Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite - (ebook by Undead)

  The first spatters of rain started coming down ten minutes later. The cars still went implacably by. Nothing’s wet hair fell in his face. The rain came down harder, colder. He was almost ready to turn around and go back to Spooky—the motorcycle wouldn’t offer any shelter, but maybe they could hole up in the vault—when the black van came thundering down the road.

  It was dingy and dusty, black going gray. The back window was covered with stickers and decals. As the van passed him, Nothing caught a glimpse of several legends half-obscured by mud and dirt: PHOTUS/FETUS/VATOS, in dripping red letters; PARTY TILL YOU PUKE; BAUHAUS, with the sketchy face that was the band’s logo. And he thought he saw one that said JESUS SAVES and another that read IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY DRIVING, DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT.

  Then the van jolted into reverse and pulled up next to him. Three heads swivelled to look at Nothing, three clumps of hair, three faces defined in blots of dark makeup. Their hands clawed at the windows, and their mouths opened, laughing, and for a moment Nothing thought they would drive away and leave him staring after the van, his foot already on the asphalt, his skin ready for warmth. But then the passenger door opened and one of the figures swayed toward him, spat hair out of its mouth, and said, “Hi. Want a ride?”

  The air inside the van was as hot and wet as a kiss, and the sweet scent of cheap wine was so strong he could taste it. “I’m Twig,” said the driver. His voice was low and amused, and his sidelong smile was as quick and sharp as a blade. “The bum here is Molochai. And the pretty one in the back, that’s Zillah.”

  As the van started up again with a jolt, Nothing crouched next to the gearshift and studied his new companions. Twig was fox-faced, with eyes like chips of night. Molochai’s features were more blunt, his smile more babyish. But there seemed to be some invisible bond between them. They laughed at the same time; their gestures mirrored each other.

  Right now they were involved in some long meaningless argument about a drink they had invented—strawberry wine and chocolate milk, Nothing gathered after a moment. Twig steered the van with one hand and swatted at Molochai with the other. Molochai swiped back at Twig with grubby fists, then passed him a bottle of wine. Twig sucked at the bottle. Wine ran down his chin, and they giggled wildly as the van swerved across the center line.

  Nothing crawled into the back of the van. The ceiling and walls were decorated with more stickers and decals and Magic Marker graffiti. Overlying it all was a pattern of large dark stains like some kind of cancer.

  The third occupant of the van—Zillah—lay stretched out on a mattress where the dark stains were even more profuse. Zillah had an androgynous, perfect face and a ponytail tied back by a purple silk scarf. Wisps of hair escaped the ponytail, framing that astonishing face, those stunning eyes green as limes. From the sleeves of an oversized black jacket emerged strong graceful hands with long nails, nails filed sharp and painted glossy black. Nothing twined his own fingers together, trying to hide his chipped polish job.

  Beneath the skin of Zillah’s hands was a delicate purple tracery of veins. Nothing thought again of the heroin he had shot up, the drug still coursing through him. Then he looked away from the strong veined hands, up into Zillah’s eyes. And Nothing felt himself falling into a green sea.

  “Hello,” said Zillah. The voice was soft, a little husky, razor-edged with amusement. Surely Zillah was used to being stared at, used to taking strangers’ breath away.

  “Hello,” said Nothing. His voice wasn’t working very well.

  Zillah lit a tiny pipe carved in the shape of an ebony rose and passed it to Nothing. The substance in the bowl was dark, sticky.

  When Nothing sucked at the pipe, a sweet strange taste came into his mouth. It was like smoking incense. “What is it?” he gasped, trying to hold the smoke in.

  Zillah gave him an evil, heartstopping smile. “Opium.”

  Two new drugs in two hours. Nothing thought he could get to like hitchhiking. He lit the pipe again. With the next drag he became aware of Zillah’s eyes still on him, felt that green light blazing along the lines of his body. But when he looked up, what he saw was Zillah’s mouth: lips parted, the pink tip of a tongue caught between sharp teeth. And then Zillah’s hands were on him, drawing him toward that mouth. He wondered whether he might fall in and lie on Zillah’s tongue until Zillah swallowed him down.

  “You are delicious,” Zillah told him after they had kissed.

