The Vampires

by John Rechy

  “Yet they carried poison!” Valerie said.

  “Poison which they would use only if stirred,” said the priest.

  Blue opened his lips: Father, forgive me, for I have sinned. Only when there was no reaction from the priest, nor from anyone else, only then did Blue realize he had not spoken the words that begin a formal confession. They had merely thundered in his mind.

  4

  “What do you want to tell me about me and Richard?” Joja said the words. She saw: Her reflection in the haloed mirror, the luminous red hair, the purple, heavily eyelashed eyes, the mouth like a rose: Youth had extended its lease to her. But how much longer? Time exists only on my face!

  “I remember the man who burned you,” came Mark’s cold words again.

  An invisible fist pulled at Joja’s skull. “How dare you!” she tried to challenge the boy.

  “You reached for the man’s cigarette, for his hand, and you brought it against your breast—right here— . . .” He touched her there. “And you laughed while you forced him to burn you in front of my father and the others,” he went on rapidly.

  I felt dead, I wanted to feel pain to know I was Alive! Joja’s mind shrieked. Remembering: Malissa was there, hissing, coaxing: “Burn her, darling, she wants to be burned!’’ “I had been drinking. I was— . . .” Joja continued her ambiguous defense.

  “Stoned,” Mark finished. “On pills and everything else.”

  “Which your father provides in abundance!” Joja hurled. “And I was hysterical,” she continued, compelled to explain. “Your father had just told me— . . . something.”

  “That he was marrying Karen—and not you,” the boy finished.

  Yes! Like that! Suddenly I was through! My period of strange probation was over! I had failed him mysteriously like all the others in his search for— . . . What! Her mind screamed that. But in an irrational effort to erase the feeling of having been cornered, she shouted instead at Mark: “You weren’t wearing those trunks earlier!”

  “I wasn’t wearing anything,” he said easily.

  She gazed at his body. The velvet down of hair thickened at the edge of his trunks.

  “What’s that scar on your neck?” he asked her abruptly. The halo of lights locked their reflections in an intimate circle.

  She touched the scar, almost with affection. “Your father— . . .” she said dreamily, the memory inducing a trance, “Richard, once—one time— . . . he— . . . bit me there! He called it a symbolic ritual of— . . . our ‘affection’!”

  Mark touched the scar gently.

  Joja lifted her head. The invisible fist that had clutched her skull relaxed magically at the boy’s touch.

  Outside, there was the whirring of the helicopter.

  “Do you love my father?” Mark asked softly.

  She could not form the words which her mind quickly supplied: He brought me to life, if only while I was with him. She remembered: The only fulfilling interlude in the wailing emptiness of her life. Love? No. But only because that word was not powerful enough to define her desire, her need—all sealed by the ritualistic initiation performed by his mouth on her neck: her blood in him. I need him! she knew.

  “I asked him to invite you back,” Mark flung the words into the roiling silence.

  He’s lying! she thought, the words stirring vague fears. Was there a rivalry between father and son?

  Mark leaned over her. His bare thigh touched her arm.

  Joja closed her eyes, raising her face to the boy.

  It was uncanny, the resemblance between Paul and her son. That thought frightened Tarah. She had been ready to join the others in the anteroom. Now she stopped abruptly. Why are they here? . . . Richard’s terrible experiments. No!

  Paul was aware that the woman was staring at him. Without realizing it, she had moved to within a few feet of him. “I’m sorry,” she apologized to him. “You remind me so much of— . . .”

  “Someone you loved,” sighed la Duquesa. The thought floated to the surface of her mind from the pool of her private reveries. “Someone who died, at the summit of his beautiful life—and loved you with all his heart— . . .”

  “No,” Tarah said quickly. “He isn’t dead. He reminds me of my son.”

  “Will Gable be here?” The words formed like ice on Malissa’s dark lips.

  “You know I wouldn’t allow it, Malissa!” Tarah said. Automatically her eyes scanned the beautiful youngmen in the room. She throttled the images. The fever— . . .

