by Rice, Anne
It seemed very charming to me, but mostly on account of the sweet warmth of the air around me, and the bit of jungle creeping down around the structure, with its inevitable snaggle of banana leaf and Queen’s Wreath vine. Ah, that vine. A nice rule of thumb might be: Don’t ever live in a part of the world which will not support that vine.
At once we set about to changing clothes. I stripped off the tweeds, and put on the thin cotton pants and shirt I’d bought in New Orleans before we left, along with a pair of white tennis shoes, and deciding against an all-out physical assault upon David, who was changing with his back turned to me, I went out under the graceful arching coconut palms, and made my way down onto the sand.
The night was as tranquil and gentle as any night I’ve ever known. All my love of the Caribbean came back to me—along with painful and blessed memories. But I longed to see this night with my old eyes. I longed to see past the thickening darkness, and the shadows that shrouded the embracing hills. I longed to turn on my preternatural hearing and catch the soft songs of the jungles, to wander with vampiric speed up the mountains of the interior to find the secret little valleys and waterfalls as only the Vampire Lestat could have done.
I felt a terrible, terrible sadness for all my discoveries. And perhaps it hit me in its fullness for the first time—that all of my dreams of mortal life had been a lie. It wasn’t that life wasn’t magical; it wasn’t that creation was not a miracle; it wasn’t that the world was not fundamentally good. It was that I had taken my dark power so for granted that I did not realize the vantage point it had given me. I had failed to assess my gifts. And I wanted them back.
Yes, I had failed, hadn’t I? Mortal life should have been enough!
I looked up at the heartless little stars, such mean guardians, and I prayed to the dark gods who don’t exist to understand.
I thought of Gretchen. Had she already reached her rain forests, and all the sick ones waiting for the consolations of her touch? I wished I knew where she was.
Perhaps she was already at work in a jungle dispensary, with gleaming vials of medicine, or trekking to nearby villages, with miracles in a pack on her back. I thought of her quiet happiness when she’d described the mission. The warmth of those embraces came back to me, the drowsy sweetness of it, and the comfort of that small room. I saw the snow falling once more beyond the windows. I saw her large hazel eyes fixed on me, and heard the slow rhythm of her speech.
Then again I saw the deep blue evening sky above me; I felt the breeze that was moving over me as smoothly as if it were water; and I thought of David, David who was here with me now.
I was weeping when David touched my arm.
For a moment, I couldn’t make out the features of his face. The beach was dark, and the sound of the surf so enormous that nothing in me seemed to function as it ought to do. Then I realized that of course it was David standing there looking at me, David in a crisp white cotton shirt and wash pants and sandals, managing somehow to look elegant even in this attire—David asking me gently to please come back to the room.
“Jake’s here,” he said, “our man from Mexico City. I think you should come inside.”
The ceiling fan was going noisily and cool air moved through the shutters as we came into the shabby little room. A faint clacking noise came from the coconut palms, a sound I rather liked, rising and falling with the breeze.
Jake was seated on one of the narrow saggy little beds—a tall lanky individual in khaki shorts and a white polo shirt, puffing on an odoriferous little brown cigar. All of his skin was darkly tanned, and he had a shapeless thatch of graying blond hair. His posture was one of complete relaxation, but beneath this facade, he was entirely alert and suspicious, his mouth a perfectly straight line.
We shook hands as he disguised only a little the fact that he was looking me up and down. Quick, secretive eyes, not unlike David’s eyes, though smaller. God only knows what he saw.
“Well, the guns won’t be any problem,” he said with an obvious Australian accent. “There are no metal detectors at ports such as this. I’ll board at approximately ten a.m., plant your trunk and your guns for you in your cabin on Five Deck, then meet you in the Café Centaur in St. George’s. I do hope you know what you’re doing, David, bringing firearms aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2.”
“Of course I know what I’m doing,” said David very politely, with a tiny playful smile. “Now, what do you have for us on our man?”
