The Vampires

by John Rechy

  A crumbling tower. Two figures. A split man. The woman was merely attempting in her flippant game—and the strange child in joining it—to utter a wild, baseless prophecy, the priest told himself to keep from responding in anger: perhaps the very reaction the woman wanted to prod.

  Malissa went on, as if on a verbal rampage, issuing hints of destruction: “Bravo—the eleventh card! Force!” she deliberately misnamed the card of Strength: referring now to the occult cards not so much for their mystic meanings as for the impact of the readily evoked images within them.

  “Force!” Bravo’s voice was menacing. (A man on a woman. “Now!” The man’s body pulled away savagely: And the whip about his neck.) She recovered immediately: “Come off that mystic crap, man!” she tossed.

  But it was obvious that Malissa’s black-pearled weapon had found its object there, if fleetingly. It moved swiftly from Bravo in search of other possible victims: “The Fool!” she sentenced Albert with contempt. “On the edge of a precipice, blindly! And the Queen of Swords beside him: the suit of desolation!”

  “But I have known love!” la Duquesa declared.

  “Savannah!” Malissa accosted the stunning woman. “Savannah can be the Moon, dripping blood!”

  Blood! Savannah looked quickly into her hand.

  Malissa seized the reaction: “Ah, yes; the Moon! The eighteenth card in the major arcanum—eighteen reduced to nine, the number of initiation, Savannah! The torn hymen!”

  (Blood! “Cut it!”) Savannah’s eyes blackened.

  “Dogs baying at the unsullied, but bloody, moon!” Malissa ground on viciously with her description of the card.

  “Baying like you!” Savannah aimed coldly at Malissa.

  But Malissa was not fazed. Her words propelled her kinetically into further assaults: “Tarah!”

  “My card will be The Day of Judgment,” Tarah said quietly. Her eyes scorched their message of vengeance on Richard. Her purpose had been announced.

  Richard said: “A card of resurrection. Or death.”

  “Death,” Tarah chose.

  Malissa allowed the black word to float on the silence. Then: “Or shall you be represented by the Hanged Man? The hanged?—or the hanger, Tarah?” Not wanting an answer now, she said quickly: “Richard, should you be the Magician—the most powerful figure in the Tarot? Or . . . shall it be I . . . Richard?” And there it was: Her own challenge had been issued, easily. YesI It would be this season. Tonight!

  “Or Mark.” Joja’s own words astonished her.

  The boy glanced abruptly away from his father. As if a secret had been announced prematurely.

  Joja felt trapped within two tides. Opposing tides? Or finally conjoined.

  Malissa’s words had stopped abruptly. Mark. . . . In invading her entertainment so expertly, aiming with such uncanny cunning at the priest, had indeed the boy enunciated his bid for power? But he was just a child. Yet perhaps if not now, later. Or was it now? Would she then have to confront Richard and Mark?

  “Is there a snake in the Tarot, Lady Cobra?—for you to play?” Bravo demanded.

  Rejecting the insult, Malissa’s hands wove an intricate symbol before her, it arched, it swirled, it swept about itself: as if something beyond her were directing its shape and her words: Now the black-ringed finger pointing like a sword lunged at Blue. “The card of Death!” she said. Her hand collapsed, the finger aimed at the tattooed star.

  “No,” Blue rejected. “It’s— . . . over, man,” he said vaguely.

  Now abruptly Malissa’s hands came to life again, floating. “And the Lovers!” she named the sixth card. But this time the accusatory finger found no definite object—it glided from Karen to Bravo, to Blue, la Duquesa, the priest, Joja. . . . Paul, Valerie: It waited momentarily like a spider on an invisible cobweb.

  Then the finger retreated. The stabbing hand died. Malissa sighed, suddenly bored: “A game much too complicated,” she deliberately rejected her own seriousness. “We must choose another,” she said in a dull tone.

  Malissa and Richard—weaving the usual trance: advancing, retreating, Tarah knew, almost in admiration.

  “Shall we choose sides between God and Satan?” Malissa offered, casually, a substitute preliminary entertainment. The blue glasses faced the priest.