  “But you are here,” said Malissa. “And indeed so are we all—waiting for our host to surprise us, and, perhaps, to surprise our host!” Then her eyes sliced the room in an arc, gliding from a figure in the domed hall to Bravo for an important reaction to be studied. “Savannah is here,” Malissa said casually.

  “Shit,” Bravo said. She brought her whip against her thigh with a whack!

  In a haze of gold light, a woman of stunning beauty stood under the crystal dome. Often described as the most beautiful woman in the world, she moved toward the others now, slowly as if her beauty had an actual physical weight which must be borne with care. Dressed in sheer tan, the color of her body, she appeared almost naked. Eyes the color of honey in the warm sun, the same color as her hair; long eyelashes black and lush; full orange lips: a perfect, starkly sexual face rivaled a perfect body: tawny, lithe, slender, with full, firm, tight breasts. Savannah’s beauty was utterly flawless, the reality of it surpassing even its legend.

  As she entered the anteroom: With a hiss, the tip of Bravo’s whip lashed outside through the window (before which Tor still stood vacantly in search of the Escaped bird). The whip choked the stem of a Vermillion flower, and broke it with a snap. Bravo retrieved the blossom, marched toward Savannah; and—booted legs spread defiantly—she dropped the dead flower like a severed head at her feet. “The virgin whore!” she slashed at Savannah.

  Savannah laughed: loudly. A derisive laughter meant to obviate whatever of triumph the gesture held for Bravo.

  Malissa joined the other’s laughter; then Topaze too; then Rev.

  “A dramatic gesture, Bravo!” said Malissa.

  “A scene from one of your unreleased movies?” Savannah said.

  “What happened to your prince?” Bravo attacked Savannah.

  “Which one?” said Savannah coolly.

  “The one she pimped for you,” Bravo spat, indicating Malissa.

  Savannah brushed her long hair from her face, dismissing the memory evoked.

  “Are you still a virgin!” Bravo continued the assault.

  “Yes!” Savannah’s eyes were like rare, blazing, amber jewels.

  Tor stood next to her, flexing his giant muscles as if to challenge the woman’s beauty.

  “Boo,” said Savannah. But no response from Tor. “Doesn’t he speak?” she asked no one, anyone.

  “He flexes,” said Malissa.

  “And performs feats—interesting feats,” Albert volunteered excitedly. “Topaze performs . . . feats, too; we found him in a circus!”

  Malissa’s silent hands, barely rising, restrained Albert.

  “Your entourage for this season?” Savannah asked Malissa.

  “And la Duquesa— . . .” Malissa indicated the queen in mourning drag.

  “Where the hell do you find them?” Bravo demanded.

  “We found la Duquesa outside of a cemetery,” Malissa answered easily.

  “She was actually hitchhiking!” Albert blurted. Once again he retreated quickly.

  Rev laughed, glancing from Albert to la Duquesa.

  “We were on our way from somewhere,” Malissa said. “A bleak day. We saw the figure in black. Waiting. She intrigued me, standing there in mourning, in the drizzle—looking like a figure expelled from the cemetery.”

  La Duquesa remembered: The grave.

  “Doesn’t he—she—speak either?” Savannah asked.

  La Duquesa drew the black veil from her face. She enunciated slowly: “God is a transvestite!
Created in the image of both man and woman. . . See, I can speak.”

  The priest averted la Duquesa’s searching eyes.

  “A cemetery . . . a circus. . . . Where did you find the others?” Bravo taunted.

  “We found Tor on the beach, everyone was staring at his body!” Albert said breathlessly. “And Rev tried to rob me on the street—I was alone. Then Malissa came and laughed in his face. Now he’s fiercely loyal to us.”

  Rev looked at Albert with undisguised contempt.

  “To me,” Malissa corrected him. “Rev is fiercely loyal to me. Show them what you can do, Rev!” she commanded the man in the leather vest.

  “Toss it!” Rev barked at Topaze. The midget flung his cane quickly into the air like a baton. Rev’s hurled knife buried itself into the tip of the spinning cane.

  “Can you match that, Bravo?” Malissa challenged.

