Lost Souls

by Poppy Z. Brite - (ebook by Undead)

  “Hurry up,” Steve panted as they swung into the alley. “You’ve got the key.”

  Ghost fumbled with the key Arkady had given him, aware of Steve behind him wanting to wrest it out of his hand. At last the door swung open. The shop was very cold. There was some other smell beneath the herbs and candles and incense, something dry, ready to crumble. The mummy smell, Ghost thought. That’s what they smelled like. Ghost had never seen a mummy, but his grandmother had looked at a bunch of them in a museum once. They were all in glass boxes, she told him. You couldn’t smell them, but I knew just how they would smell. Like spice kept in a jar too long. Like rags hung up to dry for a thousand years.

  Pink and black candle wax had melted onto the velvet dropcloth of the altar. Steve took the stairs three at a time, kicking aside a heap of rags that lay across the top tread. Ghost followed slowly. There was a bad feeling here, a feeling of stillness, of nothing left alive. He didn’t want to go upstairs, but he knew he had to.

  At the top of the stairs he nudged the heap of rags with the toe of his sneaker. It rolled over and gaped up at him, lips stretched tight over teeth like chips of ivory. A tiny half-dried trickle of blood seeped from the torn socket of its right eye. Arkady must have summoned the last of his strength to pull the knife out of his robe and drive it into his eye socket. Ghost had seen the knife on Arkady’s nightstand, a long, lethal-looking thing with a jewelled handle and a ten-inch tapered blade. His hands were still folded around the haft. Ghost saw the gleam of precious stones between fingers like dry kindling.

  Steve’s boot had punched a sizable hole in Arkady’s brittle rib cage. Inside the body cavity, withered organs hung like empty wineskins, grayish-brown, already coated with a fine layer of dust. How the twins must have loved Arkady, Ghost thought; how many wild nights they must have spent with him, to be able to suck him so utterly dry. How could this bundle of shrivelled tissues have lived long enough to drive a knife into its own eye?

  But the knife protruded from the socket in mute testimony. Gently, Ghost pried Arkady’s brittle fingers from the haft, drew the blade from Arkady’s eye, and tried to tuck the white robe around the desiccated little body. He closed Arkady’s withered eyelids as carefully as he could, but they still flaked away beneath his fingers.

  Then he made himself go into the bedroom.

  The light was as flat and dead as neon, though it was only the light of the moon shining through the window. Steve sat on the edge of the bed. Beside him was a hump swathed in bloody sheets. Steve’s face had gone an absolute, eerie white. Thick blood coated his hands. He raked his fingers through his hair, matting it and streaking his forehead. “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  Steve laughed the most hopeless laugh Ghost had ever heard. “Oh yeah. I’m sure. Come here and get a good look, why don’t you?” Ghost stepped closer to the bed, and Steve yanked the sheet back.

  Ann lay on her side, twisted into an attitude that was painful to look at. Her neck craned stiffly back. Her face was a grimace of pain. Crusted rivulets of blood ran from the corners of her mouth. Her hands were thrust between her outstretched legs as if she had been clawing at herself. Blood slimed her arms to the elbows like gory gloves. Most of the bandages had come unravelled, or Ann had torn them away. They lay in a sodden heap beside the bed. The sheet beneath Ann’s hips was a black nightmare of blood. She had bled so much that the sheet and the mattress could not absorb it all; the overflow pooled in the wrinkles and depressions of the bedclothes, clotting as thick and dark as jelly.

  Cupped in Ann’s hands, half-encased in a glob of gelatinous blood, Ghost saw a pale shape no larger than a red bean: the dot of an eye, the veined bubble of a skull, tiny fingers like the petals of sea anemones. He looked away.

  Four a.m. is when all my dreams die, Ann had told him. It would always be four a.m. for her now; nothing could ever get her through this last, longest night.

  “You know what?” Steve laughed again and shoved his bloody hair back. “There’s even blood on her eyeballs. How the fuck did it get on her eyeballs? What did he give her? What did we give her?” He stared wildly around the room, at the dusty walls, the cobwebbed ceiling. He met Ghost’s eyes, but there was no sign of recognition in his empty stare. A long shudder ran through him.

