by Rice, Anne
I sat on the church steps, rather liking the carved surfaces of the broken arches, rather liking to sink back in the darkness against sanctified stone.
I realized very carefully that the Stalker was nowhere about, that tonight’s deeds had brought me no visits from another realm, or horrifying footsteps, that the great granite statue had been inanimate, and that I still had Roger’s identification in my pocket, and this would give Dora weeks, perhaps even months, before her peace of mind was disturbed by her father’s disappearance, and she would now never know the details.
So much for that. The end of the adventure. I felt better, far better than when I’d spoken with David. Going back, looking at that monstrous granite thing, it had been the perfect thing to do.
Only problem was that Roger’s stench clung to me. Roger. He’d been “the Victim” until when? Now I was calling him Roger. Was that emblematic of love? Dora called him Roger and Daddy and Roge and Dad. “Darling, this is Roge,” he’d say to her from Istanbul. “Can you meet me in Florida, just for a few days. I have to talk to you.…”
I pulled out the phony identification. The wind was harsh and cold, but no more snow, and the snow that was on the ground was hardening. No mortal would have sat here like this, in this shallow high broken arch of a church door, but I liked it.
I looked at this fake passport. Actually it was a complete set of false papers, some of which I didn’t understand. There was a visa for Egypt. Smuggling from there, no doubt! And the name Wynken made me smile again because it is one of those names that makes even children laugh when they hear it. Wynken, Blinken, and Nod. Wasn’t that the poem?
It was a simple matter to tear all this into tiny fragments, and let it blow away into the night, over the tiny upright stones of the small graveyard. What a gust. It went like ashes, as if his identity had been cremated and the final tribute was being paid.
I felt weary, full of blood, satisfied, and foolish now for having been so afraid when I talked to David. David no doubt thought I was a fool. But what had I really ascertained? Only that the Thing stalking me wasn’t particularly protective of Roger, the Victim, or had nothing to do with Roger. Hadn’t I already known this? It didn’t mean the Stalker was gone.
It just meant the Stalker chose his own moments and maybe they had nothing to do with what I did.
I admired the little church. How priceless and ornate and incongruous among the other buildings of lower Manhattan, except that nothing in this strange city is exactly incongruous anymore because the mix of Gothic and ancient and modern is so very thick. The nearby street sign said Wall Street.
Was I at the very foot of Wall Street? I rested back against the stones, closed my eyes. David and I would confer tomorrow night. And what of Dora? Did Dora sleep like an angel in her bed in the hotel opposite the cathedral? Would I forgive myself if I took one last secret, safe, forlorn peek at Dora in her bed before letting go of the whole adventure? Over.
Best to get the idea of the little girl out of my mind; forget the figure moving through the huge dark corridors of that empty New Orleans convent with the electric torch in hand, brave Dora. Not at all like the last mortal woman I’d loved. No, forget about it. Forget about it, Lestat, you hear me?
The world was full of potential victims, when you began to think in terms of an entire life pattern, an ambience to an existence, a complete personality, so to speak. Maybe I’d go back down to Miami if I could get David to go with me. Tomorrow night David and I could talk.
Of course he might be thoroughly annoyed that I’d sent him to seek refuge in the Olympic Tower and was now ready to move south. But then maybe we wouldn’t move south.
I became acutely aware that if I heard those footsteps now, if I sensed the Stalker, I’d be trembling tomorrow night in David’s arms. The Stalker didn’t care where I went. And the Stalker was real.
Black wings, the sense of something dark accumulating, thick smoke, and the light. Don’t dwell on it. You have done enough gruesome thinking for one night, haven’t you?
When would I spot another mortal like Roger? When would I see another light shining that bright? And the son of a bitch talking to me through it all, talking through the swoon! Talking to me! And managing to make that statue look alive somehow with some feeble telepathic impulse, damn him. I shook my head. Had I brought that on? Had I done something different?
By tracking Roger for months had I come to love him so much that I was talking to him as I killed him, in some soundless sonnet of devotion? No. I was just drinking and loving him, and taking him into myself. Roger in me.
A car came slowly through the darkness, stopping beside me. Mortals who wanted to know if I needed shelter. I gave a wave of my head, turned, crossed the little graveyard, stepping on grave after grave as I made my way through the headstones, and was off towards the Village, moving so fast probably they could not have even seen me go.
Imagine it. They see this blond young man in a double-breasted navy-blue blazer, with a flaming scarf around his neck, sitting in the cold on the steps of the quaint little church. And then the figure vanishes. I laughed out loud, loving the sound of it as it went up the brick walls. Now I was near music, people walking arm in arm, human voices, the smell of cooking. There were young people about, healthy enough to think that bitter winter could be fun.
The cold had begun to annoy me. To be almost humanly painful. I wanted to go inside.
THREE
I walked on only a few steps, saw revolving doors, pushed into the lobby of someplace or other, a restaurant I think, and found myself sitting at the bar. Just what I wanted, half empty, very dark, too warm, bottles glittering in the center of the circular counter. Some comforting noise from the diners beyond the open doors.