  Bravo’s whip lashed out like lightning. Its tip grasped the buried knife, pulling it out of the cane. Retrieving it, she pushed the knife contemptuously back to Rev with her foot. To cap her flashy triumph, she turned her head quickly, like a cobra ready to strike, toward Malissa: “But what do you do with them, Malissa, these people you collect? You have no sex. Do you just drain theirs vengefully because you have none? What happens to them?” Though she addressed Malissa, her eyes sought the current entourage, to stir rebellion.

  “Terrible things happen to them sometimes!” Albert blurted. “The dancer last season—he jumped out of a window. Malissa just stood there. He thought he could fly, and she encouraged— . . .” His eyes glistened with tears at the memory. “His beautiful young body shattered on the street. He was . . . floating . . . in his own . . . blood!”

  La Duquesa saw: The Duke’s body, crushed roses of blood on his chest.

  Blood like a torn, sheer, clinging red sheet on the naked bodies. . . . Blue’s black-blue eyes sought the priest’s.

  “And the transfusions— . . . !” Albert gasped.

  “What transfusions!” Bravo demanded.

  Malissa’s hands rose, the fingers spread. She could have been controlling an invisible current to crush Albert’s words:

  Suddenly he covered his mouth.

  Valerie turned her head quickly; she and her brother had remained silent, witnessing the beginning of a struggle they did not understand. “I abhor violence and cruelty,” she protested.

  “I adore violence too,” said Malissa.

  “She said she abhorred— . . .” Paul corrected.

  Malissa ignored the correction. “Poor Albert,” her lips said; her face had no expression. “I’ve been considering committing him.”

  “No, Malissa!” Albert pled. “I was just making up stories!” he told the others frantically. “I swear I was! Everything I said is a lie!”

  “He imagines things.” The words formed about Malissa.

  As if some key word had pried open her memories, la Duquesa said: “I allowed no one else to attend the funeral of the Duke, my husband, my lover.” (The body on the street. She placed her hand on the red spot, to stop the blood carrying out his life. “Get away! What are you looking at! He’s my husband!”) “I didn’t even go back in the long black limousine. . . . When he was alive, we would drive along the deserted coast.”

  “In winter?” Rev asked abruptly.

  “Yes, in winter,” la Duquesa said. “He held my hand.”

  (A hand. “Let me go!” Death.) Retreating from the evoked memories, the priest met Blue’s stare; it seemed to pull him instantly into its dark depths.

  Looking back at the priest, Blue moved like a gliding shadow out of the amber room, through the gold and white hall in which the stage waited. The shadowed props. Into the domed hall: outside: into the rotunda of vine-choked columns: along the complex maze of gardens: soundlessly. Then he reached an alcove, the round hollow created by shrugging trees. Naked statues, frozen white shadows, guarded it blindly. Blue sat on a bench and waited.

  Footsteps.

  He didn’t look up. “Hello, Father,” he said.

  “You surprised me,” said the priest. “I didn’t know you—anyone—was here,” he explained pointedly.

  The sun penetrated even the vine-veiled alcove. Shifting sequins of light needled the priest’s eyes hypnotically.

  “Father,” Blue spoke the words that had begun to shape earlier. “There’s something I need to tell you, man. About a black throne— . . .” He retreated quickly from the expelled words. “About a face, and the devil— . . .”

  Immediately, the priest felt assaulted by a powerful force spiraling from the depths of this youngman’s dark-blue eyes: whirling vortexes funneling from the center of his convoluted soul. “You want to confess,” he said.

  “Confess?” The word itself seemed to confuse Blue. Confess. . . . An entity, seen before, but not recognized. “No, just rap, man.” Then he blurted: “I saw the Lord Sa— . . . I saw Satan’s face!” The expression on his face did not match the intensity of his voice: His face was impassive.

  (“Hurry, it’s urgent! She’s dying!” No, it was not like that. The priest canceled that other memory.) “Did you invoke his spirit?” He looked down, to establish at least the superficial order of an impersonal confession, to render the thundering words more tolerable. He saw: The inverted star tattooed on Blue’s ankle. He thought: The ram’s head; the ram’s head is missing within the tattoo.