  Then he seemed to pull himself together. His eyes were no longer blank; they shone with the glaze of alcohol and unhealthy resolve. “I’m gonna kill them,” he said. “You found Ann. You can find where they live. And you’re gonna take me there and help me kill them all.”

  Ghost had to moisten his lips before he spoke. “I don’t want to kill anybody,” he said.

  “Yeah?” Steve grinned his humorless grin. “Then how come you’re holding that?”

  Ghost looked down at his hand. He was holding Arkady’s jewelled knife. The slender blade was dazzling in the cold neon light.

  Ghost raised his eyes back to Steve’s. Slowly he shook his head.

  “Fuck you, then!” Steve jumped up and bolted onto the landing, heading for the stairs. Ghost started to follow.

  But before he reached the door, he turned back and dug a handkerchief out of one of his pockets. Quickly, without thinking much about it, he took the head of the foetus between thumb and forefinger and extracted it from the lump of congealed blood. The back of his hand brushed Ann’s inner thigh; it was scaly with dried gore.

  The tiny skull was still warm, and for a moment the sticky skin seemed to twitch between his fingers. But that was only his hand trembling. He wrapped the foetus in his handkerchief and tucked the bundle into his pocket.

  Out on the landing, Steve snatched Arkady’s withered corpse up by the front of its robe and slammed it against the wall. The brittle cranium shattered. Dust sifted from the cavity, powdered Steve’s hands, mingled with Ann’s blood.

  “What’d you do to her?” Steve yelled into the ruined face. “What was that stuff? Drano? Why did we trust you?”

  He kicked the body down the stairs. At the bottom it crumbled, the white robe settling over a pile of dust and splintered bones. Steve followed it.

  Ghost ran down after him and tried to grab him, but Steve was already raging through the shop. He kicked Arkady’s altar, and it crashed over, though Ashley’s skull was nowhere to be seen. He tore the beaded curtain down. Bright bits of plastic skittered across the floor. He swept rows of bottles and boxes off the shelves. Strange pungent smells wafted up from the spilt substances.

  “Fucker,” said Steve helplessly. “Goddamn shithead fucker.” He might have been speaking of God or Arkady or himself. He stood with his feet splayed and his eyes rolling wildly, looking for something else to destroy, something whose broken fragments might magically recoalesce into a whole, living Ann. He grabbed the knife from Ghost’s hand and raised it high above his head.

  Ghost saw plainly what Steve intended to do next: he was going to bring the heavy handle down on the glass case where Arkady’s bowls and jars were laid out. Several hundred pounds of shattering glass, even in a back alley of the French Quarter late at night, might attract attention. And with Ann lying in her own blood upstairs and the proprietor smashed to powder in the back room, attention was not what they wanted. “Don’t do that,” Ghost said, and caught Steve’s arm.

  Steve whirled on him. For a moment Ghost thought Steve would bring the knife down in his face. But Steve only stood poised to attack, the muscles of his arms trembling.

  “Listen,” Ghost said as calmly as he could. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even Arkady’s fault. Ann made her own choice.” Bewitched, he thought, but that wouldn’t help Steve.

  Steve’s lips worked soundlessly. His eyes were red and desperate. But ever so slowly he lowered the knife. In that moment, despite the dark smears of blood on his forehead and the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, Steve’s face looked younger and more vulnerable than ever. It was the face of the eleven-year-old kid Ghost had once known, wanting badly to believe what Ghost was te
lling him, wanting to trust Ghost but not quite able.

  At last Steve said, “You don’t think it was my fault?”

  “It was never your goddamn fault.”

  “Or Arkady’s, even? You don’t think she died because of the poison we gave her?”

  “She would’ve died no matter what, Steve. Arkady told us she couldn’t have an abortion. And the baby would have killed her. It wasn’t our fault. Not a damn thing could have helped her.”

  “The vampires did it.” Soft, but simmering with rage and pain. “Yeah. Vampires. So what if they are? Does that mean they can just roll into town, fuck up my life, then go off and party some more? I was fucking up my life just fine on my own. I didn’t need them. Ann didn’t need them. I still loved her—I would’ve—I would’ve—”

  “I know you would’ve.”