I put my elbows on the bar, my heels hooked on the brass rail. I sat there on the stool shivering, listening to mortals talk, listening to nothing, listening to the inevitable sloth and stupidity of a bar, head down, sunglasses gone—damn, I had lost my violet glasses!—yes, nice and dark here, very, very dark, a kind of late-night languor lying over everything, a club of some sort? I didn’t know, didn’t care.
“Drink, sir?” Lazy, arrogant face.
I named a mineral water. And as soon as he set down the glass, I dipped my fingers into it and washed them. He was gone already. Wouldn’t have cared if I had started baptizing babies with the water. Other customers were scattered at tables in the darkness … a woman crying in some far-off corner and a man telling her harshly that she was attracting attention. She wasn’t. Nobody gave a damn.
I washed my mouth off with the napkin and water.
“More water,” I said. I pushed the polluted glass away from me. Sluggishly, he acknowledged my request, young blood, bland personality, ambitionless life, then drifted off.
I heard a little laugh nearby … the man to my right, two stools away, perhaps, who’d been there when I came in, youngish, scentless. Utterly scentless, which was most strange.
In annoyance I turned and looked at him.
“Going to run again?” he whispered. It was the Victim.
It was Roger, sitting there on the stool.
He wasn’t broken or battered or dead. He was complete with his head and his hands. He wasn’t there. He only appeared to be there, very solid and very quiet, and he smiled at me, thrilled by my terror.
“What’s the matter, Lestat?” he asked in that voice I so loved after six months of listening to it. “No one in all these centuries has ever come back to haunt you?”
I said nothing. Not there. No, not there. Material, but not the same material as anything else. David’s word. Different fabric. I stiffened. That’s a pathetic understatement. I was rigid with incredulity and rage.
He got up and moved over onto the stool close to me. He was getting more distinct and detailed by the second. Now I could catch something like a sound coming from him, a sound of something alive, or organized, but certainly no breathing human being.
“And in a
few minutes more I’ll be strong enough perhaps to ask for a cigarette or a glass of wine,” he said.
He reached into his coat, a favorite coat, not the one in which I’d killed him, another coat made for him in Paris, that he liked, and he drew out his flashy little gold lighter and made the flame shoot up, very blue and dangerous, butane.
He looked at me. I could see that his black curly hair was combed, his eyes very clear. Handsome Roger. His voice sounded exactly the way it had when he was alive: international, originless, New Orleans-born and world-traveled. No British fastidiousness, and no Southern patience. His precise, quick voice.
“I’m quite serious,” he said. “You mean in all these years, not one single victim has ever come back to haunt you?”
“No,” I said.
“You’re amazing. You really won’t tolerate being afraid for a moment, will you?”
“No.”
Now he appeared completely solid. I had no idea whether anyone else could see him. No idea, but I suspected they could. He looked like anyone might look. I could see the buttons on his white cuffs, and the soft white flash of his collar at the back of the neck, where the fine hair came down over it. I could see his eyelashes, which had always been extraordinarily long.
The bartender returned and set down the water glass for me, without looking at him. I still wasn’t sure. The kid was too rude for that to be proof of anything except that I was in New York.
“How are you doing this?” I asked.
“The same way any other ghost does it,” he said. “I’m dead. I’ve been dead for over an hour and a half now, and I have to talk to you! I don’t know how long I can stay here, I don’t know when I’ll start to … God knows what, but you have to listen to me.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Don’t be so nasty,” he whispered, appearing truly hurt. “You murdered me.”
“And you? The people you’ve killed, Dora’s mother? She ever come back to demand an audience with you?”
“Ooh, I knew it. I knew it!” he said. He was visibly shaken. “You know about Dora! God in Heaven, take my soul to Hell, but don’t let him hurt Dora.”
“Stop being absurd. I wouldn’t hurt Dora. It was you I was after. I’ve followed you around the world. If it hadn’t been for a passing respect for Dora, I would have killed you long before now.”
The bartender had reappeared. This brought the most ecstatic smile to my companion’s lips. He looked right at the kid.
“Yes, my dear boy, let me see, the very last drink unless I’m very badly mistaken, make it bourbon. I grew up in the South. What do you have? No, I’ll tell you what, son, just make it Southern Comfort.” His laugh was private and convivial and soft.
The bartender moved on, and Roger turned his furious eyes on me. “You have to listen to me, whatever the Hell you are, vampire, demon, devil, I don’t care, you cannot hurt my daughter.”
“I don’t intend to hurt her. I would never hurt her. Go on to hell, you’ll feel better. Good night.”
“You smug son of a bitch. How many years do you think I had?” Droplets of sweat were breaking out on his face. His hair was moving a little in the natural draft through the room.
“I couldn’t give less of a damn!” I said. “You were a meal worth waiting for.”
“You’ve got quite a swagger, don’t you?” he said acidly. “But you’re nothing as shallow as you pretend to be.”
“Oh, you don’t think so? Try me. You may find me ‘as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.’ ”
That gave him pause.
It gave me pause too. Where did those words come from? Why did they roll off my tongue like that? I was not likely to use that sort of imagery!