  “No, uh. No— . . .” Blue twisted his foot, concealing the tattoo.

  “By your actions— . . . ?”

  “Diggit: This is how it happened: I worked through a contact service,” Blue said; “a man got me clients, a male madam—Mr Stuart.”

  The priest remembered: Arched bodies. He turned toward the cold statues, searching cold, blind eyes. “This belongs in a confession,” he said. In the cloistered booth of a church—its mosaicked windows so beautiful, its saints like dolls—the harshness of life was rendered less real: the purpose of the gray whispered ritual.

  “No,” Blue insisted. “Listen, man: He commanded me to— . . .” He shook his head, as if to shake those words away. Interrupted images: like a spliced movie in which a recurrently hinted scene is omitted.

  “Who commanded?” The priest felt trapped in a clear shaft of light which Escaped suddenly past the huddled, conspiratorial trees.

  “Commanded?” Blue asked vaguely, caught in a haze of memories. “Oh, uh, what? Oh, nothing, man. This is what I want to tell you. The face— . . . One day I had had four assignments—all insisted on me, even when Mr Stuart told them I was busy; they’d wait, they said—I was the most popular. I felt righteous loved,” he spoke words.

  Words which came too easily, with something of defiance, something of pride? Merely the words of an exhibitionist flaunting his life? Or was he truly anxious to tear a horrible blemish from his soul? The priest had this sudden feeling: of attempted confession of a lesser evil, of the deliberate use of horror to thwart a greater horror. He waited for the unmistakable tone of a wounded soul, the indication of a soul in cold fire. “You felt desired,” he said.

  “Loved, desired—the same thing, man,” Blue said impatiently. “And I rushed to the mirror when I got to my pad, to groove on all that love showing on my face— . . . But— . . . But the face I saw, it was a distortion of my own—like— . . . like it was turned inside out, man! Like the inside of me was reflected in the mirror!”

  Had there been, then, a clear note of genuine terror in the voice? The priest did not fill the suspended silence.

  “Do you believe in Satan?” Blue asked the priest abruptly. A paradoxical smile touched his moody face.

  Again, the priest did not answer.

  “Do you!” Blue insisted. The vague smile was marooned in a twisting sea of dark, shifting expressions.

  “The spirit of— . . . The mind is capable— . . .” the priest stumbled.

  “Was that his face I saw in the mirror?”

  “Sometimes guilt— . . .”

  “Diggit, man,
I don’t feel guilty about anything!” Blue said defiantly. “I just want to know: Do you believe in Satan?”

  “Yes,” the priest answered finally.

  “I was his prince,” said Blue. “He commanded. She—the Blue Woman—and I, we sat naked on the black throne. The others knelt. Listen to me!”

  Wings! Wings flapping! The black bird glided gracefully over the alcove. Now it seemed suspended weightlessly over them for moments. Then it soared away, up, toward the dome of the house. It seemed about to land on the ledge of Joja’s window. Instead, it floated suddenly into the sky.

  Mark saw it. He moved abruptly away from the actress. “I think other guests are here!” he said. “I heard the helicopter.”

  Joja opened her eyes. The world shattered in her face. Her arm felt cold where only moments earlier the touch of Mark’s thigh had warmed it like a promise. Over her—her neck still stretched—the exposed round mirror in the ceiling seemed to spin; a glass maelstrom— . . . She heard the door close. Mark was gone.

  She grabbed a purple robe. On a current of depression, anger, rage, frustration, anxiety, doubt, despair, she rushed out of the room and along the halls. Mirrors grasped at her image. She glided past the panels of vague, waiting figures, a panorama of tense, gold silhouettes like accusatory witnesses pursuing her reflections. Down the sweeping stairs. Over her, the exposed dome stared like a blank eye.

  “Richard!” she yelled defiantly into the empty room. “Richard, where the hell are you? Watching us? Forcing us to wait? Already playing your demonic games?”

  She saw a small, beautiful man staring quizzically at her. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

  “Topaze,” he answered.