“Ah, yes. Jason Hamilton. Six feet tall, dark tan, longish blond hair, piercing blue eyes. Mysterious fellow. Very British, very polite. Rumors as to his true identity abound. He’s an enormous tipper, and a day sleeper, and apparently doesn’t bother to leave the ship when she’s in port. Indeed he gives over small packages to be mailed to his cabin steward every morning, quite early, before he disappears for the day. Haven’t been able to discover the post box but that’s a matter of time. He has yet to appear in the Queens Grill for a single meal. It’s rumored he’s seriously ill. But with what, no one knows. He’s the picture of health, which only adds to the mystery. Everyone says so. A powerfully built and graceful fellow with a dazzling wardrobe, it seems. He gambles heavily at the roulette wheel, and dances for hours with the ladies. Seems in fact to like the very old ones. He’d arouse suspicion on that account alone if he weren’t so bloody rich himself. Spends a lot of time simply roaming the ship.”
“Excellent. This is just what I wanted to know,” said David. “You have our tickets.”
The man gestured to a black leather folder on the wicker dressing table. David checked the contents, then gave him an approving nod.
“Deaths on the QE2 so far?”
“Ah, now that’s an interesting point. They have had six since they left New York, which is a little more than usual. All very elderly women, and all apparent heart failure. This is the sort of thing you want to know?”
“Certainly is,” said David.
The “little drink,” I thought.
“Now you ought to have a look at these firearms,” said Jake, “and know how to use them.” He reached for a worn little duffel bag on the floor, just the sort of beat-up sack of canvas in which one would hide expensive weapons, I presumed. Out came the expensive weapons—one a large Smith & Wesson revolver. The other a small black automatic no bigger than the palm of my hand.
“Yes, I’m quite familiar with this,” David said, taking the big silver gun and making to aim it at the floor. “No problem.” He pulled out the clip, then slipped it back in. “Pray I don’t have to use it, however. It will make a hell of a noise.”
He then gave it to me.
“Lestat, get the feel of it,” he said. “Of course there’s no time to practice. I asked for a hair trigger.”
“And that you have,” said Jake, looking at me coldly. “So please watch out.”
“Barbarous little thing,” I said. It was very heavy. A nugget of destructiveness. I spun the cylinder. Six bullets. It had a curious smell.
“Both the guns are thirty-eights,” said the man, with a slight note of disdain. “Those are man-stoppers.” He showed me a small cardboard box. “You’ll have plenty of ammunition available to you for whatever it is that you are going to do on this boat.”
“Don’t worry, Jake,” said David firmly. “Things will probably go without a hitch. And I thank you for your usual efficiency. Now, go have a pleasant evening on the island. And I shall see you at the Centaur Café before noon.”
The fellow gave me a deep suspicious look, then nodded, gathered up the guns and the little box of bullets, put them back in his canvas bag, and offered his hand again to me and then to David, and out he went.
I waited until the door had closed.
“I think he dislikes me,” I said. “Blames me for involving you in some sort of sordid crime.”
David gave a short little laugh. “I’ve been in far more compromising situations than this one,” he said. “And if I worried about what our investigators thought of u
s, I would have retired a long time ago. What do we know now from this information?”
“Well, he’s feeding on the old women. Probably stealing from them also. And he’s mailing home what he steals in packages too small to arouse suspicion. What he does with the larger loot we’ll never know. Probably throws it into the ocean. I suspect there’s more than one post box number. But that’s no concern of ours.”
“Correct. Now lock the door. It’s time for a little concentrated witchcraft. We’ll have a nice supper later on. I have to teach you to veil your thoughts. Jake could read you too easily. And so can I. The Body Thief will pick up your presence when he’s still two hundred miles out to sea.”
“Well, I did it through an act of will when I was Lestat,” I said. “I haven’t the faintest idea how to do it now.”
“Same way. We’re going to practice. Until I can’t read a single image or random word from you. Then we’ll get to the out-of-body travel.” He looked at his watch, which reminded me of James suddenly, in that little kitchen. “Slip that bolt. I don’t want any maid blundering in here later on.”