  “Yes, yes!” Topaze encouraged gleefully “We’ll choose between Satan and God now!”

  “Though often the distinction blurs,” Richard said.

  “Like lovers they begin to look alike,” Malissa offered easily. Whatever war would develop ultimately between her and Richard, now their words were in perfect harmony.

  “How can you speak of God, Malissa?” Tarah questioned bluntly.

  “Why, I have dedicated my life to the discovery of Him, dear Tarah,” Malissa said seriously. “To ferreting Him out for scrutiny.”

  The woman’s smile, cold as it was, certainly it belied any seriousness to her brutal words, the priest told himself. The words merely sought a reaction: how far, how outrageous they could become. Yet he felt personally assaulted. He must challenge the mockery. By leaving? Flee. . . . The recurrent word. Richard’s eyes were on him as if he had spoken it aloud. “Choose by drawing lots?” Jeremy asked lightly, refusing to acknowledge even a sacrilegious seriousness.

  “No, not arbitrarily,” Richard said. “In such a game we would acknowledge freedom of choice.” His smile, like Malissa’s, obviated the seriousness of his words.

  “I believe it’s called free will,” said Malissa.

  The mamaloi and the papaloi trembled slightly, like figures only momentarily released from a powerful force.

  Tor flexed his body, touching it.

  Richard turned swiftly to the priest: “Which side would you choose in such a game, Father?”

  “The obvious choice.” Jeremy still controlled his anger.

  “He chooses Satan,” Malissa said, her words like acid. “Topaze!” Her hands were live entities again. “Which side would you choose? God or Satan?” she asked the midget.

  “You!” Topaze said hurriedly.

  Rev pointed his knife at the midget.

  “And I,” la Duquesa’s voice quivered at the edge of tears, “I would choose . . . love.” (“I love you, I’ll love you forever, only you.” And she extended the flowers to him.)

  “I choose whatever side you’re not on!” Bravo flung at Richard.

  “They’re not serious,” Valerie protested. But she moved urgently toward the priest.

  “Of course not,” he said.

  But Malissa had already whirled about to face Blue. “Which side would you choose?”

  He frowned at her. (He remembered: “Lord Susej, I have received a command!” The words had melted on his mind, like a wax rainbow.) “What?” He searched the tattooed pentagram on his ankle. (Mouths! Kissing it! Mouths moving up to the blue rubber! The star there, too—stretched!) But the ram’s head, he told himself urgently, the ram’s head within the pentagram is missing. “Oh, uh— . . .” he started hazily.

  “Between God and Satan—which side!” Malissa demanded.

  “It’s what— . . .” Blue started seriously. His eyes sought the priest’s, as if for help.

  The priest made a move toward him. He felt Richard’s relentless stare. He stopped.

  Blue touched his own forehead—a half gesture—as if to clear it. “See, man, I had to get it together. Diggit, it’s what I— . . . See, when Mr Stuart— . . .”

  “Decide! Decide!” Malissa’s words hammered remorselessly.

  “Stop torturing him, Malissa!” Tarah thrust herself between Malissa and Blue. “Can’t you see he’s taking you seriously?”

  Malissa’s laughter broke the strange moments. “Why, so he was.” She turned toward Richard. “Richard, he was really taking us seriously,” she said.

  The closed chambers of her mind springing open suddenly—eyes pieces of desperate blue glass—the mamaloi flung herself under the glass dome within the indigo light of heavy dusk.


  Malissa motioned for silence. Now the others watched the black woman in fascination.

  Contracting her body, she seemed about to crumple onto the floor. Instead, in one stunning eruption of energy, her body became free, her arms were thrust at the dome of sky. Her mouth opened, and it hurled one single word into the waiting canyons of the mansion:

  “Murder!”

  The word released memories like sprung echoes in those who stood about her in a circle: Blood! Bodies! Clawing hands! Screams! Lights bursting! A gasping child! A black throne! A grave! A shattered body floating in a pool of red! A coffin! Fists crushing staring eyes! A face veiled with blood!

  10

  Malissa moved swiftly before the black woman, her rubied hands before her as if to sustain the trance within which the black woman was wrapped.

  “What do you see?” came Malissa’s words.