  “But now I can’t.” Steve spread his hands wide. “There’s no choice anymore. Everything I wanted, everything she ever wanted—none of it can ever happen now. And how come? Because some vampire was horny?” He hefted the knife. “No. It’s not gonna be that way. You can find them, Ghost. You can take me to their lair.

  “And I’m gonna kick some vampire ass.”

  Christian clawed the bathroom door open and felt his way back along the landing. His good night vision could not help him now, because his eyes were squeezed shut against the pain. It washed over him again, a green nausea that felt as if it were turning his guts into bloody lace, a sickness that clutched the softest core of him and squeezed.

  Twice already he had made his way to the bathroom. His fastidiousness would not allow him to vomit on the floor as the others were doing, though now he was far sicker than any of them, except possibly Nothing.

  He swore at himself. Stupid, stupid—-falling for Zillah’s tricks, trying to buy their love. You can never be like them. They are young and strong and wild. To them the blood is just another path to drunken gratification. You are old, and for you the blood is life itself.

  But as the Chartreuse blazed down, he had felt as if he were drinking those eyes, Zillah’s eyes. Zillah had made him drink half the bottle. Molochai and Twig egged him on between bouts of retching. Nothing lay silent, slit-eyed, beaded with icy sweat.

  Christian pushed the door shut, stumbled across the room, and fell on the bed beside Nothing. He heard no gagging or moaning; everyone else seemed to be asleep. The blaze of green pain lessened a little. Christian opened his eyes and studied the delicate pattern of water marks on the ceiling, following their lines, wondering if they formed maps that someone might travel. Wondering if they formed the map that had brought him and Nothing and the others here, to this city, to this room.

  Soon his eyes closed, and he slept a dark dreamless sleep.

  His feet sore from all the night’s running, his heart ready to burst with Steve’s pain and his own, Ghost led Steve along Chartres Street. Steve had jammed the dagger into the waistband of his jeans. The jewelled handle protruded obscenely.

  Ghost was pretty sure he knew where Nothing and the others were staying. He didn’t have to be psychic to use the phone book, and Christian’s bar was still listed. But how do you know about the bar, the long-ago nights empty even at Mardi Gras? How do you know about the room upstairs where a girl gave birth to her own death? These were questions best asked in dreams. Ghost let his feet lead him along.

  He shouldn’t be taking Steve on this fool mission at all, putting them both in danger. He should lead him to a dead end, an empty room somewhere. Or a bar. But Steve had been put through enough bullshit tonight. Something in Ghost rebelled at lying to him. Anyway, the vampires would surely be out drinking somewhere. Steve could go upstairs and bang on the door until he saw the room was empty. Then there would be no reason to stay.

  Steve saw the boarded-up window, the shabby door with the faded sign above it that still said CHRISTIAN’S. Beside it, an unmarked door stood open; a long staircase ascended into darkness.

  “Is this it?” Steve didn’t wait for an answer; the truth was in Ghost’s eyes. He put his hand on the jewelled haft and started up.

  Halfway to the top, the darkness took on a velvety tangibility, as if Ghost might stroke it with his hand. Above him he heard Steve feeling his way up the stairs, banging his head against the walls, missing a step and stumbling when he finally reached the landing. Up here there was a little light, dim and watery, as if the moon shone in through an unseen hole in the roof.

  “This door?” Steve asked. There were three.

  “Yeah, but—” Ghost stared at the door. He had thought the room would be empty, but it didn’t feel empty.

  Steve twisted the knob and gave the door a vicious kick with the toe of his boot. It swung open, and before Ghost could react, Steve had stepped inside.

  It was even darker in the apartment. Steve couldn’t see the bed or its two shadowy occupants until he was upon them. His knees hit the edge of the mattress, and he nearly lost his balance. Only the thought of falling into bed with two vampires steadied him.

  The room reeked of blood and vomit. Steve’s stomach clenched, and all the beer he had drunk earlier threatened to make itself known to him again. But he was past being sick. There was another smell too, something herbal and alcoholic. It was coming, he realized, from one of the figures on the bed. It was on his breath.