  “So are you,” Nothing answered, and his heart contracted. He had never felt so far away from home, or so glad to be there.

  “You’re bewitching.”

  “Bewitch me,” Nothing managed to say, and then Zillah was sucking at his mouth again. Nothing slipped his hands inside the baggy black jacket, under the soft shirt. When he felt the rings through Zillah’s nipples, his eyes widened a little—this was a wilder crowd than he was used to. Not that he was complaining.

  Zillah’s teeth were at his throat, biting hard enough to hurt, then seeming to hesitate and release his skin an instant before drawing blood. He had made out with virtual strangers before—among his friends back home this was almost as fashionable as bisexuality—but he had never done it with anyone half as beautiful as Zillah.

  There was an explosion of loud laughter from the front seat. Zillah was whispering something in Nothing’s ear. The words were jumbled, but Zillah’s voice was as smooth as Kahlua with cream, and the junk in Nothing’s blood made him passive. His body felt heavy and very warm. He lay back, not knowing what Zillah wanted to do to him, not caring.

  Later, he could only remember trying to raise his hands, wanting to push Zillah’s head away from his chest because Zillah was biting his nipples too hard. But he could not raise his hands, could not move them at all, so he lay back and concentrated on enjoying the pain. It was easy. He had been doing it for so long.

  “I guess we could take you to Missing Mile,” said Twig, trying to focus on Nothing’s face. “We’re headed for New Orleans. We’re going to see our friend there.”

  New Orleans! That sounded good too. Nothing had never realized how many places there were to go. You could spend your whole life going from place to place, seeing everything and never getting sick of it. That was exactly how Zillah and the others seemed to spend their time. The piles of clothes and bottles and the heavy, almost meaty smell made him think they must live in the van. Again, he wasn’t complaining. The smell did not seem unpleasant to him, and the idea of life in a travelling caravan was as glamorous as anything Nothing had ever dreamed of.

  “Who’s your friend in New Orleans?” Nothing asked. But Twig didn’t answer at all, and Molochai only mumbled “Chrissy” through his mouthful of chocolate cupcake and washed down the sweet stickiness with a swig of strawberry wine. Nothing turned to Zillah, wanting to ask about New Orleans, but Zillah met Nothing’s mouth with his own, his tongue flickering in and out like a snake’s.

  Nothing clung to the edge, teetering happily. He was laboring under the influence of more drugs than he’d ever had all at once before. He wasn’t exactly drunk, and he wasn’t exactly high; he simply floated. Fucked up, Jack would have said—in that other world, in that other life. Just plain ol’ fucked up.

  Zillah had claimed him immediately, which scared him a little and excited him a lot. Zillah was a rougher and more thorough lover than any of the inexperienced kids back home. He had a purple, gold, and green streak in his hair—he said they’d been in New Orleans for Mardi Gras a while back—and he teased the skin of Nothing’s stomach with it, flicked it over the ridges of Nothing’s hipbones. Molochai and Twig stared at them, then laughed and opened another bottle of wine.

  An hour ago, sometime after midnight, Twig had slumped over the wheel, and Molochai had had to grab it and steer them away from the guardrail. Now they were parked in a field somewhere in southern Virginia, or maybe already in North Carolina.

  Nothing sat up and cleared a spot on the foggy window with the sleeve of his raincoat. He saw rows and rows of stunted t
obacco outside. The window was cold against his hand. He put his cheek on the glass and realized how hot his face was, how hot his whole body was.

  Then his stomach convulsed, and he fumbled at the door handle. Molochai said, “Just puke on the floor,” but Nothing fell out of the van and rolled over the crackling dead tobacco leaves and vomited copiously on the frosty earth. He choked, spat, felt steam from his vomit wash over his face. He tasted fried chicken, strawberry wine, bile. Dimly he became aware that Zillah was holding him, that Zillah’s hands were smoothing his hair back from his burning face.

  Zillah bent to Nothing’s lips and licked away the sour sticky spit that webbed them, tenderly forced Nothing’s mouth open, kissed Nothing full and deep.

  “I love you,” Nothing told Zillah before he knew what he was going to say. But Zillah only looked at him with those glowing green eyes, and Nothing thought he saw a touch of amusement there.