  “Murder. . . .” the black woman whispered. Her eyes were locked.

  “When?” Malissa coaxed.

  “Yesterday. . . . And tonight,” the black voice spoke.

  “A murder committed,” Karen interpreted.

  “And one to be committed,” Tarah pronounced.

  “Tonight! Who?” Malissa demanded.

  But the trance faded. The blue-glass eyes in the black face opened. Next to the black man again, the black woman’s body was rigid and dead.

  “What a terrifying prediction!” Valerie’s mind had burst with distorted images.

  “The beginning of the game,” Malissa announced.

  But Richard laughed. “No cause for alarm,” he directed himself to Valerie. “The mamaloi knows only a few words of English. She witnessed a murder once on the mainland—they practice voodoo.”

  “Shit, she just wants to make herself seem important with all her heavy predictions, man,” Bravo said, directing her words at Malissa.

  “Of course,” Malissa said. “And that’s why Richard brought her here—for our amusement, to keep us from boredom!”

  “I’m afraid,” Valerie whispered to her brother.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” the priest said to the girl. “Our host—and some of his guests—have an uncanny sense of effective drama.” He rejected the scene they had just witnessed.

  A grasping, then a sudden release, to produce the ultimate control: It was Richard’s tactic, Tarah knew.

  “Predictions of doom are the safest to make,” Joja too dismissed the scene, haughtily. “She could mean a symbolic murder, and who in his life has not wanted— . . . ?” (She heard: A child gasping for breath! Saw: A terrifyingly white pillow!)

  As if—correctly—he had expected her to turn toward him at that moment, Mark looked at the actress, and then quickly at his father.

  “When the Duke—. . .” la Duquesa began.

  The whirring of the helicopter—they all heard it.

  Blue thought: Cam! The name spun out of his clouded mind, like something always waiting. And then: No, there was no way Cam could be here. He was— . . . He blocked the rest.

  Daniel! Valerie thought. He’ll insist we leave.

  Anger strangled Tarah with iron fingers. No! her heart shrieked. It couldn’t be— . . .

  Lianne! Joja knew. She felt an unwelcome, jealous rivalry toward Mark’s mother.

  The whirring ground like gravel into Savannah’s ears. A montage of gray rejected memories: A room, her body. She heard: The terrible whirring as if it were drawing the blood.

  La Duquesa felt the Duke’s presence at that moment. “The Duke and I outlawed unkindness within our world,” she reminded them.

  Albert sighed for her.

  “The games, Richard!” Malissa insisted.

  “Tonight,” Richard said.

  Clearly about to dismiss his guests for now, Tarah knew. He was moving away from them, perhaps to meet whoever had arrived in the helicopter.

  Mark made a move to follow him. Then he stopped.

  Now the others drifted away from the staring dome, which was like the eye of a glowering heaven.

  In the enormous banquet hall, food and wine still waited, intact, like glazed statuary. There had been little of eating throughout the day, little of drinking.

  As if, thought Tarah, they were fasting for communion.

  She walked upstairs. Now Richard will come to me, she knew, and then he will go to Karen and Joja. The familiar panels along the walls in the corridors intrigued her anew: the gold silhouetted figures on the brink of self-discovery; or, perhaps, frozen at the point just immediately beyond it. In her room, she looked about tensely. (Remembering: Two men in the darkness.) Now she would wait for Richard. Whomever he had gone to meet—if indeed he had—Richard would be here. Soon. And she knew: Joja, Karen—in their rooms they too waited for Richard. But he would come to her first.

  Now she looked out the window. The sky was a darkening cave of bitter stars. From this level the gardens formed a symmetrical pattern, like a mirror-image. The alcoves were lighted by soft, subdued lights, hidden among the statuary. From this distance the illumined grottos were like fireflies floating in the night. She saw: A shadowy figure waiting downstairs in the purple pool of night. Who? It looked up. At that moment she heard the door to her room open, close. She turned to face Richard.

  “And Gable?” he asked immediately.

  “He’s well, he’s very handsome. We travel together— . . .” she rushed words to cancel other questions, “when he’s not in school.”

  “And except for the interludes.”