  Steve pulled the knife out. The haft felt good in his hand, heavy and sure. It would cleave straight through the motherfucker’s heart—blood for Ann’s blood. And then he would keep carving. He would take out as many of them as he could.

  The weight of the knife tugged at Steve’s arm, as if the thin sharp blade were hungry for blood. A thread of doubt touched him. Blood for blood: that was right. But somewhere in him he knew that this was not the one who had killed Ann. This was not Zillah. Did they all have to die for Zillah’s sins?

  Steve wavered, nearly dropped the knife. But then the demon in his mind began to whisper. Not his old familiar demon. This was a new one, darker and more twisted, with a dark shapeless mouth and eyes that wept blood. Ann died like a roadkill, it told him. And you know it was your fault. Fuck what Ghost says, you know the part you played. If you can’t do this, you might as well carry her bloody corpse back to Missing Mile slung over your shoulders.

  Steve’s hands tightened convulsively around the haft of the knife. The sharp facets of the jewels cut into his palms. Zillah was somewhere in this room, he knew that. And Zillah would be next.

  Then the demon was pulling his arms down, and Steve screamed his exultant rage as the blade cracked the vampire’s breastbone and sank into his soft dark heart.

  Nothing struggled to wake up. Something was wrong. His body felt sheathed in dry sweat, and he could not force his eyelids open.

  He had been so sick from Wallace’s blood. They all had.

  The smell of vomit was still strong in the room, vomit and Chartreuse and beer…

  No one had drunk beer tonight. That much he was certain of. Nothing managed to open his eyes.

  He had just enough time to see Steve standing over the bed, his face terrified but crazily exultant, his arms raised high above his head—and then Nothing saw the blade plunge down into Christian’s body beside him. Christian’s black blood arced up from his chest, splattering the moonlight, soaking into the carpet to mingle with the faded blood of Jessy.

  The impact brought Christian up from sleep.

  For a moment there was pain, deep and cold. But compared with the sickness he had felt earlier, the pain was not very bad. It was like being adrift on a river, one that smelled of mud and bones like the Mississippi, but this river was green. Its gentle luminescence bathed him and soaked through him. At last he was drunk. The river made him drunk, and his mind grew dim and began to rest.

  Heartblood welled up in his mouth, and he licked it from his lips. The taste was sweet, dark, familiar, and it would stay with him forever; it was the essence of him. Through the bright film that washed over his eyes, he saw a face above him: tra
nslucent hair hanging like a waterfall, pale eyes wide and stricken.

  As Christian sank beneath the green waters of his death, he thought, Three hundred and eighty-three years. And he was as beautiful as he should have been. He was lovely.

  There were too many words in Ghost’s mouth, ready to spill into the silence of the room. Murderer, he wanted to say, my best friend, my only brother. I once saw you run your car off the road to keep from hitting a stray dog. How could you stab someone through the heart? How could you bear it as you looked into his eyes?

  But in the end he didn’t say any of those words, because the silence erupted around them.

  Ghost had come up beside the bed. He was standing a little behind Steve, and he never saw Zillah coming. Steve must have seen him, because he stepped backward.

  There was only a heart-stopping blur of motion launching itself out of the darkness. Then the razor flashed, and every speck of light in the room seemed to coalesce along its deadly edge. Wetness hit Ghost’s face, hot and stinging. The taste was in his mouth, in his throat. Blood. Steve’s blood, spraying.

  Zillah had Steve around the chest, forcing him down. Steve bucked and clawed at him. But Zillah’s free hand had the razor, and now it was swinging down, toward Steve’s throat.

  The knife still protruded from Christian’s chest, jewels glittering dully in the faint light. Ghost reached out and pulled it free. Christian’s heart made a faint sucking sound as the blade came away. Blood seeped from the wound.

  Ghost felt that he moved in slow motion: the razor was still swinging down. He took two steps forward. Easily, he slid his left arm around Zillah’s neck; effortlessly he pulled Zillah’s chin up and back.

  Then he drove the knife straight into Zillah’s temple, and that was the hardest thing he had ever done.