by Rice, Anne
“I wanted to tell him about the veil.…” I insisted. I struggled. Memnoch held me.
“This way!”
The heavens opened with another fiery shower of sparks and the clouds burst above, clashing together, the lightning touching down over our heads, and on came a thunderous deluge of cold and chilling rain.
“Oh God, oh, God, oh God!” I cried. “This cannot be your school! God! I say no!”
“Look, look!”
He pointed to the figure of Roger on his hands and knees, turning like a dog, amongst those he’d slain, men imploring him with outstretched arms, women tearing open the cloth of their dresses to show the wounds, the chatter of voices rising perilously as if the sound of Hell itself would suddenly explode, and Terry—the very same Terry—with her arms still around his neck. Roger lay on the ground, his shirt torn open, his feet naked, the jungle rising around him. Shots rang out in the dark. Crack of automatic guns spitting their numberless fatal bullets in unstinted fury. The lights of a house flickered among vines, amid monstrous trees. Roger turned to me, trying to rise, sinking back on his leg, crying, the tears streaming down his face.
“… and each and every act, in its own way, Lestat, and I didn’t know … I didn’t know.…”
Distinct and ghastly and demanding, he rose before me only to recede into the countless others.
In all directions I saw them. The others.
Scenario lapping into scenario, ashen colors brightening, or dying in a murky haze, and rising here and there from the horrid furious turbulent fields of Hell, the Purified Souls. There came the beat of drums, there came the piercing shrieks of some unendurable torture; a mass of men in crude white robes shoved into the blazing logs, their arms appealing to the souls who shrank and howled and screamed in remorse, in awful recognition.
“My God, my God, we are both forgiven!”
What was this sudden whirl of the filthy, stinking wind?
Upward souls went with arms out, garments suddenly stripped or faded away into the indistinguishable robes of the Saved, the Tunnel opening.
I saw the Light, saw the myriad spirits flying loose up the Tunnel towards the celestial blaze, the Tunnel perfectly round, and widening as they rose and for one blessed moment, one blessed tiny instant, the songs of Heaven resounded down the tunnel as if its curves were not made of wind but of something solid that could echo these ethereal songs, and their organized rhythm, their heartbreaking beauty piercing the catastrophic suffering of this place.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t know!” The voices rose. The Tunnel closed.
I stumbled, turning this way and that. Here soldiers tortured a young woman with their spears, while others wept and sought to throw themselves between her writhing form and her tormentors. Here babies ran on chubby legs with little hands outstretched to be gathered in the arms of weeping fathers, mothers, murderers.
And pinned to the ground, his body covered in armour, his beard long and red, his mouth open in a howl, lay one cursing God cursing the Devil and cursing all Fate. “I will not, I will not, I will not!”
“And who stands behind those doors,” said a sombre Helpful Ghost, her beautiful hair shimmering around her in ethereal whiteness, her soft hand on my face. “See there—” The double doors about to open, the walls lined with books. “Your dead, my beloved, your dead, all those you’ve killed!”
I stared at the soldier on his back, roaring from his red-bearded mouth, “Never, never will I say it was right, never, never.…”
“Not my dead,” I cried. I turned and ran. I stumbled and fell again on my face in the soft press of bodies. Beyond, the ruins of a city withered in fire; walls crumbled on all sides, the cannon exploded again, and once more, a noxious gas filled the air, people fell coughing and choking for breath, the chorus of I DID NOT KNOW blended all in one instant of order that was worse than none!
“HELP ME!” I cried and cried. I never knew such release in screaming, such pure and abandoned cowardice, to shout to High Heaven in this Godforsaken place where cries were the very air itself, and no one heard, no one but the smiling Helpful Dead.
“Learn, my dearest.”
“Learn.” Whispers like kisses. A wraith, an Indian man, turbaned head, darkened face. “Learn, my young one.”
“Look up, see the blossoms, see the sky.…” A Helpful Ghost danced in circles, her white dress passing in and out of the clouds and spurts of soot and filth, her feet sinking into the marl but turning still with certainty.