  Her eyes flashed angrily at the words she had sought to avert. “You bastard! You pushed me to it— . . .” (Naked writhing shadows.)

  “Gable doesn’t know.” A question? A statement.

  “No!” she said. “And if anyone should ever— . . .”

  “What would you do, Tarah?”

  She looked out at the maze of gardens. There was no moon. Yet the stones on the paths gleamed like the eyes of cats. The shadow waiting there still—it looked up again. In search of one particular window?”

  “But what could ever happen to allow Gable to discover?” Richard asked.

  Even without facing him, she was aware of his commanding presence. Her love—long shattered into hatred—was like fragments suspended in the present. She attempted to conquer his power with words about their son: “He reminds me— . . .” she started to say “of you,” floundered, almost formed “of Mark”; instead she said: “Why did you bring Paul here? And his sister. They’re so wrong among the others. They’re— . . .” She couldn’t use the word. Pure, she wanted to say; pure like Gable.

  “I wanted, finally, to meet them,” he told her.

  “Do they know about their mother’s murder?” Tarah heard herself ask.

  “Murder?”

  “You know damn well—. . .”

  “There was an acquittal, Tarah,” he reminded her firmly. Then, as if what he would say was of profound insignificance—so that it was the reverberation of his words, the lingering, insistent echo, that would accost Tarah—he said: “Daniel gave Paul and Valerie to me.”

  It was moments before she could react. “Gave— . . . You bought— . . . !”

  “He needed money.”

  “And you need lives to feed on!” she said with stunned outrage.

  “I wanted to help him, and them.”

  “You gave him all the drugs he needed, you supported him—and them— . . .” She looked at the man she had married, lived with. A man capable of anything in his— . . . What? The exploration of the human soul, he had once named it wryly. “And now—somehow—you’re collecting the monstrous debt.”

  “I wanted to meet them,” he repeated.

  “What if Daniel hedges on it?” Tarah hissed at Richard. “What if he comes here to kill you, Richard? He’s a violent man, capable of anything.” She stopped. Would she be satisfied for someone else to slaughter Richard?

  Richard’s depthless eyes pulled her to him. “Rest now, Tarah, for tonight’s entertainment—a play for
our amusement,” he said. We won’t be bored, I promise. It’s about a blind queen, Tarah—and the man—the only man—who can restore her sight: with his body.”

  Quickly, he kissed her on the shoulder—as if branding her with his mouth.

  When he had left (Now he will go to Karen, and then to Joja, she knew), she remained by the window. The shadow outside moved; it seemed about to raise its hand.

  A signal for whom? Jeremy wondered seeing it from his room. He retreated from the window.

  Why was I invited here?

  It had been a night like this, so still and ominous. A night which had exploded into a night of howling and death. Death had been a shrieking presence between him and the figure whose paleness was suddenly violated by blood. The pale, dying hand! You ran away from the mortally wounded, he thought, but they pursue you in accusation.

  Accusation.

  Impulsively he returned to the window. The shadow waited. A knock on the door. Even though he saw the shadow outside, he thought: It’s him!

  It was Tarah.

  “I need your help,” she said quickly, as if belatedly choosing sides in the earlier game downstairs. Instantly she was caught in the sensuality emanating from the young priest. “You’ve seen the youngman— . . .” she went on hurriedly.

  Blue.

  “. . .—and his sister,” Tarah finished. “They’re in danger!”

  I gave her the branch of wild rose, the priest thought illogically.

  “Why are they in danger?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Tarah said in abrupt bewilderment. “This island—it always disorients one; it’s difficult to separate the real from the imagined.” Then her eyes were on him, boldly; drawn powerfully to the hair over his white collar. So dark. So thick. At his groin it would— . . . She lifted her hand, held his, and brought it to her breast.

  He allowed it to remain on the bare, beautiful flesh. He felt aroused. Suddenly he withdrew his hand, looking outside toward the waiting shadow.

  Tarah left quickly.

  In the hall she saw Malissa talking hurriedly to Richard. Tarah moved away from them.

  “That creature—Bravo—she wants Karen,” Malissa told Richard. “Show her, Richard!”