Sweetblood (9781439108741)

by Hautman, Pete

  I am halfway through my latte when I find out. Without ceremony, the oboist sister begins to play. The sound is deep and pure and rich, tingling the fine hairs on my arms, a falling series of notes like the calling of an owl. She repeats the series again and again, each time with some tiny variation: a little slower, a little quieter, a little harsher. A contest of owls? I close my eyes and I am flying through the forest at night, hooting. Then the bass notes hit: I feel the thrumming in my lips and my breasts. Startled, I look at the bass player. She is staring at me, a faint curve on her blue lips, long fingers slapping fat strings. I close my eyes and let the raw sound carry me away. I am flying again, sliding through the woods on liquid air, leaves stroking my body like fronds of seaweed. Maybe I am not an owl. Maybe I am some other night creature. I twist and turn in midair; the full moon flashes through the foliage. If I knew where I was I could fly across town to the Sacred Bean and see myself through the window, sitting here with my eyes closed, absorbing the sounds of oboe and bass.

  My imagination is quite real, quite intense. It has gotten me through many an algebra class.

  The bass vibrations cease. The hooting of the oboe slows, quiets, then stops altogether. My ears are again filled with the chatter of multiple conversations. I open my eyes to find Guy sitting across from me, his blue eyes fixed upon my honey browns.

  “I’m surprised you came,” I say.

  Guy nods. On the tiny stage behind him the blue-lipped women are sharing a cigarette, taking a break. Guy is holding a tiny espresso cup.

  “I can’t stay very long,” I say.

  Guy sips his espresso. His tattoo peeks at me from beneath the cuff of his leather jacket. I sip my latte—I try to sip my latte—but my mug is empty and all I get is a glob of foam on my lip.

  “You want another one?” Guy asks.

  “No, thank you.”

  One corner of his mouth turns up. “You are very polite,” he says. He is sitting directly beneath one of the track lights. His thick black hair glistens.

  “But I’ll take an espresso,” I say. I don’t want him to think I’m too polite. Also, I need to get rid of him for a couple minutes so I can think.

  He melts into the sea of black leather, and I frantically try to imagine how the rest of the evening will go.

  My brain freezes; I fail.

  He is back with my espresso. I take the tiny cup in my hands and hold it up to my nose and inhale. The smell of it is toasty and deep and rich, like fresh baked bread, or tobacco.

  “I wanted to ask you something,” I say. “The bug you gave me. Isn’t it kind of late in the year? What happens when the butterfly comes out? If I let it go it’ll freeze to death.”

  “You can keep it for an indoor pet,” he says, grinning.

  I taste my espresso. It hits the tip of my tongue and for the briefest instant it is sweet. Then it flows back into my mouth and I get hit with sour and bitter all at once. I swallow, and my mouth comes alive with intense coffee flavor even as my throat clenches, complaining of the potent bitterness. Guy is watching me; I keep my features carefully composed and wait a few seconds for my throat to loosen.

  “It’s good,” I say, but Guy is looking over my head. I feel a presence close behind me and turn to look.

  A tall, scrawny guy with short, shaggy hair is looking down at us. He has orange eyelashes. I think his hair would be orange too, if he didn’t dye it black.

  “Hey, Weevil,” Guy says.

  “How’s it going, kid?” He extends his hand to me. “Hey there, baby bat. I don’t know you, do I?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Look at you. You’re amazing.”

  I shake his thin, long-fingered hand. “Actually, I’m Lucy.”

  He laughs. “You’re funny too. You a student at Harker?”

  “At the moment I’m a future high school dropout.”

  “Really! A prescient future dropout. So, you guys going over to the Carfax tonight?”

  “What’s going on?” Guy asks.

  “There’s a thing. If you’re not doing anything. You too, baby bat.” He winks at me.

  “Maybe we’ll drop by,” Guy says.

  “You want a ride?”

  “I got the dadmobile.”

  “Cool. See you there, Dilly.” Weevil wanders off.