  Back in the van, Nothing expected howls of derision; in this crowd throwing up surely meant you were a pussy. But Molochai and Twig didn’t laugh at him. They were snuggled down on the mattress, clutching each other like children. Nothing lit a Lucky but wrinkled his nose and pitched the cigarette out the window after two drags.

  “Still sick?” said Molochai. “I bet we can make you better.” A glance passed between the three of them. Molochai dug under the mattress and pulled out a wine bottle half full of a dark liquid, ruby-brown and thicker than wine. The outside of the bottle was covered with dried smears and fingerprints of the liquid. “Drink this. It’ll fix you up.”

  “If it doesn’t kill you,” Twig added with his quick blade of a smile.

  Nothing took the bottle, uncapped it, lifted it to his mouth, and sipped. There was some kind of liquor—vodka or gin, something oily and stinging—but mingled with that was another taste, dark and sweet and a little decayed. Familiar. He brought the bottle down, blinked, then lifted it again and drank deep. Molochai, Twig, and Zillah watched him. All three sat very still, seeming to hold their breath. Nothing stopped drinking, licked his lips, and smiled.

  “I don’t think drinking blood is so weird,” he said.

  At first they only looked surprised. Molochai and Twig were perhaps a little disappointed; Nothing thought he saw a faint feral glow fading out of their eyes. Zillah raised his eyebrows at them, lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. The air in the van was thick, tense; something seemed to be passing between them, something Nothing could not read. Then Zillah laid his hand over Nothing’s and pushed the bottle to Nothing’s lips again.

  They passed it around, drinking until the insides of their mouths were stained rotten red. Nothing no longer felt sick. He was giddy with joy, and when Zillah grabbed him again, he kissed back hard, then hooked his fingers through Zillah’s nipple rings and tugged gently.

  “Do that again, about three times as hard,” sighed Zillah.

  Nothing complied, dizzy with arousal. He could not have imagined a better lover if he had been given the blueprint.

  He didn’t know where the blood had come from, whether it was something they used to scare outsiders or a taste they genuinely cultivated, and right now he didn’t care. Anyone who wanted to play vampire was all right by him.

  Everyone passed out sometime before dawn. Nothing slept close by Zillah, his smooth cheek resting against Zillah’s arm. Zillah watched him in the darkness, studied the lashes lying smudgily against the pale skin, the sweet lips parted in sleep, the breath from them rich with wine and blood. He brushed a strand of dirty black hair away from the boy’s brow, traced the shape of the boy’s face with his forefinger. It was a fine clear face, the delicate yet strong bone structure just beginning to emerge from the mask of childhood. He was perhaps the most attractive hitchhiker they had ever picked up. And what was so strange about him?

  He had drunk from the bottle of blood without choking, without spitting or gagging. To the contrary—the blood had seemed to revive him, freshen his skin, brighten his eyes.

  Most hitchhikers were glad enough to party with them, to share a pipe or a tab of acid or a tumble on the mattress. Then—always after these pleasures, for it made their blood sweeter—the wine bottle was brought out. Or the whiskey bottle, or whatever they had put the latest batch in. This was Molochai and Twig’s favorite part: the hitchhiker, already drunk or high or fried on acid, would swig eagerly from the bottle. Then his eyes—or her eyes—would grow big and frightened, and his mouth—or her mouth—would twist in terror and disgust as the blood drooled back out of it, and Molochai, Twig, and Zillah would be upon him. Or her. One rescuing the wine bottle, one holding the hitchhiker’s panicked hands, and one at the throat. The sweet, rended, pulsing throat. Or the belly. Or the crotch. Anywhere would do, any spot that would bleed.

  But none of that had happened with this boy—Nothing. Where had he come by such a name? And where had he come by a taste for blood? Again Zillah studied the clear sleeping face, the dark fringe of hair that fell across the eyes. This one could stay around for a few days. There was magic in his bloodstream, surely, but maybe a sort of magic that should be saved for a while. With the tip of his finger he touched Nothing’s lips. And in his sleep, Nothing smiled.