“Don’t fool me, there is no garden here!” I shouted. I was on my knees. My clothes were torn, but in my shirt I had the veil! I had it.
“Take my hands.…”
“No, let me go!” I slipped my hand in my coat to cover the veil. Staggering towards me a dim figure rose, hand outstretched, “You, you cursed boy, you filthy boy, you in the Paris streets, like Lucifer Himself full of golden light, you! Think what you did to me!”
The tavern took form, the boy falling backwards from the blow of my mortal fist, the barrels going over and the growl of the disheveled and drunken men who closed in on me.
“No, stop it,” I roared. “Get him away from me. I don’t remember him. I never killed him. I don’t remember, I tell you, I can’t.…
“Claudia, where are you? Where are you, the one I wronged! Claudia! Nicolas, help me!”
But were they here, lost in this torrent, or gone, long gone through the Tunnel to the blazing glory above, to the blessed songs that wove the silence into their very chords and melodies? Pray gone, pray there, above.
My own cries had lost all dignity and yet how defiant they sounded in my own ears. “Help me, someone! Help!”
“Must you die first to serve me?” Memnoch asked. He rose before me, the granite angel of darkness, wings outstretched. Oh yes, blot out the horrors of Hell, please, even in this most monstrous of forms! “You scream in Hell as you sang in Heaven. This is my kingdom, this is our work. Remember the Light!”
I fell back on my shoulder, hurting my left arm, but refusing to pull my right hand free of the veil. I saw the blue sky above in a flash and the peach blossoms blowing from the green leaves of the tree even as the luscious fruit itself clung to the branches.
Smoke stung my eyes. A woman on her knees said to me:
“I know now that no one can forgive me but myself, but how could I have done those things to her, and she so small, how could I.…”
“I thought it was the other things,” whispered a young girl who had hold of my neck, her nose touching mine as she spoke, “but you know that kindness, that just holding his hand and he.…”
“Forgive!” Memnoch said, and parted the way, gently pushing the souls aside. But the crowd crushed in; pale figures raced over me as if towards a respite I couldn’t see, or some source of alarm.
“Forgive!” Memnoch whispered.
He snatched up the monk covered with blood, his brown robes shredded, his feet blistered and burnt from deliberate fire. “In your heart, the power!” said Memnoch. “Be better than Him, better than Him, set Him an example.”
“I love … even Him.…” came the whisper from the soul’s lips as it suddenly dissolved. “Yes, He couldn’t have meant for us to suffer so … He couldn’t.”
“Did he pass the test!” I demanded. “Did that soul pass muster in this hellish place, what he just said? Was that enough! Ignorance of God, was that enough! Or is he here scrambling somewhere else in all this filth, or did the Tunnel take him up! Memnoch! Help me.”
Everywhere, I looked for the monk with the burnt feet. I looked and looked.
An explosion ripped the towers of the city and they tumbled. Was that the tolling of a bell! The huge mosque had collapsed. A man with a gun fired on those who fled. Veiled women cried out as they fell to the ground.
Louder and louder pealed the bell.
“Good God, Memnoch, a bell tolling, listen, more than one bell.”
“The bells of Hell, Lestat, and they are not toiling
for anyone! They are ringing for us, Lestat!”
He clutched my collar as if he’d lift me off my feet.
“Remember, your own words, Lestat, Hell’s Bells, you hear the call of Hell’s Bells!”
“No, let me go. I didn’t know what I was saying. It was poetry. It was stupidity. Let me go. I can’t stand it!”
Around the table under the lamp a dozen people argued over the map, some embracing each other as they pointed to various areas marked in dull colors. A head was turned. A man? A face. “You!”
“Let me go.” I turned and was thrown against a wall of bookshelves, spines gleaming in the light, books tumbling, striking me on the shoulders, dear God, my limbs couldn’t take any more. My fist went through the glittering globe of the world, mounted on its fancy arc of wood. A child with bent knees sat staring up at me with empty eye sockets.
I saw the doorway and ran.
“No, let me go. I cannot. I will not. I will not.”
“Will not?” Memnoch caught me by my right arm, dark scowl looming over me, the wings flexing and rising, blotting out the light again as they closed to enfold me as though I were his own. “Will you not help me to empty this place, to send these souls to Heaven?”