  “Dilly?” I say.

  Guy/Dylan/Dilly shrugs. “They used to call me that.”

  “Apparently, they still do.”

  “I like Dylan better.”

  “What about Guy?”

  He grins. “I’m more used to Dylan.”

  “Okay. I’ll call you Dylan. What’s the Carfax?”

  “The Carfax Arms. It’s an apartment building over on the east side. The guy that lives there, Wayne, must be having a party. Interested?”

  “What sort of party?”

  “A goth thing, probably.”

  “I don’t know….” Sneaking out for a cappuccino was one thing. Driving across town to a goth party, that I wasn’t so sure about.

  “You’re interested in vampires, right?” Dylan is grinning at me.

  “So?”

  “So maybe this is your chance to meet one.”

  15

  Butterflies and Beer

  The Carfax Arms is one of those old apartment buildings that was probably very chichi when it was built a hundred years ago, but now it’s not so nice. The marble floor in the vestibule is cracked and stained, the brass mailboxes are tarnished to the color of mud, and the ceiling has been covered with the sort of cheesy acoustic tile you might see in a Kmart. The inner door is plain gray steel, cheap and forbidding.

  There are only four mailboxes. The apartments must be huge, I think. Dylan presses the button under mailbox number four. The button is old and yellow and has the look of a buzzer that hasn’t worked in twenty years. The name W. SMITH is printed on a piece of white tape beneath the button.

  “Somebody’ll come down to let us in,” he says.

  A minute passes. I can hear music and voices coming faintly from above. I’m too nervous to talk. A couple of times I almost ask Dylan to take me home, but it passes. Dylan has his hands in his pockets. I sense that he is not quite as cool and confident as he seems. Another minute passes. He presses the button again.

  “I don’t think it works, Dylan,” I say.

  The outer door opens. Three laughing black-haired girls crowd into the vestibule. Two of them I don’t know, but the other one is Marquissa Smith-Valasco.

  All three of them are wearing different perfumes. The clash of sweet and musk and spice is revolting.

  “Hey, Dylan.” Marquissa smiles brightly and touches her hair.

  Dylan nods, still with his hands in his pockets.

  Marquissa notices me. Her eyelids fall back to their usual half-closed position. “Lucy,” she says.

  “Good guess.”

  “What are you guys doing standing out here? Is the door locked?” She shoves the door and it opens. Marquissa and her friends push past us and start up the stairs, leaving a trail of scent. Marquissa looks back at us. “You guys coming, or what?”

  We follow, feeling pretty stupid.

  “Last time I was here the door was locked,” Dylan says.

  As we climb the stairs the smell of incense cuts through the perfume reek. The music gets louder. The lights in the stairwell are yellow. At the top of the stairs there is a landing not much bigger than the vestibule below. There are two doors. The one to the left has a steel bar across it with a large padlock. The other door, apartment number four, is painted purple. Or maybe it is maroon—it’s hard to tell in the yellow light.

  Marquissa and her friends walk right in. Dylan and I follow.

  The first room is long and narrow. It looks like a stage set where the playwright has specified “ugly, gloomy, spooky, incredibly badly decorated room.” A bank of windows along the right-hand wall is covered with heavy dark green brocade curtains. The floor is carpeted, and the furniture—a sofa and four big
overstuffed chairs—is all draped with the same green brocade curtain fabric. At the far end of the room a small fire flickers in an oversize fireplace. The only other light comes from two matching brass lamps with opaque shades.

  “Nice place,” I say. Music is coming from farther back in the apartment, a throbbing, thumping, off-center beat.

  Aside from us, there are only two people in the room: A guy and a girl sitting at one end of the sofa. I don’t recognize them; they look older than us. Both are wearing the standard goth uniform: black, black, metal, red, black, metal, black, black. Standard Goth, of course, requires that each individual display at least one Very Unique (a redundancy, I know) Feature. In this case, the guy has a bolt through his lower lip. A nut is threaded onto the end of the bolt. It’s probably not a real bolt, which would drag his lower lip down over his chin—not to mention the rust stains. I suspect it’s a piece of hollow silver jewelry made to look like a bolt.

