had no profit of it, and I am hungry now; truly hungry, bitterly hungry, with a hunger you know nothing about and never can. Reese, who has his own appetite, guesses. He means to use my hunger to break me to my role in his performance.

  “Your uncle was right, you should have stayed the other night to see Reese display the antagonist he means to subdue. In reality I can give Reese nothing—but he can take from me. He ‘builds me up,’ as Roger put it, in order to stand higher himself when he has cast me down. He presents me as some mystical and powerful being which he alone, the leader, the master, can conquer and destroy.” His knuckles whitened where he gripped the side of the cot. “Do
you hear, do you understand? Let me out or Reese and his people will kill me.”

  “Stop saying that! Roger—”

  “Stop dodging, face the truth! Roger can’t help now even if he wants to. He consoles himself for his loss of control with thoughts of how rich he’ll become from Reese’s enterprise. Against that the slaughter of a mere animal, an investment made on a whim, weighs very little. Have you noticed, Roger never refers to or addresses me by name? He is preparing himself to be indifferent to my death.”

  Mark struck the bars with his fist. “Shut up, Roger’s not a coward, he’d never let anybody get killed! You’re the killer, and you’re a dirty liar, you’d say anything to turn me against Roger so I’d let you go! You’d do anything, you freak, you murderer!”

  “And you,” replied the vampire with weary bitterness, “are clearly Roger’s kin. He makes his preparations and you make yours. At the level of name-calling there’s nothing to be said or done. Go tend to your schoolwork.” He closed his eyes.

  Mark turned away. “Old liar,” he whispered furiously to himself. “Murdering old lying freak!”

  * * *

  The weather turned warmer. Mark spent as much time away from Roger’s as he could, sitting through foolish movies, wandering blankly down quiet museum halls. Neither his school assignments nor Skytown could hold his attention even when he took all his papers to the library and tried to work there. Once he fell asleep on the carpeting in the muted glow of the gem exhibit at the museum. A noisy class of children came in and woke him. He left and found himself walking uptown toward his mother’s: running away.

  He could no longer remember the college student’s face. The young man’s death seemed to him now like . . . like a kid getting his arm pulled off by a bear at the zoo, except of course he hadn’t stuck his own arm through the bars to the bear. Roger had done that for the man, literally. Alan Reese had sort of done it, too, through Roger. Sometimes Mark scarcely believed it had really happened. He hadn’t seen the student die; maybe it was a mistake, maybe the newspapers had gotten the facts wrong or exaggerated for some reason, or maybe Reese had lied to Roger.