He was absorbing all this, my preoccupation, my obvious self-doubt. How did it manifest itself, I wonder? Did I sag or fade slightly as some mortals do, or did I merely look confused?
The bartender gave him the drink. Very tentatively now, he was trying to put his fingers around it and lift it. He managed and got it to his lips and took a taste. He was amazed, and thankful, and suddenly so full of fear that he almost disintegrated. The illusion was almost completely dispersed.
But he held firm. This was so obviously the person I had just killed, hacked to pieces and buried all over Manhattan, that I felt physically sick staring at him. I realized only one thing was saving me from panic. He was talking to me. What had David said once, when he was alive, about talking to me? That he wouldn’t kill a vampire because the vampire could talk to him? And this damned ghost was talking to me.
“I have to talk to you about Dora,” he said.
“I told you I will never hurt her, or anyone like her,” I said. “Look, what are you doing here with me! When you appeared, you didn’t even know that I knew about Dora! You wanted to tell me about Dora?”
“Depth, I’ve been murdered by a being with depth, how fortunate, someone who actually keenly appreciated my death, no?” He drank more of the sweet-smelling Southern Comfort. “This was Janis Joplin’s drink, you know,” he said, referring to the dead singer whom I, too, had loved. “Look, listen to me out of curiosity, I don’t give a damn. But listen. Let me talk to you about Dora and about me. I want you to know. I want you to really know who I was, not what you might think. I want you to look out for Dora. And then there’s something back at the flat, something I want you.…”
“Veronica’s veil in the frame?”
“No! That’s trash. I mean, it’s four centuries old, of course, but it’s a common version of Veronica’s veil, if you have enough money. You did look around my place, didn’t you?”
“Why did you want to give that veil to Dora?” I asked.
This sobered him appropriately. “You heard us talking?”
“Countless times.”
He was conjecturing, weighing things. He looked entirely reasonable, his dark Asian face evincing nothing but sincerity and great care.
“Did you say ‘look out for Dora’?” I asked. “Is that what you asked me to do? Look out for her? Now that’s another proposition and why the hell do you want to tell me the story of your life! You’re running through your personal afterdeath judgment with the wrong guy! I don’t care how you got the way you were. The things at the flat, why would a ghost care about such things?”
This was not wholly honest on my part. I was being far too flippant and we both knew it. Of course he cared about his treasures. But it was Dora that had made him rise from the dead.
His hair was a deeper black now, and the coat had taken on more texture. I could see the weave of the silk and the cashmere in it. I could see his fingernails, professionally manicured, very neat and buffed. Same hands I threw in the garbage! I don’t think all these details had been visible moments ago.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered.
He laughed. “You’re more afraid than I am.”
“Where are you?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I’m sitting next to you. We’re in a Village bar. What do you mean, where am I? As for my body, you know where you dumped the pieces of it as well as I.”
“That’s why you’re haunting me.”
“Absolutely not. Couldn’t give less of a damn about that body. Felt that way the moment I left it. You know all this!”
“No, no, I mean, what realm are you in now, what is it, where are you, what did you see when you went … what.…”
He shook his head with the saddest smile.
“You know the answer to all that. I don’t know where I am. Something’s waiting for me, however. I’m fairly certain of that. Something’s waiting. Perhaps it’s merely dissolution. Darkness. But it seems personal. It’s not going to wait forever. But I don’t know how I know.
“And I don’t know why I’m being allowed to get through to you, whether it’s sheer will, my will, I mean, of which I have a great deal by the way, or whether it’s some sort of grant of moments, I don’t know! But I went after you. I followed you from the f
lat and back to it and then out with the body and I came here and I have to talk to you. I’m not going to go without a struggle, until I’ve spoken with you.”
“Something’s waiting for you,” I whispered. This was awe. Plain and simple. “And then, after we’ve had our chat, if you don’t dissolve, where exactly are you going to go?”
He shook his head and glared at the bottle on the center rack, flood of light, color, labels.
“Tiresome,” he said crossly. “Shut up.”
It had a sting to it. Shut up. Telling me to shut up.
“I can’t go looking out for your daughter,” I said.
“What do you mean?” He threw an angry glance at me, and took another sip of his drink, then gestured to the bartender for another.
“Are you going to get drunk?” I asked.
“I don’t think I can. You have to look out for her. It’s all going to go public, don’t you see? I have enemies who’ll kill her, for no other reason than that she was my child. You don’t know how careful I’ve been, and you don’t know how rash she is, how much she believes in Divine Providence. And then there’s the government, the hounds of government, and my things, my relics, my books!”
I was fascinated. For about three seconds, I’d utterly forgotten that he was a ghost. Now my eyes gave me no evidence of it. None. But he was scentless, and the faint sound of life that emanated from him still had little to do with real lungs or a real heart.
“All right, let me be blunt,” he said. “I’m afraid for her. She has to get through the notoriety; enough time has to pass that my enemies forget about her. Most of them don’t know about her. But somebody might. Somebody’s bound to know, if you knew.”
“Not necessarily. I’m not a human being.”
“You have to guard her.”
“I can’t do such a thing. I won’t.”
“Lestat, will you listen to me?”
“I don’t want to listen. I want you to go.”