  The girl’s bid for uniqueness is orange stockings under her black leather mini. Orange is not one of the Approved Colors in the Official Goth Color Guide. It is a bold move, but not very attractive. (There are good reasons why orange didn’t make the cut.)

  On the table in front of them a spiral of smoke rises from an incense burner.

  Marquissa and her crew walk right past them through a door leading farther back into the apartment.

  “C’mon,” Dylan says.

  As we walk past the couple on the sofa I see that the fire in the fireplace is actually several candles, and that the boy is holding a beer mug full of something thick, dark, and blood red.

  The apartment is like a maze. No, it’s more like a series of interconnected stage sets, each one populated by a collection of weird actors. In one room we come upon four guys with shaved heads and enough hardware stuck in their faces, ears, and scalps to set off metal detectors for miles around. They look like soldiers from the same demon army. They are sitting on the floor playing cards and smoking cigarettes and laughing. They are probably in their twenties, although with all the hardware I can’t be sure. Two of them are drinking the same blood-red concoction.

  I grab Dylan’s sleeve.

  “What are they drinking?” I ask.

  “Snakebite. Wayne must have a keg going. You thirsty?”

  “No!” Again, I think that I should leave. But somehow I don’t.

  Marquissa and her friends have disappeared.

  “C’mon.” Dylan leads me deeper into the maze. We enter a smoky room where several goths are staring at a grainy black-and-white movie on an old-fashioned black-and-white TV set. The smoke reeks of cloves. The next room is the kitchen. Weevil is standing over a keg of beer. He fills his mug halfway, then opens a can of something—I can’t read the label—and pours it into his beer. He notices us watching him.

  “Hey there, baby bat,” he says, blinking orange lashes. “Welcome to Waynesville.” He takes another bottle from the counter, pulls the cork, and pours a shot of blood-red fluid into his mug. The beer turns dark. He takes a gulp and grins. His teeth are red.

  My stomach wants to crawl up my throat.

  He carries his mug back into the TV room.

  I take a closer look at the bottles. The red stuff is raspberry cordial. The can contains hard apple cider.

  “That was a pretty awful-looking drink.”

  Dylan is grinning at me. “It’s called snakebite and black,” he says. “You want one?”

  I shake my head. But I do wonder what it tastes like. I’ve had beer before. A few times. I actually don’t mind it. I’ve had wine, too. My parents let me have a glass on special occasions. I can take it or leave it. Mostly I leave it. Alcohol has what Fish calls a “significant impact” on blood glucose. Besides, it clogs up my brain.

  “Who is Wayne?” I ask.

  “He lives here.” Dylan finds a clean mug and pours himself a beer. He leaves out the cider and cordial.

  “I’ll have a sip,” I hear myself say. I don’t want him to think I’m a total prude.

  He hands me the mug and I drink. A chain of bubbles gallops down my throat, bitter and sweet. Then I notice the butterfly on the knife.

  At first I think it’s a fake silk butterfly like you might see on a flower bouquet. But then it moves its orange and black wings, slowly. It is perched on the blade of a black-handled kitchen knife on the stained white Formica countertop next to half a lime. It feels wrong. What is a butterfly doing here, inside an apartment? On a knife blade? At night? In October?

  I point at it.

  “What?”

  “The butterfly.”

  Dylan looks. “Oh. They’re all over the place. Wayne raises ’em.”

  “He grows butterflies?”

  “Where do you think I got you that chrysalis?”

  The butterfly is slow-motion flapping.

  “Does he let them go?”

  “I guess they could fly out the window if they wanted.”

  “It’s cold outside. It’s October.”

  “They don’t have to leave if they don’t want to. C’mon.” He takes my arm and guides me out of the ex-kitchen. We walk down a short hallway.

  “How big is this place?” I ask.

  “He’s got the whole second floor.”