“I can’t do it!” I cried. “I won’t do it!” Suddenly my fury rose. I felt it obliterate all fear and trembling and doubt; I felt it rush through my veins like molten metal. The old anger, the resolve of Lestat. “I will not be part of this, not for you, not for Him, not for them, not for anyone!”
I staggered backwards, glaring at him. “No, not this. Not for a God as blind as He, and not for one who demands what you demand of me. You’re mad, the two of you! I won’t help you. I won’t. I refuse.”
“You would do this to me, you would abandon me?” he cried, stricken, dark face convulsed with pain, tears shimmering on his shining black cheeks. “You would leave me with this, and not lift your hands to help me after all that you have done, Cain, slayer of Brothers, slayer of the Innocents, you cannot help me—?”
“Stop it, stop it. I won’t. I can’t support this. I can’t help this to happen! I cannot create this! I cannot endure it! I cannot teach in this school!”
My throat was hoarse and burning, and the din seemed to swallow my words but he heard them.
“No, no, I will not, not this fabric, not these rules, not this design, never, never, never!”
“Coward,” he roared, the almond-shaped eyes immense, the fire flickering on the hard black forehead and cheeks. “I have your soul in my hands, I hand you your salvation at a price that those who have suffered here for millennia would beg for!”
“Not me. I won’t be part of this pain, no, not now, not ever … Go to Him, change the rules, make it make sense, make it better, but not this, this is beyond human endurance, this is unfair, unfair, unfair, this is unconscionable.”
“This is Hell, you fool! What did you expect? That you’d serve the Lord of Hell while suffering nothing?”
“I won’t do it to them!” I screamed. “To hell with you and with me.” My teeth were clenched. I seethed and stormed with my own conviction. “I will not participate in this with them! Don’t you see? I cannot accept this! I cannot commit to it. I cannot abide it. I’m leaving you now, you gave me the choice, I’m going home! Release me!”
I turned.
He grabbed my arm again and this time the fury in me knew no bounds. I hurled him backwards over the dissolving and tumbling souls. The Helpful Dead turned here and there to witness and cry out, their pale oval faces full of alarm and distress.
“You go now,” Memnoch swore, even as he lay still on the ground where I had thrown him. “And as God is my witness you come back my pupil and my student on your knees at death, and never again this offer to make you my prince, my helper!”
I froze, staring over my shoulder at him, at his fallen figure, his elbow digging into the soft black underdown of his wing as he rose to his cloven feet and came at me again, in that hobbled monstrous walk.
“Do you hear me!”
“I cannot serve you!” I roared at the top of my lungs. “I cannot do it.”
Then I turned for the last time, knowing I would not look back, with only one thought in my mind, Escape! I ran and ran, sliding down the loose marl and the slippery bank, and stomping through the shallow streams and through the clumps of astonished Helpful Dead, and over wailing souls.
“Where is the stairs? Where are the gates? You can’t deny it to me. You have no right. Death has not taken me!” I shouted but I never looked back and I never stopped running.
“Dora! David, help me!” I called.
And there came Memnoch’s voice almost at my ear. “Lestat, don’t do this thing, don’t go. Don’t return. Lestat, don’t do it, it’s folly, don’t you see, please, for the love of God, if you can love Him at all and love them, help me!”
“NO!” I turned and gave him a great shove, seeing him stumble backwards down the steep stairs, the dazed figure amid the huge fluttering wings awkward and grotesque. I pivoted, turning my back on him. Ahead, I could see the light at the very top, the open door.
I ran for it.
“Stop him!” Memnoch cried. “Don’t let him out. Don’t let him take the veil with him.”
“He has Veronica’s veil!” cried one of the Helpful Dead lunging at me through the gloom.
My foot nearly slipped, yet on I ran, step after step, bounding, legs aching. I could feel them closing in, the Helpful Dead.
“Stop him.”
“Don’t let him go!”
“Stop him!”
“Get the veil from him,” Memnoch cried, “inside his shirt, the veil, the veil must not go with him!”