I obeyed. Then I sat on the bed opposite David, who had assumed a very relaxed yet commanding attitude, rolling up the stiff starched cuffs of his shirt, which revealed the dark fleece of his arms. There was also quite a bit of dark hair on his chest, bubbling up through the open collar of the shirt. Only a little gray mixed in with it, like the gray that sparkled here and there in his heavy shaven beard. I found it quite impossible to believe he was a man of seventy-four.
“Ah, I caught that,” he said with a little lift of the eyebrows. “I catch entirely too much. Now. Listen to what I say. You must fix it in your mind that your thoughts remain within you, that you are not attempting to communicate with other beings—not through facial expression or body language of any sort; that indeed you are impenetrable. Make an image of your sealed mind if you must. Ah, that’s good. You’ve gone blank behind your handsome young face. Even your eyes have changed ever so slightly. Perfect. Now I’m going to try to read you. Keep it up.”
By the end of forty-five minutes, I had learned the trick fairly painlessly, but I could pick up nothing of David’s thoughts even when he tried his hardest to project them to me. In this body, I simply did not have the psychic ability which he possessed. But the veiling we had achieved, and this was a crucial step. We would continue to work on all this throughout the night.
“We’re ready to begin on the out-of-body travel,” he said.
“This is going to be hell,” I said. “I don’t think I can get out of this body. As you can see, I just don’t have your gifts.”
“Nonsense,” he said. He loosened his posture slightly, crossing his ankles and sliding down a bit in the chair. But somehow, no matter what he did, he never lost the attitude of the teacher, the authority, the priest. It was implicit in his small, direct gestures and above all in his voice.
“Lie down on that bed, and close your eyes. And listen to every word I say.”
I did as I was told. And immediately felt a little sleepy. His voice became even more directive in its softness, rather like that of a hypnotist, bidding me to relax completely, and to visualize a spiritual double of this form.
“Must I visualize myself with this body?”
“No. Doesn’t matter. What matters is that you—your mind, your soul, your sense of self—are linked to the form you envision. Now picture it as congruent with your body, and then imagine that you want to lift it up and out of the body—that you want to go up!”
For some thirty minutes David continued this unhurried instruction, reiterating in his own fashion the lessons which priests had taught to their initiates for thousands of years. I knew the old formula. But I also knew complete mortal vulnerability, and a crushing sense of my limitations, and a stiffening and debilitating fear.
We had been at it perhaps forty-five minutes when I finally sank into the requisite and lovely vibratory state on the very cusp of sleep. My body seemed in fact to have become this delicious vibratory feeling, and nothing more! And just when I realized this, and might have remarked upon it, I suddenly felt myself break loose and begin to rise.
I opened my eyes; or at least I thought I did. I saw I was floating directly above my body; in fact, I couldn’t even see the real flesh-and-blood body at all. “Go up!” I said. And instantly I traveled to the ceiling with the exquisite lightness and speed of a helium balloon! It was nothing to turn completely over and look straight down into the room.
Why, I had passed through the blades of the ceiling fan! Indeed, it was in the very middle of my body, though I could feel nothing. And down there, under me, was the sleeping mortal form I had inhabited so miserably all of these strange days. Its eyes were closed, and so was its mouth.
I saw David sitting in his wicker chair, right ankle on his left knee, hands relaxed on his thighs, as he looked at the sleeping man. Did he know I had succeeded? I couldn’t hear a word he was speaking. Indeed, I seemed to be in a totally different sphere from these two solid figures, though I felt utterly complete and entire and real myself.
Oh, how lovely this was! This was so near to my freedom as a vampire that I almost began to weep again. I felt so sorry for the two solid and lonely beings down there. I wanted to pass up through the ceiling and into the night.
Slowly I went up, and then out over the roof of the hotel, until I was hovering above the white sand.