  The music is getting louder. We enter a large room with heavy brocade curtains and paisley wallpaper. About a dozen people, including Marquissa and her friends, are standing around smoking cigarettes, talking, and ignoring the three guys playing music. Actually, it’s not really music. One of them, a big dopey-looking guy with huge hands, is slapping the fat strings of a bass guitar with his long fingers. Another one, smaller and sharp-featured, is holding a small drum between his knees, hitting it with his palms. The third musician is hunched over a violin, running a hairbrush up and down the strings. They all look drunk or stoned, and they sound like it.

  I say in Dylan’s ear, “They’re really”—I search for the right word—“dreadful!”

  He laughs, and we move to the next room. We are in a small library, bookshelves covering the walls. Bookcases are like magnets for me. I read some of the titles: The Book of lies by Aleister Crowley, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology by Montague Summers, a collection of vampire books, and several titles by someone named James Branch Cabell. Whoever this Wayne is, he has interesting tastes in literature. I am reading the titles on the third shelf down when one of the books moves. I jerk back, startled, then realize that I am looking at another butterfly, this one sitting on the spine of a book titled Practical Lepidoptery.

  Dylan touches my arm. I follow him down another short hallway and through a curtain made of heavy plastic strips.

  We step into another world.

  At least that’s what it feels like. The heat and humidity and light hits me like a soft slap in the face. It takes me a moment to realize that we are surrounded by plants.

  The room is long. I look up and see stars through a glass ceiling. We are in a greenhouse. The greenhouse is alive with butterflies. Butterflies in the air, butterflies on the leaves, butterflies everywhere.

  Dylan leads me past a table covered with orchids, strange flowers with fleshy petals and leaves that look like the green skin of an extraterrestrial. I’ve never met an alien, but if I did meet one, they’d probably resemble an orchid. Along the glass wall is a long trough of dirt full of tall green weeds. The smell of plants—decay, fresh growth, and wet earth—is overwhelming.

  At the far end of the room we come upon a black leather sofa, two matching chairs, and a long, low smoked-glass table. A man is sitting in one of the chairs with a glass of wine in his hand. He is looking down at the table and talking.

  Across from him, on the sofa, sits a small, ghostly looking girl with black hair down to her waist. She is wearing a long black dress. Her legs are crossed, showing black fishnet stockings. Her thin white hands are draped over her top knee.

  We stop outside the furniture circle.

  “That’s Wayne,” Dylan whispers.
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  The man, Wayne, looks out of place. He is the first non-goth I have seen here. He has sandy, curly hair; a stubbly blond beard; and red cheeks. He is wearing a blue denim jacket over a Nike T-shirt. I think that he is about forty years old. His voice is very low, like the sound of boots scuffing through wet leaves. I can’t quite hear what he is saying.

  The girl is listening intently. A butterfly flits between them. Neither of them seem to notice. After another minute Wayne sits back and sips his wine. The girl nods, stands up, and walks past us as if we are transparent.

  Wayne looks up, fixes his eyes upon me, and says, “Next victim?”

  16

  Wine Red

  His red cheeks dimple like a little kid’s. His teeth are small and short. I think if they were normal-size I might run, but those stumpy little teeth and red cheeks make him look harmless.

  “Victim of what?” I ask.

  “Your fate,” he says, all serious. Now his voice is that of a priest: soft and pleasant and insidious. Then he laughs, deep and warm. He points to the sofa. “Have a seat!”

  Dylan and I sit down.

  “Who do we have here?” he asks, looking at me but talking to Dylan. His eyes are dark brown—so dark that I can’t distinguish pupil from iris.

  Dylan says, “This is Lucy.”

  “Ahhh!” He is looking at me so hard my skin feels hot. “My name is Wayne,” he says. “I live here.”

  “It’s very… nice,” I say, trying to be polite.

  “Be honest, now.” He sips his wine.

  I notice a large black and yellow striped caterpillar crawling across his knee. “You have a worm on your knee,” I say.