  The birth of morning found them all heaped on the mattress, tangled, hair across faces, hearts to backbones, hands clutching hands. Zillah stirred and muttered as the first light touched his eyelids—the last ancestral vestige of a reflex he scarcely remembered, even in his nightmares. He pressed his mouth against Nothing’s throat. Then he came half-awake and, remembering that he had decided to keep this boy, did not bite but had to suck like a baby before he could sleep.

  16

  Steve had awakened with a hellacious hangover. This was no rare occurrence for him—usually he could sleep it off or chew Excedrin until he felt better—but today’s was a real bulldog, tenacious and ugly, with pounds of power in its drooling jaws.

  Now Ghost was trying to talk to him. The guy had some nerve. Steve glowered across the kitchen table. “You want to go where?”

  “Miz Catlin’s. You remember her, my grandmother’s friend? She has her own store now. It’s out on Forty-two toward Corinth. Just down the road, west.”

  “West,” said Steve stupidly. He poked at his banana pancakes, then sipped the beer Ghost had given him. Hair of the dog, he told himself. Hair of the dog that bit me. Who says there aren’t nerves in the brain? He pressed his hands to his temples, winced, lifted the beer again. That was all the exercise he planned on getting this morning. “What do you want to go out there for?”

  “She makes herb remedies. I want to get some balm of angelica.” Ghost shovelled in a forkful of pancake, licked honey off his lips. “I got a wisdom tooth coming in.”

  “I’ll take you down to the 7-Eleven. You can get a bottle of Tylenol.”

  Ghost pulled his hair in front of his face and looked disdainful. “That’s no good. I can’t use any of that stuff—it makes me sick. Come on, you ought to get out of the house.”

  “Where is this place again?”

  “West,” said Ghost patiently. “You know. Like California, only not as far.”

  Steve lifted his middle finger, but the effort was too much for him, and he took another swig of beer. “I’m supposed to go to work at four.”

  “We’ll be back by then. Come on, Steve. It might not be warm much longer.”

  Steve cast a suspicious look at Ghost. “You drank as much as I did. How come you don’t have a hangover?”

  Ghost smiled. “Miz Catlin gave me a potion. Want some?”

  One of the four roads that led out of Missing Mile, Fire-house Street, crossed N.C. 42 a ways out of town. Steve turned the T-bird onto the highway and leaned out the window, letting the wind rush past his face. The air smelled of the long sweet death of summer and the gaudy return of autumn. Dandelions, creekwater, woodsmoke from an early bonfire. Steve breathed them all in.

  He felt better now, had felt better ever since Ghost made him drink some bittersw
eet anise-flavored liquid from a tiny blue bottle. Steve had heard all the arguments against herbal medicine—it was dangerous, it was inaccurate, it was better left to real scientists with real Ph.D.’s—but growing up around Ghost and Miz Deliverance, he had seen folk remedies in action a hundred times over. They could be a damn sight more powerful than anything available at the local pharmacy.

  Ghost had dug an old five-stringed guitar out of the T-bird’s trunk. He sprawled in the backseat strumming random chords that sounded like crystal being smashed by a rusty hammer, singing as loud as he could over the wind and the hum of the tires on the road. “Sold in the market down in New Orleeeeens… I bet your momma was a voodoo queen… owhoooo, how come you dance so gooood?”

  Ghost’s voice always reminded Steve of Hank Williams before the speed and the whiskey got him, and in it Steve thought he could hear the beat of dusky blood and the roar of the Mississippi. But he only said, “That’s not how that song goes.”

  Under Ghost’s enthusiastic fingers, the guitar strings protested, then succumbed and sang their cacophonous song. The G-string pinged out a tiny death knell as it snapped. Ghost sang more softly, mourning it. In the front seat Steve grinned, shook his head, and pushed the speed up a notch. The sun was warm, and the road rose and fell smoothly away, and they almost drove past the place before Ghost stopped playing and said, “That’s it!”

  Steve slowed, looked around. “Where?”

  Ghost pointed at a little house set back from the road. It was painted green and sat on a big lawn still speckled yellow and white with late dandelions. Out back, Steve thought he saw the gleam of a pond. Sure enough, as he watched, a fat white goose came around the house and marched up the porch steps. At the end of the driveway, a carefully stencilled sign read: CATLIN’S COUNTRY STORE. PICKLES, PIES, PRESERVES. CLOSED SUNDAYS