But this was enough, wasn’t it? Fear gripped me, the fear I’d known when I did this little trick before. What in the name of God was keeping me alive in this state! I needed my body! At once I plummeted, blindly, back into the flesh. I woke up, tingling all over, and staring at David as he sat staring back at me.
“I did it,” I said. I was shocked to feel these tubes of skin and bone enclosing me again, and to see my fingers moving when I told them to do it, to feel my toes come alive in my shoes. Lord God, what an experience! And so many, many mortals had sought to describe it. And so many more, in their ignorance, did not believe that such a thing could be.
“Remember to veil your thoughts,” David said suddenly. “No matter how exhilarated you become. Lock your mind up tight!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now let’s do it all again.”
By midnight—some two hours later—I had learned to rise at will. Indeed, it was becoming addictive—the feeling of lightness, the great swooshing ascent! The lovely ease of passing through walls and ceiling; and then the sudden and shocking return. There was a deep throbbing pleasure to it, pure and shining, like an eroticism of the mind.
“Why can’t a man die in this fashion, David? I mean why can’t one simply rise into the heavens and leave the earth?”
“Did you see an open doorway, Lestat?” he asked.
“No,” I said sadly. “I saw this world. It was so clear, so beautiful. But it was this world.”
“Come now, you must learn to make the assault.”
“But I thought you would do it, David. You’d jolt him and knock him out of his body and …”
“Yes, and suppose he spots me before I can do it, and makes me into a nice little torch. What then? No, you must learn the trick as well.”
This was far more difficult. Indeed it required the very opposite of the passivity and relaxation which we had employed and developed before. I had now to focus all my energy upon David with the avowed purpose of knocking him out of his body—a phenomenon which I could not hope to see in any real sense—and then go into his body myself. The concentration demanded of me was excruciating. The timing was critical. And the repeated efforts produced an intense and exhausting nervousness rather like that of a right-handed person trying to write perfectly with the left hand.
I was near to tears of rage and frustration more than once. But David was absolutely adamant that we must continue and that this could be done. No, a stiff drink of Scotch wouldn’t help. No, we couldn’t eat until later. No, we couldn’t break for a walk on the beach or a
late swim.
The first time I succeeded, I was absolutely aghast. I went speeding towards David, and felt the impact in the same purely mental fashion in which I felt the freedom of the flight. Then I was inside David, and for one split second saw myself—slack-jawed and staring dully—through the dim lenses of David’s eyes.
Then I felt a dark shuddering disorientation, and an invisible blow as if someone had placed a huge hand on my chest. I realized that he had returned and pushed me out. I was hovering in the air, and then back in my own sweat-drenched body, laughing near hysterically from mad excitement and sheer fatigue.
“That’s all we need,” he said. “Now I know we can pull this off. Come, once again! We’re going to do it twenty times if we have to, until we know that we can achieve it without fail.”
On the fifth successful assault, I remained in his body for a full thirty seconds, absolutely mesmerized by the different feelings attendant to it—the lighter limbs, the poorer vision, and the peculiar sound of my voice coming out of his throat. I looked down and saw his hands—thin, corded with blood vessels, and touched on the backs of the fingers with dark hair—and they were my hands! How hard it was to control them. Why, one of them had a pronounced tremour which I had never noticed before.
Then came the jolt again, and I was flying upwards, and then the plummet, back into the twenty-six-year-old body once more.
We must have done it twelve times before the slave driver of a Candomble priest said it was time for him to really fight my assault.
“Now, you must come at me with much greater determination. Your goal is to claim the body! And you expect a fight.”
For an hour we battled. Finally, when I was able to jolt him out and keep him out for the space of ten seconds, he declared that this would be enough.
“He told you the truth about your cells. They will know you. They will receive you and strive to keep you. Any adult human knows how to use his own body much better than the intruder. And of course you know how to use those preternatural gifts in ways of which he can’t possibly even dream. I think we can do it. In fact, I’m certain now that we can.”