I waved my left hand, driving the Helpful Dead in a soft shapeless clatter against the cliff. High above loomed the door. I could see the light. I could see the light and I knew it was the light of Earth, brilliant and natural.
Memnoch’s hands clamped on my shoulders and he spun me around.
“No, you don’t!” I snarled. “God forgive me. You forgive me, but you’re not taking me or the veil!” I roared.
I raised my left arm to stave off his reaching, clawing hands, and shoved him again, but against me he flew as if his wings now came to his aid, and he almost pressed me back against the steps. I felt his fingers plunge into my left eye! I felt them drive open the lids, smashing my eye back into my head in an explosion of pain, and then the gelatinous mass slipped down my cheek, through my trembling fingers.
I heard Memnoch gasp.
“Oh no.…” he wailed, his fingers to his lips, staring in horror at the same object at which I stared.
My eye, my round blue eye, shivering and gleaming on the stair. All the Helpful Dead stared at the eye.
“Step on it, crush it,” cried one of the Helpful Dead and rushed forward. “Yes, crush it, step on it, smear it!” cried another, swooping down upon the sight.
“No, don’t do that, don’t! Stop, all of you!” Memnoch wailed. “Not in my kingdom, you will not!”
“Step on the eye!”
That was my moment, that was my chance.
I flew upwards, feet scarcely touching the steps, I felt my head and shoulders plunge through the light and the silence and into the snow.
And I was free.
I was on earth. My feet struck the frozen ground, the slippery sludge of snow.
I was running, one-eyed and bleeding, with the veil in my shirt, running through the driving storm, through the drifts of snow, my cries echoing up the buildings I knew, the dark, obdurate skyscrapers of the city I knew. Home, Earth.
The sun had only just set behind the dark gray veil of the descending storm, the winter twilight eaten up in darkness by the whiteness of the snow.
“Dora, Dora, Dora!”
On and on I ran.
Shadowy mortals slouched through the storm; shadowy humans hurried through small slippery paths, automobiles crawled through the blizzard, beams searching the rising, co
llecting whiteness. The snow was in such thick drifts that I fell and then scrambled to my knees; yet on I went.
The arches and the spires of St. Patrick’s rose before me. St. Patrick’s.
And beyond, the wall of the Olympic Tower driving upwards, its glass like polished stone, seemingly invincible, its height monstrous as if like the Tower of Babel it was trying to reach directly to Heaven.
I stopped, my heart about to burst.
“Dora! Dora!”
I reached the doors of the lobby, the dizzying lights, the slick floors, the press of mortals, solid mortals everywhere, turning to see what moved too swiftly to be seen. Woozy music and lulling lights, the gush of artificial warmth!
I found the stairwell and rose like a cinder going up a chimney in my flight, and crashed through the wooden door of the apartment, staggering into the room.
Dora.
I saw her, smelled her, smelled the blood from between her legs again, saw her tender little face, white and stricken, and on either side of her like goblins out of nursery rhymes and tales of hell, Armand and David, vampires, monsters, both staring at me in the same stark wonder.
I struggled to open the left eye that was no longer there, then turned my head this way and that to see the three of them distinctly with the one eye, the right eye, that I still had. I could feel a sharp tiny pain like so many needles in the empty tissues where my left eye had been.
Oh, the horror on Armand’s face. In his old finery, he stood, heavy shopwindow velvet coat, modern lace, boots spiffed like glass. His face, the Botticelli angel still, torn with pain as he looked at me.
And David, the pity, the sympathy. Both figures transfixed in one, the elder Englishman and the young fine body into which he’d been locked, smothered in the tweed and cashmere garments of winter.
Monsters clothed as men but earthbound, real!
And the shining gamine figure of my Dora, my slender, yearning Dora with her huge black eyes.
“Darling, darling,” Dora cried, “I am here!” Her small warm arms went round my aching shoulders, oblivious to the snow falling from my hair, from my clothes. I went down on my knees, my face buried in her skirts, near to the blood between her legs, the blood of the living womb, the blood of Earth, the blood of Dora that the body could give, and then I fell backwards onto the floor.